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We live in a fathomless sea of plastic mind substance. This substance is ever alive and active. It is sensitive to the highest degree. It takes form according to mental demand. Thought forms the mold or matrix from which the substance expresses. Our ideal is the mold from which our future will emerge.

The Universe is alive. In order to express life, there must be mind; nothing can exist without mind. Everything that exists is some manifestation of this one basic substance from which and by which all things have been created and are continually being recreated. It is man's capacity to think that makes him a creator instead of a creature.

All things are the result of the thought process. Man has accomplished the seemingly impossible because he has refused to consider it impossible. By concentration, men have made the connection between the finite and the Infinite, the limited and the Unlimited, the personal and the Impersonal. The building up of matter from electrons has been an involuntary process of individualizing, intelligent energy.

Men have learned a way to cross the ocean on floating palaces, how to fly in the air, how to transmit thought around the world on sensitized wires, how to cushion the earth with rubber, and thousands of other things just as remarkable, just as startling, and just as incomprehensible to the people of a generation ago.

Men will yet turn to the study of life itself and with the knowledge thus gained will come peace and joy and length of days.

The search for the elixir of life has always been a fascinating study and has taken hold of many minds of Utopian mold. In all times, philosophers have dreamed of the day when man will become the master of matter. Old manuscripts contain many, many receipts that have cost their investors bitter pangs of baffled disillusionment. Thousands of investigators have laid their contributions upon the sacrificial altar for the benefit of mankind.

But not through quarantine or disinfectants or boards of health will man reach the long-sought plane of physical well-being; nor by dieting or tasting or suggesting will the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's Stone be found.

The Mercury of the Sages and the "hidden manna" are not constituents of health foods.

When man's mind is made perfect, then and then only will the body be able perfectly to express itself.

The physical body is maintained through a process of continuous destruction and reconstruction.

Health is but the equilibrium that nature maintains through the process of creating new tissue and eliminating the old, or waste, tissue.

Hate, envy, criticism, jealousy, competition, selfishness, war, suicide, and murder are the causes that produce acid conditions in the blood, causing changes which result in irritation of the brain cells, the keys upon which the soul plays "divine harmonies" or "fantastic tricks before high heaven" accordingly to the arrangement of chemical molecules in the wondrous laboratory of nature.

Birth and death are constantly taking place in the body. New cells are being created by the process of converting food, water, and air into living tissue.

Every action of the brain, every movement of the muscle, means destruction and consequent death of some of these cells, and the accumulation of these dead, unused, and waste cells is what causes pain, suffering, and disease.

We allow such destructive thoughts as fear, anger, worry, hatred, and jealousy to take possession and these thoughts influence the various functional activities of the body, the brain, the nerves, the heart, the liver, or the kidneys. They in turn refuse to perform their various functions—the constructive processes cease and the destructive processes begin.

Food, water, and air are the three essential elements necessary to sustain life, but there is something still more essential. Every time we breathe, we not only fill our lungs with air, but we fill ourselves with pranic energy, the breath of life replete with every requirement for mind and spirit.

This life giving spirit is far more necessary than air, food, or water. A man can live for forty days without food, for three days without water, and for a few minutes without air; but he cannot live a single second without ether. It is the one prime essential of life, so that the process of breathing furnishes not only food for body building, but food for mind and spirit as well.

It is a well-known fact in India, but not so well-known in this country, that in normal, rhythmical breathing, exhalation and inhalation takes place through one nostril at a time—for about one hour through the right nostril and then for a like period through the left nostril.

The breath entering through the right nostril creates positive electromagnetic currents, which pass down the right side of the spine, while the breath entering through the left nostril sends negative electromagnetic currents down the left side of the spine. These currents are transmitted by way of the nerve centers of ganglia of the sympathetic nervous system to all parts of the body.

In the normal, rhythmical breath, exhalation takes about twice the time of inhalation. For instance, if inhalation requires four seconds, exhalation, including a slight natural pause before the new inhalation, requires eight seconds.

The balancing of the electromagnetic energies in the system depend to a large extent upon this rhythmical breathing, hence the importance of deep, unobstructed, rhythmic exhalation and inhalation.

The wise men of India knew that with the breath, they absorbed not only the physical elements of air, but life itself. They taught that this primary force of all forces, from which all energy is derived, ebbs and flows in rhythmical vibration through the created universe. Every living thing is alive by the virtue of partaking of this cosmic breath.

The more positive the demand, the greater the supply. Therefore, while breathing deeply and rhythmically in harmony with the universal breath, we contact the life force from the source of all life in the innermost parts of our being. Without this intimate connection of the individual soul with the great reservoir of life, existence as we know it would be an impossibility.

Freedom does not consist in the disregard of a governing principle, but in conformity to it. The laws of Nature are infinitely just. A violation of just law is not an act of freedom. The laws of Nature are infinitely beneficent. Exception from the operation of a beneficent law is not freedom. Freedom consists in conscious harmonious relation with the Laws of Being. Thus only may desire be satisfied, harmony attained, and happiness secured.

The mighty river is free only while it is confined within its banks. The banks enable it to perform its appointed function and to answer its beneficent purpose to the best advantage. While it is under the restraint of freedom, it gives out its message of harmony and prosperity. If its bed is raised or its volume greatly increased, it leaves its channel and spreads over the country, carrying a message of ruin and desolation. It is no longer free. It has ceased to be a river.

Necessities are demands and demands create action, which result in growth. This process makes for each decade a larger growth. So it is truly said that the last twenty-five years have advanced the world more than any previous century, and the last century has advanced the world more than all the ages of the past.

Notwithstanding all of the different characters, dispositions, and idiosyncrasies of different people, there is a certain definite law that dominates and governs all existence.

Thought is mind in motion, and psychic gravity is to the law of the mind what atomic attraction is to physical science. Mind has its chemistry and constituent powers and these powers are as definite as those of any physical potency.

Creation is the power of mind in which the thought is turned inward and made to impregnate and conceive new thought. It is for this reason that only the enlightened mind can think for itself.

The mind must acquire a certain character of thought, which will enable it to reproduce them itself without any seed from without to impregnate it.

When mind has acquired this nature in accordance with which thoughts are able to reproduce themselves, it is able to spontaneously generate thoughts without outside stimulation.

This is done by conceiving thought in the mind as a result of being impregnated and fecundated by the Universal.

They must not be permitted to go out into space, but on the contrary, must remain within where they will create psychic states corresponding to their natures.

It is this absorption of self-generated thoughts and their conception of corresponding psychic states that is the Principle of Causation.

This is possible owing to the fact that the mental cosmos is perpetually radiated as a unity of mind, and this mind functions in connection with the soul of man as his mind.

It being essence, it is identified with the essence of the cosmos and with the essence of all thing's.

The result is that having attained unto and having become an infinity of thought, the individual is omniscient in mind, omnipotent in will, and omnipresent in soul. The quality of his mind is omniscience and the quality of his soul is omnipresence.

Such a man is possessed with real power in all that he does. He is indeed a Master, the creator of his own destiny, the arbiter of his own fate.

There are many flowers of vari-colored blossoms. Each blossomed stem simply reaches up to the great Sun—the god of vegetable life manifestation—without complaining, without doubt, in all the fullness of plant desire, faith, and expectancy. They demand and attract the richness of color and perfume.

And so man, too, will in the future unshackle the great desire forces of mind and soul and turn them to heaven in righteous demand for the highest gift in the universe, Life.

And life means to live.

Age is a prejudice that has become so firmly anchored in your mind that any casual number of years mentioned evokes a precise image on your brain.

Twenty years, you see a youth or a young girl adorned with all of the juvenile graces.

Thirty years, a young man or young woman in the full development of vital strength and equilibrium, still on the upgrade towards the dazzling heights of maturity.

Forty years, the summit has been reached, the effort made having been maintained by the prospect of the vast horizons to be dominated.

The road traversed is contemplated with pride, but with emotion you already turn towards the abyss whose dizzy curves wind steeply into ever-increasing darkness.

Fifty years, halfway down the slope, which is still illumined by the light from the peaks though already touched by the chill of the abyss. Organism weakened and compelled to submit to numerous abdications.

Sixty years brings you to the entrance of the cold melancholy valleys. Resigned to inexorable destiny, you stand on the threshold of old age. You begin preparations for the long journey that must inevitably be undertaken.

Seventy years, wrinkled and old, endowed with numerous infirmities, you sit in the waiting room for the last journey, considering it miraculous that you are still alive.

If the eightieth year is exceeded, the fact is mentioned as an amazing phenomenon and you are treated with the respect due to antiquities.

Is this parallel correct? Is there any connection between age and age-value? Let it be emphatically stated that the tyranny of the birth certificate can be abolished.

The fact that a year represents one complete revolution of the earth around the sun has nothing in common with the evolution of the human being.

To be so many years old means simply that the circling seasons have been observed so many times, and nothing more. It implies no consideration of the intellectual or physical state. The person who has seen the untiring astronomical phenomenon forty times may be much younger in the real meaning of the word than one who has seen it but thirty times.

The vibratory activities of the planetary universe are governed by a law of periodicity. Everything that lives has periods of birth, growth, and fruitage. These periods are governed by the Septimal Law.

The Law of Sevens governs the days of the week, the phases of the moon, the harmonies of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and atomic structure. It governs the life of individuals and of nations, and it dominates the activities of the commercial world. We can apply the same law to our own lives and therefore come into an understanding of many experiences that would otherwise appear inexplicable.

Life is growth, and growth is change. Each seven year period takes us into a new cycle. The first seven years is the period of infancy. The next seven is the period of childhood, representing the beginning of individual responsibility.

The next seven represent the period of adolescence. The fourth period marks the attainment of full growth. The fifth period is the constructive period, when men acquire property, possessions, a home and family. The next, from 35-42, is a period of reactions and changes, and this in turn is followed by a period of reconstruction, adjustment, and recuperation, so as to be ready for a new cycle of sevens, beginning with the fiftieth year.

The law of periodicity governs cycles of every description. There are cycles of short periods and cycles of long periods. There are periods when the emotions gain the ascendancy and the whole world is absorbed in religious thought; and there are other periods when science and learning take the ascendancy and the patent office is flooded with new inventions. There are other periods when vice and crime rule with a high hand; periods of strikes and hard times; times of turmoil, confusion, and disaster; and there are periods of reform.

What is the cause of these cycles? Are they arbitrary? Have they no basis or foundation in nature, recurring with almost the regularity of clockwork and without any incentive whatsoever? Or are they perhaps due to Universal Laws and caused by the revolution of the planets in their orbits, having their origin in some principle in nature which man may learn and thus ultimately be able to predict with certainty the recurrence of the same phenomena?

The revolution of the several planets upon their axis constitutes the largest amount of matter in motion with which we are familiar, and consequently is responsible for the largest amount of energy.

The movement of the planets in their various orbits around the Sun brings the largest amount of ether under strain, and thereby brings into existence the largest amount of potential energy with which we are familiar.

All of the activities of the material universe are therefore contingent upon the movements of these several planets.

Let us note the results of these movements. The first result to be noted is the differentiation of the rays of the Sun into seven primary colors—orange, green, violet, yellow, red, indigo, and blue. These seven colors have their correspondences in the seven notes of the musical scale.

We then find that the vibrations of each planet is responsible for the condensation or crystallization of electrons into matter, and so we have gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, tin, and lead.

By pursuing our inquiry still further, we find that these vibrations are distributed to all parts of our body through the sympathetic nervous system, and that there are seven plexus along the spine for this purpose. We also find that there are seven functions of our body which are controlled—the heart, brain, lungs, veins, gall, liver, and spleen— and finally we find that these vibrations manifest on a still higher plane as spirit, soul, intellect, love, energy, judgment, and memory.

The angle between two planets at some time and place in their established orbits and their angular relation to the Earth causes an influence that is received by those individuals who are receptive or keyed to those particular vibrations.

Under a favorable influence, we find the body relaxed, comfortable, and at ease. This state of being reacts favorably upon the mental condition and we find mental poise, tendency to pleasure, amusement, reaction, happiness, kindness, and love.

If the influence is unfavorable, the body will be tense and irritable with corresponding mental depression, fear, anger, malice, violence, etc., according to the nature of the planets involved. When Saturn contracts the tissues and squeezes out dead elements from the organs, Jupiter does the reverse by expanding and absorbing new elements for the maintenance of growth and development.

The effect of this Jupitarian process on the mind is to make the feelings "Jovial," optimistic, comfortable, carefree, generous, and compassionate; able to look out and beyond self to the needs and happiness of others, with the result that the word and deed bring commendation and support from others—what is done will produce fortunate results.

When Saturn is benignly aspected, the organs and functions affected by vibratory influences of that planet operate in a normal manner, but when Saturn is adversely aspected, its operations in the human body tend to inertia, contractions, restrictions, decay, or dissolution and serious disease results unless the individual is aware of what is necessary in order to counteract the influence.

Herbert Spencer said, "Life is a continual adjustment of internal conditions to external environment," a statement which we all know is absolutely true, just as much as the axiom of the ancient wise men, "As above, so below." Events in the solar system have a corresponding effect in the human system. Much food for thought is furnished by the divisions of the zodiacal circle, taken in connection with the various periods of vital activity that determine the course of life.

The planet uranus makes the circle of the heavens in eighty-four years, which is its "year"; and as this planet is one that has a special influence over man in a spiritual sense, its "month", or passage through a twelfth part of the circle, might well be expected to exercise an influence on the life of man comparable to that exhibited in the physical world by the sun during the various monthly stages of its annual course.

The fact that during each period of seven years a complete change is known to take place in the physical body, as testified to by physiologists, tends to support this theory of a sign ruling over each seven years of life; and certainly the period of eighty-four years may be taken as a life cycle, without necessarily regarding it as marking the limit of normal human life. In this sense, these eighty-four years of life will correspond to the one earth year, or to the circle of the Zodiac.

Let us now consider the division of the Zodiac into four grand quarters resembling Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.

The Spring Quarter corresponds to infancy, childhood, and youth—the irresponsible and educational period from the first to the twenty-first year of life, when the personal is being fitted by service and study for the next important stage. It is the time when fidelity, filial reverence, obedience, and industry are instilled into the growing mind.

The Summer Quarter of life, from 21 to 42, is the practical period of life and is concerned with the life of the householder, in which wealth becomes an object, responsibility grows, and the duties of life become heavier and filled with business activity. It is the period when the social side of the personality is expressed and the lesson of unselfishness is learned. Prosperity comes with the fullness of life which abounds in the Summer portion. The virtues developed are caution, thrift, charity, magnanimity, diligence, and prudence.

This period of life is governed by the sign Leo, in which the life-forces burn at their greatest heat and love for partner and offspring finds its greatest height in the domestic and social world.

The Autumn Quarter of life is one in which the glory of manhood and the fullness of motherhood are turned to wider interest and personal claims are sacrificed for the benefit of those outside the narrow circle of the home. The duties of government and the national welfare are taken up with motives that are less limited and more altruistic in their nature, the desire being to help in the ruling and guiding of those who belong to the nation. The virtues to be acquired are equilibrium, justice, strength, courage, vigour, and generosity.

The concentrating power of this period is denoted by the sign Scorpio, symbol of self-controlled emotions, fixed feelings, and permanent modes of action; the fluidity and changeable sensations of the watery signs being made stable and reliable and fixed.

The next stage of life, the Winter Quarter, is the period in which experience is garnered and the lessons of life are stored, ready for the enriching of the ego. It is the stage in which the review of life brings wisdom and the tender feelings of sympathy to all. The virtues of the last three signs are made manifest as patience and self-sacrifice, service, purity, wisdom, gentleness, and compassion.

The centralizing of the mind in the sign Aquarius brings the climax when the man is complete, and the humanized perfection of manhood culminates in the one whose mind is wholly centered in higher states of consciousness.

This is the plan of the normal evolution of humanity, when the civilized nations have worked through their infantile, spring-like stage. For nations, like individuals, are also evolving, and it is the national good and the national perfection that is to be the outcome of this wisely ordained plan in accordance with the will of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.

Perhaps it was this national good and national perfection that one of our great men saw when he had the wonderful vision that he so beautifully described.

"A vision of the future arises. I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust. The aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.

"I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature's forces have by science been enslaved. Lightening and light, wind and waves, frost and flames, and all the subtle powers of the earth and air are the tireless toilers for the human race.

"I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music's myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and truth; a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world in which the gibbet's shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its full reward, where work and worth go hand in hand.

"I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's heartless stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.

"I see a race without disease of flesh or brain—shapely and fair, married harmony of form and function—and, as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all, in the great dome, shines the eternal star of faith."