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Chart No. 1: The Vital Creative Flame
improper propitiation and neglect, or has it left the house of flesh entirely? Who knows the answer and who understands the ways of life? Are these in the books of learning or bestowed as degrees in institutions of education? Are Vitality and Life the main subjects taught there, or are they but guests or strangers there also? Are its teachers inspired by its radiance and do they impart it to the students, or is it all but an intellectual pursuit of the detail functions of the body and its structures as we see them from the outside, by the artificial light of our own mind's action, supplemented by electricity?
Where are the real devotees of the Sacred Flame of olden times? Has life changed, or have we, in our search for it and in our purely material viewpoint of it, failed to tune into its REAL WAVE LENGTH? Does our research by means of chemical tests prove Life, aid it, or merely condition its manifestation in the body? Has Vitality a material origin, or is it something beyond the reach of matter? All these questions have piled up since the search for the 'Fountain of Youth' started, long before the recorded history of Spain.[1]
The search goes on, but Life is silence itself. We are moved and know not the Mover. We think and know not the Thinker, and hardly know our own thoughts. All this is somewhat out of proportion to all our material progress and the increased number of institutions of learning. It appears that all our effort has been spent on research in matter, and none on Life itself.
We know more about the distant stars and constellations, and the atom, than we do about Life and our relation to it. We look for it externally, in matter, when it is the very heart and core of all living things. It is a unit which we have missed in our search for detailed proof. We have wandered away from the trunk of the tree and its main branches, and have lost ourselves among the leaves on the Tree of Life. Or, it may be that Life has passed us by because we have not tuned in on its wavelength of recording and broadcast everywhere around us? If we treated any television or radio broadcast as we treat Life, the reception to our tuning would give the same results.
Real knowledge or understanding is a two-edged sword, like Truth, which requires much sacrifice of our precious time through attention and interest in its wholehearted pursuit. Art is a jealous patron of its devotees, even as deities were said to be. The Muses cut the thread when interest lags. The art of Life passes the laggards by. Even a whole lifetime of living gives us no acquaintance with Life itself. Many precious years of our
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1 The Fountain of Youth is a mythical spring that restores the youth of anyone who bathes in it or drinks from it. Legends of such springs date back as far as the 5th century BC.
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