CHAPTER IV.

THE POWER OF LOVE.
Love is threefold in expression, — a A, animal, mental, and spiritual.
Animal and mental love are physical in mani- festation. These loves are in the attraction which prompts birds to flock together, animals to gather into herds, and men to combine in society.
The same attraction draws wealth to a center in syndicates, power in corporations and govern- ments ; and it is the factor which unites the sexes in pairs.
Love is always love on every plane, however obscure its manifestations may be. It is a kind of protoplasmic cement, which causes the soul to adhere to anything and everything it touches in its onward march and blind search after the great- est good. It attaches man to things, to ideas, to wealth and the means of gaining it, to food and drink, and even to the habit of drunkenness. Its attachments are strong and weak. In some cases
60 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
the love is more for an act than for an object, as in the spending or gaining of a fortune rather than for the fortune itself.
Men seek brothels for the love of an act, since they have no love for the women whom they meet in such places.
Man rises and falls on the animal plane through the exercise of sexual love. Alone he can only fall, and he is alone unless woman unites with her whole heart in the sex union. Its effect is to build up or to tear down. Union is strength ; division, weakness here as elsewhere.
Every individual is male and female, mind and soul ; and the action and reaction of these princi- ples causes all the motions of the body and the emotions of the soul. The peculiar office of the male is to beget ; of the female, to conceive. The mind begets ; the soul conceives. So mind is the positive projective principle of energy, or the male ; and the soul is the magnetic receptive principle, or female. The active mind projects its thought, its vir, to the soul, wherein that which is most positively and continuously thought is conceived, gestated, and is finally born into the body as atomic matter, to work its way out into
THE POWER OF LOVE. 6 1
acts which are good or evil. Thus is generated in ourselves all that we are, and all that we do is our thought objectified in actions, which are our children, whose parentage we cannot deny.
Conjunction is the foundation of all manifesta- tion. We exist by and through the conjunction of the positive and negative forces. All acts spring from love, which is the Father so often referred to by Jesus. Vice and morality are off- spring of the same forces, positive and negative, male and female, begotten of that " Love which lieth at the foundation." Some offspring are be- gotten in love of good, others in love of evil ; and each bears fruit in accord with its nature and quality.
Conjunction of the sexes begets other offspring than physical children, which are rarely begotten in promiscuous sex indulgence. Disgust, the enemy of health and happiness, is conceived, and the woman brings forth a loathsome progeny to fester in, pollute, and poison the social atmos- phere, and ultimate in sores, ulcers, and physical degeneration.
Who can estimate the malignancy, the fatal power of disgust? Dissatisfaction, which is con-
62 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
tinually begotten in wedlock and out of it, soon culminates in disgust, which in its turn breeds crime and disease. It is fed by every act when the prompting is not mutual love.
The learning of the schools, the gossip of the world, the knowledge of law, finance, political economy, — all, in fact, which relates to this outer life, are mere pastimes for this world and must pass away ; but the knowledge gained through the reactions of love takes hold on immortal energy and abides. This knowledge does not come through mental experience alone, but through the union of truth and mind, or the male and female potencies.
When two of opposite sex come together, an experience is begotten which is denominated in the Scriptures knowledge ; "and Adam knew his wife Eve."
Infinite happiness is in oneness, unity, not in division ; and the nearer two approach to oneness the higher the happiness and the greater the cre- ative energy evolved.
Infinite wisdom has fixed an impassable barrier to the complete fusion of two into one, and at this limit pain begins. If absolute fusion were
THE POWER OF LOVE. 63
possible, all forms and objects would be united in one, and creation would cease. But energy has not divided itself wholly into male and female; the undivided, or unconditioned, remains to sepa- rate their activities, as time and space. Conditions divide these activities also, and the separation produces an interchange of spirit, of action, and reaction varying in rapidity of vibration corre- sponding to the nature of the dividing substance.
Vibrations are both pleasurable and painful, those which reach the soul producing joy and sat- isfaction, while those which end in the body result in pain and unrest.
True pleasure is of the soul, and the divine body is evolved from knowledge which we feel to be true by the peace and joy which is in and of it. We do not think out such knowledge ; we feel in it the pulsations of immortality, and in it there is neither fear nor shame nor guilt.
Immortality is begotten in the conjugal love of souls, but on the animal plane of conjugality we beget only physical children and disease unwit- tingly. Children take advantage of us, and steal into our lives unbidden and often unwelcomed. Sometimes deformed, hideous, or idiotic guests
64 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
join us at the feast, when the invitation is general.
Men and women embrace, having sensual pleasure only as an object, not realizing that the monsters of the human species are begotten of the extinguished fires of lust, falling like ashes and smoke, involving the devotees of pleasure in shame and ruin.
Ah, woman, fragile and beautiful as a flower in bloom! Can she realize that she holds within her nature the balm of healing for sick bodies and minds, the power that can build anew the wasted atoms of the old and worn-out structures in which life is housed ? She is created to increase life, not to degrade and destroy it by selling herself for fashion, gold, display, or honors. That which she too often accepts in exchange for herself is not the love which her regal nature demands. Although the shows of life pass in splendor, the colors fade as the cheek fades, never to be renewed.
She listens to another voice than that of love, and through a weary life she hungers for com- panionship, vainly trying to fill the loneliness with other interests, only to be devoured with
THE POWER OF LOVE. 65
ennui and repelled from him whom she has prom- ised to love and honor, with disgust. She enters into a world of pretense and conceives a family of lies, which consume life as worms devour a corpse.
To create life and love is woman's mission. She is love's tabernacle, and without the presence of the god how empty are its chambers ! Dust is on its floors; the decorations of its walls are faded ; its gorgeous vases are filled only with withered flowers. The dim corridors echo to no coming feet ; the silence of the grave is in its inner chambers.
The unloved, unloving woman hungers and thirsts for love. Men experiment with her in passion and wantonness, but she is unfed except she eat her own heart. The soul of woman is filled with phantoms, dreams of the perfect union with one ; perhaps it is a faint memory of a true conjunctive love known in some past and other- wise forgotten age, when man was more worthy, less a trifler than in the present time. But whether phantom, dream, or memory, it shadows forth complete manhood, the perfect counter- part. This is ideal conjugal love, and nothing
66 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
will satisfy woman except the man who has the same phantom image in himself. He is her counterpart ; they are twin souls.
Few men are ever conscious of this phantom of love. It is buried too deeply under the desire of possession, and can never manifest without the aid of woman, who in giving herself increases the fire until desire is ashes and the image in man is revealed. Then they twain are one, and being interblended become one song of worship in an eternity of immortal life.
The genius of love is freedom. It is not pur- chasable ; it gives itself. The most alluring fasci- nations cannot attract it ; they may attract its outward symbols, drawing two bodies together, while the souls are forever disjoined. All priestly rites and legal enactments are vain and void unless love calls souls together, and no divorce is possible when the true marriage is consum- mated.
Most marriages are of the body and of the mind, and what wonder that when the novelty of the relation wears off the souls shrink openly from each other, having no part in the incestuous union ? Woman is a mystery, and man knows her
THE POWER OF LOVE. 6j
only in conjugal love. Passion does not reveal her, nor can she know man through passion. Under its sway he lies silent and unknown, with power only to beget the lie he is acting in the holy name of love.
The spirit which descends from woman to man to make him an immortal being is halted at the door of creation by the inrushing of passion, and instead of being incorporated into his body as immortal substance, combines with passion and becomes a mortal being. Thus was Cain begot- ten and conceived, and thus violence and crime are ushered into being to flourish for a season and then vanish away.
He who truly knows woman until his soul is filled with her spirit has her phantom in himself, and thus perfected in one, they are eternally wed ; they are in God and he is in them.
Thou searcher after the deep things of life, what experience lingers longest in memory? What vanished good is most sacred and holy ? It is " Love's young dream," which bathed in rosy light life's early morning, before the fire of pas- sion burned fiercely, or the heart was hardened by the attritions of selfish desires.
68 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
That ray of divine light was the glow of heavenly warmth quickening into life the divine within, which is beyond and above " the changes and chances of this mortal world."
Other experiences have stolen between then and now ; innocence and trust have withered with evil knowledge and doubt, and the light and joy of life are a dream, dear, well-remembered, but vanished forever.
Thus does man die spiritually by losing his sen- sitiveness to love, and because of this loss he must reincarnate in the mold of this world until the first love of his nature permeates all his being and life, and he becomes wise, with innocence, sen- sitive, with all experience, and trustful as the little child whom the Great Master made the exemplar of fitness for the kingdom of heaven. The Rosi- crucian aphorism, " Love lieth at the foundation," is the gospel for all life and for all time. Fully comprehended, it includes all that makes man divine. It is the foundation of family, races, nations, governments, progress, order, peace, jus- tice, and purity; in fact, it gives all that truly enriches man. Love is the first cause of soul sensation when the fire of life is kindled. It is
THE POWER OF LOVE. 69
the inmost of soul life, the cherished and most sacred emotion.
Our tenderest love is not exploited abroad. It is too sacred for public exhibition. We love in secret, as Jesus commanded his followers to wor- ship, and love and adoration are alike an ecstasy of the soul.
There is no life without heat and consequently no growth, and love is the heat from which light evolves. Love is the inmost of mind, and to it the mind owes all its creative power. It is the secret attraction which draws truth from darkness and twilight into the sunlight of recognition.
The mind barren of love is a sterile waste, where nothing grows to please or gratify. It is void of creative power. Love is a well of living water out of which flows peace and the bliss of the angels. It is rest for the weary ; it is sleep in which passion ceases its ravages, a soul slumber where nothing intrudes to disturb or distract.
With the first vibrations of the soul of love, the mind falls at the feet of some ideal being in com- plete surrender, asking only " to lay the throbbing head on the beloved bosom and breathe life out sweetly there." This ideal being is the spiritual
70 E VOL UTION OF IMMOR TAUT Y.
or love body, something divine born of the truth, a breath of the Great God made flesh, in which is the spirit of love and worship.
In the evolution of life truth is wedded to an idea, and this conjunction is conjugal love, the union of male and female, or true marriage.
Ideas are born of love ; they lead the world ; they are in the van of progress and are always arriving ; they are the vir of thought.
Spiritual marriage takes place in each one of us and brings forth the powers, faculties, and attrib- utes of mind, even as children are born of physical marriage. The first fruit of this conjunction is the evolution of a center of energy which is known as executive force. This gives the spirit of resist- ance, of aggression, and of self-preservation. It is the head center of the animal, and from its manifestation has come the idea of the kingship, or supremacy, of the firstborn.
The next in order of formation is the domestic or social center, where tenderness and sympathy predominate and love rules the mind. Here so- ciety germinates and the first impulse of justice is given. Man cannot become a moral being alone ; he must be associated with others in order to
THE POWER OF LOVE, J I
know the right from the wrong; he must meet pain in order to feel pity. His sense of justice is born from resistance to aggression and wrongs inflicted by brute, unfeeling force.
Love and truth are one ! infinite, unlimited free- dom, but being divided in the soul, love is hungry for truth or in love with it ; and searching for what it desires, the soul sends out from itself only force, as a telegram goes in the form of questions.
In order to receive an answer to its quest the soul opens a receiver in the mind, a cell or womb, into which the answer comes as thought which germinates into ideas. This empty reservoir, which opens as a flower into which the universe may deposit itself, may be called the ideal center, the center which evolves ideas. We are fed with truth from this center which makes us wiser and better. Here is where telegrams from the Infinite meet the listening ear, and intellect and percep- tion are born of the light it radiates.
This ideal center is the point where the animal instinct culminates and reason begins, for ideality, or imagination, is creative and it is the beginning of immortality.
It is generally believed that man is what he is
72 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
forced by environment and heredity to become, which is partly true, but not unavoidably and altogether so. There is an alchemy of soul which transmutes these elements into atoms of flesh, bone, nerve, thought, and spirit peculiar to each person, at the same time rejecting the undesirable material. Thus the soul has a choice of elements, and this power of choice is in its loves.
The universe of matter, spirit, and circum- stances which infringe on man as if to overwhelm and destroy him simply enfold and feed the physical, the spirit of them entering into the soul by the way of the mind to be transmuted into that which man loves best. The true man towers above the conditions which surround and would enthrall him, and that which destroys the false becomes power to overcome in the true. Each element has its place in the economy of being, and, rightly used, works out the salvation of the soul.
This ideal center is the soul's mirror in which the unknown good is reflected, and thus reflected illuminates and changes the entire nature. Man rises thus above nature, which he desires to improve.
Originality in art, science, religion, and litera-
THE POWER OF LOVE. 73
ture issues from this center, which also is in- fringed upon by the lower world of falsehood, deception, and vain imaginings which give birth to superstition and obsession.
It is dawning on the world that disease, appar- ently incurable, can be healed by mental treat- ment. Diseased tissue can be reorganized, re- created into health, by focusing thought and desire on the patient to that end. But in this, as in all successful mental operations, the desire must pre- cede, or at least must unite with the mental act.
Too much stress is laid on diet and other exter- nal means for perfecting the body and keeping physical functions in healthful activity. It should be known and recognized that the mental and love natures are as important factors in the nourish- ment of the body and the building of its atoms as the food we eat.
If life is desirable at all, it is just as much so here as in any other state, or world.
There is no question about the ability of man to change things outside of himself, or to create them, as the telegraph, machinery, etc. ; but that he can alter vitally and effectually himself has heretofore been considered an impossibility. It
74 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
has been held that any change within himself for the better is a gift from God, or some power other than himself; but it is slowly dawning on the world that, as he can change or remake the atoms of his body, he can as well change, regulate, and control his inner man ; that, in fact, salvation is of the whole being, animal, mental, spiritual, and that on all planes man is the architect of his own fortunes.
In love the animal nature sleeps and man lives an ideal life, the Christ-life, wherein the soul respires as the lungs do, in breathing new life and being from infinite energy, which is love. In this ideal life, love builds new atoms of spiritual force, which change magically the sluggish phys- ical into the fire body, which is divine.
Thus shall ''this mortal put on immortality"; the idea is the seed of it. To conceive of a thing is proof of its existence in some form or condition, here or elsewhere. The universe is infinite, and it would fail of being so if man's thought could transcend it.
Paul in the ecstasy of inspiration declared that " this mortal shall put on immortality," " in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," but he seems
THE POWER OF LOVE. 75
to have conceived it as taking place on some resurrection, or general judgment day, as if the soul's experiences are marked by sections of time. Perhaps we misunderstand Paul, or possibly he did not fully understand the Christ idea, that there need be no such change as we call death.
The story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fable though it may be, shows that the idea of man's ability to put on immortality in a moment is not new. It is a well-established fact that the astral body can be detached from the physical and appear at any distance to those still in the phys- ical body; but the soul, or fire body, is quite a dif- ferent structure, in substance and vibration. It gestates in the soul, being begotten of truth and nurtured in wisdom. It connects with every atom of the body and with every faculty of the mind, to control, to project, to indraw, to change, to divide, to cause to appear and to disappear at will. These are some of the powers of an immortal being. Possibly Paul meant that some should conquer death when he said, "We shall not all sleep."
The idea of a day of universal resurrection and
J 6 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
judgment is out of harmony with infinite wisdom and justice. To the soul there are no days or years, but one eternal now, and God is all the time within us in judgment.
When a man's sins overtake him is the day of judgment for him ; when his misdeeds come thronging back into his consciousness, demanding recognition and reward, the God within judges, separates, and punishes, and the soul is the great white throne of deity.
When a man forsakes his evil ways and turns his back on wrong-doing, his sins turn also and follow him. They are his, the angularities of his nature, the atoms of which he is made. Let him receive them as a father his wayward children.
Their home is the love of evil that gave them being, and there they have a right to return to die, to be indrawn and forgotten, or forgiven, being received in love and recognized by wisdom, their work having been accomplished according to the law of their existence.
This is the at-one-ment, the indrawing of evil to its source. Jesus said, " Resist not evil." If the evil instinct be indrawn and transmuted into good,
THE POWER OF LOVE. J J
no outward evil can harm us. Love is the uni- versal absorbent in whose infinite bosom evil dis- appears.
The consequences of our evil actions come home to the source of the actions ; their death throes are painful, but all regrets cease and tears are wiped away when we succeed in forgiving our- selves.
There can be no salvation of the race until each individual of it is cemented to all by brotherly love. There can be no salvation of the individual so long as the different faculties of the mind are at war with each other. Salvation is in har- monious union, or perfect moral and physical health.
Salvation cannot be perfected in a diseased body, and it is to teach this truth that Jesus healed the sick. His religion is physical and spiritual, but the first work is with the body. Disease and pain make the mind opaque ; the light cannot shine through it. Pain is only the froth and foam of being, in too great agitation. It is the result of the jar and friction of opposing elements of mind and body. If the atoms of the body be true one to another, and the elements of mind are in
78 E VOL UTION OF IMMOR TALI T Y.
harmony, all is peace in the outer and inner man. Truth, peace, and joy descend into the minutest atom of being, as the body is built or rebuilt by the quality of our thought.
THE FORCE OF TRUTH.
79