newlife

Introduction

Readers of this booklet will benefit as follows:

1. They will have a clearer idea of their basic nature as being composed of body and soul.

2. They will be reminded that God loves each person and that God wants each person to be admitted to Heaven to enjoy a life of perfect happiness.

3. They will be made more aware of the enormous importance of death as a doorway to a new life.

4. They will receive some guidance on how to live a better life.

Chapter 1

Death is Your Destiny

The answer to the question, "Am I going to die?" can be given with scientific certainty,"You will die!"

At one time a frequently used inscription on gravestones read as follows:

"Thou traveler that passeth by,

As thou art now, so once was I.

As I am now, thou soon shall be;

Prepare for death and follow me."

The most brilliant scientists, the finest physicians, and the wealthiest individuals are unable to shield themselves against death.

Carlos Gomez in his book, Regulating Death, presents this verse:

"If death was a thing

that the rich could buy,

The rich would live

and the poor would die."

Stone age persons lived only to about the age of eighteen. In 1900 A.D., the typical life span in the United States was about 47 years. Today the average life span is about 77 years.

The time, the place, and the details of your death are impossible to predict. Even when you become seriously ill, the best health professional people are unable to predict with certainty the time of your death. On many occasions, persons have been told that their deaths are about to occur, and these persons have recovered and have been restored to normal life.

Your death will probably take place over a prolonged period of time. Probably you will become more and more ill until you lapse into a coma before dying

The likelihood is that you will die in a hospital. In England and the United States, 80% of all deaths occur in hospitals.

If you collapse at home or away from home, someone will telephone an emergency medical unit. You will be rushed by ambulance to a hospital where professional personnel will use marvelous machines and medicines to keep you alive. You may be connected with a respirator to help you breathe, with intravenous tubes to provide you with nutrition and medication, with various monitoring devices to check on your vital signs, and with other state-of-the-art technology.

In past centuries dying persons were cared for in their own homes by their relatives and friends. The life cycles of birth and death were constantly in view in everyday life. The dying person was surrounded by those who loved that person.

In one sense everyone dies alone. One dying young woman said to a friend, "Hold my hand. I am afraid. I have never died before."

A son who had visited his father one evening in a hospital went for another visit the next morning. The father said:

"I almost asked the nurse to telephone you late last night after you returned home. I began to feel that I was dying and I did not want to die alone."

Why do even individuals who believe in life after death want to avoid death? When a person faces death a feeling of sorrow is a natural reaction. Perhaps the greatest sorrow is the prospect of leaving loved ones.

Herman Feifel wrote about a young lady suffering from a terminal illness who expressed these ideas shortly before she died:

"I am sitting outside on the patio. The sun is warm on my back. The sky is

clear of clouds and blue. The air is fresh. The birds are twittering music. Death

is so close and yet so far away."

Very young children attending a summer school religious class were told by their teacher, "I want each of you to raise a hand if you want to go to heaven."

All of the children except one raised a hand. The teacher asked this child, "Don't you want to go to heaven when you die?"

The child answered, "Yes. I do when I die, but I thought that you were getting up a group to go right away."

Coming events assume great importance in our lives. We look forward to enjoying such holidays as Christmas and Easter. We are interested in birthdays, graduations, marriages, and other special celebrations. We do not want to give up the pleasures we find in our daily activities.

Most persons go through a period of emotional turmoil before death takes place. Almost everyone experiences some fear. Some show discouragement, despair, bitterness, rage, or confusion. Some become complainers. They complain about their relatives, their food, their doctors, their nurses, and about many other things. Some win admiration for facing death quietly, uncomplainingly, with fortitude and faith.

The author, W. Somerset Maugham, started his work career as a physician at St. Thomas Hospital in London. He wrote these comments about death:

"I must have witnessed

pretty well every emotion

of which human beings are

capable ... I saw how people

died. I saw how they bore

pain. I saw what hope looked

like, fear, and relief; I saw

the dark lines that despair

drew on a face; I saw courage

and steadfastness."

With death the final curtain falls. The acts of your life have come to an end. What would you report if you had to write your own obituary? Surely you would want to point out the good and loving side of yourself.

All the major happenings of your life are stored somewhere in the conscious or unconscious parts of your mind. Is the overall picture of your character an attractive one?

We have public lives open to the view of others, but we also have private lives that are known only to ourselves and to a few persons close to us. A person's character may be much better or much worse than it appears to be to the general public.

Some persons have been described as being "street angels and house devils." They project an image in public of being an admirable person while they treat the persons nearest to them in a nasty way. Robert Louis Stevenson's story of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde dramatizes the good and the bad in one person.

A well-known radio celebrity once commented that he hoped that when his casket was being lowered in the cemetery ground that no one would regard this happening as an occasion for celebration.

Intelligent discussions about life and death are to be found in the ideas of three brilliant Greek philosophers -- Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Many persons regard Socrates as a model to follow in facing death. Spiritual values were a part of the philosophy of these ancient wise men.

Modern scientists do not claim to have knowledge of life after death. Their total attention is focused on the material world. They spend their lives examining information provided by their sense powers. They observe phenomena; they conduct experiments; they do research; they keep adding to mankind's knowledge.

George Washington had a fear that he would be declared dead by mistake and would be buried alive. As he was nearly dead, he gave instructions, "Do not let my body be put in a vault in less than two days after I am dead."

The sword of Damocles hangs over your head. Every day stories of sudden deaths are reported in the newspapers, and in radio and television news. The main reason that many individuals subscribe to a daily newspaper is to read the obituary columns.

We like to believe that the world is getting better, but unfortunately we find that the twentieth century was marked by more violent deaths than any other century in the history of the world. The author, Paul Johnson, wrote:

"By the 1980s, state action had been responsible for the violent or unnatural deaths of over 100,000,000 people, more perhaps than governments had hitherto succeeded in destroying in the whole of human history up to 1900."

Another terrible loss of human lives was caused by the flu epidemic in the years 1918 and 1919. Over 40,000,000 persons died in Europe, Asia, and America.

Chapter 2

Your Body

In your lifetime, your body passes through three general stages -- growth, maturity, and decline.

Your body in the earliest months of your existence was sheltered within the womb of your mother. She provided you with the nourishment and the protection for you to develop sufficiently to be able to survive.

You came into the world as a helpless infant. Daily care from others was absolutely necessary for your physical survival during infancy and childhood. Some loving persons responded to your crying which signaled that you were hungry or thirsty or in some kind of bodily distress.

You came into the world devoid of knowledge. As the years passed, you acquired knowledge as a result of information provided by your bodily sense organs.

In your pre-school years, your brain dominated your physical development. When you entered school, your brain mass was 90% of its adult size while your body mass was only 40% of its adult size.

The cell is the basic unit of your body structure. Your adult body is made up of 35 trillion (35,000,000,000,000) diversified cells. These cells are constantly dying and being replaced by new cells. This process of renewal of cells slows down as you grow older.

Blood flowing through all parts of your body carries to the cells the oxygen and nutrients needed by the cells. By age 75, your blood flow to the kidneys is only one-half of what it was at the age of 25. Your blood flow to your brain has in that period of time decreased by 25%.

Your knowledge of the world of persons and things outside of yourself is made known to you by your external sense powers of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. You learn about different foods through tasting and smelling. You learn about music through your sense of hearing. You find out about the wonders of the world of nature through your sense of sight. These external senses enable you to perceive the physical qualities of persons and things that you meet with in daily life.

You have an internal sense power that receives impressions from the individual external sense powers. This internal sense power links together the individual impressions to enable you to form a general picture of the persons and things that you have encountered. Thus you are able to form images of external reality.

Another internal sense power provides you with the ability to recall the images drawn from your sense impressions in past times. A permanent record of sense impressions is one of your important abilities.

An example of recall of experiences of long ago was provided in a movie about the life of a prominent American. On his deathbed, this man kept repeating over and over the word "Rosebud."

His friends were completely puzzled. They were unaware that he was repeating the name of a sled that he owned as a child. The memory of the joys that this sled had brought to him had returned to his mind just before he died.

Information from the external and internal senses is the beginning of the process that ends in intellectual understanding. The senses also bring to you information about number, size, shape, motion, and rest.

Along with external and internal sense powers, your body has sensitive appetites. These sensitive appetites perceive sense impressions as being pleasant or unpleasant. Sensitive appetites are also called passions, emotions, or feelings. These are given outward expression in your behavior.

In a book called Staying Well, Dr. Harvey B. Simon states that addiction to sense pleasures is destructive of good health. Overeating, smoking, alcoholism, use of narcotics, promiscuity, and sloth are some of the problems arising from over-commitment to pleasures of sense.

Hedonists plan their lives around sensual pleasures. They are in love with their foods and drinks, with their fashionable clothes, with their luxurious homes, with their fast automobiles, with their expensive jewelry, with their recreational and entertainment activities, with their money, and with all worldly things. Their philosophy of life is "Eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow you die."

Another term used to describe over-concern with the body is narcissism. The name comes from the Greek youth, Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image when he saw it reflected on top of the still water of a lake.

The death of your body can occur in hundreds of different ways, but here are the ten leading causes of death in the United States:

1. Heart disease

2. Cancer

3. Stroke

4. Accidents

5. Chronic lung disease

6. Pneumonia or influenza

7. Diabetes

8. Suicide

9. Liver disease

10. Atherosclerosis

Malfunction of the heart causes 36% of all deaths.

While doctors have been successful in extending the average life span, they have been unable to increase the maximum age for life.

A news item in 1993 reported that the oldest person living in England had died. This person was a woman who had reached the age of 118. In many centuries of history, some persons have reached this age. Yet even in our modern era this seems to be about the absolute limit for life on earth. You certainly will die long before your 118 birthday.

Death is the most important event in a person's life. Human nature is a unified nature made up of body and soul.

St. Paul refers to the body as being the temple of the Holy Spirit. This statement reflects the deep connection of soul with body.

Death results in the destruction of the body and the isolation of the soul. Before death actually occurs, the soul strives to keep the body alive.

Death is a frightening, mysterious, and catastrophic event that tears asunder the unity of body and soul.

The spiritual soul lives on awaiting the day that it will be joined with a new body to be created by God.

Belief in life after death makes death bearable. Faith in God, hope in God, and love of God are sources of strength enabling persons to accept death with calmness and courage.

Religious belief in the resurrection of the body is easily misunderstood. In the early centuries of Christianity, Roman officials wanted to put an end to Christian belief in bodily resurrection. In killing Christians, Romans destroyed the bodies by mutilation and burning to ridicule the idea that these bodies could ever be brought back to life. These tactics did not destroy Christian belief. Jesus had arisen from the dead and the Christians firmly believed that they too, by the power of God, would also rise one day body and soul as Jesus had taught.

For life on earth, we have a physical body; for the life in heaven, God provides each of us with a glorified body.

A Roman soldier asked a Christian who was about to suffer martyrdom,"Why do you Christians love death?"

The Christian replied, "We do not love death. We love life."

Chapter 3

Your Soul

You are a masterpiece of creation with a nature that enables you to live in two worlds. The first world is one in which you now live; it is a world of transitory, material things. The second world which you have open to you is a world of a new spiritual life. You will continue to have the same soul that you possessed in earthly life.

Your soul is not a bodily organ, but it is dependent upon bodily organs in order to grow and develop. Your intellectual soul enables you to acquire a correct understanding of the physical universe. You have the ability to arrive at universal truths.

Many, many centuries ago, Hippocrates made this observation:

"With the brain we think and understand,

see and hear, and we discriminate between

the ugly and the beautiful, between what is

pleasant and unpleasant, and between good and evil."

In his Treatise on the Soul, Aristotle refers to the intellect as "an independent entity implanted in the soul and incapable of being destroyed."

Your intellectual soul enables you to perceive your inner self. You are basically the same person throughout all the years of your life. Psychiatrists point out that significant experiences early in your life often have important impacts upon your behavior as an adult.

The founder of General Motors Corporation, William Durant, once commented:

"A person comes into the world with nothing and leaves the world with nothing."

In truth, you come into the world with a body which is wonderfully made and with a pristine soul that has the potential for marvelous development. You go out of the world with the same soul that after death continues to be a storehouse of the experiences and the ideas acquired during your entire lifetime.

Sense images provide the raw material for the rational thought processes of the intellectual soul. Human beings have the ability to bring immense amounts of knowledge of the material universe within their minds.

Your human nature prompted Shakespeare to write this memorable passage:

"What a piece of work is man!

how noble in reason! how infinite

in faculty! in form and moving

how express and admirable!

in action how like an angel!

in apprehension how like a god!"

In his work, The Philosophy of Religion, G.W.F. Hegel stated:

"It is by reason of his being Spirit that man is man; and from man as spirit proceed all the many developments of the sciences and arts..."

The soul cannot be seen because it is a spiritual entity. We become aware of the soul by observing its acts and powers. The thinking power of the soul is different from the sensing power of the body. Because the soul is spiritual, religious faith enters into belief in the soul.

The soul's ability to understand enables human beings to comprehend universal truths. Thinking and understanding are great abilities that you possess.

The soul enables you to compare and to differentiate pieces of knowledge. It enables you to advance step by step from one truth to another truth. It might be compared to a beacon of light that enables you to perceive truths of which you had been unaware.

The proper ordering of your nature calls for your soul to rule over your body. Plato stated this fact when he wrote:

"Now in every man there are two parts: the better and superior part which rules, and the worse and inferior which serves ..."

Often in real life, the intellectual soul is unable to move individuals to behave in accordance with reason. The behavior of many individuals is dominated by strong bodily passions and emotions.

Dr. Denton Cooley, a famous heart surgeon, once wrote: "The personality, mind,spirit, soul, and other intangibles must reside in the brain."

This statement appears to relate to the fact that the brain provides the images that are the building blocks for the soul's creation of immaterial ideas. Also the brain serves as the pathway by which the thoughts of your soul are given public expression.

However, the soul is not like an organ that can be seen and touched in a specific location in the body. The soul cannot be examined under a microscope. The soul as a spiritual entity probably resides within your entire body.

At death there is no failure on the part of the soul. Death is entirely due to the fragility of the body. After you die, you soul moves from the natural world to a supernatural world.

In the homes of deceased persons in many areas of Eastern Europe, an old custom is to throw open the doors and windows on the day of death. This is done to symbolize that the spiritual soul will be able to move without hindrance into a new world.

Viking leaders who died were put into a boat which would be set ablaze so that the spirit could free itself from the body.

Hindus and Buddhists burn the bodies of their dead. One reason for doing this is that they believe this procedure liberates the soul from the body.

You are a unique individual with a nature made up of your particular body united intimately with your particular soul. Unfortunately the day will come when your body will cease to function. This fate will not be true of your soul because the soul constitutes the spiritual side of your nature and the soul will continue to live.

The idea of your soul existing apart from your body is mind boggling. During earthly life the soul is immersed in the material body and expresses itself through a material brain. How can the soul exist by itself?

Part of the answer is that a soul existing apart from a body is an unnatural state of existence. Great stress must be placed on the fact that your soul will be re-united with a body in the next life.

A question to which no one is able to provide a complete answer is -- What happens to the soul in the period of time between the death of a person and the Final Judgment by God?

Various theories might be presented but they are only theories. Perhaps the soul is kept in a sleep characterized by refreshment, light, and peace.

The poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote these lines about sleep:

"O Sleep! it is a gentle thing,

Beloved from pole to pole,

To Mary Queen the praise be given!

She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,

That slid into my soul."

Sleep is a familiar and natural part of every human life. As an infant, you slept about sixteen hours per day, usually in four hour intervals. As an adult, you sleep about eight hours every day so that well over one-third of your life on earth is spent in sleep.

Other scholars theorize that, immediately after your death, you will see with great clarity your moral state. Your success and failures will be open to view. In a sense you will be passing judgment upon yourself in a tentative fashion.

Christians do not have information provided by Jesus Christ about what will happen immediately after their deaths.This period between death and general resurrection is a mystery.

Christians live with the assurance of Jesus Christ that, in their life after death, the happiness that will be theirs will be greater than the mind of human beings could ever conceive. The full life with God comes only after the General Resurrection.

What is clear is that the same soul that you had in life will be carried over into your life after death. You, the person that you are in life, will continue to have your same consciousness after death. Your personal identity will be preserved.

When you are given a glorified body by God, your soul will individualize your resurrected body. Your soul will continue to be the expression of your total personality, the center of your personal identity, the source of your intelligence and creativity, the repository of your life history, the essence of your connection with all those persons who gave you their love and to whom you gave your love, and the focus of God's love for you as one of His unique and lovable creatures.

Chapter 4

Growth of Your Soul

From their date of birth, persons are either winners or losers in regard to the parents, relatives, and family friends into whose company they are born.

You are blessed if you had a good father and a good mother. Often one dedicated person, usually a loving mother, is sufficient to set a child in the proper direction for healthy spiritual development. Rotten adult role models are a dreadful handicap for a youngster to overcome.

Until well past the teenage period, young persons need direction from mature adults. In a sense, the intellectual soul of a concerned adult serves to help the young person keep strong passions and emotions under control. The lifelong battle between bodily passions and the soul is particularly evident in the youthful years. Most crimes are committed by young persons.

Until the moment that you die, you and every other sane person are responsible for behaving in a rational manner, for having your soul rule over your body.

Three practices are worthy of approval:

1. Think no evil, e.g. harbor no hatred for other persons

2. Speak no evil, e.g. do not in spoken or written word express unreasoning hatred of other persons

3. Do no evil, e.g. do not act upon hatred of others by wreaking harm upon them

Thinking evil is bad; speaking evil is worse; and doing evil is worst of all.

Advice on your spritual development can be secured from religion and from philosophy Philosophy uses systematic reasoning to search for truth in such areas as logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology.

Guidance in improvement of your character may be found in ideas offered by the philosopher par excellence, Aristotle, in his writings on ethics. The word "ethics" comes from the Greek "ethos" meaning manners, customs, habits.

Aristotle believed that self-perfection is achieved by having the rational appetite, the will, act in accordance with right reason.

Most persons think that happiness consists of worldly wealth, worldly possessions, worldly honors, good health, lot of leisure, and other material comforts. Aristotle approves of these attractive things, but he insists that they must be enjoyed in moderation.

Aristotle sees the real source of happiness as spending your life performing virtuous actions. You find happiness by acquiring the habits of conduct called the moral virtues.

Moral virtue is usually the middle course of action between two extremes. The virtue of generosity is a middle course between the one extreme of miserliness and the other extreme of being a spendthrift. Courage is a middle course between the extreme of cowardice and the other extreme of recklessness or foolhardiness.

"Nothing in excess" is the rule for the golden mean, the middle course.

Excellences of soul or virtues recommended by Aristotle are courage (fortitude), self-control (temperance), gentleness, generosity, self-respect (a sense of honor), friendship, truthfulness, and wittiness (charm). These moral virtues are acquired by conscious effort on your part.

You become the type of person that you choose to be. By a thoughtful decision, you can acquire each virtue step by step by repeating the good action time after time. At the beginning, the good action requires strong initiative and resolution. As the action is repeated time after time, you begin to behave with ease and grace.

The difficulties met with in the early stage of habit formation disappear when the action becomes second nature for you. In order to make the good habit establish deep roots within yourself, you must allow no exception to occur. You learn to be generous by performing acts of generosity; you learn self-control by repeated acts of self-control.

Many scholars emphasize these moral virtues:

Prudence - This may be defined as rectitude of discernment of things to be done that are in accordance with reason.

Justice - This is the application of prudence in doing to others what we ought to do, e.g. gratitude to parents and to other persons who have been your benefactors.

Temperance - This is the application of prudence by suppressing carnal desires in order to follow rational behavior.

Fortitude - This is the application of prudence of following the dictates of reason in spite of the assaults of bodily passions

Some human beings go completely out of control in pursuing pleasure. Alcholics, drug addicts, and sex maniacs are examples. Everyone is free to make the choice of selecting the attractive good of the body in preference to the higher good of the intellectual soul.

You become bad by repeated acts against the rule of your reason. Repeated evil acts establish vices or bad habits as a part of your make-up. This means that you have allowed your body to rule over your soul. Every bad action is like placing a little poison within your soul.

You become a good person by repeated acts in accordance with reason. These repeated acts become good habits or virtues. Your soul is ruling over your body. Every good action enables you to establish a firmer foothold on the pathway to personal goodness.

A person may secure group support in spiritual development by joining with others in an established religion. A religion is characterized by a creed which is a statement of religious belief, by a code which is an outline of moral behavior, and by a cult which is to be understood as a system of religious prayer and worship.

If you express belief in God, then coldness toward God on your part is inexcusable. Meditation on eternal truth, prayer to God, and good actions in helping fellow human beings should be a daily part of your existence.

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