Joy Philosophy
	The Old-Clothes Man <  Previous Contents

“Some months ago you wrote in a short letter to me, stating that when a person leaves this earth, death is only a door to another state of life, and that we don’t enter it unless it is best for us at that time and place. Do you consider death in all its different forms, in a young person as well as old, best for them, no matter whether they die from accident or natural causes? Mr. Towne writes in his article on reincarnation in October that what we learn during one life is carried forward into the next. Now how much knowledge can a child have learned when death comes, compared to an older person? If death is the door by which we enter another state, and that is spiritual, what comes from that? Do we inhabit this earth again? Won’t you and Mr. Towne give us a little more light on the subject?”

When we are children and go to school we work problems on a slate—or used to. If we made a little mistake and quickly discovered it we wet our forefinger on the tip of our tongue and wiped out the mistake, and then we filled its place with the correct figure, or figures. But sometimes we made a mistake away up near the top of a long problem of long division, and that mistake was carried on down until there were more mistaken figures than correct ones. Then we wet our little sponge and wiped the whole thing out of existence, and did it all over again. Sometimes we did this several times over before we learned how to do the “sum” correctly.

We are still doing that sort of thing. Life is really a "problem,” which must be done by mathematical rule. Our bodies are simply the figures on the slate. Every day we work away like more or less sensible and happy children; every day we find ourselves making and correcting mistakes, wiping off a little here and adding a bit there. Our bodies record all this, mind you.

But sometimes we fail to see our mistakes in time to correct them a little at a time, and sometimes we have not the patience to correct them. The mistakes are carried all through our bodies, just as through our problems on a real slate. Then we discover what a lot of blunders there are to correct, and we grow discouraged and quit trying. This relaxation of effort and will and interest is the wiping off of the slate. We do it ourselves— do it sub-consciously, from the habit of ages of wiping off the slate. That which goes out of a body at death is the real person. and he it was who wiped off the slate, who withdrew himself from the body.

No man dies unless he is ready to die—unless his mistakes of thinking (his body is built of his thoughts, you know) are so in preponderance that he cannot hold himself longer as an organization.

A body is an organization of thought things which must fit in and work together. When a man’s mind is filled with warring, opposing thoughts, he is disorganizing himself. It is as if he turned wolves and lions and dogs all into the same corral, to oppose and rend each other, as well as to tear down whatever else was therein organized. Lions, wolves and dogs are warring organizations.

A man’s body in order to endure must be one organization,— every part must work with every other part. But as long as a man thinks into his body, one day good things, kind things; and another day ugly, revengeful, death-dealing things, he is turning lions and lambs together. And it is only a question of time and the kind of thought when he will cease to be an organization,—he will fall to pieces, a victim to opposing forces.

And a man need not even be ugly himself in order to die. He needs only recognize ugliness in others. The Pharisee who has spent his life in ferreting out meanness and obscurity in others is as full of meanness as the nastiest sinner that walks. Man becomes what he thinks upon.

But such a one may be strong and healthy a long time because nearly his whole body is organized of the one kind of thought. So full is he of “evil” that he is an organized evil—a one-mind of evil.

It is the “good” and the goody-good people who fill themselves up on the warring factions of good and evil, whose bodies are choked with the warring and who suffer most and die youngest.

The same thing is true of people at all ages. Wisdom does not necessarily come with years, though no soul ever lived five minutes that did not in that time discover and eliminate mistakes by waking up to more, or less truth. All experience enlightens—even that of being born to die in a day or a week.

Don’t imagine babies are such ignorant little lumps. They are not. They are wise enough to choose their environment— just the one best calculated to teach them what they most need to know NOW. To be sure they do not choose parents as you and I would go out and look over a stableful of horses and choose one. They do better than that. As the birds obey the desire to fly south when winter comes down with frosty breath, so the infant soul obeys its sub-conscious desire for a particular parentage. In other words, parent and child are attracted; and each furnishes to the other the particular sort of experience necessary to its next further growth.

Just as we sometimes wiped off our problem before we had half a dozen figures down, because we had found our mistake and wished to correct our work, so the infant soul may find a big mistake and wipe out its body—only to begin again somewhere else.

Oh, don’t be sceptical because you can’t remember doing such things. You cannot remember many things that happened just a few years ago. How, then, shall you remember back to the time you chose your parents? Or still further back to the infinitely greater number of parents you may have chosen in succession, since the beginning of eternity. You cannot even remember those problems you put on and wiped off your slate at school. Is it, then, wonderful that you forget some other things?

But you can do other problems like those you learned on, and do them almost unconsciously, so easy has it become. You learned much on those old forgotten “sums”—you remember the “how,” but you forget where you learned how.

So, no wonder you forget your old bodies and experiences. But the wisdom gained with them is still with you.

And every hour you are learning new truth—and forgetting how you learned it.

The babe is conscious, and the babe learns—fast, fast. But it forgets how it learned. And if it is not pleased with its experience and learning it lets go its body and passes on—to other experiences.

Those who die die because they are ready. And they “are taken away from the evil to come.”

“Accidents” are results of “natural causes.” An “accidental” death is a “natural” death—and sometimes much easier, and preferable to a so-called “natural” death. Who would not, if left to a decision, unbiased by public opinion,—who would not prefer instant death in the electric chair to a slow rotting by cancer or tuberculosis? One death is as “natural” as another.

No man dies unless it is best for him to do so.

“Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?

I hasten to tell him it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.”

There is nothing about death to be afraid of. It is but a wiping off of the mistakes which have handicapped you. YOU go on forever.

Death is as natural and as good as life.

Only the fear of death can harm you, by tearing down your body before you want it wiped out.

It is said the first mark of insanity is that the patient fears and hates his best friend. The fear and hatred of death is insanity. To fear death for yourself is foolish. It but hypnotizes you, and death charms you as a snake charms a bird. You die before you would need to if you had not feared death.

It is still more foolish to fret over the death of another. In this case you not only add the death-dealing forces to your own body, hastening death for yourself; but your heavy thought handicaps in the outset of his new state of existence the friend for whom you grieve.

Spiritualists who claim to see and converse with departed souls often tell their friends that the “spirit forms” are “so weak and worn” that they are not able as yet to communicate with their old friends. The medium says the new made “spirit” is “heavy” over the unhappy state of its earth friends.

Why should not this be so? If our heavy thoughts ever affect each other (and we know they do) then death does not change it. Our thoughts carry help or hindrance to those of whom we think, be they dead or alive.

We think we must eat right and live right and think right for the sake of our unborn or new-born babes, that they may have the best possible start in their new existence. We need just as much to eat right and live right, and especially to think right, in order to give our “departed friends” the best possible start in the new life upon which they are just entering. We need to lay aside every small personal consideration, and bid them a hearty good-speed with every thought of them. We need to cultivate peace, and quiet joy, and willingness to have them go, for their sakes.

We can easily do this if we remember to be glad with them, instead of selfishly fussing around our own little personal “loss.” They have wiped off the slate and gone on, with added wisdom, to better things. Why not be glad with them, and for them!

Whether we are spiritualists and believe in departed spirits; or evolutionists, who believe in an immediate reincarnation; or theosophists, who believe in a Devachanic rest before reincarnation; or Catholics whose friends may be in purgatory; or Protestants who hope they are in heaven,—whatever we are, the fact remains that our friends can no more fly beyond the reach of our help or hindrance than they can fly beyond our thoughts.

Let us help those who have “passed out.” Let us treat them for power and love and joy and progress. Let us make them glad by being glad ourselves.

Death is good.

But it will cease to be necessary as we cease to make and perpetuate mistakes.

Being afraid of death and mistakes is the greatest mistake of all.

Get rid of it. Face death in your mind, until it loses all terrors for you. Call it good. Tell it if ever the day comes when you want to die you will do so with a good grace. Call death friend, and not foe. Tell it you may need it some day to wipe off your body, but remember that YOU couldn’t die if you would. Death is only your old-clothes man—you may need him, and you may not.

For my part, I don’t care whether I ever die again or not. If I keep on building better and better (and I see no reason why I shouldn’t) I shall live right along indefinitely, maybe forever.

But if ever I get myself into such a tangle as some folks do, and as I have got into in times past, I shall do what Jesus did— give up my body.

Ida C. Craddock, sweet, earnest, clean soul, chose, for the sake of forcing her teachings upon an unready world, to butt her head repeatedly against the stone wall of Law, until she was so bruised and discouraged that she—wiped off her slate by conscious will. She made the martyr’s choice and mistake, which means always death.

If ever I got tangled up as Ida Craddock did I might end the matter as she did—as Socrates ended his troubles.

But I hope to avoid the paths that lead to death. I love to live, and I mean to keep on living more and more fully and positively. I am seeking FIRST the law of Life and to live it.

Ida Craddock sought FIRST to convert and reform the world The world, which did not want to be reformed, nor even to be taught too fast to reform itself, made things so warm for Ida Craddock that she couldn’t stand it.

It seems a great pity. But it isn’t. Ida chose her own course, knowing the result; she has learned her lessons, wiped off her mistakes and gone on to do still better work for herself and the world.

Jesus of Nazareth did much as Ida did. He spoke out in meeting, and out of it, until he stirred people up to crucify Him. He wanted to be crucified, in order that He might prove that He could live again.

But I want to live all the time, and I don’t care whether or not I prove anything to anybody but myself.

Jesus and Ida Craddock deliberately trod the road to death. According to their faith and work, it was unto them.

I am treading my own individual path where no death is.

Death lies waiting for him who works against the established order—who makes crosses and carries them.

Life lies within and without for him who, resisting nothing, grows out of the established order—as a branch from the tree.

I believe I have found eternal life. Time alone will prove it. To live is to love and work with all things, knowing that all is good and all is life.

To resist anything is to cut off so much of life.

To fear death is to bring it upon you.

Get busy with LIFE.