224 OCCULT PRINCIPLES OF HEALTH & HEALING
greatest opportunities for serving him and laying up
heavenly treasure for ourselves.
We have studied the phenomenon of birth and have
evolved a science of birth. We have qualified
obstetricians and trained nurses to minister in the best
possible manner to both mother and child to make
them comfortable, but we are sadly, very sadly, in need
of ascience of death. When a child is coming into the
world we bustle about in an intelligent endeavor; when
a lifelong friend is about to leave us we stand
helplessly about, ignorant of how to aid; worse than
all, we bungle and cause suffering instead of helping.
We have stated that the vital body is the storehouse
of both the conscience and subconscious memory;
upon the vital body is branded indelibly every act and
experience of the past life, as the scenery upon an
exposed photographic plate. When the Ego has
withdrawn it from the dense body, the whole life, as
registered by the subconscious memory, is laid open to
the eye of the mind. It is the partial loosening of the
vital body which causes a drowning person to see his
whole past life, but then it is only like a flash,
preceding unconsciousness; the silver cord remains
intact or there could be no resuscitation. In the case of
a Spirit passing out at death, the movement is slower;
the man stands as a spectator while the pictures
succeed one another from death to birth, so that he sees
the first happenings just prior to death, then the years
of manhood and womanhood unroll themselves; youth,
childhood, and infancy follow, until it terminates at
birth. The man, however, has no feeling about them at
that time, the object is merely to etch the panorama
into the desire body, which is the seat of feeling, and