and began thus:
"To live long you must have perfect control of the forces that engender
life. The atoms of which your body is composed are in perpetual
movement,--your Spiritual Self must guide them in the way they should
go, otherwise they resemble an army without organisation or equipment,
easily put to rout by a first assault. If you have them under your
spiritual orders you are practically immune from all disease. Disease
can never enter your system save through some unguarded corner. You may
meet with accident--through the fault of others or through your own
wilfulness,--if through your own wilfulness, you have only yourself to
blame--if through the fault of others, you may know that it was a
destined and pre-ordained removal of yourself from a sphere for which
you are judged to be unfitted. Barring such accident, your life need
know no end, even on this earth. Your Spirit, called the Soul, is a
Creature of Light--and it can supply revivifying rays to every atom and
cell in your body without stint or cessation. It is an exhaustless
supply of 'radium' from which the forces of your life may draw
perpetual sustenance. Man uses every exterior means of
self-preservation, but forgets the interior power he possesses, which
was bestowed upon him that he might 'replenish the earth and subdue
it.' To 'replenish' the earth is to give out love ungrudgingly to all
Nature,--to 'subdue' the earth, is first, to master the atoms of which
the human organisation is composed, and hold them completely under
control, so that by means of this mastery, all other atomic movements
and forces upon this planet and its encircling atmosphere may be
equally controlled. Much is talked of the 'light rays' which pierce
solid matter as though it were nothing but clear air--yet this
discovery is but the beginning of wonders. There are rays which divine
metals, even as the hazel wand divines the presence of water,--and the
treasures of the earth, the gold, the silver, the jewels and precious
things that are hidden beneath its surface and in the depth of the sea
can be seen in their darkest recesses by the penetrating flash of a Ray
as yet unknown to any but adepts in the Psychic Creed. No true adept is
ever poor,--poverty cannot exist where perfect control of the life
forces is maintained. Gladness, peace and plenty must naturally attend
the Soul that is in tune with Nature and life is always perpetuated
from the joy of life.
"Stand, therefore, O patient Student, erect and firm!--let the
radiating force of the Soul possess every nerve and blood-vessel of the
body, and learn to command all things pertaining to good with that
strength which compels obedience! Not idly did the Supreme Master speak
when He told His disciples that if their faith were but as a grain of
mustard seed they could command a mountain to be cast into the sea, and
it would obey. Remember that the Spirit within your bodily house of
clay is Divine, and of God!--and that with God all things are possible!"
I raised my head from its bent position over the book, and drew a long
breath--something oppressed me with a sense of suffocation, and looking
up I saw that I was being steadily closed in, as by a contracting cage.
The little room, draped with its soft purple hangings, was now too
small for me to move about, I was pinned to my chair, and the ceiling
was apparently descending upon me. With a shock of horrified memory I
recalled the old torture of the 'living tomb' practised by the Spanish
Inquisition, when the wretched victim was compelled to watch the walls
of his prison slowly narrowing round him inch by inch till he was
crushed to death. How could I be sure that no such cruelties were used
among the mysterious members of a mysterious Brotherhood, whose avowed
object of study was the searching out of the secret of life? I made an
effort to rise, and found I could stand upright--and there straight
opposite to me was the entrance to my own room from which I had
wandered into this small inner chamber. It seemed easy enough to get
there, and yet--I found myself hindered by an invisible barrier. I
stood, with my heart beating nervously--wondering what was my
threatening danger. Almost involuntarily my eyes still perused the
printed page of the book before me, and I read the following sentences
in a kind of waking dream:--
"To the Soul that will not study the needs of its immortal nature, life
itself becomes a narrow cell. All God's creation waits upon it to
supply what it shall demand,--yet it starves in the midst of plenty.
Fear, suspicion, distrust, anger, envy and callousness paralyse its
being and destroy its action,--love, courage, patience, sweetness,
generosity and sympathy are actual life-forces to it and to the body it
inhabits. All the influences of the social world work AGAINST it--all
the influences of the natural world work WITH it. There is nothing of
pure Nature that will not obey its behest, and this should be enough
for its happy existence. Sorrow and despair result from the misguidance
of the Will--there is no other cause in earth or heaven for any pain or
trouble."