The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-10-26
Our Nine Lives
by ERNIE PYLE

XXTASHINGTON, Oct. 26-It is 1 believe not
w considered smart in present-day literary and
social circles to confess to being reader of Jack
London.
But being outsider to those distinguished
strata feel perfectly free to record right here for
all the scornerS to see, my recent pleasure in read
ing The Star Rover Jack London book published
more than 20 years ago. This volume has brought
more conjecture and dark, pulling studies to what
is sometimes referred to my mind than any book
I've read in years.
This book is based on the premise that mans
spirit is a continuing thing ut is not a book on
splrltualsm), that when the body ceases that same
life comes popping up again in some other human
form, and that all past lives are somewhere back
IN our consciousness only lack the Commemorative
ability to 60 back and remember them.
Inc Leading character in The Star Rover is a
professor of agriculture in Western university
who has murdered a fellow professor and hence is
spending the rest of his days in San Quentin
The professors pride continually rebels against
the small lnjuSticeS ConVctS must endure Finally
he becomes labeled No. l incorrgibe, and spends
all his time IN solitary, most of it in strait jacket
ITO avoid the torture of the jacket and partly az
H. an experiment, he trains himself to kill" his
body just by thinking hard about it; first he con-
centrateS on his feet until they seem no longer to
exist, then his legs, his arms, his chest and finally
his brain; and as the last section of his body is
eliminated, his mind goes shooting back into his
tory, and he lives again the lives he lived in the
past.
complete reality and genuneness his life as a child
with the forty-ninerS, which ended in his death at
the hands Of Mormons; his life as a shipwrecked
sailor IN Korea where he spent years as a beggar
MS lie as a French noble in the dueling davS his
life a worker in Egypt
With practice, he acquired the ability TO go To
sleep even While they still lacing his Jacket
ana he would not awaken again till they were I'M
lacng him at the end of 10 days in that period he
would nave lived over in the greatest detail some
fascinating past life, and yet the time that had
elapsed IN this world, it seemed to him had not
been 10 days, but merely the flash of a second
he never got back to the days when he was a
mud turtle but he felt that with sufficient practice
he could get back that far. They took him out I
regret to report and hanged him before he got that
far.
7 CAN NOT help but wonder in those vague inter-
Il ludeS when sit alone and think weird things
TO ourselves, if there is not something to this past
life business
AS Jack London says, all of us have had those
uncanny f1ashbacks-a face in a crowd, an over
heard remark and we have that pulling feeling
that somewhere we have seen, or heard or done
that thing before. And yet nothing in our memory
can BRING to realization when where or how was
Lonoon thought those moments are swift glimpses
OF our former lives, and that's as far as most of us
can ever CO. but with intense concentration and de-
votion to mental discipline approaching self
hypnosis, London thought we could recapture and
reLve in our minds all those experiences
When l get rich I expect TO buy a house wav
down South, and lean a chair up against the sunny
side and just sit there for weeks and weeks irving
to get back to the days when I was Genghs Khan
or billy goat, or maybe Cleopatra And if I don't
succeed, at least III have had a mighty fine rest