Louis Condé – Life as you Give It

 

CONTENTS

Foreword

How to Attain Happiness

Mind Development: Emancipation from Human Miseries

Co-operation between Employer and Employee

Power of Suggestion

Thought Vibrations

Birth of a New Era

Selected Gems from Lahissa’s Teachings

 

FOREWORD

This book consists of seven talks by Lahissa, better known as Dr. Louis Conde, and one section of selections, short pas­sages taken from many of his talks. Throughout the text there are also some excerpts from his lessons on Mental- Spiritual Development. The seven talks were given between 1927 and 1931, the last years of the speaker’s life. The Gems were selected from talks given during that same period; and to the best of our knowledge, the thoughts included in these Gems are the very ones he stressed during all his years of teaching.

Doctor Conde was an independent teacher, lecturer and world traveler, a pioneer in the mental-spiritual field, and the material in these pages was selected for its application to the present day.

For over half a century, without affiliation with any or­ganization or institution, Doctor Conde devoted his life to service to mankind—uplifting them to higher channels of thought. His work was for all, regardless of color, creed or social status. Turning his back on all opportunities for a career for personal gain, he went about teaching the laws and realities of life and exemplified his teachings in his own experiences. He helped people to understand and to help themselves, inspiring happier and more useful lives. He helped those who came with their problems and ailments, broken in mind and body. Instinctively he was called “Doc­tor,” and this title remained with him through all his life.

This uncommonly common man lived side by side with

people in all walks of life; he assumed different roles for periods of time in order better to understand people and to teach them in their own language—his was never academic parlance. The many illustrations used in this text are the real stories of people who came to him for advice and help. Backed by his vast experience and deep insight, his teachings were given on his own authority, acknowledging none other than the Supreme Source of all knowledge, the Universal Intelligence, or God.

These talks were recorded in shorthand and transcribed by the editor who was Doctor Conde’s secretary; her sister, the co-editor, has contributed much in helping to arrange and complete this work.

In appreciation of the opportunity we had of studying personally with this teacher-philosopher and of serving him the last few years of his earthly life, we are presenting this book with the sincere wish that all who read it may receive the enlightenment and help which we and thousands of others have derived from these masterful teachings. Other interesting and varied subjects will be published later.

Louis Conde—Lahissa, originally from inner spiritual Ti­bet, came to the Western world and to the United States to pioneer a new era, the era of man’s full consciousness of the power within him—the power of thought.

“His power is unlimited,” he said in Boston in 1875. “As a man thinks, so he can do; what seems impossible today is possible tomorrow. Man will be able to go around the earth in the flash of a moment; he will be able to go from here to any of the planets, to use forces of which the human mind hasn’t the least conception as yet.” With these statements always came the warning that man must use his powers con­structively or he would pay the price.

Many of the natural laws which the author-speaker pre­sented to the scientific world in his early teachings have gradually been unraveled, and still others he gave remain to be discovered. One may well imagine the reaction when, at the time electricity was beginning to be better understood, he said: “All things contain that force which is called elec­tricity; electricity is only directed vibrations; and all matter is concentrated vibrations.”

Or when he said that “life is present everywhere and all planets have life.”

Doctor Conde was much ridiculed when, before the dawn of the twentieth century, he said: “There is enough energy in one grain of sand so that if it were to be released suddenly, it would tear the world asunder,” but after these many years, the enormous potential power of the atom has been tapped.

He was ahead of his time when he referred to diseases as reflections of the mind; and to mental lethargy as the worst disease of all; and when he explained evolutionary reincar­nation—even thought vibrations, years before those expres­sions had been heard of. These and many others of his New Teachings fell like bombshells into the stagnant thought of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, bringing the sure reaction of persecution to the teacher.

Ignoring all opposition, this genuine pioneer went tirelessly and fearlessly on, planting seeds of mental-spiritual under­standing. Nor did persecutions ever cease—they continued to the end—for this teacher of men, who was continually at war with intolerance and selfishness. He openly exposed existing conditions wherever he found them enslaving instead of enlightening the people. Though the simple truths Doctor Conde gave were resisted during his lifetime, in recent years they have become more and more understood, until now many of the things he talked about are commonly accepted.

The keynote of his message, as will be seen in the pages of this book, is the Law of Compensation in its broad sense— that “as you give to life and your fellowman, so shall you receive from life and your fellowman”; that unselfish love, tolerance and forgiveness are not only words to be heard from the platform but are prerequisites to health and happi­ness; that in order to gain wisdom, one must seek Truth and Understanding. He worked for a greater rapprochement between peoples and nations; he envisioned the assimilation of all religions into the Brotherhood of Man.

Though many of the worthwhile things that Doctor Conde stood for and fought for have not as yet come to pass, there has been a great awakening of thought, and vast strides in human progress have been made in the past three-quarters of a century. But progress has gone too far on the materi­alistic side at the expense of the spiritual, and the present need is for greater spiritual development. It is left for all of us who are interested in the unfoldment of that which is beautiful and best in mankind to stress the importance of the spiritual values of life—those the speaker talks about in these pages.

For, as he stated: “Real progress along the physical- material plane cannot be made without there being first progress along the spiritual as well—for the spiritual, or mental, always dominates the physical.”

 

 

 

How to Attain Happiness

The law governing attainment of Happiness is very sim­ple, the same as the Law governing Health. It is: Forget your­self Your great handicaps to happiness are thoughts of self, the fears of self, the fears of the game of life, the fears of what may be in the future through experiences in the past.

The handicaps to your happiness are the capital sins: Self­ishness! Greed! Hatred! Envy! Jealousy! Pretenses! Those are your handicaps to happiness!

Living-in-the-past or living-in-the-future is a handicap to happiness. Live now), continually now—not speculating in possibilities or daydreaming all kinds of beautiful things for yourself. Keep your mind concentrated on what you are do­ing now: on being of service to your fellowman, on giving happiness unselfishly to everyone you come in contact with, whether you get happiness from it or not. That is the key to your happiness.

My dear people, you are all seeking—every human being is seeking—something; but they don’t know what it is. What they are seeking is Happiness. That is what they are all searching for, and to me it is pitiful to see them trying to find it all kinds of ways but the right way.

They think, “Money will give me happiness.” No! No! What does it profit a man if he has gained the wealth of the world but he does not have happiness—he does not have health! What does he have?

Many possessions do not give happiness. You know the old story of the mendicant sitting on the sidewalk. When the king came by and offered to change places with him, the mendicant told the king that he did not wish to make the ex­change, for he had what the king could never have—free­dom and happiness.

These good times, as you call it, of excesses, do not give happiness to you. The Law of Compensation is ever there: if you over-seek pleasure, you have a reaction from it. If you go to dances and the like until four or five o’clock in the morning, and you have to go to work at eight, then you pay the price. One is at the expense of the other one: you are not able to do your work, and you are bound to be a failure. If you drink, and drink to excess to forget your troubles and unhappinesses, when you wake up in the morning with a headache, it is still unhappiness—even worse unhappiness. Frivolities do not give you happiness. You must find relaxa­tions, yes! I do not say to you that you must go through life with a long face. No! I do say to you to seek your happiness —get it any way you can get it, so long as you do not hurt somebody else. No matter what you do, don’t go to excess.

Obey the physical, the material laws; obey the Spiritual Laws! You must be in harmony with both in order to get the most and the best out of life. But you will not find happiness by seeking it in nervous excitement; you will find it in love, kindness, service.

A little while ago I was talking to some youngsters at the back of this building, among them a young girl who was studying to be a journalist. I explained to her, “Now, little girl, in school you are getting journalistic theories of writing, and so forth, but after you are through school, you are only beginning. When you will buck the game of life—when you will come up with the realities of it, you will not have senti­ment, because you will see the realities, and realities have no sentiment. And when you will learn to play the game of life completely—to meet the tragedies of life completely—to know what it is all about—to know what is going on in this world, then you will start to learn, and you will start to be­come a journalist. But not until then. And if you apply your­self in your work completely, not daydreaming and building castles in the air; but doing something, facing the realities and the tragedies, seeking ways of helping and of changing them, then you will find happiness. Money will not give it to you.”

“Oh yes,” she said, “money will! Money will give you any­thing you want.”

“Oh no,” I replied, “money will not. When you don’t have it, you crave for it; then when you do have it, you want some more; and when you get some more, you are not contented but you want something else. So money does not mean much —it means but little.”

She finally came to the realization.

Every day people tell me, “Oh, if I had this man, if I could marry this man, I would be happy!” That is all a dream. Or, “Oh, if I owned my home, I would be happy.” No, you wouldn’t.

All those material things—those physical things—do not give you happiness or peace of mind. Happiness does not come from the outside. It comes from ‘within—the mental side, which is the spiritual side. You are either in heaven or in hell now. If you have happy thoughts, you are in heaven. If you have selfish thoughts, revengeful thoughts, hateful thoughts, you are in hell.

Happiness does not come from outside. It comes from the radiation within; and it is just as easy—it is easier—to have happy thoughts as it is to have miserable thoughts. It is easier to be kind than it is to be hard; and as I have told you at the beginning of this talk, it is those handicaps—the capital sins— that are really the cause of your own unhappiness. So unbur­den yourself of those handicaps.

Hatred! What good does it do you to hate anyone, no mat­ter what was done to you? If you keep on hating the person, you are sending out those vibrations. You are bound to speak them out, they are bound to get around to the person. And then the Law of Compensation comes in: as you give, so you receive. That person is going to do everything against you— creating more trouble and more unhappiness for you; but the moment you forget to hate that person, and you forgive, it is over with.

Gossip is another one of your faults. There is so much of it and it is so unnecessary. When you gossip, you are disturb­ing that smoothness, and those same vibrations come back to you.

When you have learned to make the most of now, to for­give and to forget no matter what is done to you, no matter what anyone says, when you have learned to be big enough to live your own life: to look things squarely in the face, ana­lyze them, see the best thing to do and do it, regardless of the thoughts or ideas of anyone, then, you are master. And when you are master of yourself, and of everything around you, then you are happy.

When you scatter sunshine and happiness around you, giving constructive suggestions—always something good— everyone likes you; they think a great deal of you, and at your time of need, they are there for you. And it is so easy to scatter happiness—so easy.

That reminds me of a girl in Mobile, Alabama. The Elks Club was having a baby show contest. That particular morn­ing, as I came by the square, I saw the girl in the contest office. I saw her with her handkerchief, wiping her eyes, with her head down on the desk; and I knew the girl was in distress—distress of soul. I walked in and stood by the desk. She looked up and said, “Oh, I beg your pardon.”

I said, “Yes, little girl, is this the baby contest show?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, weeping.

“Are you taking babies?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. Have you got a baby?”

“Oh, yes,” I told her, “I have. She is about this tall.” I in­dicated about five and a half feet. “She is a blonde, with blue eyes. She is very shapely and pretty, and I think she is the most beautiful baby you have seen.”

She looked at me oddly and said, “Oh, no! This is for little babies.”

Then she laughed. I looked at her and said, “Do you feel better, little girl?”

She looked at me surprised and said, “Why . . . yes.” “Fine! That is all I wanted. Good-bye.” And I walked out. After that, every time this girl would see me on the street at a distance, she would call, “Hello, Doctor, hello!” Several weeks later, she was waiting for a streetcar when I happened to come up. She said, “How do you do, Doctor Conde.” “How do you do, little girl.”

She stopped and asked, “Do you know what you did for me?”

I smiled and said, “Yes, I know.”

With thankfulness in her eyes, she told me that I had saved her life that morning. “When you came in,” she said, “I was ready to go and jump in the bay. I was desperate. Everything looked dark, but when you came in and made that joke”— because it was a joke, naturally, to make the girl come out of it—“it made me laugh; and somehow or other, it put new hopes in me that life was not so dreary and dark after all. It changed my attitude toward life completely, and what I thought was a tragedy is over with. I am happy now.”

Do you see how easy it is? It is so easy: forget yourself, forget to talk about yourself, to tell everybody your trou­bles. The more you talk about your troubles and about your miseries, about your tragedies, the more you are making yourself conscious of them and the more selfish you are. But when you are thinking of the other person, of everyone you meet, with the desire of helping them, not with charity, but through your words, through your actions, helping them to something better, you will have happiness yourself. That is the only way you can have it.

Do not pretend! Because when you pretend, you have to lie; and it takes more lies to cover that one lie. Then when you are found out, you are miserable; and you are tense all the time, afraid you will be found out. So be natural, be real, live a real life.

Do not cater to the pettiness of other people, don’t be a slave, don’t have an inferiority complex. Remember there is no human being who is better than any other human being or different from any other human being. You are all just as little grains of sand on the beach. So why feel inferior, or think that you have to cater to somebody else or live accord­ing to the ideas of somebody else? Think for yourself.

Don’t run away from handicaps—your mental handicaps. Meet them! Fight them! If you run away from a dog, that dog is going to grab you and get you. But if you meet that dog, he will come and sniff and then walk away. It is the same with your handicaps. If you walk away from them, they will overcome you; but when you meet them and see the picture of what you are with the handicaps, then you are ready to change.

It is those handicaps that are causing you a great many un­happy thoughts and those unhappy thoughts are due to self­ishness.

My dear people, what difference does it make what will happen tomorrow or next year to you? Why look forward to troubles when ninety-nine per cent never happen?

Instead of being conscious of trouble, forget it all, and ap­ply yourself to doing the best thing now, because it is now that counts and nothing else but now. Have an object to work for—something constructive—and put your effort to that now by doing something now about it. Then you won’t have disappointments; then you won’t have tragedies. I don’t think about whether I will be able to pay my bills next week or not—that doesn’t interest me at all. I am giving the best in me, right now. By doing that I know there will be some re­turns, and those returns will pay the bills. It is not worrying about it, not scheming all kinds of things, that will bring the money to pay those bills.

Look upon your experiences as fun, because life is a fight— it is a battle—and the one who fights and is game is the one who has happiness. He is doing something constructive, and when you are doing something constructive for yourself, you are doing something constructive for your fellowman.

Why dream of wanting this or of wanting that? Those are wasted thoughts, wasted energy; and whenever you waste, you pay the price. Use what you have now, but do not waste it. Use your brain, but do not waste it on unnecessary thoughts, because it will “get” you, it will sap you, it will weaken you. So why scatter your thoughts and do things that do not mean anything to you?

Forget sentiment! Forget ideals! There aren’t any. If you have sentiment and ideals, you are the one that gets your “bump,” because that is all sentiment and ideals are for! They are to cause you to have to sit down and face the reality, and it hurts. When you fall down, it hurts. When you are expect­ing all kinds of things for yourself, when you have ideas that people should be this way or that they should do that way, you are the one that is going to suffer from it. So do not have your thoughts on sentiment.

Love is not sentiment! What most of you call love is self­ishness. Real love is the love that wants the best for the other person and that will do anything to give happiness to the other person, to help that person go up, without thought of receiving anything in return! That is love.

Wives who come to me tell me eternally the same thing: “My husband does not love me anymore; he doesn’t make me happy.” I look at them and say, “Well, what are you giving him? Are you making him happy? You expect everything from the other person, but you give nothing in return. When you will forget to receive from the other person, and will give the best in you, you will receive the best back.”

That reminds me of a woman who came to me not long ago with that tale. She was oppressed and depressed; had been operated on and had all kinds of physical troubles: all caused by her misunderstanding of the word love. She had a husband of the type that is not emotional; and because he didn’t come home every day and take her in his arms and crush her and hug her and make a fuss over her, she was mak­ing herself miserable, claiming that he didn’t love her—that he didn’t give her happiness. So I questioned her.

I asked: “Little girl, how long have you been married?” “Oh, nine years.”

“Have you any children?”

“No,” she replied.

“You told me that you had been ill?”

“Yes.”

“Has your husband provided for you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “I will say that for him.”

“How much does he make?”

“About one hundred and ninety five dollars a month.” “Have you a nice little home—very comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“When you were sick who paid the bills? Did you pay?” “Oh, no! I wouldn’t have been able to.”

“What was your operation the last time?”

She told me.

“How long were you in the hospital?” I continued ques­tioning.

“Almost three months.”

“Who paid the bills?”

“Why, he did.” She took that as a matter of course.

“Was he good to you while you were in the hospital?” “Yes.”

“You had a nurse?”

“Yes, private nurses. One day and one night.”

“That was quite a worry to him, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Did he have a great deal of money in the bank?”

“No.”

“It has cost him two or three thousand dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Did his regular salary cover that?”

“No, he does work at night—extra work.”

“For what? To pay that bill?”

Then I hardened. “You poor, foolish, sentimental little woman! The man was giving you the greatest proof of his love for you. He stood for all your foolishness all those years. He put up with your petty ailments—you making yourself ill, and all because he didn’t make a fuss over you; and he stayed on and slaved, just to please you! And you have caused him many hours of anxiety, many days of anxi­ety and months, probably years, of hard work, all for you! And you mean to tell me that that man does not love you? Is that your conception of love? That mushy sentiment? He stood by you through thick and thin, and you have let hap­piness fly out of the window, with your petty sentiment, with those ideas, when it was there for you all the time!”

With husbands it is the same thing. “Oh, my wife doesn’t do this and she doesn’t do that,” they say. They are miserable about it. I say to them, “Are you doing everything to help her to be happy, to make her happy, and to help her prog­ress?” Because you cannot be happy without progress! You cannot make a woman happy by giving her four walls and a home! You cannot make a man happy by cooking a good meal for him! That is not happiness. Happiness comes from the unselfish desire of giving happiness to the other person, of helping that person to something better.

The woman who wants her husband to be home right after he gets through work, thinking, “He must be home. He must stay home, his business is with me!” is a handicap to that hus­band. He may be a little clerk or a little businessman; he has no liberty. His wife has robbed him of his liberty; she has made a slave of him! He cannot mix with his fellowmen, he hasn’t any friends, he doesn’t have the good will of his fellow- man, because he is not one of them. He is held by an apron string. And after ten years, he is still holding the same posi­tion, he has not advanced. And then his wife looks at him and says, “My, he never made anything of himself, he is not a suc­cess, he is a failure. Here we have been married ten years, and we haven’t anything.”

She doesn’t realize that she is the one who is guilty, she is the one who has robbed herself as well as him! If she had given him his freedom, if she had had her mind on helping him to better things instead of “petting” and all that, if she had helped him to make something of himself, she would have had happiness out of it, and she would have gloried in his success. But she took him unto herself.

Sentimental love will never give you happiness. It is not hugs and kisses either from your child or from your opposite sex that will make you happy; but it is the love of construc­tive good for the other person. That is what will make you happy.

A half hour ago when I was in the back of the building here, if you had seen me with the two boys, one sixteen and the other eighteen, and two girls, one fourteen and the other sixteen, you would have thought I was fourteen or sixteen too. I was laughing, making the most of now, enjoying it. And at the same time I was giving constructive words to them, like what I told the girl about journalism. And I told one boy, “Wait a minute, boy. Look out. I have seen the handwriting on the wall long ago, and I have said that the women are going to surpass the men. These girls are working hard to get up to the top; what are you doing about it? It’s time for you to wake up.”

We were talking about marriage, and the boy said he was planning to be a husband. I said, “By the time you are twenty- five, you will be the one staying at home, rocking the baby! That is what is coming. And it will be a nice place for a man, won’t it? But the women are going out, doing the work, tak­ing the money and the men’s places. So, boys, you had better wake up!”

The thoughts I was giving them were constructive.

Then the girl asked me if I could do the cartwheel. I told her to go ahead and do it first. She did, and I said, “Wait a minute, you did not do it complete, you only did it half way.” Then I looked at my watch and said, “My time is up, I will have to go in now.” And when I turned to leave, she called to me, “That is a nice way to get out of it, isn’t it?”

I replied, “Well, that is where brains come in.”

That is the way to happiness: scattering sunshine and smiles; giving happiness to others. But when your thoughts are centered on self, always thinking: “I want this for my­self,” or “I want that for myself,” you don’t get it. Because man proposes but destiny disposes. And destiny does not mean fate; your destiny is within your own hands. You may want something, but yet be so occupied thinking of yourself that you don’t do anything to get it and are not willing to meet the conditions necessary for it; and you do not get what you want. Then you are the one that is hurt. Remember that.

The law is—-forget yourself! The more you think about yourself, and the more you want things for yourself, the more troubles you are heaping upon yourself, and the less you will have for yourself. Learn to be contented with what is, now, wanting something better, but be willing to work for it and to do the things necessary for it, and apply yourself to doing the best always now. With that in view, you will get it. You will not get it by sitting down there whining, “Oh, I want that but I can’t have it. I am not that lucky!” and all that.

Get your mind at peace, by eliminating from it all thoughts of self-pity, all thoughts of petty, mushy sentiment, of cry­ing for the moon. And because you can’t get it, why shed tears over it?

Learn to concentrate your efforts at all times on scatter­ing sunshine around you, giving smiles, constructive words, happy words, unselfish thoughts and words—helping the other person to help himself, helping him to progress on his journey through life and to develop to something better.

As you give to everyone you come in contact with, so it will be reflected within your own mind, vibrating out, at­tracting to you the things that will be in harmony with you, to give you Happiness and Health.

May Peace be with you! At Peace with that great Intelli­gence whom you call God! At Peace with your fellowman! At Peace with yourself! Peace of Mind—for such is the King­dom of Happiness.

MIND DEVELOPMENT: EMANCIPATION FROM HUMAN MISERIES

Indeed, my dear people, it is mind, development of mind, that will emancipate humanity from all its ills. It is, after all, not your physical condition that causes troubles. It is mind— your mental condition, because mental disharmony is the cause of physical disharmony. And if you learn how to use that great power of mind, you will never have tragedies, you will never have illnesses, because troubles are only unsolved problems, and they remain troubles as long as you don’t try to solve them. They crush you, until you are compelled to do something. They are the means to an end—forcing you to do something for yourself. And that is progress, because the human tendency is to follow the line of least resistance. Trou­bles are the means to force you to advance, to develop. Why wait for troubles to come in order to advance? Why not make the effort before?

Man is only conscious of what his senses perceive: his sight, his hearing and the like. He is not conscious of microbic life because his senses are limited and it is too small for his eyes to see. It is just the same the other way: he is not conscious of the immensity and grandeur of the universe—it is too large for his eyes to perceive. But by his desire, or wanting, to know, he has devised means, through the microscope and the telescope, to enlarge his scope of vision. He has made the ef­fort.

It is the same with the sense of hearing. His ears can only receive certain vibrations, but again he has devised means to enhance the reception of his ears: by the telephone, the ra­dio, and other instruments. He has come in contact with that knowledge because of his desire for it: it came to him—he got it. After all, all knowledge is always here, and it is man’s desire to learn that attracts to him the particular knowledge in the universe that he is seeking.

It is the same with the sense of feeling. Man could not dis­cern the finest vibrations; so he has devised plates and chem­icals in order to become conscious of those vibrations. It is his desire to know that has brought him to greater knowledge.

But out of a thousand people, nine hundred ninety-seven do not think, two think a little, and one thinks for all the rest. And it is that one and those two who really carry the load for all the others. And why are those nine hundred ninety-seven not thinking? Because they absorb whatever they hear, whatever they read, that is, whatever they take in through their senses; and all that they absorb remains there in their brain and they repeat it like parrots. That is education, but not knowledge.

Knowledge is attained only by your own effort, by the question mark in your own brain, ever asking, “What is it?” How many people do I see going along the streets, never see­ing anything, never interested in anything, who do not see farther than the tips of their noses—some not even that far. My dear people, knowledge is attained by one who has that sense of observation and who keeps in his own conscious mind the questions, “Why?” “What is it?” “What for?”

To illustrate. I passed by a paint shop the other day, and in the show window was a little bottle of paint which had written on it, “Bottled Sunshine.” I looked at it and thought, “The man who wrote that gave a great truth without realiz­ing it.” It is bottled sunshine. That is exactly what it is. It is matter that has absorbed from the rays of the sun a certain kind of vibration or color, and it is now bottled sunshine.

Many who passed by that window saw those words on that small bottle of paint, but how many sifted down to what was meant? Those who did not have little sense of observation. They are like parrots, or a phonograph. When the machine is turned on, sound comes out; when it is not, nothing comes out. When it comes to thinking for themselves, seeking to understand, and having the question mark before them, they are not interested. They are not concerned with the things around them for their own development and their own bet­terment. They do not seek to understand or to get the best out of life.

Every day I come in contact with people: many cases come to me, and I put them to thinking. That starts a chain of thoughts and acts, and finally they are in harmony with the solution to their problem. And they think it is wonderful, but if they had made the effort themselves, they would not have needed me.

Man gets what he desires, what he reaches out for, from the Universal Mind. Because Mind does not belong to you. Mind is universal. Brain is yours, and brain is the machine that Mind comes through. And it is within your power to develop that machine: the more effort you make in putting it to work, the more Mind, or thoughts, can come through; and the greater will be your happiness, health and attainment in life.

So many people are living in troubles, in the past, in memo­ries of past tragedies, of past illnesses and operations. They are not living now. They are living then. They keep those past troubles in front of themselves; then they wonder why they are discontented and unhappy, and why they are not accomplishing anything. They say, “Lahissa, I am not getting along—I am not succeeding in getting what I want out of life.” Why aren’t they? When I let them talk, they always tell me about the past. That is all they talk or think about. They think about their operations and illnesses—about their trage­dies; and they pity themselves, trying to find someone to blame for it all. Instead of being interested in remedying the condition or changing the situation, they are trying to seek someone to lay the blame on. It is, my dear people, those who are living that kind of a life who cannot progress, who can­not get the best out of life.

It is now and eternally now. That is the reality. As I often say, yesterday is a cemetery of tombstones; now is the sun­shine. Enjoy the now! Make the most of now, and instead of being in a turmoil because of your problems and tragedies, concentrate your mind on the problem until you find the remedy—until you find the way out. And if you do concen­trate and use that reasoning mind of yours, you will find a way out, because the Law of Compensation is always there: when you reach out into the Universe for the solution to your problem, you get it.

I explained that Law of Compensation to someone today by saying: It is just like having a wonderful meal on the table in front of you. If you don’t reach out for the victuals, you don’t get them; but as soon as you do reach out for them, and get them, how fine they taste! That illustrates this inevi­table Law.

You must do something for what you want. Nothing will come to you by being one of the nine hundred ninety-seven who do not think, but it will come to you if you are one of the three who do think. Make the effort of reaching out for the solution to your problem. Seek to understand, to know. Men and women so often tell me about what failures they are, saying that they never had an opportunity. No!! they never did, because they never reached out for one. They only wait and look at others, and go about with their mouths wide open, pitying themselves and saying, “I haven’t got a chance.” They are not willing to make any effort, and yet they expect the best out of life. They are not willing to un­derstand, to grow, to develop their brains. To many the brain is a useless thing. But the moment they make the effort to un­derstand, they get the best out of life.

Life is a beautiful thing, my dear people, and it is you who are making it. You get what you reach out for. I am going to show you what a tremendous power you have in your own brain. Just think! You can move a mountain by thought.

It is done every day. The engineer who sees a mountain in his way when he is building a road, says, “That mountain shall move.” That is his thought, and he finds means and ways by thought to move that mountain. And he moves it. Thought is a tremendous power, and you can develop that power.

I am going to give you an example—showing you a way out, by citing a case that has come to me. There was a young man, twenty-four years old, a shoe salesman, getting about a hundred and fifteen dollars a month; he was just fitting shoes. He made the effort of coming to me, and he asked me, “Doctor Conde, what will you charge to analyze me and see what I am really fitted for?”

I knew the boy didn’t have money, so I named a small amount.

“I can’t pay that,” he said. “I will have to indebt myself, but I am willing to do so in order to pay it.” The Law of Compensation was met there; he was ready to make the ef­fort for what he wanted.

I analyzed him, eliminating one possibility after another, until there was but one thing remaining for him to do, and that was constructive engineering,.

“My dear boy,” I said, “what you are fitted for is construc­tive engineering.”

“But,” he said, “how can I do that? I haven’t any educa­tion. I am twenty-four years old. I have no money.”

“Are those handicaps?” I asked. “Are they going to pre­vent you from becoming what you would be? You have a great power here in the brain. Develop it. You are only twenty-four years old; you have a lifetime in front of you. I will tell you what to do. First, learn to concentrate your thoughts on now, on what you are doing now, and nothing else. Then learn how to plant thoughts into your subcon­scious mind, or brain, so that they will work for you. Then learn how to use your reasoning mind by the process of elim­ination, until you have the solution to your problem. And if you carry out the simple methods I will give you, you will make it!”

He looked at me and said, “Doctor, if you were to tell me to stand on my head three times a day, I would do it.”

“My dear boy,” I said to him, “you are going to make it.”

And he did. He showed a willingness to do something for himself, and he carried out my methods faithfully. In three months he had given up his job. He could see opportunities around him of which he was never conscious before, and he went into a business of his own. He made money, went to the university, worked his way through for seven years and came out with honors. Immediately construction companies bid for his services, and he made a contract for two years at twenty-four thousand dollars a year. The next two years he did things: he engineered big dams and built bridges. When his contract was almost over, certain capitalists got together and asked him, “Why don’t you start a company of your own?”

“Because,” he replied, “I haven’t the capital as yet.”

“We have the capital,” they told him, “you have the brains.”

So they organized a fifty-million dollar company, and last year they secured a sixty-nine million dollar contract to build bridges. All that from a shoe salesman. If he could do that, you can also. He made the effort, and he wanted the thing badly enough to do anything for it, and that is the key to suc­cess.

My dear people, this is the capital, this thing here, the brain. Every day I hear people say, “I haven’t any money to do anything with.” No! they haven’t any money, and they don’t use their brains—that is the whole trouble. It is the truth, and it is the truth that hurts, and it is by knowing the truth that your possibilities are awakened. I have brought many people out of their indifference by telling them the truth about themselves—painting them just as they are— even though they have hated me for doing it.

Human beings, many of them, may be compared to pigs waddling in the mud—contented, passive, lying there eating, sleeping, getting fat. When you go to pigs with a stick and probe them to activity, they grunt and fight. It is the same with people: when you try to make them think a little, they will fight you. It is by giving you these realities that I make you realize your own failures, your own handicaps; and those can be eliminated completely by development of mind.

By concentration—concentration on now, on what you are doing now, you remove your fears and doubts, you remove all possibilities of failure. You remove self-con­sciousness. If I were self-conscious, if my mind were not concentrated on what I am doing, I wouldn’t be able to talk to you. I am not concerned about what your ideas are—I am doing something and giving something right now. My mind is on that and nothing else. When you have your mind concentrated on what you are doing, you eliminate all your handicaps. But when you have a sense of self-pity, looking into the skies or into the clouds and asking, “Why? Why must this happen to me?” you are full of handicaps. Forget “Why?” and think of what you are doing now. Then those questions will not come back into your mind; you will have no reason for having them. All the failures, all fears, all doubts, all self-consciousness, all egotism: all those handicaps will disappear, and you will be rendering a service—by con­centrating your thoughts on now.

It is what you are doing now that counts. Eternity is now: even after you are “dead,” it is now to you, and it is continually now. So many people ask the question, “Where do I go when I die?” Why don’t they also ask, “Where did I come from when I was born?” And whether you die tomor­row or ten years from now, what does it matter? If you give the most there is in you, if you use that great power, you don’t have to worry about what comes after life. (And if you believe in reincarnation and the eternity of life, it doesn’t matter.) Your sins are not the petty matters of disobeying man-made laws and ideas, but of trying to evade the spiritual Law of Cause and Effect. It isn’t what will be in the future for you—whether in the present life or in the spiritual life; it is what you are doing now that makes your future for you. If you are doing the most and the best in you now, you are obeying that great spiritual Law—you are performing your duty.

Mind, indeed, is the emancipator of human miseries. Why do you have sickness? Why do you have operations, and all that? Why do you have miseries? I am going to tell you why. Because you are not putting your mind on doing something now—you are putting it on petty thoughts. The more you think about sickness and about health, the more you talk about it, the more you are creating ill-health for yourself.

I am going to give you a few words about the subconscious mind, or brain, to show you how it looks after you. You do not need to tell your heart to beat seventy-two times a min­ute. Where does that command come from? From genera­tions back. From the moment of conception, the subconscious thoughts of your mother which were controlling her heart­beat, were also being transmitted, like radio waves, into your little brain in-the-making, and took control of that heart of yours. It is the same way with the lungs, with the stomach, and with every cell in your body: if you don’t interfere, that brain of yours will look after them. A boy tinkering with his watch sees all the intricate wheels working in beautiful har­mony, but there is one wheel that to his idea is going too slowly, and he will take a pin or a needle and try to make it go faster, and he will put the whole watch out of commis­sion. Then he takes it to someone who can put it back in har­mony again. It is the same way with people: with your fear thoughts you interfere with the perfect control by your sub­conscious mind of every part of your body. Why think so much about your body—it doesn’t matter much. What mat­ters is here, in your brain.

Quit feeling your heartbeat and saying, “Oh, my heart is not beating right! ” What does it matter? If you will leave it alone, it will be all right; but when you are thinking such thoughts, you are telling your subconscious mind that your heart is not all right, and immediately your brain will do as you have bid it, and it will make your heart skip. That sub­conscious mind doesn’t differentiate between what is good and what is bad; it simply accepts whatever is planted there. If you put good thoughts in it, good comes out; if you plant bad thoughts in it, bad comes out. If you plant thoughts of sickness in it, sickness comes to you. If you plant a thistle seed, it will remain under the ground for a little while, then it will grow, develop and bear fruit. But it bears thistles—not roses. If you had planted roses, roses would have come up and grown. It is the same with the subconscious mind. If you plant constructive thoughts, constructive things will come to you. That is the means of coming in contact and in harmony with the Universal Mind. What you send for comes back in reality.

I am never sick. I went through many experiences in order to teach you what Laws are to be obeyed in order to have no trouble. Much of my body is gone—an organ is out that medical men say one cannot live without, but I am alive.

Thirty-six years ago, when I was in New York, a friend— a man whom I knew very well—was shot through the kid­ney. The doctors said he was going to die. At that time, they had no idea that a man could live with one kidney out. I knew better. When this friend in his extremity sent for me, he said, “Tell me, what can I do?”

I wanted to give the medical men a lesson also, so I told the doctors to take the kidney out. They said he couldn’t live —that no human being can live with only one kidney. But I said, “Take it out, because the subconscious mind, or brain, will look after you, and if you take one kidney out, then the other kidney will do the work of the two.” And it did. The injured kidney was removed and the operation proved to be a success.

If you take the appendix out, there are some small glands in the intestines that will become active and take the place of the appendix. It is wonderful how the subconscious mind, or brain, will look after the body for you without your having to worry about it. But if you tell your subconscious mind that your stomach is not acting right, for instance, you are really telling it that it is not controlling that part of the body properly; and the subconscious mind will do as you have commanded it, and will disrupt the perfect functioning of that organ. You create the condition by planting in your brain the seed which interferes with the harmony of the

Mind emancipates mankind from all ills, from all sickness. I never think of myself—I haven’t time. I am thinking of those who come to me for help. I am thinking of doing some­thing for humanity. If I have a little pain, I say, “Oh, that will go away after a while,” changing my thought, not worrying at all—and soon it is gone. That brain of mine looks after it. But if you keep on centering your thoughts on a pain, you create the very condition you fear.

If some of you ladies want to know how to retain your youth, I will say to you forget yourself, and you will stay younger. The more you think about yourself, the more trou­bles you will have. I suppose you are watching for the gray hairs and are creating them for yourself. I have some, too. I pull one once in a while when it shows too bad, and when I do, I say, “You little devil you, you can be seen a mile away —out you come!” and that is the end of it. They come and go, and I haven’t any more today than I had forty years ago. One of the girls in the office told me that where one is pulled out, ten will come back in its place. I laughed and said, “Oh, mother! I should be completely gray then.” I make fun of it and forget it. That is the way out.

As you think, so it is. As you believe, so you are creating. If you center your mind and concentrate it on doing some­thing novo, at all times now, you will not have any sickness or any troubles. If your sweetheart dies, that is the end of it. There is the tombstone—don’t live for the tombstone. Live for novo. Don’t give sympathy and tears to everyone; give smiles and sunshine. Forget the thoughts that are depressing you.

You may say that is a hard philosophy, without feelings or sentiment. My dear people, you will find that you are bet­ter off without feelings or sentiment, and far more construc­tive. Sentiment is destructive: it is destructive to yourself and to those around you. I have no sentiment, no feelings, but I have a great love for humanity. No matter what is necessary for the good, I am willing to do it.

I am going to tell you the story of an English lady whom I thought a great deal of. One day we were riding, and her horse stumbled. She fell, and both of her shoulders were dis­located. There is nothing more painful than dislocated shoul­ders; it causes more suffering than an arm broken in ten places. I dismounted, saw the situation, and looked at her coldly—without feelings or sentiment, studying what was the best thing to do. We were eight or nine miles away from any help, and even if I had gone after help, every moment would have meant torture to the woman. So I knelt down be­side her, started to touch her and she screamed! Then I said very harshly, “Come on, scream again! I will make you know what’s what!” To her it seemed cruel, naturally, until she fainted; and that was all I wanted. The moment she fainted, she relaxed completely, and by one movement I put both of her arms back in place. When she became conscious and looked at me, hate was in her eyes. I smiled and said, “No, my dear girl, it was not cruelty—it was the easiest way out. I was searing my own soul in order to help you.” That is the great love, the constructive love.

Get away from sentimental thoughts of pity and sympathy, which are not constructive. Center your mind on doing something that will help. See means and ways; analyze the problem. That will produce results.

Trouble will come upon you, trials will come to you until you are forced to do something. And if with your sympathy you try to ward off those troubles and trials from others, you are only preventing the growth and development of those you are trying to protect. I know. The old teachings of fool­ish sentiment, of sympathy and pity, are not constructive; it has been proven so. Use your brain to see the best way out, the right, the constructive way. Then you will be of great good.

It behooves you then to use that great power you have here in your brain, instead of going along in life with your eyes closed, seeing nothing but tragedies and miseries, envel­oped with that sense of self-pity. Be wide awake, watch everything, put the question mark in your brain, make the ef­fort to develop yourself; and you will have happiness, you will have health, you will have the best there is in life. That is the price if you want happiness, health and success, which are the three great things human beings are seeking. There is but one way. Don’t wait for a chance; if you do, you will never have it. Don’t wait for opportunities, but create them with your own activity of mind.

If you develop that great power within you (and I have shown you what the possibilities are), if you use it, you will not be “dead ones.” I once gave a lecture entitled, “Are You Alive?” As I closed, I looked the audience over and said, “Keep the question mark above your heads; you need to.”

When I stand on the street corners, what do I mostly see? People going along without any sense of observation, with­out an awakened mind, without any interest—just walking dead ones, alive from the eyes down—big from there down, but small from the eyes up. Physical activity without the mental is worth only a few dollars a day to you; an active brain is worth millions—that is the difference. From the eyes down, you will find misery and sickness; from the eyes up, you will find happiness and health. It all depends on the use of the brain. Don’t be a fanatic, but seek and thou shalt find. Make the effort to develop the wonderful power that you have within, and you will triumph over your handicaps, your miseries and your ills, becoming of greater good to yourself, to those around you and to your fellowmen.

HOW TO OVERCOME YOUR MENTAL HANDICAPS

The Heavy Load Upon Your Back

Years ago humanity looked to some God to make their lives; they thought there was an outside power that caused everything in their destiny. But gradually humanity has com­menced to realize that their lives are governed by definite Laws of Cause and Effect.

Tonight I am going to talk about the individual, his life and his handicaps—the handicaps which are preventing him from getting the best to be had from life.

When I think of a human being, I compare him to a turtle, barely crawling, with a heavy load upon his back; and that heavy load is his handicaps. Most individuals are too lazy mentally to analyze themselves and find out what those hand­icaps are and seek to overcome and remedy them. Conse­quently, their lives are worthless to themselves and to oth­ers, because as you are, so you are influencing those around you. It will be a revelation to you to see how many handicaps human beings are laboring under. Each handicap can be elim­inated very easily, very quickly, by making efforts according to the universal Law of Compensation. God will not remove them for you; you will have to remove them yourself. God helps those who help themselves.

Self-Analysis

Look at yourself squarely in the looking glass, analyze yourself, see your faults, recognize your handicaps, and then fight to overcome them—fight in the game of life. Life is a fight: it is a fight in which the fit win and the misfit and unfit lose. It is a fight to overcome all adverse conditions.

By analyzing yourself, you can learn what your handicaps are, the handicaps that are a load upon your back.

Ask yourself: Am I emotional? Am I self-conscious?

Am I timid, nervous, hysterical?

Am I self-centered, egotistic?

Do I envy others?

Am I selfish?

Many people will have to answer affirmatively.

Ask yourself if you are solicitous of others. It is very dan­gerous.

Ask yourself if you are despondent.

Easily confused? Impulsive? Excitable? Cruel?

Are you lazy? Superstitious?

What about tolerance? Are you tolerant of others, of their ideas and beliefs?

Are you an easy prey to doubts? Do you forget things eas­ily or does your memory serve you well?

Do you boast about yourself, about what you have or do?

Are you sensitive—easily hurt? Are you given to vague imaginings, to daydreaming?

Are you easily influenced by others? Are you jealous?

If you must reply Yes to all or most of these questions, you have a great load upon your back.

Are you a poor loser or a good one?

How vain are you?

Are you always in control of yourself, always self-confi­dent?

Do you let people walk all over you because you lack self-assertiveness? Most people are weaklings, who do not think for themselves.

Do you lack positiveness?

Do you crave sympathy? Do you magnify the truth? Do you belittle others, thinking to make yourself more impor­tant?

Do you procrastinate—put off acting?

Do you get angry easily?

Do you gamble and drink habitually?

Do you fear?

Fear is a great handicap, my dear people—a great handi­cap to the human mind. It takes so many forms, creeps into your life in so many ways. The things people fear are almost without number: some fear crowds, some insanity, others fear disease. There is the fear of falling, of high places, of danger, of troubles, fear of others or of one particular per­son, fear of physical pain, of lightning, of darkness, of being alone. Some people fear open spaces, others fear enclosures; there is the fear of failure—many have this. And many fear doing or saying the wrong thing.

Do you have unnatural habits and desires? Are you always or often embarrassed?

Do you feel superior to others? Or inferior to them?

Do you pity yourself? Are you self-righteous?

Are you money crazy, pleasure crazy?

Ask yourself if you are forgiving. How few are forgiving!

Are you reliable; can people depend on you, on what you say?

Are you punctual? Do you value time?

Are you studious and observant? Are you energetic?

Are you appreciative—grateful for what others do for you?

Are you truthful? Humble?

And, very important, do you have a questioning mind?

If you will sit down and analyze yourself honestly, an­swering these questions, you will be astounded to see how many handicaps you are laboring under. I am here to give you the realities of life, to paint the picture just as it is and to say to you, “Here it is—look at it. Here is the mirror—look at yourself.”

To show you how few really see themselves and their handicaps as they actually are, I will cite you an incident that happened in a restaurant one day. I had been going to this restaurant every day to eat. There were two tables usually reserved for a group of politician-lawyers—and one noon I happened to sit down a couple of tables away from them. One of them—a fleshy, bald-headed man—looked at me and pointed, speaking to the waitress. He said something; she laughed. And then they all laughed. I smiled. I use a business card with my photograph on the back. I took one of those cards and pasted it with some syrup to a piece of paper that I had in my pocket. Underneath this picture, I wrote: “Look at this and laugh; then look in the looking glass and you will die laughing.” I walked over to their table, handed it to them and said, “Here, I have something for you.” I wish you could have seen the faces of those men.

Poor creatures—never seeing themselves as they are, but always ready to mock or condemn or criticize. The big mind does not do those things; it is only the little fellow who tries to kid himself into something that he is not; that is why he is the little fellow—that is one of his handicaps.

A View of Your Handicaps

Selfishness. Selfishness is the greatest human crime.

How many people are selfish and are hurting other people! Here again the Law of Compensation comes into effect, for by hurting other people, you are hurting yourselves—it comes back to you. Some of our wealthiest men get their money by hurting others, and what does their money give them? Misery all their lives and, often, ill health. So they get what they go after, but that is all they get—money. You know the words in your Bible, “For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” He is unhappy, miserable, and what good is that money to him?

Selfishness is the greatest human crime. The human being is a poor little nonentity who thinks that he means every­thing. But he doesn’t amount to even a little gust of wind. He came into the world with nothing and he leaves it with noth­ing—and what he has is not his: it is to be used for good. If he is fortunate enough to have money and to use that money constructively in service to his fellowmen—helping them to help themselves—his money will give him happiness and health, and he will have everything that life can give. But when he uses it selfishly, it brings him nothing but turmoil, disharmony, and unhappiness.

Intolerance. How many people are intolerant of others’ beliefs and ideas! always thinking, “My way—what I say is the thing; I know—nobody else knows.” That person is shunned and has no friends at his time of need. Intolerance is a form of selfishness: condemning your fellowman for not thinking and acting as you do.

Superiority Complex. Many have feelings of inferiority and superiority, and the feeling of superiority is just as de­structive as that of inferiority. Poor little human beings, deluded with their self-importance. The feeling of superi­ority is a great handicap. It prevents you from doing things which would aid you to success, because you feel superior, and think: “I wouldn’t do that, I am too good for that.”

No one is your inferior. No one is your superior. Life is give and take. And you need the laborer as much as he needs you: he means just as much in this universe as the king or anybody else. So there is no reason to feel superior or infe­rior. I have more respect for the ditch digger than I have for those with the sense of superiority, because at least he is doing something for his fellowman—rendering service; the others are getting. Ancestry, society, position, and all that— they are not worth a thing; it is what you do and what you are that counts. When you have given the best there is in you to your fellowman in activity and service, then you can have that sense of peace and calmness which tells you, “I have done my duty; I am worthwhile.” But you are never better than the other fellow.

Egotism. When you are trying to overcome circumstances and to become strong, you are playing the game of life; but because you are doing that does not mean that you deserve to be praised, for you are only doing the things that you are in this world to do. If you are not active and doing something worthwhile, you are a weakling; so do not look for praises and do not have that sense of egotism. The truly great man or woman is humble, while the one who tries to camouflage to make other people think he is big, is only deluding and fooling himself.

How many belittle others! So often they say: “That fel­low, I don’t see how he made it. He hasn’t any education; it’s ‘luck’ with him.” No, my dear people, it is not luck; he had a mind and he used it. You want to find excuses for your smallness. When I see a man who has made good, I say, “That fellow has something in him. He is worthwhile.” I don’t say, “Oh, I wish I were he; I wish I had his ‘luck.’ ” You weak­ling! You didn’t have the strength. That is the truth. If people would realize their own smallness about those things!

Jealousy and Envy. When a businessman is envious of an­other man because of his success, he is telling the world how much of a failure he is. It really denotes how he is standing.

How many married men and women or sweethearts are jealous! Jealousy not only makes miserable the person you subject to it but it also makes you miserable. That sense of possession in marriage is destructive just as slavery is destruc­tive . . . Jealousy is a heavy load upon your shoulders; it is holding you down.

Another thing I teach is appreciation for those who per­form services for you: the elevator boys, the street sweepers, and all the others. Remember, they are showing you a cour­tesy in doing things for you (no one owes the individual any­thing), and without those services, most of you would find yourselves helpless. If it were not for the elevator boy, you would have to walk up stairs; if it were not for the street sweeper, you would have to walk in filth. So each is render­ing service. Why not acknowledge that service and thank them for it? Show appreciation no matter who they are; then you are in harmony—you feel good—and they all want to do things for you.

Lack of appreciation is a load the selfish person carries on his back; so is ingratitude, so is cruelty, so is the holding of a grudge, unwillingness to forgive.

Forgive! No matter what is done to you, forgive. Forget it. Drop it from your mind. Then it is no longer a load for you to carry.

Fears and Doubts. Fears and doubts are indeed your great handicaps.

Fear goes hand in hand with superstition; it produces ob­sessions of all kinds.

To show you how strangely fear complexes work, I will tell you of a very unusual case I had. I was in New Orleans and a young woman came all the way from Los Angeles to see me. She told me that she had a deadly fear of going up or down a stairway, which had caused her many painful accidents.

I asked about her work. She said: “I am a stunt flyer in the movies. When I am one or two thousand feet in the air, I get on the wing of the plane and hold on by one hand. I go down a rope hanging from the plane, then up again, and stand on one foot or one hand on the side of the plane when it is dipping.”

“You have no fear then?” I asked.

“No,” she replied, “the only thing that causes me to fear is going up or down a stairway.”

In order to help this young woman overcome her com­plex, I produced a situation which compelled her to go up the stairs quickly and right back down again; and from then on, that fear was completely eliminated from her mind.

Again, there is the fear of being alone. I had a woman tell me that she had the fear of being alone. She said, “I may be in a crowd at twelve o’clock noon when the streets are packed, but if I have no one with me, that fear grips me. To drive a car alone would be out of the question because I would lose my head.”

I analyzed her and found that once, while she was sick and in a semi-conscious state, she had dreamed that the whole world had been destroyed and she was left all alone. This impressed her so much that when she came to full conscious­ness, it kept on pushing up to her thoughts. During the dream, that fear was implanted there and it was reflected in her mind. I made the woman take her car and drive all around the block alone, and I had her work until she finally overcame that fear.

Instead of running away from any fear, face it, fight it, and the first thing you know, you will have overcome it in an easy way. Then it is over with.

Fear of failure, fear of doing or saying the wrong thing, fear of being misjudged, of being ridiculed. Many have fears of this kind. They are doubtful, have no faith in themselves, no faith in anything. Those who have such fears are the weak.

They do not meet their problems now but, instead, put off solving them.

The successful man or woman has self-confidence, self-assertiveness. He has fears, yes. Everyone has fears. But the successful man overcomes them, he masters them. He is mas­ter of the situation, master of himself, master of his fears; and no matter what situation he is in, he comes back to the top. The strong man faces the situation, he does not turn tail on any problem. He meets his handicaps and his environ­ments; he does not lie down.

Most human beings are afraid of being ridiculed, afraid of expressing their own ideas and their own beliefs. Why? What does it matter what other people think? If a thing is worthwhile to you, that is all that counts. Constant fear that some­one will misjudge or criticize you results in self-conscious­ness, and soon produces many undesirable complexes.

Self-consciousness has many undesirable consequences. It results in feelings of inferiority—an inferiority complex; in feelings of compulsion, in chronic embarrassment. Often it means lack of self-control, of self-confidence, lack of self-assertiveness, of positiveness. Many self-conscious people stammer; many procrastinate, put off acting.

How many people are self-conscious! And it is because they think of themselves most of the time. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be self-conscious.

I had a little secretary in Jacksonville, Florida. She had a wonderful brain but was very self-conscious. I wanted to help the girl, to develop her, so I started sending her to inter­view men and women about my work. The first one I sent her to see was the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. When she left, I said:

“Mabel, stay with it—don’t come back until you have seen him.” I could see the fear in her eyes, and I said, “Go on now, you’ll make it!”

She told me afterward that when she got to the Chamber of Commerce building, she walked around the block half a dozen times and started to come back, but she knew that if she came back and had not made the attempt, I would remon­strate. She finally “got herself together” and forced herself to go in. In a meek way she asked the girl at the information desk if she could see the secretary, really hoping within her­self that he would not be there. But he happened to be there, and the girl told her to go right in to see him. When she went in, she trembled all over because she expected to meet a hard man, one who was forceful and all that. But to her astonish­ment, he was easy to talk to, and in a few moments she felt at home. She had won her battle! The big fight went on while she was walking around the block so many times, and she finally conquered.

Self-consciousness is one of the principal handicaps. A form of it is stage-fright; I know the feeling. Just at the last mo­ment, when you are about to meet the person, a lump comes up here, in the throat, and you feel as though your heart is about to go to pieces.

It is the one who says, “No, I am power. I have just as much force as the other person, and I can meet his thoughts,” who wins.

No human being is so formidable that you need fear to meet him.

If you are self-conscious, you won’t be able to meet cir­cumstances.

There came to me a girl who had gone to the lowest of the low, and she said, “Oh, Doctor, there’s no chance—for me!”

I said: “Yes, there is, little girl. It is only that you are the victim of circumstances. Now it is for you to become strong enough to overcome circumstances.” And she did. Today she is in business and a fine woman. But she was willing to make the effort.

Self-consciousness will prevent you from overcoming cir­cumstances.

You know, when you have learned to concentrate your mind on now, continually now, you won’t be self-conscious. Question your mind, asking, “What am I going to do now?” “Oh, this!” All right, then, let’s do it. Concentrate on the doing of the thing, not on self or on fears or on doubts.

Faith! Faith is the force—not religious faith only, but just faith: faith in yourself, faith in your own strength, in your power; that is what overcomes self-consciousness—the establishing of that faith. The way to establish it is to meet the problem instead of running away from it.

Self-consciousness is an inferiority complex—fear of being misjudged. And naturally you are misjudged when you fear it because that is what you radiate. What do you care what people say or think about you, or how much they look at you? Do they mean anything to you? Are they going to make your life? Are they going to make you well? Are they going to make you happy? No! So why care about them? And when you have learned to not care what people say or think, then you have no self-consciousness.

Men and women are so concerned about themselves, keep their own thoughts so continually on themselves, that when the time of need comes, they are all in a flurry, they are afraid to meet a person and to speak out—they feel small. It is a sense of inferiority.

When you meet a person, don’t be looking for something from him, but have the attitude of mind of giving something constructive to the other person all the time.

Lack of positiveness! How few people are positive! How susceptible they are to suggestion!

I was with J. P. Morgan in his office once when his secre­tary opened the door and said, “Mr. Morgan, I beg your pardon, but you have an appointment to see Mr. P—————- , the

car dealer.”

Mr. Morgan said, “All right, let him come in.”

The man entered and said, “How do you do, Mr. Morgan. Let me show you. . . .”

But Mr. Morgan said firmly, “Wait a minute. I have looked over your pamphlet. My secretary will fix up the financial arrangements. Good evening.” There was no halfway about it, no hesitation. That is positiveness.

Positiveness is to mean what you say. How many people say “Yes,” but negatively. That is where the other fellow gets the best of you. He knows it is a negative “yes” or “no,” and he is going to persuade you to think just the opposite of what you have said. I am positive—not negative—and positiveness should be a force behind you. When people come to me, to many of them I say, “Oh, my, I wish you would get angry. It would give you the force to do something, because you certainly haven’t any now.”

Do not entertain destructive suggestions from anyone. Many a businessman has failed because he took to heart a destructive suggestion from one of his “best friends.” Some­body told him he looked sick; he took it up and that was the beginning of self-centering. His mind dwelt on himself in­stead of on his business. It is just as easy to give constructive words as to give destructive ones. But most human beings would rather give you the suggestion that you are going to fail (trying to belittle you to enhance themselves) than to tell you that you are going to succeed. Rise above those in­fluences.

Give constructive suggestions to your friends and those with whom you come in contact. Then they will want to have you around. But when you commence to talk about your little petty affairs, about what you ate this morning, and the like, they want to keep away from you.

Ask yourself: Am I timid? easily confused? doubtful? for­getful? undecided? self-centered?

The basic reason for all these is self-consciousness—the thought of self.

The emotions can impose severe handicaps on you.

Ask yourself: Am I emotional? overanxious? impatient? easily angered? hysterical? excitable? given to vague or om­inous imaginings? nervous? impulsive? easily hurt? easily influenced? a poor loser?

How many people are emotional! And why? Because they are living in memories of the past, often in memories of their loved ones who are dead. I had a case a few days ago, a girl and all she would talk about was her dead mother. She had worked herself up to a mental disturbance until she was al­most insane. Yesterday, last week, or last month, is a ceme­tery, nothing but tombstones. Why live in that cemetery with those tombstones? They will simply work you up into a men­tal turmoil, making you unfit to meet the battles of real life.

If you have made mistakes, recognize them, but don’t re­peat them or live in them. If you have had tragedies, they are past, so forget them. When I leave a city, it is left behind, because I am living now. Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, I am living there—not in the tragedies of the past. If I were, I would not be here before you now, because if you knew what I have gone through with these teachings, you would know why I would not be here now. I accept and make the most of whatever happens; and years ago when I was stoned out of a city, I went to the next one and did the same thing again, and enjoyed it. I was helping the people and giving them something, not living in the tragedies of those rocks and things like that. That is why I am young and happy and never sick.

I tell you there are two things that will give you the best in life, that will overcome all your handicaps, and those two things are forgetting yourself and concentrating on what you are doing now.

Impatience—wanting results at once. I see it every day also. Oh yes, they want to make money and they want to make money right now. They are not willing to lay down a stable foundation first; and they don’t get results. A building must be built slowly and gradually until its completion. People like that are in a mental turmoil, completely at a loss, wanting to get it now. The impatience of human beings is a great handicap. If a man visualizes or sees what he wants to accomplish, and then concentrates his mind on each step go­ing up, that is the way he gets there.

Are you easily angered? Don’t lose your temper because the other person doesn’t want to do as you want him to do, or because he won’t believe what you want him to believe. Instead smile and think, “Am I right? I think I know, but do I?”

Are you hysterical, excitable? Whenever you permit your­self to be so worked up over anything that you become hys­terical and emotional and then depressed, it is dangerous and you pay the price.

Do you act impulsively? How many men and women are victims of their impulses! In acting on impulses, you are use­lessly throwing out an enormous amount of energy because you will have to do it over again and repair the mistakes you have made. By stopping for a few moments and using your mentality, you would have saved yourself all that.

Have I feelings of self-pity and despondency? Am I over- sympathetic and sentimental? Do I crave sympathy? Ask yourself these questions and answer honestly.

Self-Pity—the feeling that the world is against you. The world is not against you. It is you who are the cause of your tragedies, your failures and everything else. Self-pity is an emotion that is very destructive.

So is despondency. How many people permit themselves by their own selfishness and egotism to become despondent, taking tragedies and troubles unto themselves! By living now, instead of in the memories of the past, you would never be despondent.

Just after the boom in Florida when many men went to the wall in Miami and other places, they drifted to the north­ern part of the state. I was located there at the time, and I helped many of them out. They were crushed. One man who came to me was limp with self-pity. I asked him what was the matter, and he said, “Doctor, I have lost everything I had.”  ~

I said, “Well, I have lost everything a good many times. What about it!”

“I cannot get a job to support my wife and baby. I have a little job that pays me about seventy-five dollars a month, and that doesn’t even pay expenses. It is slavery. I used to be a passenger agent for one of the large railroads.” He had given up his position to go to Florida where he had invested all his money, and, like a good many others, had lost it.

I looked him over and said, “Do you know what I think of you? You are yellow—just as yellow as you can be! You are just like a jelly fish that anything can crush.” And I called that man every name I could think of, but he took it all.

He had shown me a picture of his wife and baby, but he only talked about and pitied himself. I said, “By the way, you have a wife and baby, haven’t you? Your wife is quite pretty, isn’t she?”

He looked at me, and I saw that I had struck home: he loved her. I said, “It would be a blessing indeed if some man were to take her from you. At least she would get the things worthwhile in life. I know a man who will do that, and I am going to send him to your city.”

He was ready to fight. When I got him completely in the fighting spirit, I laughed and said: “Now, young man, you want to fight me now! Why don’t you go out and fight for that wife and baby of yours, you coward, you?”

He gripped himself and said, “Thank you, Doctor, good­bye.”

I had brought him back to himself.

My dear people, he went to the Chamber of Commerce, fought his way in, and said, “You have got to give me some­thing to do.”

They liked his self-assertiveness. All human beings admire the strong man or woman and they despise the weakling. When you show your fellowman that you are a fighter, he will help you to get up. So when this young fellow made his wants known, the Chamber of Commerce said, “We have a job for you; you are going to get memberships for us.” He made a success of that, and later became one of the biggest men of Jacksonville, Florida. I made him forget himself.

So many have that sense of self-pity and despondency, per­mitting little things to crush them.

How many people are over-sympathetic! How destructive that is to you! Don’t crave sympathy. Look upon the one who sympathizes with you as your worst enemy. I am going to prove it to you: You have a headache, and one of your sympathetic friends comes in and says, “What is the matter, dear?”

You say, “Oh, my head!”

“I feel so sorry for you. Let me rub your head and put some cold cloths on it.” And how you love it, don’t you! But it makes your head feel that much worse.

That sympathetic friend leaves, and a “good fellow” comes in and says, “What’s the matter with you?”

“Oh, my head,” you say.

“Forget about it,” he says. “Listen, did you hear the latest?” And he keeps on getting you interested and getting your thoughts in a different channel, tells you a few jokes, and in a short time you are laughing and enjoying yourself, and have forgotten your headache. I am giving you that example because you know it is true: it has happened to you.

And in life there should be no sentiment, no one catering to you and pitying you. That is not constructive for you. Give people the means to help themselves, yes—but without pity or feelings. The greater love has no sentiment, but it is willing to do anything that is for the good of the one that is loved. That is the constructive love.

Learn to scatter smiles and sunshine around you, give good thoughts, kind words, constructive words to those who come in contact with you, never complaining about your own trag­edies and ills, but instead cheering those who are with you. It will all come back in reflection upon you, which will mean happiness and peace.

Mental lethargy means sluggish mental habits, it means laziness, poor memory, slow thinking, unreliability.

It is the tendency of all living things to follow the line of least resistance. Life is activity, and there is a tendency to­ward slowing down in all activity. But then the Law is there: the Law of evolution and progress, or continuous changes; and when you try to follow the line of least resistance, you are going to find yourself full of troubles. And troubles are a blessing to you then, because they help to force you to do something, to become mentally active until you solve those problems.

That is the trouble with human beings today: they are mentally lazy. They go to great exertion to prevent them­selves from thinking for five minutes: thinking is the hardest labor they possibly can have. And that is the disease that is affecting ninety-nine per cent of humanity—mental lethargy. It is the worst disease on the face of this earth. It is far more deadly, far more destructive than cancer, tuberculosis, or any of the physical ills, because it is the cause of such ills.

Most people go along in life with their heads way up in the clouds without seeing anything. They are just in dream­land, and if they look at anything, it is with just a passing glance. The Kiwanis Club of a certain city in the South once asked me to give them a talk. When I came before them, the president asked me what I was going to talk about. I was watching them, and I noticed that two or three were almost asleep. So I said my subject would be, “Are You Alive?” When I started to speak, I said:

“Gentlemen, a very appropriate question for you is ‘Are You Alive?’ Do you know what you remind me of? You make me think of a cow standing in her pasture in the heat of the day with her eyes closed, chewing her cud. She is liv­ing, but that is all. A few days ago I started to go to the cemetery to see if I could see some ghosts, but on my way I found I didn’t have to go that far. I could stand on the comer of any street and see them go by—walking dead ones. The only difference between them and those six feet under the ground is that they are too lazy to close their eyes. They never use the question mark: they are never awake, they never see what is going on.”

My dear people, what part is your brain playing in your life? Keep the question mark before you and analyze things, be observant, and then you will develop a wonderful knowl­edge—not by the reading of books. Be mentally active! In­stead of saying, “There is nothing to it,” say, “I am going to find out.” Question! Search! Then the truth will unfold to you. It is the inquisitive mind, the questioning mind that re­ceives knowledge.

How few are punctual! Remember, time is a thing of great value, and what you receive from life depends on how you make use of it. If you lose and waste your time, you are not accomplishing things.

A certain millionaire in the South, a lumberman, had in prospect a big deal that involved about eight million dollars. It was during World War I, and he communicated with con­tractors in New York to furnish them the lumber. He re­ceived a wire from one of them asking him to be at his office in New York at one o’clock on a certain day. He arrived there at one-twenty instead of one, and the secretary would not allow him to see the man. “But,” he said, “I had an ap­pointment with him.”

“Yes,” the secretary said, “at one o’clock, but this is one-twenty. You cannot see Mr. X————- now; he is very busy.”

About ten minutes later the man he had been interviewing left, and this lumberman pushed himself into the contractor’s office and said, “Here is my card. I came to see you about a deal.”

“I am sorry,” the contractor replied, “but I just closed the deal with the man you saw going out.”

The lumberman was too late.

How Handicaps May Be Overcome

There are two things that will eliminate all handicaps. One is forgetting yourself. The more you think about yourself, the more troubles you are heaping upon yourself; the less you think about yourself, the happier and the healthier and the more successful you will be, because your mind will be clear, at peace. It is selfishness—it is thought of self continu­ally—that brings all those inharmonious conditions.

The other method of eliminating handicaps is concentra­tion on what you are doing now. It will remove fears of all kinds, because it is impossible for you to have your mind on thoughts of fear and at the same time be thinking of what you are doing; and if your mind is concentrated on what you are doing now, you will eliminate those handicaps. By letting your thoughts jump here and there, you are permitting fears and doubts and all those other handicaps to come in and over­come your interest in what you are doing now, and that pre­vents you from accomplishing what you should. Forgetting yourself and concentrating your mind on what you are doing now, at all times now, will eliminate all those fears, doubts and handicaps.

Most human beings have fears of some kind that have been implanted, and I will say to you that the thoughts of the mother at the time the child is in-the-making have a great deal to do with implanting those fears. But inheritance is no excuse because that is for you to overcome. That is why you are here. Life presents troubles and forces you to activity to help you overcome your handicaps; and it is good, because if life were smooth and you had no troubles or tragedies, you would not make the effort to develop. It is you who must make the effort, and troubles get you down and force you to do something for yourself. These are the workings of that eternal and spiritual Law of Evolution and Progress. If it were not for that, there would be no progress. Instead of taking troubles unto yourself, it is for you to overcome them.

My dear people, there is a great Law which states that either you are the master or the other thing is master—no matter what it may be: a human being, an animal, circum­stance, environment, or handicaps. By positive concentration, you are the master. I am going to show you that concentra­tion does it: The man who goes into the lion’s or tiger’s den, through his concentration of mind, has no fear. No fear thought can come in because his mind is concentrated on but one thing, “Come on, lion, do what I want you to do.” He is the master of the lion; but if he feared the lion, it would master him and would get him. That shows you that by con­centration and positiveness, you can master any situation in your life.

It’s Up To You

Each one, no matter in what strata of society, whether rich or poor, is born with handicaps of all kinds; and as you make the effort to overcome prenatal impressions, environment, and circumstances, it makes you that much stronger. Don’t be a victim of environment, a victim of circumstances, a vic­tim of fears, of doubts, a victim of obsessions. Be the strong character that rises above those handicaps by your own ef­fort, by mind.

If you have handicaps and are not willing to work to over­come them, to understand yourself and that great power within you, you will never accomplish anything. You are not here in a helter-skelter, chaotic way, but you are living ac­cording to certain definite Laws, and you have to understand and obey those Laws. You should make the effort to under­stand the Laws that govern you; but as long as you shift the responsibility to the other fellow, saying, “Let George do it,” or “Let God do it,” you are a weakling and you are not get­ting anything from life. When you see that it is you who are failing and it is you who are not willing to do the things necessary, then and only then will you develop and grow, becoming a power, and worthwhile.

The Law of Compensation is ever there: As you give to Life and your fellowmen, so shall you receive from Life and your fellowmen. And if you do not rise above your own dis­harmony and handicaps, you will not receive much from Life. So give efforts; work to do the things necessary to help your­self, and thus you will learn to overcome your handicaps— to throw off that load that you carry along in life.

CO-OPERATION BETWEEN EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE

My dear people, how little co-operation do I see between employees and employers!

How little care most of the employees have about their work! When I stand on the corner of the street and see these men and young girls and women go by, I look at them and think how little development they have. They have a job, working so many hours a day, giving the least efforts possi­ble for so much money; and in twenty or thirty years, they will be just about where they are today—still with a job, still giving the least possible and expecting the most. And when they find they don’t get the most, they become radicals and everything else, and think, with self-pity, “The employer, or corporations, are misusing me, poor little human being!”

As long as you have that sense of self-pity, that sense of wrong, thinking you are being mistreated by your employer, you are remaining stationary and are not developing. But when you see yourself just as you are, with your handicaps, and then seek the way out to overcome them, then you are on the way up.

My dear people, the purpose of the New Teachings is not to give you something way up in the clouds, out of your reach, but something that is constructive to you right now, that will help you to help yourself. And when I give you the painting of the picture as it really is, it is not to antagonize you but to make you see the realities, so that you can fight your way to better yourself—to greater things, to higher things.

The “little man” and “little woman” remain crawling with their heavy load of handicaps all throughout their lives, in­stead of seeking the way to overcome them. That is what makes the difference between the little man and the big man. The little man doesn’t try to develop and use his mind, or to master himself. From his neck down, a man is worth only a few dollars a day; but from his neck up, he is worth billions, according to the effort that he makes. If he uses little of his mind, he is worth little; but if he uses a great deal, he is worth much more to himself and to his fellowman. The Law of Compensation works at all times: The more you use your mind and make the effort to use it, the more compensation you have.

My dear people, there is never an employee. You are never working for somebody else—you are always working for yourself. Even if you are being paid by a corporation or an individual for your labor, still you are not working for that corporation or that individual—you are working for your­self.

If you have the attitude of mind that you are working for an individual or a corporation, you are the type that wants to give the least possible for the most money, and after you have been working like that for fifty years, you still will not have advanced any. But the one who is interested in every­thing he does—trying to improve it—getting ideas, devising means that will make his work better, easier, and less costly, that employee is going to progress and get there. The man who was a little clerk in a bank, or in a department store, or who was a mechanic in a shop, but who has become owner of that same bank, that same department store, or that same shop—he is the one who was working for himself. He was not working for anyone but himself. Everything he does, he does as if it were for himself; he was not working for any boss—that is why he became boss.

So often they come to me with their weaknesses, their excuses (the man or the woman with that self-pity), thinking the world is against them. “Oh, yes, I am all right but the world is all wrong,” they say. “The employers are unappre­ciative—they don’t care about the working person!”

I smile and say, “Don’t you believe they don’t care! Don’t you believe they aren’t appreciative! Do you know what is wrong? It is you, with your mental lethargy, mental lazi­ness.”

You think that your employer, whether an individual or a corporation, is ungrateful; you think that if you give a little spurt of activity as you go along, your supervisors should fall all over you, put their arms around you, telling you how grateful they are to you for making that little spurt. If you work with the best in you for one day, you think, “Oh, my, they should be at my feet for it.” It is only spurts with you, but when you give the best there is in you now, at all times now, don’t believe that it will not be recognized! The em­ployer soon knows whether you are a worthwhile employee.

I will cite you a story from my bag of examples. (And it is an enormous bag because every day different types of people come to me. I deal with all kinds of human problems and tragedies, so I have many experiences to draw from.)

How many girls tell me the same thing! That they have been working for a firm for ten years but their salaries have been advanced only a few dollars in all that time. And they think it is unjust and the employer is unfair.

I knew a secretary who worked for an old man who was a dyspeptic and a crank and very quick-tempered. She worked for him five years, and she did all kinds of little things she didn’t have to do. For instance, when he would have one of his dyspeptic spells, she would fix up soup and little things like that. She did everything for him, but seemingly, there was no appreciation on his part—he was always gruff.

But after five years, the man died. And she was astounded when the will was read, to learn that he had left her one hun­dred thousand dollars in gratitude for all her services during those years. It was the workings of the Law of Compensa­tion.

I am going to give you different types of examples to show you how that inevitable Law of Compensation works. But don’t expect that Law to bring you millions by giving little spurts of effort. That is not the Law; it works by continuous efforts, and the more you put in, the more comes back to you.

A young fellow about twenty-two years old, in Oklahoma, went to work for an oil company. He had a general educa­tion and started to work as a pipe-fitter, making good money (because the large corporations pay well). Did he spend his spare time carousing and drinking? No. He spent his evenings studying. He would shed his muddy overalls, and go to his little room to study. Gradually, he got better positions. He wasn’t conscious of it, but shortly after he had come there, the president of the company thought, “I am going to watch that boy; there is something in him. He is giving the best there is in him.”

Steadily the boy was pushed up until he had charge of a big oil station. Then the general manager died. This boy had been with the company seven years, but there were many submanagers who had been with the company twenty and thirty years, and they each thought, “Now I am going to wear those shoes.” They had gradually, with small efforts, gone up to where they were. And they were astounded when this boy, who was about thirty years old, was made general manager of the corporation.

Employers are not ungrateful: they watch; they see; they know. But it is the little employee who is continually blaming the employer instead of himself, seldom making the effort to advance and to put forth the best in himself at all times.

Last night one of my cards announcing these lectures was returned to me in an envelope; and on the back of it there was a stamp which said the printing should be done by union men.

Labor unions would be a fine thing if they would realize that their salvation lies in teaching every man and woman to put forth the best there is in them. But the trouble with most of these unions is their inefficiency in demanding the same salary, same wages, for so much time, giving the least effort possible for it. It is pitiful; I have talked to many employers. A man who owns a large building told me a few days ago that he was entirely helpless because of the union controlling his employees. They tell him whom he should employ, how much he should pay them, and how many hours they should work. The Law of Compensation, my dear people, is not met there; and that is why there is such a turmoil between union men and big capital.

I was watching a building being constructed here in Chi­cago on the corner of Dearborn and Randolph. For two hours I watched the men putting up big pieces of steel to see how much actual work they did. They worked fifteen min­utes; they idled away at least an hour and three-quarters. And those men were being paid generously. Twenty or thirty years from now, they will still be union men, drawing union wages and still giving the least possible for such wages. They will not have advanced.

Mr. Capitalist drives and takes everything he can from the working man; but he is not the only one. So does the work­ing man take everything he can get. The working people have organized themselves to give the least they possibly can and get the most; so it is a fight on both sides—one trying to take from the other. The capitalist is necessary under present conditions, but so is the working man necessary; and instead of one hoping to overthrow the other, there should be co­operation between them.

There are clerks, trusted clerks, forty or fifty years old, who are nothing but little slave machines. They have been working at the same place for twenty or thirty years. They get there at nine o’clock in the morning—oh, my, yes, they are punctual! They go through their routine just as easy, but that is all—they never do anything new. They are the ones who say, “Well, I have been here thirty years and haven’t got anywhere; I am still drawing the same salary, and I have been the best clerk this company has ever had. I am always here on time, even working a little overtime,” and so on. They do not realize that that is not the question.

That reminds me of a case that I watched. A young man went into an office and started to work for the president of the company. He had will power; he had a mind of his own; he was not a weakling! All the other clerks, when the boss came in, were busy—they didn’t even look up. And when the boss called any of them and gave them the dickens, they took it all, afraid of their jobs.

One day the president of the company sent for this young man, and started to give him the dickens. The young man said, “Wait a minute! Don’t talk to me like that! I am not your servant. You are paying me—that is true—but I am giving you plenty in return. I have improved things; I have thought out better methods in my work. You need me as much as I need you. As a matter of fact, I don’t need you. I can find a job somewhere else for I know my own value.”

The boss looked at him! and said, “You have nerve, haven’t you?”

“Yes, certainly, I have nerve; you can’t run over me like that.”

The president said, “All right, go back to your desk.”

The young man turned to the employer and said, “Here, the next time that you have any kick coming, send for me, but treat me like an equal, not an inferior. Good-bye.” The young man walked out, and the president laughed to himself, tickled at the man’s nerve.

In a few weeks, the manager of the company died, and the employees who had been there for ten or twelve years each thought, “This is my chance; I am going to be the one to take his place.”

This young man had been there only a very few months. The president sent for him, and said, “How do you do? You take the manager’s desk; that is your job now.”

And all the rest of the clerks thought that was terrible, saying, “Just think, he has been here only a few months, and we have been here so long!” Yes, but they had been little machines, little weaklings, little slaves, while this young man had brains. He was worthy to be the boss. The others were not: they were not strong enough mentally.

The business world is looking in vain for efficiency—look­ing for men and women with ideas. There is too much ineffi­ciency—too much of doing things as quickly as possible in order to get the most money for what is done—quantity in­stead of quality. And, my dear people, my advice to each of you is to use your head instead of your body; you are worth far more to your employer when you do—jar more.

The one who becomes big is the one who starts down at the bottom and uses his mental power. If that is the case, isn’t it to your benefit to make the effort to develop that power? To quit your mental laziness and seek the way out by un­folding that great power within you? Because, after all, it is Mind that does it. Mind is everything. Mind made this table, those lights. Mind is really the power within you; and if you are too indolent, or lazy, to use that Mind, you don’t get much out of life.

My dear people, I am going to give you a little secret of my own. When I came to Chicago years ago, I gave a lecture to labor union men. I am not much in sympathy with them because they want big money for little service. I was lec­turing to them on that very subject at one of the regular monthly union meetings and I said to them, “It is pitiful to me and it amuses me—the irony of it—to hear you men say­ing that the capitalist is holding you down. The capitalist is not holding you down enough. He ought to take every drop of your blood if you are not willing to do anything for your­self; you want everything, but are not willing to make the effort.

“Let us take five of you, for example. Four of you are what you call good fellows, and you are drawing big wages —about three or four times as much as white-collar office workers are getting. You are getting more than any of them, and yet each one of you considers yourself the poor man who doesn’t have a chance. The four of you have spent your money drinking, in the pool hall, gambling, buying foolish things; and by the end of the week, you owe more than you are drawing. Jones, the fifth one, is not one of the boys, and you hate him for it. He puts his money away. He studies in his little dingy room in order to better himself—to become something better. And after two or three years he passes an examination and becomes a master instead of a worker. He starts a little business of his own, and in a few years becomes a millionaire. The four of you will look at Jones and say, ‘Look at him! He worked with us once. He wasn’t anything, but he became a despised capitalist; he is holding us poor men down.’ But I say that no one is holding you down but yourselves.”

This was about ten o’clock in the morning. Just then one of the leaders of the union men spoke up and said, “Yes! Yes! that is very fine for you to say. You have plenty, you don’t have to buck the game of life.”

“I tell you what I will do,” I replied. “I will start right from this hall without a penny in my pockets, with a suit of overalls on, and I will go out into the world. I am going to make it, and I will come back to you when I have made it. Watch me”

They took me up on the plan. So I called up the hotel where I was living and told the manager to have all of my things put away, as I was not coming back for several months. Then I called the bank and instructed them not to honor any of my checks until I came back to the bank my­self. I changed my clothes, and all I had left was a new suit of overalls, my own shoes, my own hat, shirt, and underwear. But not a penny in my pockets. I left the meeting hall about eleven o’clock that morning.

The first thing I did was to look for work. I knew I would need something to eat and a place to sleep. As I passed by a restaurant, I saw a newspaper lying on one of the tables in­side. I stepped in, looked at the want ads, picked out a few within walking distance, and went to apply. But I found I was about six or seven hours too late. At every place there had been about fifteen or twenty men there before me and someone else had taken the job. I was walking along, study­ing the problem, and on passing by a little restaurant, I saw the sign in the window, “Dishwasher Wanted.” I walked in. There was a man at the cashier’s desk; and I realized he must be the owner, because the restaurant was too small to have a paid cashier. There was one man behind the counter, and one girl to look after five tables. I said to the owner, “How do you do? You want a dishwasher, don’t you? I will take the job!!” and was on my way to the kitchen where I saw a pile of dishes.

There had been no dishes washed since five o’clock that morning, and for the moment I wavered a little, but then I commenced to go after it. The man came to the kitchen after me, and my hands were already in the water, washing dishes. “Wait a minute!” he said, “I haven’t time; I have to get these dishes out.”

“You don’t look like a dishwasher,” he objected,

“Never mind! I am a dishwasher now. Leave me alone. When I get through, I will talk to you.”

At two o’clock, when he came back, I had every dish washed, the cook’s table cleaned, and I was tired. He looked at me in amazement and said, “My! that is the first time this has been cleaned as it is.”

“Yes,” I said, “it needed it!”

He told me to get my dinner and rest until half past five, when I would have to report again and work until eight.

“I have no money,” I said. “Let me have a dollar.”

“Sure, I will let you have two dollars.”

“No, one is all I want.”

My dear people, I got a fifty cent room—it was clean but nothing fancy—and I rested. At five-thirty, I was back on the job and worked until eight. At five o’clock the next morning I was there. By eleven o’clock, the proprietor came to me and said, “Say, I can get a woman to do the dishwash­ing; I think you would be a better man behind the counter.” Fromotion!7 When I got behind the counter, men came and sat and talked with me. I was courteous to them and inter­ested. I would say to one, “Let me give you another piece of butter,” and to another, “Oh, let me fill up your coffee cup.” And they were surprised to receive that kind of treat­ment. The former waiter was a union man, and that was too much for him to do. The men came back and brought others with them, and after only a few days, they would ask for me. They wanted me to wait on them.

In the afternoons, from two to five-thirty, did I idle my time away? No. I gave suggestions to the proprietor. I told him that his show windows looked very dingy, and said, “Let me fix them up for you.” I got some paint and fixed them up attractively. I suggested that he change the covers on the tables often, and not permit them to get spotted, because people love to eat on something clean.

The owner saw that he was getting greater returns, and he let me go ahead. After about three weeks, he had to put an­other girl at the tables, and two more men at the counter. Then one day of the second month he said, “Come home with me; I want to have a talk with you.”

We went to his home, had some cigars, and he said, “It is through your efforts that the business has increased. How would you like to be my partner?”

“No,” I replied. “I wouldn’t care to do that yet; I haven’t any capital.”

“Well,” he said, “you have brains. That is your capital. We will go fifty-fifty and I will play ‘second fiddle.’ ”

“All right,” I agreed, “we will try that for one month, and if things are all right, we will sign a contract, but not before.” I stayed with him for another month or five weeks, and when the day came that these union men met again, I was there with a fine new suit of clothes on, new shoes, and with about seven hundred dollars in my pocket.

The poor man hasn’t got a chance? That is only an excuse. His brain is his chance!

It is pitiful to me to see the disinterest that I find among the employees in certain stores. Not long ago I walked into a store and waited. I saw the employees talking and laughing with one another, and I waited and waited until finally I yelled out, “What is the matter with this store? Doesn’t any­body work here? Aren’t you people being paid? Aren’t you working for it? I have been standing here over fifteen min­utes to be waited on.”

One of the floor men came rushing up to me, and said, “I beg your pardon, what is it?”

“What is it! You are as bad as all the rest of them. If you were on the job, they would be also. And yet I guess you ex­pect to own Marshall Field’s store in a year; and if you don’t, you will blame everyone else except yourself. How long have you been a floor-walker? You look like you are about forty years old; I guess you have been in the same job here twenty years. Bye-bye!” and I walked out.

And those employees think the employer is ungrateful, be­cause after five or ten years they are still behind the counter, drawing about the same wages. They think, “That’s terrible. We poor little unfortunate human beings, we haven’t a chance.”

To those employees I will say: Chance—nothing! No one has a chance; it is you that makes your chance: it is you that grasps, that makes the efforts and creates your own chances. Get it into your minds that the Law of Compensation is an inevitable Law, that you cannot evade it; if you try, you are the one who pays.

I changed the attitude of mind of all the convicts in a peni­tentiary by making them realize that they were there because they had given the worst there was in them and that if they would from then on give the very best in them, they would never get back into the penitentiary again.

Don’t think it is God way up in the sky giving you good or bad luck, or bringing things to you. It is all yourself. God helps those that help themselves. As you give, so shall you receive.

Quit pitying yourself, quit blaming the world, quit blam­ing your employer; but analyze yourself and see how men­tally lazy you are; then make the effort to become mentally active, because what you are worth depends on the mental activity you are putting forth.

Not long ago I was talking to a man who is doing big things, and I asked him if he would tell me his story.

“Doctor Conde,” he said, “I worked in a store as a clerk, and I was interested in all the details about it, and I saw means and ways whereby things could be done quicker and cheaper. I went to my employer and told him how things could be changed to make the business far more productive; and the employer said, ‘Is that so? Yes, you are right.’ ”

And gradually he was pushed to the front, until today he owns not only that store, but a good many others. He was interested in his work—he was giving forth the best there was in him now—at all times now.

So, my dear employees, wake up to the fact that no one is to blame for where you are but yourself. And when you are willing to give your employer the best there is in you, full value for what you get, then you will be deserving of more, and you will get it.

You get out of anything just what you give to that thing —that is the inevitable Law.

Now for the employer. There are too many little employ­ers who were at one time just employees learning the business and who went into the same line for themselves, following the footsteps of their former employers. They in turn try to give their employees the least possible for the most work possible; that is why they remain small businessmen.

But the employer who is interested in the physical and mental welfare of his employees, who helps those that are willing to help themselves to still greater steps—he is the one who is and who does make a big success.

But before becoming a good employer, he must have been a good employee. To be a good general, you must first have learned to be a good soldier—willing at all times to give the best in you—obeying orders to the letter. You have to learn to obey before you can command and expect the others to obey you. And a good, constructive employer must have been a good, constructive employee first.

That is the lesson, and Henry Ford was the best employee and the best employer in this country. I admired him because I have seen his work. I knew him when he was down and when he was a mechanic. He didn’t spend his time wondering whether or not he was going to get drunk that night; but his mind was on how to improve each piece of machinery—how to devise things that would work better.

When Ford saw the wealthy people having the pleasure and convenience of fine cars, he thought of the working man with less ability of acquiring, who could not afford cars. And he thought if they could also have automobiles, it would be the means of bettering them, of urging them to make greater efforts to improve their condition. And his whole soul and mind was intent on inventing an inexpensive engine and mak­ing a car that would be good, yet still be within financial reach of the poor man. He didn’t expect to make the billions that he later made; his mind was on service, on accomplishing something for his fellowman. And when he did devise the engine for that car, I know that Ford walked the streets of Detroit, his family went hungry, and he went hungry. He made every sacrifice, but he kept to it until he had secured the necessary capital. He was willing to do anything for what he wanted. Then he got it; he deserved it. He started his factory, and it grew. The unions tried to break it up by forc­ing him to employ unskilled labor and lazy men, but Ford was too big for them. He said, “No, the Law of Compensation is going to be met: I am going to give every man a chance to put forth the best there is in him, and if he doesn’t, he is out of it.”

Ford tried to better the condition, the mental condition, of his workers by paying them well; and he did pay well, but they had to produce for it. I was in Ford’s factory some years ago, and I also visited another automobile factory in Detroit just to see the difference. At the other factory, I talked with some of the machinists and they would pass time with me talking and explaining everything—they had plenty of time. Then I went to Ford’s factory, stopped a machinist and questioned him. He answered quickly and to the point, and I kept on bothering him with questions until he said: “Wait a minute, I am working for Henry Ford, and I haven’t time to waste. I am being paid for what I am doing—and •well paid—so I must give my time and work, too, and you’ll have to excuse me.” That is what his men were doing. He demanded efficiency; and when he got it, the Law of Com­pensation was fully met. Any ex-convict just coming out of the penitentiary could have a job with Ford the next day, and he was given a chance quicker than any other who was seeking work, but he had to produce.

There is an example of a good employer—not permitting people who do not want to make the effort to help them­selves, to remain on the job, but willing to give to those who are deserving of it. That is the constructive employer.

There are too many little people, with little minds, who are trying to get into the employer’s shoes—trying to be the owners of things.

Some years ago in Colorado there was a mine owner. He had taken over a mine, put it on its feet and was making a big proposition of it. The workers said, “It is not fair that this man should make all the money, and here we are slaving and getting only a pittance.” And they created a great deal of trouble for this owner until finally he decided to give them their lesson. “My dear men,” he said, “you seem to think I am not doing the fair thing with you. I am going to step out. The mine is yours. Go ahead!” And the mine was turned over to them.

What happened? In less than two months, the men sent for him and told him, “Come on, take your mine back; we don’t want it.”

When the men were running the mine, each one had wanted to be the boss, the “big I.” There was dissension among them, and none of them wanted to work hard; and when pay day came, there was no money for them to receive. So when they sent for this owner who had turned over the mine to them, they told him, “You are the boss, you are the one at the head, you are paying our wages. Now we know what you are up against and are willing to work with you.”

My dear people, Co-operation—(and that is what cor­poration should mean)—is a wonderful thing, and it is the salvation of many working people. It is a cold proposition. There is no sentiment about it. Just the same as in my illus­tration about the boy who started as pipe man but became general manager of the firm: you get from these corporations what you deserve, and no more.

I have been in Standard Oil plants all over the United States, and I must say they are one of the best organized companies to be found anywhere. They have a high class of workers, with nice homes; they get good wages, but they must produce. The weakling is out of it; the lazy one is out of it, because the weakling is the lazy one. But the one worthwhile remains with the company with a full chance of going up.

The Law of Compensation is the Law that many of the corporations go by, and those corporations have been a bless­ing in the development of this country. The oil industry, for example, would not have developed to what it is today if it had been left to small business minds instead of the cor­porations; and it is not robbing the people—it is taking with one hand and giving out with the other.

I have had experience with many secretaries. When I started work in this city, I called for a secretary. The appli­cants wanted big salaries. I told one, “My dear girl, I am willing to pay for what I get, but I am not willing to pay for what I do not get. Suppose you try it a week to see what you are going to do. I will pay you what you are worth: if you are worth one hundred dollars, or if you are worth ten dollars, that is what you will get. Are you willing to take that?”

“No, no, I want sixty dollars a week. I will work from nine until five, with Saturdays off.”

And when I mentioned recording my lectures on certain nights, why, that was terrible! She wanted ten dollars a night extra for that. So I thought, “I am going to see how it works out, and give the demonstration.” I let one of that type work for a week; I was to pay her sixty dollars. In five days she had composed four letters. When I would come into the office suddenly, I would find her reading the paper, and often noticed her talking over the phone for half an hour at a time. When I told her that she was worth only twelve dollars a week, she thought I was robbing her but she didn’t think about robbing me!

The next one I kept almost two weeks and gave her a chance, but what did she produce? The same thing. They wanted money, but I didn’t get anything in return. And that is typical of at least ninety per cent of the employees, want­ing everything and giving the least in return. And as long as you have that attitude of mind, you are not deserving of anything, and you never get anything, because that Law of Compensation is a cold law. It has no sentiment—you get back only what you give out.

The way out for the employers and employees then is for both sides to get a better understanding of the Law of Com­pensation: the employee to remember that he is working for himself, that the more effort he makes to develop himself, the greater he will become, the more he will deserve and the more he will get.

And if the employer doesn’t push him along, he will de­velop enough to go somewhere else where he can do some­thing worthwhile instead of lazily staying with the job and blaming the employer all the time, saying, “I have been here five or six years, barely being paid enough to get by.” If there had been anything to him, he wouldn’t have stayed there so long—he would have gone where there was a chance for advancement, where the employer understood the Law of Compensation.

With employers, it is the same thing: they must recognize that Law. Life is continually “give and take,” not from only one side, but from both sides. And the really big men realize that. They are humble. They know they are helpless without other human beings—that without their workers, they would not be what they are.

Also, the workers must co-operate with the employers be­cause they wouldn’t be where they are if it were not for the employers, and because they haven’t the ability to be the em­ployers.

You employees who wish to better yourselves, first make the effort to better your mind. That is the way out. You em­ployers who want to become still bigger, learn to use your minds. Learn the workings of the Law of Compensation and the Laws that govern your life and all things; learn to give your employees the best there is in you.

Your steps forward, your growth and your accomplish­ments depend entirely on the efforts you make to develop that great power within yourself, the Power of Mind. That is the thought I wish to give you tonight: Life is obedience to the Law of Compensation. As you give, so shall you receive.

POWER OF SUGGESTION

My dear people, I am going to place in your hands a great, a tremendous, power—the Power of Suggestion. When you are able to use that power, you can accomplish anything you want. It is a power that can be used either constructively or destructively; with it you can either build or destroy. But remember that eternal Universal Law, the Law of Compensa­tion. You must use the power of suggestion for good; if you don’t, it comes back to you as a boomerang.

You are all susceptible to suggestion. If a friend comes along and tells you, “My, you look bad!” you feel down­hearted. But if another friend comes along and says, “How do you do? You look like you are ready to go after things!” you react to the suggestion. “Oh, yes,” you say, “I feel fine.” That shows you what a tremendous power it is if you know how to use it, and what you can accomplish by it.

Suggestion is the power that is used by the professional people, by the merchants, by the industrialists, by the lay­men, and even the housewife and mother. The professional man uses the power of suggestion by giving you the desire for his services. When you go to a medical man or to any healer, he will give you the suggestion that you can be healed and that he can heal you. You accept the suggestion. It is the same way with attorneys, dentists, oculists and oth­ers.

The medical profession is getting to realize more and more the great value of suggestion. When a medical man comes to your home or you go to his office, he generally fills you up with drugs of all kinds. In years to come he will give you fewer drugs, but he will give you more suggestions; and it is only a matter of time when the healing profession will realize fully and will be willing to acknowledge that, after all, all their work is done simply by suggestion.

In my talk on “Faith the Force,” I told you that it was the faith established by the physician’s suggestion and by your acceptance of it that makes it possible for him to reach you; that if you firmly believe medicine is going to cure you and you accept it, it will cure you; but on the other hand, if you do not believe in medicine, and you go to a chiropractor with the same trouble, and he gives you the suggestion that by manipulating your spine, he is going to make you well, and you accept it, then when he loosens your spine, you will get well. After all, it is not the means that cures you, but the re­ality behind it, which is Suggestion.

You will see later on how diseases and everything else can be created by suggestion.

I remember years and years ago seeing “spec peddlers” go from farm to farm, with their packs on their backs, trying to sell “specs.” And who bought specs? Only the very old peo­ple—they were the only ones who needed them. But then, Mr. Peddler began to think that that was not dignified enough, so he changed the name of specs to glasses, and in order to create a demand for his wares, he commenced to give the suggestion to the people that if they looked at the sun and everything appeared blurred, they needed glasses. Or if after looking at the sun they could see specks in front of them, they needed glasses. The spec peddler gradually de­veloped into a specialist, and he has kept on giving those sug­gestions until the human mind has accepted them, and they have become a reality. Now you see children wearing glasses, and it is shameful—it is pitiful—but at the same time it is all due to suggestions. I just read of an opticians’ meeting where they claimed that eighty per cent of the children should wear glasses. A wonderful field for their product, but the poor children—I feel sorry for them!

Many products are advertised over the radio, giving you, through your sense of hearing, the suggestion that you need them.

The merchant displays his goods, and when you pass by, you gain, through your sense of sight, the suggestion of wanting what he has. It is the same way with the industrialist. Henry Ford understood the process of suggestion when he created the big demand for his Ford car. Wrigley, the same way with chewing gum. All those pioneer industrialists who brought something new to the consciousness of the public and who created a big market for their ware, did so by the process of suggestion: by advertisements on billboards, in pa­pers and by other displays.

Some years ago there was not the demand for chewing gum that there is today. It was a hard struggle to create in the public the habit of using chewing gum. A certain com­pany had put on a big campaign of advertising, but with­out results. So finally, the president of the company came to see me and asked, “Why aren’t we getting results?”

I asked him for a compendium of his advertising, and when I had glanced over it, I told my secretary to call him. When he came in, I said, “I am going to ask you a question. Do you think people think?”

“Certainly people think.”

“No, they don’t think. That is why your campaign has not been a success: because you have been giving people something to think about, and they won’t go to that trouble. Your advertisements are about chewing gum made of the best chicle in South America, handled with sanitation and all that; and people are not going to stop and read it all and digest it. The human mind goes by association—one thing associated with the other—you get the thing in association.”

We will say Fruity Fruit, for example. “Give them ‘Fruity Fruit Chewing Gum’ and nothing else. When they look at an advertisement, they get the suggestion by the reading of those words. It enters through the eyes, and reacts—creat­ing the desire for the taste of that flavor, that sugary taste, and they act upon it. When they call for chewing gum, which one will they call for? Fruity Fruit. Because that is what they saw in association.”

(An advertisement must be seen from 600 to 3000 times before it enters the subconscious mind, reacts to the con­scious and creates the desire; and when the advertisement is simple, the suggestion is easier to attain.)

Eyeglasses, false teeth, automobiles and elevators mean a retrogression because people are relying less on their own bodies. They use their eyes less; their teeth less, because food is made easier to chew and to digest, giving little work to the teeth and to the stomach. And you know any organ that is not fully used and continued in use, retrogrades. The elevators and automobiles are doing the work for the legs; and the muscles of your arms and legs, if you don’t use them, will atrophy and become smaller and smaller. That is the process of evolution humanity is going through.

The medical men give you the suggestion that you need their treatment until in your mind you have created the ne­cessity for it and you come to rely on the substitution. Now a gradual reversion is coming where less reliance is put upon the substitutions and more upon the mind.

I am going to show you how suggestion affects your very own life, your family, yourself and your friends. If you knew how many men have “gone to pieces” and failed in business because of the wrong suggestion given probably by the wife in her solicitude.

For example, this morning perhaps the businessman comes down the stairs for breakfast. He doesn’t come down quite as fast as usual, and his wife says, “What’s the matter, dear, don’t you feel well this morning? You look bad. Didn’t you sleep well?” That thought starts to creep in, and all day long he does not feel well. And in his self-concern—thinking of self—he produces in himself what he fears. (That is the hu­man failing: people take unto themselves anything pertaining to themselves.)

During the day, when a business proposition comes before him, he doesn’t have his mind on it because he is concentrat­ing on feeling bad; he makes a mistake that causes the deal to be a failure, and his wife doesn’t realize that she is the cause of his tragedy.

If you were to analyze, you would find out that many a person has been ruined by a suggestion from a good friend or loved one.

How many mothers use the same process with their chil­dren! The child comes up with a long face, and the mother says, “What’s the matter, dear, don’t you feel good? I don’t think you should go to school today.” The child loves it, plays the game, accepts the suggestion, until finally he be­comes sick.                ^%

My dear people, it is just as easy to give a good suggestion as it is to give a bad one. Even if the person does look bad, why tell him, or her, so? Find something good you can say; because as I have said, each human being, absorbed in his thoughts of self, is susceptible to suggestion. Anything per­taining to self—how quickly it is picked up! So instead of giving bad suggestions, say, “You look fine; you have rosy cheeks,” or something like that. Many, many a human being has gone down by the process of wrong suggestion in his own home.

How often your friends will say, “What’s the matter? you look sick.” That is an enormous crime. I once read about a book called The Great Psychological Crime, and I thought then that the greatest psychological crime is suggestion when used destructively: it has caused more deaths and murders than anything else. You don’t realize that when you give the wrong suggestion about one’s health, you have planted a seed in that person’s mind which starts a chain of auto-suggestion, which may finally cause sickness and death. Because, as I have said, human beings are so unto themselves that if you give them one suggestion of that kind, it starts a chain of fear thoughts, of expectation and as you think, so you create. If you give yourself the suggestion that your heart is bad and that your pulse is skipping, you are creating that very condi­tion, because your physical side is only a reflection of your mental side. When you give suggestions of that type to your friends and loved ones, even though you don’t realize it, you are quite often a murderer—not by taking a knife and strik­ing the heart, but causing in time the very condition which destroys. And you are the one who planted the seed.

You have heard of the man who boasted that he was never sick. His foolish friends plotted that they were going to put him to bed as a joke; so the first one who met him that par­ticular morning, said, “What’s the matter, Bill? You look bad.”

“Me? I feel all right,” Bill replied, emphatically.

“But you do look bad.”

A few minutes later, another friend came along and asked, “What is the matter, Bill? You look pale.”

“Me? No, I am all right.” (But doubts had commenced to enter his mind.)

Then a third one came along and said, “What is the matter, Bill, you haven’t got consumption or something, have you?”

“No, why?”

“You look pretty bad. You don’t feel good, do you?”

“Well, I don’t feel quite right!” he replied.

A few more suggestions like that, and Bill went home sick. The experiment was a success. That example has been proven. It shows you that repetition of a suggestion will get to the foundation of any human being.

You see what a responsibility it is to give the right sugges­tions. Use that process of suggestion, but as I said before, use it constructively; if you do not, the harm is going to come back to you, because the Law of Compensation is ever there.

The human mind works in a very strange way. You have very few friends who are constructive to you, because of their suggestions. I hear so often businessmen talking to one another: one is giving a plan of something he wants to do, and the other says, “Oh, you can’t put it over—that cannot be done.” Those are bad suggestions. I would rather say to that man, “Go after it now, put it over!” than to tell him he cannot do it. How do you know he can’t? Because you can’t do it does not mean that somebody else cannot.

So beware of the suggestions of your own friends. Moth­ers have destroyed or prevented the development of their own children by the process of suggestion. Many young boys and young girls have gone bad and become criminals because of the process of suggestion.

There was a little boy brought to me in New Orleans, a child seven years old, the worst little criminal you ever saw. He would steal, break windows; his mother had no control over him. Why? Because everybody was telling him how bad he was. They said he was a bad boy, that there was nothing to him and he would grow up to be nothing but a criminal. Sure, that was what he was working toward.

I changed that little boy’s life completely. After looking him over, I said to my secretary, “They tell me this is a bad boy.”

My secretary said, “Yes, Doctor Conde, they say he is bad.”

I looked at him again and said, “They tell me he is the worst little boy in New Orleans.”

“Yes,” she said, “that is what the juvenile judge says.”

“They tell me he is the worst criminal in Louisiana.”

She agreed with me, “Yes, that is what everybody says.”

I looked the boy over again and said, “I don’t believe it! I believe he is a good boy, and that he is going to be a good boy.” Then quickly, “Aren’t you, boy!?”

He looked at me with big eyes, surprised, and said, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”

That was the beginning. Gradually that boy came up. I put something in front of him to work up to. During the three months of training when he was with me, I pictured to him the presidents of the United States and showed him what they had made of themselves by efforts, by hard work; and I told him and planted the thought, or suggestion, in his brain, “Joseph, you are going to be president of the United States when you grow up.” From then on his development was remarkable.

Six years later the boy wrote me that he was still first in his class. He was not a criminal any more. What did it? That one suggestion. He had had it in his mind how bad he was, but I gave him the suggestion of how good he was, and grad­ually he worked up to it.

Many mothers and many fathers have completely crushed in their children the ability of unfoldment, by the process of suggestion, saying, “You can’t do that; you mustn’t do that,” and by telling them how bad they are; instead of encouraging them by telling them how good they can be, by letting them do things for themselves and encouraging them in it, and put­ting some incentive in front of them, saying, “Yes, I know you can make it.” By giving them those suggestions, you are making them work up to it. So you see what a tremendous force the power of suggestion is.

It is an easy matter to learn to resist destructive suggestions and to accept constructive ones; but you don’t always realize the difference between constructive and destructive sugges­tions. Many suggestions that you think are constructive are really destructive. For instance, someone can come up to you and pat you on the back, saying, “You are a big man; you have done wonderful things.” That makes you feel that you have accomplished something big; and the moment you get that in your mind, you stop advancing because you become self-satisfied. Thus the suggestion was destructive. Never give undue praise; give the truth and encouragement, but don’t flatter.

How can you guard yourself against destructive sugges­tions by others? In a very simple way: instead of accepting them, ridicule them. If someone tells you tomorrow morning that you look bad, say, “Is that so? Let me call the under­taker.” If someone comes to you and tells you that you are going to fail in a venture, say, “Yes, I will fail to such an ex­tent that every bank in the city will fail also, because I am borrowing their money,” or some such ridiculous remark. Your best armor against any of those suggestions is ridicule. You hear over the radio that if you have certain symptoms, you should take cold tablets or tonics, and the like. Instead of thinking, “Oh, that fits my case!” the way to do is to ridicule those suggestions, saying, “Oh, shucks, that is foolish” or something to that effect. When you ridicule a suggestion, it has no force; but when you take it unto yourself, then you are disturbing your own perfect control and you create the very condition that you fear or that you are centralizing upon.

When you are positive and cold, you are best armed against suggestions; but while under emotions, you are very susceptible to them. The more selfish you are, the more sus­ceptible you are to suggestions; the more you think of your­self, the more susceptible you are. If you are told that you look bad, the fear enters your mind because of your selfish­ness.

As I have said, you are all susceptible to suggestions; and all around you continually are suggestions about diseases. I will say to you that there are more diseases today, far more, than there were fifty years ago. I remember in our great Western country, in Montana, in Wyoming, South Dakota, Idaho and even Arkansas and Oklahoma—those people liv­ing in those scattered settlements and living on ranches were healthy and happy in the early days. They did not have to contend with continuous destructive suggestions, and there was very little sickness then. They were hardy, strong— strong physically and strong mentally.

I will cite a case that proves their strength of thought and willingness to endure. In Wyoming many years ago, I was called by telegraph to come to a certain ranch. It took me two weeks to reach there; distances were great in those days, and a horse was the only means of travel. When I ar­rived at the ranch, I found that the woman had fallen two weeks before and had fractured her collarbone in three dif­ferent places and her arm in two places. She had stood the pain for two weeks and kept on doing her housework. Just think of a woman today doing that! Those people had that force—that mental force. Today you have been taught that when you have the least little pain in the tip of your little finger, for instance, you must run to the doctor. (I am not against the medical men—they are doing their work.)

I am going to give you a forceful example of the power of suggestion which you can’t help but see.

I gave a lecture before some medical men at a hospital, and two of them were supposed to be scientific men. I made the statement, “I can produce any disease I want in anyone I want by one suggestion.” They said that it was “all bosh.” I looked them over and said, “Gentlemen, you claim to be scientific men. Instead of rejecting, why don’t you find out whether my statement is true or not? Instead of refusing to believe it, experiment and find out.”

Just then a great big interne walked by, and one of the doctors in a joking way said, “I would like to see you pro­duce Bright’s disease in that fellow.”

I said, “All right, I will do that. You doctors stay with me, don’t interfere; look, but don’t talk. When the thing has been produced, it will be time for you to say something.”

I stepped up to this interne and said, “I beg your pardon, where is the washroom?”

He directed me, but I gave him a veiled suggestion, “I will get lost, won’t I?”

He said, “I will show you,” and he went with me. It was now eleven o’clock and I knew the man had been in the op­erating room since eight o’clock that morning. While we were in the room, I looked at him and said, “What is the mat­ter, do you have kidney trouble?”

“Oh, no!”

“I thought you were straining.”

“Oh, no,” he replied, “there’s no trouble in my family.” “You look puffed under your eyes,” I continued. “It is sus­picious.”

“No,” he said, “I am all right.”

“Then perhaps I am mistaken.”

These two doctors were there and heard what I said.

I left that city in the evening; and before leaving, I told the two doctors, “Leave him alone, forget about it, and when he gets bad, let me know and I will give you instructions what to do.” This happened in Baltimore.

Five months later I was in Seattle when I received a tele­gram from one of the two doctors, reading, “Dr. So-and-So is in bed with Bright’s disease in a very dangerous condition. What about it?”

I wired back, “Don’t do anything until I get there. As I produced it, I will have to undo my dirty work.”

When I reached Baltimore four or five days later, they came to see me. I said, “Now, gentlemen, are you satisfied?

You know, no one is so blind as the one who does not wish to see”

They immediately tried to find excuses and said it was a coincidence.

“Coincidence nothing. I told you what would be pro­duced, and it has been. If you want this man to get well, do what I want you to do.”

“Yes, we want him to get well.”

“Gentlemen,” I said, “the patient knows a great deal about medicine and anatomy, and we will have to play a deep game by the process of suggestion. You are his physicians and will visit his room this morning. As you are leaving, pass the re­mark so that he hears it but pretend that you don’t want him to hear, saying, ‘I wish we could locate Doctor Conde— he is the greatest specialist on kidneys!’ That’s all—don’t say any more than that. Then tomorrow morning when you are together in his room, one of you should say to the other, ‘Oh, by the way, I located Doctor Conde last night and wired him, and I just received a telegram saying that he is on his way— he will be here in three or four days.’ If he asks you any questions, say, ‘Oh sure, you know Doctor Conde. He is the greatest specialist on kidneys; he’s coming to see about your case.’ ”

They did as I told them, and in four days he was ready for me. They were in the sickroom when I came up and knocked at the door. I had my bags with me, as if I had just got off the train. The nurse opened the door and said, “Come in.”

The doctors greeted me and I asked, “Where is the pa­tient?”

“Right there.”

I took my coat off, walked over to the bed. I didn’t even look at him, but laid my fingers on his forehead, listened to his heart, turned him over and tapped him here and there. When I got to his kidneys, I tapped on them, then stopped. I had instructed the doctors what to say, and when I stopped, one said to the other, “See how quickly he got it! He knows.”

The sick man was taking it all in. I sat down by him and studied as if thinking deeply, then tested him again some­where else, looked down at him and said, “By the way, haven’t I seen you before?”

“Oh, yes, doctor! You were here a few months ago, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was. There is quite a change in you, isn’t there?” After a little more of this farce, I looked at the patient and said, “Well, doctor, we will have you out of here in about three weeks.”

Then I turned to the nurse and said, “Nurse, I am going to send you some medicine, but be very careful with it as it is powerful medicine. Be sure you don’t give him more than ten drops in half a glass of water every two hours.”

I turned to the doctor standing by and said, “Doctor, this medicine will increase his pulse, and his respiration will in­crease very much; but don’t be alarmed, it will be the reac­tion from the medicine and in a few days it will be over. Good morning.” And I walked out.

The doctor followed. He smiled and said, “Pretty well played. He has complete confidence in you and he knows he is going to get well.”

“Sure, he’s going to get well,” I said. “He got the sugges­tion. Now to prove more convincingly to you the tremen­dous power of suggestion, we are going to go into the drug room, the three of us. The patient knows so much about medicine that we must give him a compound concocted in such a way that he cannot detect its contents. Also, we must make sure there isn’t anything in that medicine that will cause his pulse to increase or his respiration to increase or that will cure Bright’s disease. Then watch the results.”

So we did. We fixed up a concoction and it was sent to the nurse. She administered it.

Two days later I was at my hotel and those two doctors walked in. I looked at them and smiled, and they looked at me wryly. Finally one came right out and said, “I’ll be d——– . His pulse went to ninety-eight, and his respiration went to thirty-two.” And yet they knew there was nothing in that medicine that would increase either his respiration or his pulse. The result was a revelation to them.

In less than three weeks, the man was well. And yet, my dear people, the disease had been there, because it had been created by himself. Then we called him in conference. When he came in, I said, “Doctor, I have a confession to make to you. Don’t take it personally, but accept it as a scientific ex­periment. You were the victim; you were the subject of the experiment; and if you see the value of it, it is going to help you tremendously in your own profession.”

Then the whole plot was told to him, and it all came back to him. He said, “Oh, yes, I remember now when you came to me and gave me that suggestion.”

Then I said, “Doctor, to make the experiment complete, would you mind telling us the processes of your mind during those five months?”

“I didn’t think of it for a month,” he replied. “Then one morning when I got up, I felt a little uneasiness in the region of my kidneys, and I thought, ‘My, I wonder if I have any kidney trouble.’ ” He had got the association. Any symp­tom associated with the suggestion that was given was im­mediately taken up.

“Then I commenced to watch myself and I found there was a discoloration and the thought came to me ‘I believe I do have kidney trouble.’ I commenced to worry about it. I made a urinalysis, found some casts, and then I knew I had kidney trouble.”

The experiment was a success and complete. It shows you the tremendous power of suggestion.

You see, first he thought, then he believed, then he knew. The suggestion was planted; the auto-suggestion or self-sug­gestion process finally created and produced it. Suggestion in the brain is just like a planted seed: You put it in the pot, plant it, cover it up. Then you do not see it for a while; but pretty soon it starts to break through the ground, to grow, unfold and bear fruit.

A suggestion may be given you today. It enters the sub­conscious mind, or brain, it is covered up—and when any­thing in association with it comes up, it bobs up to con­sciousness. Thus gradually by the process of auto-suggestion, you are producing a reality of it.

A little later, after the Bright’s disease episode, I spoke be­fore the graduating class in the same medical school where this experiment took place, and I said to them:

“Gentlemen, you are going into the world to practice medicine. You think you are going to accomplish miracles with your smattering of anatomy, materia medica, of bacteri­ology. But I am going to say to you that you are going to meet with many disappointments. I will give you one point to remember: When you enter your patient’s room or your patient enters your office, that patient is watching every ex­pression of your face, he is weighing every word that you utter; and according to the mental impression that you make on him, the success of your case depends.”

One of the graduates of that class became the most success­ful medical doctor in New York City, and became superin­tendent of Mount Sinai Hospital; and he was big enough to acknowledge that his success was due to the little thought I gave that graduating class. He said, “I realize that the suc­cess of my cases depends on the mental impression I create on the patients; and I make it a point at all times to give them positive thoughts—no negative suggestions but constructive ones—always with my face showing hope. And that has been the key to my success.”

I have told that to medical men and made a comparison, saying: “Here is a man who has less medical knowledge than most of you who have had far more schooling and hospital experience, and yet he has the biggest practice. Why? It isn’t his knowledge, but it is his personality—his understanding of human nature and the value of suggestion.”

While at another school, the students wanted me to talk on the power of suggestion. So I prepared, and when I appeared before them, I told them, “I am not going to give you a lec­ture on suggestion but on toxins or poisons.” So I com­menced to talk on the different kinds of poisons. When I had them interested, I related to them the story of a trip I took in Peru among the Indians in the Andes Mountains:

“While I was there, I noticed they used a gummy substance on their arrows, and when these arrows penetrated any ani­mal, it was killed instantly. I wanted to find out what it was, and they told me it came from the Tree of Death. This, I saw, was a big tree, and around it could be seen skeletons of all kinds of animals. The tree emitted a gas that killed any­thing that came in contact with it. In order to get that poi­sonous substance from the tree, the Indians would use a gas mask and quickly cut a place in the bark of the tree—pushing a receptacle in. Later on they would return and take out the receptacle in which was that very gummy substance. Then they would boil that substance and use it on their ar­rows. It is called curare. In experimenting with that poison, I found that by mixing it with ether, it would dissolve, but the moment it came into contact with oxygen again, it would turn back into a gas. . . . And, gentlemen,” I said, “I have brought a sample of it with me.”

Then I took out of my pocket a small bottle containing some of this ether and poison, and I said: “The moment oxy­gen comes in contact with this, it reverts to gas again, a gas which is very powerful and very nauseating; and if you get enough of it, it will kill you. I am going to open the bottle. Those of you who get the odor first, put up your hands.” (I was holding my head away from the bottle.)

First one hand went up, then another, another. And in a few moments they were shouting, “Open the windows!” Just then I pressed a button and an attendant came in. I said to him, “Do you smell anything?” I offered him the bottle.

“No,” he said. The audience was shouting, “Don’t—it will kill you!”

I insisted. “Smell it—taste it!”

He did and said, “It tastes like water.”

Then I said, “Gentlemen, that is all it is. That illustrates to you the power of suggestion. You asked me to lecture to you on suggestion, but what I have given you has been far more powerful than any words I could have spoken.”

I will give you another example to show you that sugges­tion will even kill.

This took place some years ago, in Europe. There was a man to be executed, and in Europe when one was condemned to die, there was no chance of a pardon nor for some lawyer to get the prisoner out on a technicality. No—it meant death, and death on the day set by the court. Scientists had the priv­ilege of experimenting with condemned prisoners, and in or­der to prove the great power of suggestion, we received permission from authorities to experiment with this man. We went to the prisoner and said, “My dear man, by special per­mission the mode of your execution has been left to you to decide. Which way do you want to be executed: publicly, as is usual, or would you rather have it done privately in one of the prison cells?”

Naturally he preferred to be executed without display.

“Very well,” he was told, “your wish will be granted; you will be executed in one of the chambers of the prison.”

When the day and the hour came, we had the chamber ready. The man was brought in and placed on the table. His feet were tied together and to the table; his arms were spread out and tied, hanging down from the sides of the table. Be­side him there was a small table on which were instruments and a knife. He was told, “Now, we are going to cut your wrists and let you bleed to death; it will be an easy, painless death.”

All preparations were made in front of him. Suggestion is given not only by words, but also by acts and looks. We took the knife and cut a piece of paper while he was watching, to plant the thought in his own mind. Then basins were placed on the floor underneath his arms.

A hood was put over his head, and quickly sharp pieces of ice were brought in, and a fountain syringe containing luke­warm water. The ice was passed over his wrists, causing a sharp cutting feeling. The melting of the ice caused the water to trickle down his fingers, then the lukewarm water from the syringe dripping through his fingers into the receptacles below gave him the suggestion that it was his own blood. He could hear the drip, drip, drip; he could feel “blood” filtering through his fingers; and in less than twenty minutes the man was dead. He had died by the process of suggestion.

That experiment was given to the whole world as an ex­ample of the tremendous power of suggestion. When his body was opened, we found that there was no blood in his arteries—it had all been thrown into his veins and heart, cen­tering around the heart.

Thoughts are powerful things. Imagination is a powerful thing. The process of suggestion gives the thoughts which produce the results. That was an official experiment, which has proven beyond a doubt that suggestion will kill—and kill quickly. I am giving you this example to make you fully real­ize what a tremendous power it is.

These are destructive suggestions. Later on I will show you the constructive ones.

There was an amusing case of a soldier during the first World War. I happened to be in a camp when a medical aide came rushing up and said, “Come on quickly; a man has been poisoned and is dying.”

I went into the operating room and saw the man on the ta­ble. Several persons were standing around. They said he had taken bichloride of mercury by mistake. He was in convul­sions, but I saw that the other symptoms did not follow in the sequence usually found in this poisoning. So I said, “Some­thing is wrong. What is it?”

The steward was standing near, and I could see by his eyes that something was wrong. I took him outside, and he said, “I know I am going to be court-martialed, but I don’t un­derstand it. This fellow has been a nuisance in the hospital; he keeps asking for things and nobody likes him; so I thought I would play a joke on him. He asked for a glass of water, so I gave him some water, took the empty glass back, then came rushing back to him and said, ‘Oh, my God! What did I do!! I gave you bichloride of mercury by mistake.’ And inside of five minutes the man was having convulsions, and the doctors didn’t know what had happened.”

“All right,” I said, “we will have to counteract that.”

They were all rushing into one another’s way, so I said, “Everybody stop! Let me handle the situation. You, doctor, give him artificial respiration; you, give him a 1/100 grain nitro-glycerin tablet, and you keep up the movements of his legs. Go to it”

While they were working, I walked up to him, felt his pulse and gave the suggestion that his condition was very bad indeed. Then I said that it was getting better, and slowly and gradually I gave those constructive suggestions until in half an hour the man was out of it. He was all right.

That shows you what a powerful thing suggestion is, and how you suggest to yourself about your own diseases.

I am going to give you the Law: The more you think about yourself, the more troubles you are creating for your­self; the less you think about yourself, the happier and the healthier you will be. Many people have remarked how well I retain my youth; and, ladies, I am going to tell you the se­cret: Forget yourself. Don’t be thinking of wrinkles and gray hair, and you won’t have them.

Now for constructive suggestions; for there is also the constructive side. Many men and women have been brought completely out of their lost condition by one suggestion.

A young fellow stopped me one day as I was coming out of a hotel and begged me for something to eat. I looked at him hard, and said, “You have your nerve, haven’t you. I don’t owe you anything. Why should I feed that stomach of yours? Do you know what I wish would happen to you? I wish you would get down to the gutter, filthy, ragged, starv­ing and sick, then maybe you would do something for your­self. You are some man, aren’t you, asking another man to feed that stomach of yours!”

That got him—he thought I was awfully hard—and when I got his emotions aroused I looked at him and said, “Young man, I see big things in you. You have the brains. I see big possibilities for you, a wonderful future in front of you.”

He looked at me meekly and said, “Do you think so?” “No,” I said, “I don’t think so, I know so. Why don’t you go after it, boy, and make it?”

While I had him under that emotion, I planted that sugges­tion there. I saw him grit his teeth; and he said, “Thank you,

Five days later he had secured a position with one of the banks, and in seven months, they had pushed him over twenty older employees. He had made it, whereas if I had gone in my pocket and given him a quarter or half dollar, he would still be begging. But that one suggestion made him.

Suggestions enter deeply under emotion, because under emotion there is no conscious resistance. When people come to me downhearted and crushed, I get them emotional, and then plant the suggestion of success in their minds—that they can make it. And they do make it.

All success in life, all business, is due to suggestion. The real salesman, when he comes to you with his insurance, his real estate, or his goods to sell, is simply giving you the sug­gestion that you need what he has. The laborer may be a wonderful worker, a wonderful artist at his job; but unless he makes his ability known to his employer, he is just a part of the machinery.

You who are in business, use the power of suggestion con­structively for yourself. Let the world know what you have and what you are doing, not boastingly but through the pro­cess of suggestion. As long as you hide your light under a bushel basket, no one knows anything about it. A man is only as big as people think he is; and no matter what a wonderful brain he may have, if the public doesn’t know anything about it, he is nothing. And how will the public know about it? By the process of suggestion—by his placing himself before them, and giving them the suggestion of what he has, what he can give, what he can do.

It is the same with you who are working for someone. Place yourself continually before your employer. Let him know what your value is, what you can accomplish, what you are doing, and you are going to get there. I will cite you a concrete example.

There came to me a machinist, and he was a wonderful machinist. He told me his trouble. “Doctor Conde,” he said, “I have been working in this machine shop for the last nine years. I am as good a machinist as any in the United States— there isn’t one who can surpass me—but I don’t seem to ad­vance, I am still in the same place.”

“I see. All right, I will sift down your problem for you.” The next day I called on the owner of this big machine shop. There were about eight or nine hundred workers, and the owner showed me the courtesy to take me around and explain things to me. And when we came to this particular machinist, I made it a point to stop close to him and talk with the owner for a few minutes; but this man never even looked up.

The next day I sent for him, and told him: “Do you know why you have been there nine years and are still in the same place? You don’t understand the process of suggestion. This owner employs several hundred men and he has a foreman who looks after each section. All he knows about his work­men is the names that he sees twice a month when he signs the payroll. He has seen your name there for nine years, but to him you have been just a little piece of machinery.

“Now, young man, the next time the owner comes along, overcome those handicaps of yours and call his attention to some fine piece of machinery that you have finished. Stop him and say, ‘Good morning, sir, look at this thing! Isn’t that a fine piece of machinery? Look at it.’ And he will look at it. Then say, ‘That is the kind of work I am turning out here.’ Give your employer the suggestion of your ability. That is, do not be like so many who merely have a job and who ex­pect to give just so many hours for so much money—that isn’t ability.”

So he did. The next time the owner passed by, this man stopped him. The owner looked at the piece of machinery and asked, “Who has been turning this out?”

“I have been.”

“Is that so? How long have you been here? What is your name?”

It was the first time the employer was really conscious that this man was working there. And in less than a year he was made foreman of the whole plant. So it pays you, my dear people, to let the world know what you can do, by the pro­cess of suggestion.

It is easier to use suggestion constructively than to use it destructively—far easier.

A stout woman came to me; she had a black eye her hus­band had given her. I told her to let out her story; and while she was telling me all about it, I planted a little suggestion here and another there about her problems.

I didn’t see her any more for about seven or eight months; then at one of my lectures I saw her in the audience. And how different she looked! Before she was all troubles; but now—she was all smiles, radiating happiness. After the lec­ture, I went to my consultation room, where I found this woman waiting. I looked her over and said, “Well, there is quite a difference in you.”

“Oh, yes,” she replied, “everything is so different. I am happy, and everything is fine. People didn’t want to be near me before, but now they call me Sunshine. You know, at first I didn’t realize you had done anything for me. After I had been to see you, my friends asked, ‘What did he do?’ and I said that you talked to me. They said, ‘Is that all? I don’t see how that would do any good!’ I wondered then, ‘What good did he do?’ But just two weeks ago I realized that my life had been changed completely and that I was healthy, fine and happy, so I commenced to review. I stopped and thought of the miserable condition I was in a year ago, and how fine I am now, and when I reflected, I saw that the change had commenced from the day I came to see you.

“So you did do something, Doctor, didn’t you?”

I smiled and said, “Yes, but not exactly what you think.

You people have no conception of the tremendous power of mind, of thought. If I had slapped you on the back and said, ‘Hokus, pokus, fokus,’ if I had twisted your neck and cracked it, if I had massaged your spine, or given you a lit­tle pill, you would have thought I had done something. That would have been your conception of doing something. But I did something far more powerful than that: As you were telling me about your history, I made remarks, ‘Do this, this is the way out,’ or ‘Do that,’ and I gave suggestions. And the suggestions that I planted in your subconscious mind started a chain of auto-suggestions which produced action on your part and brought everything all right for you. That was all—just suggestions.”

That is the constructive side of the Power of Suggestion.

So you see what a tremendous power it is that you can make or kill human beings with it; and with it you can give happiness or despair. It is in your hands.

Instead of talking about how cold the weather is—saying that you are going to catch a cold or pneumonia—think of something constructive to say. Don’t give thoughts of that kind to human beings. As I was coming down in the elevator, the boy gave a suggestion of that kind today, and I looked at him and said, “You are trying to murder me with your sug­gestion that I should have pneumonia. If I accepted it, I would get sick and die. You are the one who gave me that suggestion, and you would be the murderer.”

Don’t accept any destructive suggestion from anyone. Be the power, not the weakling. The person who is susceptible to suggestion is the weakling. The one who has resistance thinks, “That doesn’t mean anything to me; you cannot hurt me,” and it doesn’t. When someone tells you how bad you look, say to that person, “I will look better after awhile,” and don’t pick it up.

My dear people, during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904- 1905, I was wounded. I went through it so that I could give you the possibilities of what can be done. A big piece of shrapnel went through my right side, tearing out half of my lung and two of my ribs. A bayonet pierced my liver, caus­ing it to be removed. There are two bullets in my intestines still. I have a piece of ivory in the place of my bone just be­low one knee, and there is steel scattered all over my body.

When I was wounded, a messenger was sent to the English hospital at Port Arthur. They wanted to save my life because they thought I had certain knowledge important to them in the war. I was brought in on a stretcher to a great English surgeon, Major General A———— . It was eight o’clock in the morning when I was brought in, and an English nurse came to me. I smiled and said, “How do you do?”

“Oh, let me give you something to relieve your pain!” she said. “You are in terrible misery.”

“No, little girl, I don’t need anything.”

Just then Major General A———— and four other surgeons, French, English and Russian, came up, looked at me and examined my wounds. Then Major General A—————— said, sadly, “If you have anything to reveal, you had better do so now, because you won’t be here by twelve o’clock.”

I looked up at him, smiled, and said, “Major General A——– , why are you trying to murder me?”

He looked at me, then at the others, and shook his head.

I said, “Oh, no. I am rational; I am not delirious; I know what I am saying. Why are you trying to put the conscious thought in my mind that I should die by twelve o’clock so that my subconscious mind, or brain, will send the message to the organs to stop their functioning by twelve o’clock? What do you know about it? What right have you to com­mand that I should die? Why do you give me those destruc­tive suggestions?”

He was a big-minded man. He looked at me, and immedi­ately his mind started working. Then he looked at the other doctors and said, “This man is right. We have been giving destructive suggestions to our patients without realizing it.”

Then I smiled and said, “By the way, Major General A——— , I am going to say to you that you will not have the pleasure of going to my funeral but I will have the sorrow to go to yours.” And I did. But I am still here because I did not accept that kind of a suggestion.

I am giving you a living example. Suppose I had accepted those suggestions given by those doctors. I wouldn’t be talk­ing to you today!

My dear people, this talk tonight will give you a real­ization of the tremendous Power of Suggestion and auto­suggestion: that if you get the thought in your mind that you are going to make a success and you keep thinking that, you are giving yourself the auto-suggestion, which will produce success. If you forget about your little, petty accidents, your subconscious mind will look after them for you. That is the mind which tells your heart to beat so many times a minute, and if you don’t interfere by your own suggestions, it will beat that many times a minute; but it is your fear that will produce the reaction and create the condition that you are thinking of.

Beyond a doubt, when you tell your friends how fine they look, they accept it and feel better, and they like you bet­ter; but when you tell them how bad they look, it makes them feel bad and they don’t want you around. Since that is the case, why not give good suggestions to everyone you come in contact with? It will be one of the stepping stones in your success. Scatter good words, kind words, constructive words; scatter sunshine, smiles and encouragement; and everybody will be in harmony with you, everybody will like you and when your time of need comes (because you do need your fellowman), they will be there for you. Also, while you are giving good suggestions, you are changing your own attitude of mind, and you will feel the same way that you are giving to others.

Don’t give sympathy or destructive suggestions. I have talked to people near death, and said, “My! you are looking better today; you are going to pull through; you’re all right!” And I have pulled many out, just by a suggestion like that. But if you go before their bed with a long face, it will have the opposite effect. I once knew a nurse whom they called Funeral Mary, and when they knew there was no chance for a patient to live, they would send Funeral Mary in to send the patient on, for when they would see her, the poor fellows ‘wanted to die. Don’t be a Funeral Mary.

Be sure your suggestion is as constructive to the other person as it is to yourself; be sure it is for his good as well as yours. Then your suggestion is a wonderful suggestion. But if it is made just to “get” the other fellow, then it is de­structive to you too; the Law of Compensation will make you pay the price. I was talking to one of our big lawyers about the Law of Compensation, and he said: “Yes, Doctor, that is an inevitable Law. It never fails—I see that every day. Peo­ple don’t realize it; they think they are putting it over but they are not.”

Remember always, at all times, the Law of Compensation— that the thing must be constructive for the other person as well as for yourself. If you are contemplating something for your own advantage but which is destructive to the other person, don’t do it, because you will pay the price. Just like the bread cast upon the waters: it comes back, not on the same wave, but it will eventually come back on some other wave.

So let that great Power of Suggestion be a constructive force in your hands. It is a tremendous force if you use it.

THOUGHT VIBRATIONS

My dear people, I am here before you with but one pur­pose, and that is to help you to develop that great power that is within you—the Power of Mind. That mind of yours is a tremendous power. Just think of it! You cannot move your little finger without thought, but you can move your head, or your body, or a mountain with thought.

It is Thought that moves mountains.

I will relate to you an incident referred to in another talk that occurred after one of my lectures on the Power of Mind. There happened to be in the audience a man who had a great sense of egotism. He was completely materialistic, and an engineer (he called himself). He spoke up and said, “Doc­tor Conde, do you mean to say you can stand there and by the power of thought make a mountain move?”

“Yes, sir, indeed,” I replied.

“Oh, why! That is not so! You may stand there for an eternity and that mountain would not move. It takes men, machinery, dynamite.”

I smiled, and said, “I see your trend of thought, and your understanding. You think it is all a matter of force, but you are forgetting that Thought is the greatest potential force in existence. You say it is machinery, men, and dynamite that will move the mountain. I am going to prove to you that it is not so—that it is mind and thoughts. You say you are an engineer. We will just picture a mountain, say three thou­sand feet high. How many men do you think it would take to move that mountain? Just mention a figure.”

“Oh,” he said, “we will say five hundred men.”

“How much machinery do you think it would take to move that mountain?”

“About twenty tons.”

“How much dynamite would it take to move that moun­tain?” I asked.

“About one-fourth of a ton,” he said.

“Very well. You and I are going out and call five hundred men together, and say to them, ‘Go on, move that mountain.’ With their picks and shovels, they can pick-and-shovel all their lives, and they would only make a dent in that big mountain.

“You say it would take twenty tons of machinery,” I con­tinued. “We will get twenty tons of machinery and put it on the side of the mountain. Will that machinery move the mountain? No.

“You say it would take about one-fourth a ton of dyna­mite. We will have a natural hole in the side of the mountain, put the dynamite in, and touch it off. Will that move the mountain? No.

“But I will tell you what will move the mountain: that engineer—that one man who saw the mountain in his way in building a road, and in his mind said, ‘Mountain, you shall move.’ That was thought, his thought. And he conceives with thought means and ways to move that mountain; and the men, and the machinery, and the dynamite were only means in the hands of that one mind to move the mountain. So it was Thought that moved the mountain.”

Few realize that tremendous power of thought! When you understand what thought is, where it comes from, and where it goes, then you will understand how to use it for your good and the good of others.

What is thought? Thought is a potential power—a silent, potential power. It is a power that you cannot see, you can­not touch, you cannot weigh, you cannot smell. None of your senses is conscious of it, or can be conscious of it. Thoughts are vibrations sent out; thoughts are vibrations re­ceived in the brain.

I am going to prove to you very simply what a tremen­dous force thought is. Telepathy—you all have heard of telepathy. Most of you have experienced it. You are sitting in church, or at a show, or at a gathering and quite a way in front of you, you see the back of a person and you think, “My, I believe that is Mr. Smith—it looks like him. Yes, it is Mr. Smith.” Your mind, your thoughts, are completely concentrated on that person; you are not speaking, you are thinking those thoughts. Then you see that person turn right around and look at you and say, “How do you do?” He rec­ognizes you. He has received your thought vibrations. You know that is a fact—you have experienced it.

A great experiment was conducted some years ago. Two universities wanted to experiment in telepathy to prove whether or not it was real: Harvard University in the United States, and Oxford in England. These schools com­municated and agreed that at a certain time, students at one university would be in the state of mind of almost negation— would not think for a moment—and students at the other would concentrate on a certain thing. There was no pre­arrangement of what thought they would concentrate on, but there was a basket and in that basket were slips of paper with the names of all kinds of things written on them: “ele­vator,” “orange,” “lemon,” “chair,” for instance. Then just one minute before nine, the selected students of Harvard gathered in a classroom, one of the slips of paper was picked out of the basket, and the two words written on it were read. The words were: “white elephant.” Each student thought of those words—could see them, concentrated on them. Then they awaited the results. Shortly after, they received a cable from Oxford in England, containing just the words “white elephant.” The experiment had been a success.

That proves to you beyond a doubt what a tremendous force thought vibrations are.

You have been with a friend, walking along or sitting in the same room, and when you started to say something about a certain subject, the other person said, “I was just thinking the same thing.” Why? You have said, “Oh, it is a coinci­dence.” But there is no such thing as chance; everything is cause and effect. The friend was thinking of that one thing, and you received the vibrations; then both of you spoke at the same time.

It happened to me this evening. I was saying something to the little girl* and just as I was starting to say it, she said exactly the same thing at exactly the same moment. I also had an experience while going down Broadway today. A young lady called this afternoon regarding a concert tonight. I had not seen her except as she was entering the apartment and had not come in contact with her. My secretary saw her and talked with her. As I passed a lady on Broadway, I thought, “She looks like the young woman who called this afternoon. She has on the same coat and the same hat.” After I had passed her and walked probably fifteen steps, the thought came to me, “She is going to turn around.” I turned around, and just as I did, she did also. Was it a coincidence? No—it was thought vibrations. * Term often used by speaker in referring to his secretary.

When I speak to salesmen and businessmen, I tell them that the successful salesman is not the one who talks much, but he is the one who has his mind concentrated completely on what he is saying—he is sending out  those thought vibra­tions. You know very well that somebody may be talking, but your mind is somewhere else. Why? Because the person who is talking, is just talking, his mind is on something else too. But the one who commands attention is thinking and sending out vibrations in harmony with what he is saying. You cannot help but listen to him. That is the secret of suc­cess.

What are vibrations? A very simple way to illustrate to you what vibrations are, so that you can visualize what they are and what they mean, is this:

Many of you, when you were young boys and girls, have been near a calm pool of water, and in fun you have picked up a stone and thrown it in. The moment it hit the water, what did you see? Little circles, starting from where the stone hit—circles becoming larger, larger, larger and larger. Those circles were vibrations, and they went on until they reached the confines of the pool; and then they went back again. Those circles moved not only on the surface but also up and down, below the surface, along the sides, and every­where.

Another illustration of vibrations is found in the radio, and I will compare the brain to a radio—that is all it is. What do you receive over your radio? Is it songs? It is sound vibra­tions. The same with my speaking. If there were an instru­ment to receive my voice here and send it out, those vibra­tions would not mean a thing to people walking down the street; but another instrument in harmony with those sound vibrations would receive them and give them out. Thoughts are the same: they are waves, the same as sound vibrations, just like the waves that you saw on the surface of the pool.

Brain—what is brain? Brain is the tuning-in instrument, the same as your radio is a tuning-in instrument; and what­ever you become in tune with as you move the dial, you receive in sound vibrations. The brain is also an instrument sending thought vibrations out into the universe, which come back after they have gathered from the universe vibrations in harmony with them. If you send a question into the Uni­versal Mind—into that great pool of vibrations—it reaches the station of its destination and comes back with the vibra­tions added to it which are the answer to the question that you have sent out. Whatever your brain is in tune with at the moment is what you receive.

What is Mind, Universal Mind, or God! The Christian calls It God, the Jews call It Jehovah, the Mohammedans, Allah; the Christian Scientist calls It God or Infinite Mind; but nevertheless It is that which we will call the Universal Mind, so as to fit all religions and all beliefs. It is all one and the same thing. And that Mind is Intelligence, Thoughts.

You are the result of a spiritual thought of that Universal Mind, and you are still in the process of formation.

A constructor has the thought that he is going to build a large building. Step by step the building is erected, gradually materializing his thought.

You too are the building-up of a thought—a thought of that Great Intelligence—and it will take you billions and bil­lions of years before that thought will be complete.

Universal Mind, or Mind, or God, or whatever you may wish to call It, is an immense pool with all kinds of vibra­tions, with every vibration in it, just the same as an enormous radio station sending out thoughts everywhere to every intel­ligent thing. And you with your brain are the receiving sta­tion, and whatever vibrations in that Universal Mind you are in harmony with, that is what comes back to you.

You have a radio set: you can turn the dial and send out the vibrations from your radio into the universe, and there they pick up vibrations in harmony and sound comes out. Likewise your brain sends out vibrations—thought vibrations —which gather unto themselves vibrations in harmony with them and come back to your brain. If your thought is con­structive, if what you desire is constructive, then it comes back in something good for you. If your thoughts are de­structive to you, then you will pick up destructive vibrations from the universe. One man thinks with his thought vibra­tions, “I am going to build,” and another man comes along thinking, “I am going to tear down.” Each one receives from the Universal Mind whatever he wants to be in contact with.

You are just like a little tadpole in the pool that I told you about, the pool where you take the stone and throw it on the calm surface and little circles become larger and larger, reaching its confines, coming back, going along the sides, and everywhere. You are the little tadpole swimming in that pool. Whatever waves or vibrations it comes in contact with guide its movements. You are in this great universe of vibrations; you are making the effort to progress by sending out thought vibrations, and like the little tadpole which comes in contact with whatever vibrations it is swimming in, you come in con­tact with the vibrations you are in harmony with.

Mind! So often I hear people say, “My mind.” My dear people, do not delude yourselves: Mind does not belong to you. No one has Mind, for Mind is universal. Brain is yours, and what comes back to you is in accord with the vibrations of thought that you send out from that brain, or your desire. I am going to prove that Mind is not yours. There are con­crete proofs if you stop and think and ask the question, “Why?” The trouble with most human beings is that they accept or reject a thing without questioning why it is or what it is and without seeking to find the reality and the truth.

There have been many cases of different brains having the same desire. There were two cases of inventors in the United States courts not long ago: Two men who had been seeking a certain machine, received the solution at the same time, and each one mailed his invention to the Patent Office. The case was quite a lengthy one, and finally the judge had to decide in favor of the man whose invention was received at the Patent Office first. There was a difference of only an hour and a half; one was on the east coast of the United States, in fact in Florida, and the other man was in Portland, Ore­gon. Both had sent out with their concentrated thought, the same desire and the same vibrations and they received the same answer at the same time.

Again (just like the radio): Here is a sending station; for that one sending station, there are many receiving stations— millions of them in the United States. All the receiving sta­tions which are in tune with that one sending station and which are sending out those same vibrations receive the same music. This shows that you can tap Mind, that vast pool of thought vibrations, of Intelligence (no matter what you call It) by making the effort and sending out for whatever you want from It.

Knowledge. There is a great difference between education and knowledge. Education is parrot-like, repeating what has been received from others through reading books, listen­ing, seeing, that is, through the senses. But knowledge, real knowledge—that is different. Knowledge comes to you— you don’t get it through books. Knowledge is received by the active brain that is sending out those vibrations of desire to know. If you are sending out, really meaning it, wanting, and desiring to know, there comes back an answer. Then it is put in print and given to the “parrots” or “mocking birds” as education.

Where does the inventor get his ideas? Is it from books? Where does the musician get his inspiration? Is it from books? No. Ideas and inspiration come at a time of mental calmness, with that concentration, that desire, sending out those thought vibrations into the universe. All at once the seeker is inspired—his desire comes back in beautiful tunes (the same as the radio again) and he goes to the piano and plays—he has got it. Then that artist writes the music down on paper, and it is played by many.

There was the inventor Henry Ford. He had his engine and had been working on it, but the engine would not run.

Finally he gave up. His reasoning mind, as you say, could not find out what was wrong. So he closed up his shop and said, “I am through.” He went home and sat by the fireplace, looking into the red hot coals. He had forgotten. And while he was there, in contemplation, all at once he “saw” a piston in front of him and he saw a red line around that piston, as if to mark a groove. He shook himself and exclaimed, “I have got it!” He ran to his shop, got a file and filed a groove around the piston of that engine where he had seen the red line. He started his engine, and it went. With his reasoning mind he had concentrated on that great need; and when he forgot all about it, the need was supplied.

Writers—many of them will tell you that sometimes for days they cannot write; then all at once they start writing and they keep on writing without having to reason it out. The late novelist, McCutcheon, has told me that when in­spiration would start coming to him, he would write for days and days without stopping, until he had finished the part of his story that he was working on. He had sent out his desire and had received the answer. His desire also was to give humanity something it could read which would give it a better understanding of the realities of life; and it was under the moment of inspiration that those thoughts came to him.

Where does inspiration come from? It must come from somewhere. Does it come from another human being? No. Inspiration and ideas come from Mind. Mind is Universal. When you send out a thought—desiring a thing—it goes into the great, universal lake of vibrations; and when you are in tune, you receive the understanding of it. Inventors, musi­cians, writers, poets—many of them will tell you the same thing: that the reasoning mind doesn’t do it—it comes to them.

To give you an example of my own: Many years ago, I was in one of the deserts in India, in what is called the state of contemplation and meditation. (The people of the Occi­dental world do not quite understand those things. You are so busy, so bustling, but if you only knew how much work you do to attain one little thing, and how simple it would be to attain far more with calmness.) As I said, I was in the desert, sitting in the sand. How long? I don’t know; time did not mean anything. I was looking at the sky and the stars, and my thought—the thought vibrations that I sent out into that Universal Mind of which you and I are a part—was ask­ing the question: what is the Law that governs those stars?

That was my thought, and the answer came back to me, into my subconscious mind, and registered there. When I came out of contemplation back to my consciousness, I knew what that Law was. It was the Law of Individuality—the Individuality of Planets: that each one had its own peculiar­ities, that each one had its own particular vibrations of color and its own particular vibrations of sound; that while they were making their evolutions and revolutions and convolu­tions, they were emitting sounds; that each one had its own individual and particular forces governing it: the force of attraction, the force of repulsion, the centrifugal force, and many other forces, some of which the Occidental world is not cognizant of as yet.

When I came back to Europe, I lectured before a society for scientific research in London and in Berlin, and I gave them that Law. They accepted it as a theory. (And I have given many laws in the scientific world, which it afterwards took them twenty or thirty years to work out.)

Strangely, five years later, Camille Flammarion, the great French astronomer, came out in a book with exactly the same thing; and he was told that Doctor Conde had given that to a society for scientific research five years before. This aroused his interest, naturally, and he called on me. I was in London at the time. When I received his card from my valet, I sent word that I would see him in a few moments. I went down into the reception room and greeted him. “How do you do?” he said. “I wish to see Doctor Conde.” I smiled and said, “I am Doctor Conde.”

“Oh, no,” he replied, “I mean Doctor Conde Senior.” “There is no Doctor Conde Senior. I am Doctor Conde.” Then Camille Flammarion asked, “But you don’t mean to say that you are the Doctor Conde that gave the Law of Individuality of Planets!” He scratched his head. “I cannot understand that. How is it that you are comparatively a young man, and still you must have given years of your life in research to have come to that understanding! Why, it took me over forty years.”

I said, “Yes, Mr. Flammarion, it took you over forty years. Why? I am going to tell you why. Because you went in the round-about way, the academic way, the educational way— by reading, by researching. That is the long way. It took me less than forty seconds, by sending the question out into that great Mind that knows all things, and a revelation came to me.”

At one of my earlier lectures a question was asked about Mars by someone in the audience who was interested in astronomy. (Astronomy was not very well developed then; there had been some little things said about Mars: that ap­parently it had a different color than the rest of the planets, for instance.) The question was, “What do you think about Mars? ”

I smiled and said, “Mars is a planet that has gone through the process of evolution longer and farther, and more quickly, than this earth.” And I made the statement then that all planets have life—that life is everywhere.

Indeed life is on every planet, regardless of what your scientists say. Science is a strange thing: it offers a theory today and changes it tomorrow. You have used—rather, the scientists have used—this planet as a unit to start from; and because they find a planet around which they cannot detect air by means of their spectrum, they say there is no air— there is no life. That is not true. Life will adjust itself to any environment, to any condition; and it is only a question of time when scientists through their microscopes will find that there is life in what to us is the most deadly gas or acid or anything else—there is active life just the same.

So after years of research and observation, finally some scientists came to the realization that there is life on Mars and that it is inhabited by beings who have “evoluted” far more than the beings of this earth. So far, in fact, that they are able to build enormous canals which make the Panama Canal look as a thread in comparison, which canals divert the water of the poles into the dry areas of the equator. Photographs of Mars proved that.

One day (this was at the beginning of better understanding of electricity) the question was asked by a scientist of that time: “What is electricity?”

I came back with another question: “What is thought?” They are both, and all things are the same: Vibrations. Matter is only concentrated vibrations. The chemist takes two mat­ters; one has the vibratory force, we will say, of ten thou­sand, and the other a vibratory force of only five thousand. He puts them together and they form a new vibration of a different matter.

I answered that question immediately (as you will learn tonight when you ask me questions). I don’t care how deep those questions will be, you will receive the answers from me instantly. Why? Do I have to search, do I have to use my reasoning mind or an academic education? No! I send out the desire to answer the question, and the answer comes to me.

From where? From the Universal Mind—from that great big pool of millions of billions of trillions of thought vibra­tions. You—and all human beings—are simply taking out from that immense pool, thought vibrations, and using them, after which they pass on again into that universal pool. You are only borrowing them—they don’t belong to you. Like the sound waves sent out by a broadcasting station: thousands of receiving stations can pick up the same vibrations.

So when that question was asked me, What is electricity? immediately I put myself in harmony by a moment of medi­tation and contemplation—by complete elimination of rea­soning thought (it only takes the flash of a moment) and the answer was this:

All things contain that force which you call electricity. Electricity is only directed vibrations; and all matter is concentrated vibrations. You call that electricity an en­ergy. I will say to you scientists that there is enough energy, or concentrated vibrations, in one grain of sand that if it were to be released suddenly, it would tear the world asunder.

By the way, when that statement came out, there happened to be a reporter in the audience, and there was quite a little publicity and a great deal of fun about it. “The idea!” people said. “Enough force in one grain of sand to blow the earth to pieces!” And I was raked over the coals. But after thirty or forty years, scientists finally came to the realization of the tremendous power in the atom, and even in the electron. The power of the atom was demonstrated when a researcher ex­perimenting with atoms in a laboratory in Germany, acci­dentally and by a certain combination which he could not remember afterwards, caused the energy in an atom to escape —creating a force so tremendous that it blew out the whole side of the concrete laboratory in which he was working and almost killed him. Just one atom! *

As a last example, I will say to you: Where did James Watt get his understanding? If it wasn’t for Watt, if it wasn’t for his receiving the answer to the question he sent out, you would be without automobiles today. You would still be traveling at the rate of fifteen, ten, or eight miles an hour. But his was an active brain that was observant; when he saw a kettle of water and steam coming out of it, and he saw the top of the kettle moving by the force of that vapor, the question came to his mind, “How can I concentrate that force?” And the answer came to him, and he made the first steam engine; it was very crude, but nevertheless, a steam engine.

And later, when Fulton told the “parrots” or “mocking birds” of his time that he had found he could use vapor com­ing out of a kettle to move even a boat, they thought he was crazy—that was impossible and out of the question. But Fulton knew, he had no fears and doubts in his mind. He was in contact with that great Intelligence, and he received the answer from It. When you get knowledge, there is noth­ing that can tear it from you; the arguments of scientists cannot take it away from you. So Fulton built the first steam­boat, and then the parrots, the mocking-birds, accepted it. And it is ever the same—there has to be the intelligent one who has the thought first. If you are making the effort to put yourself in harmony and to send out the desire, knowl­edge will come to you. It is here for you in this tremendous universe, which is nothing but a great big book of knowl­edge; and you can turn to the page you wish by simply send­ing out those thought vibrations.

• Atomic energy has been studied for many years, but not until 1945 did we see the dawn of the atomic era.

You young men and you who have already passed a cer­tain time of life, I will say to you the same as I said to a man very nearly fifty. He said, “I am fifty years old—what’s the use?”

“No,” I said, “you are not fifty years old. You have a life­time in front of you yet—you will find it worth your while to seek to develop the power within yourself. Come! It is worthwhile.”

That little man had been like a small boat or raft drifting along—he had not accomplished very much. He finally did come and carried out the methods I give for mental-spiritual development; and in six years’ time he accomplished more than he had during his fifty years of life before. He became quite an artist.

That shows you that it is never too late, because eternity and everything is for you now. It is now that counts. As I say to many who come to me, some of them have lived not in the right way and have made mistakes—and when I help them, I say, “From now on, it is a new life for you. Forget the past—that is gone—that is dead. From now on, you are clean. From now on, you are well, because it is now that counts.” Don’t fail to make the effort to develop that tre­mendous power you have here. If you are not willing to make the effort, you do not deserve anything, because that God of yours (by whatever name you call It) works by spiritual Laws, and the principal Law is the one that I keep on giving to people: the Law of Compensation—you get only what you go after. You are only deserving of what you make the effort for, so do not put things off until tomorrow or the next month. I hear that so often: “I will start in a month or so from now; I haven’t the money or the time.” And in a month from now, it is the same thing: excuses. Excuses are for the weaklings. Ten years from now, such people are still in the same boat—they have not progressed. Don’t be one of them. Start now!

Questions and Answers

I am going to read you a few questions that were asked after one of my lectures, just to give you an idea of how interesting you can make them. For example, this one: When you get an answer from the Universal Mind, does it come from some other thinker?

This is another good question: If someone calls your name aloud, what does that mean?

What was meant by this question was that there was no one there, but the asker heard his name called. I explained it.

Another one: I used to be a shepherd boy in the Alps, and at that time any moment I wanted to tune in on music, I could hear the most beautiful music that I never could hear with my physical ears. How do you explain that?

That shows the type and kind of question that you can ask and I will answer.

Question: My right wrist was broken several years ago; will you tell me why it has been paining me considerably the last several weeks?

Answer: As you think, so it is. It is a matter of mind, of faith, and a matter of impressions—what you have absorbed from the senses. By the way, that is the subject of the next lecture I am going to give, “Fears and Doubts, Your Great­est Enemy.” The Occidental world is full of fears and doubts; and all conditions, including yours, are reflective of the mind. I am going to prove it to you: You have a pain now—you are thinking about it—it is bad. Some friend comes along and says, “How do you do? By the way, did you hear the story of Pat and Mike?” This friend tells you the story, makes you laugh and you forget all about the pain. It was all a reflection of your mind. As you think, so you are.

Question: How can you be sure that what you get is from the Universal Mind rather than from other minds or your subconscious mind?

Answer: By complete harmony—by meditation and con­templation. But before you will be able to do this, you must first learn to concentrate.

In my lesson on Concentration, one of the methods I teach is that of concentrating on an object. And, by the way, I will say to you just experiment with yourselves. Take an object (anything) in your hand. Look at your watch, and when the hands are straight up and down—the big hand on twelve and the second hand on the half-way mark (30 seconds)—start concentrating on that object. When the first other thought comes in, quit concentrating and look at your watch. To you it will seem a long time, but you will be astonished to see that it has been only about two or three seconds.

After you have learned to concentrate on an object, then the hardest thing to learn is to concentrate on nothing. In other words, to have no conscious thoughts for a moment, just the flash of a moment. You are not thinking—you are just calmly sending out the desire of wanting to know— when all at once, while you are at peace, before you know it and without being conscious of it, you have the solution. You were in the state of meditation for a moment and you received the answer. I can concentrate my mind and I will not be conscious of anything outside—through my senses. Machines can go by, and everything else, but I don’t hear them—am not conscious of them. You could come up and touch me and I wouldn’t know it. So when you have learned to concentrate on something, then learn to concentrate on nothing for just the flash of a moment, and you will get the answer. Then you must not permit doubts to come in, but accept it, act upon it, and you will not make mistakes.

My dear people, I am going to give you the Silence, which I usually give before a lecture to put the audience at peace, getting them away from all mental turmoil, so that they are ready to receive the message. If you will remember these suggestions and repeat them to yourself when you are alone in a room or anywhere, you will be able to put your own mind at peace; and that will be a means for you to be in contact with the Universal Mind. When you are seeking the solution to a problem, or when you are in a turmoil and can­not see the way out with your reasoning mind, just permit yourself to let go, relax, with these suggestions, and the ques­tions that are uppermost in your mind, or brain, will be answered. The answers will come to you while you are in that state of mind and register in your brain, and when the time comes to act, they will come to your consciousness. You will think, “This I must do,” and you will do it.

The Silence

Relaxing in your seats, closing your eyes, permitting your minds to be at peace, at rest, forgetting all troubles, all wor­ries, all problems, all tragedies—just peace. . . .

Every muscle relaxed, every nerve calm and quiet, every organ in your body working in harmony, one with the other, in perfect control by your subconscious mind, or brain. . . .

Heart beating slowly—rhythmically. Blood coursing freely in a cycle throughout your body, reaching every cell and tissue, repairing the tear and the wear of the day, bringing back to full health those who have been contaminated by germs of diseases. Breathing slowly, rhythmically. . . .

A feeling, a sense, of peace, of calmness, of quietness, has taken full possession of you. . . . How wonderful it feels to be at peace, to be at peace with all things, to be at peace with the Universal Mind or God, to be at peace with your fellowman, to be at peace with yourself. . . . Peace of mind! Wonderful Peace!

You have just received a message which has given you a better understanding of the realities of the Universal Mind, and how to tap that great power for knowledge, or whatever you want, by sending out thought vibrations. But you will remember that the Law of Compensation is eternally there: that as you give yourself through your efforts, as you give your fellowman, so shall you receive from that Universal Mind and from your fellowman— just what you give. So from now on, you will make every effort to obey that great Law of Compensation by giving at all times smiles, happy words, kind words, constructive words to everyone who comes in contact with you, and thus you will receive the best and the most there is to be had from Life.

You will now remain silent for a few moments, permitting your mind to be at peace, at rest. Beautiful thoughts will come to you from the Universal Mind, or God, registering into your subconscious mind, bobbing up into your con­sciousness at your time of need: to guide you, to help you, to strengthen you, and to inspire you. Remain silent until you hear the words, And so it is.

(Brief period of Silence.)

And so it is!

 

BIRTH OF A NEW ERA

In the present day, so-called civilization has made life a complicated thing indeed. More than ever before, man is unhappy. His struggle is greater, his understanding of the realities and the Truth, less. With his selfishness, with his greed, with his petty ideas, with his egotism, he has made of himself a pitiful being indeed. And the time has come when a change must be made.

All over the world there is a feeling of unrest; every coun­try is in a turmoil. The spirit of man is discontented with his boasted civilization and progress, because it has not brought him peace of spirit or of mind. Instead, it has made of him a greater slave; it has placed his mind in a state of confusion. He doesn’t know, he is seeking a way out; still he feels that a tragedy is coming.

You know, my dear people, it takes tragedies—it takes great tragedies—to bring men together. And there will be wars, there will be great suffering, but yet I say to you that it is all as the birth of a child—a new era—a better era for humanity, a better world, better conditions, better life. But the pains of the change must be borne. As when a child is born, there is a great deal of labor, there is a great deal of pain, so does humanity have to stand those pains in order to bring forth the new-born baby—a greater rapprochement of humanity with one another, of the races, of the countries —a greater feeling of co-operation, a greater desire of doing, of living for all instead of for self.

After all, life could be a beautiful thing if man understood himself, if he understood the Laws that govern, if he got away from his petty ideas, from his small-mindedness, and if he were to do as the Teacher told him over nineteen hun­dred years ago: Seek, seek understanding.

Men’s ideas, men’s theories, their isms and ologies, have made life, or the understanding of life, a very complex thing to the human mind, so complex that man does not really know where he is or what to believe. My teachings are to bring back the human mind to the simplicity of things, to the simplicity of life, to the simplicity of understanding the Laws that govern this universe, that govern the material, the phys­ical and the spiritual. All the great Teachers have given you those Laws in such a simple way that everyone can under­stand them; but men in their selfishness, in their hardness, in their greed, have departed from them.

I will say a few words of wisdom to you, my dear people, that I say to many: You are all seeking happiness, you all wish it, but you are seeking it in the physical sense. I will say to you that happiness can only be attained by giving hap­piness to others, by rendering service, by giving at all times to life and your fellowman the best and the most there is in you. And thus you will receive, because the Law is inevitable: As you give life and your fellowman, so shall you receive from life and your fellowman. Be interested in the affairs of all, to the betterment of all, to the betterment of humankind.

All mankind, through all these ages, has been seeking de­velopment. But they have sought principally physical devel­opment. The balance has not been there. The new era that is coming will produce that balance. Man will not care about his so-called civilization, his material progress, as he calls it —his play things, his built-up castles of cards. To him, then, those will be only the means to an end. He will not have pride in his accomplishment, or egotism. He will just do, build, work, change—seeking to do better, continually bet­ter, not in a material, mechanical way alone, but for the betterment of all humanity. He will accept all as his equal— no superiority, no superior race, but all as one great family— the family of man.

And then will be fulfilled the dream of all philosophers who have dreamed for centuries and who have been trying to teach the Brotherhood of Man. And the words of the Teacher of over nineteen hundred years ago will be fulfilled. Peace will descend upon mankind, peace of mind, happiness —all as one family. And He will be able to say then, “My children. They are all my children.”

I will say to you, my dear people, the Truth and the realities are always very simple. It is men’s ideas and theories that are complicated. So the thoughts that you will receive here are simple.

Universal Law

As you give, so shall you receive. Such is the inevitable Law of Compensation—the fundamental Law of the Uni­verse … As you give to Life and your fellowman, so shall you receive from Life and your fellowman.

All things are governed by that Law: the tree, the plant, the insect, the human being—even the changes in the earth, the movements of the sun and the energy thrown out by the sun; it is all governed by the Law of Compensation. It is all activity—and you, the individual, are deserving only of that which you make the effort for.

No one can evade the Law. If you think you are escaping it, you are only deluding yourself. It is so certain that though you may think you are getting away with it, you are not. All at once something happens, and you are crushed.

All teachings fit only the times in which they were given, but the Universal Law that has been given by every Teacher of humanity is the Law of Compensation. If you give constructively, you will receive constructively; if you give de­structively, then you will receive destructively.

Sameness in All Teachings

There is but one teaching, Truth, and the Truth is the hardest thing to be accepted.

All Teachers have taught the world the same Truth. I am teaching the same Truth. It is nothing new; it is simply to remind you, to bring it back to your own mind.

Your Teacher of over 1900 years ago gave the world the teachings, but you have lost sight of them in your creed and ritualism. You have looked at petty things instead of the great realities that were given you by your Teacher.

The fundamental teachings that have been given by every Teacher that has come into the world—whether it was Con­fucius, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, whether it was Jesus, or any other—are: Love, Tolerance, Forgiveness, and the Seeking of Truth and Understanding.

Love

You are not here to live within yourself, with a wall around you; but you are here to love and to render service to your fellowman.

The greater love is love without sentiment or feelings. It is the love that wants the good of the other, regardless of the cost to self.

“Love thy neighbor as thyself.” That is the true love of fellowman: doing things for him, helping him to help him­self. When he is down, don’t give him a chance to stay down, but give him an opportunity to do something for himself.

It is love and service to others, to your fellow beings, regardless of color, religion or nationality, that will give the individual real happiness, and make a nation stable and great.

Tolerance

The next teaching is tolerance. How the world needs an understanding of tolerance! If you expect the right to live your own life, to think as you wish to think, and to believe as you wish to believe, you must give the same right to the other individual.

The Catholic is right in his belief; the Protestant is right in his; the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the Confucianist, or the savage in Africa who worships idols—each one is right in his belief. All religions, all faiths, are right: each one is a way, a spoke in the wheel, leading to the same center—the seeking of understanding and truth.

Intolerance is always the result of ignorance. The one who really thinks is not intolerant.

No matter what your religion is, it is right, so live it! Forgiveness

The next is forgiveness. Forgive at all times, no matter what is done to you. The moment someone does you harm, instead of holding a grudge against him, keeping the thing alive—forgive and forget it immediately, and then it is over with.

Seeking Truth and Understanding

And last—the Seeking of Truth and Understanding. Seek and you shall find. Seek knowledge and a better understand­ing of things—not narrowing yourself by what someone has given you, or accepting without any effort of reasoning or analyzing, but seek, and knowledge will come to you. Seek —and the seeking is endless.

All Efforts Rewarded

The greater and more efforts you make to develop that great power within yourself—the power of mind—the more you will receive from life. Your steps forward, your growth, and your accomplishments, depend entirely on the way you use the Law of Compensation.

Don’t think it is God way up in the sky giving you good or bad luck or bringing things to you. It is all yourself. God helps those who help themselves; as you give, so shall you receive.

There is no such thing as luck. Your life, your future, is not something that is dictated or given you by a Being sitting on a throne, saying, “Fokus, hokus, pokus—and so it shall be for you,” but your future is in cause and effect. What you do now, continually now, has a bearing on what will be for you in the future.

God—Just, Impartial

Remember, your God is a just God, but cold and without sentiment or favoritism. If It had sentiment or favoritism, It would not be a just God.

No matter what name you give that God of yours— whether you call It God, Allah, Jehovah, Universal Mind, Mind, Great Spirit, Nature, or anything else—It is all one and the same. It is without feelings, It has no sentiment, no ideals, is not concerned about you, the individual, but works by certain, definite, spiritual Laws, and you, the individual, must obey those Laws, or pay the price. You have to con­form to the Laws of the universe.

Here is a table and on it is a wonderful meal. There are all kinds of foods upon it—the finest and the best—every kind you can think of—good and bad for you, the individual. You are sitting at the table. But before you can get that food, you have to work for it—you have to reach over and bring it to you—it will not come to you. And you are going to get just what you reach out for. That is the way in life.

You are only given what you deserve. You are only given as you give. So it behooves you to be real, to be good, to be kind, to be helpful (not charity): helping others in the solu­tion of their problems, helping them to help themselves, giv­ing at all times service to your fellowman, spreading sunshine and smiles all around you. Then sunshine, smiles, and happi­ness will come back to you: that is the inevitable Law.

Seek Happiness

God does not demand that human beings go through life with a long face—it is their duty to be happy. Every person is here upon this earth to seek and to find happiness, and Christianity should be a joy instead of a sadness.

I am here to give you something worthwhile, so as to change your life from one of depression, repression and nar­rowness into one of freedom. Seek the way to be happy, get your happiness, get it any way you can get it as long as you don’t hurt somebody else.

Nobody can tell you how you shall live your life, but if you permit them to, they will make a mess of it for you. Throw down the chains and think for yourself.

Think!

Think! Therein lies your happiness! Think—see the beauty in things, see the progress, see the reason why you are here and what your duty is.

Those of you who have ideas of your own must remember that progress is had only by those who are willing to change their ideas; that those who are set in their notions, in their beliefs, and are not willing to listen, to think, and to change them—those are the ones that remain backward—those are the ones that are trying to hold back the wheel of progress.

Those who listen, then think, and see if what has been given them is better than what they already had, and if it is, accept it—still seeking for something better—those are the ones that keep progress moving onward.

Whenever you are not obeying that Law of Progress and Evolution by the process of mental activity, you are out of harmony and you have troubles.

Sin and Suffering

What is the cause of all human suffering? First of all, self­ishness. Next is disobedience of the natural or spiritual Laws. Those Laws are inevitable, and it is our trying to evade them that causes all our suffering.

As long as there is selfishness, as long as there is greed, in the make-up of a human being, he is not in harmony, and he will pay the price in disharmony within his own mind.

The greatest sins are the mental sins. They are: selfishness, egotism, greed, gossip, pretense, anger, hatred, jealousy, fa­naticism, mental lethargy.

Greed—Selfishness

Greed is caused by selfishness—taking everything and giv­ing nothing, or little, in return. The greedy shut themselves off from happiness or heaven.

You might get away with violating man-made laws, but you cannot get away with violating the Law of Compen­sation.

The more you run after money, the harder it will be for you to get; and when you do get it, what good is that money to you? But when you think of rendering service to your fellowman—of giving him something worthwhile to his own development—you don’t have to think of money, it is a natural consequence.

The man who does big, constructive things and makes a fortune is doing good. But the man who is trying to hurt his fellowman for his own selfish purpose, he is evil to himself as well as to others.

The greed for power is shown in the politician or the self­ish man who allies himself with the gangsters, the thieves and the criminals in order to come up the steps to power. That man does not stay in power long; those with whom he has allied himself are quick to turn on him and desert him when they see the ship starting to sink.

Humanity is eagerly seeking, seeking. They are seeking happiness but never attaining it, because they are seeking it the wrong way: in thrills, in excesses, in frivolities—trying to forget, fearing to be alone with their own thoughts.

They think that money or possessions will give them hap­piness; but when they get it, they want some more; and when they get some more, they are not contented, but want some­thing else.

Happiness is not given you by factors outside—happiness is a state of mind. As you think, so it is.

It is time for the Occidental world to receive a new teach­ing: one that will soften the selfishness, hardness and merci­lessness of the present-day humanity, with its cold commer­cialism and struggle for wealth. It is time that they be made to realize the realities and the truth—that wealth does not give happiness, that the scramble for money leaves in its wake the corpses of everything that is beautiful; that it de­stroys love; that it builds selfishness; that it creates envy and hatred; that it is destructive to the individual and the nation, and the price is downfall.

Egotism

As long as people are way up in their own estimation, they are not one of humanity, they are not one with humanity, they are not doing anything for humanity.

Blessed is he who can do his work with humility in his mind. Few have attained that.

The street sweeper, the elevator boy, the maid, are just as necessary in the scheme of the world as the man or woman of affairs. We need them, without them we would be helpless, so why not show them appreciation? It is by showing appre­ciation to your fellowman, no matter how low or how high in the scale of society he may be, that you will have his co­operation.

Gossip

It is pitiful to me that you have laws against the thief who steals from you, the murderer who takes your life—laws to incarcerate them, to put them away where they cannot of­fend or hurt anymore; but you have no law against the thief of your reputation—no law against the one who crushes spirit in the human being by his filthy gossip.

The gossiper is like a vile snake in the grass, that sneaks up and strikes. He deserves no mercy, but should be trampled upon and crushed. It would be a blessing to humanity if the tongue that carries ill tales about his fellowman were cut off completely.

Pretense

The real aristocrat is not the one with noble ancestors: he is the one who renders great service and does something con­structive to his fellowman; the rest is all pretense.

Simplicity is the source of all dignity, and pretense is the source of all absurdity.

My dear people, expression of the soul—that is what every human being needs, dropping those pretenses. You are only small children after all, and only infants, so why pretend?

Hatred and Revenge

There is little forgiveness in this world—very little. I see it every day: people I come in contact with holding a grudge against someone and hating him because of some harm that has been done them—and continuing to live it, keeping it with them, to destroy their peace of mind.

If someone has hurt you and you are keeping it in your consciousness, you are sending out those vibrations and are attracting to yourself the hatred of that individual. But the moment you dismiss it from your mind as a thing of the past —not living it—it becomes negative and dies of its own ac­cord.

Jealousy and Envy

As long as you have jealousy, like a darting flame it keeps on burning always in your own soul.

Instead of being jealous, want for the other person, happi­ness; and want for him, success.

Instead of tearing down your competitor, boost him and boost his business. You are boosting yourself and your own business then, and you are getting the good will of the other fellow.

Fanaticism and Bigotry

Indeed it is time to get away from fanaticism and face things as they are, look them squarely in the face—making the most of them, accepting the realities and building from them, not trying to force your ideas upon the rest, but per­mitting each human being to decide for himself. Personal liberty, indeed! Not only liberty of ideas, but liberty of belief!

When you try to force your way upon others, then you are a fanatic.

That is why there are so many wars and so much trouble: intolerance and fanaticism.

The church or religion that demands of you and teaches you that you must go through life with a long face, or with your eyes cast to the ceiling, with your hands clasped to­gether, never smiling with happiness, but full of repression and suppression, repenting for living now so as to go to heaven after you die—that kind of religion is fanaticism.

The fanatic, the moralist, has caused horrible conditions because he does not see farther than the tip of his long nose.

Reform and Man-made Laws

The fanatic and the reformer are identically the same— wanting everybody to be angels, to suppress human emotions—wanting everybody to be just like they are. (But, oh, if you could see behind their angelic masks into their real selves!!!)

Laws will never make angels out of human beings—it is human nature to want to do the thing that you are told not to do.

Before any change for the better can be produced, the people have got to be willing to accept it, and how can they become willing to accept it? By the receiving of thoughts in their mind—by education.

If the Prohibitionist-reformer, instead of seeking legisla­tion to prohibit the sale of liquor, had started his campaign by educating the people to the consequences of drinking and all that—pointing out the results, both physical and mental— the people would have been willing and wanting to over­come the desire for drink. But Prohibition made drinking far more tempting and much more thrilling.

Spiritual Laws Supreme

It is the understanding of the great spiritual Laws that will make human beings worthwhile.

How few people think! How few people use common sense! How few people seek to understand the Laws that govern them. And, oh, my dear people, life is so easy, it is so beautiful when you know that it all centers in the spiritual self—in the state of mind—in your own thoughts: that it isn’t the material things which give you peace of mind and contentment, but it is what you give out from your soul to everyone that you come in contact with.

Mental Lethargy

Mental laziness is the greatest handicap in human beings. They will go to any extreme in efforts with the physical side, but will put forth little efforts from the mental side.

From the eyes down you are worth only a few dollars a day; but from the eyes up you are worth billions—there is no limit.

Life today, more than ever before, is a struggle for the survival of the fittest; not the survival of the fittest physi­cally, but the survival of the fittest mentally.

Nature of Thought and the Brain

What is thought? Thought is the greatest potential force in existence. It is a power that you cannot see, you cannot touch, you cannot weigh, you cannot smell—and yet it is something very real.

Thought can even be photographed; it has been photo­graphed. Thought pictures have been sent to other people— telepathy. Most of you have experienced it. Perhaps you are sitting in the back of an audience, and you think, “That is Mr. Smith sitting down in front,” and Mr. Smith turns around and looks. He received your thought.

Thoughts do not belong to you. You reach out for thoughts and you use them, but they are not your own.

Thoughts are vibrations, like the waves in a pool of water, like the waves sent out from a radio. Universal Mind is an immense pool with all kinds of vibrations, with every vibra­tion in it. And you, with your instrument, the brain, send thought vibrations out into the universe. They come back after they have gathered unto themselves vibrations in har­mony with them and then register in your brain, to be used as you need them. Whatever vibrations in that Universal Mind you are in tune with, are what come back to you.

The Mental Faculties

Concentration is the key to success; it is the secret of the big businessman: concentration of mind on what you are doing now—not living in the past or the future, but on each moment now.

By concentration of mind on now, continually now, you won’t have any troubles, because troubles are only unsolved problems; and instead of putting off the solution of your problems, you will meet each one as it comes up.

The little businessman is living in troubles and business worries; his thoughts are here, there and everywhere; and when a business proposition is presented to him, he doesn’t know what to do—he hasn’t been listening. As a result, he lets his opportunities escape, and fails. Opportunities are ever before you, but it is wavering that makes you lose them.

The big-minded man is master of himself, and no matter what situation he is in, he comes back to the top.

The subconscious mind, or brain, is the mind of record, where impressions from the senses, from reading, memory, and the like, are put on record. It does not differentiate be­tween what is good and what is bad—it records whatever you plant in there.

Your subconscious mind, or brain, controls the workings of your body in beautiful harmony if you permit it. It looks after all your needs as long as you don’t interfere with it. It tells your heart seventy-two times a minute: “Beat, beat, beat.” You don’t have to think about it. But the moment you commence to think that your heart is not beating right, immediately the subconscious mind tries to act upon your conscious bidding, and you create the very condition that you fear.

Fears and doubts are the worst enemies of the human being.

As you think, so you create. Whatever picture of your own physical self you have planted in your subconscious mind, that is what you are creating in your body. All diseases are mental reflections.

Your subconscious mind is your servant. For instance, if you tell it to, it will awaken you at five o’clock in the morn­ing to catch a train.

To every problem, there is a solution; and it is by persist­ently questioning yourself—by stopping, thinking, and ques­tioning—that the solution will finally come to you.

When you ask yourself a question, you are asking from the conscious mind to the subconscious; and the subconscious gives you the information that is already in there. When the information or answer to your question is not there, then the subconscious mind reaches out into the Universal Mind for the answer.

Education is received through the senses—from reading books and listening to what your teacher gives you—and then repeating it like a parrot; but knowledge, that is differ­ent! Knowledge comes to you.

The more you reason a thing, the more “on the fence” you will be, because one moment you are for it and the next moment you are against it. But if you concentrate your thoughts right now as the problem presents itself, then your subconscious mind will tell you what to do—it will guide you.

Thinking—that is indeed the great power. Some think that money is power, that machinery and all those things are power, but, my dear people, without thought this table would not be here. Without thought, you would not have anything. With one thought you can change a life com­pletely. So that shows you the real power is thought.

Power of Suggestion

Suggestion is a tremendous power that can be used either constructively or destructively.

You are all susceptible to suggestions. If your friend tells you that you look bad, immediately you feel bad, but if your friend tells you that you look fine, it makes you feel good.

Why not use that power constructively with your friends, your loved ones, and those that come in contact with you, by giving them kind words, good words, hopeful ones?

The greatest psychological crime is suggestion when used destructively; it has caused more deaths and murders than anything else. When you give the wrong suggestion about one’s health, you have planted a seed in that person’s mind which starts a chain of auto-suggestion, which may finally cause sickness and death.

When you are telling others about your operations, about your pains and aches, or boasting about what you have done, you are not giving them happiness. You are making them remember and think of their own troubles, of their own wor­ries, of their own miseries; but when you are giving them kind words, laughing words, you are helping them.

Harmony of Physical and Spiritual Laws

You are of the physical and of the material, also of the spiritual; and you must be in harmony with all the Laws, the physical as well as the spiritual, in order to get the most and the best out of life. If you try to be all spiritual, you get the worst of it; and if you try to be all physical, you get the worst of it.

There are many philosophies of life, and beautiful theories, and philosophy is wonderful; but what the world needs today is more of the practical understanding, which deals with the realities of life and with the development of the power that is in each human being. This is not up in the clouds but more here.

Law Governing Happiness and Health

The Law is this: The more you think about yourself, the more troubles you are heaping upon yourself. The less you think about yourself, the happier and healthier you will be, and the younger you will remain.

When you are interested in something worthwhile—not in a bridge game, for instance, nor in yourself, but in some­thing constructive to your fellowman as well as to yourself —then you haven’t time to think about yourself, you haven’t time to worry and to implant fear-thoughts in that brain of yours.

The secret of your happiness is the giving of happiness to everyone that comes in contact with you—giving kind words, constructive words, smiles, love. And thus it will come back to you in happiness, in smiles, for as you give out to your fellowman, so will you receive from your fellow­man.

Success and Opportunities

The man who gets there is the man who is willing to do anything that is necessary in order to get there; he is not “too good” for anything.

Concentration is the keynote to success. Know what you want to accomplish, “see” it; then forget about it, and apply yourself completely to doing things now.

The men or women who have accomplished the big things in life are not the ones who have sat and waited for oppor­tunities; they went out, used their brains and found their opportunities.

It is you who create your own opportunities; they do not come to you. It does not take money but vision.

What are opportunities? Ideas. The field is enormous.

Handicaps and the Game of Life

You have equality in opportunities to succeed, but no two persons are born equal. Each is born with handicaps of many kinds.

Those handicaps are a blessing. They are only the means to an end to force you to do something to overcome them. If you were not forced to, you would all follow the line of least resistance, and there would not be any progress. You would all die from inactivity.

The handicaps and troubles that come into your life are a necessity. They are the unsentimental way of Nature, or God, to force you to fulfill the spiritual Law of Evolution and Progress. So your destiny is according to your efforts.

Life is a fight: it is a fight from the moment you are born until the moment you die. It is a fight for the first breath— when a baby is born, he fights for that first breath. It is a fight for the last one—a dying man fights for just one more breath. It is a fight all the way through. And as in a game of poker, when you win, you smile, don’t you? You win some­times; but you lose many times. When you win, smile. When you lose, smile also. Then you are playing the game of life thoroughly—as a thoroughbred.

Faith, the Force

Faith is the force. It is faith that will make you succeed, that will give you power and strength. Not religious faith only, but faith: faith in your ability, faith in yourself, faith in the power that is within you. It is faith that will carry you through.

Faith is belief beyond a doubt; and when you believe be­yond a doubt, it becomes a reality to you.

It is faith that heals you. When you pin your faith on medicine, if your faith is great enough, the medicine will heal you. If you believe in chiropractic, and your belief is com­plete, chiropractic will cure you. When you pin your faith on Christian Science, your whole faith, it is going to heal you. The same with any other healing agency—it is your faith in that agency which restores your health.

Eternity and Reincarnation

My teaching to you is this: The past is a vast cemetery, with nothing but tombstones of memories, mostly sad ones, and mistakes. Don’t live among the tombstones. The future is in the clouds—you don’t know. Don’t be in the clouds. Now is eternity. So make the most and the best of now, and the future will take care of itself.

What will be for you tomorrow is according to what you have done today. Heaven or hell is now. It is the state of your own mind, as you think. If you are happy, you are in heaven; but if you are full of worries and tragedies, you are in hell.

The Universal Force, or Mind—called God, Allah, Great Spirit, and the like—is in reality you and I, and all things which are a manifestation of Itself. You are a part of It, or God, just as a cell is part of you. So life—your life—is ever­lasting, only changing its phases.

It is beautiful to know that life is eternal; that death is merely the putting off of an old garment to replace it with a new one.

You ask, what is death? Why do you want to know about death and what is after? Why not want to know also what is first—what was before birth, and before conception? One is just as important as the other.

The Law governing Reincarnation is just as real, precise and eternal as the Law governing the movement of stars and planets.

Reincarnation is the same as your life from day to day. You are working today—using your mental activity to pro­duce a creative work. Tonight you retire, after divesting yourself of the garments that you wore during your work of the day. You are sound asleep, unconscious, practically as in death. In the morning you awake back to life again; you assume a suit of clothes, and start your work where you have left it the day or the life before.

You, as you are now, are the consequence of an eternity in the past, and with all that, you have developed only one- sixth or less of the activity of your brain. With all those bil­lions of years behind you, just think of the billions of years still in front of you that it will take to develop two-sixths and finally six-sixths of your mental capacity. And then this body, this physical form, is not the end. This is only one of the phases of eternity, of eternal life. Your Teacher of over 1900 years ago said, “In my Father’s house are many man­sions.” There is an infinity of planets of all kinds for you to go through yet in your process of Reincarnative Evolution.

Evolution

Evolution is not according to man’s reasoning ideas: by certain definite steps. It is life—adapting itself to any new condition. There is a mental growth, an adding to, a throw­ing out, receiving, and throwing out more. But the physical or the material evolution is only according to environment, according to circumstances.

If this earth were to pass tonight into a region of, we will say—dust, cutting off a great portion of the heat of the sun, millions would die in a few hours; but some would survive. And those surviving, from generation to generation, would create a new change, a new adaptation, to the new condition.

I experimented with fish, to make the demonstration. I had fish taken from an open pond—fish which had large eyes— and placed in a pond in a dark cave. After they had been there a few generations, we took them out, and they had no eyes. There was a place for eyes, but no activity in them.

Then we took those fish and placed them again in water where there was light. After a few generations, they again developed eyes. Their life adjusted itself to the new condi­tions.

There isn’t one planet, there isn’t one star in the firmament that hasn’t life, because life adjusts itself to any condition. I proved that to scientists once: I took some water com­pletely sterilized. To their conception, there could not be any life in it. I had that water hermetically sealed in a glass tube—no air could pass through—and laid it aside. After years we examined that water with a strong magnifying glass; and we could see life, activity, in that sterile water.

Life is eternal—it is everywhere, but in different forms and stages of development. Evolution is going on and will go on through eternity.

Reincarnative Evolution shows all the steps of the con­tinuity or the eternity of all things, and the steps you are going through, and why. It does not conflict with your re­ligion.

Life a Continuous Cycle

Nothing is lost in the scheme of the universe; it is a con­tinuous cycle.

The physical life is just as eternal as the spiritual one. For example, you slice your finger by accident. A piece of flesh falls to the ground, or it is picked up and thrown out. It decomposes; the cells become scattered underground. A plant grows and absorbs the matter that made up those cells. A human being cuts that plant and eats it; the cells that you lost from your finger are replenishing the cells needed in that being. So it is a continuous cycle.

There is no wall separating the spiritual and the material: it is a continuity of blending-in, and you will never find a beginning. When I made that statement to scientists years ago, they thought the molecule was the smallest particle of matter. Later on, they said the atom was the smallest. A few years later, they said not the atom but the electron was the smallest—pushing the wall farther back. Now, they are daring to think that the electron is composed of many re­volving particles; and the wall is being shoved farther back still. And so it will be ad infinitum.

Life is existent in all things, and there is a process of growth going on at all times, never stopping. Even stones are alive.

The ways are mysterious ways, and your God is a just God. It is not concerned about petty things; but It is con­cerned about the steps of progress, of evolution.

Your duty is to put forth everything there is in you in helping along the working of that great Universal Law of Evolution and Progress, and to be a strong link instead of being a formation of rust on that eternal chain.

Public Spirit

If you do not make the effort to alleviate the miseries all around you; if you remain within your petty, limited ideas, and don’t want to see anything else, don’t want to make the effort to do something to help remedy the terrible condi­tions, you are not doing your duty, you are not worth while, you are not getting the best out of life.

You must look after yourself—provide for your neces­sities, comforts and those things—but that isn’t all. You must also be constructive in the questions that arise about the bet­terment of all, of your city, of your state, of your country and of the world.

Wars will be no more when man has learned to live, do, and die for the benefit of all instead of for self.

If each individual were to study civic questions and want to do his or her part, there would be better conditions.

Laws, Crime and Criminals

The gangster and the politician are inseparable. But to those who decry this fact, I would say: You are only getting what you deserve. The criminals are organized, but you are not; they protect their own, but you are not even interested enough in the welfare of the public to go to your polls and vote.

What is wrong with laws, courts, justice? The answer is: Organized criminals against indifferent society.

In foolish man-made laws, there is actually no law. There are so many man-made laws that one kills the other one completely; and by the very laws under which a person is accused, I can prove that he is innocent.

In two hundred years from now, how they will laugh at the haggling lawyers in your courts of today! Here is a law­yer for the defense and here is one prosecuting: they do not want the truth to come out. They are fighting with each other to defeat the truth and to prevent the administration of justice.

How they will laugh in two hundred years from now at your method of handling criminals. You are treating them physically, by putting them in jail or prison. You are follow­ing the line of least resistance: when a poor devil is mentally sick, you just put him away where he will not bother you. That is easier than treatment, but not humane.

Criminal Justice

It is not by building prisons, asylums and jails, that you are going to do away with crime. That system has been a total failure. Success will come not from punishing criminals to prevent criminals, but from proper education in what makes criminals: the environment, circumstances, prenatal influences, the different stages during the period of man- in-the-making.

If the money that is spent on trials, courts, penitentiaries, asylums, prisons, and institutions of that kind were to be used constructively to remedy conditions under which crim­inals are born and made, if instead of passing all kinds of laws which tempt men to become criminals, a system of edu­cation were established to teach the youth and the public the Law of Compensation—that as they give to Life and their fellowman, so shall they receive from Life and their fellowman—inside of two generations there would not be a need for any of those institutions.

Social Codes

How the people of two hundred years from now will laugh at your customs, at your social codes, at your social castes. This Republic with social castes, so-called aristocracy and all that—it is amusing!

Capital and Labor

The capitalist is necessary under present conditions, but so is the working man necessary; and instead of one hoping to overthrow the other, there should be co-operation.

The way out for employers and employees is for both sides to get a better understanding of the Law of Compensa­tion: the employee to remember that he is working for him­self, that the more effort he makes to develop himself, the more he will deserve and the more he will get—the greater will be his success.

With employers it is the same thing: they must recognize that Law. Life is continually “give and take”—not from one side, but from both sides. And the really big men realize that. They are humble, they know they are helpless without other human beings, that without their workers, they would not be what they are.

Charity

Charity is destructive, and it is only a question of time when all charity will be done away with; because you know human beings try to follow the line of least resistance, and the more you give them in charity, the less they have to do for themselves, so it is not helping them. But what they need is to be shown the way to help themselves—to do something for themselves.

Prenatal Influence

This great country is spending millions and millions of dollars to improve the breed of its cattle and hogs; but it is not spending one dollar to improve the breed of its citizens by the proper education of the mothers and fathers to the reality of the prenatal influence that the mother’s thoughts will have upon her child. There is a great question that is before humanity today; and it is the understanding of that most delicate period of the citizen in-the-making, before it has seen the light of day. I hope before long to see a move­ment of this great government and its people of starting to educate prospective mothers to the care of themselves— mental care—during the prenatal period. * Meaning: The giving to people who could do something for themselves but who make little or no effort to do so.

The prenatal thoughts of the mother create in the child. The little brain in-the-making is an agglomeration of empty cells. The subconscious thought-pictures in the brain of the mother are transmitted, as she uses them, into the cells of the little brain, becoming subconscious impulses. Thoughts are vibrations and they are transmitted the same as radio waves.

The little brain is also subject to the mother’s conscious thoughts and impressions. All kinds of fear thoughts are planted in the little being in-the-making, which it has to fight and overcome all throughout its life. It is time the prospective mother understood the importance of control­ling her thoughts and of having good, wholesome, construc­tive thoughts during the time of pregnancy. It is time that people realized the tremendous effect that prenatal influence has upon the destiny and life of a child.

Education

How the people of two hundred years from now will pity and be amused by the system of schools of today!

And you call that system education! Why don’t you guide the children into what they are best fitted for, instead of feeding their brains with unnecessary things? Why don’t you give them something constructive to their life and to their mental progress?

The New Era

This country today, my dear people, has reached its apex of materialism, of physicalism, but at the expense of the spiritual side, and you have made slaves of yourselves. I know the price; physical, material progress is always self-destructive. The signs of the times have been giving you the warning, but, you know, no one is so blind as the one who does not wish to see.

It takes tragedies to awaken humanity, and to have them desire something different, something better; and I will say to you, those tragedies are about to happen to the human race; but then, after it is over, on the corpse of the old will be built the new, which will unfold to something far greater, far better.

There won’t be any racial disparity; and men, no matter what their color, men no matter what their religion, their belief, no matter what their origin, will all work, one for the other. The self will be effaced, all wanting progress and the good of all, each one wanting for all, each one doing for all. Today it is do others; but then, it will be do for others; and people will be far happier because self is the great handicap of humankind today.

When men have learned to love one another and render service to one another, that will be the New Era, the dream of all philosophers, of all teachers, of your Teacher of over 1900 years ago, who taught Peace among men! Brother­hood of men! And that day is almost here.

Thoughts To Ponder

Men, with their ideas, their theories, have confused men’s minds until they don’t know where they are. The realities of things, and the Truth, are always simple, very simple.

If you watch life, you will see from your own experience that you get back what you are giving to it—what you radi­ate.

If you are weak, the ones a little stronger than you step on you and try to hold you down. But if you assert yourself, and fight and work for development, nothing can stop you.

The New Teachings I am presenting to you are not in accordance with the old dogmatic ideas.

Your going to church, shouting, giving to charity, and the like, does not avail you anything. It is obedience to the spiritual Laws—the sending out from you the best there is in you at all times now that will make you deserving of the best eternally now.

Do you mean to say that God is sentimental—that He would give happiness to one person and inflict misery upon another one? No! You get what you deserve in life, nothing else.

If you think happy, constructive thoughts, you will be happy; but if you are always in a mental turmoil, seeking thrills, it is a continuous disappointment and the price is to be paid.

If you were to start each day by thinking of a song, a piece of music or a beautiful piece of art—instead of waking up with a long face or a grouch—and if you were to live all day with that song, with that music, or that beautiful piece of art in your soul, then you would be able to scatter sun­shine around you, and you would forget the harshness of life.

To do for self is fine, but you must also do for others.

Each one of you who is only thinking about your little self—“Well, as long as I get along, I don’t care about any­body else,” had better wake up.

Be tolerant, for it was circumstances that made you white or Protestant, and made the other fellow colored, or Catho­lic or Jew.

When anyone has harmed you and needs assistance, go to his assistance. You will make a friend out of an enemy and get more out of life.

Corporations are a blessing indeed as long as they are corporations of service. But when the selfish purpose comes in, then they become destructive.

The unity of collective minds is a tremendous power, not only for communities, nations and races, but it is just as great in your business or in your family.

Too many people do things which are a waste of energy, a waste of time, a waste of efforts; whereas if they would stop two minutes and think, and question themselves, they would save themselves all that loss.

Mental lethargy is the greatest impediment of progress and development.

Don’t pay attention to the sheep—all following the little path and afraid to deviate from it. It is the man with original­ity, with ideas, who accomplishes things.

Each individual is an antenna, in contact in that great Uni­versal Mind with what he is sending out—the same as a radio is only in contact with the stations it is in harmony or in tune with. Whatever you tune in with from your brain is what you receive from Mind.

When you are relaxed, and your mind is at peace—that is the time you are receptive to thoughts from the Universal

Mind or God, which enter your subconscious mind and come to your consciousness at your time of need.

The reasoning mind is the most deceptive part of you, be­cause you go by what you have seen and what you have heard until you are in confusion.

Have your objective, something to work for and to; but keep your thoughts continually on now.

It isn’t the size of the brain, it is how you use that brain to put it in harmony with the Universal Mind, that deter­mines your mentality.

The more active you are mentally, the less sleep you re­quire and the more alive you will be.

It is not the little mechanical things you may do, but the spirit behind the thing you want to accomplish, that will produce results.

Every sense vision is from the brain; every real vision is from the Universal Mind.

Time is existent only in your own conscious conception but not in eternity.

What is eternity? We will represent it by a circle. Can you find a beginning anywhere on that circle? Can you find an end? The very beginning of a thing is the end of a thing.

If you can point out to me a starting-point of that eter­nity, I will point to you an end to that eternity also.

What is Life? It is activity. What is activity? Vibrations. Everything is vibrations. All matter—every cell, every elec­tron—is concentrated vibrations.

All things contain that force which you call electricity. Electricity is only directed vibrations.

When I first came to the United States in 1875, they did not dare mention more than five thousand years back, but now they are speaking of billions of years in earlier time.

No one owes the skeptic an explanation or a demonstra­tion of any kind. It is for the doubter or the skeptic to seek and find out for himself, and to prove within himself the Truth and the reality.

Pitiful is the one who lacks faith; his life is drab and dreary and dark.

So It is beyond, It is around, It is everywhere—that Great Intelligence. And the one who doubts that there is a Supreme Intelligence, doubts his own intelligence.

Give at all times now the best there is in you—the best to your fellowman, and to yourself, and to Life—and the best will come back to you.

 

The End