THE

WORD

LIVING FOREVER

(Continued)

TO allow the body to go on in the process of living forever, certain things must be given up, certain practices avoided, certain tendencies, emotions, sentiments and notions must have disappeared, because they are seen to be unworthy, futile or unwise. Unnecessary restraints should not be placed upon the body, nor its actions unnecessarily checked. There should be no longing for any special foods. Food is not an end; it is merely a means of attainment. Feeding and the time for feeding should not be a matter of eager concern, but of duty.

All drugs and narcotics must be given up. Drugs and narcotics overstimulate or deaden the organs and nerves, and cause degeneration of the body.

No wines, liquors, or alcoholic intoxicants or stimulants of any kind may be taken under any form. Alcohol inflames and disorganizes the body, excites the nerves, exaggerates or inhibits the senses, tends to unbalance and upset the mind from its seat in the senses, and weakens, diseases, or kills, the generative seed.

All sexual commerce must be stopped, all practices discontinued in which the sex nature is involved. The generative fluid must be retained within the body.

The heart must not be set on anything in the world or of the world. Business, society and official life must be given up. These can be given up only when they are no longer duties. Others take up the duties as he outgrows and is ready to leave them. Wife and family and friends must be given up. But this must not be if the giving up would cause them sorrow. Wife, husband, family and friends, are in need of one no more than one needs them, though the needs are different in kind. The wife or husband, family and friends to whom one thinks he is devoted, are not the real objects which call out his devotion. Seldom is he devoted to those individuals, but rather to the sentiments, emotions, or particular desires within himself and which are awakened, stimulated and developed within, by wife, husband, family or friends. He responds to them, to the extent that the response satisfies that in him which they represent to him. His devotions and affections are to the desire for wife, husband, family, friends within himself and not to any wife, husband, family and friends outside. They are only reflections or means by which he seeks to satisfy desires within, which they reflect and stimulate. If the organs or functions of body, or particular emotions or sentiments concerning husband, wife, family, friends, within him should die, become impaired or wear out, then it is not likely that he would care for those outside individuals—certainly he would not care in the same way in which he had cared for them before. His sentiments will change toward them. He may feel responsibility or a pity for them as toward a needy stranger, or treat them with indifference. So long as wife, family or friends, need one’s care, protection, or advice, it must be given. When one is ready to leave wife, family or friends, they do not need him; they will not miss him; he can go.

The emotions must not be given free reign. They must be restrained. Such sentiments or emotions as the wish to help the poor or to reform the world must not be allowed to flow out into the world. He himself is the poor one. He himself is the world. He is the one in the world who most needs and deserves help. He is the world which must be reformed. It is less difficult to reform the world than to reform one’s self. He can confer more benefits upon the world when he has redeemed and reformed himself than if he should spend numberless lives among the poor. This is his work and he proceeds to learn and do it.

He cannot give up the things it is necessary to give up, nor do the things which he must do, unless the doing or the giving up is preceded by meditation. There is no use in trying to live forever without meditation. Coincident with the whole process, and essential to his development, is a system of meditation. Without meditation progress is impossible. In meditation is decided what must be given up. There is where the real giving up takes place. Later, when the proper time comes, the things given up in meditation, are by outside circumstances naturally made to fall away. The actions performed, the things done, which are necessary to the living forever, are first reviewed and done in meditation. The cause of the attainment of living forever is in meditation.

Let it be understood: The meditation here mentioned is not connected with nor related to any modern teachers, nor to any practices such as the repetition of a word or set of words, the gazing at an object, the inhaling, retaining and exhaling of the breath, nor is it the trying to center the mind on some part of the body or on something in a distant place, the getting into a cataleptic or trance condition. The meditation here mentioned cannot be engaged in by any physical practice, nor by any development or practice of the psychic senses. These will prevent or interfere with the meditation here mentioned. Let it also be understood that no money should be paid or can be received for information concerning meditation. One who would pay to be taught how to meditate is not ready to begin. The one who would receive money directly or indirectly under any pretext whatever, has not entered into true meditation, else he would have nothing to do with money in connection with meditation.

Meditation is the conscious state in which man learns to know and knows, himself as well as any thing in any of the worlds, that he may have imperishable being and freedom.

The belief of the world is that knowledge concerning any object can only be obtained by observation, physical analysis and experiments with that thing. This is so in part only. No experiments or experience with a thing from its physical side only, can ever result in knowledge of that thing. All the labors of all the scientists in the many sciences, have not resulted in complete knowledge concerning any one object of their study, as to what that object is and its origins and source. The object may have been analyzed and its composition and transformations recorded, but the causes of its constituent elements are not known, the bonds which unite the elements are not known, the elements in their ultimates are not known, and if the object is organic the life is not known. The appearance of the object on its physical side only is perceived.

No thing can be known if it is approached from its physical side. In meditation, the meditator learns of an object and knows the object in its subjective or abstract state and without any contact of the object. After he knows in meditation what the object is, he may examine the physical object and subject it to analysis. Such examination or analysis will not only demonstrate his knowledge, but he may know in detail the object from its physical side as no scientist can know. He will know the elements in their pre-physical states, how and why these are bonded and related, and how the elements are condensed, precipitated, and crystallized into form. When an object is studied from its physical or objective side, the senses must be used, and the senses are made the judges. But the senses are limited in their action to the sensuous world. They have no part or action in the mental world. The mind only can act consciously in the mental world. Physical objects or psychic objects are previously represented in the mental world. There are the laws which govern the operations of all things concerned in the appearance of any physical or psychic object.

All processes and results of the physical, psychic and mental world can be perceived in meditation, as the meditator learns to make use of his mental faculties in connection with or independently of his senses. The meditator cannot at once distinguish his mental faculties from his senses, nor the manner in which the faculties are related with and operate through his senses, nor can he analyze at once an object in its ultimate parts and synthesize the parts, nor can he know these in meditation at once as a whole. This ability and knowledge is acquired by his devotion to it.

How soon he will be able to learn all there is to be known about an object or subject in meditation will depend on the development and control he has of his mind when he begins, on the control he has over his desires, on his devotion to the work, and on the purity of his motive in his will to live forever. Some minds are better adapted to meditate on abstract subjects than on concrete things, but this is not usually the case. Most minds are better adapted to learn by beginning with the objective world and advancing in meditation to the objects or subjects of the psychic and mental worlds.

The meditation here to be outlined and which must precede and accompany the psycho-physiological changes in the work of living forever is: from the physical state, by which the mind is bound down, limited and conditioned, through the psychic emotional world, where it is attracted, deluded and enthralled, to the mental world, the world of thought, where it can move freely, learn of and know itself and perceive things as they are. The objects or subjects to be meditated on, therefore, will be those of the physical world, of the psychic world, of the mental world.

There is a fourth order or kind of meditation which has to do with the mind in its ultimate state as mind in the spiritual world of knowledge. It will not be necessary to outline this fourth meditation, as it will be discovered and known by the meditator as he progresses in meditation of the third or mental world.

There are four degrees in meditation, in each of the worlds. The four degrees of meditation in the physical world are: taking and holding in the mind the object or thing to be meditated upon; subjecting that object or thing to an examination by each and all of the senses from their subjective side; contemplating or brooding over that thing as a subject, without the use of the senses and by means of the mind only; knowing the thing as it is, and knowing it in each of the worlds where it may enter.

The four degrees of meditation in the psychic world are: selecting and fixing in the mind any such thing as an element, an emotion, a form; seeing how it is related to and affects each of the senses and how the senses regard and affect it; pondering over the senses, their purpose and relation to the mind; knowing the possibilities and limits of the senses, the action and interaction between nature and senses.

The four degrees of meditation in the mental world are: to conceive a thought and to keep it in reverence in the mind; to perceive the manner in which the senses and nature affect and are related to thought or the action of the mind; to contemplate thought and mind in its relation to and as separate from the senses and nature, how and why mind and thought affect nature and the senses and to contemplate the purpose of the mind’s action toward itself and toward all other beings and things; to know what thinking is, what thought is, what the mind is.

(To be concluded)