The herald., 1896-07-27
THE THPOSOPHlSTS
Death and the Hereafter Discussed bv nr. II.
A. Gibson

a. utDSOn
H. A. Gibson spoke to a full house at
II a. M, at Blavatsky hail. 525 West Fifth
street. from the subject: After Death
What? He said in part: OF all the
words in our language, death" seems to
be most potent to arouse fear and even
terror in the minds Of men. We en-
shroud 1t in mystery and go to the farth-
est extreme in demonstration of grief
Death is as natural as any other opera
tion in nature and as common. Our
bodies are the theater of the operation
of disruptive lives and also for the
builders when the strength of the dis
ruptive lives is greater than that of the
builders we begin to die. When we out
grow any environment and change it
for another we die to the old. So in
ing to some form and being born to new
phases of life. Some people are phiio-
sophie and complacently view the pro-
cess of change, while others of a less
trustful turn and more conservative.
face every attempt at change of base as
to be strenuously resisted. 1t is not sur
prising that many view death as a great
enemy and violently resist and fear his
found in the fact that we center our
aims, hopes and interests in a phase of
life that ceases for us at death and robs
us of much or all that we have so earn
estly striven for. In life we find some
phases have permanency and resist the
work of change while other aspects
seem to be obliterated very shortly after
their experience as falling within the
fatal line of permanency of q few years.
Now in the larger view Of life we can
easily predicate strata of being or
forces which have permanence beyond
the fatal line reached by death. Men
may SO live and act from the more in
terror part Of each that death will not
destroy the consciousness, but without
break man can live deprived of body.
1t has been proved repeatedly that con-
Sc1OuSneSS can be retained apart from
the body. Many states in the body tram
scend its field of cognition and reach the
soul planes of permanency. States Of
trance prove this to any intelligent in
vestigator:
When the death Of any person occurs
soon after f1lmy body is seen to ooze
out from the physical body and remain
suspended near the body in the ether
by a small silvery chord. This is the
ETHEREAL counterpart or model of the
physical and is the seat of sensation
and connects the mind to the physical
form it wishes to operate. This astral
body remains near the body till disin-
tegration of physical molecules, when it,
too, dissipates.
There is also a second death, that Of
separation of the permanent from the
non-permanent The ego or soul has been
associated with the passions and desires
of the body or person and 1t must disen-
tangle itself, or, in another simile like
induced magnetism in iron, it has vital
lied these and has to withdraw. This
leaves the ego or soul pure, bodiless and
free, separated from the body of desire
or tendencies to material life. Thus it
passes to a heavenly state of bliss and
assimilate the knowledge of life into
wisdom and enjoys its native realm of
purity and transcendent life. This state
Will endure till the causes which brought
1t about exhaust themselves, when old
tendencies for earth life assert them
selves and the ego is drawn once more
to lower form of life, following out the
course of its evolution to higher wisdom
through experience and suffering. Lost
to the world of reality it soon becomes
clouded and once in the stream of ma
terial life may think that the only real.
Thus we are drawn to life until we learn
to live above the realm of it's desires
and illusive transient interests and bv
attainment of larger knowledge we
learn the truer and more permanent
phases of experience and live beyond
care, want disease and death, till the
thread of consciousness is unbroken, the
life having approached the continuous
and immortal. Till that time the Sphinx
devourS us and we return to life to rean
causes sown and right wrongs commit
ted.