Lifer

“ 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. ”

“ For all I learned through him of Nature’s law!
If lives stretched for goodness, well might his vie
For an exemption from the rule to die;
Nothing more certain, as his light grew dim,
Than his waiver of it, if pressed on him.
And You make a fuss at death, fret and fume,
When how does your life differ from a tomb?
You rid yourself of half of it in sleep ”

“ What a dream must this life soon become to us if we are born, through death, into another one widely different fom it! and seeing what death does to this body of ours, how can it be other than widely different? If, therefore, we could pass from life to life, or rather from stage to stage of life, keeping the knowledge gained in each to help us in the next, such knowledge, however bitterly, or, as we call it, evilly gained, would be really all in all good. ”

“ Looking at life as merely a preparation for death, their point of view was diametrically opposite to that of the Farmers who looked upon life as a phase of existence to be made the most of and to be enjoyed to the full with every breath from first to last. ”

“ Then he whose physical frame is perfect and whose vitality remains in its original purity—he is one with God. Man passes through this sublunary life as a sunbeam passes through a crack; here one moment, and gone the next. Neither are there any not equally subject to the ingress and egress of mortality. One modification brings life; then comes another, and there is death. Living creatures cry out; human beings feel sorrow. ”

“ After all, was it worth while to seek Death, when Death had already whispered that the little one was to be his own so soon, and had stealthily removed all but the last barriers that guarded her own poor life? ”

“ Even the worm begotten of death, springing from corruption, we name Life in matter; making Life a product of death and death a product of Life. When will the age awake to reason on being, as fairly as on other subjects. ”

“ Then, when body and soul are fitted for the change, there comes what ordinary mortals call death; and the pure being closes his eyes, to awake forthwith in his original glory from the sleep which mortals call life. ”

“ We should look on the body as the manifesto of the mind and on posterity as the manifesto of the dead that live after life. Each is the mechanism whereby the other exists.
Life, then, is not the having been born—it is rather an effort to be born. ”

“ Is it possible there is life there? Are we indeed in the presence of a mortal? Or one of the many who upon a day, many, very many years ago, stepped out of their graves, and were seen abroad? No; 'tis not one of those, but a wreck of a human being. ”

“ The Good One penetrated, the Founder of the first Mystery, the Life that became from the Life, the Kuštā that was from time immemorial at the beginning. This is the spring of life, which bubbled up from the place of life, so that we drink from this spring of life. He penetrated through life, founded life and sustained in the house of life. ”

“ And he saw that the two grand instrumentalities and co-accessory agencies to this end, were Life and Death, both equally constant and active, like all the other instrumentalities and governing agencies of the universe. Life is forever unlocking the portals of the present to youth and vigor; Death is forever closing them to age and decrepitude. This divine prevision thus becomes the wisest and most beneficent provision. Without life there would be no such thing as death, and without death no such thing as this grand succession and march of life--this passing from out the Shadow into the Day. ”

“ The living live, and then die. They pass away, as we know, to dust and to oxygen and nitrogen and so on. But what we don't know, and what we might perhaps know a little more, is how they pass away direct into life itself—that is, direct into the living. That is, how many dead souls fly over our untidiness like swallows and build under the eaves of the living. ”

“ I prayed to my Creator with all my soul, 'O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go hence, and be no more seen.' As if for an answer, the thought crossed my brain, 'Set thine house in order, for thou shalt not live, but die.' I then called my children and made disposition of such of my property and personal effects as were not covered by my will. ”

“ When does the immortal soul of the human individual come into existence? Is it at the moment of conception, or when the new-born babe begins to breathe, or at some moment between, or even perhaps at some era of early childhood when moral responsibility can be said to have begun? Some of the answers to these questions would transform an ephemeral creature into an immortal one in the same person. The most proper answer is a frank confession of ignorance. ”

“ In a way Death had become for her and for the time a lovely and gracious figure intent upon good. The hand of death was to open the door out of her father's house and into life. With the cruelty of youth she thought first of the adventurous possibilities of the new life. ”

“ And what is the meaning of this mortal life—this strange phenomenon otherwise so unintelligible—if it be not the moment in which a soul is proved, the period in which a soul is shaped and developed for other lives to come? ”

“ And yet in those days not much more than now
Would generations of mortality
Leave the sweet light of fading life behind.
Indeed, in those days here and there a man,
More oftener snatched upon, and gulped by fangs,
Afforded the beasts a food that roared alive,
Echoing through groves and hills and forest-trees,
Even as he viewed his living flesh entombed
Within a living grave ”

“ Because you and I and other creatures who live by their wits most of the time and have the tasks of physical existence performed for them, need to remember that one can almost see and feel the truth of eternity ... the eternal seasons, Thurley, the ever-dying, ever-reviving blossoms, the migration of the birds, the continual progress and continual decay of all forms of life—that is what makes us really seem so busy. ”

“ Human birth, growth, maturity, and decay are as the grass springing from the soil with beautiful green blades, Human frailty afterwards to wither and return to its native nothingness. This mortal seeming is temporal; is it never merges into immortal being, but finally disappears, and immortal man, spiritual and eternal, is found to be the real man. ”

“ The new law benefits the short-timers proportionately much more than the men with longer sentences. Only the poor lifers do not share in it. We were very anxious for a while, as there were many rumors that the law would be declared unconstitutional. Fortunately, the attempt to nullify its benefits proved ineffectual Think of men who will see something unconstitutional in allowing the prisoners a little more good time than the commutation statute of 40 years ago. ”

“ The first cry of life, when he came out of the womb, as much testified of One in whom is life, who is the Source of life, as the look with which he greeted his sisters or his Lord, when he was commanded to come out of the grave. The opening of every sense to take in the sights and sounds of the world around him,—the opening of every affection which apprehended his human relations,—testified of the same living Word. ”

“ To this pointless knowledge there came a dawning struggle with the powers of mortality, until very slowly, inch by inch, the negativeness was driven back, and the spark of life began to brighten within me. ”

“ Do ye not know that every moment ye live brings ye nearer to your end? Your clothes wear out, your woods and your houses decay, and yet ye look that your bodies should be immortal. What are the common accidents and diseases of life, but so many warnings to provide yourself for a remove? ”

“ As I sat in the gloom waiting the arrival of my comrade, a succession of strange thoughts and fancies passed through my mind. I speculated upon the probable aspect of the face concealed beneath the sheet—Was it not horribly distorted by the nature of the death—a fearfully sudden death—rendering a wondrous living tissue of organisation, in an instant, effete and worthless—a man yesterday, and to-day knowing more of heaven or hell than all the philosophers upon earth. Now only serving as a subject for dissection, while inheriting an immortality! ”

“ One paragraph may be quoted:
"There is life, and That which produces life; form, and That which imparts form; sound, and That which causes color; taste, and That which causes taste. The source of life is death; but That which produces life never comes to an end."
Remember the dying Socrates: 'life comes from death, as death from life.' We appear, at birth, out of that Unseen into which we return at death, says Liehtse; but that which produces life, —which is the cause of this manifestation (you can say, the Soul) ,—is eternal. ”

“ The body returned to the earth, the breath to the winds, the fire of the glance to the sun, and the ethereal soul to the world of the pure. Such were the ideas of mortal dispersion formed by ancient humanity. ”

“ Why, therefore, dost thou spend thy years, and thy thoughts, in seeking to make thyself great in this world? Death will soon come, and then all thy grandeur will come to an end, and also all thy designs. ”

“ How marvellous then are those laws by which even the humblest types of organic existence are preserved, though born amidst the sources of their destruction, and by which a species of immortality is given to generations, floating, as it were, like evanescent bubbles on a stream raised from the deepest caverns of the earth, and instantly losing what may be called its spirit in the atmosphere! ”

“ Brighter days, however, have dawned, and we now see death as universal and inevitable, as part of that great soul-stirring and heart-upholding average which we call for convenience the order of nature. ”

“ He traced the lives of these simple folk until we arrive at the grim and gaunt figure of Death, who, as he grasps the woodman by the shoulder, reminds him that his course is finished and that he, in common with all his fellow-men, must enter the great unknown land from which there is no return. ”

“ There is something real, something of human evolution, something additional to the Mystery Monitor, which survives death. This newly appearing entity is the soul, and it survives the death of both your physical body and your material mind. This entity is the conjoint child of the combined life and efforts of the human you in liaison with the divine you, the Adjuster. This child of human and divine parentage constitutes the surviving element of terrestrial origin; it is the morontia self, the immortal soul. ”

“ Wouldst thou desire to live for ever? Wouldst thou only wish thy life to last for a thousand years? Remember the long hours of weariness in thy short career, thy frequent fainting under the burden. Thou wast aghast at the limited horizon of a short, uncertain and fugitive life: what wouldst thou have said if thou hadst seen an immeasurable, inevitably long future of weariness and sorrow stretch before thy eyes! ”

“ There presides over this great drama of life a law as harmonious as that which regulates the movements of the heavenly bodies; and if death carries off from the scene every hour myriads of living creatures, each hour life causes new legions to rise up in order to replace them. It is a whirlwind of being, a chain without end. ”

“ And may we not, in speculative moods, consider Death as the grand impatience of the soul to free itself from the circle of individual activity—the yearning of the creature to be united with the Creator? ”

“ I measured cynically the tenaciousness of life, measured the thread that yet held me among the number of the living, and I realised now what the fight between life and death meant to a man brought to bay. ”

“ No; when the term of life has arrived, death does not wait even a moment ” Thou hast appointed his bounds, which cannot be passed." (Job. xiv. 5.)
3. We must all die. This truth we not only believe, but see with our eyes. In every age houses, streets, and cities are filled with new inhabitants: their former possessors are shut up in the grave. And, as for them the days of life are over, so a time shall come when not one of all who are now alive shall be among the living. "Days shall be formed, and no one in them." (Ps. cxxxviii. 10.) "Who is the man that shall live, and shall not see death ?" ”

“ But when we talk of the Life Force, the strong stream of physical immortality, which has replaced form with form and kept the stream unbroken through the ages, we ought to understand whereof we speak. ”

“ And again precisely in what sense, and how far, the survival must be personal is not easy to lay down. I shall assume here that what is meant is an existence after death which is conscious of its identity with our life here and now. ”

“ At this, the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said, “How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality?” [3]
IV.
Life is a state which follows upon Death. Death is a state which precedes Life. Which of us understands the laws that govern their succession?
The life of man is the resultant of forces. The aggregation of those forces is life: their dispersion, death. ”

“ Humans who pass from mortal existence ere the culmination of corresponding stages of growth and maturity, lack, so to say, ripeness, and upon entering the Spirit World they are at such a disadvantage that they find it necessary to again return into mortal environments where, through association with mortals, they may acquire growth and experience. ”