Geraldine Cummins - The Road to Immortality

MANY wonderful speculations have been made aboutthe whence and whither of man's destiny. Few have directly attempted to discusswhy man was created, why the material universe spins apparently for ever andever through space, its elements ever continuing, nothing lost, seeminglyimmortal, changing but in its imagery.

"A vast purposelessmachine." Such was the epitaph the scientist of the last century wrote of it, and in sodoing he declared the faith of the thinking men of his age, namely, that thereis no why. There is, therefore, no fulfillment. Matter is the only reality. Andthis terror, a purposeless mechanical drama of motion and life, must, withghastly monotony, play on for ever and ever.

Now, truth is far from us all; but it wasimmeasurably remote from those who came to this melancholy conclusion. However,if mind is accepted as existing apart from matter, there is a very definiteprospect of discovering the reason for the strange fantasy of existence.

First, it is necessary to define it, so far asis possible, in one sentence. If the contents of the following phrases be takenas a working hypothesis, then we may find an answer to the riddle of eternity.

Shadow and Substance:

Matter, Soul and Spirit:

Manifestation and its Source:

God, the Unifying Principle:

Disintegration in Matter, in ever finer andfiner Substance:

Unification again inSpirit.

WHY?

The spirit, or deeper mind, which nourishes anumber of journeying souls with its light is a thoughtof God. This thought is individualized, but not in the human sense. It isindividual in that it has a certain apartness from itsCreator, the apartness of the created thing from the One who gave it life.

Now, the mystic speaks of the god within him.This is an entirely erroneous statement. The term God means the Supreme Mind,the Idea behind all life, the Whole in terms of pure thought, a Whole withinwhich is cradled the Alpha and Omega of existence as a mental concept. Everyact, every thought, every fact in the history of the Universes, every part ofthem, is contained within that Whole. Therein is the original concept of all.So it is preposterous presumption on the part of the mystic to call his ownspirit God.

These myriad thoughts, or spirits, begotten by theMighty Idea, differ from one another; many of them, nearly all, before theycontrol and manifest themselves in matter, are crude, innocent and incompleteembryos. They must gather to themselves numberless experiences, manifest andexpress themselves in uncountable forms before they attain to completion,before they may know perfect wisdom, true reality. Once these are acquired,they may take on divine attributes and pass out Yonder ,entering within the Supreme Idea and becoming part of the Whole.

The reason, therefore, for the universe and forall appearances, for even the little mundane joys and sorrows of human beings,is to be found in the term "evolution of spirit," the need forcomplete fulfillment which can be obtained through limitation, through theexpression of the spirit in form. For only through that expression can spiritgrow, developing from the embryo, only through manifestation in appearance canspirit obtain fulfillment. For this purpose were we born, for this purpose weenter and pass through myriad worlds or states, and always the materialuniverse is growing, expanding, giving fuller and fuller expression to mind.The purpose of existence may be summed up in a phrase--the evolution of mind inmatter that varies in degree and kind--so that mind develops throughmanifestation, and in an ever-expanding universe ever increases in power andgains thereby the true con-ception of reality. The myriad thoughts of God,those spirits which inform with life all material forms, are the lowest manifestationof God, and must thus learn to be- come God-like--to become an effective partof the Whole.