WE HAVE had the question asked, what do we mean by young and old souls, and in this Editorial we will try to make it so clear that all will understand.

As we look about us the observing ones cannot help but see that all people, the men and women on the street, those we meet in business and social activities, even those in our homes, are of different degrees of intelligence or of innate understanding, and therefore they must be in different stages of evolution or of soul growth.

At first we may think that this difference is caused by education, or rather by the lack of it, in those not having much understanding. But we have all met men and women of very little education who impress us with their deep understanding of men and of the ways of life. Such we instinctively feel are wise souls, and we cannot help acknowledging and respecting them for it. On the other hand we have met those who have vast book knowledge and appear highly educated, but who know little of life itself and what to do when confronted by problems calling for a practical use of their knowledge.

Consideration of these facts, especially when they are gained from personal experience and observation, leads one to the conclusion that some men have an inner knowing that is far superior to what they could have learned in this one short life, and that they must have come here somehow in someway already possessed of such knowledge. This is confirmed by the child musical, artistic, mathematical and other prodigies, who seemingly were born with their special knowledge and powers, displaying them at an early age when other children were learning their A.B.C’s.

This could only mean that their souls had gained this knowledge and these powers before coming into this particular physical expression, and because they could play the piano or the violin, could paint and draw, or have such an intimate acquaintance with mathematical problems, they must have gained their knowledge and powers from much experience, instruction and practice in physical bodies in previous existences on earth.

In other words, as souls they must have attended many terms and had much instruction in this world’s school of life, in order to have gained such mastery in their particular lines of endeavor.

The fact is evident that such mastery cannot be acquired in one short lifetime and must take many lives, and that, because such proficiency was with material instruments and problems, they could not have acquired it in the spiritual worlds where material things do not exist.

This then would prove that man’s soul spends many lives—so-called—on earth learning the laws of life and mastering physical and mental expression, and it eventually learns what the physical world can not provide—true happiness, peace and soul contentment. That, it learns, after many, many ages, can be gained only by returning to the Father’s home in His Spiritual Consciousness, which is accomplished only by knowing the truth—that all that appears in the outer so-called physical world is man’s creation and exists only in his mortal mind consciousness, that believes itself separate and different from God’s Consciousness.

Until he redeems all of these “separate” and wrong beliefs and knows himself to be a soul and one with his Father in heaven, and sees only God’s goodness and perfection in everything and everyone, including himself, he must return again and again to physical life’s school in order to gain this understanding and power.

SOUL growth is exactly like physical man’s growth and unfoldment of understanding. Even as man begins as a child to learn the facts and principles of life in the kindergarten and then, as his mind unfolds in consciousness and understanding, works up through the primary, grammar and high school grades and then through college and university; so does the soul begin as a babe in understanding and have to work its way up through similar stages of spiritual unfoldment.

But while man’s mind gains from such schooling all that he is able to learn about the various subjects of human knowledge and which as it is digested and assimilated is built into the mind’s consciousness, all that is learned in one lifetime is but an infinitesimal part of what the soul must learn in the vast period that elapses from its birth at the beginning of the race eons ago to the race’s consummation, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of years hence.

With the soul, each lifetime on earth would be but as a day at school; and as each night the mortal mind digests what was learned in the daytime, so the soul, in its nighttime between incarnations when back in its spiritual home, digests what was learned on earth the previous lifetime and builds it into soul knowledge.

It is difficult for the human mind to grasp the great difference there is between the mind of the prehistoric cave-man and the mind of Christ, and that it takes millions of years for the consciousness of the soul of a caveman to grow and unfold in intelligence to the understanding of a Christ. An appreciation of this fact will help to account for the wide difference in intelligence in those around us, and will explain why some are younger souls than others.

It may be thought that as all souls were created at the same time, as seemingly stated in Genesis, yet a little study will show that even at Adam’s time he was far in advance of others of the human race; also that if his sons got their wives from other families not as favored of the Lord as was Adam, and if the sons of God also took wives of the daughters of men, there was much mixing of blood even at this early beginning and all kinds of in-breeding, not to speak of the powerful influence of environment, which could account for the great difference in intelligence existing today among men, such as between the aborigines of Australia, Africa and the Islands of the Sea—the few remaining “savages” still on earth, all along up to the most advanced master minds of the world.

Also it does not say in Genesis that all souls were created at the same time, but that they were created in the “sixth day,” which we now know covered eons of time. And it is easy to believe that each soul came to its birth during that “day”—even as all other things arrive at birth—when all the phases and factors of its consciousness and nature had arrived at the stage of ripeness, thus permitting it to come forth into life expression. And that “sixth day” evidently being the harvest time of creation, when the highest form of life then known life expression came to fruition, it is safe to assume that it was during that eon of perhaps many hundreds of thousands of years that all souls came into existence as full-fledged human entities, as contrasted to animal entities, those on the next lower stage of evolution.

Again, when we think of the terribly slow growth of the soul, assuming that all had their birth perhaps millions of years ago, and considering all the contributing factors of heritage, climate and environment, it is not hard to understand why some souls are much wiser and seemingly older than others.

Of course, even as we cannot determine the innate intelligence and understanding of a soul by the age or size of its physical body, as most of us have been made to realize that many children these days are much older souls than their parents, so the so-called age of the soul is not determined by when the soul was actually born; it is determined only by its education and experience. We will consider then what constitutes soul education and experience.

That cannot be fully understood and appreciated until one has a clear realization of oneself as a soul. In order to get this realization one has in a way to orient oneself from the brainmind and imagine oneself as having lived in many bodies in many ages in many countries and in all kinds of conditions.

Realizing this it is then not difficult to look back, as it were, and see the many problems and difficulties that had to be overcome before your soul attained its present knowledge and understanding of life. And then perhaps you can see how in a much lesser way your soul from the beginning of this life has been trying to teach your mind this knowledge so that it may gain the understanding and benefit from it that your soul now possesses.

The only way the soul can learn, even as can the mind, is by experience. And so the soul had to be put through an infinite number of experiences to gain what knowledge it now has. Just to give you an idea of how slowly the soul learns—and by soul-learning we mean developing soul qualities that enable one, for instance, not to kill, or to steal, or to get angry, or be jealous, or impatient, or unselfish—think, if you have not perfected yourself in any of these qualities, of the headway you have made with them in this life.

But these particular qualities are of a moral and spiritual nature, which evidence themselves only in older souls. Before such qualities are in any degree developed the soul has passed through countless experiences of purely physical and then of mental nature. For the soul passes through three general stages of human embodiment—physical, mental or intellectual, and moral or spiritual, each requiring eons to bring it to its consummation.

In this connection we cannot do better than to quote from a very illuminating book, now out of print, “The Soul in Human Embodiments,” by Cora L. V. Richmond, showing how every soul must pass through these three stages in order to attain its full growth.

“THE EXPRESSIONS of physical life are, at first, seemingly without intellectual or moral purpose, yet in reality these purposes are there ready to come forth when the successive steps of victory over matter shall have made it possible. In each of these general stages there are many degrees (culminations), and in each degree many successive lines of embodiment.

“The successive lines of the expression of one soul are really typified in the single life of a man and a woman. Childhood is the state of physical growth; there is the feebleness and limitation to conquer, and the physical surroundings seem to overcome whatever else may be enfolded there.

“These first feeble lines of expression are what occur in the many successive embodiments of the first stage of expression.

“You cannot find the lowest human expressions upon the earth at the present time. But take the lowest human states as typical of their earliest beginning, though not in reality the beginning, then consider all grades until you reach the highest expression, and this would be typical of the conclusion, the final state upon the earth. With the exception of the first stages, there are manifested to your vision nearly all of the different stages upon the earth today, of what the soul experiences in the many eons of its expression upon this planet.

“The three stages or degrees of expression are primarily stamped upon the human race; but it is best to explain here that while the intellectual and moral possibilities are hinted at in the primal nature of man, the expression of those possibilities seems, in the infancy of human embodiments, to be excluded; as we discover in the states of races and individuals who seem to have no unfolded moral perception. This lack of mental and moral expression indicates that the first stages of expression do not include the moral problems; they have not yet been reached in the scale of human progress toward perfect expression. Physical life has first to be entered upon, the victory over it and the environment of the senses must come afterward.

“The embodiments follow one after another in rapid succession in the physical states of expression, since there is little or nothing of the moral and spiritual harvest to gather. The growth is slow, and the perceptible advancement in expression from one embodiment to another would scarcely be noticed until the final result.

“In this first stage of expression man seems inferior to the animal kingdom since he has no instinct to govern his appetites, and his mental and moral nature is still undeveloped in expression. This is so because the only law of man’s government is the mental and moral (spiritual), and because being different from the animals he has no blind instinct to guide him.

“Each culmination is the termination of a line of successive embodiments to a certain point of perfect expression in one direction; and while there may be latent suggestions of other lines in the same series of embodiments, there is always a dominant purpose, in each embodiment of that series, in the direction of the culmination.”

Then are given illustrations of the glutton, whose only happiness consists in the amount of food consumed; of the Epicurians, whose motto was “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die;” of the Bacchanalian feasts of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors who considered no one a real man who did not finally sink with stupor at the end of a banquet. Then how it was not many centuries ago since the evidence of the highest civilization consisted of the greatest amount of physical strength. Witness the feats of gladiators and the wonderful skill of athletes in the tournaments of ancient Greece and Rome. The prize ring is but a remnant of those days.

“The spirit of each embodiment is the breath, or impetus, from the soul toward a culmination. A culmination is the highest point that can possibly be attained in a given line. Those who have outgrown the prize ring, and the desire for physical contest, may safely conclude that in a past embodiment they expressed themselves to the fullest extent in that direction. Every step toward this culmination, however, is a step toward the knowledge of its fallacy.

THE SECOND general degree or stage of expression is that of the intellect. Not at once does the mind assert its presence and begin to be a dominant force. It begins with the beginning of embodiments, and commences to manifest its power before the physical is fully expressed; even as the moral instinct commences to manifest before the intellectual is fully expressed.

“The mental steps are not only more various, but they combine many and more intricate problems. The steps in the direction of art, for instance, are various and slow at first. In music, the one who struggles to that which cannot be attained in one embodiment, having little ability yet for which there is much desire, the struggle with persistence is continued through many embodiments.

“We would name Mozart as a genius because, untaught, in childhood he knew the principles of harmony. He knew not because he had learned it in this life, but because he had had experience in previous lives, had taken all the steps until this present life was the culmination. This enabled him to know music at three years of age; not because his soul or spirit was any more potent than any other, but because he had taken the preceding steps in previous lives to that culmination. While another might be culminating in poetry, another in painting, or other art, he was culminating in music.

“When genius appears the world recognizes its light. All steps toward genius are steps of aspiration. The one who wishes to play, the one who wishes to sing, certainly shall play and sing, because it is something yet to be attained.

“Genius, therefore, is the culmination of many steps toward perfection in one direction. Then wherever there is genius distinctly manifested, it is the final expression of the individual soul in that one direction. Each may know by the genius of the world what the culminations of all will be, or have been, for each soul must express itself as perfectly as any other in those directions.

“States of mental and intellectual unfoldment are sometimes mistaken for something higher. It is well to draw the line distinctly at once, and to see that no amount of human achievement, such as victory through the methods of mechanical and intellectual effort, can be called victory in the end, excepting as an illustration of what life is not for. Just as the physical culmination is nothing of itself, but an expression of what life will not finally express; so the intellect is an expression of what the mind will not finally express—that is, intellect without spirit.

“IN CONSIDERING the spiritual degree, the most complex stage of human expression, should be remembered that—as there is no partiality in the soul, so there is no partiality in experience. Each soul begins at the beginning of experience here, passes through physical conquest and then physical disappointment, the intellectual conquest and then intellectual disappointment, and enters upon the spiritual conquest, that of self, finally overcoming all its difficulties. The physical victory is not a conquest over the physical nature, nor is the intellectual achievement a conquest over the intellect. They both but testify to the development of soul qualities and understanding gained from much experience in these stages.

“The full strength of spirit is attained through struggle that must encompass all conditions of life. Not gigantic to the extent of overweening physical strength, but for the purpose of usefulness as such strength is needed; not gigantic to the extent of a masterful intellect unwedded to the heart, but to be used to succeed in all and to fail in all, until one can forward the work of the spirit until it conquers all states—not only sin, but the greatest of all sins, self-righteousness, until pure selflessness, manifesting as love, for one’s fellowman, is achieved and stands in sublime and exalted humility as the typical illustration of conquest over the earth.

“All states between that and the lowest condition you can picture are states of human experience that every soul must pass through. The spirit begins its triumph where the intellect fails. Spiritual power is the beginning of Love’s inspiration in every age and in every individual. Whatever flows into man’s life from the divine changes his outer life expression. Constant listening to the voice of Love within himself gradually brings the outer mind to an open state where it is always able to receive in its need.”

When man begins to show evidence of being guided entirely by an inner knowing, and radiates a kindliness and gentleness of Spirit, he proves himself to be an “old soul,” one that has learned most of the lessons of life, and knows he is here now solely to help others; also that he is fitting into the Great Plan and into the part for which all the long past has been preparing him.

There are souls that are old in human knowledge, but who are still babes in spiritual knowledge. The truly old souls are those who have culminated in all lines of human endeavor, only to learn the futility of them all so far as bringing soul satisfaction and peace; and who therefore now have only one desire—to be selfless channels through which Divine Love can express, that It may help and bless all they contact.