Life force

“ There is a pulse, there is breathing, there is a throb of life. It is throbbing all over, everywhere, every cell in your body is throbbing. That's all that is life. But we are not really talking about that life, because nobody can say anything about that life, except to give definitions. You can call it life-force, this, that and the other, but living implies all the other problems that the so-called life creates. ”

“ Was it that the struggle of things to survive produced as a sort of necessary by-product these intense preferences and appreciations, or was it that some mystical outer thing, some great force, drove life beautyward, even in spite of expediency, regardless of survival value and all the manifest discretions of life? ”

“ They belong to divine Principle, and support All force mental the equipoise of that thought-force, which launched the earth in its orbit and said to the proud wave, “Thus far and no farther.”
Spirit is the life, substance, and continuity of all things. We tread on forces. ”

“ Upon the illumination of the seven centres by the life force, another mystery takes place. The levitation of the spiritual life overpowers to a considerable extent the natural gravitation of the flesh—the down-pull of years. ”

“ In order to live, the body must maintain its various relations with the outside light and air - not only to gain life-force, but also to manifest it. Consider how fully employed the body is with its own inside activities ”

“ In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above what we know of the essence of life. ”

“ For I to be now set to tell, as I have told, that it not to offend me to suppose that there to be this inward force peculiar to each shaping of all bodies that do hold that wondrous quality of Life. And if that you ask me that I give example to make clear my thought, I to say that it doth be reasonable to suppose that the Force or Spirit of the Human doth be peculiar to the Human, whether that it to be a Cause of Life, or the Result of that which hath been evolved out of a Condition. ”

“ Now that he has learned that he lives, he understands that force which gives life to the whole world and in his consciousness he coincides with it, but being limited by his separate being (his organism) , it seems to him that the purpose of this force which gives life to the world, is the life of his separate being. ”

“ What life is, both as to its manifestation and character, is determined by the form of organization through which force, all there is of life, becomes a particular and differentiated vital phenomenon. ”

“ This vital force that is thus handed over need not necessarily manifest itself at once, but may lie dormant for a long time to be awakened to manifestations of life by the concurrence of proper conditions in its environment. ”

“ This unquestionably involves an increase or decrease of the rate at which the spiritual force discharges itself, and it is clear that this must be a matter of careful regulation by the Authorities in charge of evolution. ”

“ That we are ignorant of one or more of the indispensable conditions symbolized in the abstract term Vitality or Vital Force, is no reason for quitting the secure though difficult path of Observation, and rushing into the facile but delusive path of Fiction, which proposes metempirical Agents (in the shape of Vital and Psychical Principles) to solve the problems of Life and Mind. We may employ the term Vital Force to label our observations, together with all that still remains unobserved ”

“ It is the universal natural force that also regulates human life. And what do we see in human life? A fearful amount of moral and physical evil which is not prevented, but rather in part begotten by that regulator. ”

“ We may consider it as the active principle of life—Vital Force, if you please. It is found in all forms of life, from the amoeba to man—from the most elementary form of plant life to the highest form of animal life. Prana is all pervading. ”

“ These principles appear so well founded that in a measure they form an integral part of contemporary mentality. What scientist would nowadays deliberately venture to explain some biological fact by the intervention of the evidently inadequate vital force or final cause? ”

“ And so the force of life was renewed in me and I again began to live. ”

“ we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity, animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life in man and we call that freedom. ”

“ Vigor of body, of mind, passions, desires, reason, all that goes to make up a human soul, were in the full tide of existence; and I was here surely not to contemplate death, but to fulfil the functions of life—of a new life. ”

“ The range of individual differences in this respect is enormous; but whatever the mixture of yeses and noes may be, the person is infallibly aware when he has struck it in the right proportion for him. This, he feels, is my proper vocation, this is the optimum, the law, the life for me to live. Here I find the degree of equilibrium, safety, calm, and leisure which I need, or here I find the challenge, passion, fight, and hardship without which my soul's energy expires.
Every individual soul, in short, like every individual machine or organism, has its own best conditions of efficiency. ”

“ For I am alive, and this hand is part of a living being, the first law of whose existence is to preserve its life. Being alive, this hand of mine, if it were burnt, would set about trying to repair itself. ”

“ As the development of species continued, higher forces became manifested; until, at last, the condition of man was reached, and a life-power developed of a much higher order than any previously known. This life-power, or human energy, is the “ego,” the “self,” the cause of the bodily functions, and is eternal. ”

“ The health of your body, the same as the health and strength of your mind, depends upon what you relate yourself with. This Infinite Spirit of Life, this Source of all Life, can from its very nature, we have found, admit of no weakness, no disease. Come then into the full, conscious, vital realization of your oneness with this Infinite Life, open yourself to its more abundant entrance, and full and ever-renewing bodily health and strength will be yours. ”

“ Truly do we carry in us, each human of us alive on the planet to-day, the incorruptible history of life from life’s beginning. This history is written in our tissues and our bones, in our functions and our organs, in our brain cells and in our spirits, and in all sorts of physical and psychic atavistic urgencies and compulsions. ”

“ Through success in all these struggles, and not in any one alone, there results a survival of the fit, that is, of those organisms that are so equipped with proper parts and habits that they on the whole fit into and conform to all the essential conditions of life provided by the environment in which they are forced or elect to dwell. Holding their own in such unremitting and remorseless contests, those among them in whom consciousness has awakened, inevitably come to feel a certain sense of vital adequacy, a will and power to live, and an assurance of unexhausted opportunity. ”

“ If our minds are wandering to the nations of the earth, what will it benefit us? The grand place for our operations to begin is in our bosoms, and to see that our minds and bodies are influenced by those principles that pertain to light, life, and immortality. ”

“ Every human being is constantly generating three classes of forces, and they determine the kind of life he will lead here, the degree of success or failure that will characterize it, and the state of his consciousness on the inner planes after the death of his physical body. The law of rebirth brings us back to incarnation, but it is the law of action and reaction under which we evolve while here. ”

“ If we take normal physical, mental and moral exercise, this energy will be conserved in the blood, which is the life, and directed so as to produce a perfect development. Sin alone has brought conflict and inharmony into our three-fold nature and prevents perfect happiness and perfect development. ”

“ The whole journey of life on the physical plane here below is so designed and planned as to make the natural aging and decay of the physical body supplement, unfold and develop the Spiritual Body, through the right use of the faculties, capacities, and powers of the Human Soul—the Individual Intelligence.
These are aspects, uses and powers of that subtle something we call Life; that Principle that
Normal use that insures growth and development, range and power of action, is also, from first to last, a refining process ”

“ Forces can be set into operation which will literally change and make over the diseased, the abnormal portions, and in time transform them into the healthy, the strong, the normal,—this when we once understand and vitally grasp the laws of these mighty forces, and are brought to the full recognition of the absolute control of mind, of spirit, over matter, and all, again let it be said, in accordance with natural spiritual law. ”

“ And as a fact, in normal cases, to will and to observe that our efforts are to a certain degree efficacious, at least in controlling bodily movements, or in directing the course of our inner life, are actually very closely related processes. ”

“ Or, associating some departed ancestor, relative, hero, or king with the Nature force—an association which would be greatly strengthened by belief in the survival of the soul after death—he gradually confounded the disembodied human power with the soul of the Nature power, and through the law of least effort, used the concrete image of the departed human being to stand in his mental processes for the much more difficult thought of the Nature force. ”

“ Because the thing he revered in nature, the spirit, the universal, the life that was God, had created at his birth or before his birth the three tremendous instincts of nature—to fight for life, to feed himself, to reproduce his kind. ”

“ The purpose of these outlines, suggestions, analogies, and inferences, is to show that this life is a period of gestation, in close analogy and comparable with that of the child in utero; that with the web and woof of character, organ and function, impulse and use, opportunity and destiny, we are building a spiritual body, the immediate vehicle of the soul, as literally as is the physical body on the outer material plane; that the laws of Spiritual health and vitality are as concrete, apprehensible, and demonstrable as those of physiology. ”

“ These laws are inextricably mixed in consciousness with the data of volition and sensation, with free activity and fatal action or impression, and they guide us in rising to a personal being, a self or free cause, and to an impersonal reality, a not-me—nature, the world of force—lying out of us, and modifying us. ”

“ Certainly the angelic state would be less happy without than with the condition of eternal progress.
The truth of this doctrine may be further argued from the intense activity which exists in heaven. Wherever there is life, there is activity; and the higher the life, the more intense the activity. And it is an eternal law that all our human powers—our intellectual and moral faculties not less than our bodily organs—are expanded and strengthened by exercise. ”

“ All living things which exist at the present day have been successively formed by this means, aided by a long lapse of time, by favourable conditions, and by the changes on the surface of the globe—in a word, by the power which new situations and new habits have of modifying the organs of a body which is endowed with life. ”

“ Other elements of that force are the physical needs; the push and play of passions ingrained in human nature; the inherited bias; the strength of habits formed before childhood had begun to reflect,—the thousand forces which blend with reason and choice to make up our destiny. ”

“ How the vigorous life watches the passage of the liberated life out of its earthly environment! What a change is this! How important the knowledge of whither life tends! Here is shown the setting free of a disciplined spirit giving up its mortality for immortality,—the condition necessary to know God. ”

“ Discomfort and annoyance, hunger and wet, pain and cold, squalor and filth, cease to have any deterrent operation whatever. Death turns into a commonplace matter, and its usual power to check our action vanishes. With the annulling of these customary inhibitions, ranges of new energy are set free, and life seems cast upon a higher plane of power. ”

“ Life seemed a great, inexorable machine, setting at naught human aspiration, human endeavor. What was the good of fighting it? What was the sense in believing in a divine order, in such infernal chaos? ”

“ It is the lingering effect of this living force which helps to preserve it for so many ages, and in the midst of such adverse circumstances, as a survival among other customs and beliefs existing under a different living force. ”

“ How far up, down, around, do natural forces and agents extend and operate? If there be a fixed limit to nature’s domain, where is it? When life departs from man’s body, are the forces which continue to act upon his invisible spirit, whether that continues to be or ceases to be a conscious individuality,—are the forces which then act upon it and which bear it to its appropriate position in spirit spheres, natural forces, or are they other? ”

“ Physiology, exalting matter and dethroning Mind, would rule man by material law instead of spiritual; and, failing to give health or life by this process, ignores the Divine Spirit as unable or unwilling to render help in time of physical need. ”

“ And here 'tis observable how the same act of man is made the condition both of his life and death: ‘put forth thy hand and pull and eat and die,’ or ‘put forth thy hand and pull and eat and live for ever.’ 'Tis not to be conceived that there was any physical virtues in either of these Trees whereby to cause life or death ”