People like to justify doing something they know is wrong to accomplish something that they think is right.
It’s true that there are higher truths and mundane truths.
Sometimes we might think it’s okay to break a law in order to live up to our moral ideals. We’re willing, in some circumstances, to pay the price of breaking the law.
Often, this comes up when people decide to use violence against their opponents.
Yet violence will beget violence.
In the Hebrew Bible, God told the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites. They refused. In my opinion, they did the right thing. Judaism has a history of encouraging argument with God, and disobedience.
For example, God teased Adam and Eve, using reverse psychology (Don’t eat that apple!!), to get them to “Eat THE Apple.” It wasn’t until Eve disobeyed that she became a human exercising choice. Free will is a different story. But without a real option to make some choices, we are like most other animals, usually acting out of our genetic programming. Wasn’t God sick of watching a play with everything predetermined? Giving humans a higher level of choice spiced things up.
Anyway, which was worse? Eve feeding the apple to Adam? Or Cain killing Abel?
Even if we don’t have a clear answer, the direct message of the Cain killing Abel story is that killing another person in anger is bad. Maybe the point of God’s command to exterminate the Canaanites was for us to realize that it would be better to make friends. Which happened at some point. Why else were the prophets always ranting about not marrying them?
The consequences of the descendants of the Biblical Israelites choosing to try to obey God after a 3000 year delay are plain to see, for anyone with a sense of the phrase “cause and effect.” It’s very sad. It’s very painful. It’s very shameful. It’s impossible to find words to adequately describe the growing horror.
Rene Girard, in his book “Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World,” explains that the whole point of almost all of human culture, as hidden in many myths from around the world, is to contain the intermittent violence that inevitably erupts whenever humans live together. Girard points out that NO “SIDE” will ever acknowledge that “We started it.” Billy Joel riffed on this theme in his famous
Maybe God changed “his” mind in the intervening series of eternities. There are multiple instructions in the Bible where humans are instructed to love their neighbors and enemies, and to be kind to the stranger.
The problem is that kindness requires contemplation. Because expressing kindness to one person may require different actions that would befit someone else. We need skill and desire to be kind. We need to be willing to put in the time.
Note that most complicated things in the world do not result from the “simple cause and effect” that kids are taught in school. The truth is closer to the Buddhist idea of “dependent arising.” The rain does not, by itself,” cause a rainbow. Other conditions are required to see a rainbow. MANY other conditions must be met.
I’d like to acknowledge Daniel Aliya for bringing up to me the idea that the means determine the ends. I see this as a great truth, probably greater than the other “great truth,” more commonly spoken, that the ends justify the means. See Aldous Huxley on this idea.
The latest on ageing from Phil Van Huffel. He’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment!
Shrinking
I hardly noticed. Since I traveled almost every week, I seldom had trouble hoisting my carry-on luggage into the overhead bin on airplanes. In 2019 I finally retired and quit traveling by air. Therefore, I drove my car to exotic places like Florida. At some prodding from my younger cousins, I began to write a book about the Van Huffel Family history, which was finished and published in 2021.
Surprise! When I went for my physical in 2020, my height had changed from 5’ 11-1/2” to 5’ 9”. I had shrunk by 2-1/2”. I could still reach the top shelf in my kitchen cabinets but not all the way to the back. My spine had compressed that much. Sitting in a car and at computer most of the time, not walking, not stretching, not exercising would be a root cause (so to speak). With all the falls this past year, I have lost another inch in height. I am now 5’ 8” tall. I can no longer reach the top shelf in the kitchen cabinets. My spine is bent out of shape. If I put a pillow over one shoulder I could be Quasimodo. My ship is listing to Port. My trousers now bag over my shoes. I’m not going to have them shortened.
But I can still reach the light switch.
Dexterity
I was a good typist. I took typing in Highschool. I used a portable typewriter all through college. When electric typewriters became affordable I bought one which I still have. I have several font balls for it. I could type 60 words a minute.
When computer keyboards became available, I could type even faster. Now my fingers have slowed down to such an extent that I type between 5 to 10 words a minute. The fingers don’t find the right keys that my brain is directing them to. It’s as if they were a young child defying a parental directive on purpose.
Because of my lack of depth perception I can no longer thread a needle. I use a jeweler’s eyepiece, and it still takes me several minutes to succeed. This manifests itself when I am eating. My hand-eye coordination is vanishing. If I eat soup the spoon and my mouth don’t always meet exactly, or the soup spoon tips to one side or the other spilling some of the contents.
The strength in my hands has ebbed. The tide has gone out. Things like opening a jar which I could do with relative ease have become a chore requiring inventive devices to replace my younger hands.
Buttoning a shirt now takes minutes because I no longer feel the opening in the buttonhole with the button in my other hand. The fabric under the button somehow gets in the way.
Shuffling cards is another changing activity. I used to be able to intersperse cards on a one-to-one ratio. I play Bridge twice per week. When my partner is dealing the next hand, I am supposed to be mixing up the cards from the previous hand. Often times I miss completely because of my lack of depth perception, and my fingers don’t have the strength to bend the cards so I can get a one-to-one interspersion like I use to. The cards now don’t get mixed as well.
On the other hand, the reduced dexterity gets me out of many tasks that others might have asked me to do.
Cognition
Concentration. I used to be able to spell any and all words without looking at a reference book. Spell check has now become my constant companion.
Sometimes my train of thought runs off the tracks. I am thinking through a problem and suddenly it’s gone. Or someone pulled the switch, and I am now pondering a completely different idea. Scenarios change like in a movie. I now have to retrace my steps to get to the spot where everything changed and move on with my thoughts with the original problem. Sometimes it may be hours later.
The same thing happens when I set out to perform a task. I start but interrupt with a different action. Then I recall what I started to do and seek to finish it no matter what I am doing at that time.
If I set out to perform an action, I now must consider every move in sequence. There is nothing automatic anymore. For instance, if I am climbing or descending stairs I have to decide which foot to use, the right for descending and the left for ascending, one step at a time.
I used to multitask. Now I monotask. Sometimes it’s semi-tasking.
Verbal
I am having a conversation with someone and the words come out wrong. My brain gets ahead of my ability to speak what I am thinking. Sometimes it’s a slurred word or the word that has skipped two spaces like a Monopoly game where I have landed on CHANCE.
Or a name I know but can’t find in my random-access memory until two hours later when it pops into my head while I am thinking or talking about something entirely unrelated.
Or someone asks a question, and three different answers appear to me out of nowhere. I have to consider which answer to give. If that person is expecting a quick response I may say something that is not accurate or to the point. It can be frustrating.
Nonetheless, I am curious to see what develops next. Maybe my upcoming birthday at 92 will be better.
Here is Part 3 of Phil’s journey into the challenges of aging. For most of my life, most of my friends were older than I was. This, I felt, gave me a heads up on what was coming my way. At 67, I now have a few friends who are younger, but Phil is filling the role to leading the way!
It all started when I was walking on the factory floor during an audit around 2011. Suddenly the room began to move. It was spinning at about 60 rpm. I told the person who was escorting me that I needed to find an empty office and sit down, explaining that I was having a dizzy spell. Fortunately, we were close to some shop floor offices and I sat down in a conference room. The spell lasted about 15 minutes. I continued with the audit.
Fast forward about 3 years. I was conducting a three-day audit at a factory in Minnesota. The first day uneventful. I had dinner at a restaurant within walking distance of my hotel. After I had made some notes of the day’s activities, and watched some TV, I went to bed. When I awoke early the next morning, I felt like I was in the center of a carousel watching the horses spin around but no music and I had no break. Now I was concerned. I went back to bed to see if the dizziness would abate. After a half-hour it slowed down a bit so I could maneuver. I washed, got dressed and went down to the breakfast room. I ate something and drank a cup of coffee. The vertigo did not leave. I returned to my room to consider my next action.
I decided to see if I could drive. I hefted my backpack onto my shoulders and caught the elevator to the garage area all the while still experiencing dizziness. I managed to get to my car, store the backpack in the trunk, and back out of my parking space. I traveled about 100 yards down the ramp and decided this was a bad idea. My vision was blurred and the car felt like a boat on rippling water. There was a turnaround just in front of me, so I took it and returned to my old parking space. In the process, I managed to scrape some paint off the driver’s side fender of my rental car. (That cost me my deductible on my insurance policy.)
I returned to my room and contacted the client, explaining my circumstances. We settled on a plan that someone from their company would pick me up at 1:00 pm and I would resume the audit. By noon time, the effects had subsided to the degree that I was able to walk without holding on to something. I was still unsteady but moving. The client picked me up on schedule. The afternoon went without incident, but I stayed at the prescribed table and did what is called a “desk” audit. By evening all evidence of dizziness had disappeared. The next day went off without a hitch.
When I returned to Grand Rapids, I called my primary physician and explained what had happened. He immediately made an appointment with a neurologist. (It helped that we played golf once a week.) I met the neurologist who conducted a series of physical tests. There were no anomalies. She then scheduled a PET scan of my brain. They found nothing.
I have not experienced a similar incident since. But something caused it.
I celebrated my Ninetieth birthday in November 2023.
The Van Huffel First Cousins planned a family reunion for June of 2023 to be held at Geneva on the Lake in Ohio. The Tuesday before that weekend I was hurrying to complete some chores before I left on Thursday. On the way into the garage at my house there are two concrete steps, one about a 10-inch drop and the other about half that. The sill plate in the door opening is an aluminum plate that extends about ½ inch beyond the frame of the house. As I was going into the garage to get to my car, the left heel of my shoe caught on the sill plate. I lurched face forward past both steps and landed on the concrete floor of the garage. My left arm was lacerated in my attempt to shield my fall. My face looked I had just gone ten rounds with Muhammed Ali. It was bloody and puffed up like a cream-filled pastry. That event led to subsequent incidents that cause me now to use a cane and a mobile walker.
No further incidents. But winter was less forgiving. I persuaded my son, Paul, to get me a walker. He obliged with an aluminum tubular device with three “U” shaped tubes that folded flat. It was good for trekking down my driveway to get the mail. None of the four posts had wheels. When the snow melted, the walker became a hindrance. It was like the old joke, “hit the ball, drag George”, place the walker one pace forward and drag Phil. A remedy came to mind. If I put casters in each of the four posts, I could mobilize it. Off to the hardware store to obtain a wood dowel, from which I cut four shorter pieces, which would just fit inside the tubes, and four casters to fit into the dowels. It all worked.
Then I decided to get a cane because I was experiencing some minor vertigo. Off to Meijers to see what they had. I found an aluminum foldup cane with the brand name, “Hurrycane”. It was supposed to stand on its own, but the design was inadequate. So, I modified it by taking the 4” lid from a plastic jar of nuts turned upside down and forcing it into the base of the cane. Then I drilled and screwed it into the cane base to secure it. Problem solved.
I celebrated year 91 in 2024 with a weekend of parties with my son and daughter and grandchildren. On Monday morning while I was in my kitchen at the sink, I started to move back and lost my balance. This resulted in a gash on my left arm from a drawer pull. I landed on my spine. It was an excruciating pain. But the blood gushing from my arm was where my attention was directed. I arose with some difficulty and put my arm under the cold water faucet. The bleeding did not stop so I wrapped a towel around my arm and proceeded to get dressed. I subsequently drove myself to the nearest hospital emergency room. After some delays, they stitched the gash together with 8 stitches. I drove myself home and began to feel the pain from my spine. I spent the rest of the day lying on the bed.
I fell in my bedroom three more times, injuring my back each time and damaging a chair that is positioned beside the end of my bed. Now I am psychologically conditioned to take very small steps. I have developed the “Van Huffel shuffle” which I had observed in my older brother and my grandfather. I now wear an electronic button which brings to mind a TV ad from the past. “I have fallen, and I can’t get up”. The device works. Press the button and it calls 911. I now have two canes, one for the house and one for the car. I have also purchased a fancy walker with a seat, fabric storage box, big wheels, and breaks. I use it every day now to maneuver between rooms.
I employed a chiropractor to see if he could straighten my spine. In several months of procedures there was some improvement but two days after a session things would return to the way they were. I could feel the disks in my neck and spine slip back. So, I gave up on this solution. I am now trying a posture correcting prothesis which I can wear under my shirt. It forces my shoulders into an attention position and supports my back with a Velcro belt with vertical stays. Maybe I can walk upright again instead of bent over.
Olives ripening on a tree near my hotel room door.
The International Conference on Engineering Against Failure VIII took place at the end of June, 2025 in the beautiful resort town of Kalamata, Greece. You know, where they grow a lot of olives. Kalamata is at the tip of the middle “finger” of the southern Peloponnesian Peninsula, which intrudes into the Mediterranean Sea. I was invited to present some failure analysis topics to the “Industrial Failure Analysis” session at the 3 day conference. As far as I could tell, I was one of three (3) Americans attending. One of the others was from an organization I belong to, and a fellow mover and shaker for international friendship through professional associations. The other was a sophomore engineering student from a Christian university, presenting on behalf of his professor, whose wife reportedly would not let him change the family vacation plans in order to attend the conference.
Overall, the conference, and visiting Greece, was a good experience.
My one disappointment was that the taxi company that I had arranged a trip to Sparta with, so I could brag to my neighbors that I had visited the “Real Sparta,” said it was going to be too hot. 43 Celcius. That’s like 99 F. They had a new model Mercedes, but the route involved going over a small mountain range. I still do not know if they were more worried about the vehicle overheating, or the customers having heat stroke, but they took us to the closer Messinia instead. That too was very hot, even though we got back to the hotel before the hottest point of the day.
Remains of a steam bath from the glory days of Messinia.
Here’s a little writing that I did early in the trip, before the conference itself.
I did not go to Greece to see the Parthenon.
That was the subject of the 1977 trip.
This time, an engineering conference, held at a seaside resort. At poolside, American Hip Hop is Hot. A lovelorn man feels like he’s enduring “Katrina, with no FEMA.”
Imagine those words being written today. Grounds for deportation. No simple exhortation.
In Kalamata, olives and lemons grow, not giving a fig that the fig does too.
Too bad for you if you love the sea view with hip hop. Here the sound track is seagull squawks, waves, and traffic noise.No, I don’t know who that person is.
In Greece, “Daily Necessities” at the resort shop do not include hats, or sunscreen. A trip to a pharmacy is in order for the latter. I bought the Greek brand.
A few buildings cling to low, green sloped mountains to the north. The slopes to the south are steeper, some overhanging, and claim no soil. Arid, white rock sparkles.
This is the land of wine and olives. They have cheese and honey too. And fish. Lots of fish. And squid. And octopus on menus.
The birds sould cheery at 7 pm. Not exotic as in farther lands. Although the swallows don’t chitter like the ones I heard at home. They squeal.
Here is Part 2 of Phil VanHuffel’s series on Aging. Hope you enjoy. He’d love to hear from you!
Have you ever heard the term “ear candling”? Neither had I. When someone suggested this procedure to improve hearing, curiosity took over. I learned that it was not a recommended medical process but a homeopathic remedy. It was offered at the Dominican Center in Grand Rapids. That someone was raving about the results. Like a cat with a ball of catnip, I couldn’t resist trying it.
So, in about 2004 I scheduled a session. It was not inexpensive. It was not covered by Medicare. Nonetheless I had to try it. The procedure began with a massage to relax me. Then a warm towel was placed on my head, and I was told to close my eyes. The therapist lit a candle and held it close to my left ear. The heat from the candle began to warm my ear. I experienced something flowing from my ear. The sensation of ear wax leaving the ear canal is the best way to describe it. It took fifteen minutes She did the right ear next. When she was finished, I walked outside and heard birds singing loudly. I couldn’t remember ever hearing birds that clearly. I was sold.
Airplanes, rental cars, hotels, and work continued to occupy my time. My travel schedule didn’t ease up. After a few years, I decided to engage the homeopathic procedure once again. This time the results were not as dramatic. Then, one day, my left ear went dead.
In 2007 I scheduled an appointment with an ear, nose, and throat doctor. He ran a series of audio tests. His conclusion was that I had severe nerve damage in my left ear and less severe damage in my right ear. He didn’t offer any further advice or remedy. So, I went on my way and continued to hear with my right ear.
When Jean, my wife, complained that I wasn’t listening, I decided to invest in some hearing aids. I began to use the internet to find options. Then I received an ad in the mail, offering cheap hearing devices. I bit. A week later I received a package from a company in Illinois containing two earpieces. I followed the instructions and put them in my ears. I could actually hear better.
But problems persisted. I could not hear conversations when we ate at a restaurant, unless we were in a booth. Even then, the background noise caused a din that made hearing conversations difficult especially if the speaker were soft-spoken. I wanted more. So, I upgraded to a higher priced version from the same company in Illinois. This lasted for about six months. My hearing got worse. Keep in mind that I was purchasing products in double digits each.
My next adventure into the audio-racket was an ad that arrived in the mail. It touted a doctor in Arizona who had developed state-of-the-art technology in hearing aids and was now offering it locally in Grand Rapids. In 2009 I made an appointment. My ultimate mistake.
When I arrived at the storefront address, I was greeted with much ado. I should have seen it coming. I went through the routine hearing tests which confirmed what I already knew. I couldn’t hear! But help was on the way. I now graduated from double digits per piece to triple digits per piece. At first the new devices worked much better than the earlier ones. But they needed to be charged every night. That meant a new piece of hardware that accompanied me on every trip. Another thing to keep track of.
With some adjustments, after I had used them for a month, I was satisfied with their performance. About a year later one of the aids quit working. I went back to the office only to find a sign that they had closed. I went to the parent company’s website seeking help only to be advised that if I needed service I would have to travel to Lansing or Detroit. Evidently Zounds, the name of the maker, was in financial straits. Back to square one.
Now I was spoiled. I had some of my hearing back with hearing aids. It was now 2011. I sought out another source for more reliable service. I found Hearing Life located within 5 miles of my house. I made an appointment and visited the office. The company had several locations in Michigan. They were distributors of other manufacturers. The person who I met with was professional with certified credentials for evaluating hearing.
Another round of audio testing was performed. This time I was shown graphs of each ear’s acuity at different frequencies of sound. My left ear was under 50% at many levels and below 25% at the high end of the frequencies. Now I was given a choice. Some choice! I could get a pair for roughly $1000.00 a piece that would only adjust volume, or I could get a pair for roughly $2500.00 a piece that would modulate sound and cancel background noise. So, I had a thirty-day tryout period and if I kept them the sale would be complete. I kept them. In a quiet room I could hear much better. In a restaurant, not so much.
After three years, an upgrade was offered. It was only $1000.00 a piece extra. I am now wearing the upgrade, and I still can’t hear that well in a restaurant. But I had opted for non-rechargeable, battery-operated devices. I don’t need a charger and the batteries are free. I get a review twice per year and any adjustments to the software are made during these visits.
This week, and next, I’m posting a guest blog from my friend and fellow writing group member, Phil VanHuffel. Phil has been a wonderful member of our Non-Fiction Writing Group. He joined way back before the pandemic, when we met at Schuler Books and Music in Grand Rapids. We’re still going strong, Phil and several other members of the group have published their first books. Hope you enjoy!
Ageing – Part 1
It begins. Almost undetectable.
At 70 years of age, full of life, very active, working, traveling almost every week, there is a whisper of something not exactly right. What is it? No time to investigate.
It can’t be the quadruple by-pass that took six weeks to recover so work could continue. That went without a hitch and the healing was rapid. Three weeks after surgery you were an active witness at your grandson’s wedding. You fashioned a side ceremony honoring the bride’s grandparents. You wrote the words and actions for this.
Back to work like nothing happened. Airports, airplanes, rental cars, hotels, meet the clients, start the audit whether it was Quality or Environment. Ask the questions. Search documents for compliance. Observe operations in the factory and outside. Return and repeat the same scenario the next week someplace else.
There is no time for ageing.
Several years go by. There seems to be a change in the focus of the eyes. It’s nothing. Schedule an appointment with the ophthalmologist. Six weeks. OK. Back to work.
The ophthalmologist says there is a slight problem with the left eye. She schedules an appointment with a retinologist. Another eight weeks. OK. Back to work.
The new doctor says there is a distortion on the surface of the retina. He doesn’t explain beyond this but provides a card with a grid pattern and a dot in the center. He explains that it should be looked at three times per day with only the left eye, for at least two minutes. No reason. Come back in two months. This instruction lasts about two days. Back to work.
In two months, nothing has changed. Come back in two months. In two more months, nothing has changed. With no explanation of the condition and no advice on proceeding, I’ve become a billing opportunity, in my opinion, so I stop seeing this doctor. I have somehow compensated for the lack of focus in my left eye and things seem normal.
Fast forward 18 years. Now a different doctor says if I had surgery on the retina when originally diagnosed, it would have been corrected. The procedure now, didn’t work. My brain no longer compensates. I have lost depth perspective. Welcome to ageing.
Have you been told that critical thinking means suppressing your emotions?
That’s ridiculous, and my new book sets out to let you prove that to yourself!
I hope you will give it a look. It’s available on Lulu, as Amazon is not getting a dime more of my money than absolutely required.
Do you want to leave a legacy to your kids? Your grandkids? Mentor younger members of your profession? The keys lie in this book. I renounced admonishing anyone to “Think Critically.” It’s a myth that it’s easy to do. We have to learn how. Step by step. This book sets you on that path.
Here is my Goodreads review of a new book that will be of interest to those interested in life after death, old science fiction, or Spiritualism. I cyberly met the editor, whose PhD project this was, through a weird orchestration of events last winter, and, being a fellow writer, offered to review the book. It’s now available on Barnes and Nobel, but here is the text of my review:
The heading, “Fake News from Futures Past,” is from the Foreword. The Acknowledgements of all that it took to compile the stories of Robert Duncan Milne, and the detailed Introduction to the collection of stories themselves, this massive treasury of stories from the time of the first blossoming of genre science fiction fifty years before it was called that, gives us a window back into a time when science and spirituality were not at such odds as they are for most people today.
I was a participant for two decades in a USA based Spiritualist church, and even briefly a member. Having had a series of mystical experiences in 1996, including a materialization event that was pretty scary, the Independent Spiritualist Church, combining belief in science and spirit, became a welcoming community for me. Yet nobody mentioned science fiction. We knew about the Fox sisters, but not Robert Duncan Milne. By the time I was attending, the attention paid to science was mostly perfunctory and declaratory, claiming that Spiritualist seances offered irrefutable scientific proof of the world of spirit. The actual members of the congregations had little to no interest in actually gaining any understanding of scientific facts or reasoning. This was disappointing to me, as a working engineering consultant. But reading the introduction to the book provides lots of historical context to what was happening in the American culture as technology started battering older ways of life.
I have been a lifelong lover of science fiction, and especially older science fiction. As Scottish sci fi writer Ken MacLeod writes in the Foreword, the writing practice of the time, which continued in full strength up through John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968), was to include “fake news” and other “fake” (fantasy, fictional) references to provide the background for the stories. I miss this style of storytelling, and was happy to get a drink of it in the stories I read for this review. Nowadays, writers of all genres are told to “show, not tell” what is going on. That’s annoying for me. If I wanted them to show me everything, I would watch a movie, not read a book.
Here are some thoughts on a few of the stories, written in a time of skeptics, but not a dogmatically skeptical population at large. Science was new, science was interesting, science seemed to provide credibility to Spiritualism, when compared to the old “revealed truth” faiths.
The Silent Witness: What a great story. Anyone working as an expert witness over the last 30 years will be familiar with the arguments about whether digitally captured photos, rather than film, could be presented as evidence. AI is reopening those arguments again. Here we have the latest scientific gadget of the 19th century, an experimental recording and playing phonograph, that becomes the silent witness and saves the innocent accused.
The Eidoloscope: The editors note that this story is considered one of Milne’s greatest works. While he was not the only speculative writer describing the possibility of travel to the past, they conclude that he likely picked the idea up from what we now might call “the thought field,” rather than from any of the other writers exploring this idea. In the story, we learn that the walls really do have eyes, or at least the ability to see and record, even if they need the help of Milne’s character’s invention to let them retell what they’ve seen. Milne is absolutely not giving mere lip-service to science. He explains in clear prose that any willing lay-person may readily understand, the concepts of how his character’s time machine works. It’s simple cause and effect, like any other science, even if it appears to bring us recordings of ghosts rather than embodied beings. The timing is such that the embodied beings whose likenesses are brought before the witnesses are still remembered and recognized by current living humans, when they have the chance to see the walls emit their memories.
The editors show what a visionary Milne was, in addition to being a literary and scientific genius. He understood, brought to life, and warned us about the ethical issues that are usually only revealed after extensive use and reliance on new technologies.
It’s also interesting that Milne, likely in line with the word usage of the day, calls out the new technological gadgets as “art.” The sci-fi gadgets were made by individuals using concepts and tinkering skills, rather than a methodological scientific process. Of course, as the Rosicrucians and modern physicists alike tell us today, it’s all about harmonization of vibrations. Who needs a team and a big budget? Besides, the inventor meets the skepticism of the other character with irrefutable 18th century thermodynamics: Energy is neither created nor destroyed! It is merely changed from one form to another. Thus any energy thing that has ever experienced energy in its neighborhood, sits ready, in proper circumstances, to disgorge that energy in form identical to that in which it was absorbed. The local “Akashic Record” is held in every solid object. Anything that happened once is eternal. We don’t even need the mysterium of quantum physics!
A New Palingenesis: Milne starts out by noting that the ideals of Spiritualism are pure, and uplifting to those who live according to a belief in an afterlife, a point also made by the founder of another modern religion, the Bahai. Yet, he acknowledges the dogmatic blocks that many will have in following his tale. This is obviously still a problem today for many different “occult” phenomena.
This story is particularly beautifully written. The paragraph describing the caring doctor’s action to comfort his dying wife lets us imagine being present in the room with the narrator, the doctor and his wife. It covers all the things open minded people wonder about. “While noting the tender care and consideration with which the doctor arranged the cushions and performed those hundred little nameless offices, which only affection dictates, for his invalid wife, I could not help wondering, as so many more have fruitlessly done, at the mysterious provision which does not permit us to know whether the emotions and affections are merely the chance mechanism of a moment, or enduring and imperishable entities which have an infinitely more lasting existence than the forms of matter with which they are now associated.”
Is love forever, even if the body is not? Read the story and come to your own conclusion!
