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860
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
still, men who have reached a certain age bend themselves still lower under the imputation, and do all that they can to merit it."
The effect of evil suggestion about old age, senility and weakness is terrible on life. It paralyzes the will, on wucse activity alone depend the life and health of the organism. Men who assume the airs of age, weakness, and decrepitude to excite the sympathy of their fellowbeings, who pretend to be overwhelmed with grief to convince others of their love for the dead or sympathy with the living, and all those who stifle or in any way smother the natural buoyancy of their souls, are the authors of their own death. Wherever and whenever, on the contrary, the organism has been treated with the love and respect which it is entitled to from its ' tenant,' and not made to bear the ceaseless strain of unnatural living, nor exposed to unhealthy, uncongenial or poisonous environment, it has never failed to prove the fact that premature death, disease and old age are merely accidents, which nature has strewn in the path of reckless Bensuous living. And death itself is conquered with the subjugation of passions and lusts, for it holds no sway over pure Will, so that he who becomes one with it necessarily passes out of the whirling whirlpool of transmigration to which alone is confined the Kingiiom of the King of Terrors. But much more than mere speculation from an easy armchair is needed to acquire the mastery of death. He who would aspire to soar so high-and none is debarred from it by nature-must follow the advice of Buddha :
“Look to no extraneous aid, make yourself an island, depend on none, depend on the strength of your own righteous exertions, and the supreme effort made with earnestness to control the low nature
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