THE GARDEN OF LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16372, 28 October 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE GARDEN OF LIFE.

DEATH, THE GATEWAY. BT TVM. SATCHELI.. Oblivion- is the price paid by all who | enter the Garden of Life. That this must be so I will show you later. Possibly— probably even— garden is but one of —one of an infinite number, each utterly different from the rest. Words cannot convey its wonders. Regard only the splendour of the light, how it foams and shatters itself in a myriad jewel colours on earth and air. Contemplate the mighty azure dome with its floating vapours, translucent as glass, sixty miles in thickness, conserving the golden heat, excluding the icy cold, resisting tho artillery of the wreck-strewn void. If the sons of God had desired to fashion for themselves a palace of delight, might it rot be a place such as this? Yet for all its beauty and majesty it is so far but tho shell, the empty temple, the divine potential of that ultimate loveliness, that paradise for which it was conceived. And the spirits laboured in the warm primordial waters, building not blindly, but in the full light of intuitio-., drawing to themselves those things they needed, coming and going through the gateway to which is given the name of Death. Thus the waters were peopled, the air above the waters, and the lands that encompass them round about. The Portal of Oblivion. But the ideal temple of the spirit is not •yet. Stone must be added to stone, chamber to chamber, windows from which to look forth, and now a lamp is set in the tower and the light of consciousness floods the building. This is a moment immortal, but observe how with the growing light intuition fades. That illumination which continues to be all in all in the vegetable kingdom, casts an ever-weaken-ing gleam across the animal world, to fail almost completely in man. The advent of the human understanding has changed the aspect of the Garden of Life. A sun has risen in whose refulgence the eternal verities are concealed. If the sun of the world never set, what would bo known of tho starry heavens ? So, while this lesser light shines in tho temple, the indwelling spirit, blinded by its beams, beholds only those things which come within its rays. The Garden of Lifo becomes to him the only reality. Death, the gateway of return, is changed to the gloomy portal of oblivion. The inward and the outward' change places. The Is is projected into 1 the To Be; "I have forgotten" is construed into "I shall forget." Thus oblivion is the price paid for admission into the Garden of Life, for if it were not so, then earth life would be a mere playing, with shadows, devoid of sensibility, colourless, tasteless, objectless. The Clothing of a Spirit. For "evolution" let us read "involution," tho clothing of itself by the spirit in a garment of sensibility. Has it ever ' been conceivable that spirit should be evolved from matter? that a fortuitous concourse- of atoms should under certain ! circumstances of pressure, temperature, or what not, become Jiving beings? The ' materialistic philosopher is in himself the denial of his materialism. Shall there be ' reasoning and no reasoner? If I do not first postulate myself, the intuitive, un- ' conditioned self, then all my demonstrations are a mere threshing of air. I have said that intuition fails almost completely in man, but this must not be taken to mean that the failure is actual. Though the sun glare conceals the stars from our vision, they yet continue to shine uninterruptedly upon the earth. So, undimmed by the meretricious splendour of the human understanding, the light of the soul streams through the Garden of Life. It is said that if one descend into a pit one may behold the stars even in broad daylight, so in the profundity of human nature it in possible to catch gleams of a light which does not emanate from tho understanding, Insoluble Problems, i What do the spirits seek in the Garden of Life? Is it but a continuous picture show, with the sensation-seekers coming and going? Or is it of vital import? We know how the unembodied spirits press at the gateway of life, crying to us for admission ; how sweet and irresistible is their call in the hearts of youth and maiden. We know with what wonder and delight those who gain admittance gaze around them; with what joy they dance and disport themselves under the roof of lapis lazuli in the halls of gold and silver. Wo know how they scramble and struggle with one another for the pleasures of sensation; how, all too soon, they grow weary and disappointed and pass out again through the gateway of death. Why do they come? Is it to them a matter of indifference whether they inhabit tree, fungus, or human body ? Are there, then, states in the spiritual world? or is it that every form of life possesses its own delights and compensaI tions? To the human understanding, 'or j which all phenomena appear as projected on a screen whose dimensions are time ■ I and space, such problems must for ever : remain insoluble. I The Survival of tho Soul.

Yet it would seem as though there were being brought into being in this Garden of Life a machine, ever more increasingly complex and responsive, which may yet in the hands of Master Spirits play for their delight the subtlest airs of paradise. This machine, in the highest stage to which it has yet been developed, is the human body; moving and inspiring it, is the Intuitive Self, ever seeking through its ' medium a fuller expression, a wider range of sensibility. Ot the conditions govern ing the supra-essential existence we -an know nothing, save only that they are other than the conditions in which our earth life is manifested. Observe a man s shadow cast upon the roadway ; a thousand misadventures may befall it; express trains mav speed across it, passing clouds mav blot 'it from existence ; yet the caster jof 'the shadow moves on his way unharmed, even unconscious of these catas- ! tropin So it is with the soul, though j the darkness of death engulf the living body. _______ ——