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ABOVE
LIFE'S TURMOIL
by James Allen
The Immortal Man
Immortality is here and now,
and is not a speculative something beyond the grave. It is a
lucid state of consciousness in which the sensations of the
body, the varying and unrestful states of mind, and the
circumstances and events of life are seen to be of a fleeting
and therefore of an illusory character.
Immortality does not belong to
time, and will never be found in time; it belongs to Eternity;
and just as time is here and now, so is Eternity here and now,
and a man may find that Eternity and establish in it, if he
will overcome the self that derives its life from the
unsatisfying and perishable things of time.
Whilst a man remains immersed
in sensation, desire, and the passing events of his day-by-day
existence, and regards those sensations, desires, and passing
events as of the essence of himself, he can have no knowledge
of immortality. The thing which such a man desires, and which
he mistakes for immortality, is persistence; that is, a
continous succession of sensations and events in time. Living
in, loving and clinging to, the things which stimulate and
minister to his immediate gratification, and realising no
state of consciousness above and independent of this, he
thirsts for its continuance, and strives to banish the thought
that he will at last have to part from those earthly luxuries
and delights to which he has become enslaved, and which he
regards as being inseparable from himself.
Persistence is the antithesis
of immortality; and to be absorbed in it is spiritual death.
Its very nature is change, impermanence. It is a continual
living and dying.
The death of the body can never
bestow upon a man immortality. Spirits are not different from
men, and live their little feverish life of broken
consciousness, and are still immersed in change and mortality.
The mortal man, he who thirsts for the persistence of his
pleasure-loving personality is still mortal after death, and
only lives another life with a beginning and an end without
memory of the past, or knowledge of the future.
The immortal man is he who has
detached himself from the things of time by having ascended
into that state of consciousness which is fixed and unvariable,
and is not affected by passing events and sensations. Human
life consists of an evermoving procession of events, and in
this procession the mortal man is immersed, and he is carried
along with it; and being so carried along, he has no knowledge
of what is behind and before him. The immortal man is he who
has stepped out of this procession, and he stands by unmoved
and watches it; and from his fixed place he sees both the
before, the behind and the middle of the moving thing called
life. No longer identifying himself with the sensations and
fluctuations of the personality, or with the outward changes
which make up the life in time, he has become the passionless
spectator of his own destiny and of the destinies of the men
and nations.
The mortal man, also, is one
who is caught in a dream, and he neither knows that he was
formerly awake, nor that he will wake again; he is a dreamer
without knowledge, nothing more. The immortal man is as one
who has awakened out of his dream, and he knows that his dream
was not an enduring reality, but a passing illusion. He is a
man with knowledge, the knowledge of both states- that of
persistence, and that of immortality,- and is in full
possession of himself.
The mortal man lives in the
time or world state of consciousness which begins and ends;
the immortal man lives in the cosmic or heaven state of
consciousness, in which there is neither beginning nor end,
but an eternal now. Such a man remains poised and steadfast
under all changes, and the death of his body will not in any
way interrupt the eternal consciousness in which he abides. Of
such a one it is said, "He shall not taste of death", because
he has stepped out of the stream of mortality, and established
himself in the abode of Truth. Bodies, personalities, nations,
and worlds pass away, but Truth remains, and its glory is
undimmed by time. The immortal man, then, is he who has
conquered himself; who no longer identifies himself with the
self-seeking forces of the personality, but who has trained
himself to direct those forces with the hand of a master, and
so has brought them into harmony with the causal energy and
source of all things.
The fret and fever of life has
ceased, doubt and fear are cast out, and death is not for him
who has realised the fadeless splendour of that life of Truth
by adjusting heart and mind to the eternal and unchangeable
verities.
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