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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
formerly with certain definite organisms, have been observed in operation apart from those organisms, both while the organisms were still living, and after they had decayed."
Concerning the souls of the departed, Mr. Myers is of opinion that there is ground to believe that their state is one of endless evolution in wisdom and in love.
"Spiritual evolution :-that, then, is our destiny, in this and other worlds;-an evolution gradual with many gradations, and rising to no assignable close. And the passion for Life is no selfish weakness; it is a factor in the universal energy. It should keep its strength unbroken even when our weariness longs to fold the hands in endless slumber it should outlast and annihilate the 'pangs that conquer trust...... Nay, in the infinite Universe man may now feel, for the first time, at home. The worst fear is over; the true security is won. The worst fear was the fear of spiritual extinction or spiritual solitude; the true security is in the telepathic law......As to our own soul's future, when that first shock of death is passed, it is in Buddhism that we find the more inspiring, the truer view. That western conception of an instant and unchangeable bliss, or woea bliss or woe determined largely by a man's beliefs, in this earthly ignorance, on matters which the angels desire to look into'-is the bequest of a pre-Copernican era of speculative thought. In its Mahomedan travesty, we see the same scheme with outlines coarsened into grotesqueness:- we see it degrade the cosmic march and profluence into a manner of children's play."
The fact is that the moment we get rid of the erroneous notion that consciousness can be the product of the physical matter of the brain, and assign to it its proper place as a reality, coeval with matter, and endowed with functions which matter can never perform, we are left with no other alternative than that of continuity of life in both the past and the future. A necessary corollary from the established facts of continuity of life and evolution is the possibility of a consciousness of pre-incarnations in some rare and more
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