Nature never really
grows old as we understand that term. She is ever casting off her worn‑out
physical envelopes, or forms of expression. We say the tree decays. But do
we not see the new tree springing from the rotten stump of the old one? That is
the same tree. In other words, it is the
spirit, or force, of the tree we called old, materializing a new form of
expression. That process has been going on through countless ages. That
species of tree was far coarser than now in some far‑off past. It has, through
its successive re-growths, been growing finer and finer, and is to grow finer
still.
In all animal and
other organized life, we find periods of repair and recuperation preparatory to
a certain newness of life, and renewal of organization, as when the crab or
lobster casts its shell, the snake its skin, the bird in its moulting‑season
casting its old plumage, the animal shedding its fur. In all these
organizations other changes go on, which we do not see. During these periods,
the bird, animal, and fish are weak and inactive. Nature demands rest during this reconstruction. Such reconstruction
is going on internally in the organization as well as without.
All natural law, as
seen in the lower forms of organization, extends to the higher. This same law
extends to mankind. There come temporary periods in every person’s life,
when all the activities, forces, organs, and functions are more sluggish. We
are then undergoing our moulting process. Nature is laying us up for repairs.
If we obeyed her demands, we should come forth in a few weeks or months with a
renewed life and a renewed body. All
that Nature asks of us, is that we give mind and body the rest they call for
while in the repair‑shop.
We speak of people of “middle age” as having reached their
greatest amount of power and activity. After this period, “it is inferred as
the law of Nature,” that we decline gradually into “the sere and yellow leaf.” This faith in “old age” and weakness, by
the same spiritual law makes old age and weakness.
The “turn” at middle
age, or a little after, means that the physical body you have been using is
giving birth to a new one; in other words, the old is being re‑formed, and
giving place to the new. During such
process of re‑formation, a great deal of rest is required. Your real,
invisible, spiritual self is busy at work in the process of reconstruction. You
should be no more overtaxed at this period than you were when an infant, or
during childhood.
We do not grant this
rest. We force the exhausted organization
to work when it is unfit for work. We mistake our season for moulting, and
consequent temporary weakness, for some form of disease. We then fix in our
minds, through faith in evil, the idea of disease; so we construct a disease
for ourselves. While Nature is trying to
give us a new birth, rejuvenate us, and make us stronger, we defeat her
purpose, and make ourselves weaker
In the vast majority
of cases, people cannot give themselves the rest Nature calls for. They
must work on and on, from day to day, from year to year, to “make a living.”
That makes no difference as to the result.
Nature’s laws have no regard for man’s systems. So fagged‑out and ignorantly
disobedient humanity fags on, and thousands “make a living,” and toil and
suffer and wear out, and die in misery on respectable beds of sickness.
In cases habit is so strong that people cannot stop their
work, or peculiar line of activity. They
have no idea or capacity for resting spirit or body. They are miserable
unless at work, and yet through growing weakness unhappy while at work,—like so
many “house‑wives,” always complaining of being worked to death, yet unhappy if
not at work.
Could these people once have mind and body brought into a
condition approaching that of real rest, they would possibly be alarmed, and
fear their powers were failing. They might for a time become sluggish, inert,
and relatively inactive. That would be only because the strain being off mind
and body, the spiritual power is using its force to recuperate and build anew. But you cannot work force in the outer, or
physical, system, and the interior, or spiritual, system, at the same time.
While one is at work, the other must stop.
Nature’s great source
of recuperation is rest. The land lying “fallow” gathers new force for
growing grain. The mother whose mind and body are least taxed during gestation,
gives birth to the healthiest child. The broken bone requires rest while being
knit together.
By rest we mean rest
of mind as well as body. Mental rest is as necessary as physical rest.
Thousands of our race have no conception of mental rest, or a mind at ease. With them, worry, fret, uneasiness, and
anxiety about something is a fixed habit. Rich or poor, It makes little
difference. All this leads to exhaustion, decay, and disease. All this comes
because men and women cannot as yet believe that they, as parts of God, or the
Infinite Spirit, have spiritual power, which, if cultivated and trusted to,
will supply all their needs, grant them perfect health, and give them delights
they do not now dream of. Man is to see
the day when he shall know that when he says, “I will do thus or so,” and
persist in that attitude of mind, that the thing he wills is being done,—that
unseen forces are accomplishing the undertaking while his body sleeps, or,
while awake, he is re‑creating himself.
What we now call
“death,” is only the falling away from the spirit of the old body, before it
has the power to put on the new one. Through ignorance and violation of
spiritual law, our race has not yet given the spirit this opportunity. You
cannot die. It is only your body that dies. You had a body in an existence
previous to this. That died as others died before it. Your real life is the life of your mind, or spirit. You are not
always to suffer the death of the body as in the past. A period is to come when
your spirit will have so far matured its powers, that it can clothe itself
gradually with a new physical body as the old wears away. Paul inferred this possibility when he said, “The last great enemy
which shall be destroyed is death.”
When this law is known and followed, there will be results
which would now be called miracles. Spirits (by which name we term all using,
and in possession of, physical bodies) will have bodies for use on this stratum
of life so long as they desire to use them; and such bodies being more perfect
and symmetrical, will, as more perfect instruments, be better adapted to
express such spirit’s ever‑growing powers. Your
real self never loses any power. It is only because of the giving out of the
machine, the body, that the spirit is unable to express that power, even as
the most skilful carpenter can do little with a dull or broken saw.
Prentice Mulford,
Your Forces and How to Use Them
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