"I received a letter from New York while sojourning in Florida which contained the following: ‘The report has gone around that you died last week. Of course we know it is not true, but how do these things get started?’ I had to reply to this letter somewhat after the following manner, ‘In the language of Mark Twain I must say that the report of my death is greatly exaggerated — and yet somehow or other the same report is true.’ The offices of death are many. According to the apostle Paul, death is one of the most helpful and necessary things that can be performed. He advised the habit of ‘dying daily,’ and this prefaced the glorious possibility of being born daily also! There is something back of the ‘idea’ of death which is replete with substance for meditation."
"When you die to anything you are through with it. Just as in the relative sense of the word when a man dies he is immediately separated from all his possessions; good, bad, or indifferent. His debts are cancelled so far as he is concerned. His estate is disintegrated almost immediately, and no longer is attached to him. Like a cloud of dust in a hurricane, his entire affairs are scattered in all directions. Not understanding Life, the greatest enemy is death. It deprives Life of its manifestation. When Jesus became conscious of Life, He could pass in and out of the shadow called death almost as if passing through a purifying fire. When He arose from physical death, even His disciples did not recognize Him until He allowed Himself to take on enough of the former form, to which He had died, for them to do so. All along the way to Emmaus, they could not distinguish the man with whom they had been for three years. ‘I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again.’ And He took it up on a higher plane!"
"When the eagle is born or hatched, it means death to a thing or state of things called ‘egg’ — and in this new process it is impossible to carry any of the old estate with you. Many are seeking the new birth, but they do not want to go through death to get it. In other words, they want to hold on to old stages of development, and at the same time try to express new capacities. It is quite as impossible for a caterpillar to fly as it is for an egg; both must perform the death upon the thing of which they want to be rid, and re-embody themselves with the new reality, before they can attain the expression they are seeking. When you learn the proper interpretation of the word ‘death’ you will see that it becomes a friend (O death, where is thy sting?), for it is a cleansing, liberating process. It is a letting go completely and ascending to a place where the former things cannot enter in, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the present manifestation. Instead of getting rid of things temporarily, man dies completely to the idea of its manifestation. In the new place he finds himself as incapable of experiencing his former limitations as an eagle flying over the abyss would have in experiencing the cramped quarters of the eggshell from which it evolved."
"A tiny plant starts from its cell and the seed dies. It pushes forth a bud, the flower comes, and the scales or outer leaves die, and the flower is born. The fruit pushes out into manifestation and the flower dies, and so it goes ever onward and upward into the more glorious manifestation of Life here and now. The never-ending merging into new and lovelier states takes place when what you have been and have obtained is ready to die, and when the ‘last enemy’ has become a friend and thus the ‘sting’ has been taken from it. The offices of death are oblivion to that which is outgrown and of no further use. If you have not already died to much of the conscious thinking of yester-years, you are suffering from arrested or retarded mental development. If you have not died to many of your previous stages of development and former states-of-being, then your growth is indeed stunted and you are a spiritual dwarf. And so death, when properly understood, becomes the friendly enemy. It is that which throws a veil of oblivion to outgrown states and cast-off limitations and causes the Magdalene to look about and see that she has no accusers. Suddenly she is dead to the thing called harlot and all that has gone with it, and she is born at the same instant to something that cannot experience or even understand the former state of things. The friendly enemy has released her!"
Much more in the text:
"In the dream I saw an old lady — tall and skinny and rather bony — quite frail, too, and she looked as old as the hills. She was stiff and shaky, could hardly walk, but she kept tottering along. In desperation she was grimly and tenaciously holding on to the little crevices in the wall against which she leaned as she continued down a long hallway. She held her head high, almost arrogant in manner, as though to say, ‘I’ll never give up, I’m not going to fall,’ while it was obvious she was already collapsing. As I watched, feeling sorry for her, gradually, she slid to the floor — and suddenly I saw her and the wall no more."
"At the time this dream came I prayed earnestly that the Lord would let me come across this poor old lady who needed so much for someone to help her — but of course I never found her — and soon forgot all about the matter. When the Lord brought it back to me, He let me know that I was the old lady! The old lady is the nature that doesn’t want to die, and fights desperately to have its way, because that is its nature. No wonder she looked as old as the hills — she’s been around since Adam! She has traveled a long, long corridor down to this day, and while nothing in her wanted to die, at last she sensed that she would, or she wouldn’t have been holding on for dear life. How glorious that we have discovered that God had already decreed that He would have a people in the beauty of the life of Jesus Christ, because He Himself would totally overcome the limitations of sin and the power of death to become the resurrection and the life for all creation! I don’t know how to explain it, but somehow I feel that I’m not hanging on the cross any longer — yet the cross is still working in me. I am dead, and my new life is hid with Christ in God!"
"In my time I’ve been through deep waters alright, and through the fires — and I know not what lies ahead. Yes, dying is painful in many ways, but I’ve discovered that after every dying episode, our blessed Lord comes with a baptism of holy Love that literally lets us drink in His very substance — a healing balm that comforts, strengthens, enlightens, transforms, and raises us up into perfect wholeness in an altogether new and higher dimension of life, victory, and glory! When the old lady totally collapses the wall disappears, too — for the old lady is indeed herself the very wall that separates us from the fullness of the indwelling Christ! What a death! What a life!"