Ernest Holmes – Freedom To Live, Discover Lifes Riches

 

CONTENTS

Foreword

PART ONE: THINGS NOT SEEN
Chapter 1 – A Science of Religion
Chapter 2 – The Spiritual Universe
Chapter 3 – The Modern Miracle Worker
Chapter 4 – Thought and Experience
Chapter 5 – Life Is Creative

PART TWO: THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS
Chapter 6 – Mind in Action
Chapter 7 – A Basis for Spiritual Healing
Chapter 8 – The Dynamic Power of Thought
Chapter 9 – Beyond Appearances
Chapter 10 – Perceptive Awareness

PART THREE: THINGS WHICH DO APPEAR
Chapter 11 – Adventure, Plus
Chapter 12 – The Great Investment
Chapter 13 – Problems Have Answers
Chapter 14 – Successful Living
Chapter 15 – The Real Self

 

FOREWORD

We are born with complete freedom to think as we will. Yet out of that freedom we have for the most part placed ourselves in bondage to negative ideas which deprive us of the very life we desire to experience.

However, in spite of the appearance of conditions we are confronted with, or the nature of situations in which we find ourselves, with a better understanding about ourselves and the universe in which we live there is a way to find a new freedom. A freedom to more fully enjoy the better things that life is ever ready to give to us.

If a person desires a miracle to occur to change things in his life he must understand that it is not something that just happens to him, but rather something that occurs because of what he does.

It is within the unseen realm of one’s own mind that rests the power and complete freedom to change for the better every aspect of daily living.

This is the eleventh volume of the Miscellaneous Writings of Ernest Holmes. His great work, The Science of Mind, is a classic in the metaphysical field, and these additional volumes further expand his original concepts. World famous as one of the great religious philosophers of our day, his philosophy has had a tremendous impact on people in every walk of life and every religious background.

Assimilated and used, the ideas he advances in this book can enable every reader to discover a greater freedom to really live.

Willis Kinnear

Director

Science of Mind Publications

 

PART ONE THINGS NOT SEEN

The world in which ive live is very real and very tangible, yet that which is the causative factor behind all that exists can never be weighed and measured.

No one has ever seen an idea. However, ideas are powerful things in every aspect of our lives. Who has seen a thought? Who has caught a glimpse of any of the laivs that govern our existence or control the universe?

There is a great unseen realm which appears to be the ultimate source of all that is. We but dimly comprehend its nature, but to the extent we do, we can begin to give some meaning to this thing called life and our experience of it.

As we begin to understand the nature of things as they are, then we begin to more fully partake of the unlimited potential that surrounds us.

Chapter 1 – A SCIENCE OF RELIGION

Science is a specific knowledge of laws and causes which can be demonstrated to be so. The birth of any science is first a belief in some theory relative to nature or her laws, then the gathering together of an enormous amount of facts until finally the facts justify the belief in an underlying principle.

Science, which is supposed to be the demonstration of a certain principle or principles, believes in that principle which it has never seen. Just as we do not see God, we do not see the principle of any science. The only reason we have to believe that there is such a principle is because everything acts as though it were so. When enough facts are gathered and tabu­lated and enough data built up to support the belief in any given principle, then the scientific world feels justified in announcing that principle. Always we are having new an­nouncements because science is just as incomplete as religion. We must be very careful to remember this: Whatever any scientific fact may be, and no matter how completely it may be considered to have been proved, no one has ever seen the cause.

Just as we do not see God, we do not see life. Since everything lives and appears to have life, we are justified in assuming that there is an eternal Life Principle. That is philo­sophically and scientifically correct. It is correct from the stand ­point of experience and of logic, of deduction and of theory. Wherever we look we see the manifestations of Life —of pur­poseful intelligent action. We find that Intelligence is manifest in everything, from the blade of grass to our theoretical specu­lations about the nature of the cosmos.

Is it not reasonable to suppose that there is a vast and infinite Intelligence in everything and through everything and around everything? It is scientific as well as philosophic to believe in a universal Intelligence. The most positive materialist believes it. The question now is not, Is there an Intelligence? but, What is the nature of such an Intelligence? Does It or does It not respond to man? This is not a scientific question; it is a religious question.

Scientifically we must and do conclude that there is a universal Intelligence. Science as such does not attempt to say whether or not that Intelligence responds to man. That is the office of religion. And it is interesting to note that many of the great scientists of today are saying that science has carried cer­tain problems so far and it must now hand them over to the religionist to discuss those underlying, ultimate principles. Therefore, we pass from the scientifically known to the reli­giously speculative field.

Religion, which is a belief in God, believes in something which it has never seen. Here we are not discussing theology, which is the dogma of spiritual philosophy, but rather dis­cussing religion itself, which is some belief in an infinite and Divine Presence.

We believe in God. All religionists believe in God. Some people believe in what seems to us to be a strange God, but that is their belief and they have just as good a right to it as we do to ours. But the central belief in God is that there is an overshadowing and indwelling universal Presence or Intelli­gence which responds to us directly. I am not going to say you have to believe that is so. It is my business to lay out the ideas; it is up to you to accept what you like and reject what you do not like.

I believe that if the intelligence in a geranium plant can and does respond to love and affection, and if the intelligence in an animal can and does respond intelligently to a higher intelligence, and if the intelligence in man responds to the in­telligence in man, consciously, how much more must it be that universal Intelligence responds to us.

In other words, I do not think it is a question of opinion at all. I think, judging not only from the religious conviction, or from the philosophy of reality, which clear thought leads us to do, but as a scientific basis in building up a principle, as any scientist does, we have every reason to believe that the uni­versal Intelligence responds to us, and no reasoning can doubt it.

Everywhere we look we see evidence of a law that intelli­gence intelligently responds to intelligence. That law is written in the vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms. Where did it come from? Out of the universe; therefore the law of the response of intelligence to intelligence is a universal law. Con­sequently, I believe that every man’s religion, from the most crude to the most exalted, has been more nearly right than wrong. And because it has been so, it has maintained vitality. There is Intelligence in the universe, then, I am going to assume, that responds to us.

Now the next question will be: How does It respond? Let us go right back to the methods used by scientists to arrive at conclusions. It is known that in hypnotism intelligence responds by corresponding as an object is held in front of a mirror. That is demonstrated; there is no question or argument about it; it is true. It is known that animals respond by corresponding to our own temperament. More than that it is known that we respond to each other as our own thought is. Therefore, I am going to lay this down as one of our fundamental premises, that not only is there an Intelligence which responds to us, but by reason of Its own nature, It can only respond by corresponding.

There has never been a great, inspired, or illumined system of thought given to the world which was not partly built on that principle. That is the conclusion the great minds of the world, of all ages, have arrived at; that the Infinite responds to us by corresponding, as in a mirror there is reflected the image of the object which is held before the mirror.

Now we begin to see the secret of some of the sayings of Jesus. Jesus did not say: Now, my friends, if you will be good, God will be good to you; if you will love God, God will love you. He said: ”… as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee,” implying not only a Consciousness, an Intelligence, and a Law in the universe that responds, but implying emphatically that It responds only by corresponding —as we believe, it is done. Jesus thus established faith as a law and set down the conditions governing that law — that the faith, any man’s faith, in something, of something, about something, and the cor­responding result will absolutely, perfectly correspond.

To make practical use of this idea we must hope, trust, believe, and have confidence that we are dealing with an im­mutable Principle which may be absolutely relied on, and that It is the medium through which our thought, purpose, prayer, conviction, or faith brings about some definite good which we have not experienced previously.

These things are either true or else they are not true. We wish to prove, no longer theorize, no longer have merely a blind hope that is vain and empty. Can we bring about a definite and desired good?

We seek to demonstrate the supremacy of spiritual thought force over apparent material resistance. What do we mean by spiritual thought force? We mean that kind of faith, conviction, belief, or spiritual attitude, whatever we choose to call it, which, looking at confusion sees peace and knows that peace is and has power to calm the troubled waters. The one who seeks to prove the supremacy of spiritual thought force over apparent material resistance must know that the Law of Mind has no opposition — knows none, senses none.

We want to demonstrate that good overcomes evil. The method is not difficult. Let us go over it briefly. The one who wishes to scientifically do this, that is, the one who wishes to be able to specify when and where he wants it to happen, starts out with this beginning: God is, and there is nothing else. Perfect God, perfect man, and perfect being —that is the Principle. That Principle is absolute, complete, perfect. No one person, not even Jesus, has perfectly used that Principle. But just as we know there is Life everywhere and that Intelligence responds to us, it is now known and knowable that this Prin­ciple exists. It is self-evident.

We must, then, look at a condition until that condition no longer disturbs us. One persists in accepting the idea of perfect God, perfect man, perfect being. Perhaps, then, discord arises, but the earnest one says, “That discord is not real; it is an experience; it has no power or no right to be because I know that back of it is Reality, and because Intelligence responds to intelligence the discord ceases.”

This constitutes scientific religion, scientific Christianity, if one chooses to call it such. I like the term Religious Science because it includes every man’s religion.

We cannot serve God and mammon, which means we can­not walk two ways at once. We cannot seek to divide the self against the self. We do not say evil is equal to good, or doubt and despair are as beautiful as faith and confidence. We must have a calm, flexible determination disregarding whatever ap­pears to contradict that which we know. What is it that we know? God is all there is; there is no devil; there is no hell; there is no punishment reserved for us; there is no evil — that is all fabricated out of the morbidity of man’s imagination and nowhere else.

”… whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” If a man continues to do evil, he experiences evil until finally he gets tired of it and turns to good. Then evil, like the thief in the night, steals away and is seen no more, and in its place is the realization that God is all there is, there is nothing else. So each one of us takes this thought into the contemplation of his own mind: God and I are one. All the good there is is for me; all the power there is is with me; there is One Power, One Law with me — Love, the living Spirit Almighty.

Chapter 2 – THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE

It appears that there is some final Source of creativeness in the universe which intelligently and creatively responds to our approach to It. We call this final Source, Spirit. It is the Prin­ciple of Its action, the responsiveness to our approach, which we seek to demonstrate in actual practice. I believe in trying to prove this insofar as we are able, and I believe we are all able to prove it much more than we ever have. In other words, if a thing is so, it will work; if a thing is true, it can be demonstrated.

We need to understand that there is no God in the universe who withholds good from humanity. There is no power and no intelligence in the universe trying us to see how much we can stand. There is no deific presence in the universe so arrogant that it waits for us to bend our knees to it. All of these concepts are the result of ignorance, superstition, fear, and viciousness. They are all false.

On the other hand, there is an Intelligence in the universe ^which is ultimate, a creative Power which is absolute, and there must be some approach to It, and It must respond in terms of that approach. This proposition is self-evident, it is free from superstition, it need have no fear in it, and it is intelligent. It needs no advocates, has no enemies, and knows no opposites.

We must expert to find that there is a final unity in the universe. While there still may be many disputes about unity and duality in philosophy and theology, it will not be very many more years until science, neither attempting to be philosophical nor theological, will so completely demonstrate the unity of the Ultimate that philosophy will have to accept it and theology acknowledge it. J. B. Haldane, the great English scientist, in surveying the findings of science says that all con­verge somewhere in a final unity as so many fingers reaching into one hand. He says that perhaps the knowledge of this final unity will be called the science of being. This is the position that more and more knowledgeable people are taking — there is one ultimate Reality which has no opposites.

The nature of Reality could only be goodness, truth, and beauty. Jesus called It “Our Father which art in heaven.” Re­gardless of what we call It, It must be good. In spite of how much apparent evil there is in the world, remember that the brief history of the human race on this planet demonstrates without any question that the only thing that is eternal in human history is goodness. The ethics of Buddha, the morals of Confucius, the compassion of Jesus, are as fresh in the pages of history today, but infinitely more widespread, as they were when these men were contemporaries of would-be world con­querors.

There is no question but that truth crushed to earth shall rise again. Therefore, no matter what the fleeting fantasy of the present appearance may be, we may accept that there is an underlying solidarity and unity in the universe, based upon goodness, truth, and beauty. Everything that is a synonym for that which can endure forever we call God. I like the word Spirit better than the word God only because it suggests to my own thought something which is fluidic. Perhaps it is because for so many years human consensus has unconsciously pictured God with form and that which is pictured with form seems to be solid. But people have always thought of Spirit as something fluidic — something which is ever flowing and ever pressing into and against everything. I believe that this Spirit —God — is the Source of all power.

It makes no difference how evolution reached its present state, back of it was the Divine urge for expression impelling it forward. All normal people believe in a greater good than they have ever experienced. There is no man who, allowing his mind to dwell on fundamental principles, would not arrive at the conclusion that there is an Omnipotence somewhere in the universe which can be relied upon. It is at this point that re­ligion becomes scientific. This does not mean a religion which is based just on energy, but a religion which is based on energy and intelligence, perfectly cooperating, coordinating, harmoni­ously functioning together — intelligence directing energy to­ward creativeness.

My concept of the universe is very simple. I believe there is in the universe an infinite Knower, there is an infinite Law – here is an infinite Spirit ready to take form. All of these things are invisible. The visible universe is the result. The vis­ible universe is in a continual state of flux and flow, never twice alike. Nothing is permanent in the objective world. It is horrifying at first to contemplate the impermanence of this transistory objective life. But remember, if it were permanent and if we were immortal beings in such a permanence, then we should all have to believe in hell because we would be tied to the ignorant forms of our superstitious creations. Nothing visible is permanent, and nothing ought to be. That does not mean that what is tangible is an illusion, but back of the visible is a permanence of Divine Presence, a permanence of a Law, one ever acting through the other. There is a flow of consciousness into a pattern which is invisible, but then this invisible pattern in turn appears in a form which is visible. Creation is ever pushing out, seeking greater expression.

Modern science is confirming this concept of the universe, but in so doing does not use terminology that is philosophical or theological. Modern science gives no name to the Ultimate. It does not say this is God or this is Spirit. It assumes an infinite Intelligence which it dares not name, and rightly so if it is to remain a purely neutral science. However, recently many scientists have been departing from the established custom of science and are beginning to write books on philosophy and religion. It is a spontaneous outcome of inevitable conclusions and deductions drawn from scientific facts: known equations in a universe of law, the purposefulness of life, the presence of order, and the nature of that which is uncreated and that which is created.

All of this indicates that the Spirit is the Source of power. So we find ourselves immediately in contact with an invisible Power which is absolute, positive, and creative. Everyone is in contact, no matter what he believes theologically, philosophi­cally, or scientifically. Whoever a person may be and wherever he may be, he is in touch with an absolute creative Power which is positive, limitless, and is right where he is. The consciousness of Spirit is the final creative power because the Law is subject to It. We must conceive of ourselves as being in touch with a Power that reacts creatively to our consciousness, and in our attempt to use It there is no limitation imposed upon us.

We discover that the one who gets the best results is the one who is the most completely conscious of this spiritual Power. What do we mean by being conscious of spiritual Power? It is a consciousness recognizing that good is more powerful than evil. It is a consciousness that life is real, and that nothing that lives can die. It is an awareness that peace overcomes confusion, and that the positive destroys the apparent negative. Such an acknowledgment of the nature of spiritual Power looses It through one’s consciousness into action at one’s direction.

We can say that ultimate Reality is Mind or Intelligence, and the approach to It is belief. However, It can respond to us only in the terms of our belief. If, then, we believe in that which we call negative, we are still doing it affirmatively, and, as it says in the Old Testament: “With the pure thou wilt shew thy­self pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward.” The Law reveals Itself to us in the terms of our approach to It. The Law of Mind is as a mirror, reflecting back to us the exact ideas we present to It. The mirror is impartial, returning our beliefs to us. We always have beliefs, but everything we believe is not constructive. Therefore, in spiritual mind treatment we must turn from the belief in what we call the negative, to a belief in what we call the positive; from the belief in what we call evil to the belief in what we call good. In so doing we are accepting the universe in a constructive instead of a destruc­tive way.

Chapter 3 – THE MODERN MIRACLE WORKER

Evolution is not the transformation of nothing into some­thing. The materialist says that intelligence is the result of evolution. He is wrong. He should state it this way: Evolution is an effect of Mind, it is a result. Because I have a mind I can read a book, I can play a game, but the reading of the book and the playing of the game do not create a mind, they utilize a Mind which existed before I used It and It now becomes indi­vidualized through my act. There is an infinite Mind back of, in, and through everything — that is what we call God. What this Mind is like our finite minds grasp only in part, but the Infinite Itself is good and It is here.

We discover that in the evolution of the human race man’s potentialities and powers preexist his use of them. For example, a dam is built for the purpose of harnessing natural energy. That energy existed as a potential before it was decided to harness it. The great spiritual geniuses and revelators of ages past did not have, for instance, electricity. They could have had it to use but they did not know about it. In other words, there seem to be innumerable energies and potentialities in the uni­verse which have always existed. Man must discover these potentialities; he must wake up to them; he must use them according to the laws which control them. Every scientist knows that nature will deliver her energies and actions to him only as he discovers the way in which they work and complies with their laws and processes of operation.

The greatest discovery that man has ever made, the simplest, the most direct and the closest to him, is the discovery of him­self. That is the discovery which distinguishes man from the brute and inanimate creation. Therefore, an ancient temple of Greece had inscribed over its entrance: Know tbyself. The high­est manifestation of God we can ever find is man. Consequently, when we make self-discovery we are uncovering more than we think we are; we are discovering God manifesting as what we are. God is revealed in the innermost side of our nature. Kant, who often is called the father of modern reason, said that when we see something in the objective world we are enabled to recognize it because it awakens within us an intuition. What he meant was that it awakens within us that which is akin to the common medium in which everything resides or exists. As Emerson said, “There is one mind common to all individual men”; and he goes on to add that we can only interpret history from this viewpoint, that the mind that reads it, wrote it, and the mind that wrote it, reads it. It is all self-discovery.

When we examine this inner principle which we call the mind, we must remember this: It is more than a person we are analyzing. That is the reason why it is so difficult to tie psy­chology down. In studying the nature of what we call the human mind, we eventually approach the Divine Mind, which is outside the realm of most psychologies. When we speak of the discovery of mind, it is the individual who makes the dis­covery within himself. But it is more; it is the discovery of a universal Self and his personal self provides a unique and indi­vidual outlet for It.

We shall never understand the meanings of the things we study unless we can start out with this premise: There is a unity of God and man. We must accept this unity, and understanding a little of it, we find that this is what the great spiritual geniuses of the ages have talked about. People like Jesus and Whitman were not talking about isolated individuals but about all being included in this Unity. When we say that a certain man has a good mind, what we really mean is that he has good thoughts, that he has an excellent use of Mind.

Every man is an expression of the universal Mind, he indi­vidualizes It, It flows through his mentality, It is his mind. That is what the spiritual wisdom of the ages has revealed. Therefore, when we speak metaphysically of the nature of Mind we are not speaking of the psychological study of mind, yet we do not deny the value of such studies. Mind is more than that.

Mind as a miracle worker does not involve hypnotism dr mental suggestion, though these things may have their value. We have an access to Mind which preexists any individual use of It. Mind is ever ready to take the form of our consciousness because that is Its nature. It awaits not our salvation, but our realization that we are one with It. In other words, when we awake to our unity, it is as though we were never isolated. We shall never find anything in the universe but ourselves, never, because it is the nature of Mind to reflect the self back to the self. Mind is a mirror, as Ella Wheeler Wilcox said —it is a “mirror of king and slave.”

It is my belief that whatever I can become conscious of in the nature of Reality, in such degree as I am conscious of it, will be as a reality in my experience. Whatever I can become conscious of in the nature of that which contradicts Reality, will also become my experience. That experience will not be part of the Divine nature but it will be real to me as I experience it. It is the nature of the Law of Mind to create the possibility of any experience. The Law of Mind reflects back to us as fact (although it is not always what we call desirable) that which we mentally embody. Mary Baker Eddy said, “All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation . . . . ” Emerson said, “We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate.” Jesus, more profound than either of these two, with the sim­plicity of profoundness, summed up his whole philosophy of life by simply saying: “… as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee,” implying that there is something that can do it, and will, but it must conform to the belief.

What is belief? It is a mental state. Therefore, we are correct when we say that if we can change the mental state we can change the outward form. But we do not change the mental state by merely denying the outward form. That is where many people make a mistake. Our philosophy is not one of denying the reality of the external, but of affirming the reality of the invisible as the causation of the external. That which makes can remake. That which creates can re-create. That which molds can remold. Hence we arrive at the idea of the healing power of mind which does not lie in the realm of suggestion. For it is not the suggestion which heals, but the Power loosed through it, and the Power loosed through it and by it is already inherent within that for which It is loosed. The one who heals a person spiritually does so by affirming the perfect action of that Thing in his patient which is creative of everything that he is.

Every time we think we are using infinite Intelligence. We call Mind a modern miracle worker because ours is the age in which man has discovered the nature of Mind. This is the new­est of the sciences, revealing more than the other sciences, yet all reveal much. I consider the Science of Mind the most signifi­cant of all sciences, the most interesting, although perhaps the most elusive. However, it is a science which does not require the physical equipment that other sciences require. Every man thinks, therefore every man consciously or unconsciously uses an infinite Creativeness. We are not, then, trying to find the Truth; It has always been inherent within us. It is not so much a question of trying to find the Truth as it is of awakening to It.

So we come into the uses of Mind. What is Mind? I do not know. That is professing a profound ignorance, but I do it with great joy because no one else knows. Mind is! You might as well ask, What is Life? When we arrive at a final analysis of Reality, we arrive at a conclusion that has to be ac­cepted on faith, because it is self-evident. Faith is not an illusion;, faith is the highest conclusion which the human mind can arrive at. It is not an infant crying in the night; it is the proclamation of the eternal Principle Itself.

Mind is. But because Mind is, the very bondage which we may experience is the result of our freedom to use It in the terms of that bondage. Once I did not like to believe that. Years ago it came to me that this was so, but I did not fully accept it. It seems we do not like to accept what we know is so if it is critical of our own act. Yet we arrive at a certain point where we must accept. What I am, what I have, what I experience, what I enjoy, what I love, what I hate, what I meet, what I see – all is the reflection of the use I have made of Mind, consciously or unconsciously.

We wish to make an intensely practical use of our faculties. I am not very much interested in a perusal of philosophy, good as it may be. Just as it is good to understand psychology and metaphysics. But nothing is good unless it is used, and nothing is known to be unless it is proved to be. We must always take the motto: To know is to do; to do is to know.

In our use of Mind we come up against a situation which we cannot evade. We come up against a universal Law. We did not make It; we cannot change It. If a man wants peace, he has to become conscious of peace before he can have it. Peace is. If he wants success, he has to become conscious of success before he can have it. Success already is. Jesus said: “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.” That does not sound sweet, but it must be true if there is law and order in the universe. That is a veiled statement of the Law of Cause and Effect, something that does unto the thinker as he thinks. I am admitting that it is not easy in the midst of confusion to think peace. It is not easy when one has a pain to think peace, and yet that is what we are called on to do, and that is why we often seek help from another. Another who is not hurt by the pain can in his own consciousness more clearly affirm the manifestation of the per­fection of Reality in the individual.

What is it that produces the healing? Mind, God — always rising into objective manifestation at the level of someone’s comprehension. Mind is the miracle worker, but we are the channels for Its action. The Almighty has delivered to us a Power, which, though greater than we are in intelligence, is the Power we use. Often in our ignorant use of It we bring upon ourselves the very things from which we seek to extricate ourselves.

Something tells us that we want to do more and to be more. It is the miracle of Life Itself that this is what we can do. For back of us is the supreme Power of the universe which gives to the individual that degree of creativeness which he accepts from It. One can never exhaust It, never wear It out, and the more use that is made of It but increases the possibility of still greater use.

The secret of the life of Jesus was not that he was a better man than other men. His ethics were no more sublime than those of Buddha. His compassion was no greater than the com­passion of people in the Salvation Army today. But the thing that places Jesus in a unique position amongst men is that he laid hold immediately of the Power of Spirit. He did not argue about It, nor did he philosophize over It. He knew about It and used It, but all the rest of the people for two thousand years just have been talking about It. They have said that he must have been God. Of course God was manifesting in him, just as God is manifesting in all men. But that thing which made Jesus unique was his absolute conviction, his unqualified ac­ceptance, of his unity with God. He had come to a point where he no longer denied that he had access to all the Power there is. His was the majesty of a mind poised in the Universe, knowing who he was and why. So it was that he could say to a paralyzed man, Get up and walk! Mind never failed him.

That is the vision we must hold before ourselves. Humble as we are, insignificant as we may be in the human order of things, we each have immediate access to That which is creator of all. Mind is ever ready to reveal itself to us in terms of our own belief. Therefore, we must remold our thought, we must rebuild our conviction, not by protesting, not by merely scream­ing our affirmations to the void of nothingness, but through a deep, inner calm, touching that subtle and indefinable some­thing in ourselves which knows it is forever wed to a universe of Truth, Beauty, and Power.

Chapter 4 – THOUGHT AND EXPERIENCE

Life is to each one of us what we are to It. It evermore reflects back into our experience the thoughts which we enter­tain. If, therefore, our yoke is heavy and the load which we have to draw burdens us with a sense of eternal struggle, then we may be certain that we lack a sense of Divine Companionship. We have not consciously unified with the Spirit to which there is no burden.

We must never forget that when we make conscious use of the Law of Mind, through the creative power of our thought, we are dealing with a universal possibility, a latent power, an unexpressed potentiality, which can take, through us, only the form which we give it.

Very frequently people feel that they can understand how it is that thought, feeling, and imagination can affect the well­being of the physical body, but everyone cannot as easily see how it is that thought actually creates our environment. The body seems intimately connected with us, while the environ­ment does not seem to be under our control to the same degree.

In translating the Divine Activity from the Universe, which we do not control, to our little world which we would like to control, let us theoretically do away with the material, or physical and objective universe, other than to look upon it as a passing show. Strange as it may seem, there is no man on earth who can tell us what the physical universe is because no one knows. But let us say that the entire objective universe has form only as a reflection of an idea, a creation of the imagina­tion of God. In other words, we transpose the whole thing into a form of mind, so we find ourselves living in a mental and spiritual Universe right now. The Universe is a thing of intelli­gence, a thing of law — Intelligence, through Law, projecting form.

Our physical bodies are facts in our experience. The auto­mobile, the streetcar, the bus are physical facts in our ex­perience. They are effects, results. We look about us and dis­cover that we have a certain physical environment. We may like it or we may not. We may think it is beautiful or we may think it is ugly; we may think it is friendly or unfriendly. But, in the final analysis, each one’s environment is going to be to him finally what he is to it!

It does not seem as though this were true, but we are dealing with a Creativeness which is neutral. We do not control the thought of the race, and often we do not even control our own thinking. But we can learn to at least partially control our thought, and thus to a certain extent we can control our own environment. Perhaps we could absolutely control our thought, but I have never seen anyone who did it perfectly.

In such degree as we can shift the basis of our thought, our belief, our emotional and imaginal reactions to life, we can come to a place, individually, of peace, security, and happiness; and gradually as that change takes place, it will change our en­vironment, somewhat, as well as the environments of those people we think about and influence.

It is imperative that we bless and curse not. We may not be aware of it, but every time we say that our environment is against us, we are actually cursing it, and cursing ourselves in relationship to it! We should bless our environment and idealize it in thought and imagination. We should mentally create an environment which is like that which we feel will make us hap­py. The existence of life or form is from within and never from without, and we have a perfect right to contemplate an ideal environment. The environment should be contemplated as joy, love, appreciation, and recognition. If we contemplate our en­vironment as not appreciating us, then it will respond to us at the level of our contemplation of it.

We do not question the fact that the belief in lack and limitation has produced a similar objective condition, nor do we deny that people are experiencing a condition of poverty which is not in harmony with happiness or wholeness. What we affirm, however, is that without consciousness there could be no experience, and that if we are successful in changing the consciousness, we shall, at the same time, be successful in changing the experience.

In giving a spiritual mind treatment we must always have, as a basic principle in our consciousness, the perfection of be­ing, the fundamental necessity of harmony, the unity of good, the freedom from burden. Life must flow along rather than be dragged or pushed along. Continuously, we must bring our thought back to this basic principle: God, or Good and Har­mony, is all there is, and the experiences which we have that contradict this Allness of God are but temporary. They are more or less like a dream from which we may be awakened.

This awakening must come through the knowledge that Truth is complete, and it is possible for man to realize he is united with the Center and Source of his being, thereby coming into harmonious relationship with the Universe. Abundance of good is necessary to human happiness, and poverty is the very antithesis of abundance. The more completely we experience good, the more completely is God expressed through us.

All laws of limitation are man-made, and man will be limited by them until he himself reverses them. Man exists at the point of limitless opportunity for self-expression, and the opportunity for self-expression exists wherever such opportuni­ty is recognized. In spiritual mind treatment we declare the good we wish to realize, and our declaration automatically be­comes the law unto the thing desired. We should expect an answer to our treatment, since expectancy hastens the answer. Since the Law of Mind is one with our mind, our thought is one with the Law. The Power of Mind is definitely specialized through the treatment which we give, in the direction which we designate, for the purpose we have in mind.

All the possibilities of infinite Being exist for us right now. God is supply, for the Spirit is substance and substance is for­ever taking form. Supply is never limited to any particular channel. The Infinite is already perfect. Nothing can be added to or taken from God. Life, Law, and Power already exist and are established from eternity to eternity. All the longings and desires, then, that arise in our consciousness are prophecies of the fulfillment of our good, when we shall learn to take the gift of God as it is intended.

It is not difficult for Spirit to create. In such degree as we enter into a conscious union with this Spirit, knowing that It will direct us, our human problems are solved. To wait for the day of deliverance is merely to wait until we change our belief that we live in a limited universe. We can express dominion now or we can procrastinate that dominion. The only Law which the Infinite can have, or be, is the Law of Mind, and we must know that right ideas constitute our ability to use the Law of Mind. If, then, we would demonstrate supply, we must be­lieve that there is a Principle, not only willing, but by Its very nature compelled to give, because in giving It expresses Itself. The receivingness of man is but the other end of the givingness of God. It is logical and right that we should have what good we need in this world, and we should know that supply is al­ways where we are and every channel for it is open. Every good is ours now, but we must reach out and claim this good. The Law belongs to the man who uses It, and Life belongs to the man who accepts It!

If we are dissatisfied with conditions or environments in our lives, we should seek that place in consciousness which is so unified with Reality that it no longer feels dissatisfaction. Then the entire experience becomes, not a confused struggle against opposing forces, but the onward march of That which triumphs over all apparent difficulties. And finally we arise to that peak of consciousness where difficulties, problems, and burdens, as we now understand them, shall exist no more. It is then that we are permitting the Creative Process to mold the new situation out of Its own infinite possibility.

Chapter 5 – LIFE IS CREATIVE

The entire theory of the Bible is that we are created and have come into conscious being as real individualities, having the power of selection, of freedom, of self-choice, and being destined to continue throughout endless periods of evolution, not with infinity as the goal, as though we might in some fu­ture time exhaust the Infinite, but rather that we are expanding into infinity.

Such an expansion, then, would be endless for there would be no limit to its eternal unfoldment. In other words, no matter how great our evolution may be in the next million years, as we measure time, this would still be but the beginning of a still further evolution, and on and on forever. It is not even neces­sary that we contemplate the meaning of such infinity, nor is it possible for us to grasp it. But that it is an inevitable necessity is a logical conclusion if we start with the premise that we are a point of God-consciousness in an infinite possibility.

Now this is exactly what the Bible supposes when it says that we are made in the image and likeness of God; conse­quently, as God’s thought is creative, so ours must be also. This is the meaning of the macrocosm and the microcosm, of the Father and the son. But the son starts unconscious of his free­dom, and, therefore, the very power within him which he uses, that is, the creative power of his thought, binds him until he conceives of freedom — freedom bound up with the idea of love, with the idea of the universal Spirit being responsive to his nature. This, of course, is symbolized in the teaching of Jesus, a man who so completely understood his own nature, the nature of all persons, and the nature of God, that he made his whole earthly life a teaching and an example of the intimate relationship which exists between the Universal and the indi­vidual, between God and man.

The nature of the Divine Being was revealed through him, not that God had particularly chosen him, but that his con­sciousness was so clear on the subject, and his will so determined to disclose the Divine offering, that his life did reveal, perhaps more than most lives, not only the meaning of life but the limitless possibility of the individual soul. It was the mission of Jesus to provide such an example of the Divine givingness and the power of the Divine Law, rightly used, that those who un­derstood could no longer be misled by appearances.

If we assume that there is a creative power within each one of us which is a manifestation of the Divine Creativeness, and if we also assume that we are individuals, having the preroga­tive of self-choice, then naturally it follows that our use of Divine Power, whether affirmatively or negatively, decides and controls our destiny at any particular time.

Thought is creative. From this we can never escape. Nega­tive thought, then, is creative, projecting forms of limitation and fear, even as positive thought is creative, projecting forms of beauty, harmony, and health. We can never too deeply ponder the thought that the universe appears to each in the guise of his belief about it. A person’s negative use of thought does project a condition which is real enough so far as it goes, but it is not eternal. It is real only as any other mistake is real; but real only to this degree, that it creates a temporary form of limitation which binds us until, through the very Law which created such bondage, we re-create a new situation less limiting.

The negative use of the creative power of thought, then, is a very real thing, and, indeed, is at the root of all of our troubles. And while we persist in believing that evil is as real as good we shall experience the evil in which we believe. While we persist in thinking and acting as though limitation were the law of life, we shall continue in bondage. To free ourselves from the contemplation of evil and bondage — projecting as they do the forms of lack, unhappiness, and physical disease — is the whole aim and purpose of the Science of Mind. Moreover, it was the whole purpose of the Christian Bible, for this book starts out with the assumption that God is universal Spirit, creating by Self-contemplation, that is, by thought, through word.

This thought universe, of course, does not contradict what we call the physical universe; it merely affirms it as a result of Intelligence. We are living in a thought universe, and every man’s world is primarily a thought world. If his affirmation, then, is that evil equals good, then his experiences will be a balance between good and evil. At times he will be certain of life and at others he will be despondent. But everything that he does and everything that he is, objectively speaking, must always be some result of the subjective state of his thought. He may, if he wills, consciously change the subjective state of his thought, hence he may govern and control his destiny. As the wrong, destructive, or negative use of thought is hell, so the constructive, positive, or affirmative use of thought is heaven.

Jesus proclaimed that he came not to destroy but to fulfill, and he added to the law of Moses the personal factor — love and warmth and color. Moses stood in awe before the awfulness of the Law and undoubtedly was afraid of the God whom he worshiped. Jesus proclaimed: “… the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” He understood the Law as his servant and the Spirit as personal, therefore Jesus did not stand in awe before the Law nor was he afraid of the Spirit. The Spirit to him was personified through all, hence he loved humanity. The Law, being an impersonal factor, but a creative one, he consciously used whenever any need arose.

Now it must be that his consciousness was very clear as to the right use of the Law since it never failed him at any time. Also we cannot believe that any man could have contradicted any of the laws of nature; and, most certainly, we cannot con­ceive that he was using one force against another. Jesus clearly understood the unity of good and the affirmative use of thought. The key to his spiritual insight, and to his corresponding mental power, seemed to be summed up in the idea that the Universe is an absolute unity, whose nature is goodness, truth, and beauty, and whose relationship to man is intimate since man is a mani­festation of the Father, that is, man’s mind is a manifestation of the Parent Mind. Jesus clearly stated the Law of Cause and Effect when he said: “… as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.” Then he completed this statement by telling them how they should believe.

Now this is exactly what we do not do, or at least we do not do it enough. We are always making negative statements. We are declaring that limitation, lack, and bondage are things of themselves. We place causation in the world of effects and not independent of it. Thus we perpetuate limitation by a nega­tive use of affirmation and bind ourselves by a false belief. Moreover, too often when we seek to free ourselves, our work is done on the basis that we are using good with which to combat evil.

What we should realize is that any evil, any lack, any limitation, or any negation whatsoever which has appeared in our experience, will disappear just as soon, and completely, as we no longer contemplate it, believe in it, think about it, or give it any power. It withers away by non-use. Moreover, our recognition that any particular negation no longer has power, robs it of the power which it has appeared to have. And in doing this we are not pitting one power against another; we are merely using one Power in the right way.

Let us see how this works in actual spiritual mind treatment. We should watch very carefully when we treat and be sure that our treatment is not merely a mental wishing, so to speak, or wistful daydreaming. Every statement in a treatment should be clear-cut and positive. It should arise from the consciousness that good is the only power there is, that Spirit is the only presence there is, and that the word which is spoken is the law unto that thing whereunto it is spoken. Treatment is not a hope, it is not an aspiration, nor should it be considered merely as an inspiration. It is affirmative, specific, and dynamic.

Too often our spiritual mind treatments are really new ways of stating our fears, new ways of affirming our negations. Somewhere in the treatment the mind must swing clear from the negation, be free of the negative affirmation, and delve into a realization of the fullness of life. It must become a straight affirmation of the presence of the desired experience, or whatever the need may be. We must be very careful indeed in using denials of evil that they do not really terminate in affir­mations of evil, for this we could do very easily. In other words, we must not fight the devil so hard that we create him out of our own mental struggle. We must know that there is no evil and that the only reason that evil has appeared to be as real as good is that we have made it so in our own imagination.

How wonderful it is that we have such a power! By seeing through the situation with clarity, our denial of evil is not a denial of something which has a power equal to good. It merely resolves itself into straightening out our own conscious­ness and becomes an explanation revealing the Truth of being. To know that we are not subject to negative mental suggestion is entirely proper, provided that in making this statement we do not set up a law of negation in our imagination and fight it. We should declare that there is no negative suggestion in our life because we recognize that the true Principle of being is a straight affirmation. Our affirmation really is a statement of the Principle of Truth and the Truth is always freedom. It is always joy, It is always life, and It is always wholeness.

PART TWO THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS

The things which do appear spring from the invisible thought or idea acting through an equally invisible Law that is creative of our experience.

The Bible says that is was the word of God that created all that is. It would appear that if God’s word or idea is productive of results, man, having been created in God’s image and likeness, would have his word be a creative factor in his experience.

However, there arises the question of what com­prises that word or idea which will be productive of a greater good in everyday living.

Thought is creative of things, but there is a necessity to understand how it works and how to use it.

Chapter 6 – MIND IN ACTION

Nothing much has happened to human nature since Jesus walked the earth. The unhappy man wants to be happy, the impoverished wants to become enriched, the sick wants to be healed, and the lonely person wants love and friendship. These are natural human needs and back of them is the basic need to feel safe and secure, not only in this world but in the world to come.

While it is true that we have made many scientific dis­coveries, our fundamental needs have not changed. Our real problems have not changed, but in many ways we have multi­plied them. There is something missing somewhere, and every­one knows it, for you can hardly pick up a magazine or news­paper without finding a reference implying our need for God. Around the world today, as never before, a great cry arises, a great question is asked: What is it all about?

It is not as though the answer had not been given long ago, for Jesus had proclaimed that God is a Divine Presence filling all space and ail form. And the most startling of all the claims that Jesus made was that God is not only around us, He is liso within us — He is our life and our mind.

When the Bible snvs: “Let this mind be in you, which was ilso in Christ …” it is referring to the Mind of God. The writer was trying to tell us that there is One Mind, that Mind is God, that Mind is our mind now. Jesus told us that if we would live in accord with this Mind, in harmony with It, all the thoughts and ideas we need in our everyday living would come to us.

The One Mind responds to us, individually. But since it is Mind responding to mind, then how could It respond other than through our belief? Of course It could not. And so Jesus told us that when we ask for Divine action in our lives we should believe that we receive it. When we are confronted with a problem, instead of saying, “I have a problem which I cannot meet,” we should say, “I have a problem which I can meet. Something in me, something in my own mind, something closer than my very breath, is leading, guiding, and direct­ing me right now, and is telling me the answer to this problem. The Mind of God in me knows the answer.”

When we do this we will find new thoughts and new ideas will flow up through our thinking and will give us the solu­tion to our problem. We should think, act, and live as though the answer were ours right now, ready to be put into action. It is not enough to say God is all there is. It is not enough to say there is One Life and that Life is God. This statement is not complete until we say, “There is One Life, that Life is God, that Life is my life right now.”

This is what we mean when we say there is a Power greater than we are and we can use It. But we must always think of this Power as being within as well as around us. There is an In­telligence in the universe, the Intelligence that created every­thing. It made you and It made me, and through us It made the toy balloon and the steam engine. It is always the One Mind doing these things. Each one of us, using this Mind, individu­alizes It, personalizes It.

The Divine Spirit is in and through everything, everyone, everywhere. This was the secret of the life and teaching of Jesus. He had found God, not afar off, but right where he was. Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes only because he recog­nized loaves and fishes instead of want and need. He healed the sick because he recognized the spiritual man, not as a spirit separate from the natural man, but as the One Spirit manifesting as the natural man.

There is an Intelligence in everything that responds to us according to the way we use It. For instance, every cell of the physical body is governed by intelligence, but a lower form of intelligence always responds to the higher form. In this in­stance the higher form of intelligence is our conscious aware­ness, our conscious thinking, the mind we use every day.

The intelligence in every atom and every cell, in every organ and function of our body is continually responding to our affirmations or denials of life. The Divine Intelligence has created the physical body so that it runs automatically when it is not interfered with. But our conscious minds are continually interfering with this Divine pattern. We are so in conflict with ourselves that the lower form of intelligence that makes up the physical body is continually being disturbed by our conscious thinking; it becomes confused when we think negatively-

For example, let us consider the ordinary occurrence of eat­ing our food. We sit down at the table with a fork in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Perhaps there is a startling head­line — twenty people are killed in an airplane crash, a train has run off the track, a new war has started somewhere, someone suddenly drops dead from heart trouble.

Well, we have the newspaper in one hand and the fork in the other and food is going into our physical system, but the intelligence in the cells and organs of our physical body are confused by the messages they are receiving from the news­paper we are reading. Our minds are transmitting negations to our process of digestion and we really are saying, “Nothing is right. Everything is wrong. There is nothing but calamity and bad luck and misfortune everywhere.” And so we get an echo from the inside of us which says, “Nothing is right. I don’t even know how to digest this food.”

Then we get a funny feeling in our stomach and we say, “Oh, my poor stomach! I don’t digest my food properly. I must find another kind of diet.” So we try the new diet. But we still have the fork in one hand and the newspaper in the other, and the new diet doesn’t agree with us any better than the old one. The normal intelligent action of the digestive tract is still being disturbed by the influence of our negative thinking. Whether or not any food is going to be properly assimilated depends largely on the harmony of our thinking.

Now let us reverse the whole process, sit down quietly and calmly at the table, and begin to think how wonderful it is that we have the privilege of eating, how wonderful it is to realize that there is an Intelligence within us that knows how to digest this food. Then the messages that go from our con­scious thinking to the subconscious actions of the physical body will be happy ones and the body will function in a harmonious manner.

Of course we want to simplify this whole thing. We do not want to spend hours every day thinking about our digestion, our hearts, our livers, or our lungs. So we have to find a few simple affirmations that will provide a blanket coverage, a sort of general insurance policy that meets every need. And this simple coverage would be something like this: There is a Divine action in every atom of my being. Every cell is alive with the One Life. This Life is my life, therefore every cell and function of my body is in harmonious unity with It. There is

One Life, that Life is God, that Life is perfect, It is harmonious, It is a’hole, and that Life is my life now.

Not only do our physical bodies respond intelligently to our affirmations, everything in life does. Our success, our hap­piness, our ability to get along with others — everything is in­cluded in the One Mind that flows through all things. Our complete coverage here will be daily to affirm: Everything I think, say, and do is inspired by Divine Wisdom, governed by Divine Intelligence, which knoivs all things. Every impulsion in me responds to love, to good, and to that which is right and happy and constructive.

Even in our busy world we have time daily to affirm: Everyone I meet also is some part of God. The Mind that is in him is the same Mind that is in me, for there is One Mind, that Mind is God, and that Mind is our mind now. And when Mind meets with Mind, there is harmony, joy, and peace.

We do have time to say: I am being directed by Divine Intelligence, which alivays moves in love and harmony and goodwill. It alivays establishes right relationships between my­self and what I am doing.

We do have time to say: Every good and constructive thmg I think about finds fulfillment. There is One Presence in which I live and move and have my being, ivhich prepares the way for me.

This is what Jesus meant when he said that we should seek the kingdom of God first, for the kingdom of God is a kingdom of wholeness, a kingdom of love and harmony. This is what Jesus knew. And this is what he told us to do.

Chapter 7 – A BASIS FOR SPIRITUAL HEALING

What do we mean by spiritual mind healing? Exactly what the words imply; that the mind does something in relationship with its belief in Spirit that produces an effect on the body or the circumstances. This is what spiritual mind healing would have to be. We are dealing with a Presence or Power, acting as a Law or Principle, which is transcendent of any existing cir­cumstance, and operates independently of it. It operates for us from the level of our thought, prayer, meditation, belief, or consciousness, producing an external known, seen, felt, and experienced circumstance, situation, or condition.

Unless it is possible for the mind to operate independently of an external condition so that as a result of what it does the external condition is changed into something different, there is no such thing as spiritual mind healing. Jesus said, and he was the first one to introduce this idea consciously: “And these signs shall follow them that believe . . . . ” implying that there is a certain belief which, indulged in, will produce a dynamic effect in the physical body or on the environment; that while we do not see the belief or how it operates, we shall see its effect.

At first this may seem strange, but all the laws of nature operate this way. We do not see the laws of nature, only what they do. One of our troubles is that when we come to weigh and measure the possibility of spiritual mind healing that we could do, we often find that we have separated our thought of God from our thought of what is creation, our thought of the Spirit from our thought of what is out in the world, our thought of Life from living. We have so separated the invisible from the visible that we think one has to change the other, as though something which is God operates on something which is not God.     ‘               ‘

The Bible states that “the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.” We must recognize that throughout the ages, and today, there is a prayer of faith. But who is there among us who would believe that the prayer of faith would make the world flat instead of round? There is no one living who believes God would flatten out the world to please our whimsy. But still we believe that the prayer of faith influences God.

We need to get away from that fallacy. We cannot tell God anything. “The Lord is God! He needeth not the poor device of man.” The prayer of faith is not a method by which or through which we convince the infinite Mind of God to do anything. Does the prayer of faith influence the Law of God? A desk is held in place by gravitational force. I can move it about. I can move myself about. But if everyone on earth were to pray that such a law would not exist it would still be there. It is very evident then that the prayer of faith does not influ­ence God nor does it influence the Law of God.

We must agree that there is a Law of Mind which is inde­pendent of our belief, and yet It operates on that belief. Jesus resolved what we call the material and physical universe, the objective universe, the solid universe, into something that is plastic in the hands of universal Intelligence, and he said if you have faith in this universal Intelligence it will respond.

Through the ages it has been proved that wherever there is faith there is a response.

This faith does not explain itself. People do not know necessarily why they have it, but there are beautiful souls, and there have always been great and good souls, who have exer­cised a faith so that they trust where they do not trace.

But there is another method of spiritual mind healing in­volving specific conscious mental action which in no way contradicts the desirability and efficacy of faith. It is based on the concept that everything in the universe is fluidic and only appears to be solid. Fifty years ago everybody would have said this was a fantastic idea. Today it is the last word in science! Everything is in a flow, taking temporary form which is more like a shadow than substance. This is science, not metaphysics, but it is true in metaphysics, too.

The universe is fluidic like water, yet within it there are pieces of ice, but the ice is still basically water. Einstein has said that energy and mass are interchangeable, and the Bible says that the things which we see come out of what we do not see, because the invisible things of God from the foundation of the world are made manifest by the visible.

Spiritual mind healing is based on the assumption that we are living in a spiritual Universe, that the physical body and its every organ, action, and function is a Divine idea. The Divine idea is universal. All conscious, definite spiritual mind healing is based, not on the thought that there is a spiritual power operating upon a material or a spiritual body, but on the concept that Spirit operates upon Itself. There is no indi­vidual isolation, as though we are here and God is there. There is only a complete unity; God is everywhere, and in Him we live and move and have our being, and He is that being. That is why Jesus said: “… he that hath seen me hath seen the Father . . . . ” and yet he said: “… my Father is greater than I.”

All spiritual mind healing that is done intelligently, and in a precise manner, and that is the way most of it is done, is built on the theory that the body is a Divine idea, a Universal idea, now manifested. We do not have a head, a heart, a mind, or feet separate from God. Spiritual mind healing is based on the assumption that for everything in this world, everything, from a blade of grass to a man, there is a spiritual prototype, archetype, counterpart, or pattern. This is what has been taught by all the great and wise.

Let us use the word “pattern” because we all understand what a pattern means. The Bible says to make all things “ac­cording to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.” There must be, and we believe that there is, a spiritual pattern of perfection. Jesus called it the kingdom of God, our Father which art in heaven. The Neoplatonists spoke of the kingdom as “over yonder,” by which they meant within. They said that everything that is here is over yonder and everything that is over yonder is here. Emerson spoke of this as parallels. Psycho­somatic medicine is also built on this philosophy — the parallels between the mind and the body. We are getting closer to it all the time in science. Nothing in science contradicts it; every­thing tends to affirm it.

There is a Divine pattern and nothing ever happens to it. But when we appear to get separated from the pattern, we get sick. If the pattern is already perfect — “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” — we but need to return to the pattern to be made whole, for nothing has ever happened to it and we are never separated from it in reality. Therefore, spiritual mind healing starts with the premise of perfect God, perfect man, and perfect being.

Chapter 8 – THE DYNAMIC POWER OF THOUGHT

All of the great teachings that have been given to the world have really been attempts to show the relationship between the Universal and the individual, between God and man. Every religion is an attempt to discover a direct relationship between the infinite Spirit and man. Every philosophy is an attempt to discover the nature of Reality. All science is an attempt to un­cover the secrets of nature and make them of use for man. Therefore, we can say that every avenue through which the human mind has ever attempted to do anything, or to be any­thing, or to discover anything, has been some attempt to har­ness the known to the unknown, the visible to the invisible.

We might ask why it is that every normal person feels that there must be a direct relationship between the invisible and the visible unless there is such a relationship, bearing silent and unconscious testimony that there is more than we have ever experienced. There is always something in us which, by intuition, knows that there is something more. Is that not what the scientist means when he refers to the evolutionary principle – that thing dynamic enough and intelligent enough to push purpose up through protoplasm into the thought of the illu­mined, the mind of Shakespeare, and the heart of Jesus?

We find ourselves making this tireless and persistent in­quiry: What is the relationship between love and law? Science tells us, and rightly of course, that we are living in a universe of law. Religion tells us — and when I say religion I am not talking about just the Christian religion; I am talking about the universal concept of God of all ages — that God is love. Robert Browning said in one of his great poems: “I spake as I saw . . . all’s love, yet all’s law.”

There was an age through which scientific thought passed in which, viewing everything merely as law, it forgot the spon­taneous element of love. Science is emerging from that, not to the loss of law, but adding now the assurance that we can still be scientific, and, at the same time, believe in those higher motivations of love, in the justification of reason and rational­ity, in the emotion of feeling, in the conviction that not only is the universe governed by Law, but that it is also impulsed by Love.

It is interesting to turn back a few thousand years and ob­serve some of the great occult mysteries of the ages, some of the esoteric or hidden truths which form the background of every great religion on earth. They were all symbolic repre­sentations of what today is no longer occult but has a significant meaning. Nothing is occult when we know what it means. One of particular interest is the symbol of the pillars which stood before the Temple of Solomon. Over these pillars there was an arch. These pillars formed the narrow passageway through which a man must pass to enter the Holy of Holies. One pillar stood for personality, warmth, volition, spontaneous personality; the other stood for cold, exacting, immutable, irrevocable law. The arch which bound the personal to the impersonal stood for love. And before a man could enter the Holy of Holies he must understand that everything is Law but that Law is balanced by Love.

The two outstanding characters of Biblical history were un­doubtedly Moses and Jesus. Moses prophesied the coming of Jesus. He said: “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet . . . like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.” Jesus referred back to Moses when he said: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.” And then he added: “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” We find in the teachings of Moses and Jesus the background of what we call the human law of justice and the human law of equity — justice balanced by mercy; the cold fact of the law softened by the warm, pulsating presence of feeling. That is the basis of all civilized law.

Moses did not have quite the warmth and color Jesus had, but he was a great lawgiver and what he taught was right. He said that the universe is so organized that it is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth — that is the immutable Law of Cause and Effect. The Hindus taught exactly what Moses taught; that is what was meant by the Karmic Law.

Through the teachings of Jesus we find the law of equity, of mercy balancing justice and making it possible to escape from the misdemeanors of previous experience. Jesus understood that the universe must be governed by Law, else everything would be chaos. But he understood also that flowing through the Law is Love, and because he understood this he introduced into the Law a new element and built the foundation for a concept of Love in the universe. Even of those who sought to harm him he said: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

In all of this there is a marvelous lesson for us as we come to view our own problems which confront us more or less per­sistently in this life. We all experience what we call evil, that is, unhappiness, negation, physical pain, mental disappointment, and chagrin at the vicissitudes of fortune, and we fight, natur­ally, because we are human. And unless there comes to us, out of the well of intuition which saturates and inhabits the inner sanctuary of every man’s life, the concept that there is a Love and Goodness overshadowing every apparent evil, we become iconoclasts, hard, cynical, and unhappy. I would rather see a man, no matter how crude his religion, who at least believed in an eternal Goodness, than a man who has such a fine intellect that he does not believe in anything. The more ignorant man, because of his faith, is infinitely better off, much happier, and a much better citizen. He who believes in goodness does more for the general welfare of humanity.

We wish, however, to find the answer to the apparent paradoxes of life and the great enigma of human experience. What does it mean to be born, to have experience, and to die? There are times when we all ask: Is there any sense to human life and experience?

We who study metaphysics believe there is some sense to it. We believe that there is a universal Law of Cause and Effect, and we believe that there is a government of absolute Law. We believe that we have conscious access to this Law, that this Law is primarily mental and spiritual, and that as a man “thinketh in his heart, so is he.” We believe in the dy­namic power of creative thought. Our whole philosophy is built upon the supposition of the ages that everything is Law, but that permeating the Law is Love; that everything in the universe is reason and reasonable, but that permeating it is a spontaneous Consciousness.

It would seem that since we believe in the dynamic power of thought, we have a power which enables each of us to get exactly what we want. We have no such power, for which we are very grateful. We know that back of this Law of Cause and Effect there is a coordinating Presence which says that we enter the Holy of Holies only as we pass under the archway of Love, which joins the personal and impersonal qualities of the universe and makes a cosmos and not a chaos out of life.

How, then, are we going to put these two things together? How are we going to know what God wants us to have, to be, and to do? Personally, I would rather not do any tiling that would be contrary to what I believe to be a universal Reality, for I believe that whether we do it in ignorance or consciously we suffer as a result. I believe that that is what suffering is and that is what hell is, but I believe that every man ultimately gets out of hell into heaven sometime, somewhere, somehow. When he is ready, be it here or hereafter, every man will dis­solve hell and find himself in the midst of heaven. If I did not believe that, I would not believe in God, I would not be­lieve in man, I would think the whole universe a joke.

But, believing as we do, that this universe is Intelligence in action, that while it is governed by Law there is some sense to it and that it is meaningful, how are we going to reconcile negative experiences in accord with Law to the possibility of hope and emancipation? It is very simple: We must stop to consider what universal Wholeness is.

Universal Wholeness depicts the nature of God. The nature of God is justice, goodness, truth, harmony. beauty, perfection, peace, joy, absolute certainty. That is what God has to be because if God were any less, the elements of self-destruction would inhere in the Divine nature, Consequently we have to adjust to perfection and not imperfection, goodness and not evil, truth and not falsehood, strength and not weakness, faith and not fear, heaven and not hell.

The sooner we forget evil, and stop doing it, the sooner we shall stop experiencing it, for there is a law that says that no matter how good a man is, if he sticks his hand in the fire he will be burned. God is not going to make one law to destroy another. The Law is not a law of bondage, but of liberty, and by the very Law which produces what we call destruction, what we call constructive creation can be produced.

The Law of Itself is impersonal; It is no respecter of per­sons. The use we make of Law is personal, and it is the personal use of the impersonal Law “which decides what we call good or evil in our experience. So much for the Law, the impersonal pillar in front of the Temple of Solomon. Standing next to it is the personal. What of the personal as over and against the impersonal? We wish to so use the characteristics and the possibilities of this personal equation that as we set the impersonal Law in motion It shall never bring back evil but shall always result in good. This can only be done as Law is balanced by that integrating factor of the universe which is Love.

What do we mean by Love? We mean more than human sentiment or emotion, although it gives rise to the human senti­ment. It is an inner sense of one’s unity with all Life, so that we know there is a direct relationship between that Life in us and in the tree, the bird, the animal — all creation aflame, alive, animated, influenced and illumined by Love.

Life is so organized that it is impossible to do harm without getting the harm back. Whoever seeks to hurt will, because of the ultimate integrity of the Universe, himself suffer the hurt. The Universe demands nothing unkind; it simply says this: Whatever you get, get it in the right way, because if you do not it will most certainly be taken from you.

Let us particularly note this, however, that the Law does not say: Suffer and you shall be rewarded for suffering. No one gets any reward for suffering, except more suffering. All that suffering will ever do for anyone is to finally waken him to the absolute negation of it, and I am firmly convinced that we shall suffer until we grow weary of it and decide to stop.

Is it not a most remarkable thing to conceive that each one of us has the key to liberty and freedom? It is a fallacy that there is any law in the universe which renders to the person what he wants. However, we get what we are, always, in­evitably, irrevocably, by Law, without any question. We must realize that since like begets like, if we are calm and confi­dent, absolutely poised in spirit, there is a Law which will bring into the pathway of every man’s experience that which is good. We must dwell upon that which is good; we must embody that which is good.

This much we know: If a man can create in his own con­sciousness the image of good and keep it there, he will experi­ence it, but not at the expense of his fellowman. Each man is Divine and senses that Divinity in his unity with good, with all humanity, all creation. Unto the great has come that sublime and Divine realization that the man who gives the most, gets the most, by way of the Law of Cause and Effect which is im­mutable, the chancellor of God and the servant of man; and that Love is the motivating power of all Life, binding us to­gether in one great universal brotherhood.

Chapter 9 – BEYOND APPEARANCES

We all know that things are not what they seem. For in­stance, the earth and the sky do not meet; the horizon is simply the limitation of our vision but not a thing of itself; and the rails of a railroad do not come together as they appear to. We also discover that the hurt has largely disappeared from ex­periences we have had, which at the time we were having them seemed very trying. Time, we say, heals all wounds. We know that if our consciousness could be elevated to a certain level from which we could better see the meaning of things, every­thing would be more nicely fitted into place and much that looks like tragedy would no longer be.

We know that a two-dimensional mind looking at a cube would not see the cube. To it the cube would look flat. Conse­quently, at our place in evolution our three-dimensional minds might well be looking at that which is four-dimensional or more, but looking at it, not see it. So, if our gaze is focused only on the physical, we might be looking right at the spiritual, the mental, or the intellectual, and not see it. Science has al­ready proved that there are almost infinite variations of vibra­tions of color and sound which the human eye and ear do not detect because they are not perfected enough, and yet me­chanical instruments do detect them. We are subject to them but not seeing them nor hearing them.

Now there have been people, like Jesus and a good many others, who have experienced what we call cosmic conscious­ness. They have, as it were, looked through the material uni­verse into a spiritual universe and they have announced this spiritual universe, to the chagrin and the incredulity of those who listened to them. It is as though we are sitting in a room full of people in complete darkness. We have never seen each other, we do not know very much about each other’s existence, we are unconscious of the presence of each other, but for a moment there comes a light which illumines the room and our ears are unstopped and we see the people and we hear music. Then in another moment darkness closes down and we can no longer see nor hear. Others would say we had had a dream, a vision, but to us the experience would have been real and we would say: This is what we saw, this is what we heard, this is how we felt.

If we could for one moment break through this shell that we are looking with, we would see Reality. For instance, we see that which is beautiful but we do not see Beauty Itself; we feel It. We see that which is lovely; we do not see Love; we experience It. We see that which lives; we do not see Life. We look at each other; we do not see each other; we see the objective manifestation of that invisible Principle which no man has ever seen. Perhaps no man ever will see It.

We must keep our thought very direct and very simple. We believe that there is a Spirit in man. This Spirit is God. This same Spirit is in all men, and the Spirit that is in you is the Spirit that is in me; It is One Spirit, just one, always one. The Spirit that is in the dog is the same Spirit. The Life Principle in the tree is the same thing. There is One Spirit, but there are different manifestations of It.

We recognize each other and this thing which we call the personality is the objective evidence of the use we are making of our invisible and subjective individuality — the projection of the Power, Presence, and Intelligence in us as us. In other words, consciousness, itself, is God — one indivisible, infinite, and eternal Reality. Our conscious use of our individuality per­sonifies It.

Here you are and here am I. What are we? I do not know, but we are. We exist, and since we exist then whatever Reality is, whatever God is, whatever this thing we call Life is, that is what we are. Because we are what we are, undoubtedly we might do something about it if we understood what we are. That is why every great and wise teacher has said: Get under­standing. Understanding of what? Understanding of this thing that we are, that what we are is God, God is what we are. Therefore, the Power by which I lift my finger is God, but that Power could just as well lift a desk, because It holds the planets in their places.

As much of that Power is delivered to me as I embody, live by, and use — all the power I have is that Power. The Power by which I speak, that is God; that is God speaking, but it is God speaking through me only at the level of my embodi­ment of that which God is. There is something else in the universe speaking to me which I as yet but faintly understand, and that is God, too. I have always held that ideas do not be­long to anyone. All ideas derive from God, therefore no idea belongs to anyone but all have access to all ideas in the Divine providence. It is like the figure two. What intelligent mathe­matician would say, “The figure two belongs to me”? He knows that it is impersonal; the concept belongs to the universe. He can use it as many times as he wants to and there is just as much left.

The appearance of things to us is circumscribed by our mental conception of Reality. Jesus must have understood these things, and because he understood Spirit he understood him­self. He knew he was Spirit and that God was manifest in him as him. He knew that spirituality and immortality are not things man must attain. Jesus directly contradicted the thought of his day, and they said of him that he could not be holy. His whole message was directly opposed to the teaching which was presented at his time, and which has been practiced in all times by people who have had the mistaken idea that there is some­thing that we have to do to become spiritual. There is not. It is merely what we have come to believe in, and if we be­lieve that in order to attain spirituality we have to do some­thing, then we do. But that thing we do is not what delivers it, but this happens to be the way that we take.

We need to believe that Reality is already delivered to us, but it is hard. Why? Because we are looking at the appearance and not at Reality. We must realize, then, that Reality delivers Itself to us in the appearance, because the appearance is Reality as we see It; according to our awareness of It. This is the whole essence of spiritual mind treatment. How can we give an effec­tive treatment if we are just mumbling a lot of words? A treatment must not be like that. We must believe in our own treatment if it is going to be effective. How can we believe in it unless we first believe that there is such a thing as Spirit, and that Spirit is right here, responding to us, and expressing as the experience or the condition we wish to enjoy. If we allow our mental vision to be circumscribed by the objective mani­festation, we shall not transcend the appearance.

Even the Power by which we measure out our limitation is God. One of the great fallacies of theology has been the inability to see that negation and affirmation are identical, and are not two. There is only One, and It is always to us what we are, because It is us as we are. This is the hardest thing we will ever have to understand. When we treat someone for spiritual healing, if our minds do not get any farther than the appear­ance, then the appearance will not be changed. It is only as the mind transcends the appearance that the appearance can be changed because a mental concept is the original causative factor.

Back of the appearance there is Reality; back of the ob­jective man, with all of his confusion, with all of his varying vicissitudes of fortune, there is a Presence and a Reality. But the natural flow of Life necessitates changes in order that It may be experienced. In the change is the Permanent; in the finite is the Infinite; in the form is the Thing giving form to it, which Itself is formless but which forever takes form. There is a sort of Divine imagination, a dramatic emotional reaction to this Thing that I think we should use. In a certain sense we dramatize Life. We are thinking, feeling, desiring, warm, color­ful beings, and I am glad we are and I do not think we have to change at all. The great souls like Jesus, Emerson, and Whit­man who delivered real spiritual insight to the ages, have been very spontaneous, very sweet, very simple souls, and most of them even had a good sense of humor.

Here is the thing that Jesus uncovered: We do not have to become immortal, we are immortal. We do not have to become spiritual, we are spiritual. We do not have to become geniuses, we are geniuses. We do not have to grow, we are already full- orbed. We do not have to go somewhere — “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

We wish to experiment with this Reality to see what we can do with It. Every time we work for a spiritual healing we are experimenting to see what we can make the mind do for us. The mind is creative and all we have to do is to use it. The mind is creative because it is God. We exist because God is, and we can’t help it. Therefore, it is not that we try to discover the spiritual self; we are the spiritual self. We wish to demon­strate the ever-presence of Reality, that It may flow anew into manifestation through our consciousness of It.

Through spiritual mind treatment we endeavor to more specifically express Reality in our objective life, thus becoming more successful in every legitimate undertaking. The idea that God is trying us is all wrong. God is not trying us; we are merely gradually waking up, and the awakening is what we call a process of evolution, our awakening to what already is. I do not mean that a building is an eternal thing, but the mind that built it is an eternal thing. I think that every temporal thing which is good should be enjoyed to the utmost, because we are dealing with an infinite Universe which by Its own Divine imagination creates all that is out of Itself.

Now if we express our own natures, create out of our own images of thought, it is a sort of a play, in a sense. We must think of ourselves as being the way we would like to be. We do not make the thought creative; it is God. There never was a human thought. All thought is Divine, even though it is Divine in a humanly circumscribed way. We need not look for some other power — we have it right now. It is the only Power we will ever know, but we will know more of It and we will use It in a different way and test our own ability to use It. Since It is invisible, the essence of Reality, It is transcendent of anything that is visible. The appearance is true and real but not self-creative. We should forget all the negative arguments, forget all the reasons why it is not so, and begin to think of a few reasons why it is so.

To live affirmatively is to live as God lives, so we must plunge beneath the appearance. Here is where the test comes. We are testing ourselves to see whether or not we can forget evil and conceive more good; let go of limitation and take hold of the limitless; let go of the appearance and embrace Reality.

Chapter 10 – PERCEPTIVE AWARENESS

There is a Power within us which operates, I think, in different ways. First of all, it appears to operate externally. In this way we find in the history of the spiritual aspiration of the human race the desire to propitiate God, or many gods. But the interesting thing is that no matter how crude the percep­tion, no matter how crude the religious rite, every man is searching for the Divine. That is the impulsion back of every man’s religion; that is why I believe in every man’s religion.

It is the religious motivation, the spiritual intuition, which has given rise to every religion that has ever existed. Naturally, each has taken on the color of individual perceptions; that is why we have so many. They could not all be externally right, but internally every religion is impulsed by an unconscious spiritual intuition, an inevitable and irresistible search after something great enough for man to lose his littleness in, and find a bigness about himself which is worthy of immortality and of eternal expansion.

Therefore, we may know that even the primitive forms of worship were based on a subconscious spiritual intuition, driving man forward. Now we call it the evolutionary push. Naturally, then, men were afraid of things — the thunder and lightning represented the voice of an angry Deity, the flash across the sky was a sign of His anger; and when the rainbow came after the rain somebody said that God hung it there as a good sign. Later came the idea to propitiate this invisible but superpresence, to please God, and at first man sought to please many gods because there was a god of this, that, and the other thing. But gradually, as the consciousness of man evolved, he saw there could be only one God because many powers would produce chaos and not a cosmos.

We are at that place now where we believe there is only one God, but many people still believe, sincerely but foolishly, that God divides His power with the devil. People sincerely believe it because they think it answers a lot of questions. It does not; it just makes the riddle more difficult to solve. We either have to believe there is a God who is good and a devil which is bad, or we have to understand that the devil is the personification of the sum total of the fears of man. There is an inward sense of justice which causes us all to feel that evildoing must be punished. I believe it does, but not by the devil.

Hence, to get around the old belief we may resort to the ancient Hindu concept which has never been bettered: that there is a Law of Cause and Effect, the karmic law, which is not the devil at all but merely the fruit of action. Then we have to couple with that, not the idea that the karma must be eternally worked out, but the realization of Jesus that when evil goes from us evil will no longer come to us. Every great thinker who has ever lived has taught a supreme Reality and an abso­lute Law of Cause and Effect. For every mental action there is a legitimate reaction. It is the fruit of action, but we do not have to plant the fruit a second season if we do not like to eat it.

So people gradually came to believe that there is only God, and prayer assumed a more purified form. I think all people pray in some manner. But the great of the earth have located the power of prayer at the center of our being, through a more complete perception that God is not only everywhere, He is in us. And that is the God that we see everywhere we look — the one, indivisible, undivided, complete, perfect Wholeness.

Here is the great perception, then, which I think every one of us should seek to add to his conscious use of the Law of Mind in order to give power to our word, faith and conviction to our idea: If there is only one God, one Divine Mind, and if that one Divine Mind is everywhere, then of course It is where I am. If It is where I am, and undivided, then all of It is where I am, not some of It. That is why the ancients said it is That whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is no­where. We should not see this thing just as a law and a big, bright, brilliant goodness; we should see it as something vi­brating with life, pulsating with warmth, and scintillating with color.

This is the awareness of allness, unity, and omnipresence that Jesus had when he said: “I can of mine own self do nothing . . . but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” We are so loaded down with the idea that God is afar off, that it is hard for us to locate God in the only place we can ever find the Divine. Then often we feel we are not worthy; we have a false sense of guilt, a false sense of duty, or a feeling that God is against us, and this divides us from the very roots of our being — the Spirit within.

God is here, God responds, and the urge of the Divine is to express. We are still thinking in terms of duality and separation, however. Why? Because we are still seeking union with the Divine. The very search after union is itself duality, because the great Unity does not seek Itself. I am not saying the search is not good, because we are all making it, but when we have discovered our union, the search will be over. That is what Plotinus meant when he said that when the image turns to its prototype, then life’s journey is complete. It has an identical meaning with what Tagore described as the union of the soul with its source. In other words, when we see that the Divine is all there is, and the only Presence there is, then that by which we see is the Divine, and God no longer goes in search of Himself.

We are going to arrive at this awareness by gradual un- foldment rather than by storming the gates of heaven and screaming into the void. There is a deep inner wellspring of realization that must be aroused. We read books about how to awake the sleeping giant within us. I do not think it is a spiritual or intellectual giant within us that is asleep — because if God were asleep we would not know how to awaken Him — but I think it is the inertia of our own thought that must be aroused. Jesus implied that we are the ones who have to wake up. He did not say we had to wake up some spiritual faculty. He just said one thing: Believe!

It is so simple, so obvious, that we do not believe it. What do we think a spiritual mind treatment is? Is it repeating the Twenty-third Psalm? Not at all. Is it repeating the Lord’s Prayer? No, but that is a help. Is it singing a hymn? No, that is beautiful and helps us to get ready. But if we spend all our time getting ready, we shall never begin because we shall never be ready to begin. This is probably the most difficult thing for any of us to see. We already have the Power, but because we are not using It as if we had It, we are using It as though we were still looking for It, therefore It cannot make the demon­stration for us. I find every day a greater wisdom in the simple teaching of Jesus that the kingdom of God is at hand, the Power is within us, but we must believe It to be that which we desire It to be.

In spiritual mind treatment, after we have made our state­ments about God and man, which are beautiful and true and in the present state of our unfoldment probably necessary, we must recognize that God is where the discord appears co be, and not believe that there is any discord to answer back. Nothing cannot reply to something; it has no power. But, because we have not transmuted the psychic energy of our morbid fear of evil into a spiritual outflow of spontaneous self-expression and really gotten rid of our belief in evil, we are likely to believe it is hindering our progress, and we say, “What have I done that I can’t make a demonstration?”

We separate ourselves from the Power that is within us every time we condition that Power to some existing fact. We cannot treat to remove an obstruction successfully unless be­fore we finish the treatment, as far as we are concerned, the obstruction is removed. It is difficult for us to get away from the appearance. But the Power is in every one. It could not have been in Jesus unless it were also in you, and me, and every living soul.

The creative power of our word is not something we inject into the Power greater than we are, but something we draw out of It, and the Power from which we draw is within. God is wisdom, life, power, beauty, joy, peace, wholeness, happiness, and the abstract essence of what you and I call prosperity. Often, using God-Power, we are projecting not right action but limitation. We encounter objective manifestations of our spe­cific negative ideas which act as laws of limitation. There is no finality in that bondage; it is really a guarantee of our free­dom. We need to understand that the Power that makes a man sick will heal him, the Power that makes him unhappy will bring him happiness, the Power that makes him poor will en­rich him. However, if we want to be happy, we have to turn from unhappiness. We must learn to enter into a conscious sense of prosperity and identify ourselves with a feeling of wholeness and happiness. When we come to the awareness that God is within us, and the Power to live is within everyone, we realize that there is only one Power which is flowing freely through us, dissolving everything unlike Itself, healing us.

We often have an intuition, a feeling, a sense, or moments when we knoiv this is true. In those moments when we know, we should get as quiet as possible and give a dynamic spiritual mind treatment, always remembering that faith should not be in the opinion of men, not in the wisdom of men, but in the Power of God. We are not sinners, we are not lost souls, we are not destitute, we are not on the road to hell. We are Divine beings, already in the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of God is at hand. It is here, it is in us, but we must awake. We have to wake out of the apathetic sleep of our own delusions into the glorious recognition that we are already in That which we aspire toward. All that the Father has is ours, now.

This is not only the essence of faith; it is the Divine pre­rogative of Spirit seen in nature, sensed in the invisible, breath­ing through us, walking and talking with us — the only evi­dence we have that there is any God at all. So it is that as we return to the simple, true path of the soul, aware in our own consciousness of our unity with the Invisible, the Ineffable, the Eternal, there is something in us that rises and sings: “Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul”!

PART THREE THINGS WHICH DO APPEAR

In spite of the pronouncements by spiritual lead­ers, men of medicine, and many scientists, people are reluctant to accept the idea that it is done unto them as they believe.

Possibly the greatest adventure one can embark on is the self-discovery that there is a relationship between thought and experience, betiveen thought and success, betiveen thought and joyous living. Life is largely what the individual makes it, but the mak­ing occurs in the process of his own thinking.

The “things which do appear” in one’s life have their origin in the unseen. It is from the intangible realm of thought that there comes ”the substance of things hoped for.”

Chapter 11 – ADVENTURE, PLUS

There was a time when only one man was so convinced that the world was round that he determined to prove it. Columbus felt that if the world was round it could be cir­cumnavigated.

He was surrounded by superstition, ignorance, and fear; yet there were a few adventurous souls who dared to finance his expedition, for they had caught the vision from him be­cause of his own certainty. One man’s courage and persistency, backed by an interior vision, made it possible to discover a new world.

But the age of discovery is far from passed. Who would have believed fifty years ago that a physician in high standing would write a book in which he affirms that most of us choose when we are going to die and from what disease? It would have seemed strange twenty-five years ago for one in the psycho­logical field to say that family pets can become neurotic. And how many would have believed that you can bless and praise plants, or condemn them, and have them react accordingly?

The age of self-discovery is just beginning. Here is a field that needs no physical laboratory, no great staff of experts and assistants. Here is a field where the subject is ourself and the tools are our own thoughts.

There was another man, long before Columbus, who came to some far-reaching conclusions. By some inner awareness or spiritual conviction, Jesus had come to believe that man — every man — is a spiritual being, living in a spiritual universe. He had come to believe that there is a center in every man’s life that is as perfect as that Life which gave it birth.

It is no wonder he brought down the anathemas of his age, that he was labeled as one worse than a heretic, he was blasphemous. But so great was his conviction that he set sail on a voyage of self-discovery which changed the whole course of human experience. He opened up a new territory, into which but few people had gone — the discovery of man’s direct and intimate relationship with God, the Creator. Working alone with himself and the Cause of all things, he brought forth the greatest spiritual philosophy the world has ever known.

It is great because it is so simple and so far-reaching. It is intimate because it deals with the human being right where he lives. It is cosmic because it shows a direct relationship between the human and the Divine. It is practical because we are able to prove his claim.

You and I are trying to follow in his footsteps, as best we may, to make the great discovery for ourselves. Can we reach in and out and up to something beyond? Can we grasp the meaning and significance of a direct relationship to something which, while it is greater than we are, is at the same time what we are?

Researchers in the fields of science have unlocked many of the secrets of nature and through invention brought great good to the human race. Yet, in the face of this, we are more confused than ever. The field of the humanities is way behind in winning the race for human survival. This is a time .to pause, to stop and look and listen and see if we cannot discover the missing link — something that can bind humanity together in one common good while at the same time leaving freedom for all. ^

Humanity is made up of its individual members and the research will have to start with the self. Just what is our re­lationship to God, to our fellowman, and to that something within us which we feel reaches beyond the realm of the phy­sical, and the mental, into some Divine pattern that contains wholeness, happiness, and completion?

So we are embarked on the voyage of self-discovery. And fortunately, we have much to go by — the lives of the great, the good, and the wise of the ages who have stood on the mountaintops of spiritual vision and proclaimed: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof . …” It is to these few great souls that we must look for guidance, and they have all been in accord in saying that there is a Spirit in man. It is not an isolated, separate entity, but the One Spirit which is the Cause of all things. It is the Intelligence governing every­thing, functioning through the Law of Its own nature.

Following the footsteps of the great, we need to claim our Divine Sonship, a close, intimate, and personal relationship to the universal Spirit, and an equally close relationship with the Law of Mind through which we can govern our individual destinies.

Possibly the skeptic may say this is too high an order, that this is but the dream of one who seeks escape from the realities of life, one who would find security in seclusion, in a medi­tative life withdrawn from the world; something entirely im­practical, something vague, visionary, and mystical.

Let us remind ourselves that this type of alleged practi­cality has brought the world almost to the verge of destruction. What we need now is the kind of people whom the overprac- tical have overlooked. And this is where you and I come in, for we are convinced that man is a spiritual being, living in a spiritual universe, governed by spiritual laws. We have gone far enough in our research to prove that there is something within us — in our physical bodies, our environments, and in nature itself — that responds to our belief in it. We know that anyone who has this solid conviction in his own mind can prove his claim.

We may not yet have reached the promised land, but we already can see it, a light in the darkness, a new continent to be explored, a new world to be gained. Who can say that this adventure is impractical since those who are engaged in the discovery of this new continent of human experience already are more happy, more whole, more deeply contented. They have a greater peace of mind, more inner security. And they have something else in comparison to which all other things sink into complete insignificance — they have an inner sense of certainty, a freedom from fear.

We are indeed on the pathway of a great adventure, the adventure that Jesus must have had in mind when he said: ” . . . greater works than these shall he Imanl do …. ” And what did he mean other than enlarging the lives that we are living every day? We want something that will make us happy and whole here, and give us a sense of certainty about the here­after. This something is not to be found in books, preachments, or proclamations. Fortunately for us, this discovery can be made only by the individual, in himself, to himself, and for himself. This must be the starting point.

This may seem rather selfish, but we are confronted with the age-old proposition: ”… Physician, heal thyself . . . . ” It is only when you and I find an inner peace, an inner security and sense of well-being, that we have anything to offer the world. It is only when we have healed ourselves that we can help others. The search must begin with the self. From this self-discovery we then can reach out to others and finally to the world.

This will call for persistency of purpose, based on a con­viction that is unshakable. It will call for an independence of thought and action, an inner vision so certain that it never becomes dimmed.

We have to begin right where we are, for this self-discovery is just the reverse of a psychological escape mechanism — we are not trying to get away from people, the world, or our own problems. We need to face life in the light of a new truth, a new understanding, a conviction that we are in partnership with the Infinite. Then we may receive direct Divine guidance and know how to live as human beings because we first have dis­covered that we are Divine beings.

The great adventure in living is an unending experience that leads us ever onward into the realm of the Infinite which encompasses all that is.

Chapter 12 – THE GREAT INVESTMENT

What is the greatest investment we can make in life? I do not believe that the greatest investment is one which would necessarily bring the largest financial return. I am quite certain that the greatest investment we can make in life is the one which brings the greatest happiness, the greatest peace of mind and contentment.

Money we all need, of course, for we cannot pay rent with­out it, or purchase food and clothing and many other necessary things of which we all have need. But we know that money without happiness turns to ashes in our hands. A fine home is of little value unless there is contentment, peace of mind, and joy within it.

Now all of this means that the greatest investment we can make in life is an investment in ourself. The greatest returns that life can bring us are the returns of happiness and a sense of having lived for some purpose. If we knew that we already possessed the capital to make this greatest investment, no doubt our first concern would be to invest the capital wisely. Well, our capital is ourself, the dollars and cents of our own per­sonality. The things we have to sell are thoughts and ideas. Our customers are everyone we contact, and our place of business is wherever we happen to be at any moment. No one can rob us of this capital. It will always bear compound interest if we invest it wisely and well.

I wonder if most of us have not overlooked the one great fact of life, the one supreme reality: the value of the Self. It is true, is it not, that by far the largest part of any man’s life is spent with himself? It is here that he must face every problem and answer every question that confronts him. “Who am I anyway?” is a question millions have asked, and only a few, comparatively speaking, have found the right answer.

When we ask ourself the question “Who am I?” perhaps we answer: “Why, I am myself.” But what is this self? Is it physical? It most certainly appears to be, for of course we have a physical body. But then when we stop to think it over we know that it is not our physical body that is doing the thinking. We at once recognize that we have a mental self. Then at times when a great surge of feeling flows through us we know that we have an emotional self. When we are out in the world we may discover that we have a business or a practical self, and in our relationships with people we discover that we have a social self. In moments of quiet thought, when we rise above the confusion of outward circumstances, above the fears and confusion in our thought, we realize that we have a spiritual Self. It is interesting to realize that each is a combination of many selves fused into one.

I once asked one of the wisest men I ever met to give me a definition of the ego, that is, the self. He replied that the ego is a fusing of intelligence, will, and volition into one unit. I wonder how many of us have fused all of our various selves – the mental, the emotional, the social, the business, and the spiritual — into one well-coordinated self? This is the starting point if we are to make a success in life; if all our investments in living are to return laden with the fruits of happiness, peace, and an inner sense of security. When we ask ourself, “Who am I?” we should become silent for a few moments, trying to realize that our real Self, the fusing or the joining together of all the lesser selves we possess, is a spiritual being, a spiritual entity.

Each one of us is unique; there is no one else like us; an Intelligence has stamped an indelible imprint of individuality upon us. Whatever we choose to call this invisible Source of our power is of small concern. Certainly it is the origin of our life. It is the giver and sustainer of everything we possess. Is not this what we mean when we say God? Suppose, then, when we ask, “Who am I?” we answer our question by realizing that in a unique way we represent God on earth. Of course this is true of everyone, but each has a right to know that the Life Force which has set the stamp of individuality upon him, must, at the same time, have set a law in motion which is able to provide for his every need. Surely God is not bankrupt or un­happy, and we are all individualizations of God.

Our investment in life, then, really is that use we make of certain Divine powers, qualities, and attributes which we al­ready possess. Up in the mountains there may be a vast reser­voir capable of supplying unlimited water. Each one of us in our own home may turn on the faucet and a certain volume of water may flow, but the flow will be limited to the size of the pipe we have provided for that flow. I think the Self is like that. Our real personality, the dynamic which we are, is drawn from the vast Reservoir, piped through our own imagination and will to its destination, which is of our own choosing.

But have we taken the time to realize that there is such a Reservoir? That we are really connected up with such a limit­less Power? That we are already one with the vast Designer of the universe, the Infinite, which is God, the living Spirit Almighty?

This, then, is the starting point. This is the capital we have to invest. It is limitless because it represents the creative Spirit, the Power, and the Intelligence which make everything. It flows through us into our thought, speech, and act; into everything we think, say, and do. If we reveal this real Self to others we will demonstrate friendship. It does not matter how lonely we may seem to have been, once we realize that we are delivering the true Self to others, we will have formed an in­visible union with them. We will draw out of them the same friendliness that we feel toward them. This is an investment in friendship; it will bear fruit ir hosts of friends.

This real Self is uncritical and kind, tolerant and just, charitable and wise. We may depend upon it. The false self is a mask covering up the true personality. We should not, then, be afraid to unmask ourself and let the feeling of love and generosity flow through us from that invisible yet inexhaustible Reservoir, the living waters of eternal Spirit. These waters, kept flowing through our personality, will extinguish hate, will heal unfriendliness, will open the doorways before us as though a magic hand swung them wide. The moment we begin to think unfriendly thoughts, we close the doorway of the Self which is the friend, and the strange part of it is we close it within ourself. This automatically shuts others out merely be­cause we have shut ourself in.

We need to make an investment in friendship, an invest­ment in helpfulness, an investment in spiritual healing, and an investment in living a more successful life. The ability to do this is within us as we bring our torch and light it at the altar of faith. The world is waiting for just this thing to happen.

The time taken to discover the real Self, the Divine at the center of our being, is the greatest investment we can ever make, and it will reward us with abundant dividends.

Chapter 13 – PROBLEMS HAVE ANSWERS

We all believe in Divine guidance, but if such a reality exists, it cannot be for the few. It must act as a principle in nature and therefore be accessible to all. We cannot look upon it as a special dispensation of Providence, as though God turned to some but not to others, nor can we intelligently accept the position that Divine guidance belongs to any particular re­ligious conviction, for God is “no respecter of persons.” As Jesus said: “… he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

If Divine guidance exists as a principle in nature, we should become acquainted with its operation and use it, not only in solving the deep problems of our lives, but equally in everyday living. Let us then inquire into the probable nature of this prin­ciple and the way it must work.

To begin with, God must know by pure intuition; that is, without processes of reasoning, references to external facts, and inquiries into existing conditions. It is self-evident that Omni­science can know only intuitively. To suppose otherwise would be to suppose that the Divine Mind is finite and not infinite. We are immersed in an infinite sea of Intelligence which in­stantly knows the answer to any problem, not because It enters into a contemplation of the problem, but because principles can have no problems.

If we can get away from the problem long enough we shall find the answer, for when the mind turns to the Divine for a solution to its problems, the Divine, being ever-present, answers by intuitively knowing not the problem, but its solution. For instance, if we have a problem of confusion and we wish to attain peace, this would not be done by asking God to be peace, for the Divine knows no confusion. Our answer would come as we turn from the confusion to the contemplation of peace; as we turn from the human to the Divine. By making known our requests with thanksgiving and with affirmation, we should draw the Divine into our consciousness and instantly the problem of con­fusion would be solved.

We cannot join peace with confusion, therefore we must desert the one if we would unify with the other — “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” So it is with all those problems for which we need guidance. As our consciousness turns from the problem, and, in a sense, is lifted up into the spiritual atmosphere of affirmation, the problem disappears and the solution takes its place.

It is not always easy for us to do this, for we are so con­fused by our problems that it is difficult for us to enter into a sense of peace. However, if we can realize that the Divine Mind is ever present and ever available, we shall have the courage to make the attempt. It is as though we often go through a long process of reasoning to arrive at That which does not reason, but which is yet the father of all reasoning. It has no process in Itself, and yet what It knows is always intelligently devised and executed.

The only thing a problem can do for us is to lead us, by way of experience, to its solution. From this viewpoint every problem, in a sense, contains within itself its own answer. That is, it contains its own answer if we cease thinking of it as a problem and keep our minds open, not to a repetition of the problem, but to the receiving of its answer.

We should work with our consciousness until it ceases to function on the level of the problem and begins to function on the level of the answer. It would be mathematically certain that we must receive an answer if we do this. The apparent difficulty of the task should not discourage us from making the attempt, for the reward is great and certain.

To believe that God would answer some but not others, that the Divine Mind specializes on certain individuals, or that the attention of the Infinite is withdrawn from some while lavished on others, would be to throw our minds into such a state of confusion that we could never think straight. Therefore, we must begin by realizing that the Divine attention is centered upon every person because It is centered within every person, for every man is a center of the Consciousness of God.

We certainly cannot ascribe lack, sickness, want, limitation, or problems to the Divine, for they are strictly human; they are really incomplete conclusions; they are seeing “through a glass, darkly” and not “face to face.” Our problems are results of our incomplete knowing.

Before Divine Mind can flow through us to a point of ob­jective activity for us, It must, of necessity, flow through the subjective states of our thought, which comprise the sum total of all our mental reactions. It is self-evident that the Spirit can do for us only what we permit It to do through us. We are the block; It has no obstructions. We must, then, see through our intellectual, subjective, and emotional blocks to that pattern “shewed to thee in the mount.”

When we bring our hopes and aspirations to the Divine Center within us, and lay them there on the altar of our faith, in complete confidence, giving thanks and having joy because we know the Divine will meet our needs by answering them, then we shall have arrived at the correct way to use the Divine guidance available within us. Many great souls have done this instinctively. People of all religious faiths and convictions who have had faith have received their answers. “Whosoever will, let him take the waters of life freely.”

We do not need to wait until we have acquired either great intellectual capacity or spiritual knowledge; all we have to do is to begin right where we are and say, “The Divine within me knows the answer, the solution to every problem. I shall turn from the problem to the solution. I shall turn from the appear­ance to the Reality. I shall turn from confusion to the contem­plation of peace.”

This is the real secret of the answer to prayer, for no matter what the particular religious conviction of the one praying may be, in the act of prayer he rises above his own limited beliefs; he opens his consciousness to the Divine influx, and That which is forever flowing against him flows into and through him, dominates his intellect, affects his will, and automatically exe­cutes Its Law through his act.

If we do not seem to get the correct answer we should not say that God has willed us to suffer, or remain in want, fear, and uncertainty, for the Divine knows no want, has no fear, and is never affected by uncertainty. We should merely say, “So far I have not succeeded in lifting my consciousness up to that mountaintop of spiritual realization where all is One and One is all.” Instead of becoming discouraged and blaming fate, or of projecting the idea that God wills us to remain unhappy, we should resolutely turn away from the confusion and problem and listen intently and deeply to the inner self. The Divine Mind will never refuse the answer because God is the answer and God will never be less than God.

We shall enter into peace when we become peaceful; not by praying to God to be peace, but by consciously entering into the peace which God already is. We should not condemn our­selves because we do not immediately enter in, for often the confusion is not so much in our own intellects or emotional reactions, as it is in the race consciousness — the sum total of all human belief. We are more or less surrounded by this mass thought and we must lift ourselves above it and not be bound by the united negative thought of the human race.

Certainly the average person is sincere, honest, and desirous of the best. That which so depresses him is not merely the reaction of his own thought, his own mistakes, and his own unbelief, but the fear and morbidity of the whole human race, which creates a field of psychic and subjective confusion af­fecting all of us. The Bible calls this the carnal mind which is opposed to good.

This mass of unbelief Jesus overcame and rose above. By pure faith he transcended the whole collective thought of in­security, fear, and doubt. Through Divine intuition he con­sciously entered that upper field of thought wherein peace and joy forever exist. We can do no better than to follow his ex­ample, humbly, but with a sense of triumph; meekly, but with a consciousness of worthiness; not timidly as one who knocks at a door which may refuse to open, but boldly as one who knows the God believed in.

Chapter 14 – SUCCESSFUL LIVING

The universe is a unity, hence it must be harmonious and whole, and since being a unity means that it must be adjusted to itself — the whole to the parts and the parts to the whole — then it must be an expression of symmetry and beauty. We can come to but one conclusion: that the visible universe is the body of God, that Spirit does pass through idea into manifest form, and that “the government shall be upon his shoulder,” that is, Causation is spiritual. It is self-evident that the government of God is based upon love, peace, and perfection, and controlled by the immutable Law of Cause and Effect.

Whether or not we know it, we are either materialists or idealists. We either believe in the government of God as a thing of love, intelligence, beauty, and consciousness, or else we believe in a universe that is merely a wound-up force which never had a winder and which, gradually unwinding, will fi­nally disappear into the original vacuum from which it came. The materialist believes that there is nothing but mechanical force. The idealist believes that Mind is the Originator, the Creator, and the Projector of the physical universe. This uni­verse the idealist interprets in terms of thought, symbol, and idea, back of which is the eternal God, the everlasting Good.

The metaphysical idealist, interpreting the universe as a thing of thought and applying the law of thought to the per­sistent problems of everyday life, soon discovers that he is laying hold of a Principle which is really operative. Starting with the premise that all is Mind and that Law is Mind in action, and adding to this that he also is Mind, or that Mind operates through him, he realizes that man in his experience is a bene­ficiary of this Law of God.

The practical idealist, however, does not deny the physical universe; he affirms that its manifest form is as real as it is supposed to be. It is not necessarily evil. As a matter of fact, rightly interpreted, it becomes entirely good. Evil, lack, and limitation are no longer seen as things of themselves, but mere­ly as phenomena presented to the senses as a result of ignorance, confusion, fear, superstition, and doubt.

It is self-evident that the Infinite cannot become in any sense finite. It is self-evident that God, as First Cause, cannot produce evil, cannot will lack, cannot create limitation. In­evitably we are led to this conclusion: that that which appears as limitation is really an objective presentation of man’s sub­jective use of a Law which of Itself is the very essence of free­dom. The government of God must be a government of liberty, and, if this is true, all lack, as well as all confusion, must be considered not as a part of the eternal Reality — as though the eternal Reality Itself lacked or were confused — but merely as a misinterpretation of this eternal Reality. The eternal Reality must be expressed; therefore, there must be an everlasting mani­festation of It.

It is the nature of consciousness to take form. The objective universe can be interpreted only in terms of thought; hence the universe must be to each one of us a thing of thought. It would doubtless be a great surprise to all of us if we could really un­derstand what it means when we say, “The universe is a thing of thought.” For it would not only mean that the objective universe, which all people experience, is a thought of God; it would mean that our individual universe is a reflection of our own thought about the real universe which God projects. The very freedom that we all so greatly desire is hid, covered up, as it were, in the disguise of bondage, a misinterpretation of the nature of Reality.

All energy, like all form, finally resolves itself into Mind. All forms, then, may be likened to states of consciousness and if our concept has been that the government of God is one of limitation, naturally our concept of our own life must be one of limitation, and from this viewpoint it becomes impossible to conceive of ourselves as being successful.

The very fact that we are living in a mental and spiritual Universe presupposes and imposes this certain condition upon us, that consciously or unconsciously, ignorantly or wisely, knowing what we are doing or not knowing what we are doing, we are always imposing our images of thought upon our en­vironment. From this there can be no hope of escape.

We are creative centers. We did not ordain it this way, nor can we change that which is. We can only accept it. Like any other natural law, we must accept the fact that our thought does impose itself upon our environment and does actually create the conditions which we experience, and finally our thought itself is molded according to our concept of God.

If, then, we think that the government of God is one of limitation, we shall be subject to the law of failure. We have created our relationsihp to this law, we have allied ourselves with it; consequently, whatever the sum total of human belief about failure is, we are likely to experience it if we do not rise above this belief. Otherwise, we help to weave the pattern of confusion which arises from the collective unconscious, the race mind.

To know that “the government shall be upon his shoulder” and that the government of God must be, and is, a government of good — this is the secret of success, and of that larger success which includes the symbol of money only in such degree as money is necessary to self-expression in this temporary experi­ence which we call our life span, through which we are now passing.

The government of God is to be thought of as containing a liberty, a freedom, of which money is but one of the lesser symbols. Successful living includes more than money, for “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul” — sense of harmony? Successful living has no meaning whatsoever unless it is accompanied by those states of consciousness which may be permanent, eternal, and ever- expanding.

Everywhere people are crying out for success, for prosperity, wanting to know how to influence people, wanting to know how to compel situations to go their way. It is easy enough to attract the popular attention to this idea of success. The psy­chology of success is a popular theme, but how few people have really sifted the matter and arrived at correct conclusions? Is life without love successful? Is life without human interest worthwhile? Is there any accomplishment which can give final satisfaction to the soul unless it first contains that spiritual ele­ment that gives certainty?

We know that the government of God cannot be built mere­ly upon shifting sands. Yet how fanciful are our ideas of success! The consciousness of success must include more than the pass­ing fancies of everyday life, and yet it need not exclude them. The kingly soul will never be deposed from his kingdom. The man whose consciousness has unified with Spirit can never real­ly fail. We look for a success built upon the government of

God which is permanent, but also includes the temporary, for it should be considered true that that which is eternal also in­cludes that which is born of time. In other words, the greater must include the lesser, or, as Jesus implied, if we seek the kingdom of Reality we shall discover that all other things which we have been seeking are already there. And the gov­ernment of God includes what we call both big and little.

We want a success, then, that measures up to our expecta­tion of today’s needs and pleasures, and also a success that in­cludes the substance from which today’s needs and pleasures are to be met. We want a consciousness of stability which knows that it will always experience wholeness. We must not deal with too many abstractions. We must bring the kingdom of heaven to earth. God’s government must include everything that we are doing now as well as what we may be doing millennia hence. Today we wish to live a successful, a triumphant, and a radiant life. The desire is natural, the experience is righteous, and any thought that would deny us this privilege is itself a misinterpre­tation of Reality.

If we can come to believe that “the government shall be upon his shoulder,” that the great and eternal I Am is the in­dwelling Spirit, and that the word of power is already in our own mouth, then we shall be able to speak that word which will become manifested as that which is pleasing to us. To be happy is a normal desire, to be surrounded by love and friend­ship is a natural desire, whether one is conscious of the fact or not.

The imposition of our thought upon our environment — rising as it has out of the chaos of multiplied belief in con­fusion, the tragedy of pain and human suffering, the expecta­tion of uncertainty — and accepted back out of that environment into the inner creative chamber of our consciousness, has con­spired not only to create mental confusion, but to project ex­ternal limitation. We are like fish who have swum out of the ocean into a small stream, ever pushing against the current until finally there is no passageway. We are head-on, as it were, against an obstruction, a barrier. There is nothing left to do but to reverse our position and swim back again into the ocean of Infinity. Our consciousness must function after a more Divine pattern.

Every good and right urge that man has is a result of an inner subtle, almost unconscious, but definite and persistent insistence of the Divine nature toward self-expression. There is nothing wrong with self-expression itself, for without self­expression there would be no life because there would be nothing to live. The only thing that has been wrong is destruc­tive self-expression, unhappy self-expression, limited self-ex­pression. Our dominion over lack, limitation, and all forms of bondage rests in the right use of this Divine Creativeness. And the glory of this perception lies in the wonder that we too are some part of Its creative genius.

Thoughts are things. There is no environment external to thought for the universe is a spiritual system. Ideas do take form and dwell among men, and destiny is but a projection of consciousness. God is in every person, and every person is Di­vine. Infinite Mind is creative, and every man has access to that Mind. God is at the center of every man’s being, and the gov­ernment is upon His shoulder.

The moment one conceives that the universe is a thing of thought, that moment he strikes the keynote of liberty. This keynote cannot be struck while he believes in a material uni­verse, in a physical universe divorced from Mind, or in any universe external to Consciousness. This Jesus saw so clearly and taught with such great simplicity when he said: “Judge not according to the appearance . He did not deny the ap­ pearance; he merely said that it is no criterion for judgment.

Real judgment should plunge beneath the appearance, penetrate through the surface of externals, and discover the nature of the Invisible that is projected as substance in all form. In discovering this we would find that all is fluidic to the touch of the Divine inspiration, for That which molded it can just as easily remold it. Patterns of thought are indeed the medium for this action. To be “born again” is no idle statement. The first birth leaps, as it were, from some invisibility to what appears like a solid form, self-caused. The second birth pours this form back into the void and remolds it more nearly after the heart’s desire.

Chapter 15 – THE REAL SELF

Life can have a meaning to us only in relationship to this thing we call ourself. Let us examine ourself, then, and see what we really are made of. We shall soon discover that there is more to us than “a rag and a bone and a hank of hair.” For just as we stand before a mirror looking at ourself, something else about us seems to stand apart from our physical body. For instance, we can count our toes and fingers; we can hear our heart beat, or feel pain in our body, and know that we are more than this. There is something about ourself that in a very defi­nite sense seems to be separate from what we are doing.

It is evident that there is more to us than there seems to be; that to our physical body and environment we must add some­thing else. Let us call it consciousness, or the ability to know that we are ourself; that we are different from anyone else.

Consciousness, or the ability to know, is the most important thing in our life. It must be Life Itself in us, acting as an indi­vidual, as a person. But there is still more to it than this. For we did not create our own consciousness. It came with us when we entered this world. Consciousness, or that thing which we really are, is the gift of Life. It is God in us.

“But,” it may be asked, “what has all this to do with my personality? I want a dynamic personality. I want to be some­body. I want lovableness and charm. I want to be creative.” Of course everyone does! It would not be natural to feel otherwise. But what is this thing you and I call myself, this thing our friends call you — the person we are, the thing that makes us different from all others, and that endears us to others? It is this thing called Life in us.

Walt Whitman said there is more to a man than is con­tained between his hat and his bootstraps. Jesus said: ”… I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” It is this hidden source of our being that we are looking for, this high gift of heaven, this thing in us that can mold and make our personality. This is our treasure of life; this is the source of our inspiration.

There are hidden powers, undeveloped resources, unimag­inable depths to our being that we can penetrate and bring to the surface and make our personality anything we wish it to be. But first we must come to know what we really are. Every man is God’s good man and he alone can decide whether his per­sonality shall be happy and whole, dynamic and creative, at­tractive and loving; he alone holds the golden key to the larger life.

But we cannot use this key until we first consciously con­nect ourself to that something greater than we are. This does not mean that we are going to get lost or become submerged in a dream or a fantasy. It really means that we are going to learn to live, think, and act from the feeling that there is a limitless Power back of everything we do — a Power for good.

Somewhere in us is the same imagination that wrote every book that was ever written; the same inventive genius that in­vented everything that makes modern life comfortable; the great artist who painted all the pictures; the one who wrote all the songs. The very dance of Life Itself is in everything God ever made, and it is in us.

“But,” someone may ask, “what can I do about it? How am I going to bring all this out? How am I going to get it to the surface? How am I going to become that wonderful, dy­namic personality that I would like to be?”

Perhaps the best way to begin is not to try to be so wonder­ful or so dynamic; not to strain, not to wear a mask, not to try to be anyone but ourself. All imitation is suicide. We are our­self, and we are real, and the coming to know the real self is not so much something we develop or create or compel, as it is something we discover.

The first step, then, is as simple as this: to link our per­sonality — our physical body, our environment, and everything we think, say, and do — up with what we really are — an indi­vidual living in pure Spirit, here and now. God did not make a mistake when he created us, when He implanted His own being in our life and breathed into us the breath of Life Itself. He made us to be happy and whole, complete and contented.

We start by believing that at the center of our being there is a real person, a lovable person, a creative person. This should not be done with conceit or arrogance, but in the utmost simpli­city. We must become acquainted with ourself. We must come to know that the real self is lovable, kind, happy, and whole, and, of course, we cannot do this unless we believe the same thing about everyone else. This is going to contradict a lot of experience.

We will soon discover that thoughts of love, drawn from our innermost self, will make us a lovable personality. We may be sure that the image of ourself in the mirror is a projection of our own thoughts. All that it is or has or does, all the power it possesses, we give to it, and what it lacks we have withheld from it. We may be sure that if we become calm and poised inside, everything we do will be orderly; that if we love others, they will come to love us; that if we identify ourself with suc­cess, we will become successful. And we may also be sure that if we find peace in our own soul, we will be bringing peace from heaven to our environment.

Could we ask for more? Could we expect anything better? Could even God, in His infinite love and wisdom, have done better for us? I do not think so. The most wonderful thing about it all is that we really do not have to create this terrific personality people talk about. We do not have to influence people, as one so often thinks he must. All we have to do is to live from ourself, to express something which even we did not create and even we could not destroy — something which we can and should use.

We are all cradled in the Infinite. We are all offspring of the Most High. There is in each of us a deep yearning, a great need for a sense of security and peace. And there is also in all of us — in you, in me, in everyone who ever lived — a feeling that there is an answer to all the demands we make on life. As sure­ly as I believe that we live, so surely I believe there is a depth and meaning to our natures which neither you nor I nor any­one else has ever fathomed — an inexhaustible resource, a peren­nial fountain of life, and a person that surpasses in grandeur, in beauty, and in love anything we have ever dreamed of.

 

The End