Foreword
I. Does Mankind Need a New Religion?
II. Divine Science
III. The Universal Father
IV. My Father’s House
V. The Infinite Mother
V The Law of Subconscious Mind-Power
VII. The Universal Son
VIII. Making Your Self the Master
IX. Christ’s Code for Mankind
X. A Religion for Everyday Living
XI. God Talks with a Discouraged Man
XII. Divine Guidance and Personal Will
XIII. Living Above Trouble
XIV. The Unseen Measurer
XV. The Law of Abundance
XVI. Mental Law and Personal Destiny
XVII. Thinking Through
XVIII. Science and the Emotional Life
XIX. Life and Its Bodies
XX. Life and Death
XXI. Facing the Issue
Foreword
Each chapter in this book contains the substance of a lecture delivered in the course of my work as a teacher of Divine Science and metaphysics. My purpose in assembling this material and giving it its present form is to make available to the reader, in brief chapters, the instruction and the inspirational values of the lectures upon which they are based.
A word of explanation is due to the reader who may be unfamiliar with some of the terms employed. God and Principle are synonymous, and refer to the impersonal Cause of all things. “Father” is used to denote the universal Source of all individual life forms, but when so used in this book, it is not to be confused with the idea of a personal God. The Father of all things is not a person, but Principle. When the word is capitalized and used to indicate the incarnation of the universal Father in the individual human, a different meaning is involved. It means then what Jesus referred to when he spoke, as he so often did, of “The Father that dwelleth in me.” But he more often used the term “Son of God” and occasionally “Son of man.” Hence, whenever the terms Indwelling Father, Master Within, Christ Mind, Soul, the I Am, the greater Self, Son of God, are used in this book, the reference is to the immortal Self of the individual.
In this connection it is well for the reader to understand that such psychological terms as subjective mind, subconscious mind, and subliminal mind, all refer to the same Plus-Entity in man that I have mentioned in the above paragraph. In psychology this principle of subjectivity is regarded as creatively active in maintaining the vital functions of the body; the force back of intuition, habit, dreams, and other modes of mental action involving super-normal powers. If the reader will keep in mind these terms and their definitions, he will encounter no difficulty in perceiving the scientific basis of the instruction, and if the Law herein expounded is put into practice, he will be able to improve the conditions of his life.
I give with the book my treatment for the reader, that he may, as a result of his study, realize the presence and power of the Master-Self within him. That realization leads to success, health, and happiness. In the Name of the Master withing you, you shall be able to live the life and do the works of the Son of God.
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DOES MANKIND NEED A NEW RELIGION?
“Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!
Then He would guide me aright.
He leaveth countless steps behind Him
Yet passeth out of sight.”
The eternal quest of man is to find God. Religions change and evolve as man’s knowledge of the universe expands. When a religion fails to meet the human need; when the human mind outgrows any system of religious thought and practice, that religion begins to decline, and ultimately dies and is forgotten. Thousands of religions, cults, and sects, have thus come and gone in the course of human history, and doubtless other thousands before the dawn of history.
Wherever this has occurred, a new religion has sprung up to take the place of the old. And yet, something of the abandoned religion has been carried on into the new faith. So that an absolutely new and original religion is as impossible as a new science.
Modern science grew out of ancient magic and alchemy.
The Hebrew religion drew upon a body of laws and teachings that were very ancient when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt. The very name–Israel–is a compound of the names of ancient Egyptian gods. Christianity grew out of the religion of the Jews. Protestantism sprang from Roman Catholicism. Christian Science, to give a more modern instance, was born of Christianity.
The new religion which is now coming into the world is not and cannot be an original system of knowledge of God. It has its roots in the ancient faiths. It will grow into a distinct type of religious thought and practice, but some of the old terms and ideas will follow through. For the old faiths have in them certain truths, and all truth is universal, the property of any person or organized body of people who can perceive and use it. One fact is becoming increasingly evident: mighty forces are at work today to change man’s thought about God.
Millions of men and women, in this country and throughout the world, are awake to the need of a new religion. They are thinking as never before, and the tide of emotion in these inarticulate masses is rising upon the farthest shores of human life. Everyone who is at all sensitive to mass thought and feeling is aware of the sinister swish of this emtional sea. All are touched in some degree by its power.
A new kind of hunger is gnawing at the vitals of mankind–spiritual hunger. Its effect upon mankind is more impressive than marching legions. Spiritual hunger works more slowly, yet its effects are far more powerful and significant than physical hunger. This new force is shaking the foundations, not only of religions but of all the institutions of modern civilization. And the essential cause back of these fateful changes is the spiritual hunger of humanity.
If the craving for spiritual food is denied, reckless disregard of human life and human rights will increase. The old religions have failed to satisfy the spiritual needs of the modern man. The old moral and ethical ideals are toppling because of the crumbling of the foundations of the ancient religions. Those foundations were constructed out of materials incapable of withstanding the impact of modern scientific thought.
The present civilization is doomed unless a new and vital spiritual force comes to replace the weakened and discredited religions that were originally imported into the Western World from the Orient. The most superficial survey of the history of the world, at this time of and immediately preceding the advent of Jesus and the birth of Christianity, discloses the fact that humanity is in greater need of a Messiah today than then.
The hope, so long cherished by Christendom, that Jesus would come again in the clouds of glory to redeem mankind from its sorrows and miseries, is dead. Not one person in ten thousand has the slightest faith that such an event will ever occur. And even if it should, Jesus would find the same warring, greedy and selfish humanity to deal with that he faced nearly two thousand years ago. And the primary reason he would find an unchanged humanity is that the religions that were organized around his name and his message left out of their creeds and doctrines the spirit of his teachings.
The old forms and rituals, dogmas and doctrines, which he denounced and renounced, were incorporated in the new religion called Christianity. There was no definite break from tradition. New traditions were added; new rituals invented; a new type of priestly authority was formed. But the old spirit of intolerance and hatred, and the insolence of intrenched power, still ruled the spiritual lives of the people. That is why the old religion must go. That is why we need a new religion.
“Man cannot live by bread alone.” He must have spiritual food or die. The great question now being asked by a spiritually hungry world is, “What is the bread of life?” We ask for food and are given the stones of tradition. We cry for justice, and are referred to outgrown and discredited dogmas and creeds. Our faith in the gods of tradition is broken. War, poverty, and injustice; crime, misery and cruelty, all stalk with unabated power through the world. It is apparent that the god of the old religion was either a myth or else he has failed and deserted us.
Our hearts crave for freedom and fulfillment of the larger possibilities of life. We feel deeply that the spiritual life should thrill us with its promise of the new heaven and the new earth. But we listen in vain for some word from the leadership of the old religions, that might light up our world; some instruction to help us to master the strange new environment which science and engineering has forced upon us.
Our feet are eager to follow a true spiritual light which shall lead us into a new world of love and brotherhood and cooperation and social justice. But the old religion provides us with neither light nor leadership; neither spiritual food nor hope for freedom from the stark materialism which today rules the world. Is there no help for the widow’s son? No redemption for the spiritually and physically hungry millions of the earth?
Yes there is help. Mankind is seeing visions and dreaming dreams of a New Age. Implicit in these aspirations and hopes is the germ of the New Religion. The conception of that new Faith is already implanted in the human soul, and it is ready to come forth and satisfy the human need and the human longing.
Modern man, released by science from his prison of fear; no longer harassed by the spectre of hell; freed from the hypnotic spell of the belief in Satan, is moved by the impulse of a searching curiosity about religions. He is examining the foundations of the ancient faiths in the light of a new conception of the universe.
The myths and dogmas of the old theology no longer stir men to heated controversy. The ideas of a personal God and a personal Devil do not now arouse passionate hatreds and bitter antagonisms. A religious war is today unthinkable. What no one can prove about ancient revelations, and other old beliefs, no longer disturbs the mental atmosphere of the common people, and such dogmas have long been rejected by the thinkers and lovers of truth. The time is ripe for the birth of a New Religion that will meet the spiritual and intellectual needs of the people of the New Age.
But traditions, especially those associated with religious beliefs, die slowly. It takes more than a pat on the wrist to break up the dynasty of religious authority, even when it is based upon such flimsy foundation as supernatural revelation that is supposed to have taken place thousands of years ago.
The only way to change human institutions is to change the human mind. This is being accomplished at the present time on a scale and with a rapidity never equaled in the annals of history. And the reason is to be found in the modern press, magazines, radio, and the wonderful facilities for communication and intercommunication provided by the postal service of the world. The World Soul is mightily at work. Humanity is awake and on the march to the new world of its dreams. No force shall be able to withstand the spiritual migration of these restless and heart-hungry millions.
To meet the spiritual needs of the soul of man, a new religion is not only necessary, but it is now in process of formation and articulation. The Messiah of the modern world is not a single Personality. Thousands of men and women of vision are contributing to this great enterprise, which is undoubtedly the work of the Western World. The obscure symbolism of the Orient is unsuited to the Occidental mind. The New Religion, when formulated, will be based on Principle rather than the personality of any single Teacher.
With Principle for its basis, the New Religion will be scientific. It will teach men how to create a heaven here on earth. It will be a religion without fear, either of gods or devils. It will be a religion devoted to the ideals of social and industrial justice, rather than to “saving souls.” It will consist of a body of demonstrable mental and spiritual laws, based on Principle as the one Reality and Cause of all things.
The answer to the problems of human life and human destiny are here now, in the soul of man, and for the simple reason that the Universal Mind is in man. As all the religions of the past were evolved by the mind of man, so will it be with the New Religion. It is the task of man to search out the Wisdom of the Eternal, which is incarnate within his own being, and express it in terms that fit his spiritual needs and aspirations.
The intelligence of man is sufficiently evolved to enable him to work out the problems involved in creating a new religion and a new and just social order.
The two major fields of human thought and interest–religion and science–should go hand in hand, religion becoming more scientific and science increasingly religious in its attitude toward the laws and forces of nature. It is the purpose of this book to show how this may be accomplished.
Even now, the greatest scientific minds in the world are looking beyond the frontiers of matter and energy, into the region of Life and Mind. The spiritual leaders who represent the organized religions show little or no evidence that they are interested in applying the principles of science and rational thought to religion. Nevertheless, there are many laymen and scientists giving thought and time to this great problem.
The late Charles P. Steinmetz, shortly before his death a few years ago, when interviewed with regard to what he considered would be the great discovery in the field of human progress and scientific development, made the following statement:
“The greatest discovery and development of the coming years will be along spiritual lines. Here is a force which history clearly teaches has been the greatest power in the development of man and history, and yet we have been merely playing with it and have never seriously studied it as we have physical forces. Some day people will learn that material things do not bring happiness and are of little use in making men and women creative and powerful. Then the scientists of the world will turn their laboratories over to the study of God and the spiritual forces. When this day comes, the world will see more advancement in one generation than it has in the past four.”
The ideas and the instruction contained in this book are based upon the conception that mental and spiritual forces are governed by immutable laws, just as law governs natural forces and elements. When we understand these laws of the mental universe, we shall be able to use mental power scientifically, and with the same degree of certainty that a physicist has in using the forces of nature.
Each chapter is a self-contained unit dealing with a special feature of the mental Law. There is, however, a continuity of theme, which embraces the principles, laws, and practices of the Divine or Spiritual Science.
The chapter on the Law of Subconscious Mind Power gives the key to this Science and to its practical use.
The chapters on Divine Science, and Mental Law and Personal Destiny, make clear the reasons for the individual’s responsibility for the use he makes of the impersonal law.
It is the hope of the author that those who have been confused by the multiplicity of systems and metaphysical terms that have emerged during the last twenty or thirty years, in which the metaphysical movement has gained such great momentum, will find in these lessons a unifying and convincing statement of the fundamental principles of the New Religion.
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DIVINE SCIENCE
“That which fills all space cannot be limited to form, but contains all
forms within itself, and is the Source and Substance of all that exists.
This is why we define God as impersonal Principle
and not as personal Being.”
— Fannie B. James.
The word Science is defined as, “An exact and systematic statement of knowledge concerning some subject or group of subjects. Knowledge gained and verified by exact observation and correct thinking.” The word Divine means, “That which pertains to the nature of God.” Divine Science is therefore a systematic statement of knowledge of the nature of God, and man’s relationship to the Universe.
Divine Science is a religion. It is a new religion, because it undertakes to explain the relationship between man and the universe from the basis of Principle rather than personality. It rests on Law rather than special revelation.
Divine Science is scientific in spirit, purpose and method. Reasoning from the hypothesis that God is One, the Infinite and omnipresent Cause of all things, we affirm that everything that occurs or exists in the universe is natural, that is, has law back of it, and that this law-abiding nature of the universe applies to the powers of the human mind as well as to the motions of matter.
Upon this broad basis of One Principle as Cause, Divine Science constructs its philosophy of life. It is more concerned with law than revelation; seeks to know causes, and works in the atmosphere of scientific research rather than that of supernaturalism.
While we accept without reservation the hypothesis of One Cause, One Principle–One God–we are confronted by the problem of diversity in unity, of personality in Principle. It is the work of accounting for this infinite variety of forms, persons, laws, experiences, and natural phenomena, which make of Divine Science an evolving, scientific religion. For the true scientist is never satisfied to stand still. He wants to know what lies beyond. The moment he ceases to study and think and investigate, that moment he ceases to be a scientist. He may be a good man, a good citizen, a good religionist, but he ceases to be a scientist.
This does not mean that the Divine Scientist is disturbed or anxious in his spiritual life. He knows that growth is the only evidence of mental and spiritual health; that his progress is the measure of his use of the spiritual Law. And in this he is happy, healthy, forward-looking.
Take our basis, that God is One and Omnipresent. Yet we see that there is one force that we call life; another we name mind; another, that is everywhere around us, is matter, energy, motion. If you examine life, think of its various manifestations, you are impressed by the obvious fact that it all has one source. The life in a tree or in an animal originates in one Cause. Science has built up in its biological laboratories a wonderful and convincing proof of the unity of life. All life began, and begins, in the single cell. At first it was all alike. It ascended through evolutionary changes to complex forms, but it always begins in the cell, and is identical in its essential nature. The Source of life is One.
Consider mind–individual mind. It is in the amoeba, which exhibits mind action in its simplest form. Then, ascending through a vast range of increasingly complex organisms, it ultimates in man, in whom this intelligence extends over an enormous range of conscious and unconscious reactions.
You can carry further this analysis of all the effects you see in nature as having one Cause. Apply it to energy, matter, motion, power, vibration, thought–you will find you have to come to the same conclusion. Each type of phenomenon originates in one Cause which is identified in all its manifestations. The degree of intelligence, for instance, does not affect its essential nature. It is still the action of mind–intelligence.
This brings us to the next point of primary importance in Divine Science. The originating Cause of all things is impersonal. The best way to make this clear is to examine the attributes of personality. Here are some of the elements of human personality: Will, Choice, Desire, Opinion, Discrimination, to name a few.
Will implies the ability to do one thing rather than another. The absolute power and perfection of Infinite Principle excludes will as an attribute. It can only do and be the Truth, which is immutable. So, instead of ascribing the personal attribute of will to the Infinite, we use the term Law. The will of God is Law, absolute and eternal.
Choice means distinguishing between two or more possible courses of action. Perfect Principle, Infinite Mind, could not choose, for that would mean the recognition of something not itself, a manifest possibility, since God is All.
Desire is a factor of personal consciousness, and we can desire one thing more than another. But we cannot imagine that which is All, desiring anything.
Here then we have the key to a practical use of the Divine Science law. Principle cannot will to do one thing today and another thing tomorrow, but it does respond as Law to the action of the power of personal will in an individual. It cannot choose, but it does respond as Principle to the power of choice in the individual. And thus we could continue to analyze all the attributes of personality in relation to Principle.
This Omnipresent, Impersonal Principle is present in all creation. Its acitivity is always that of Law. See how it works in what we are pleased to call natural science. Consider the force of gravity, one phase of the infinite activity. It is impersonal. The personal factor is human intelligence which has learned how to specialize the universal force, and to use it in various ways by cooperating with its laws, turning it into mechanical energy, or electricity. The rain is impersonal and so are the wind, the soil, power, electricity, because they are all the action of impersonal Mind. But personal mind can use them, and specialize them to personal ends.
The same thing is also true of Universal Mind. It is the source of personal intelligence, but because it is universal, it must be impersonal. All personal mental action takes place in this Universal Medium. Individual mind thinks; Universal Mind acts–as Law. That is, the action of the Law corresponds with the thought of the individual. If you say, “I desire to do this,” the Law cannot say “No, you must do something else.” In the language of Jesus “Thou hast committed all decision unto the son”–the personal mind, for the Infinite cannot decide to do one thing rather than another, since it is perfect Truth, and is All.
Thus the universe is both impersonal, as Principle, and personal as manifesting in individual forms. Man also is both impersonal and personal. That is, the conscious mind or spirit of man, the self, is personal. The soul, or unconscious mind, is impersonal and acts as Law. The Law of the universe is reproduced in man. As the soil [is] to the seed in nature, so is the impersonal mind in man to his thought, desire, will, choice.
The personal mind is always dealing with, always using, the impersonal Law. We specialize it to definite ends or purposes, and it responds in exact accord with our will and thought. Hence, back of your thought is the infinite power of the universe. Just as back of the stone you throw into the air is the infinite energy of gravitation, and back of your knowledge of mathematics is the infinite power of numbers. You decide what Mind shall do for you. If you think poverty, that is your limited demand on Universal Mind. If you lift your consciousness to behold the infinite abundance, and live in the thought of creative activity and abundant supply, that will be the response of the Universal Mind. But the Law is exact and exacting. If your thought is wavering, doubtful, you impregnate the Creative Mind in you with that conception, and your doubt will manifest as failure. Faith is the dynamic action of positive knowledge cooperating with Law.
The One Principle has many attributes, but they are inherent in the one Cause. That is why nature is diversified. That is why there are degrees of intelligence, varieties of form, different modes of action. Divine Science does not deny matter, energy, space, time, motion. It accounts for them in terms of immutable law. It accepts natural science as one aspect of the Universal Science. One Cause with manifold effects. The One in all, and all in the One.
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THE UNIVERSAL FATHER
Salutation to The Father
“Eternal Father of Lights, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning, we are thy Children, the Children of Light. We turn from the darkness of dogma, superstition, tradition, and the opinions of men, to the Truth revealed in the heavens, the Work of thy Fingers, and to Nature, the Scripture of Infinite Wisdom. In the Light of the Eternal revealed in Creation we see Light. We are grateful for the Lamp of Reason which thou hast lighted in our minds, and for the Law of Love which thou hast written in our hearts. We thank Thee for the Dawning Light of the New Age, which shineth more and more into the Perfect Day.”
The human soul, in its religious life and desire for worship, will never be content with a purely metaphysical, abstract conception of God. While we recognize that such words as Principle, Cause, Infinite and Eternal Energy, Universal Spirit, and the like, are proper scientific names for Deity, and have their admitted value in modern religious thought, they do not, as a matter of fact, completely satisfy the longing of the human heart for a God who cares, and who can respond to our human need for compassionate understanding and personal communion. We cannot worship a principle; we cannot commune with a law; we cannot have a sense of companionship with energy.
We must, therefore, in working out a scientific system of religious thought and practice, account for the universal nature of God in terms that are universal; and for the personal nature of God in terms that are personal. And, since the Infinite is One and All, and therefore universal and, at the same time, finite and individual in the manifested creation, and therefore particular in the forms of nature, the solution of the problem is not impossible. That a perfect and final solution must rest with generations to come we must admit. But we are making a start. What we do here and now will contribute to that perfected Science of the Soul, to be enjoyed by humanity in that blessed time when superstitions, that now bind mankind in prisons of darkness and fear, will be merely a part of the literature of the future describing the strange ideas of God that men once believed and held sacred.
The word universal, when applied to Deity, means the all-inclusive One, the Absolute Unity, the Omnipresent Principle of all things.
As the Principle of Life, it is the same in all living forms. As the Principle of Intelligence, it is the same in all minds. As the Principle of energy, it is the same in all motion. It is the Impersonal Source of all that is personal–the Infinite One.
The word Father, when applied to Deity, must refer to consciousness, love, purpose, creative intention. The word father, in our language, and in fact in all tongues, is not capable of mistranslation. It means the male principle of generation, one who begets. Like all words, it is of human origin, and is one of the oldest words in any and all languages. It is definitely related in the human mind to the act of begetting offspring, and the offspring is always related as child to the father, and like the father in form, appearance and nature.
How natural that men, in their thinking about God, should come to regard Him as their own Father. It required a long time for this conception to reach maturity in all its implications of love and fellowship, but it grew alongside the other conception of God as a being of partialities, capable of hating some nations and loving others.
The old Hebrew tribal deity was a man of war, destroying the enemies of the Jews, and not a universal Father. Nevertheless, we see the idea growing in Hebrew literature. Where can we find a loftier sentiment than this of David’s: “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. He knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust,”–the frail creatures of time and circumstance. Not until that other great Jew, Jesus, gave to this conception its fuller meaning did mankind come to see that the Infinite Father is more willing and able to give good things unto his human offspring than man is to give good things to his own flesh and blood. And it was only through the greed and selfishness of a crafty priesthood, that this vision of infinite compassion and love was twisted into the awful creeds that defined God as an infinite, an inhuman being, who would consign some of his creatures to eternal torment because they could not or would not believe certain creeds and worship in certain ways.
But although the idea of the Universal Father is a beautiful and in many ways satisfying ideal, it is very easily distorted into the image of a being with human limitations, with partiality and special favors to some who worship him, and discrimination against those who are wicked and irreligious. Jesus forever silenced that thought for those who study his teaching, when he pointed out the obvious fact that “He sendeth his rains on the unjust and the just alike.” So our thought of the Universal Father must be lifted to the plane of the impersonal Principle of all things. Our human terms are necessary to get any conception of God at all. It is man that calls God the Father, and so in a very large way attributes to the Infinite his own qualities, thoughts, desires and characteristics.
In this there is an element of truth. We are conscious, therefore consciousness must be an attribute of the Universal Father from whom we emerge. Man thinks, and by thinking, creates his world of experience. Hence God must think, and in so doing brings forth the creation. It is right that we should reason from man the effect, to God the Cause, as well as from Cause to effect. It is only in this way that we can confirm our conclusions.
If we make statements about God that grow out of our human limitations, like attributing personality to the Deity, we deny in so doing the universal and impersonal nature of God as Principle. If we deny the attribute of consciousness, life, and intelligence which must inhere in the Universal Father, we become confused, for we ourselves possess these attributes and could only derive them from like attributes in our Source.
The Universal is Life, Mind, Spirit. How do we know? Because man expresses life, intelligence, spirit. How can we know God as Father? By realizing the Presence of the Universal One within ourselves. That is the only way we can know the Infinite at all, for our consciousness is the personal action of the Impersonal Principle of Being.
By reasoning in this way we come to see the wisdom of the teaching of Jesus, who found this Presence within himself and called it the “Father in me.” It is the Father in me that makes it possible for me to be the father of my children. The principle of generation that makes this possible is the same Principle which, on the universal plane, makes God the progenitor of worlds and all that is in them.
If I wish to worship this Infinite Creator, I can find no place to contact Him except in my own soul. Here I can commune with and be conscious of life, love, intelligence, power. When I know that these elements of my being are the individual expression of the Infinite Father, and one with Him, I no longer have a feeling of detachment or separation. I can say with Jesus, “I and my Father are one.” This enables me to know my completeness in Him, and His completeness in me. I do not have to worship an external symbol through rituals and creeds. I have the essence of the Father within my own soul. And this means the power, love, life and wisdom of the Father. The Universal is no longer merely Principle to me, a cold impersonal God of Law, but intimate and dear as my Father. And in this conception I find that which satisfies my intellect, warms my heart with love for all things, and puts me in touch with the Soul of beauty and truth.
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“MY FATHER’S HOUSE”
“In my Father’s house are many Mansions.”
— Jesus.
Possession begets interest. My business. My son. My car. My house. What belongs to me is significant.
We listen with mild attention to the description of another’s mansion. We attend with great enthusiasm when our own cottage is praised.
The phrase, “My Father’s House” is absolutely personal. So much so that the Man who first used it did so with such sublime power and comprehension born of original discovery, that humanity has never thus far been able to divorce its meaning from his personality. There has always been the feeling that the Universe and its many Mansions belonged to Jesus, and any use we should be permitted to make of them would be merely as tenants.
Of course this feeling has been sedulously cultivated through the ages, by a very large and enterprising group of gentlemen who claim to hold the Keys to the Mansion in the sky. This conception grew out of priestcraft and not out of Christ. It devitalized religion. It make of the spiritual life a vicarious process. It made of heaven an artificial resort, owned and operated for the benefit of a privileged class of keepers of the Keys who exacted tribute from all who sought to enter the haven of rest. The whole thing was a monstrous invention of selfishness and greed and utterly remote from the spirit of the Nazarene.
Religion, when truly considered, is the most personal thing in the whole world. It connects the soul of the individual with the Soul of the Universe. If you get it secondhand, as a ritual or tradition, it is as unreal and unsatisfying as a mirage of water to a lost wanderer in the desert. My Father’s House. My Mansion. No go-betweens. No alien, collecting tribute. My Home. My Father.
But after all it is a dark saying. What does it mean? It promises so much! A mansion! Comfort. Security. Beauty. Abundance. A rich and wonderful life. Is it only a dream? The vision of a Man who never had a home on earth? A Man who uttered the most pathetic cry of human loneliness that ever came from human lips–“The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.” Did he, in the solitude of the wilderness where he was wont to dream and to think, and out of the hardness and uncertainty of his economic lot, conceive this phrase and this figure of peace and safety as an other-world hope for the disinherited multitudes of the earth? It is a dark saying. But may it not be filled with Light if we tear away the symbolic wrapping and free the imprisoned splendor of its hidden meaning?
It is inconceivable to me that a man of such transcendent genius as Jesus, a world thinker, lover of mankind, could intend such a cheap effect as to intimate the promise of sumptuous fare and a palatial home in another world, another life, as compensation for poverty and misery on earth. The message either has a meaning for us here and now, or it is trash. Indeed its larger significance, its relation to Cosmic Realities and Eternal Life, can only arise out of its connection with our present experiences and relationship to the House in which we live today. Neither God, man nor priest can postpone life. It is always now, here.
Like all greatly condensed definitions of universal principles, this saying, “In my Father’s house are many mansions,” is capable of many interpretations, but as Scientists we are not given to the practice of trying to unravel oriental symbols.
The beauty and appeal of this poetic expression of a universal human hope is our reason for using it as the title for this lesson in Divine Science. We are pragmatists. We would prefer a cottage here with assured food, shelter and raiment, to the promise of a mansion in the sky.
We condense our lesson. My Father’s House is the Cosmos, the universe of time and space, matter and energy, life and mind, form and substance–all, all, is “My Father’s House.” It is my home–as much as I can occupy, as much as I can use.
The only condition to possession, which my Father imposes on me, is that I develop a mental equivalent for everything I want. In short, I can have as much as my consciousness embraces, and my will and thought can appropriate.
There are no locks on any of my Father’s possessions. The only bar to my progress is ignorance, mental indolence, self-imposed limitation.
He gives me the freedom of the Pleiades and appoints Orion as my instructor. Astronomy reveals the unimaginable vastness of my Home. Chemistry unlocks the hidden wonders of its inexhaustible resources. Mathematics and physics show me how to fly; how to harness untold forces to do my bidding; how to manage a million slaves of non-sentient energy that never tire, never talk back, and always do as they are told.
I can play with lightning, hurl thunderbolts through space for my amusement or instruction. I can throw my voice and my image through thousands of miles of space, and I am planning to talk to beings like myself who dwell in the distant realms of space on other globes like the earth.
I can evoke the wisdom of the past, commune with Masters of transcendant power like Jesus and Socrates and Buddha. My Father’s House! Wonderful, majestic, mysterious Home.
I chart my course for a million years and shall then be only at the beginning of my Father’s Infinite Domain. I have within me the potential of infinity–in experience, in life, in mental and spiritual unfoldment.
I am a god, endowed with the powers of a god. I can now look through what in my childhood I thought was solid steel, as I look through a pane of glass. I can investigate what lies behind the surface.
Law is my servant. Energy waits for me to command it. My Father! Wonderful, mighty, infinitely wise Father. Mansions, mansions without number.
I live in one now. I look out of its windows toward the Eternal Mountains and the snow-capped peaks of earth. I watch the stars as they move in glorious procession across the Dome of my Temple, my Father’s House. I sense the fragrance of the dawn and listen to the melody of birds, free in my Father’s House.
There is nothing to fear in my Father’s House. The infinite wisdom and intelligence of my Father has seen to that. When I was a child I was afraid of the dark. Now I know it is beautiful, and that it is as necessary as the day. My Father’s Love has arranged it–the great silence of night when my soul is free to commune with the Masters and sit at their feet that I may learn about My Father’s House and its laws, principles and resources.
My faith, my hope, my reason, all tell me that there is another House besides the physical universe of my Father and the body which shelters my spirit. The Life and Intelligence that creates and is omnipresent in the cosmos, building silently and without hands the substance and energy of matter into forms and systems of supernal beauty, is not confined to the material forms of nature any more than I am obliged to live cooped up in a dwelling or hotel room all my days.
[45] In addition to the physical body, I have an invisible spiritual body, “eternal in the heavens,” the immortal, imperishable and “more glorious body” which survives the changes and final disintegration of my temporal “mansion.”
“The heavens shall wax old like a garment and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up and they shall be changed, but thou art the same and thy years shall not fail.” This statement of David about the physical universe is scientifically true, and it is true of the microcosmic universe which shelters my soul during its earth life. It shall wax old and like an outworn garment be laid aside, but my invisible spiritual body shall be unchanged in the process and “my years shall not fail.”
It is this eternal rhythm of the universe, this ceaseless change from mansion to mansion, that makes the music of life, the glory of our unfolding destiny. To remain forever in one mansion, however beautiful, would at last engulf the soul in despair. Our Father has arranged in perfect wisdom for eternal change as the law of eternal life, and we pass from glory to glory upon an ascending spiral of evolution to heights beyond our present power to see or understand.
* * * * *
THE INFINITE MOTHER
Salutation to The Mother
“Infinite Mother of Life, serene in your Eternal Beauty, out of your Infinite Womb of Time proceedeth all things, and you mother them in the Measureless Reaches of Space, and, in your Mighty Arms of Love, you hold them safe…In Beauty’s Name and Love’s, Amen.”
“I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman.”–Jesus
We are learning a new tongue. The language of religious thought has a tendency to remain fixed. Its idioms and terminology do not change from generation to generation, for the simple reason that the Church, guarding the sacred lore and the traditions and rituals of religion as something perfect and complete, sees to it that children are taught from baby-hood to accept the catechism and terms of theology as inspired truth.
Jesus taught a new language of religious thought. Even his immediate disciples found it hard to accept the new idioms and thought forms. We are facing the same difficulty today. We acknowledge the logic of Science and approve intellectually the findings of scientific spiritual research. But it is hard for the majority of us to get the feeling of reality and living truth which the new tongue seeks to convey. It takes time to learn a foreign language. It takes time to learn the new scientific language of religion.
Christian theology has no word for the Universal Mother-Principle. The reason is obvious. The presence of a personal Mother-God in the trinity would have brought in complications of relationship very difficult to explain. So the Holy Ghost was invented as a substitute for the Universal Mother. No two theologians agree on the meaning of the Holy Ghost. The word ghost is defined as a disembodied spirit. Holy means “pure; morally excellent; highest spiritual purity.” Thus Holy Ghost means a spirit that is pure. But there is nothing in the term to signify universality. It does not signify whether the entity is male or female. The other two members of the trinity are both male–Father and Son. They are both persons, the Son having incarnated in human form to exhibit the personal nature.
In Divine Science, we accept the three factors in the creative process that are fundamental and present in all phases of creation now: The Father–masculine principle of will, choice, decision, positive action. The Mother–feminine principle of receptivity, love, creative response, subjective life force. The Son–the manifestation of life in form, the personal offspring of the impersonal Father-Mother God.
Jesus used the vine as a figure to define the intimate relationship between the Father-Mother-Son, in the creative process. The vine is the mother of the branches, and thus the cause of the fruit. “As the branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can you except you abide in me.” The vine as a symbol is universal. Its characteristics are the same everywhere. We must examine that rather than the words Jesus used, for they have been translated from Aramaic into Greek; from Greek into Latin; from Latin into English. The words originally used have lost much of their meaning. Only the figure remains intact–the vine, the life in it, the branches, the fruit, the fate of barren branches, the physical form of the vine.
Consider the subjective factor in the vine. It is life-force. It is the same life-force that lifts up the form of a tree or a stalk of corn. It is universal. But here in this vine, it is no longer universal, any more than it is in the tree or corn. It is identified, individualized–a vine.
What makes it a vine? Surely the idea, the mental concept of [a] vine. Whence did it originate? In the Mind of the Father–the Universal Thinker, the masculine principle of will and choice. How did the idea become embodied in the vine as an objective reality? By the union of the idea with the subjective or female principle of universal life. Thus the germinal idea of form unites with the germinating principle of life to form the vital center which expands by the law of growth to fill the subjective pattern with objective substance–personality. I Am is the “true vine”–the actual formative principle. The vine itself is external evidence of the true or living vine. The branches are dependent upon this inner life of the vine and cannot exist apart from it.
If we carry the metaphor into the human plant we find the same law operating. The life of the body is soul, the subjective principle. The consciousness of the body is spirit, the self or I am. The body is the result of the union of the idea of the self and the germinating principle of soul, developed from a vital center to organize objective substance to fill the mental pattern of the self. The fruit of this union is experience. No experience is possible, except as the result of the union of the husbandman (Father) and the True Vine (Mother) which furnishes the intelligence and life of which consciousness is the offspring (son).
If you will draw the following diagram and consider it as the symbol of the three-fold action of the creative process, you will have a clear conception of what we mean by the Father-Mother-Son.
Draw a circle three inches in diameter. Draw within it two interlaced equilateral triangles. Let the base of the one with ascending angles touch the circle at two points below, and its apex the point directly above center in the circle. Reverse the process with the other triangle inverted. Let the space above the base of the inverted triangle represent Spirit, the Creative impulse, Will, Choice–the Father. Let the space below the base of the triangle with ascending angles, represent the Principle of Subjectivity, Soul, the Receptive Substance, the undifferentiated world of matter–subjective Mind–the Mother. One of the angles descending into this Subjective World represents the Life and Intelligence Impulse. The other–Idea, Image, Word. These unite in the Universal Subjective Principle with the substance of Form, and organize a body corresponding to the nature of the Idea. This body is the external aspect of the Idea-form, and grows, or evolves, toward the perfect Ideal in the Father Mind. Involution is the descent of the Word or Image into the matter level. Evolution is the ascent of this image, through changing forms, to express the more perfect Ideal of the Father. This is the Son acting as individual being. The Son, as Principle, is the Father’s Word or idea of Man. The individual is the movement of that idea through the world of Law, Force, Time, Space, Matter, on its path of evolution through experience, toward the divine Idea in the mind of the Father.
The Idea came forth from the Father, was acted upon by the Life-Principle in the Mother, and emerged as the son–man. This process is true throughout nature. The sower, the soil, the seed. The spirit, (conscious mind); the soul, (subjective mind); the body, result of the creative action of soul and self. Or, to carry the figure into the individual experience where the universal law is re-enacted in terms of the son’s creative power: You think, and the idea falls into your subjective mind, there to unite with the mother principle of creation. It then comes forth in terms of objective experience. You plan a house with your spirit (conscious mind). You choose the type, decide upon location and other details. Creative Mind in you acts to bring it forth on the objective plane.
Man re-enacts the creative process. He is re-presentation of the Father-Mother-Son. Because the Universal Mother is Principle, and responds as Law, man can use the Law as the Agent of his own individual consciousness. In short he is himself a creator by the power of his word acting in unity with the creative mind in himself. We should have faith in the Universal Mother whose care is Omnipresent Love; whose function is to bring forth life, form, being. The subjective mind of the individual is the Universal Mother manifest as person. The conscious mind is the Universal Father–the power of will and choice. We reap what we sow. We get what we ask. This is the Law.
* * * * *
THE LAW OF SUBCONSCIOUS MIND-POWER
“So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. Even as the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself…The kingdom of God is within you.” — Jesus.
The preceding quotation is an ancient definition of the law of subconscious mind-power. In effect the great Teacher says, we have within us an impersonal creative power which brings forth in experience what we implant into it as thought or desire. And in another lesson, he adds to the general definition the specific declaration that this creative power will produce tares as well as wheat–good as well as bad things.
The meaning is about as plain as words and a good simile can make it. A simile is not the same thing as a reason, but it is usually more forceful and convincing, especially a good one like that used in the text. It was so clear to Jesus, this impersonal nature of the kingdom of God within the individual, that he used the soil of the earth as its natural similitude on several occasions, and one of his greatest parables is that of The Sower.
The fact that his term “the kingdom of heaven” has been distorted to mean only “good” does not alter the fact. He made clear to his disciples that it is “as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.” The law of the inner realm is mysterious, but no more so than the law of the outer realm, where things “grow up,” we know not how. But the law in both realms is impersonal, and produces what we plant with sublime indifference as to whether we sow tumble-weeds or wheat; love or hate; beauty or ugliness.
The fact of individual consciousness, or self-awareness, indicates that there is a Universal Cause for this phenomenon, just as the fact that the motion of physical bodies in space shows there is a Universal Cause of motion. Both these causes are invisible and act with utter impartiality–as law. That is why people have trouble and confusion in their lives. It is the reason they get sick, become unhappy, commit crimes, and get into all sorts of difficulties. They are always dealing with an absolute and immutable Law, and ignorance of that Law does not release them from the responsibility of adverse effects when they misuse it. The Law is unconscious, neutral. The conscious mind is the personal factor.
If we get hold of this conception with as much feeling as to the reality of the mental Law with which we are always dealing, as we have in regard to the natural law with which we are also always dealing, we shall begin to make things go the way we want them to go.
Suppose we regard this mystical “kingdom of heaven” of Jesus’ as an actual domain of the inner realm, comparable to an actual estate or farm. You would not expect a farm to take care of itself. If you should, and let it grow up in weeds, you would know whom to blame–yourself. If you go to work and clear away the weeds and start to cultivate the land, and sow the kind of seed you want to harvest, and take good care of the property, you become a successful farmer.
Now this kingdom of heaven–your invisible farm–is like that too. There is no difference, in principle. Whether you like it or not, you cannot get away from the responsibility of possession, so far as your inner farm is concerned.
For better or for worse, you are married to that farm. You cannot sell it nor give it away. What are you going to do with it? For make no mistake in the matter, it is going to grow things. Neglected, it will grow what the enemy–ignorance–sows; weeds, with, of course, some lovely things too. No one is altogether bad. The brownest prairie has beautiful desert things, and even the cactus has its points. But after all it is a desert, and desolate, like the lives of so many people.
The presence of spiritual knowledge in the world, free and accessible as it is, is no assurance to the individual that he can have the fruits of such knowledge. There is a department in our Government devoted to the welfare and interests of the farmer, and then of course we have our State Agriculture Colleges. But these agencies do not force the farmer to take advantage of them. And as a matter of fact, comparatively few farmers do avail themselves of what the National and State Governments have to offer in the way of information and training, although it is absolutely free, or much of it at any rate. Hence, the average farmer lives in an environment as unattractive as that of his animals.
It is that way with the majority of spiritual farmers. Here is a great and absolutely dependable Law of Mind, knowledge of which is free and accessible. Yet how few really study and use it! My experience as a teacher has convinced me that a great many students want someone else to do their farming for them.
I tell people they have to do the work themselves, because I know that is the best way to get results. Some do not like that, so they go away, looking for a teacher who will promise to hand them the fruits of the Law on a silver platter, or give them a magic wand, which they can wave and get what they want. They become spiritual tramps, wandering about looking for the thing outside themselves, when all the time the Law is right in their own souls, could they only believe it and go to work to master it, and to use it.
In order to understand this great realm with which we are always in contact, and which we are always using, and into which we are always sowing the seeds of thought, we must examine its Law with the same care with which we would study any natural law. For it is as certain as anything on this earth can be, that our experiences and the conditions of our lives are the direct product of our use or misuse of the Law of Subconscious Mind-Power. So we will state that Law and its elements as simply as possible. And of course, since it is a Law, you can easily prove it if you make an effort to apply it to your personal affairs.
For the purpose of this lesson, we are going to use the term “subconscious mind,” because the power itself is the underlying reality of objective consciousness; the actual cause of our physical bodies; the basis of habit; the sleepless intelligence which carries on the work of replacing the used up cells; the Chemist-Engineer who constantly takes care of the processes of metabolism, assimilation, elimination, heart-beat and so on.
Point one. This inner mind is intelligent, because the very work of maintaining the body with all its intricate functions shows that nothing but the most wonderful intelligence could perform the miracles of exactness required in the process.
Point two. The inner mind can reason perfectly, but due to its subjective nature, it can reason only deductively. That is, it accepts the thoughts of the self or objective mind as the basis of its reasoning, and goes to work to create conditions corresponding to those thoughts and beliefs. If the subconscious mind could discriminate and reason inductively, it would decline to act on false beliefs or misinformation. And to get this idea clearly in mind, we may say that the subconscious mind is always hypnotized in relation to the conscious mind or self.
It [the subconscious mind] does exactly what you tell it to do. And it keeps on working at the task, even when you are asleep. “As if a man should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.” It keeps everlastingly at the job of growing what you sow into it in the way of thought and desire.
Point three. It is the seat of the emotions, and emotion is the energy you set in action by your thoughts and desires. Emotional power, being an attribute of the subconscious mind, is utterly impersonal. It will act as readily in hate as in love. You must cultivate it in the right direction. This involves discipline, which is about the same as saying that a farmer must industriously keep down the weeds if he wants a good crop.
The Governor of this inner realm of mind-power is the conscious mind that says I am, I will, I choose. The inner realm is absolutely boundless in power, intelligence and creative ability, because it is the Universal Mind manifest as a personal, self-conscious entity. And like the soil of the earth to the seed, it is perfectly responsive to the thought of the self, and will bring forth “whatsoever ye will.” But you must will it, and desire it, and trust the Law to manifest it.
Another factor of prime importance in using the Law is definiteness. You must decide what you want. You must sow the kind of seed you want to reap.
You cannot think poverty and reap wealth. You cannot sow fear and reap courage.
A farmer selects the seed for his crops with care and discrimination. The subconscious mind is your farm, from which you reap the experiences, conditions and associations of life. Think. Plan. Be definite. For if you want a better order of life, you must keep that in mind, and visualize it and vitalize the mental image with faith, desire, emotion.
Believe in the reality of your dream, your vision. Fear not. Let no one nor anything discourage you. You will reap in due season if you faint not. It is a Law with which you are dealing, and it is as infallible as the law of seed and soil in nature.
If you have a tendency, due to previous religious training, to regard this Law as being only human and psychological, rather than spiritual, just remember that it was originally propounded by the greatest spiritual Teacher of the ages. One of the primary tenets of the New Religion is the conception that the universe is one. Law governs all. Nature is the visible aspect of the Invisible Spirit of the Whole.
Earnest, conscientious practice of this Law of Subconscious Mind-Power will result in “signs following.” By its use you can remake your world, so that it will conform to the new mental pattern of a better life. “The waste places shall blossom as the rose,” and the desert become a fruitful valley of abundance.
* * * * *
THE UNIVERSAL SON
Salutation to The Son
Awake? thou that sleepest, and herald the coming of the Dawn, the Dawn of the New Age. The power and freshness of a new Spirit are upon the Earth. The Christ is risen and walks amongst us. His Spirit guides the mind of the Scientist. The Revelations of the Biologist, the Physicist, the Chemist, the Astronomer have shown to us a New Universe, a Universe of Truth, hidden from the foundation of the world deep in the Heart of Man.
The shackles of dogma and superstition are broken. The doors of the prisonhouse of blind belief are opened. We walk forth into a new world. The musty air of temples built with hands is behind us. The sweet air of the star-studded and sun-illumined Temple of God thrills us with its Life-giving power. The Truth has made us free; the Truth revealed by our Saviour, Science, the Divine Science of Mind.
The fabulous stories of Creation and Revelation nurtured through the ages by selfishness and greed, fear and ignorance, no longer have the power to enslave the minds of the Sons and Daughters of God. The Truth has made us free. Man, Son of the Living God, looks with fearless eyes into the face of Life and, in this glorious freedom, walks the Earth with the foot-fall of power.
“Without me ye can do nothing.” –John 15:15.
“Thou, being a man, makest thyself God.” –John 10:33.
The most important knowledge available to man is knowledge of the Son of God. If we know the Son, we shall know the Father also. If we see the Son, we shall see the Father also. If we love the Son, we shall love the Father also. Indeed, knowledge of the Son includes knowledge of the Universal Father and Mother. It is not possible to glorify the Son without also glorifying the Father-Mother, God. But these sweeping assertions require elucidation.
Our understanding of the truth depends upon our knowledge of the terms that define truth. We cannot think without images or forms of thought. We can feel that a certain conception is true, but in order to think, we must use words, and attach to the words the meanings which usage has given to them. If, in our search for truth, we discover, or become conscious of a new conception, and there is no term in our language to convey its meaning, we invent such a term, and it comes to stand in our minds for that thing. Thus we invented “radio” and “aeroplane” and a multitude of other words.
What do we mean by the term “The Universal Son”? The word universal excludes the idea of a person, yet Son conveys the idea of a male offspring. The two words, used together, would thus appear to be in direct contradiction, or opposition to each other. Does the word Christ more accurately define what we mean by the Universal Son of God? No, because it is associated in our minds with the personality of Jesus, and its Greek root carries the meaning of “anointed one,” or to anoint.
The equivalent term used by the Jews is Messiah, and has reference to an expected Redeemer of Israel, foretold by prophecy. Both refer to a man with super-human powers. In Christian theology Jesus is regarded as the Christ, the only begotten Son of God. Since Jesus was a man, this term excludes the idea of universality. The Jews deny that Jesus was the Messiah, and still look for their Redeemer.
In the two previous lessons we have shown that the Universal Father is the attribute of Absolute Being which acts as Will, Choice, and is the positive, deciding factor in the creative process. It corresponds to the masculine element in humanity. We define the Universal Mother as the Principle of Receptivity, the Subjective Principle in the universal creative process. It corresponds to the female element in humanity, and may be symbolized by the soil of the earth, which receives the seed and brings it forth, giving to it a body to conform to the idea of form contained within the seed. We find this principle omnipresent in nature.
What we must seek for, in this lesson on the Universal Son, is the third attribute of the Absolute, which is manifest in creation as idea, form, word, individuality. To be universal, it must include all things; hence, the esoteric teaching of the Bible, referring to the Universal Son, says that “All things were made by him and for him; visible and invisible; and without him was not anything made that was made.” Obviously, this could not be true of any human, however exalted, nor of any individual being, even though of archangelic power and authority. It must proceed from an inherent attribute of the Universal One. John defines this attribute as the Logos, or Word, which means the idea or thought action of God.
We thus arrive at the conclusion that the trinity of attributes, which we call Universal Father-Mother-Son, inheres in the One Absolute Cause, and is not three Persons, but one Principle acting as three phases of creative power. And the proof of this we find in nature, from the infinitesimal atom to solar systems; from the microscopic amoeba to man.
Each unit in the creation contains within itself the Principle of its being in its structure–the idea or word which gives it special form; the life or energy which sustains it; and the body by which the subjective principle is made manifest.
In man we name these attributes spirit, the conscious mind; soul, the creative mind; body, the instrument or manifestation of mind. Since the object of this lesson is to show how this principle, when understood, gives to man a new vision of his own being in relation to the Universal Son, we shall direct our analysis to the study of self-consciousness, which is the Son manifest as God individualized, as personal being conscious of himself.
Jesus explained this conception under the phrase “The Father that dwelleth in me.” We may add to this the further explanation that “The Mother dwelleth in me,” also. In short, I have within me the attributes of the Absolute, and I am, microcosmically, the Father-Mother-Son. What I see the Universal Father do in the creative process, I do. What I see the Universal Mother do in the creative process, I do. What I see the Universal Son do in the creative process, I do. In this vision of my identity as an individual, with the Universal Father-Mother-Son, I do indeed make myself God, for I am the Son of God.
The Universal Son is Principle, an attribute of God. In me this Principle of Sonship has become manifest as personal being, for I am that I Am (the One Principle), individualized. I can do nothing without this Principle of my being, no not so much as lift a finger. But, knowing this Universal Son within me, and abiding in the consciousness of my unity with Him, I ask what I will and it is done unto me. For this is my freedom from bondage of fear, lack, doubt; that I know Him as the responsive Intelligence and Power within me.
My Saviour is thus an ever-present Indwelling One. It is not my belief in any historic personality that saves me from ignorance and trouble and fear. It is my understanding, by which I know my inseparable unity with God in my own soul. I know Him within, whom to know aright is life eternal. I do not have to wonder whether he hears me. He heareth me always. I do not have to question whether he will answer me. He answers me always, in exact accord with my thought, doing for me what I ask, yes, even what I think and desire. And the reason for this perfect responsiveness is that Principle of my being has not ceased to be Principle–the Universal Son–because it is incarnate within me.
But if I think of this Inner Presence only as Impersonal Principle, I deny the nature of my Elder Brother as personal Companion and Friend. I want love and fellowship as the essence of my religious faith. I want to know God as my immediate, my constant Companion. Since I can only know the Infinite One as Principle, Law, Cause, in the external universe, then I must seek for Him as Person in my own soul.
As my consciousness of the Indwelling Presence deepens, the Light dawns, and I see that my desire is fulfilled, for I am complete in Him and He in me. I have found the Fountain of Life in the only place it can be found–within myself. In this knowledge I am not blaspheming, but deeply reverent, when I say, my Father and I are one. I am the veritable Son of God. I make myself, or conceive of myself as God because I could do nothing without God. Therefore, it is my Father that doeth the works. Or, since the Father-Mother-Son are one in Principle, I can say that it is the Son that doeth the works, or the Mother, for the All is One.
In my practical use of this Law, a working basis, a scientific method is essential. Hence I conceive of the Creative Mind in me as being always in a state of subjectivity. I am the Father, or Spirit, the conscious power of will, choice, decision, purpose. I am also the Mother, represented in me by the soul or principle of subjectivity, receptive and responsive to my conscious thought. What I think into soul comes forth as experience. I reap what I sow. If I do not like the experiences resulting from my mental sowing, I can change them to other experiences by changing my conscious mind action, by developing a new type or manner of thinking. Thus I can re-create my life to conform to the new ideal–I can choose wealth instead of poverty; health instead of sickness; joy instead of sorrow; peace instead of discord and irritation. But it is I who must decide. In doing this I place myself in harmony with the Principle of creation, which is good, and constructive, and works through Law to bring forth beauty, life, and abundance.
If you translate this instruction into terms of vital understanding by putting it into practice, you will find your life improving from day to day, and you will come to feel the reality of the Inner Presence as the responsive and intelligent power that maketh all things new.
MAKING YOUR SELF THE MASTER
“He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he
that loseth his life for my sake, shall find it.”
— Jesus.
“Know thy Self.”— Ancient Wisdom.
The foregoing quotation from Jesus is a remarkable paradox. If you gain, you lose; if you lose, you gain. The story of Dives and Lazarus throws some light on the text, but even that leaves the meaning still in a deep shadow. We are helped toward a clearer understanding if we translate the passage thus: If you find your little self, you lose your greater Self; if you lose your little self, you find your greater Self.
The result is sure in either case. Dives pampered his appetites, fared sumptuously every day, lived for his sense-conscious self. Lazarus, without any conscious purpose to find the greater Self, lived in poverty and disease, much like the Hindu beggars you see in India today, and when he died “was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom,” which was the way Jesus indicated that Lazarus realized his divine Self. The account does not say that Lazarus was religious, nor that Dives was wicked. The implication is that suffering and loss lead to freedom and happiness; that self-indulgence and luxury lead to the loss of the greater Self. But the story is a parable and requires elucidation if we are to get at the meaning.
The little self is not hard to identify. It loves praise; prefers the chief seats in the synogogue; gives alms to be seen of men; makes long prayers to display its righteousness; indulges the sense appetites; always wants its own way; is selfish, proud, easily offended, seeketh its own, and in all ways places the emphasis on temporal things.
Saint Paul, in his wonderful chapter on love, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, defines many of the characteristics of the greater Self: The greater Self “suffereth long and is kind; envieth not; vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth in the truth; hopeth all things, endureth all things, and never faileth.”
The great question for each of us is: Which do we want to make the Master: the little self or the Greater Self? For we cannot serve both. With unanswerable logic, Jesus stated the case exactly: “No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.” Perhaps that is putting it too strongly as far as Science is concerned, for we recognize that the intellectual self has its place in the evolution of the life and the powers of the individual. But for those who seek enlightenment, there can be no temporizing with regard to the authority of the greater Self. We must make it the Master. “Not my will, but thine be done” is the final decision whenever there is any question as to what is the right course in any situation. But to know this Self is the primary condition to making it the Master. Hence our admonitory text from the wisdom of the ancients: “Know thy Self.”
It may appear on first thought that nothing could be easier than to know one’s Self. But really it is not only difficult, it is the unending process of education that requires life after life to achieve. Why? Because to know truly the Self is to know God, and the wisdom and power of God. The big thing is to know that. For complete knowledge of the Self is just as impossible as is complete knowledge of the Infinite.
Once we begin to realize that the purpose of all the true Wisdom Schools of the ages, the whole purpose of the spiritual instruction of Jesus, and the object of our own teaching, is nothing more nor less than to make this plain, we shall see the supreme importance of attaining to knowledge of the Self. Nothing else really matters. For all other knowledge is temporal. “Tongues shall cease and knowledge shall vanish away” but what we acquire of knowledge of the Divine Self endureth forever.
Jesus spoke very plainly on this matter of the difficulty of attaining to Self-knowledge, when he said: “Strait (narrow) is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” And surely as we look out upon the life of humanity, we see the truth of his statement; for the human mind and the little self come under the hypnotic trance induced by the conditions of the external world, with its allurements and fascinations and appeal to the senses.
Only the most deliberate and sustained effort will enable one finally to throw off that spell, and to live after the Law of the Master Within. But once the understanding is touched by the inward Light, and the rewards of knowledge of the Self become apparent to the intellect, there is no turning back. The Path, narrow as it is, becomes the beautiful Way of Life; and the assurance of the great Seer, that the disciple shall have all the good things of life in this present time, as well as in the eternal life, is realized.
How are we to go about the work of making the Self the Master? One good way to begin is to study the teachings of Jesus with the object of seeing this truth that is hidden in all his parables and other instructions. The Greater Self is the Father within to which he so often referred. It is not merely a matter of Self-knowledge; it is a matter of knowing God as an abiding Presence in the soul. This Presence is wisdom, guidance, power, inspiration, love, protection.
But although the Self possesses the power to protect and guide us, the little self can defy it, or ignore it, and go the way of self-will amid the insecurities of the shifting, uncertain shadows of the external world of sense-life. In this way lie the disasters that trouble and disturb and confuse us.
By turning to the Master, and living constantly in the thought of His guidance and help, we escape the pitfalls, and even though our natural course should take us through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall be sustained. And though a thousand fall at our right hand and ten thousand at our left hand, the terror shall not touch us.
All the irritations and confusions and the troublesome cross-currents of human existence shall have no power to disturb the serenity and peace of the one who has made the greater Self the Master. He learns to have implicit faith in the inner Wisdom and spiritual vision of the Master. He knows that the best of what is best shall come to him. He has found the center and certainty of his own God-Self.
A recent article in one of the popular magazines, beautifully illustrates this thought of the dominion of the Master. The author tells how, when a little girl, she used to sit at a certain place by the sea and watch the waves. The water at this point, in front of the cave where she so frequently sat, was choppy, and cross-currents make eddies and whirlpools and a topsy-turvy confusion, instead of the usual uniform wave motions. But at certain intervals there would come sweeping in a big wave, which would gather up all the little choppy waves, and move on to the shore, utterly mastering the disturbed waters by its majesty and power. This shall called the King Wave.
When we have learned finally to turn over the direction of our lives to the Master Self, we shall find all the troublesome, choppy little waves of our human life lifted up and unified by the power of this inward King, the Mind of the One who really knows. It may take time, but by steadily looking to the greater Self, and investing it with the authority of Master, and, with complete faith, going forth each day in the assurance that He knows what is best for us and will guide us safely on the Way, we shall come at last to see the wisdom and feel the joy of saying, “Thy will, not mine be done.” For in this way the little self is at last swallowed up by the “King Wave,” and is carried on in the beauty and power and majesty of a life that is divinely ordered, poised, strong, fearless–a life like unto the Son of God.
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CHRIST’S CODE FOR MANKIND
“And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain; and when he was settled, his disciples came unto him: and he opened his mouth and taught them,…And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority.”
— St. Matthew.
A Code is essentially a system of regulations. It differs from a creed, in that a creed is a definite and fixed statement of religious belief, while a code is more elastic and susceptible to such changes as changing conditions may demand. Jesus never formulated a creed; he did originate a code for mankind.
Just here, in the beginning of this chapter, it may be well to explain the meaning of the word Christ as used in the title, and the difference in meaning it has from the name Jesus. It is common practice in the Christian world, and indeed wherever the Christian religion is known or discussed, to regard the names Jesus and Christ as referring to one and the same person. So that people say Christ when they mean Jesus, and Jesus when they mean Christ. In short, the words are absolutely synonymous in Christian theology.
In Spiritual Science we distinguish between Jesus and Christ. Jesus was a man; Christ is a Principle. Jesus was human in all respects so far as his personality was concerned, a man with like passions and appetites as our own. Christ is the Creative Principle of the [82] Universe, and Jesus, along with all other humans, was an expression of the Christ Principle.
The Christ Principle is not only the creative power that manifests as man, but as all things. To use the words of Saint John’s Gospel: “All things were made by him (it) and without him was not anything made that was made.” In his opening verses, John refers to this Christ or Creative Principle as the “Word.” But whether we use “word” or “principle,” the reference is not to a personality, which in the very nature of things is limited, but to the creative action of a force that is universal.
Jesus was an individual incarnation of the Christ Principle. So also are you, whoever you may be, and to make the matter clear, we may refer to Jesus Christ, the man with whose code we are here concerned; or Abraham Christ, father of the people of Israel; or David Christ, a king of Israel. But lest you think the term Christ refers only to the Hebrews, we will still further elucidate the meaning by using your personal name, whatever it may be, as your identity in Christ, by placing it before the divine Word–Anna Christ or George Christ–so that there may be no misunderstanding as to what we mean when we speak of Christ’s Code for Mankind. Hence we have used the word Christ as the surname of Jesus in the universal sense, for he must have had another patronymic besides the name Jesus, just as you have a Christian name and a surname. His surname may have been Samuels, or Hezekiah, or Solomon. Certain it is that it was not Christ, for that is a Greek, not a Hebrew word. It was added to his baptismal name long after he had passed away, and after his surname had perhaps been forgotten.
To be definite, then, we may say that this lesson deals with that code for mankind that was formulated or originated by Jesus Christ. This distinguishes it at once from the Mosaic Code; the Code Napoleon of France; the laws of Solon, of Greece; and from the Rooseveltian Codes now being made into law for the American people. The question is this: Is the Code presented to mankind by Jesus Christ a workable system of regulations for the moral, ethical, spiritual, economic, and social life of humanity? If it is not workable–that is, practical and useable–then we may as well have done with it, for we have too many idealistic theories of our own creation, without adopting the ideas of some visionary of two thousand years ago.
It may be well to locate the Code at once, for while there are many saying of Jesus Christ recorded in other chapters of the four gospels, the entire Code, in all its essentials, is stated in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chapters of the book named Matthew’s Gospel. Whatever else the great Law-giver may have said in parables, personal discourses to multitudes or individuals, stories, answers to questions, personal experiences and so on, the real foundation of his system is to be found in the three chapters above mentioned.
Before we analyze this Code, let us frankly repeat: The Code is not a Creed. The Code is elastic, capable of application to any situation that may confront the individual (or the nation). It is a statement of principles, with illustrations as to how the principles may be applied in practice. No hard and fast rules are given. It is really a most masterly summation of those fundamental laws that underlie and must be used in the creation of a new type of humanity; a new order of civilization; a new system of government and society.
In the consideration of this subject, I ask you to dismiss as far as possible all preconceived notions about the Code. You may have read it a hundred times–in the light of orthodox creedal beliefs. But that does not mean that you have read it in the light of what Jesus Christ really meant. Nor am I assuming that I have the key to its full meaning. No one has. It is too vast a conception for any one person to comprehend, and in this statement I include Jesus himself. Great men are often the mouth-pieces of that Vaster Intelligence, and utter words which they themselves do not fully comprehend. It sometimes appears that Genius is a raving madman. Jesus Christ was accused of being mad on many occasions. His message was bigger than his personality. But it was not bigger than Christ and that is the reason it is today as modern as if it had been written yesterday.
Truth is an immortal youth. I only ask that you approach this subject with me as a free mind, curious to know what this Teacher really meant when he gave utterance to the ideas that are–perhaps crudely and inadequately–recorded in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chapters of the Gospel according to St. Matthew.
INTRODUCTION TO THE CODE
“He went up into a mountain, and when he was settled, his disciples came unto him, and he began to teach them.” Then follows what have been called “The Beatitudes.” The importance of these opening remarks is not so much in their surface meaning, as in the spirit they express.
No one believes that the “meek shall inherit the earth,” but the idea is that pride and [86] vain glory shall not finally prevail over wisdom and love. Every other statement, in the Introduction to the Code (read them), carries the internal evidence of its truth. In each line, wisdom speaks with the soft voice of love. But the voice is the Voice of Truth. It does not have to rave like a military commander, Truth is its own demonstration. Love attracts love. Righteousness (right thinking), the search for truth, shall be rewarded. The pure in heart shall see God in everything, for they are without guile. The introduction to the Code is a masterpiece of universal appeal to the soul of man.
How different our reaction if it started off thus: “His Imperial and August Majesty, Jesus Christ, King of the Jews, Emperor of the World, decrees”: and then, following, a long series of great and glorious announcements as to his divine origin; his power; his authority; his majesty as the Heir to Infinite Power; his ability to condemn anyone to hell or other kind of punishment; and a winding up of the Introduction to the Code by saying that he was the wisest man on earth; the most glorious king in the universe; the rule of all nations and countries; the owner of the habitable globe. All we need do to see the wisdom of humility is to read the Code of Christ-Jesus and then think of the Codes of lesser teachers, rulers, and gods.
THE CODE CONTRASTED WITH MOSAIC LAW
Jesus Breathes a New Spirit Into Morals and Ethics
Now to the Code itself. Start at the seventeenth verse of the Fifth Chapter of Matthew: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law.” Every Jew loved the Law of Moses. He must get their favorable attention. He is going to make all the glorious promises of the Old Testament come true. Just read some of them and see how wonderful they are. They had really become dead letters. People no longer believed them. As we would say today, in our slang, “The law is a lot of hooey.” But Jesus told these students that he knew a way to make all the great visions of the Seers and Prophets come to pass–he would show how they could be “fulfilled” in human experience.
If you can only get a little of the feeling that surged in the hearts of the poor down-trodden lower classes of the Jews of that time and prior to that time, you will be able to understand what those students of Jesus, who belonged to that submerged class, really felt when the Teacher told them he was going to bring to pass all the dreams of the great dreamers of Israel. Read the prophecies of Micah and Amos and Isaiah and other thinkers and progressive statesmen and radicals of the Hebrews. It is just as if a man came along, a man with sufficient mental and spiritual power to make people have faith in him, and said to all our hungry and disinherited millions in America: “I am going to drive the Money Changers out of the temple of American life. I am going to give you a New Deal and a Square Deal. I will restore to you the rights which a few powerful and unprincipled crooks have taken away from you. Give me your faith and your cooperation and I will bring to you a new world of peace and plenty and happiness and justice in American life.”
That was a wonderfully wise approach to the minds of the people Jesus expected to win as his disciples. Without stirring their deep-seated prejudices into active antagonism, and by the most subtle appeal to their hopes and desires, he touched the springs of responsive loyalty. And then, with consummate art, he put his finger on the trouble or spiritual disease of the religion of his people: “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Having paved the way for the presentation of his Code, by saying that there was nothing wrong with the Mosaic law except that it required fulfillment in practice, he begins boldly to declare his spiritual authority. “Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill.” He selects a commandment out of the ten fundamentals of the Mosaic Code that is the most striking for the purpose of contrasting that Code with his own, and then continues: “But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother is in danger of the judgment;” has indeed broken the law, by entertaining murder in his heart. Therefore, if you bring your gift or sacrifice to the altar, and there remember that your brother has just cause of condemnation against you, leave your gift and go and square the matter by removing as far as possible the cause for this mental attitude. Get right with your neighbor before you try to get right with God. Here is an entirely new conception of the spiritual law. It embraces motives as well as acts, and demands a higher loyalty to principle than lip service.
“Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” The import of the New Commandment is far beyond any outward observance of a law. It implies a secret or inner loyalty to the ideal of mental and emotional chastity, and ties up with that wonderful statement in his introduction to the Code in which he said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
In like manner he deals with divorce, forswearing, resistance to evil and injustice by using force against force, evil against evil, and, penetrating to the very heart of the whole matter, he contrasts the law of love with the law of Moses.
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.” Why? In order that you may live as the children of the One Father, who loves all and gives to all with impartial munificence.
The New Commandment is based on the capacity of the human soul to express the god-like power of universal love, the observance of which reveals a new type of spiritual being, a real citizen of the kingdom of heaven.
THE CODE CONTRASTED WITH MOSAIC RITUALS
Jesus Breathes a New Spirit Into Prayer and Worship
Throughout the Fifth Chapter (first of the Code) Jesus contrasts his own code with that of Moses by repeatedly saying, “It hath been said by them of old time, but I say unto you…” The Sixth Chapter (second of the Code) introduces a new note of authority.
With penetrating satire, he pictures the alms-giving of the wealthy hypocrites, who advertise themselves with trumpet and self-laudation in the streets and synagogues. In effect, Jesus as much as says–Here is the fruit of religious formalism; of outward piety and inward corruption; of observing the letter of the law while denying its spirit. Look at them! These seekers for the chief places in the church, who go about robbing the widows and orphans and then with a loud noise proclaiming their righteousness by giving a portion of their ill-gotten gains to the church and to the poor, in order that they may have the praise of men. “Verily I say unto you, they have their reward (to be seen of men). But be not ye like unto them, for if ye be, ye shall have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.” Therefore, “When thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth; that thine alms may be in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
Then, with sublime simplicity coupled with the most biting satire, he describes the hollowness of public worship and prayer:–people who love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street, lifting up loud and oratorical invocations, not with any thought of reaching the ear of God, but with the thought of being heard of men. But when you pray, “Enter into your closet and shut the door, and pray to your Father which is in secret, and your Father which seeth in secret shall reward you openly.”
Throughout this chapter of the Code, the clearest and most powerful emphasis is placed on the necessity of secret communion with the Father in heaven–that is, the Father within. He gives his model prayer, and, at its close, throws upon it the light of his spiritual genius by selecting the one phrase that contains the heart of his instructions: “If you forgive men their trespasses, your Father will also forgive you; but if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.”
The hate, ill-will, malice and condemnation you treasure in your heart against others damns you most of all. It is a subtle poison, a canker, a corrosive mental force, that shall eat away at the vitals of your being, and lead you ultimately into either evil doing or result in sickness, loss, disappointment, and bitterness. No one can study the Code of Jesus Christ without realizing that not only was he a spiritual teacher and genius of the highest rank, but that he was also a master of human psychology.
Then follows a section of the Code devoted to the real meaning of the religious fast; the warning against selfishness and greed and the desire for riches; the necessity for singleness of purpose and devotion to the one God as the path of light, spiritual wisdom and power.
When he speaks of a unified mental and spiritual life, he uses the unanswerable logic of common sense by saying what everyone knows at once to be true: “No man can serve two masters.” “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways,” to quote another Teacher. The wisdom of Jesus, in demanding of his disciples sincerity and unity of thought, motive, and purpose, is beyond question. But this alone does not confer power, as many a one can attest. The practice of the principle of secrecy, in all the religious or spiritual devotions of the individual, is paramount if spiritual power is to be attained.
Further direct analysis of the Code of Jesus Christ is not here needed. Read the Code for yourself and mark each item in it, and think how far it is from creedal limitations and hair-splitting theological dogmatism. It is really a great spiritual charter of freedom for the individual. It makes no reference whatsoever to organized religious authority except to show how absurd and inadequate to real religion such authority is.
In your study, do not overlook the instruction regarding the practice of giving in secret as unto God and not unto men; of praying in absolute secrecy, telling no one; of fasting or any other form of personal devotion, as a direct secret recognition of the Inner Presence, and for the purpose of clearing the channels of the body of waste material so as to make more effective the act of spiritual communion with the Presence.
All three sections of the Code are necessary to the complete triangle of instruction and regulation of the spiritual life, but the second section is the base, for without the specific esoteric items regarding the law of the inner life that are contained in it, it would be impossible to fulfill the conditions involved in the other two. It supports the lines and determines the apex of the other two angels of this profound and amazing Code for mankind.
Observance of the articles of the Code implies the primary desire for inner illumination and personal freedom. The entire Code is a powerful suggestion to the individual to cast off all outward trappings of ritualism and organized forms of worship, and to deal directly with the Divine Presence in his own soul. It is a challenge to all fixed beliefs. It demands spiritual allegiance to Principle alone.
Unlike all other codes, this Code of Jesus Christ is for the individual. If you regulate your life in accordance with its spirit, you will harm no one; deceive no one; lust after no one, nor anything; judge no one; condemn no one, not even yourself. You will make love the law of your life–love for the Father in you; love for your fellow-man. Love does not fight, never nags, doesn’t find fault. Love, while it is the fulfilling of the law (moral, spiritual, ethical) is also the means of realizing the greater powers of the Self. Hence the Code contains those specific instructions for the development of spiritual power and insight which are given in the second section.
But the only thing that gives value to this or any other code is the spirit with which it is observed. We have seen that the real essence of the system is absent from Christianity, which is more concerned with doctrines about the personality of Jesus than it is with the Code he gave to mankind.
The whole thing is a dead letter until it is put into practical use. The only thing that will lead people to try to put it to work is faith that its principles, when put into operation, will bring forth the desired results.
These promises include protection from evil, guidance, an abundant life; all the good things required for comfort and happiness. In this connection study the beautiful and poetic allusion to the life and raiment of the birds and flowers. And again: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” But in order that these fruits shall grow in your life, you must put the Code to the test of real practice in all its parts and implications.
Jesus envisaged the universal application of this New Commandment. To him it must have appeared so demonstrably true, that he could not believe the world would turn it down, for its observance would bring peace and happiness to all the world and healing for all nations. But the world has been blind to its pragmatic value as well as to its spiritual wisdom. Mankind had to evolve to the level where it could see beyond materialism with all its terrible fruits of greed, selfishness, hate, war, and bitter and senseless competition. Perhaps now is the time in human evolution when mankind, having suffered so greatly, will see the wisdom of putting into effect the Code of Christ. Sooner or later the world must come to it, for its is Truth.
Meanwhile, as Divine Scientists, we can prove it in our lives. We can work the works of the Father within us; live above strife and hypocrisy, and the deceitfulness of the illusory sense-life of the animal man. And in doing this we shall help to usher in the new Day and the New Age, wherein the principles of the Eternal Christ, as expounded and demonstrated by Jesus, shall rule the life of mankind with its fruits of righteousness, and peace and justice for all.
Only one conclusion is possible as to the result of the general application of these principles, either by the individual or by the race: a new type of human being, as far above the present average human, as he is above the Caveman with his law that might makes right. For no one can study carefully the teachings of Jesus without becoming aware that he visioned a new type of humanity, the Super-man, living in the kingdom of heaven as an outward evidence of his inner mastery and power over spiritual and mental laws.
May we cooperate with all our hearts with those progressive forces in the world today that are moving in the direction of the new order of human life, in which, not the money-changers and war-makers, but Christ shall rule in the hearts of men, and so in the affairs of the world.
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A RELIGION FOR EVERYDAY LIVING
“In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you. Rejoice evermore. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” –St. Paul.
The principles of religion, like the laws of nature and the forces of government, enter into all our activities. For the principles of religion are manifest in our thoughts; in our feelings toward people and the world around us; in our attitude toward our work and all the affairs of life, as well as in our thoughts of God.
We may not be conscious that we are always dealing with the principles of religion, any more than we are conscious of always dealing with the laws of nature. Most of us go through life without conscious appreciation for the benefits that we are constantly receiving from the forces of nature. About the only time we really think of the value of health is when we have lost it, and so it is with sunshine, water, air, and food. We usually accept these bounties from the Infinite Giver without so much as a “thank you.”
The same thing is very largely true of the principles and laws involved in our mental and spiritual life. The ideal that has been most popular in the world, so far as religion is concerned, is that worship of, and gratitude to, God is a kind of duty we owe to the Creator, which can be discharged by being pious at stated intervals set apart for “public worship;” by believing certain ideas about God, and at least once a year giving a day over to thanksgiving. The ideal of a religion for everyday living has had very little appeal, because religion has been considered as a thing apart from our common days–for holy days, feast days, sabbaths, and “religious services.”
With that conventional conception of religion, one may be very religious, but no more spiritual than a well-bred animal. While another, like Luther Burbank for instance, may have no religion at all, and yet be profoundly spiritual. We need not have any interest in the forms of religion, provided we are deeply interested in the spiritual and pragmatic values of that kind of religion which can be applied to the problems of everyday living.
The problems of life which we must meet successfully, if life itself is to be to us anything more than a “vale of tears” and trouble, fall into three general classifications.
The first is health. No one who is sick or ailing physically can be very efficient or happy. Hence we believe that religion, by which we mean spiritual knowledge, should help us to keep well. And should we for any reason get sick, this knowledge of God is a very present help which we can apply in regaining our health.
There are exceptions to most general rules, but most of our physical ills are directly traceable to wrong mental states. Worry and fear are mental diseases that sooner or later lead to bodily disease. By trusting in the Father as an immediate and living presence in our hearts, and by knowing that this Power is available to us only through the mental organization which constitutes our individual consciousness, we realize that the responsibility for keeping well and strong rests with us as individuals and not with God.
The Infinite provides the means and resources and perfect laws by which we may have an abundance of vitality and strength. Ignorance of the laws of the mind and of the body may lead us into all sorts of physical distress. Hence we see the necessity for a scientific understanding of mental principles, and of our relation to the Omnipresent Spirit of Life.
Such study results in a more wholesome mental attitude toward people and all the affairs of life. We learn to apply the principles of Spiritual Science to all physical troubles so that, by such practice, we finally master the art of keeping well.
The second classification, under which the major problems of life come, is the matter of supply, or securing from the universe around us what we need in order to live in comfort–food, shelter, raiment, and the things that enable us to live in freedom and joy.
A person who is destitute of the material necessities cannot be happy any more than a sick person can feel a joyous and vigorous zest for life. Hence Spiritual Science principles apply to all those problems that arise in making successful adjustment to the world of practical affairs.
We see that there is in nature a principle of abundance which provides ample supply for all creatures. But we see also that this supply is available to the individual only on condition that he uses his intelligence to take it. Let us accept the rational hypothesis that just as the resources of nature are available in increasing abundance as we develop the knowledge required to use them, so also the resources of Universal Mind respond to the awakened and informed intelligence of the person who has learned how to cooperate with, and make demands upon, this vaster Mind of the Father.
We have found simple rules for using this new understanding to get from life the things needed for comfort and physical well-being. Instead of contemplating the poverty which we dislike, we look upon the ideal of wealth and plenty. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. Trust in the Law and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.”
These and similar statements in the Bible we accept, not so much as promises of what God will do for us, but as instruction as to the kind of thoughts and feelings to hold in regard to life and its problems. You cannot very well “trust in the Lord” while your heart is filled with worry and fear. So we should take our religion into the very practical realm of making a living and getting from the universal storehouse what we need for comfort, convenience, and the good life, in terms of ample supply.
The third classification is that of human relations. In the home, the office, the shop, the school room; on the farm, in the factory or wherever we work or live, and in our social contacts, we are faced with the problem of making harmonious adjustment to people. A religion that fails to sweeten life and make all its relations more agreeable and helpful, certainly fails in a most vital and important field of human experience.
It often happens that people who are extremely devout and pious in the conventional religious sense are very narrow, intolerant, critical and sour in disposition. Naturally this disturbs the atmosphere of social, business and home life.
Spiritual Science deals with these problems scientifically by the use of the principles of psychology, as well as religious faith. It teaches that gossip, intolerance, a bad temper, and all kinds of disagreeable mental and emotional habits, are merely diseases that can be cured by the use of “the sweet reasonableness” of truth and right thinking. And it gives specific instructions as to how to go about healing such mental conditions.
The method is simply the application of the spirit of love and generosity to all problems of human relations. “Give and it shall be given unto you” is a lesson Jesus taught, and which applies to mental as well as physical forces. If you give love and confidence that is what you will get. If you give jealousy and suspicion, you can hardly expect, if you think of the matter, to receive affection and good-will in return.
We should simply take the great ideas of the Master Spiritual Scientist of the ages, and put them to the test of practical, everyday living, and we will find that they not only work, but that they are so fundamentally true and psychologically sound, that the wonder is that more people do not see the wisdom of putting them to use in daily life, rather than merely repeating them as “religious” phrases.
Spiritual Science is not only a religion for everyday living, but also a sane and wholesome philosophy, based on a sound and demonstrable principle–a religion for today and tomorrow–for all time.
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GOD TALKS WITH A DISCOURAGED MAN
“And he went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and requested for himself that he might die. And there came a voice unto him and said: What doest thou here, Elijah? And Elijah answered: I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts. For I, even I, am left of the prophets, and they seek my life to take it away. And the Lord said unto him: Go, return on thy way.”
— Bible.
Discouragement is a mental disease. It is one of the most curious afflictions of mankind. While it is always associated with conditions that we call discouraging, these conditions are not in themselves the cause of discouragement. The cause is in our mental attitude toward life.
While it is not always possible to define exactly the immediate mental cause of discouragement in any particular case, there are certain factors that are always present in one form or another. A false conception of the meaning and purpose of life; belief that opportunity is limited or lost; a feeling of inadequacy and fear in the presence of responsibility; belief in failure and the personal pride which shrinks at the opinions of people in the face of apparent failure; and most important of all, the awful emptiness of a life devoid of genuine spiritual values.
One of the most impressive facts about discouragement is that it afflicts people of wealth and power, as well as those who have little; those who are secure financially, as well as those who have lost all. Many who do not [108] know from day to day where they will find food and shelter are free from the disease, while others who have never known an unsatisfied natural desire get discouraged to the point where they would rather die than live. It is a mysterious disease, yet we can find in mental principles not only light that enables us to see the reason for it, but the way to heal it.
The story of Elijah and his effort to wipe out the idolatrous religion of Baal, which, through the favor of Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, the Jewish king, had almost completely displaced the religion of Israel, is a perfect illustration of the effects of discouragement.
Here was a man who was not afraid to challenge all the priests of Baal, hundreds of them, to a test as to whether Jehovah or Baal was the true God. He prescribed the manner of the test, which took the form of erecting altars, one to Jehovah and one to Baal. The priests of the pagan god were to call upon him to send fire from heaven and consume the ox that was placed upon the altar as a sacrifice. They prayed from dawn until noon without results. The ox was still there, and no sign had been given that the god would honor the faith of his priests.
Then Elijah dug a trench around his altar, and poured several barrels of water on the offering and the altar. He called upon Jehovah to burn the sacrifice, and Jehovah answered, burning up the altar, the offering, and consuming the water with fire. Then Elijah, having won the support of the crowd who came to witness the contest, had the priests of Baal taken down to the brook Kishon, where he slew them all, to the last man.
When Queen Jezebel heard of the terrible fate that had befallen her beloved priests, she sent a note to Elijah by one of the Court messengers telling him that what he had done to them, she would do to him before the setting of the sun on another day.
Just why a man who could call down fire from heaven to discredit a pagan priesthood should fear the threat of an angry woman, is not clear. But at any rate he took to his heels and beat it for the tall timber, seeking safety in the wilderness, where he said he wanted to die. Then the voice of his own soul spoke, asking him why he had fled to these fastnesses.
The petulance and weakness of his reason must have shamed him when he got to thinking about it. He said that all the prophets were gone save himself, and that “they” sought his life to take it away. He was willing to flee from the anger of a bad-tempered woman and seek death by suicide, and he could not face the job that was cut out for him, namely, to re-establish the religion of his fathers in the land of his birth. Under the glare of publicity and the excitement and pressure of a great contest between the forces of wrong and the truth of his faith, he could face an army of enemies. But when the stimulus of the contest was gone, and his work was threatened along with his life, he could not face the music.
But in the silence of his mountain retreat, he heard “a still small voice” and he regained his courage and went back to the task he had set for himself.
The whole problem of discouragement arises out of our neglect of the spiritual life. If we talked more with the God in us and less with men; if we listened to the inner Voice more, and less to the clamorous and glamorous noises of the external world, we would find a sylvan strength and dauntless courage that would insure us against discouragement.
Faith and courage are spiritual powers. They belong to the spirit of victory and achievement, and nothing great is ever accomplished without them. If you have courage, you can go on, no matter how dark and forbidding the way may seem. If you have faith, all things are possible to you, because faith puts you in touch with the unconquerable forces of your own soul.
After Elijah went to his mountain cave, he began to think that God would visit him and perhaps commend him for slaying the priests of Baal, or tell him what to do in the circumstances. When we get down to the bottom of the pit of despair, we are apt to turn to the one Power that can help us and that, had we turned to it in the first place, would have kept us out of the pit.
There came a great earthquake, which shook the mountain, but God was not in the quake. Afterward, came a mighty tempest which tore at the trees and the rocks, but God was not in the storm. And then there came a great forest fire, roaring past his cave, but God was not in the fire. And then came the “still small voice,” the voice of his own soul saying: Elijah, what are you doing here when your work calls for you? Why have you tried to escape from life and from men, when your people need your counsel and your help in re-establishing the ancient religion of your fathers among them? You, who faced death at the hands of an army of foreign priests who hated you and would have loved to see you die; you, afraid of a woman’s threat! Get you up and go hence, and fear not, for I am with thee. Have I not protected and helped you in the past? Did I not answer you when you called upon me, and proved to you that the Arm of Jehovah is not shortened that it cannot save, and show you by mighty signs that there is nothing impossible with me? Go to your work and your place in the world, and have faith in me, for I am with thee withersoever thou goest.
In Science we can readily translate these Bible stories into terms of the spiritual law. The God who talks to us is the God in our own souls. When we become discouraged with life, when disappointment, ill health, or poverty assail us, and we think that there is no hope, this Power of the Spirit within will nerve and strengthen and feed us, and help us to overcome. But it is not until we see the nature of the Law that is involved in the process of regaining our courage and faith and joy in life, that we are able to turn to the inner Source of power with certainty and the assurance of effective response.
The conditions and external aspects of the world around us magnetize our attention, and absorb the energies of mind and spirit. The senses deceive us as to the real values in life, for the simple reason that the world of natural forms and conditions present such a powerful and insistent appeal that we become unconscious of the invisible cause that lies back of these external phenomena.
When, in the course of our experience, conditions develop that are unfavorable to us, we are far more likely to be influenced by them than we are to fall back upon the inner resources where alone is to be found the strength and the intelligence to change the conditions.
The realm of the Spirit is invisible, its powers inscrutable. Yet, when we come to think of it, all that comes to us in the way of experience is the result of invisible forces. Our conditions and affairs grow out of our minds. And on the other hand, the very source of all that we see in nature is an invisible world, for natural forms are constantly coming forth out of the unseen, then returning to the unseen, and nothing is permanent but the hidden Law that causes things to become manifest externally.
When we begin to see this truth and translate it into terms of our experience, we become aware that we are always dealing with Law, and that the Law with which we deal is the only reality that does not change. It is the one dependable thing in the universe. We discover also that this Law is not merely operating in nature to create physical forms. It is operating in and through us, and we use or misuse it in the creation of the world of affairs that comes out of our mentalities. Our thoughts and mental images are the very stuff out of which our conditions and affairs are made.
When this becomes clear to us, we see that nothing external to us is a real reason for discouragement or unhappiness. The real reason is within us, and that is the place to begin work if we are to change the things in the outer world that have emerged from our mental world of cause. In short, as soon as we see the mental origin of things, we are impelled to study the Law of that inner world, in order that we may create the kind of life and environment that we really want.
In the beginning of this study we are wise if we accept the help of those who have already made some progress in spiritual science. For while the men who wrote or compiled the Bible perhaps did not even know the word science, still, they knew the Law of the spiritual world, and wrote about their experiences with that Law.
The story of Elijah’s experience with the Master, when he became discouraged and thought he had failed, is a moving human document, because it deals with the same kind of feelings and reactions to experience that we are having today. The factors and details of his experience differed from our own, as ours differ from those of other people, but the human elements are the same, and the Law back of them is the same.
When he was in the depths of despair, when he felt that everything and everybody was against him, he turned, perhaps not consciously, but instinctively to That Something within himself. The story makes it quite plain that this is what he did, for it explicitly states that he looked for God in the storm, in the earthquake, in the fire, but did not find Him in any of these external wonders. Then he heard the “still small Voice” speaking in his own soul, and to his credit, be it said, he listened and obeyed its monitions.
Most people in the modern world are so obsessed by things, so intent on listening to the stock ticker, or the pessimistic wailings of people, or reading of the tragedy and trouble in the world, that they think they have no time nor opportunity to listen to the Voice of God in their own hearts. It is the “still” Voice, and not until you have entered into the quiet of the soul, and shut out the strident tones of the external world, is it at all possible to “hear” the Voice.
Of course if you love your misery, if you want to nurse your discouragement and feeling of failure, that is your privilege. But do not blame Science, nor the Law, nor God, if things go from bad to worse. Blame yourself, that you have deliberately, or unconsciously, refused to turn to the only dependable Source of courage and strength in the universe. And again I say, that if you have courage and faith, and especially if that courage and faith are based upon your understanding that God is in you as your strength and life, you will be able to get out of your trouble, whatever it is.
Discouragement comes from the contemplation of the facts of life from the material point of view. If things go well, a certain degree of happiness, contentment and courage is the result. But when trouble comes, the tendency to look upon the material conditions and think of them as the cause of your distress is inevitable, for that is your point of view, the way you think of life. Since there is nothing in the material aspects of your life that can operate to change themselves in your favor, you only add to your distress by your continued thinking about the hard luck that has come to you.
Suppose, on the other hand, that you have the habit of looking at life from the spiritual point of view. Your first reaction to any situation involving trouble is to turn to the Source of strength and encouragment which you have proved in better times to be dependable and all-sufficient for your needs. It is essentially an attitude of mind, in which the idea of the presence of God is the supreme factor. And it is the direct awareness that God is not an external personality, but an immediate, living, inner Presence, the very essence of our own being. This kind of talking with God is more than prayer. It is knowing, the realization of something rather than the asking for something.
This sense of complete union with the Father Within banishes all fear, and it is fear that is always at the bottom of a discouraged mind. But not only does it exclude fear; it awakens positive faith in the wisdom and power of the Father, so that the problems of life can be faced with a cheerful heart. Indeed the real test of the quality of one’s spiritual understanding is just this forthright facing of the issues of life.
The degree of discouragement and worry measures the extent of our doubt as to the power and responsive intelligence of the Father. And conversely, actual faith in, and knowledge of, the Divine Law results in a happy and aggressive personality, which will not be downed by appearances, whatever they may be.
It requires time to establish in one’s heart the habit of communion with the Father. This is not because the Father is slow to respond, but because the habit of looking at life from the material point of view has made us insensible to the powers of the spiritual world. For the thoughts of the Father, like the thoughts of our own objective mentalities, are the action or vibration of the Inner Mind.
The reason the inner Voice is “still” is that the vibration of the Mind of the Father Within is not in terms of the human voice, but is the movement of consciousness, silent as a dream, and clear and intelligible to the ones who have learned the language of the soul. That is why it is so necessary to spend time in the Silence until the language is learned, when communion becomes as direct and simple as speech between friends.
Always, in the face of difficulty or trouble of any kind, the Voice of the Father gives encouragement and inspires us to go on. For he sees beyond the temporary condition and knows the good things that await the soul upon its pathway through life. Thus in time we are able to prove the Law in our own experience and go on in the strength that comes from personal knowledge that it works in us and through us and for us, when we work with it.
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DIVINE GUIDANCE AND PERSONAL WILL
“When he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will
guide you into all truth.” — Jesus.
Guidance of any kind involves two primary factors: first, personal will or intelligence–the object to be guided; second, the law governing conditions with reference to which guidance is sought to be applied. There is always the self to be guided or to accept guidance in relation to the guiding agency or device. Back of the device is law; back of the choice is personal will.
We may get direction from a map, a magnetic compass, aviation or nautical instruments. But we have to know the law operating through these guiding agencies; and why and how they work, before we can take full advantage of them. The Spirit of Truth operates in these scientific methods of guidance. The universe is one, though it manifests itself in different ways. Natural guidance is divine; Divine guidance is natural.
We may be influenced by the weather, a modified form of guidance; by people’s thoughts and moods; by group habits; and in other incidental ways too numerous to mention. Most frequently of all, perhaps, the individual is guided by his own feelings, desires and prejudices. Many people allow themselves to be guided by fortune-tellers, crystal-gazers, spiritualistic mediums, astrologers, omens, superstitious signs, numbers, and so on. All of which are in direct opposition to Divine Guidance.
We may have Divine Guidance when we are willing to subordinate the personal will to the Will of the Father that dwelleth in us. When we turn from all dependence on external guides, and depend only on the Inner Guide, we become strong, self-dependent, and live and act from our own center of power and intelligence.
This is the law of the universe. It applies to everything. The principle of government is in the atom, the earth, the stars. It is in the single cell, the plant, the animal, the insect, and man.
The principle of government acts as the law of affinity and repulsion in the atoms of chemistry; as gravitational force in the mass, attracting or repelling other masses. No will is involved except that of eternal law. No guidance is involved except that of absolute principle.
In the living form the principle of government is also inherent. However, a new factor, intelligence, is added, or rather has been evolved by the organism, which confers the capacity for spontaneous action from its own center of power.
Action of the individual insect or animal is no longer exactly predictable, and the higher the type of creature, the more complex these elements of spontaneous action become, until in man reason and self-consciousness supplant instinctive action and desire.
We must remember, in our study of this principle of guidance, that the instinct, operating with such mysterious and effective power in birds, insects, animals, and even plants, is most certainly divine guidance. It is the operation of the center of authority in each creature, which we must call God, Life, Mind, or some other name to indicate the presence of Divine Intelligence.
Man, with his powers of reason, is still guided in many of his activities, by instinct. But these instincts are no longer pure. They are modified, adulterated, by the intrusion of elements that have arisen out of self-consciousness, reason, and the opinions of others. This was necessary in the evolution of the soul toward the ideal of Divine Guidance, that is, self-government based on the law of the higher consciousness.
As the marvellous instinct of the bee, the ant, the water-fowl, and other creatures, operates from some mysterious center within, so when we come to accept or realize Divine Guidance, it is a power equivalent to instinct, but on a higher plane. In short, we do not have to pray all the time for Divine Guidance and then wonder about results. The real thing, when we get it, or have a living faith in such guidance, is as natural as breathing, or better still, as natural as our normal faith in the efficiency and dependability of the laws of nature.
The attainment of the consciousness of Divine Guidance is through growth. The personal will is involved in the degree that we must be willing to cooperate with the Law. My will in inviolate. It is the insignia of my individuality, of my sonship, of my identity in Universal Mind. I must will to Divine Guidance, and accept it when I have found the Principle upon which it is based.
I know, as my point of beginning, that this Principle is within me, just as the principle of instinct is within the animal. It awaits my recognition. In many ways I know I have been divinely guided all my life, even when I knew nothing about the Law of guidance. But my personal will, my ignorance, my false beliefs often got in the way and caused me trouble. Worry and fear darkened my vision. Now I know the Principle of perfect guidance is within me, and I turn to it, trust it, and seek to understand it. It is what Jesus called the Spirit of Truth.
This Spirit is the eternal, my divine Self, as distinct from my intellectual self, with which I can will to do wrong rather than right. The Spirit of Truth in me cannot err, any more than the principle of mathematics can act erroneously.
The captain of a ship can ignore his mathematics, and steer the vessel by his feeling, or he can miscalculate his position and go astray. But the principle of navigation is perfect, and its perfection is as much proved by the effects of his miscalculation as by his correct use of the principle. When the wreck occurs, it is proof that he failed to follow the rule; when he reaches port safely, it is proof that he used the rule scientifically.
It is even so in our use of the Principle of Divine Guidance. But with this difference: The master mariner has absolute faith in his nautical instruments, in mathematics, in the laws of planetary motion, in the stability of the stars. Very few of us have such faith in the God that lives within us. If we have, we trust Him. We know that this trust is well founded, regardless of appearances. No matter what happens, no matter if storms arise and difficulties beset our course, all is well. The Captain, the Master within, sees and knows what is best.
This attitude of trust in Him does away with worry. It cures us of the habit of whining about life. It sweetens the day with hope. Faith in the wisdom of the Guide grows stronger. We learn to love and to trust Him. We know that everything is coming out all right, even though our personal will sometimes gets in the way with troublesome results. Bitterness, hatred, despair, fear; these cannot abide in the heart that has learned to trust the Divine Guide.
Broadly, I should say the difference between the person who has learned the secret of faith in the Indwelling Master, and the one who has not, is that the latter worries and frets and fears, while the former loves and trusts and hopes. Both will come out all right in the long run, but the one will be happy enroute and make others happy, while the other will fuss and complain about the weather, the fellow-passengers, the fare, and the time required to make the trip, making himself and others generally miserable.
It is, in the last analysis, a matter of using the personal will to bring every thought and desire into harmonious relation to the law of life and the Universal Power. No one can know all about the Law, nor, comparatively speaking, more than a small part of it. But we see in nature and its eternal laws enough to convince us that there is an Infinite Purpose operating in the Universe; that, in spite of appearances, law governs all, and truth is at the heart of all things.
So we can best serve our own interests, as well as the great Purpose, by accepting the Power as it flows to us from day to day; by being grateful for what we have and for what we know, and by being happy in the assurance that we cannot lose our way. “I know not where His islands lift their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift beyond his love and care.”
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LIVING ABOVE TROUBLE
“God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power
and of love and of a sound mind.” — St. Paul.
When we have trouble of any kind in our lives, we can rest assured that the cause of it is within ourselves and not in God. Fear, which is the primary cause of trouble, and which “hath torment” and leads to discouragement and defeat, is a mental state we create by the misuse of the powers of thought and imagination.
The Universal Father has given us the spirit of power, and love, and a sound, healthy mind. What we do with this legacy is a matter of our own thought and decision. If someone gave you a large fortune, and you should spend it in riotous living or gamble it away, you could hardly blame the one who gave it to you. The Father has given us all things richly to enjoy. What we do with the Father’s gifts depends very largely upon whether we are willing to study and master the laws by which we shall be enabled to make the most of them.
All sin, and most human trouble, is simply the result of ignorance. The teaching of Divine Science stresses the necessity of spiritual education. It is not a matter of blind belief in the goodness of God. It is a question of knowing how to use the gifts of God intelligently and effectively.
Trouble is a condition. While it is essentially mental in its nature and origin, it always registers in the external world as some form of confusion, disturbance, or discord. The only way to begin to correct a trouble condition in your life is to start in with the cause; that is, to adjust the mental life. If you simply wait for something to “turn up,” for times to get better, or some other quite external event, you may wait in vain. And if a favorable situation should develop to help you out of your trouble, you would still be at the mercy of forces external to yourself. Whereas, if you start to work to realize and make effective in your life the Father’s gifts of power, of love and mental ability, whatever you accomplish in the way of adjustment is permanent gain. You are no longer the football of fate and external forces.
We all have more power than we ever use; more love than we ever express; more intelligence than we draw upon. The reason we do not make better use of these inherent forces of the soul is that we let fear, or doubt, or worry dominate our thoughts and feelings. Paul understood human psychology when he placed fear as the disturbing factor against the three most power gifts of God, in the foregoing text. The antidote for fear is the culture of courage. The treatment for trouble is the recognition and use of our heritage of power, love, and intelligence.
The gifts of God are universal. Nothing is withheld from any individual. But since the universe is full of good, the only way you can appropriate any of it is to know the law by which it can be made available to you. If all the power-plants that supply the city of Denver with electrical energy should suddenly be demolished, the city plunged into darkness and all the machinery stopped, we would not assume that the universe had suddenly become bankrupt of electricity. We should know that the only way to correct that trouble would be to construct new power-plants.
We are all connected with the Universal Mind by the mechanism of our consciousness. There is ample power and love and intelligence for all. It is a question of knowing how to avail ourselves of these resources. Fear demolishes the machinery, or throws it out of gear. The Eternal Light has not stopped shining just because we happen to be walking in the darkness of doubt or ignorance of the Law.
The first thing we must do to rise above trouble is to claim our heritage of love and power and a sound mind. But this is only the first step. It has the effect of placing us in tune with Universal Mind, just as an engineer, when he decides to construct a generating plant, puts himself in touch with the electrical principles involved in its construction. But he must go on and draw his plans, assemble his materials, and place the machinery. Without this process the infinite store of electric energy would have no way to work for him.
So, to claim our heritage or share in the Infinite Love and Wisdom is only the beginning of a process of realization. The Infinite can help us only as we adjust our mentalities to the Law through which it manifests. Otherwise, it is simply the impersonal, undifferentiated Power. We know enough about the Law, however, to enable us to specialize it in some degree, and as we study and use it, our knowledge grows from more to more.
Whatever habits of thought we have formed that cause trouble, unhappiness, financial difficulties or what not, we must begin to erase from our consciousness. This we do by contemplating the qualities and attributes of mind and character we wish to develop. You can never correct a trouble by concentrating on it. If you have a house that no longer suits your requirements, that you have outgrown and wish to replace with a bigger and better planned residence, you do not pore over the design of the old shack. You draw new plans. You contemplate the new home. And so in the use of the Law. We are to forget the old order of life and its confusions. We are to rise above it by contemplating the new order that we wish to establish in our lives.
This is working with the Law of mental causation. Trouble comes as a result of wrong thinking; peace, love, and power result from right thinking. Thought, feeling, imagination, and desire, are factors in the mental process of using the Universal Power.
The machinery of consciousness is so constructed that we are always using a certain amount of that Power. Otherwise we should lose all conscious contact with the world. The physical organism is more or less automatic. But we have the ability to interfere with its functioning by destructive thoughts and negative desires. Then trouble comes. A sound, healthy mental attitude promotes and maintains a sound healthy body and harmonious, agreeable relationships with people and the outer world generally.
Whatever trouble we have is of our own making; the power and love and joy we have in our lives is from “the Father of Lights, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
The way to live above trouble is to develop more power by using what we have in a constructive manner, and by contemplating and desiring the strength and independence that make for a fuller and freer life. And further, to realize more love by loving. Without love, life is as barren as a desert waste. But to get love you must give it. Be interested in people. Find out what interests them and then try to understand and appreciate them. Draw them out. Help them to express themselves, for in so doing you not only discover the hidden beauty of their souls, you help them to discover themselves. The process is always mutual. You discover yourself, too. Win the love of people by loving them, and you draw to yourself the mental and spiritual power which you awaken. Successful cooperation among humans is based on love.
This constructive program of thought and effort stimulates the mental forces. It promotes a sound, healthy mind. You can live above trouble by refusing to think trouble or to recognize or accept it. Every condition is an opportunity to display power. Every person you meet is an opportunity to see and love the divine in your fellow man. The Divine Intelligence within, when you turn to it, and meditate or commune with it, will respond to you, help you to see clearly and to love nobly the universal Beauty. It will enable you to act with power and confidence in every situation.
Contemplate the ideal you wish to become rather than the trouble you wish to escape, and you will move steadily toward the ideal. For action is always in the direction of strongest desire, and the movement of consciousness is always in the direction toward which it is focused.
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THE UNSEEN MEASURER
“With what measure ye mete, it shall be
measured to you again.” — Jesus.
Justice is an attribute of Deity. The only proof of this at present accessible to the mind of man is in the laws of nature. If we begin to look for such proof in the religions of mankind, we will at once be obliged to conclude that God has a sense of justice inferior to that of man. For instance, according to Christianity, Infinite Power would impose upon a finite creature an infinite punishment for a finite offense–a violation of the principle of justice so appaling that if we actually believed it, we would go mad from the contemplation of such monstrous and senseless cruelty. The horror of the conception is so incredible that it provides its own anodyne for the mind that accepts it as a conventional belief.
The laws of nature, on the other hand, reveal justice and mercy as companions inseparable. But the mercy is not of the sentimental variety. For instance, the just penalty of ignorance is death; absolute oblivion, with regard to all with which the mind does not have a conscious relationship. A person who knows nothing of the riches to be found in literature is not conscious of poverty. A person who has no cultivated or natural appreciation of the mental, spiritual and inspirational values of good music is not aware of any loss. These things simply do not exist for him.
Actual suffering, on the other hand, is tempered by the law of diminishing sensibility. The peak load of pain, when reached by an organism, is only a momentary summit. Nature provides an effective anesthetic. Unconsciousness comes and, should the nature of the pain be bearable for a time, the life principle builds a defense mechanism against it, the nerves refusing to carry a load of pain beyond a certain capacity.
All animal, insect, and plant life lives in comfort and happiness. The compensations may appear to the human mind to be inadequate in a given case, but a careful examination of the mental structure, physical habits, and the problems of food, breeding, associations and so on, reveal that the creature is well cared for by the Infinite Mind by a law of adjustment that is absolute in its simplicity, wisdom and justice.
If you will study animal life at first hand or, in lieu of that, go into the museum of natural history and examine with a sympathetic mind the environment and methods of supply that obtain among different creatures, you will see that each one is very happily situated. It is very easy, too, to transform your consciousness to that of the animal plane by entering the primitive emotions that still constitute a part of your mental equipment. By visualizing the habits, the adventures, the habitat, the mental problems incident to survival and to meeting the every day demands say of the eagle, the fox, the squirrel, or any other creature, you will find that they all have immense satisfactions, far, far greater than man in comparison to the mental endowment involved.
The Unseen Measurer, in the Cosmic sense of the term, gives not only justly but bountifully to all creatures. And we greatly simplify the whole problem of analyzing the conception of universal justice, when we admit, as we must do by the necessity of logic, that the Measurer and the thing measured, the Receiver and the thing received, are one.
The intelligence of the honey bee, that finds its utmost joy in laboring ceaselessly for the glory and the destiny of the species, is God acting at that level and in that capacity. The mystery of instinct, that urges these tiny and indefatigable toilers to their tasks, is the perfect Wisdom of God. Anyone who studies bees, either in books or at first hand, will see this Wisdom expressed as joy both in the spirit of the hive and in the individual worker.
The male bee, fat, lazy, with dirty, slovenly habits, no doubt has, in his brief day of ease and instinctive anticipation of the romance of the nuptial flight, a compensation equal to that of the workers. The student who goes to nature for his lessons in the Justice of God will come away from his studies each time with a sense of awe and reverence for that Power which sees to it that no creature gets the best of the bargain of life. With a chastened mind and utmost humility, he is obliged to admit that it is only man who, with his vast powers, makes a fool of himself in the idiotic effort to evade the Divine Law of Justice.
The principle of measurement, however, is not in nature’s laws, for they are impersonal, cosmic in their action; it is in the individual, with his capacity consciously or instinctively to appropriate the universal bounties.
There is in nature an All-pervading Principle of Intelligence, but it does not measure its gifts as an act of choice or personal discrimination. That is the province of the creature, and man receives greater gifts as he evolves within himself the mental capacity to perceive and appropriate more of the hidden resources of the Universal Mind.
Even God cannot give to a man what he has not the developed capacity to receive.
The Unseen Measurer is the spirit of man, for he decides by his mental attitudes what the Universal Spirit shall give to him. With what measure he metes, it is measured to him again. He sets his own pace; he decides his own value; he determines what life will measure to him.
Take the case of an unjust worker. He gives grudgingly. He watches the clock rather than his task. He skimps his measurement of service. He feels that he is “an economic slave.” He is held to his task only by grim necessity. He envies his employer, and his superiors. This mental attitude determines his place and his rewards. When slack times come, he is the first to go. What he measured to others is measured back to him. He may, and probably will, blame his luck, his employer, the times, or even God. But all the while he has used his power of measurement to decide his meagre returns from life.
God gives without measure. The universe awaits man’s recognition. The laws of nature and of Mind are the servants of consciousness. All the resources of the Father are available to the son, ready for his use. But these resources, whether natural or spiritual, can only be received by the son when a mental equivalent is developed. The slothful person has his reward. The thinker, the worker, is also rewarded, each according to his thoughts and desires. Consciously or unconsciously, we make our demands on life, and values are measured out to us in exact accord with our capacity to receive. What we think, that we become. What we demand in terms of knowledge and developed power, that we receive.
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THE LAW OF ABUNDANCE
“Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but
from him that hath not, shall be taken away that which he hath.” — Jesus.
This is not a conditional statement, Jesus did not say if a poor man is religious, the rule shall not apply to him. The text follows the parable of the talents, and is given as a condensed statement of the meaning of that parable. If you want abundance, then work, trade, be industrious, and keep your money busy too. “He that received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made other five.” Aside from the implied directions to be active, the story carries no definite instructions as to how to acquire abundance. It simply says that “Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.”
It is a striking fact that, much as the Bible has to say about the prosperity of the righteous and those that trust the Lord, no instruction is given that can be remotely considered as a definite formula for acquiring wealth. And there are some statements of the Master that are very confusing, when placed alongside others. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. Human nature is pretty much the same in all times, and our observation of those who have abundance convinces us he would speak his message in terms of our present order of life, and we would undertand him more easily. But he was dealing with Law, and it is our work to find that Law, even though it be hidden beneath strange parables and figures remote from our modern thought and idioms of speech. For the Law is a living thing, the same in all times, and if we seek we shall find it here, and be able to use it effectively now.
Jesus used many parables to define or explain what he called the Kingdom of Heaven, which according to him meant peace, happiness, abundance of good things. Once, in order to give concrete instructions, he said: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things (food, raiment, abundance) shall be added unto you.”
The Law of abundance is an inner power; but when it is put into action by the individual, it results in things being added unto him. The center of power which acts in inward growth becomes a magnetic center of attraction when it is set in motion with regard to things and conditions.
Jesus speaks the stern truth: “Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” This would be a stern judgment indeed, if limitation were a fixed and foreordained state for some, and abundance a secure order of life for others.
Let the one who has lived under the curse of poverty awaken to the divine Law, which knows no favoritism, and put it to work and work with it, and his limitation shall be turned into abundance.
He must divest his mind of the timidity which causes him to hide his talent. Let him see that inward action must precede outward increase, and begin to change his consciousness from one of lack to one of abundance, and he shall attain power and attract whatever is needed for the good life.
Recently a saleswoman came to consult with me. She was discouraged because for days she had made no sales. But she admitted that one young man on the force, working in the evenings after his studies and recitations in college, was making ten dollars a day, and doing it regularly. I said, “Yes, he has the confidence and courage that success instills in the heart. What you have to do is to fill your own heart with the enthusiasm and faith in your ability, before you succeed, that he has who has already succeeded. ‘When you pray, believe that you have received, and you shall receive.’ That is the Law. The mental image of what you desire must actually be equal to the thing you desire.
“It requires mental work, meditation, realization of the power of the Master in you to attract the abundance which you picture in your mind. But if you picture failure, and think of difficulties in the way, such as so many salespeople selling the same line, and people in no mood to buy, you are reversing the Law against yourself, and the little success you have had dribbles away, and is diminished until, as you now say, you have nothing. ‘Unto him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.’ You must get the feeling and mental attitude that goes with abundance before you can get the thing itself, for our conditions are but the reflection of our states of mind.”
We must give less heed to the poverty which we do not want. Mind is the only power that can act, and we must not lose sight of the fact that it can act to demonstrate failure as well as success. It is a magnet, and like a natural magnet, has two poles. One pole attracts; the other repels. Be sure you turn the pole of attraction upon the object of your desire, for if you turn the other–fear and doubt and discouragement–toward the thing you want, it will push it away from you, until you have less and less, even what you had being taken away from you.
By building the Kingdom of Heaven within through right thinking, we attract corresponding conditions without, and things are added unto us with the certainty of immutable law. And, grandest truth of all, the inner wealth cannot be lost or stolen, and should time and circumstance shift our outer possessions, the inner power will again attract as good or better. The things that are seen are temporal, may change and shift; the things that are not seen are eternal–the basis of enduring security and abundance.
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MENTAL LAW AND PERSONAL DESTINY
“And his father said unto him, ‘Son, thou art ever
with me, and all that I have is thine.” — St. Luke.
The parable of the Prodigal Son and the Elder Brother is one of the most significant lessons in the Bible, in regard to personal responsibility for the use of the mental Law that determines personal destiny. The fact that this parable has been used to illustrate and inculcate the doctrine of special Providence and a personal Deity is one of the interesting curiosities connected with the spiritual evolution of man.
The Figure of the Father in the parable is unquestionably designed to represent the Universal Mind or Creator. The characteristics of the Younger Son and the Elder Brother typify two distinct attitudes on the part of humanity toward God. The genius of Jesus drew these types with such remarkable fidelity to life, that they are as modern as though the characters were drawn yesterday.
We will consider the Figure of the Father as the Eternal Principle of all being. The Sons represent individual use of the Principle, or the action of personal mind in relation to it. For the sake of convenience and to make perfectly clear the scientific conception implicit in the parable, we will regard the terms Father and Law as being synonymous. The Son stands for the individual mind.
The Law gives to the younger son that which “falleth to him.” Note that the Father did not remonstrate with the young man when he requested his part in the paternal fortune. He did not point out the pitfalls and dangers that awaited his unwary footsteps in the far country. Nor did he in any way interfere with the young man’s plans. He was permitted to use the wealth and power of the Law in exactly the way he chose to use it. He formulated in his mind the thing he wanted to do, and his will in the matter was left inviolate. Power was given to him to execute his plan.
No searching party was sent out for him when a long silence led to the disturbing conclusion that he was “lost.” No rewards were offered for information concerning him. He was left absolutely to his own devices, to find his own way and learn from experience the big lesson of life. Not until he “came to himself” and his awakened thought led him to say, “I will arise and go to my Father,” did the Law act to restore to him the position, power, and privileges of Sonship.
The supreme authority of the self was not violated, even when he misused, through ignorance, the mighty power and resources of the Father.
The Law (the Father) did not say to him: “No, my Son, I will not permit you to misuse my power and wealth in the manner you contemplate. You can use my resources for only ‘good’ purposes. The word of my will is an immovable obstacle in the path of your progress in the wrong direction. You must be a ‘good’ boy, and I will not allow you to squander or use my wealth in the way you plan.” Instead, the young man was given complete freedom to do as he pleased.
In this brief lesson, we can only indicate the outline of our thought. If you wish to misuse the great Law for selfish, or even criminal purposes, the Law itself will not and cannot, as an act of personal interference, stop you, for the force of Law is in its own nature, and carries within itself the penalties of its infraction.
The resistance of the Law to your conscious or unconscious misuse of It is not in the action of the personal fiat on the part of a benevolent Father. It is the inexorable working of the Law as an impersonal force, in the action of which destructive thoughts and acts bear fruit after their kind.
It is begging the question to say that the fruit of an evil or ignorant act is an illusion and non-existent, while the result of a “good” act is real because it is in harmony with the Principle of creative evolution. The “thorns and grapes” and the “figs and thistles” of another of Jesus’ illustrations, confirms the essential point that you can either use or misuse the impersonal Law. (For those who question the power of the individual to use criminally, or in any destructive way, the power of the Law, we suggest that you examine the statement in the parable with regard to harlots, certainly a crime against moral, to say nothing of criminal, law. And it was the Father’s power or wealth that made possible this criminal action.)
Much as we may wish to have a Father who would prevent us from squandering our spiritual substance in selfishness and sensual pleasure and in other destructive ways, the facts of life and the evidence of Law are both against such a conception.
Destiny, in the large sense of the ultimate of the human soul, may be fixed as to its character. That is, each soul is doubtless moving upon an unbroken spiral of ascent toward the perfect Ideal–Christ. A vast range of experiences, life after life, are no doubt required to realize this Ideal. The further we travel, the more we see, and the more able we are to understand the truth.
But we are always dealing with Law, and the Law plays no favorites. It permitted the Younger Son to pander to his appetites. It allowed the Elder Son to become narrow, mean, jealous, and self-righteous– a wizened manikin instead of a man. Each had access to the unlimited resources of the Law. Each used it according to his limited understanding, and no doubt the bigoted Elder Son learned his lesson from the Father’s rebuke, as well as did the Younger Son from the Father’s love and generosity.
We call ourselves Scientists. Let us recognize the simple fact that it is impossible to erect a science on any other foundation than that of changeless Law. Personal destiny is determined at any period of the soul’s existence by its understanding and use of impersonal forces.
The Eternal Father, with perfect wisdom, has created a universe of infinite variety of phenomena, which is a perfect unity based on the Omnipresence of Law. When we perceive this principle of unity, we shall cease our vain clamoring for special consideration, and seek to understand the immeasurable generosity and wisdom of that Law which confers upon us the utmost liberty of choice and action, to the end that we may learn at last that security and peace and happiness are to be found only in knowledge of the Truth–the only charter of mental and spiritual freedom and power.
The parable indicates that there is a thrill of joy in the Cosmos when an erring mind sees the Light of Truth, and when an individual abandons his selfishness and sensuality and returns to the sanity and peace to be found only in the shelter and protection of the Everlasting Law of Life.
The way of return is never closed, and the Father’s House is always open.
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THINKING THROUGH
“The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” –Jesus.
The foundation principle of Divine Science is the doctrine of the unity of the Whole–one Mind, one Power, one Life. The One manifests as the many, just as the body is one, but has many members. But each unit in the universal body is related to the Whole as effect to Cause. The One is in the many; the many in the One. Mind is the Source of all form, motion, effect, life, being, and therefore all things exist in, and because of, the Eternal One.
The primary error of the human mind, which is the father of all mistakes in thinking through to correct conclusions about life and religion, is the belief in duality, in two powers–good and evil, or God and devil. The only difference between dualism and polytheism is the difference in degree, and not in principle. The devil in Christian theology has all the power of a god, with none of his virtues. The devil is a creature of the human imagination. It is certain that God does not create evil. Evil is man-made. And if we believe in the reality of evil, it has the same power over us, as if it were truth. For our mental acceptances are translated into terms of experience.
An evil experience is not less distressing merely because it is the result of believing a lie. If we believe in two gods, we believe a lie, and this results in darkness or error in all our thinking. We see the result of this almost universal error in the prevalence of misery, sin, poverty, injustice and unrighteousness in the world. The cure is to be found in religious monotheism–seeing and accepting one God. This is the single eye referred to in the text. If thine eye be single–seeing one God–thy whole world shall be full of light. If thine eye be double–seeing two gods–thy whole world shall be full of darkness. “Ye cannot serve two masters.”
Natural science is monotheistic, and so works in the light. The scientist is not afraid that some devil will come along and interfere with his work, or tempt him to violate the principles of mathematics, or ignore the laws of physics. His God is law, and as a general rule the scientist has very little use for the dogmas of religion, because religion ignores law, depending on “revelation.”
The certainties of science inspire us with hope that we shall at last establish upon an equally sound basis, the certainties of the spiritual life. It is because the human mind, when dealing with the religious elements of human experience, can reason from appearances instead of from principles, that the error of dualism enters into the process. This results in a tendency to reverse the order of values in life. People regard things as of greater value than principles; conditions as of more importance than the power that creates them; effects as of greater significance than causes.
And yet, when confronted with the challenge of the ultimate meaning of life; when pressed for an answer as to what constitutes essential values, almost everyone admits the pre-eminence of mental, moral and spiritual elements. The reason is obvious. They are enduring while conditions and all external things pass away. In the midst of the changing sea of circumstance, the soul reaches out and longs for enduring certainties. And we are coming to see, more clearly than ever before, that they are only to be found in what we vaguely call the spiritual world. I say “vaguely” because most people still believe in two worlds, physical and spiritual; two gods, good and evil. But all things in nature come forth from an invisible source–the One Cause. And all experience in the world of a human personality comes forth from an invisible source–his mind. Mind is the only Actor in the universe, and what we call matter is simply one phase of the Infinite Mind in action.
The basis of religious certainties is our recognition of the omnipresence of law. Man can do what he will with any law of nature, in the exact degree that he understands that law and the way to specialize it to particular ends and purposes. Thus, by understanding the law of water displacement, he can make iron float. This is not defiance of the law of gravity, but intelligent cooperation with it. In the same way, he can navigate an iron ship in the atmosphere. The immutability and perfect responsiveness of natural law to the intelligence and scientific knowledge of man is the basis of scientific certainties.
Man is always dealing with law. First, in the visible realm of nature; second, in the invisible realm of Mind or Spirit. When God responds to man with the dependable precision of law in nature, the act of response is as inherently spiritual as when He responds to thought, desire, love, imagination, by supplying the energy for these mental states. The Cause that lies back of all action is impersonal, and acts only as Law.
My experience is what happens to me when I deal with law. If I am ignorant of the laws of mental action, I may conjure up unhappy and tragic experiences. the Law takes no cognizance of my ignorance. It acts. If I get hurt in the process, that is just too bad. But the Law does not suffer; it is I who pay the price of my ignorance, in pain and trouble. Thus I learn at last to cooperate with the Law, to work in harmony with it, and all is well. I also learn to specialize it to new and wonderful ends and purposes, just as engineers learned to specialize the law of electrical vibration in the ether of space, and produced the radio.
It is a stupendous thought to believe that by cooperating with the laws of the Universal Mind, we can get it to do things for us that we could not possibly do without that reciprocal action from the One Mind. We make electricity carry messages for us over wires and through the ether of space, with the speed of light. This is the response of Universal Mind in physics, and the whole process is based on knowledge of mechanics and the law of vibration. Is it not reasonable to believe that the Life and Intelligence of the universe will respond to us in ways just as wonderful on the higher plane of thought and desire, when we understand more truly the principle of mental vibration in Universal Mind?
We have experimental evidence of the most convincing kind in telepathy. We have a still greater volume of evidence in demonstrations of healing by the direct action of spiritual law, scientifically used. Our belief in duality is the big obstacle to progress in this field. We still cling subconsciously to the conception of a personal God who is somehow apart from the universe of law.
When we finally realize completely that the exhaustless powers of Mind are available to us without limit in the degree that we understand the law of its reciprocal action or response to thought, will, and desire in the individual mind, we will begin to do things with that Power which, if we now stated them, would not only stagger the imagination, but would seem utterly incredible. But man is always doing the incredible in physics, because science is monotheistic, believes in one God–Law.
When metaphysics fully accepts that basis with regard to the action of Mind, equally astonishing results will be obtained, not in healing merely, but in the mastery of forces that will bring about a totally new type of civilization, in which misery and poverty and sickness will be as much out of place as an ox-drawn vehicle on the streets of a modern city.
Spiritual science and engineering is the next great field that awaits the triumphant march of the spirit of man. Little has been done in it so far, but enough has been done to command the interest and attention of some of the finest minds on the planet. Meanwhile, we study and experiment. We are thinking our way through the night of superstition, and belief in a dualistic universe, to the light of the truth that God is One, and that Law governs the All.
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SCIENCE AND THE EMOTIONAL LIFE
“Set your affection on things above,
not on things on the earth.” –St. Paul.
The power of the emotions is one of the greatest forces with which we have to deal in human life. The greatest center of emotional activity is in the affections and, in one way or another, almost the entire range of the emotions relate to this center.
If business trouble is the cause of emotional disturbance, it is related to the effect it will have on those we love. If success or good fortune comes to us, the joy we feel is associated with what it will mean to those who are dear to us as much as it is with our own advantages. Emotion enters in some degree into every experience, and is to the human soul what color is in the natural world.
A life without emotion would be as drab and featureless as deadly monotony or a world of straight lines. Love, friendship, beauty, all fine things in life, stir the emotions, and their real meaning to us may be measured by the effect they have on our feelings. It is therefore of the utmost importance to us, as Scientists, to study this magical power. For it is just as effective in sorrow and despair, as it is in joy and hope.
Emotion is “like the wind, which bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth.” Emotion is one of the supreme mysteries of the human soul. Like an unseen musician, it sweeps its fingers over the heart-strings and we are sad, or pensive, or depressed. And again, with no apparent change in the external conditions of life, the load that oppressed the heart like lead is lifted, and we know peace again.
A strain of music, the song of a lark, a country road where we have known the joy of understanding love, or some incident trivial in itself, but charged with the power of memory, may either transport the soul with joy or plunge it into sadness.
The place to begin the study of the law and spiritual meaning of the emotions is within you. Your emotions may differ in degree and in kind from those of other people, but they are made out of the same soul-stuff in all, and the secret of controlling them is an inner secret to be discovered only in the laboratory of your own being. Instruction may help you to discover the secret, but the finding must be the act of your own mind. And even after you have found the law of emotion, and have learned to control its forces, it is possible to lose this mastery if you set your affections too strongly upon “the things on the earth.”
For nothing upon the earth is stable or enduring. What you hold most dear, and that commands the complete ardor of your soul, may, in a moment of time, be snatched from you without a moment of warning, and leave you desolate and broken-hearted. A word, spoken without thought as to its influence on your destiny, may effectively change the current of your life and sweep away from you all that you hold most dear. The most casual act or word may alter your entire life. The whole set-up of life and its associations is subject to forces in the external world that are unstable and as variable as the wind.
We must, if we are to find security from the storms of emotion, set our affections on “things above,” that is, on that which endures–Principle.
The way to begin to study the law of the emotional life is to examine the meaning of your emotional activity, as it affects your life and its tendencies. Certain kinds of influence affect you adversely, cause you unhappiness, and disturb your poise and mental and emotional balance. Other kinds of influence help you to keep a sane and wholesome relation to the world in which you live. You can cultivate any kind of emotion, and the kind you cultivate determines, by and large, the direction of your life.
The time to begin is now, for without this knowledge you will “beat the air,” so far as using the mental Law is concerned. Intellectual perception of the Law is not enough. We must learn to master the emotions if we are to succeed in demonstrating harmonious adjustment to the world of life and its associations.
Emotional power of any particular kind will grow in intensity so long as we contemplate the mental or physical image with which the emotion is associated.
A person who finds pleasure in gratifying his acquisitive instinct will, if he continues to develop it, finally become greedy and avaricious. He will then suffer when anything interferes with the process by which this emotion is fed. In short, whatever feeds the love for the transient “things on the earth,” is sure to result sooner or later in disappointment and disillusionment, in sorrow and loss.
Just what does it mean to “set your affections on things above?” It does not mean a pious renunciation of the joys of life. Nor does it mean the denial of human love and all its precious heritage of joy and service, of companionship and mutual helpfulness.
The spiritual life, to be of any value beyond the questionable value of getting ready for a mythical “heaven,” must enable us to make more perfect and continuous adjustment on the earth, here and now.
The bloodless and emotionless person, who has not enough natural fire to warm his own body, may be good material for the old Christian “heaven,” but he is hardly the ideal of the normal human. No, we must go beyond the ideal of pious renunciation of the joys of earthly life, if we are to find the true answer to our question.
Let us compare a few of the “things above,” and “things on the earth.” Self-respecting independence versus greed and avarice; love versus lust; mental power versus intellectual pride and vain-glory; principles versus particulars; courage versus fear and doubt; loyalty to an ideal versus selfishness and inconstancy; truth versus error, and so on through the list of the high and low aspects of human life in its relation to the outer world.
Since the highest emotion of the soul is love, the supreme test of our knowledge of the Law is in our reactions to this experience. Love comes to us in a human form. Is it the form we love, or the spiritual quality and beauty in the form? The one can be lost, for it is transient; the other endures, for it is eternal. Its essence, the beauty and truth of the soul you love, is within yourself as well as in the one you love. If your affection is for this truth and beauty, it is safe, and you cannot suffer loss. Yes, bereavement, in whatever guise it may come, brings sorrow, but that emotion will add to your spiritual wealth if you accept it as a part of the soul’s education, whereas if you despair–which is a lower emotion–it may wreck your world.
Emotion arises out of the psychic sea, the impersonal force of the soul. It will, if uncontrolled by the I Am, express as readily in hate as love; in fear as courage. By looking at the ideal of mastery, by striving for the highest and best, we tame this mysterious and impersonal power as an engineer harnesses electricity, and by continued study and practice, we come at last to stand above it, and can still the storms, bid the troubled waters of the soul to be at peace, and live the serene life of power.
In the first stages of this mastery, we are likely to develop a certain impersonal attitude toward people that brings, perhaps, the accusation of coldness and hardness and lack of human sympathy. But this is only a phase. At last comes some gentle hand that touches the stored up energy of the heart, and the life that was masterful in its aloofness is brought into the warmer atmosphere of all that is sweet and human in the affections. But still it is free from enslavement to the lower elements of the unstable qualities of human life. Then comes also the realization of the truth of Emerson’s great statement: “The condition which high friendship demands, is the ability to do without it.”
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LIFE AND ITS BODIES
“The words of this lesson shall not depart out of your heart,
but shall grow into the knowledge of eternal life.”
What is this force we call life? This omnipresent vitalism which seizes upon matter and lifts it up into sentient forms and invests them with mind and consciousness? This mysterious Agent of the Infinite, which builds an organ with millions of keys upon which It plays the vastly varied music of emotion and thought? Here is magic that science cannot emulate, for not only does each living thing possess the miracle power of consciousness and feeling, but the Infinite Magician creates countless millions of different kinds of such organisms, species innumerable. And then to deepen the mystery, makes each one different from all its fellows, whether a leaf blowing in the wind or a man with such genius that he can evoke from out of the Mighty Depths of Being, divine melodies and thoughts eternal.
We speculate about the meaning of this strange power within us, and wonder over the mystery of death, knowing it to be the process by which the Celestial Visitor abandons the temporary home and goes we know not where. And because the body is our present means of consciousness, and enables us to sense the music of the universe, we conclude that if we lose it, we may never find another form in which to manifest and express this something in us which says “I Am.” Yet all about us nature tells anew each year the story of resurgent life, the living wave that beats upon this shore of time, coming from the illimitable ocean whose rim no man has guessed.
Within us we feel the pulse of an eternal rhythm attuned by the Hand of God. For we do not create our life, nor anything by which we live. It comes to us as the free gift of an Infinite Giver whose Realm is so vast that our little minds contemplate it with awe, and when we try to fathom it, we turn back from the boundless deep, stunned and confused, and are glad to find our mental poise and peace again in the contemplation of a flower or some simple fact in the world around us.
Oh, why should we question this beneficent Power which gives us life? Why try to build a strange incongruous doctrine of physical immortality when the Eternal Mind is forever teaching us the mutability of all that the hand can touch and the eye can see? Our Father gives us a magical House in the midst of a Garden of such beauty that no artist’s hand can do more than suggest its secret meanings and inexhaustible treasures. And because we are accorded only a few years to enjoy it all, we imagine He has no greater Garden, no finer House in which the soul may dwell again. What we have, came from Him; what we are to have, can only come from the same Source that gave us this. Shall we ungratefully deny His power to perpetuate His bounty in other forms, in realms as yet unguessed by man? “In my Father’s House (the infinite universe) are many mansions.” And shall we say, O, let me keep forever this House in which I now live?
Thank heaven, all the authority of all the Bibles and churches of all time cannot change the eternal fact. Life on the earth manifests in innumerable bodies, each designed to fulfill a purpose–to express in individual form the Genius of Infinite Being. With infinite ingenuity the Eternal Artificer plans and brings forth new forms, new bodies, to express the inexhaustible urge of creation. We may safely and with confidence leave to Divine Wisdom the manner of our transition to the new Home that awaits us when we are through with this in which we now reside.
But humanity, in its infantile lispings, cried for an answer to the riddle of death, and out of its own infantile mind, evoked an answer that became sacred because it satisfied a temporary need. The answer said in effect, “This body you now have is the only one your Father can afford. You will die, yes, but you shall be resurrected and the old flesh shall live again. As an earnest of this promise, one man has shown that it can be done. We admit there are some doubts as to the historic authenticity of the event, but the Bible says so, and you must believe that, if you are to have the benefits of the example.” And in this ancient story the hopes of humanity have been centered for two thousand years. Yet all about us in the vast play of life upon the planet, God has refuted this strange and unnatural dream.
Why, do you suppose, does nature present such a vast variety of forms, if not to reveal the infinite resourcefulness of the Omnipresent Mind in the creation of types and species and varieties of sentient beings? And is it not a form of atheism to doubt that this Power can make another Home for man? Even now we are forced to admit, from an abundance of evidence, what even the materialist is reluctantly coming to see, that the physical body is only the phenomenal appearance of an inner and invisible body. We can prove that the unseen thought has form, for we can build a material structure to correspond to it, and the substance of every object that man makes, is the mental image that had to be formed before the object could be made. Is not this in itself an evidence that man now possesses an unseen body, which is really the Architect of the physical form which he uses to live in while on this plane?
But we have other evidence, an enormous amount of it, to prove that man has a spiritual or mental body. There are many who have seen such manifestations as can only be explained on the basis of a living body composed of non-material substance, and acting without the limitations of time-space conditions. History, both sacred and profane, is filled with evidence that there are forms not made of matter, that the human soul can feel, or sense, in such way as to carry all the authority of real experience, and where the supporting phenomena and their correlation with other experiences precludes the idea of hallucination. The Bible contains a vast amount of evidence of this kind, and while we admit that much of it may be fictitious, surely all of it is not.
But we do not need to depend upon religious writing. Biography, and other forms of literature, are replete with such testimony. I, myself, have made experiments that attest in their success to the power of the human mind to project the mental body with such force as to present it at a distance, as a recognizable likeness of the personality of the sender. Our hope in the immortality of the soul has a sounder basis than a single unauthenticated case of physical resurrection. We have “a more glorious body” which is not subject to the change called death, but which is subject to the law of growth by which it makes use of innumerable incarnations, as it moves through life after life on its pathway of ascent toward the divine ideal of the perfect Man.
Of this we may be sure: The Divine Wisdom contains the answer to this question of the immortality of the human soul, and all our vain strivings for an exact answer in human terms are wasted, for when we can understand the true answer in terms of eternal Law, we shall have the experience which in itself contains the answer. Our hope is a true prophecy of the reality, and sustains us in our pilgrimage, and the more nearly that hope is translated into knowledge of universal Law, which we can see validated in nature and in the phenomena of our own experience, the more satisfying it will be to us. For Truth is our only Saviour, and to know the Truth about life and destiny is the measure of our freedom.
“Until science opened our eyes we did not know that the celestial and the terrestial are one, and that we are already in the heavens among the stars. When we emancipate ourselves from custom and use, and see with clear vision our relations to the Cosmos, all our ideals of materialism and spiritualism are made over, and we see how the two are one; how life and death play into each other’s hands, and how the whole truth of things cannot be encompassed by any number of human minds.”
We can safely trust our ultimate destiny with Him who planned the stars and peopled the earth with manifold living forms, and adjourn to the sure revelation of time the growth of our powers of vision, and the unfoldment of the hidden might of Spirit that is in us as our life and contains our immortality.
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LIFE AND DEATH
“Verily I say unto you, if a man keep my saying,
he shall never see death.” — Jesus.
Man has always yearned for convincing evidence as to the continuity of life. Death appears to stop the stream of consciousness, and break the individual’s connection with the world in which he lived. He no longer communicates with those who knew him. So far as the testimony of our senses goes, the one who “passes on” is no longer in existence as a conscious being, and his body is put away where all trace of his personality is lost, except as memory preserves it for a time in the hearts of the living.
But does this disconnection from the earth life imply that the soul that occupied the body is dead? When we turn off our radio in the midst of a program, we do not stop the program. Others are listening. The vibrations of the music are still in the room. The physical instrument is all that has been disconnected. Even if the receiving set should be smashed, it would make no difference so far as the continuance of the program is concerned. The analogy is not perfect, but it indicates at least one reason for believing that death does not end life; does not stop the functioning of the soul.
Our individual life originates in Universal Life, and is that Life manifesting as personal being. The instrument which Life thus uses may get into a state of disrepair, may stop altogether. But surely this does not signify that Life has stopped. The life program goes on, and the soul shall surely find another body. We know that the soul is not the body, but simply uses it as vehicle of expression. The creative impulse which gave identity to the I Am must be identified with its own expression, and though the form of that identity may change, the identity itself is actually spirit, and must always remain spirit–Universal Spirit identified, expressed. I must eternally be that I AM which is my only source of consciousness.
Experience is the great mystery associated with life. It is only through experience that we know life, and this is the soul’s movement through time and space, its perception of the relations existing in time and space. It is through experience that consciousness expands.
If the soul should be limited to one set of experiences forever, it would never grow, and would in fact be confined to a prison more terrible than annihilation. Infinite Wisdom has made it impossible that such a perpetual tragedy should ever be inflicted upon any creature. For if the individual, for any reason, becomes marooned in a restricted orbit of life, confined to a monotonous grind and daily sameness, then at last comes death, and says, “Move on. I will give you a new environment and another opportunity to find a greater life.”
There are two major divisions of experience–mental and physical. By far the greater part of our experience is purely mental, but this mental force is kept fresh and new only as we provide new channels for its expression.
We have all seen people whose minds were narrow from being occupied altogether with certain fixed duties, and who have failed to find mental stimulus in reading, games, and the arts, or other avocational activities. This narrowness is revealed in appearance, in conversation, and in a fixed order of beliefs. But the great Life-Giver will not have His bounty thus restricted for long. He says in effect, “Here, my son, let’s be going. New adventures await you. This experience called death is only a Door. Pass on.”
In all physical action and mental experience, we are simply turning on the Receiver which translates the Universal Rhythm into the music of life. When we change the experience, we do not change or diminish the omnipresent Life-Wave. We simply vary the program through the instrument of consciousness and, if that instrument gets out of order or stops functioning, the soul is not stopped. Life knows how to build another body.
We see life doing this in nature on a grand scale in the Spring. Life lifts up its countless bodies and rejoices in its new dress, colorful and radiantly beautiful. When we change our experiences, whether it be a simple human action or the grand natural action of death, we do not discontinue the Power back of the experience. We give it a new direction, and a new body.
Such sayings as that quoted from the Nazarene as the text of this chapter are so stupendous that we usually accept them only as purely intellectual concepts, which have been built up by billions of repetitions in the race-mind. What can it mean–“if a man keep my saying he shall never see death?” Every human being that was ever born has died, Jesus included. All his disciples, who were certainly in the best position to know what he meant, passed through this gate of death. So Jesus could not have meant that the body or vehicle of the soul would never cease to function as a physical organism.
It seems to me that he must have meant that if you do not accept death, if you look steadily at life and believe in eternal life, you will at last reach a state of consciousness in which death has no place. You shall not see death, because you will be looking at and thinking only of life.
Undoubtedly this would remove all fear and distrust of death. If you only know life you cannot know death. And the soul, thus fortified with faith in life, will come to see that even death is part of life, a part, that is, of experience. Only this Grand Experience that opens the Door to another of the Father’s many mansions, is not looked upon as death, but simply as an experience imposed by Cosmic Wisdom, to make certain that no soul should be condemned forever to the hell of a monotony of its own making.
No doubt when the wisdom of man has evolved to a point where he can profitably use a longer time in the Earth School, he will attain a greater longevity. At any rate all nature teaches us that the continuity of life does not depend on the continuity of matter. For matter is discontinuous in its very nature. It is made up of particles and parts widely sundered in space. But the energy out of which matter is made is as omnipresent as the ether of space. And so it is with the human body, which has its temporal relation to the entity which occupies it, even as that entity has its relation to the Universal Soul. The greatest scientists now admit that the real substance of the universe is Mind, and that man is a mental rather than a physical being.
Our lives become sodden and old, and gray and cold, for one reason only: we lose sight of the power of love and beauty. That, after all, was the supreme message of Jesus. He lifted life up out of its hard and fixed conventions and gave it new meaning in terms of love and beauty and romance. He was free from creed and dogma. He lived a free life. He disdained pomp and circumstance and ritual. He lived naturally and simply, in the open. He loved flowers and trees and birds and children. He loved people, and made love the supreme principle of his life and religion. In effect he said: “If you want to be spiritual, love. If you desire happiness, love. If you aspire to perfection and completeness of life, love. Not an abstract love, but warm, living, vibrant, human love. Thus shall you come to know God, who is Love, and because you love human beings, you shall love the God within them and in all things.”
Life is eternal; it is only the form that changes, and if the forms of life did not change there could be no growth. Evolution would stop. The Wisdom of the Eternal teaches us, in nature and in human experience, that perpetual transformation is the very Law of Life, and that without it the universe would be stagnant, dead indeed, and that this would be the ultimate conceivable tragedy. I am life, and I am life resurgent, eternally expanding to embrace the love and beauty of the Universal One in terms of my consciousness and individual being.
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FACING THE ISSUE
“Righteousness exalteth a nation, but
injustice is a reproach to the people.” — Bible.
Many people resent it when a Teacher has anything to say about social, political, or industrial problems. But the notion that there is no connection between religion and social and economic principles is not only false, but it is unsupported by the experiences and utterances of the man whose teachings constitute the foundation of our religion.
The attitude of the person who would separate spiritual instruction from those principles that underlie government is the survival of the old notion that religion is too sacred to be brought out into the experiences of everyday life; too holy to be subjected to the text of reason. In Divine Science we accept the hypothesis that the universe is one, and that whatever concerns the welfare and progress of mankind is essentially religious in character.
The effort to divide life into two compartments, one of which is labeled sacred and the other secular–or holy and common–is responsible for the anachronism of strange oriental beliefs and creeds and superstitions surviving in the modern world. All life is sacred; all experience has either a negative or positive relation to the principles of religion; and all conceptions are immaculate, the action of the Creative Power. Our common life is divine, the manifestation of Eternal Mind. If we fail to see this, our religion, whatever its name, is artificial, a thing apart. If we do see it, our religion, regardless of its label, becomes a natural part of all our experience.
This nation is face to face with very grave problems. Sinister and secret forces are seeking to undermine the very foundations of the Republic. The average elector in America has only a lukewarm interest in political affairs, and little if any knowledge of political science and economics.
As a people, we are very well informed about baseball and moviedom; very ignorant of those principles upon which our liberty and economic welfare depend. We howl when we are squeezed, robbed, and despoiled of our money and rights, and yet think very little. As soon as the pressure is released and we are given a breathing spell, we turn at once to our pleasures and affairs, trusting to the good Lord to look after our political and economic rights. We forget the admonition of a great patriot: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
Our forefathers shed rivers of blood to secure for us a measure of liberty and human rights. The most sacred and important of these rights is the electoral franchise, now extended to women as well as to men. Yet so little do we think of this supreme privilege, that less than fifty per cent of the eligible electorate take the trouble to vote. And it is just the ones who will not take the time to vote who wail the loudest when unjust and insufferable taxation is imposed upon them, or when their fundamental rights to freedom of speech, or group organization and action are interfered with by biased courts or corrupt administrative practices. One thing is certain: If political apathy continues to increase during the next twenty years in the same proportion as it has in the last two decades, a powerful political machine will completely dominate national affairs, to the glory and profit of the engineers who direct the machine.
We must either become politically minded as citizens, or politically impotent as slaves. The individual citizen must decide. If we educate ourselves in the principles of government, if we study the basic laws of industry and economics so that we can exercise the franchise intelligently, the result will be a higher type of public servant. We will demand that the man who holds public office be as well qualified morally, mentally, and ethically, as the man a board of directors selects to manage a business.
After all, it is the individual who faces the issue. It comes back to you and to me. Divine Science is supremely individualistic. I am responsible, not only for the conditions and affairs of my personal life, but for my share in the general conditions of the country. If I am indifferent to my duties as a citizen of this Republic, I am unworthy of the rights and benefits which I enjoy under its form of government. And my own example influences others to be equally indifferent.
While we have individual independence, there is the great law of inter-dependence. “No man liveth unto himself alone.” He is a cell in a living political organism. He either contributes to its health, regeneration and progress, or to its disease, inertia and decay. Nations, like individuals, decay and die when the majority of the human units, or cells, become infected with moral dry-rot, injustice and the inertia of political indifference.
The diseases enter the body of the state by way of the individual. It is not the will of God that nations decay and die. It is the result of the blindness and selfishness of the individuals that compose it.
One of the dread symptoms of such a state is the slow paralysis induced by increasing public charities. The degree of the need for charity measures the abnormal temperature of the patient. Every normal human being despises charity–for himself. It insults his manhood. If dire necessity compels him to accept it on behalf of his dependents, the shame and humiliation burn like a white hot iron into his soul.
The extent of public charity is a very accurate measure of the prevalence of industrial and political injustice. It is a reproach to any people. It publishes to all the fact that maudlin sympathy and unthinking pity dominate their thought, rather than dynamic thinking and constructive action in terms of social justice. Charity is based on feeling; justice is based on right thinking–righteousness. Charity is twin to the curse of poverty. Both are born in ignorance.
Behold a country with unlimited wealth in natural resources, in machinery, in engineering intelligence; a nation capable of producing at least five times as much as its inhabitants are able to consume. And behold that same country stricken with poverty, with nearly half its population living in want, denied the simple necessities of a decent life, and other millions living under the shadow of fear that they too will be in want, not knowing what day a selfish corporation, grown fat on past profits, will say “Get out! I need you no longer.” Shame to a country so bancrupt in social intelligence, so devoid of the ambition to design and direct an enlightened program of social-industrial engineering projects, that it turns to “charity” as the only solution. And shame on you and me, that we sit supinely by, and contribute by our apathy to the continuance of such a state of affairs. A nation so steeped and sodden in selfishness deserves, and will suffer some form of vast retribution, unless it awakens to its divine opportunity to solve this age-old problem. The fate of a nation in which wealth accumulates and men decay is sealed, unless it is converted to principles of social justice and political righteousness.
We have our duty as Divine Scientists. That duty embraces the recognition of our individual responsibility to inform ourselves about social, economic and political problems, and then vote for principles instead of parties. It involves the still greater duty and more powerful action of spiritual meditation, directed to the realization of a more glorious destiny for our nation than any people have achieved at any time in history. It means the finest minds devoted to solving the problems of the nation; the noblest men working for truth, social justice, national righteousness. “Then,” O America, “shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health spring forth speedily.”
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The End