Life has two sides

the visible and the invisible. The visible side is that on which man moves, a visible object among visible objects. The invisible side is the thought side, the mental energies that produce effects in the world of forms. As being, man is mind only; as individuality, he is both mind and effect of mind force.

In order to distinguish the plane of occupation we have built into our vocabulary the word "death" to express the idea of life functioning wholly on the invisible from the view point of the physical. As the spiritual eye does not see the formed object, so the physical eye does not operate beyond its own range.

Where the mind is, there is man. Jesus Christ said, "I and my Father are one." This he said while yet functioning through a physical body. The teaching here clearly is that life and associations are mental, therefore not dependent upon place; that time and place are mere relations of sense; that God pervades the universe; that all life is one. In another instance he announced, "And now I am no more in the world." When he made this assertion he was still caring for the physical body after the manner of man. The argument plainly is that we are in the realm to which the thought attaches.

Those who withdraw from a visible association with the world do not withdraw from their own sphere of consciousness. When my friend goes to Europe I do not say he is dead. I do not see him; but because he can write and I read, I receive intelligent communications from him. When my friend goes out of the body do not say he is dead. I do not see him, but I know that mind is as eternal as God, and in this knowledge I have the assurance that my friend lives, and in his changed relations proceeds to work out his destiny.

The transition from the visible to the invisible does not transform the individual nor fix him in an arbi

trary state.

The belief that either transformation or fixity is a result of the change is not the product of reason or an analysis of mind action. A selfish priesthood has instilled this idea into the popular mind, but no reputable religion makes the claim. Jesus was far from proclaiming it. To the thief on the cross he said, "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Jesus yielded up the ghost before the soldiers came to break the legs of the other. It is taught that Jesus ascended to a geographical heaven more than forty days after this declaration was made, and that he sat down on a material throne and has been loafing there ever since. If this could be true, he and the thief were together in paradise because of their like-mindedThe transformation came to the thief before transition. The Emmaus road, the fish broiling on the coals, the ascension, show progress, not fixedness.

ness.

Life ascends by remembering what we are, not by what we or some other one has been. The mental quickening called "conversion" is sometimes a desire to escape the consequences of past living; sometimes it is the conscious culmination of an unperceived spiritual growth. It is often a mighty impetus in the right direction, but it cannot free the individual from the long train of past thinking. The inner mind knows the impossibility of instantaneous freeing, and does not reach for such.

In the kindergarten days of man a representative object was needed, so his teachers drew him two pictures to express the alternatives of conduct. One picture they named "heaven," the other was christened "hell." Theology has warped the mind of the race by insisting on literal places, and material, physical bliss or suffering as attendant upon these respective localities. The unavoidable result has been that there is a widespread belief of space separation between the visible and invisible sides of life. Scripture does not warrant this conclusion.

Not one of us knows a better world than this. Those who know of higher worlds also know that those higher worlds have no relation to space.

Not one of

Those who

us knows a better body than he now has. vision the spiritual body know it is not attained by desertion of the physical body, but by a transmutation of the physical atom into energy.

For all the songs celebrating golden Jerusalem and pearl-gated walls, the mind clings to the kitchen fire and the back stile. There is the logic of order in this. The ego that propels a physical body and sustains it with physical food is too far down the class of life to pass to the head and hold his honors. Not until the mind frees itself from every longing for the things of the formed world will it be able to sever connections Iwith that world. This freeing is a growth, not a spurt.

The mother who withdraws and leaves her little ones; the loving child whose animating hope was the easement of the home condition; the sculptor with his half-hewn block standing as his hand left it — to what heaven could these go, forgetting the heart's wish? It is beyond nature that any should be happy in a strange land, suddenly disassociated from the deep-loved object. It is beyond God that a work should stand forever incomplete. Those who have withdrawn from the body are beyond the testimony of sense, hence are not known to those who wear the flesh as a veil. It is the unreason of sorrow to mourn them as departed. They cannot go, for there is no place to which they can depart. Here is life. Here is our field; the harvest of which has scarcely reached the stage of germination. That this is the best world we know, or believe we know, is testified by our willingness to continue in it. We ungenerously try to banish our friends to a theoretical realm, the vague world of a conventional heaven. How chimerical is that heaven is attested by the fact that not one au

thentic witness has returned to tell us of its delights. This spectral land of a future bliss is the ideal of the mental tendency to procrastination. The soul knows the barrenness of the speculation, and draws back. The parent cannot drive his child into the unknown night. He may advise, even command, but the little one shrinks back into the home light, and clings, weeping, to the hand that would thrust it forward. Speculation riots, but the soul knows. Here or nowhere is heaven. Here or nowhere is life

Persons who have lost a hand or foot frequently experience a consciousness of the missing member. This is the soul-mind that attaches to body, place and things The consciousness of parts that have been severed from the body evidences that man is a composite mentality. The mind knows the limb is. there, even though the knowledge is not ratified by the senses. This is surety that mind is subject to itself, not to the effects it has constructed.

Following the logic of the case there arises the query as to why any should withdraw. The experience is the result of the unenlightened mind seeking to free itself of the senses. Man has built up a universe which he calls "materiality"; this materiality he draws across his vision, shutting out Spirit. Vaguely he apprehends his real nature, and blindly he struggles to attain it. He has trained his conscious mind to believe that laying aside the physical body severs connection with the physical universe.

The real mind recognizes continuous life. The fictitious mind declares for death as a means of life. The fallacy of this belief is nearly always shown when the theory is put to test. The thought held in mind will objectify, and man lays down his body. Not without a protest is the change accomplished. The conscious mind turns from the force it has established. It cries for pills and plasters; it howls to its gods to deliver it from the bliss it has delineated in song and

homily. Theory has become stronger than the memory of being; the wheel of life turns, and the part that has been submerged arises into air.

Not until the multitude of sub-conscious creations have been set free in the universal shall man sever his connection with the formed world. Those whom men say are dead steadfastly live, and are working in their spheres to redeem the mentality of the race. As the universe is one, so is life one. As our earth is composed of land, water and gas, so is life manifesting on different planes; and as the substance, so is life a unit.

earth is one

Jesus Christ said, "In my Father's house are many mansions." There are mansions whose walls the eye of sense cannot penetrate. Let us not take our ignorance as the finality, and let not the blind say they themselves are not seen. That which we are is not visibility, and our mental world ranges from essential Spirit to the adamant of matter.

The heart recognizes its home, and the naked soul does not fare forth into the unknown. Instead, it tarries at its lesson, attaining here and remembering there until the holden eyes are fully opened. Life is a co-operative enterprise, in which Divine Mind said, "I will furnish the capital; see you to the increase." Individual mind covenants, "When I call in my investments I will render both capital and interest." God is not less true than man. If there are times when we would sniffle over our contract it is because we see in Frankenstein the fate our fears present. At the center we are stanch. We are the same stuff as Diety, and when the voice from the Heights calls, "Lo, I tarry," we wave a cheery hand and shout back, "Coming!"

As we proceed, we cancel all the obligations we have assumed. We built enstrangement, and we will dissolve it. We built separation, and we will annul