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

NTASHINGTON, 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 record right here for
all the ScornerS to see, my pleasure in read
ing The Star Rover Jack London book published
more than 20 years ago. This volume has brought
more conjecture and dark puzzling studies to what
is sometimes referred to as my mind than any book
I've read in years
This book is based the premise that mans
spirit is continuing thing lit is not a book on
SprltuaiSm), that when the body ceases that same
LIE comes popping up again in some other human
form and that all past lives are somewhere back
in our consciousness only we lack the Commemorative
ABILITY TO go back and remember them.
The leading character in The Star Rover" is
professor OF agriculture in Western university
VINO has murdered fellow professor and hence is
spending the rest of his days in San Quentin
The professors pride continually rebels against
the small injustices convcts must endure Finally
he becomes labeled No. l incorrigible and spends
all his time In solitary, most of it in strait-a jacket
ITO avoid the torture of the jacket and partly as
l. 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
MS 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
In these mental excursions he lived again with
complete reality and genuineness his life as child
with the forty Miners, which ended in his death at
the hands of Mormons; his life as a shipWrecked
sailor IN Korea where he spent 40 years as beggar
his life as French noble in the dueling davs his
life worker in Egypt.
With practice, he acquired the ability to "go to
Sleep even While they still lacing his Jacket
ana ne would not awaken again till thew were nm
Iacng 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
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.
T CAN NOT help but wonder in those vague inter-
l. ludeS when we 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 fashbacks-a face in a crowd an over
heard remark and We have that puzzling 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
LONDON thought those moments are swift glimpses
OF our former lives, and that's far as most of us
can ever go, but with intense concentration and de-
votion to mental discipline approaching self
hypnosis London thought could recapture and
rellve, IN minds, all those experiences
When 1 get rich expect to buy a house way
down 0outh, and lean chair up against the sunny
side, and just sit there for weeks and weeks trying
to get back to the days when was Genghis Khan
or billy goat, Or maybe Cleopatra. And if don't
succeed at least I'll have had mighty fine rest.