Live Youthfully Now
by
Russell A. Kemp
Chapter 9
Permanent Youth, the Gift of God
Now we come to the last and, by all odds, the most important of the ideas and the practices by which we are to attain the new-age quality which I have called “permanent youth.” It was a British scientist who spoke of youth in terms of being permanent. And if we are honest, most of us will admit that this is what we want. As someone has said, everyone wants to live long, but no one wants to get old. Why should he?
Only God knows the bitterness that is in the hearts of God’s children when they first experienced the shock of being “old,” or the still deeper frustration that seethes within them at being consigned to idleness, uselessness, and inevitable extinction, when all the time something within them protests that they are not old at all. They still feel as young as they ever did, in one part of their being. But the tyrant of “appearances” has judged them and sentenced them.
Old they are by the records of the calendars and the timepieces, old they are by the witness of their children and the endless circling of the earth in its sun-swept path. Old they are sometimes by the witness of feeble bodies, faltering footsteps, and failing memories. So the world of appearances pronounces sentence: “You shall be bound by the word old until you are dead. You must retire. We have no use, no place for you. We are too busy.”
But you can appeal from this verdict!
Thank God there is a higher court, a higher authority than this tyrant of our human race belief in time and age! The child of God who stands accused or convicted of age does not need to cringe or cower, or stand helpless or alone. He has a champion, an invincible, indomitable counselor who knows how to appeal from this court of the world and its false beliefs to a just Judge and a true world.
In Old Testament times, in the long-forgotten years when the Book of Job was written, the unknown genius who wrote this giant essay of feeble man daring to challenge the great and terrible being called God knew something of this longing to defy age. In the thirty-third chapter of Job, Elihu draws a vivid picture of age and illness. He says:
“His soul draws near the Pit,
and his life to those who bring death.
If there be for him an angel,
a mediator, one of the thousand,
to declare to man what is right for him;
and he is gracious to him, and says,
‘Deliver him from going down into the Pit,
I have found a ransom;
let his flesh become fresh with youth;
let him return to the days of his youthful vigor.’ ”
(Job 33:18-25)
Is this just Oriental exaggeration, the typical extravagant language of hyperbole and fairy tale? Who is the “angel,” the “mediator,” who shows the sick man what is right for him, so that God is gracious to man, and remits the sentence of death? It is said that when this happens, his flesh shall “become fresh with youth;” he shall “return to the days of his youthful vigor.”
In modern times when the practice of healing through mental and spiritual agencies is becoming more and more common, the idea of a human being who is seriously ill being restored to health by divine intervention does not seem as incredible to us as it did to our ancestors.
There are many today who will testify that when they were sick, not with imaginary ailments but with ailments that were medically diagnosed, they appealed from the verdict of “incurable,” either through their own prayers to a Supreme Being, or through the greater faith and understanding of another person ... and their well-authenticated ailments disappeared. There are no medical explanations for sure cures. This could be called divine intervention, or the operation of a higher law than the laws of matter or of medicine.
The word intervention is not much used in contemporary metaphysical schools, as it suggests a somewhat capricious Higher Power who interferes arbitrarily in human life, and confers benefits or favors on some but not on others. This idea is repugnant to those who believe that God is governed by unfailing law and principle when dealing with man.
Yet there is no violation of law in divine intervention. There is only the perception (either by the sick person or by another) that there is a higher field of forces operating in and through man than the forces of matter. This higher field of forces could be called the “Father” of physical man, which is what Jesus called it.
He said of His healing miracles that they were not His work, but the work of the Father. Let us for a moment take the attitude that all of the physical life of man stems from a higher field of forces, intangible to the senses, called the psychic body, or “soul.” Let us further say that this psychic body, called soul, stems from the stepping-down of a still higher and more ethereal level of forces called the Spirit of God. And let us say that the field of forces called Spirit is really the cause of the soul and body being able to function and express as they do. Is it not reasonable to call this power, which begets the existence of the soul and body instant by instant, our “heavenly Father”?
If it is true that the life force which animates and operates our so-called flesh body is nonmaterial in character and constantly originates in a field of forces superior to matter, then we have a reasonable explanation of the miraculous healings performed by Jesus. Suppose that the Master knew and understood that the body and its imperfections were only the surface manifestation of a greatly superior life force, and that this superior life force (which created the body in the first place) had power to re-create it at any time. Then it would be necessary only to appeal to this life force to re-create the ailing part.
Jesus knew how to do this. Apparently He required some form of mental assent by the one being healed. He called this “faith.” Often He merely said to the sick person, “Your faith has made you well.” Did Jesus have the faculty of quickening this faith in the mind of one who appealed to Him? Was the dynamism inherent in His character and outer appearance such that it kindled an instant belief in His power when people saw Him? Or did He have such tremendous spiritual insight and perception that He could see beyond the mask of human appearance, and clearly behold the soul power potential in the individual’s desire? Was it really this ardent longing of the soul to make contact with its spiritual Father and be healed that He called faith? Have we had a wrong definition of faith?
The writer of Hebrews said, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Is not faith the energy of one’s own power to desire, coupled with an intuitive conviction that this desire can be attained? From this standpoint faith is the ardent longing of the soul to have its desire satisfied, and this desire in turn is born of an intuition that the longed-for good can be obtained. Then faith is not a mysterious quality of believing, but a purpose we believe in. If we did not intuitively believe in our power to attain this desire, we would not try to get it.
Suppose we were to interpret the Master’s often repeated words to sufferers whom He restored, “Your faith has made you well,” in this way: Your longing to be made well is the power that has made you well.” Then what part did Jesus play? Countless people before and since have longed to be made well, but this longing did not result in their healing. What did Jesus do that made the difference?
Was He not simply the Angel, the Mediator who “intervened” or interceded for the sick one? To intervene, says Webster, is “to come between as an influencing force.” And to mediate is to act through an intervening agency. A mediator is a middleman, one who comes between others to bring about some result.
Could we say, then, that Jesus, when healing the sick or crippled, acted as interpreter of the intense longing in their hearts to be well? Did He not, in a silent flash of soul communion, interpret the sufferer’s desire to him as being the very power of God in action, with “healing in its wings”? And in revealing God to the soul of the sick one as being already present, vitally present, in his own desire, the gap was closed. The spark flashed from mind in action as longing, to mind in action as fulfillment of its own longing. There really never was any gap between desire and its fulfillment. They were always the same thing, perceived in two different ways.
The longing, the desire for healing was the power and presence and willingness of life to heal, being only partially perceived through the mind of the senses. The translation of this longing, as communicated in a flash of soul empathy by Jesus, was a superior perception that the desire for wholeness was the wholeness itself, asking, seeking, knocking at the door of the human “I” for acceptance. Being instantly accepted by the soul (and in fact by the whole personality), this conception of wholeness was instantly perceived as healing. “Your longing to be made well is the power that has made you well.” Or as it is stated in Biblical language, “Your faith has made you well.”
What has this to do with the aged? Their longing to be freed from age is acute. They need an interpreter to show them that their longing is the power that longs to free them from age, and is able and willing to do so. To repeat: the child of God who stands accused or convicted of age does not need to cringe or cower, or stand helpless or alone. He has a champion, an invincible, indomitable counselor who knows how to appeal from this court of the world’s false beliefs to a just Judge and a true world.
This counselor is man’s own Spirit, his own higher Self, the immortal, eternal undying life within him. What he wants really is to appeal from the world of the flesh to the inner world of the spectacularly intelligent and powerful spiritual mind that animates his own inner world and body cells. But how does one do this?
There is a way, a definite, practical way that can be understood and practiced by everybody. It is a way with which we are already familiar, because we have been using it all our life. It is the way of rest. All of our life we have had to give our body rest in sleep. We inherited this necessity for rest when we were given a physical body through birth, and the need for rest was automatically supplied by certain processes, even yet but little understood. These cause us periodically to be overcome by a need for sleep. During sleep our body is rested and refreshed. Our conscious mind is almost completely blocked out, for from five to eight hours, while this renewal and restoration of the body is carried out. But we do not experience any lessening of our mental faculties through this lapse of consciousness. On the contrary, our faculties function better after it. Our mind is as a rule keener and better able to do anything we ask of it after a good night’s sleep than at any other time.
If rest is good for the body and good for the mind, the question naturally arises, is it possible to use this method of renewal in still other ways? Could it be used to rest the nonphysical body of man, usually called the soul? Some may object that the soul being nonmaterial does not need rest, in the way the body does. But if the body derives its primary energy from the soul, does not the soul in turn derive its primary energy from the Spirit? This seems logical. The soul needs to rest by turning itself over to Spirit, just as the body rests by turning itself over to the soul.
The truth is that what we call rest is only a means of restoring rhythm to whatever we are resting. The rest gained by pausing from physical or mental exertion, when we are temporarily fatigued, permits the over-active glands and organs to slow down, to become more rhythmic, more regular in their action. Since the new physics speaks of matter as being essentially musical, and since rest is an essential part of any rhythm or music, then matter is fundamentally action and rest, in a musically ordered interrelation.
But where does this “music” of matter originate? The Book of Job speaks of the morning stars singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy, at the moment when the cornerstone of the world was laid. Sometimes we read of the harmony of the spheres. The “music” of matter originates in the joy of heaven. Rest of any kind is getting back into the rhythm, into the harmony of that heavenly Presence that pervades all form.
The outer form of rest is what we know as sleep. What is the true meaning of sleep? It is an escape from disorder and confusion, from the welter of conflicting reports given by our senses, from the cares and burdens, the successes or failures of the day. During sleep the inner life, the higher Intelligence which runs the unseen world of the cells, takes over to a certain extent. The vital energies which were all projected and pointed outward during the day flow back into a state of balance once more. The soul, freed from the incessant demands of the senses and their sensations, can and does refresh the body and restore its energies. Is this all that happens during sleep?
By no means. It seems likely that the soul has a holiday of its own while the body is inactive. What really nappens in the halls of sleep is a deep mystery (probably a wise provision of nature to prevent us from interfering in it). Some say that the soul during sleep dreams the experiences it is to have during the next day. Others believe that, on the contrary, the soul tries to digest and assimilate during sleep the experiences of the day just ended. Some believe that the soul, free of material restraints, leads an independent existence with other souls, on a nonmaterial level, during sleep.
Some hold that the soul retreats during sleep to the deepest inner levels of its own consciousness and here works out its own destiny. It is felt that the soul renews its contact with the divine Life-Presence during the time when the conscious mind and body are at rest. Who knows what happens during sleep? All that we know for sure is that this period of detachment and rest called sleep is essential for physical and mental well-being.
After a good night’s sleep the energy and strength of the body are restored. There is a sense of wellbeing, a willingness to work. The mind is fresh and functions at its best. The nerves feel steady and strong. The individual feels as though he is a different person than the one who retired to sleep the night before. And indeed he is, in a number of ways.
Chemically speaking, many of the finer elements that constitute the essence of the ductless glands have been changed during the night’s rest. The soul can and does manufacture chemicals of its own right in the body. These are so refined, so ethereal in nature, that they have escaped the notice of those who analyze the composition of the human body. Nevertheless we believe they do exist. Just as the existence of vitamins was not scientifically proved until this century, although they had always been a part of living substances, so the existence of these delicate soul chemicals will someday be proved by scientific methods.
Until then let us just accept on faith the idea that rest gained through sleep is absolutely essential to the body and the mind, and its chief benefits are the renewal or restoration of energy to the nervous tissue and brain. Now if such a marked physical renewal can be obtained through the rest that sleep gives, is it possible that a renewal of the soul’s energies can be experienced through some form of rest obtained by the soul? And if so, what would be the benefits of such rest by the soul?
The soul, which is a living organism composed of essences and highly refined substances at present not known to man, has its own laws, just as the body has its laws. The soul has periodic inflows of energy which it expends in various forms of activity just as the body does, with this difference: The soul not only requires energy for its own functions, but it must furnish the very considerable quantities of energy required by the body. Apart from the soul, the body has no energy of its own. It is completely dependent on the soul.
Now the soul must receive its inflows or energy from the Life-Presence that animates man. From its point of contact at the crown of the head, the spiritual magnetic life essence is radiated into the soul, then activates the primary ideas by which the body is empowered. These in turn animate the various functions of the body, and keep them energized so man can live.
If the individual drives and pushes his physical body and attempts to ignore its needs for sleep and rest, this taxes the energies of the soul. It does not have a proper opportunity to do its work for the body. The body suffers. The soul can be overtaxed and actually be fatigued. The individual’s whole tone then is lowered – and this is not just a figure of speech. Remember, all matter is essentially musical in nature. It must accord with or be attuned to certain key notes in order to maintain its properties. So when we say that the body tone is lowered, speaking in human terms, we mean that it is not normally healthy or sound.
But speaking in soul terms, we mean that the tone of the organism is actually lowered, that it is not on pitch, not on key; it is not vibrating in tune with its proper musical key of life or strength or love, or other elements in the great harmony of life. So the body suffers. The soul must make greater effort to keep it energized.
The soul, in this case, does not have time to look after its own needs. It can become fatigued. The individual is weary. He may become bad tempered or inefficient. This is quite a common occurrence. Sometimes illness causes the individual to take rest. Sometimes spiritual counsel shows him the folly of forcing and driving his body, and he voluntarily changes his ways.
At any rate, be assured that your soul needs rest, just as your body does. The soul is a natural organism and is fed by nature’s forces, just as the body is, but the forces on which the soul feeds are finer and higher in vibration, more volatile than those we know as physical substance. There are different ways to rest the soul. For instance, the soul requires beauty just as the body requires food. Beauty in any form is a kind of nourishment for man’s soul.
What refreshment man gains from a short walk in the country, or a period of work in his garden! This is because the beauty of nature actually feeds his soul. Works of art also feed the soul. Music is of extreme importance to the soul. The soul also derives much tonic and stimulation from color. Joy of any kind is to the soul as water is to the body. Was it not Emerson who said, “The soul’s highest duty is to be of good cheer”? The soul thirsts for joy; it is a necessity.
Those who resort to alcohol, trying to find joy through the toxic stimulation and burning of their finer brain tissues, are victims of a legitimate need for joy, which they are trying to satisfy in an unnatural, debased way. They can be redeemed through learning to think, breathe, eat, and pray in ways that produce joy.
As we said before, true rest is an advanced degree or spiritualized expression of the physical rest that keeps life in this body of ours. In one sense it is a natural process. Man has practiced it for ages — but not under the name of rest. It has been called contemplation, silence, prayer, safari, samadhi, meditation, deep meditation, communion, and many other names. But essentially it is a conscious resting or stilling of the human mentality, a quieting of the body and the nerves, a turning inward and upward of the eye of the mind, with the purpose of consciously coming into a perfect balance deep within oneself.
There is a point at which conscious mental activity voluntarily suspends itself, where the presence of a greater Self is sensed, where the body is relaxed and still, and the mind, though it is inactive, is not a blank nor a void. It is just resting, as one might rest at ease on a perfect summer day, with senses all alert, but not thinking-merely enjoying, welcoming, perceiving. This is true rest.
How can one voluntarily put his mind and body into the condition that makes spiritual rest possible? Certain guides can be given: a definite time in which to practice being relaxed in mind and body; a comfortable position, usually seated, both feet flat on the floor, hands open and relaxed, back straight (sit tall!).
Begin with the physical body; seek to quiet and relax the body, bring it to a state of complete stillness. Stop all the twitchings, the involuntary movements; shift the weight until the body is absolutely comfortable and can be still. It often helps to tell the various parts, particularly the eyes, to relax into peace, or strength, or life. Also, get the hands relaxed. The hands and the will act and react on each other: tense will, tense hands; tense hands, tense will.
After bringing the body to a state of relaxed stillness, there is usually little more to do. The conscious intellectual activity has been slowed down. The attention now must be diverted from thinking or holding thoughts or concentrating in any way, to the idea of “watching” or observing oneself in a detached way. There is to be no attempt to get outside of oneself in doing this. Rather the idea is simply to direct the attention to a point of balance, somewhere down behind the physical heart. There one rests in complete abandonment to the sense of “just being.” When properly done (and it never can be forced), the results are magical. More can be accomplished in one instant of such spiritual rest than in nights of prayer, or weeks of mental working.
The point is that spiritual rest renews and refreshes the soul, brings it back into harmony with the rhythms of nature. When the soul is renewed it cannot help renewing the body, for the body is really soul perceived through the limitations of the senses. And soul is of course Spirit, or the I AM, perceived through the limitations of the psychic nature. There is only one unlimited perfect Mind and perfect Body, which we perceive “in a mirror, darkly.”
Seeing our body through the misty limitations of the senses, we call it young at a certain time of life, middle-aged at a later period, and old a few years later. But this is all a matter of matter, so to speak, and matter means limitation. Limitation is the most characteristic quality of matter. It is this quality of limitation that makes matter so useful to us, and also makes matter harmful to us.
For instance, for a rose to be a rose, the substance caught and fixed in its vibrational patterns (which give it the beautiful form and fragrance of a rose) must be restricted to that form. It cannot be a rose and at the same time be a dahlia or a begonia.
An orange is always an orange. It is limited to being an orange — limited in size and form and color and composition. That is what makes it an orange, not an apple or a peach. Anything material is always limited. When we believe our body to be material it must be limited in its appearance to us. Because we do believe our body to be material, we have fixed an entirely artificial limitation on the length of time the body can function efficiently. Usually based on a misunderstanding of the 90th Psalm, we fix this period at seventy to eighty years. But there are so many people now ignoring this threescore-and-ten syndrome, and living in the best of health far beyond it, that its absurdity is becoming recognized. Soon its binding power on human life expectancy will be considered a ridiculous superstition. It will be discarded, just as the notion that night air was harmful, which made our forefathers sleep with their windows closed, was discarded. Many who read this will remember encountering this belief at an early age; today we believe that the more fresh air we can get during sleep, the better. So we open our windows and let the air in, night or day.
It is high time we opened the windows of our mind to the fresh air of new ideas. As Ella Wheeler Wilcox said: “Tear away the blinds of superstition, let the light pour through fair windows, broad as Truth itself, and high as heaven.” The belief that we have a material body, limited by the laws of matter and the laws of nature to a certain number of years on the earth, will not stand the test of logic. Both the Old and the New Testament firmly proclaim that God is omnipresent. In our body is part of the omnipresence of God.
If God is truly omnipresent, as the Bible says, why should that omnipresence stop and cease to be, wherever the body begins? “But we have a material body.” If the presence of God fills heaven and earth, can anything exist apart from it? Can even so-called matter exist apart from the presence of God?
The attempt to separate the presence of God from the presence of matter is as fruitless as the attempt to draw a dividing line between body and mind. Who can say: “Here mind ends. Here body begins.”? If the body has any reality at all, is it not mind organized and functioning in substance, mind perceived through the limitations of the physical senses?
It is time we reacted to the saying, “There is no matter, all is mind,” not by attempting to separate something that seems to be material from something called mind, but by including whatever seems to be material in the realm of mind. A slang saying was, “Include me out.” We have been including the body out of Spirit and mind. Now we must “include it in.”
Thirty years ago I had my first illumination on this subject, and wrote an article about it which was published in Science of Mind magazine under the title “This Way to Heaven.” I remember the reaction of a practitioner of spiritual healing, a close family friend, when I sent her some ideas along this line many years ago. She reacted with what was almost a holy horror: “What are you trying to do, Russell, make matter real?” She could not have been more shocked if I had asked her to invite the Devil to lunch. To her, schooled as she had been for years in the uncompromising denial of matter, in the implicit belief that all the ills and troubles of humanity have their origin in the “belief” in matter, this was an attack on all she held dear and lived by. She had no choice but to reject it.
Yet she also had no choice but to use matter, even in rejecting my theories. When she wanted to convey to me by letter her abhorrence of my approach to the problem of matter, she used such material substances as paper, pen and ink, and a postage stamp. Every breath she drew (eighteen or twenty of them a minute) was of a material substance called air. A material train carried her letter to me. But of what use to argue? I could have pointed out that Emma Curtis Hopkins, after spending most of her life in the “absolute” approach to metaphysics, said, “The endurance and substantiality of matter have been far better proved than its opposite.” But Mrs. Hopkins had been cast out of the movement many years before, and therefore belonged to those metaphysical untouchables whose heretical ideas were anathema to the leader. “No, no, matter is unreal!” Well, unreal or not, the metaphysicians of the last century, in spite of all their brave denials, in the end surrendered to matter as tamely and obediently as did the earthworms beneath their feet. Loudly proclaiming “There is no matter,” they met their end either from sheer weight of years and decrepitude or from other “material” causes.
[TruthUnity note: The "movement" that Kemp is referring to is Christian Science, which teaches that matter is totally separate from Spirit, and therefore has no life or intelligence of its own. The "metaphysical untouchables" he refers to are those who teach that matter is an expression of Spirit (though the soul) and therefore contains life and intelligence. The "absolute approach" he refers to is the early teaching in Unity which regarded matter as an expression of Spirit with no substance; that is we look only to Spirit for power and the material body is of little consequence. The difference is subtle and not well understood in contemporary Unity, but it is important. This book by Russell Kemp is leading Unity to embrace what we would call today a much more "wholistic" understanding of spiritual healing.]
So we see that the denial of matter will not deliver us from its limitations. It is, in my opinion, only the spiritual understanding of matter that will deliver us from its so-called laws and power.
In fact, I do not believe that there is any one thing alone that will enable us to overcome the material race belief in age and time. I do not think that any amount of brave “treatments,” no matter how beautifully they are worded, will do it. Make all the treatments you please. If you depend on them alone, shirk exercise and physical activity scorn the role played by proper nutrition, and drive your body unmercifully, someday you may find yourself saying: “I’m getting a little older, a little fatter, is this funny little guy who is getting older really me? What has happened to me? And there’s nothing I can do about it!”
But there is! Wake up to the fact that you can’t do it all with your mind. Stop fighting your greatest servant, matter, and learn to use it. Pray for and appropriate wisdom. Wisdom will enable you to understand nature. Nature is not your enemy nature is your friend, your arcane storehouse of life, and your treasure cave of wealth. Nature is only a name for the “Mother” side of God. If we understood only a little of what nature holds in store for us, if we could accept even a little of the energy the golden sun beams upon us every day, it would be impossible to grow old.
“Tear away the blinds of superstition.” Can there be metaphysical superstitions already when our Truth movement is barely a century old? Think for yourself; experiment for yourself. Reject, if need be, everything you have been told about metaphysics. Affirm faithfully that the unfaltering light of God in your own soul reveals to you the truth about the nature of the world in which you live. Then you will be ready for your own new age, which is “no age,” but permanent youth.
Your desire for youth and rejuvenation is God’s desire for you to have them. React to this desire in a positive way. What you are experiencing as desire is actually the divine, indomitable urge of the true life force within you to live and fulfill its nature through you.
You must disregard all the conventional ideas of age, all the accepted material or religious ideas about the inevitability of age. The only thing you need to know about age is that you are now living in the first days of the “new age.” This is a “new age” book. The ideas in it are new. Its approach to the great central problem of matter is new. Its message — that time ot itself has no power to cause age — is also new.
Don’t let yourself be frightened by these ideas. Keep on reading and thinking about them. Soon they will seem quite reasonable. They are reasonable from the standpoint of the new physics which is being evolved now. In a few years the present form of belief in the reality of matter will be out of date. You do not need to wait for that time. Join the human race of tomorrow, today!
What will the human race of tomorrow be like? It will probably be in various stages of civilization and advancement, just as it is today. But what will the truly enlightened man of tomorrow be like? He will be a great deal more like the man God “invented” than he is today. The man God envisioned and ideated was of course an ideal man, a perfect man. This does not mean a static, unchanging perfection. Cora Dedrick Fillmore, in her book Christ Enthroned in Man, said of Jesus’ saying “You, therefore, must be perfect”: “The original meaning of that word perfection is the strength to carry to completion an idea or a plan formed in the mind.”
So the perfect man of tomorrow will be one who is sufficiently awakened from the sleepy material race belief to be aware of his divine potential and resources, aware that he is equipped with the strength to make his spiritually inspired dreams come true, aware of the will and determination to persist until he actualizes them in his own flesh.
Can you believe that God’s man, the man of tomorrow, is what you are today? You can become aware of it as you read, assimilate, and practice the ideas in this book. They will gradually change your whole way of thinking about so-called age. Gradually you will so incorporate these ideas into your own philosophy that age reckoned by your birth certificate will be just a statistic to you. It will be a useful statistic for a long time to come, but it will no longer have the power to tell you when you are to stop living and enjoying life.
Just think what all of us have been doing: giving to our birth date the power to cause our demise! Does this seem reasonable? Should a birth date, a mere point in time, have more power than God? Think about this.
Remember the saying, “It isn’t what you used to be, it’s what you are today”? It is still valid, so let’s accept it. We used to be people who believed in the power of time to make us old. But now we are not what we used to be, for we have exposed the fallacy of this “time neurosis.” Forward-thinking medical science has urged us to reject it. Biologists, zoologists, researchers in many branches of science have shown us the wonders of our body dwelling, and its power to renew and restore itself.
We used to be people under a sentence of untimely death, based on mistaken beliefs in the cumulative power of years to produce age. Today we are, I hope, people who dare to think of ourselves in a new way, as God’s new people, the people of tomorrow. And it’s what we are today that counts.
Today there are increasing numbers of hardy, inspired persons everywhere (and God bless them!) who are already defying the accepted, conventional beliefs in old age and living happy, active lives, regardless of their years. I once heard one of these men, over eighty but still active and vigorous, interviewed on a radio program. To the inevitable question, ‘How old are you?” he replied: “God gives us life, not age. I am alive. Thank God!”
Let us stop arguing humanly; let us learn to argue divinely.
We were all born young, weren’t we? And in our hearts, we all want to stay that way. We can stay that way.
In order that we may learn to understand and cooperate with the infinite urge and ardor of God’s life within us, which wants to live and live and keep on living, let us practice and pray our way, every day, into our predestined divine condition: youthful maturity, the true goal of life.
