Part 26

Persons who have been at the open door of the unexplored state called death say that a delightful feeling of rest comes over the emigrant, and that entry into the next state is like being in a beautiful dream.

If this be so, there is also nothing disagreeable in death--only in the fearthought about it--and hence the one only bull's-eye we have been sure of hitting--the cause of fear of death--does not exist, except in our hopes or our fears.

Many persons who are in the habit of apprehending cause for fearthought about the future, and who spend much of their time in worry, would not like to be put down in the category of false prophets, and yet their apprehension must be false in the ratio of chances of a million to one.

Thought about chance, as related to forethought, and from the point-of-view of the speculator or gambler, suggests the absurdity of wasting any good coin--calm and happiness--by "laying it on"--betting on--fear. The chances against having "coppered" the right fear are not only not even, but are ten to one against--an hundred to one against--or more--never less. Even if you should win by correctly guessing a fear, you would get back again none of the happiness that you had sacrificed--would not even get your "stake" back.

As a matter of actual experience, the following incident is a good example: A young man employed in a publishing house, where the proprietor was afflicted with the fuss-and-fret-habit, contracted the disease, and unconsciously became a victim to its toils. Robust good health began to give way to languor that induced dyspepsia and other contingent disorders, until suicide stared the young man in the face and haunted his dreams.

One day some one whispered a suspicion in the young employee's ear that was directed at worry and anger as the causes of his ill-health and unhappiness and the thought led his systematic habits-of-business to suggest "keeping tab" on at least one of the suspects, to see if it were the liar and thief, as charged. Each day, when worry made its predictions, record of them was carefully kept, and at the end of the month the reports were checked up by results. Only three per cent. of the predictions were even remotely realized!

The old proprietor of the business, through whom the contagious poison started, is dead, and the happy young menticulturist owns the business, which has become very successful by influence of the sunny optimism of its new owner, which attracts trade unconsciously to it.

LOVE CANNOT BE QUALIFIED.

The merit of loving is in the act, and should not--cannot--be qualified by the merit or demerit of the object under consideration.

There may be more effort required, perhaps, in loving something that seems to us unlovely, but no more virtue in so doing, as loving, like virtue, is its own reward.

God-love does not discriminate. It is, therefore, ungodly to discriminate. In the performance of the Man-Nature partnership-function of "divine selection" in the harmonizing of things that are antagonistic to each other and to Man--selecting for survival those things that are not deterrent to the harmonious growth and happiness of Man--if selection is to be made, it should be done in the spirit of calm justice, and not in the spirit of hate, for, as love blesses the lover, so does hate react upon the hater.

We cannot afford not to love.

There are animals and insects that seem to us to be undesirable and prejudicial to the harmony we are seeking to secure, that may serve most excellent purposes in relation to existing conditions. They are frequently a warning against unfavorable conditions, in the same way that pain is a warning against diseased conditions in the body. In the same way, crime is a warning against social or political conditions which invite or compel crime, and remedy should be sought in change of the conditions in preference to the punishment of the crime. I believe that a change of our point-of-view--our attitude towards causes and effects--would find punishment generally unnecessary, and, as such, brutal.

There is, then, a double reason why we should hate nothing. In the first place, it is probable that we are hating the wrong thing, and thereby are unjust, and we are certainly doing injury to ourselves by nursing the feeling of hatred.

Disapproval--calm disapproval--is a better judge in the exercise of "divine selection" than angry antagonism. Pity, as well as love, is a divine attribute, but hate is an attribute of the devil. Pity suggests change of conditions producing inharmonious results. Hate suggests punishment of the victim of the inharmony.

In its relation to personal comfort, the practice of not permitting hate, nor annoyance, nor irritation, nor repulsion to possess one's feelings, will bring greatest good results. Take the mosquito pest, for instance: One who begins to feel irritation at the sound made by the wings of the insect, is already creating within himself a condition favorable to inflammation from the effects of the bite. Many who suffer by mosquitos admit that the buzz is worse, to them, than the bite, which is proof of a purely mental and unnecessary affliction.

There was a time in my boyhood when mosquitos poisoned and annoyed me beyond endurance. Each bite represented a great itching welt, and the buzzing was full of terror in consequence, or, more likely, in the light of present knowledge, the buzzing inspired fearthought or dread, and the bite was very poisonous in consequence. At present, mosquito bites are not poisonous to me, and mosquito sounds are no longer disagreeable. I do not remember when the deliverance came. Possibly the cure came through intimate acquaintance. I have lived in localities where the mosquito thrives all the year round, and in such numbers that he tires his victims into a state of non-resistance, and in the calm of non-resistance, physical and mental irritations cease. This is sometimes called acclimatization, but it proves the contention, whichever way it is interpreted.

In the practice of my freedom from what was once a great affliction, I sometimes brave a swarm of mosquitos by sleeping in their presence without drawing the bar. If the mosquitos light on me freely, I find comfort in the evidence of my popularity, and in the fact that I am probably being of service to something, or somebody, by possibly diverting attentions that would not be appreciated in like manner by them. In the morning, when I look in the glass and note the little red spots that the bites have left, but of which I am not otherwise conscious, I consider them as a record of my hospitality, and am proud of them, as the German corps student is proud of the scars on his face, that are a record of equally foolish bravery or exposure, taken out of his university course at Heidelberg or elsewhere. My braving of the mosquitos would certainly be classed as foolish, except as a test of superiority, but the pin-point red spots soon disappear and do no permanent harm.

Mosquitos are said to breed in malarial conditions, and for the purpose of absorbing the malaria. Flies do not exist except in conditions of ferment, and are of greatest service in carrying it away. Roaches are splendid scavengers, and are a result, and not a cause, of unclean conditions. Our warfare should be waged against unclean and inharmonious conditions, and not against the purifiers and harmonizers of the conditions.

It is not a difficult matter to rid one's self of repulsions if the point-of-view is changed. I presume that the most generally detested creature that is not altogether deadly in its venom is the bedbug. The bedbug is more of a tradition than a fact, and many of those who shudder at mention of him have never seen one of his kind. I am sure that none of his enemies have much if, any, acquaintance with him, as to the color of his eyes, his habits of thrift, his amiability in his family and other qualities that serve to make a creature attractive and respectable within his sphere.

The truth about this much despised creature is that he is useful as a warning against unclean conditions, and his odor and his bite are his notes of warning. Instead of filling one's self with a feeling of repulsion or anger or any other emotion that affects the free circulation of the blood, and relaxes and disorders the tissues of the body, at sight or mention of a bedbug, the discovery should elicit the expression, "Thank you for the information." If it should happen in one's own house, no hidden crack nor corner should escape an overhauling to get rid of the cause of the bedbug's warning; or, if it should happen in a hotel, there should be a change of hotel.

Mention is made of mosquitos and roaches and bedbugs in this connection, not for the purpose of degrading the feeling of love by applying it to things that are disagreeable, no matter what their mission of usefulness, but to put stress upon the fact that one cannot afford to hate anything. It is especially useful, in seeking to change the point-of-view, to consider the greatest of causes of repulsion in order to more easily reach the lesser causes, for the lesser fade of themselves by the removal of the greater.

If you can learn not to hate a bedbug, to thank a roach for informing you of unclean conditions and to endure mosquitos, you are pretty sure to modify all prejudices by thus doing.

LAST SOMETIMES FIRST.

It is my own habit to read the last chapter of a book first and if the summary of its contentions and deductions, which are sure to be found in the closing chapter, interest me, I go carefully through the book with the author to learn how he has reached his conclusions. I find, upon enquiry, that many others do the same. This is made necessary because of the vast number of books that are published and the impossibility of learning by other than the easiest means more than a small proportion of the ideas that are given out each year. There are published, yearly, in English, twenty to thirty thousand volumes of new matter, or new arrangements or new editions of old matter, so that to read carefully only a catalogue of them would be a considerable task for the ordinary reader.

This being the closing chapter of my book, and being especially possessed of my subject and desirous of being understood, I may be pardoned for offering a brief syllabus of my effort as a benediction.

I have endeavored to show that fearthought is the arch-enemy of civilized man. Through the fears of his progenitors, it is the cause of the weaknesses he inherits; and through his own permission, it is also the cause of his personally acquired ill health, ill success, discontent and unhappiness. Fearthought, however, can be eradicated from the habit-of-thought of even the most timid persons, who are cursed by the hereditary affliction of fear, or by their own weak habit-of-thought, by persistent counter-suggestion, as soon as they are convinced of the possibility of freedom, and have thereby, learned the profitable point-of-view regarding it. I have shown that forethought becomes strong-thought as soon as fearthought, or weak-thought, is separated from it; that the condition of harmony which is created by the eradication of fearthought, is the normal condition in civilized nature; that growth is immediate and strong within the harmonic atmosphere thus created; that happiness is the certain result; and that fearthought and its various expressions are the basic deterrents to growth and happiness in man. That God, in the process of Evolution, has developed Man to the point where he executes the Higher Law of Harmony through the exercise of Divine Selection in modifying the brute law of "the survival of the fittest" (or, strongest), and thereby proves the "superiority of mind over matter." That God has created a partnership between Growth and Man, which is properly distinguished as the Man-Nature partnership. That the functions of the partners are clearly defined by rigid limitations; Nature doing all the growing without harmonizing or cultivating anything; while Man performs all of the harmonizing or cultivating, but none of the growing. That Man's only method of harmonizing or cultivating is through learning and removing the deterrents to growth. That in watering plants, Man removes the deterrent, drouth. That in building hot-houses, Man removes the deterrent, cold. That in oiling machinery, Man removes the deterrent, friction. That in refusing to be the bondman of fearthought and anger and worry, Man escapes the only deterrents within himself, to harmony, health, growth and happiness. And, that in cultivating Appreciation all of the possibilities of Happiness are opened to him.

I have tried to show that one of the great deterrents to growth and the acquisition of happiness is nursed by focussing the point-of-view on worn-out traditions, instead of on the present accomplishments and acceleration of progress in which all of the elements of happiness rest. That while happiness is possible to all under present conditions, indications point to the possibility, within the assured possession of surplus wealth-of-means, that Altruism may soon "have an inning," during which conditions will be so rearranged that dire poverty and unhappiness will be impossible to any but the perverse. That normal, civilized human nature is good nature, and that if conditions are intelligently arranged most men will eagerly mold themselves into good men to fit the conditions. That the Material Age has become so rich that it can now afford leisure to give attention to the Higher Self, and in so doing will soon refuse to permit any one born under the prejudices and the protection of the Nation--the social family--to be ignorant nor idle nor poor; that the era of the three great A's--Appreciation, Attraction and Altruism--is upon us, and that it will inaugurate the Age of the Higher Self, wherein Man will realize that he is not simply the highest among animals, but is endowed with divine possibilities, and cannot longer be respectable with only animal characteristics. That the resetting of the gauge of respectability rendered necessary by the Awakening, and the new conditions that must grow out of it, will be above the toleration of anything that is unaltruistic, as surely as the gauge of the present is above the toleration of petty thieving and convicted perjury.