What is life?

Life consists—or co-exists in all things—all things contain life.

There are three distinct forms of life—there is the essence divine, the outgrowth of all material substances, which is spirit, so-called, and indestructible. Then the material, which exhibits in its development the animeline substance, which constitutes growth and has its inflation from the same source. Then the material substances composed from the material soil, inflated with the same material of life, varying only in material substances, such as the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. The same positive electric forces, combined with the negative creative forces, inflate every living substance on this orb.

Humanity has outgrown the lower order of development through incessant repetition and stands the highest, first, of all material life. Developing through spiritual aspirations, the intellectual power of the will or mind, it interblends with the higher creative power and with repeated experiences has progressed beyond all other life. 

This power is the creative power of life and the constituted developer of form.

These solar rays of the sun, which penetrate the soil, impregnating it with living germs thrown off from the various planets and conveyed to this planet, impregnates the soil, developing mineral and vegetable life. Without these solar rays, there no life could exist.

The very atmosphere which surrounds you has living germs developed through the effulgent rays of this solar power. Imbuing the material organs with strength, it also impregnates the blood of the human system, inhaled through respiration, not only by the lungs, but by the molecules of the whole physical body externally.

Life is developed within the germ of everything which has an organic development—consequently, all things have an organic development, even the seed. As the seed develops and matures within the soil from the penetrative rays of the sun, so the acorn, with its tiny unfoldment, matures for reproducing the oak tree. 

But why do they require darkness for their first development? Simply because the positive rays of the sun would destroy or consume the life-principle developed in the germ. 

Both positive and negative are essential in the unfoldment and development of life. The positive alone is destructive without the negative.

The acorn, in its matured germ, consists in or contains the fullest power of the positive force. It requires to be placed within the soil where it is not exposed to the positive electric rays, but receives a full portion through the diffusion of the power in the soil.

The soil is the reproductive negative matter—it contains various chemical properties according to its kind, and imparts the necessary conditions to the acorn, expanding the germ in the negative surroundings. The rays of this electric power penetrate, in a milder form, the soil and give it (the acorn) the vigour which sends it upward out of its immured position for more perfect development by this electric force. Invigorated by both electric and magnetic rays combined, it is drawn higher and higher.

The soil, imparting more of the chemical magnetic conditions to the root, strengthening fibre after fibre, shooting up in its current to the very trunk, giving strength and vigour to its growth. The electric rays of the sun impart the more positive power through which it becomes hardened and withstands the pressure of the elements and the rage of the storm. This is the vegetable life, requiring the electric power for its development. When dead, it returns to both the electric and negative.

One portion, the sap from which the foliage is produced returns to the positive or electric. It is drawn out by the positive rays and diffused again among the elements. The trunk decays, replenishing the soil with the negative matter whose particles, through intermixing produce the same, varying very little in change of matter from that in which the acorn was first developed. And so life repeats itself in every form of the vegetable kingdom, varying very little in quality or kind.

Only the negative forces will always impart the same conditions when repeated in the same soil, but the electric pressure will perfect everything that goes back to the remotest germ of mineral unfoldment.

If the seed planted in the soil requires darkness to develop it, so, with the higher forms of life—animal and human also require darkness out of which they, too, are developed. The human form is developed out of the animal kingdom. It is a higher form of soul-growth and yet depends upon the same conditions. Nature with its creative power imparts to one and all alike in this particular law of production.

The fish in the ocean will lay its ova in a secluded spot where, through instinct acquired by its own development, it knows the exact and proper conditions necessary. 

True, there are amphibians that place their ova within the solar rays, such as the serpent and the turtle, and various other reptiles. But the living germ is encased within a shell which gives the proper magnetic protection from the more positive element.

So, with the human germ—the ova being impregnated with the semen is drawn within the womb and develops there. 

Darkness alone imparts the negative condition. Consequently, the magnetic part of a mortal is the soul which can develop only in darkness the life-germ of a material character. It is only after the infant is born, expelled from its dark vault, thrown within the positive electric rays of this solar power, that it receives the positive spirit which imbues the whole system with an invigorated power and sound—or voice is developed immediately from the current power of this life-force.

Why is it then that mortals cling with tenacity to life? Simply this—the whole material body, being composed of every substance existing in the mineral and vegetable kingdom, it holds its attraction in assimilation toward its origination—or toward that from out of which it developed children of nature. The spirit intellectually unfolds itself according to the organic construction of the physical body. Yet the spirit may have had, has had, experiences in the spiritual spheres which often leave a bad impression in the way of fear which preys upon the thought—

In returning to the material body, it makes an impression on the sensorium or organ of life, and follows it in its experiences through the material life—if not lifted through development and progression above this sphere or plane, it continues in this state of fear until it separates from the body, being ignorant of all that follows after the material life, and especially if the spirit has had hard experiences in former lives, it cannot partake of anything good, but is harassed by reflections of the past which impregnates the fear of coming in contact with that which may be the same in effect, as was the past.

But through knowledge, which is self-aspiration and a power, the immortal spirit is assisted through the more positive guides to comprehend that it can overpower all evil and attain through the all-aspiring will a position of independence by which the soul is strengthened, for when it attains individuality, the spirit feeds the soul with positive force.

Conviction after conviction follows through this development. The independent spirit cares nothing more for the material and its perishable effects, but strives to attain its individuality, exerting the will power in attaining knowledge for its development. And thus, you overcome the fear of death only by striving to acquire knowledge and acquainting yourself with the higher laws of magnetism which convey a substance for the soul-growth and a power to assist the spiritual unfoldment—

Only through self-exertion can you convince yourself that the change of death is but an aspiration to a higher life.

If the spirit is not fully matured to realise this change for the higher and more elevated development of an existent futurity, it will repeat itself to vegetate upon the very soil, and in the very atmosphere to which it clings with such tenacity and from which it can only be separated by the progressive law of individuality.

All experiences are necessary to bring the spirit upon this elevated position.

Good and evil, sorrow and suffering—all are produced by one great infinite soul-principle.

And evil is as essential as the good, for if there were no sorrow, there could be no joy—

It is only by experiencing the deepest sorrow that joy can be appreciated.

If you were never separated from your friends or loved companion, you would not know the grief that separation causes, nor could you realise the happiness and joy a reunion imparts. 

And so you trace the evil and interblend it with the good, for if there were not this dual, separated as it is, there would not be an established whole of a united and permanent power.

Woman, and her Relations to Humanity