As man is learning more and more about his life, he is finding that sickness, premature old age, and untimely death are, in a large measure, due to his own misunderstanding of the purposes of life. It is this misunderstanding that gives the mysterious air to life. We fear the mysterious, for our ingrained habit of regarding things that we do not yet understand as insoluble mysteries is a relic of the days when savage man found mystery and danger in everything. So, if we are making ourselves unhappy, losing sleep, and suffering physical and mental distress because of the possible approach of death, we may dismiss that cause of worry. As soon as we begin to consider the purposes of life and our relation to them, we shall naturally avoid excesses in eating; live as hygienically as possible; harbor cleanly, uplifting thoughts, helpful to others and to ourselves, and so reach out spiritually for a fuller understanding of the purposes of all life. And what we cease to fear for ourselves, we soon cease to fear for our other selves. Living thus, we shall not fear death, but shall move toward it without thinking of it, knowing that it is natural, merely the long sleep of the objective consciousness. Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet! Nothing comes to thee new or strange. Sleep full of rest from head to feet; Lie still, dry dust, secure of change. TENNYSON. O’er each vain eye oblivious pinions wave, And quench’d existence crouches in a grave. What better name may Slumber’s bed become? Night’s Sepulcher, the universal Home, Where Weakness, Strength, Vice, Virtue, sunk supine, Alike in naked helplessness recline; Glad for a while to heave unconscious breath, Yet wake to wrestle with the dread of death, And shun, though day but dawns on ills increased, That Sleep, the loveliest, since it dreams the least. BYRON. CHAPTER XXXIV A NATURAL CHANGE Through generations, perhaps for hundreds of thousands of years, custom has ordained grief for the dead, we have come to feel that it is a proof of affection or of sensitiveness or a sort of virtue: we indulge in the luxury of woe, we nurse our grief until, like a spoiled lap-dog, it becomes a burden. But we know that the unselfish dead would only be distressed at our grieving. When we look upon the change called death as no more mysterious than any of the other changes in our bodily or mental development, which we either welcome or are unconscious of, we shall lose our terror of it either for ourselves or for others. Our terror for others is not really for those others so much as for ourselves. The sense of “our great loss” is really a piece of selfishness. For life cannot mean one thing for us and another for our brother; as we see our own lives, so must we see the lives of those we love. The purposes of life are the same for all men, for all men are in the plan of the Spirit.