DEDICATION
To every untiring seeker after Truth whose patient researches have brought World knowledge up to the high point from which I have been able to find the Infinite; to Clinton Ambrose Billig, M.A., Ph.D., D.D., whose loving ministrations through years of suffering have helped me find the Light, and to all lovers of Truth, I gratefully dedicate this book.
E. E. S.
The aim of this work is to make comprehensible the Grandeur of the Immobile, Intangible Infinite, reposing Majestically in its Eternal, Unchanging Stillness, in Everything, as Everything, propelling Everything.
Its Method is by a proper classification and description of the processes of the human mind to make clear that Right Reasoning must precede Right Thinking, which is synonymous with Right Acting.
Its Development shows that human beings, always eager for health, happiness and prosperity, finding these things dependent upon the Rightness of their thoughts, will become more careful in their Reasoning and thus live cleaner and more reasonable lives.
Its Iconoclasm is only that of removing obstacles delaying Man in his progress to Perfection.
Its Constructiveness is the convincing of Man of his sufficient equipment to overcome all impediments to his arrival at Positive Rightness.
Its Effect, by divesting Death of its terrors and the Future Life of its unreasonable dullness, must be to cause Man to regard Life Here and Now as a pleasing and profitable incident preparatory to still more pleasing and profitable experiences There and Then.
Its Hope is that it may find its way into every home and every life.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Chapter I.
Life and Living — The Eternal Urge — The Mainspring of Being
Chapter II.
Reason — Its Office and Power
Chapter III.
Studying Infinity — Spiritual Insight
Chapter IV.
Infinite Life and the Beginning of Its Expressions
Chapter V.
Positive and Negative Life — Power and Its Expressions
Chapter VI.
Negative Life — The Development of Subconsciousnesses
Chapter VII.
The Influence of the Subconscious on the Reason — Divine Hypnotism?
Chapter VIII.
Living Is but a Series of States of Mind
Chapter IX.
Law — The Infinite as It Works in Nature
Chapter X.
Man Can Understand Infinite Laws and Is Equipped to Take Care of Himself
Chapter XI.
Looking Again at What We Have Seen — A Review of Our Reasonings
Chapter XII.
Infinite Law Unbreakable — A Man Cannot Consciously Act Unless at the Moment of Action He decides He Is Right
Chapter XIII.
The Laws of Expressed Life — Their Evolution and Scope — The Law of Moses
Chapter XIV.
The Law of Christ — Its Origin and How It Became Theologized
Chapter XV.
“The Judgment Day” — Forever in Which to Decide
Chapter XVI.
The Devil and How to Chain Him — Why Our Subconsciousness is Slow to Respond to the Will
Chapter XVII.
Healing — How to Make Rightness Prevail in Your Physical Being
Chapter XVIII.
Hypnosis — Auto-Hypnosis — Control of the Subconsciousness
Chapter XIX.
The Healthy, Happy, Prosperous Ego — How We Can Affect Ourselves and Others
Chapter XX.
The Evolution of Christianity — Christian Science
Chapter XXI.
The Future Life, Revealed by the Law of Rightness
Chapter XXII.
Conclusion — The Office of Reason in the Infinite Economy
FOREWORD
Infinite Life . . Universal Mind . . is the Supreme . . Power. It is the essence of a Force comparable to nothing else, which, through Reason caused to be Positive by Rightness, can be made more fully operative within us, and thus bring us Health and Happiness Here and Now as well as There and Then. It is the purpose of this work to show how Reason can be made Positive in Rightness.
This is a dear, good old world, much as in moments of misery we may think or say to the contrary. We know that the universe is not misbegotten or misconducted, for everything in it is right but ourselves. We are the only things capable of reasoning, and as we are the only things that get out of gear with the universe it must be our Reason that is at fault. Our mistakes we call sins, and we suffer for them. We try, oh! so hard, and fail, or seem to fail, yet the Universal Urge to Rightness that we see working so perfectly in everything about us is also in US. There must be a way for us to arrive at Rightness. Come let us reason together and we will find it.
Over half a century ago, when the writer was but a “wee bit laddie,” his maiden aunt was in the habit of paying an annual visit to the farmhouse in which he was born. Welcome as was her coming, it is to be feared that she would not have been so eagerly looked for had it not been for the box of presents which she never failed to bring from the city for us children. We were permitted to open the box for ourselves and to select our own belongings. What joy! Every toy, every trinket, every book, was a treasure of art. Is it not possible for you to look into a new book with something of the same expectancy as we peered into Auntie’s box?
The Great Philosophy asserts that unless we become as little children we can in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven . . the State of Harmony. We cannot physically or mentally return to the state of childhood, but we can retain, or bring back if we have lost it, our faculty of Image Making. We can hold communion with unseen familiars as do children. We can be expectant to the point of believing that that which is so intensely hoped for is already ours. We can, in fact, become so aware of what Is as to know It without the aid of, indeed in spite of, our physical senses. It is to be hoped you will read this book in such a spirit. What is a book but a parcel of thoughts, things wrapped up in printed words? The container may be crude, but undo the wrapping carefully and you will find something in it for YOU. has its vocabulary . . its jargon. As little as possible of this sort of thing has been used without becoming tiresome to the specialists, who express in one word what would require an explanatory paragraph
This book may be small, but it will be found far too large for those who do not try to understand it; it will seem just the right size to those who grasp and appreciate its meaning, and it will not be too large for those who become interested and determined to weigh its statements by reading it over and over again.
The thoughts themselves have come out of the fire of years of suffering, and should be as pure as they are joyous in their release. Do not open this book with a yawn or a sneer. If you are in a mood which makes you feel like tearing something, put The Thinking Universe aside till you are in a humor to have a real good think. That you will then find that everything in it is for YOU is the wish of
The Author.
CHAPTER I
Life And Living — The Eternal Urge — The Mainspring Op Being
At the outset let us see together. In order to see alike we must take the same viewpoint and know that we are looking at the same thing. We are about to look at Life and its Phenomena. Life and Living are by no means identical. Life is the Infinite, the Immobile, the Unchanging, the All-powerful, the All-wise, the Omnipresent, the Absolute, the Ultimate.
This we will examine later on, after we have looked at things about which we are’ more accustomed to reason. While Infinite Life is motionless, Expressed Life is all and always in motion. We and all things distinguishable by the senses, as well as everything that exists, even in the most intangible form, such as light, heat, sound, electricity, and our un-sensuous bodies, not discernible by our physical faculties, belong to Expressed Life.
Admitting for the moment what later will be proved, that everything is Mind, everything must think, as that is what Mind does. Mind and Life are identical. When we live, we think; when we think, we live.
While Infinite Life is not divisible and is everywhere in all things, we will for the present accommodate ourselves to our habit of thought and think of it and its Expressions separately. At once we can find a common viewpoint . . we are all Living. We do not all live alike, because by heredity and environment we are not so constituted as to reason all alike.
Heredity and environment affect our ideas of values. We do not all like the same things. To the Esquimaux in the frozen North a piece of whale blubber, disgusting to differently bred residents of a milder climate, is a savory morsel. Even amongst people inhabiting the same zone, of the same race, and very much the same religion, there are many superficial differences as to ways of living.
The carpenter, the blacksmith, the clerk, the farmer, the professional man, in the ordinary routine of living, works as he thinks, and the monotony of his life is great or small according to the amount of thought he devotes to his work. Until recently women’s tasks were less varied and more monotonous than those of men, and it is no wonder they considered their daily routine of housekeeping and dish-washing, cooking, and sewing, and bed-making, and scrubbing, insufferably dull. Because their tasks excited but little reasoning, they did little living.
To get a yet nearer viewpoint of Living, let us drop all differences as to ways of “making a living” and glance at the social life of two modern homes. The home of the wealthy man is luxurious, but not necessarily happy. Leisure does not always cause good reasoning, and where good reasoning is absent good conduct cannot be found.
If all the reasoning in the home is about money, fashion, pleasure, all the conversation will be about such things. In the poor man’s home necessity may cause money to be a topic frequently discussed, together with the absence of pleasure, variety, and ease, and the result is the same . . poor living because of poor reasoning.
Let us get nearer still. The wife and mother is on her deathbed. In both homes alike the grief-stricken family is gathered about the loved one who is about to pass away. The grief in both cases is heartfelt, the anguish of parting acute. Both homes have come to the same door, and as it opens and the spirit flutters out they stand on the same plane, they are confronted by a general principle, that living Here and Now must terminate.
They are uplifted and purified to the extent of their conception of what this so-called Death means, but in no case do they really feel that living is over for THEM, though it may be for HER. They do not wish, they do not even attempt to lie down and die with her, no matter what their love for her may have been. Why? The Urge of Life is too strong within them to entertain such a thought. They go about their tasks as usual, and the agony of grief is a thing folded up and laid away. The business man, the inventor, the speculator, the adventurer, fails, but he tries again. Why? There is an Urge within him that keeps him from giving up.
Human persistence would be incredible, non-existent, if it were not for that something within us which persists in spite of failures. The world is said to love a lover and to hate a quitter. The Universe is held together by the attraction of things to their kind, but there is no such thing as quitting in the Infinite; everything is continuous in some form. No man commits suicide until he has made up his mind that it is Right for HIM to do so. Worry, overwork, fear, a weariness of reasoning what to do next, may put the physical machinery by which he expresses himself out of order, but you may be sure that even in his deranged state he reasons he is doing right when he puts himself out of his sensuous body.
Even the pessimist, that unfortunate creature of whom it has been said that of two evils he chooses both, does not “quit,” though we often wish he would. Why? Because there is something better, more hopeful, in him, than he expresses. He is only trying to make an average for himself by seeking to bring his fellowmen down to the low level of weariness of all things as they are.
We will see before we get very far in these studies how many of the commonest expressions we so frequently use are full of meaning that we have never appreciated, and we will cease to doubt the presence within us of the Infinite Urge to Rightness that is continually shaping the phrases by which we express ourselves. For instance, have you ever stopped to consider where you “go” when you “go to sleep,” or where people “go” when they “go crazy,” or what becomes of the sound when it “dies away,” or the light when it “goes out”?
Did you ever ask yourself why you “must have some excuse” before you do anything of doubtful propriety? Now that your attention is called to it, you will remember often having used or heard the old saying, “Be sure you are right, then go ahead.” How do you get sure you “are right,” and how do you “go ahead”? We so seldom consider our mental processes. Simple as they are when we come to understand them, it is not strange that we so often find ourselves in a mental fog, and rashly accuse LIFE of being unintelligible or stupid, while the stupidity is ours and LIFE is unintelligible only because we have not sincerely sought to understand it.
“All that a man hath will he give for his life.” This oft-quoted text does not overstate the case, yet every day we are made aware that men, consumed by passion or lust, risk their lives by slaying their fellows, or in some hazardous attempt to obtain money or fame, while yet others, unheeding the strongest human instinct, self-preservation, endanger or lose their lives to save their fellow-creatures. Why? What is the mainspring of life? Why are some people diseased, distorted, while others are apparently well and happy?
Why is there any sickness at all, any such thing as we call death? Why are some rich and prosperous, while others are poverty-stricken and appear to be helpless in their fight for their share? Why are some happy and hopeful while others are miserable and despairing? Why Job’s ancient and anguished cry, “If a man die, shall he live again?” Theologians and scientists are as wide apart as the poles in answering these questions, and fail to satisfy that which we call Reason. Why? Is Reason a thing to be satisfied?
Is it worth your while to seek the law of your Being? As you cannot escape Being and should seek to know how to Be Right, the answer seems easy. To the open-minded and thoughtful the appeal of well-founded and concentrated Reason should not be difficult and should receive careful and honest consideration. With those natures which are narrow, hide-bound, and set in the belief that “man was made to mourn,” be sick, suffering, unrestful, it seems almost useless to argue, but even they may be reached.
Those who are fond of assuming the jester’s attitude and quote with frequency and approbation the saying of the superficial humorist that “Life is just one damned old thing after another,” are difficult of access because they are so engrossed with the task of getting something jolly out of life right Here and Now that they think they cannot afford the time to consider whether they are really getting the best of what is going. If they will pause for a moment and carefully scrutinize the difference between Life and Living, they may be led to seek further.
Our mode of living is certainly “one old thing after another” . . the same old tasks; carrying the same old bucket to the same old well; the same monotonous old grind for the man, relieved by occasional and admitted foolishness; the same dreary routine for the woman, housekeeping, cooking and dish-washing and bed-making, with occasional frivolities to vary the sameness, or it may be the same useless rounds of aimless frivolities, which result, in the end, in filling life with a nauseating sameness. This, as has been already said, may be Living, but it is not Life. Life avoids sameness, and when understood is seen to be filled with new and changing things, as beautifully regular in their appearance as the changing seasons, which are never exactly alike.
To those who study the Law of Being the ever-changing, ever beautiful, ever just expressions of Life become a delight. The old tasks assume new aspects, as they are undertaken with a new purpose, a new hope, a new perspective.
It is not our fondness for living as we do which makes us cling to Life. If it were, we would not see men risking or losing their lives as we do. It is something higher. It is that which is known to the thoughtful as the Infinite Urge to Rightness which is within all of us. We cannot question the existence of the Infinite, for when we look at the wonders of our own being and of all the beings in the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms we dimly comprehend, as the Cause is greater than the Effect, that there is something superior to ourselves or anything distinguishable by our senses.
This Something, science and experience teach us, is Everywhere, and we reasonably conclude that it does Everything. This we call the Infinite. Each thing as we come to understand it appears to be for our good, and we conclude that the Cause of everything is good. In all Nature we every day see evidences of progress, the new, the fresh, the beautiful, the useful, replacing the old, the withered, the useless. In everything but ourselves we see that this is good, and because things are not stationary, but progressive, we conclude that that which caused all these good things is still Causing, and we call this power the Infinite Urge to Rightness.
Let us look at a grain of wheat. With a proper environment of warmth and moisture it germinates; in proper soil it grows; the blade, the stalk appears, the head of wheat, the ripened grain. We do not know how it is done. We cannot make a grain of wheat that will grow. All we can say is that its growth and development are caused by the Infinite Urge to Rightness. The grain never develops into a thistle or a cabbage; it is always Right. It is so with the acorn and the oak. Each germinal thing develops its kind.
That each thing develops in this way gives us faith that each thing will continue to do so, and in no sense can our sensuous understanding be the basis of believing that which we cannot demonstrate. So we must accept the Infinite Urge to Rightness as being the means by which the Infinite Causation produces results, even though we cannot sense it or technically understand its operations. Does the agnostic who is proud of his skepticism ever consider himself when he says that he cannot believe anything which he cannot see, hear, taste, smell, or feel?
Does he ever consider his origin even as far back as physical science will carry him? Is he not aware that in physics he can be traced back to an egg as small as the head of a wee pin, an egg beside which the one he has for breakfast would be mammoth in size? Does he cite to himself the fact that he is the product of this smaller egg, while the chicken is the product of the larger one? When he says that he does not believe in anything he does not understand, does he believe that he himself IS ? He must know, not sensuously but un-sensuously . . spiritually- . . that he, six-footer as he may be, was potentially contained in that egg.
He must know that his size, his shape, the color of his eyes and hair, and all his bodily and spiritual conditions in embryo, were contained in that egg; that just as the egg of the Dorking hen fecundated by one of her own kind produces a Dorking chick, so by the same law he is what he is. How does he account for the minute egg developing into the large man? His father and mother did not cause it to develop. He did not do it, though he may have assisted slightly in making the development more perfect than it was in embryo in the egg.
But if he did so help development himself, does he ask why? Why should he make the effort? At this point he comes face to face with the fact that his apparently automatic and self development are both the effect of the Infinite Urge to Rightness within him. It is the mainspring of Life, unerring in its workings throughout Unreasoning Nature, and equally unerring in Reasoning Man, who only doubts its goodness and justice because he reasons wrongly about It, as he is ignorant of the law by which It works and misunderstands his relation to It.
Let us now examine the means which we have at our disposal for studying the Infinite and learning its law, that we may conform to it and direct its irresistible power towards our happiness, harmony and well-being.
CHAPTER II
Reason — Its Office And Power
In approaching the study of Infinity it is well for us to consider our equipment for so serious a task. A moment’s thought convinces us that we can call to our assistance nothing but that which we ordinarily should use in scrutinizing the most commonplace subjects . . Reason. What is this thing we call Reason? What is its office, what its power? Lexicographers define Reason as “That mental faculty in man which enables him to deduce inferences from facts, and to distinguish between right and wrong; right judgment; efficient or final cause; cause for opinion or act; premise of an argument, especially the minor; v. i. to infer conclusions from premises; v. t. to persuade by reasoning.”
So far as is known, Man alone is endowed with Reason, and to the possession of this faculty is ascribed his superiority to all other Expressions of Infinity. Admitting this as indisputable, we find that, Man being the superlative Expression of Infinity because of his possession of Reason, therefore Reason must be the highest Expression of the Infinite, that thing which is nearest to Infinity itself. This at once gives to Reason the highest place in the Universe next to the Infinite Mind . . a place generally denied to it by Theologians, who place Faith as superior to it in arriving at a conclusion with regard to Infinity, even while admitting the superiority of Reason as a guide in more commonplace matters.
This discrimination as to the office of Reason in grave or trivial matters is illogical, for it is by Reason alone that we can distinguish between the important and the unimportant. Faith itself is but Reason satisfied by proofs that are not of the senses. In considering a subject what proofs of this sort can be adduced? To discover this we must further examine the purpose and power of Reason, though this involves the acceptance as facts of what in later chapters will be demonstrated to be truths.
Life and Mind are synonymous. Neither could have existed prior to the other, and nothing could have been prior to either. The human . . the only Reasoning . . mind cannot conceive of a condition of nothingness, and we assume that there never could have been and never can be such a condition. The Reasoning mind, however, can conceive of a condition when there was but one thing . . Life, Mind.
This statement is not technically exact, for Life, Mind, is not a thing, but That which causes all things. The difference between a thing and the cause of the thing will become more apparent as we go further into the subject. Mind, abhorring loneliness, expressed itself, as all Mind does. This is what we have been in the habit of calling the creation of Things. The word creation is avoided in this work because it carries with it in the popular mind the idea of something being made out of nothing . . an impossibility. The word Expression is used instead of Creation, as expression is the natural and well understood product of Mind. Mind, being alone, had no material or tools but itself to make anything out of, but it could and did Express itself, and its Expressions, like itself, were Fixed and Eternal. So far scientists have been able to discover between eighty and ninety elemental Expressions from which all things have been evolved. These, in this study, are termed Consciousnesses . . a Consciousness being a something which knows what it is. These Consciousnesses being the expressions of Infinity, are eternal, indestructible. This indestructibility has been known in science as the Indestructibility of the Atom; in this study as the Indestructibility of the Consciousness.
In order to avoid any misunderstanding as to the meaning of the word Atom let us define the sense in which it is used in this work. In the final analysis of so-called “matter” the smallest quantity calculable into which a thing can be divided is called an “apparent atom.” Beyond this there must be still further gradations as the “apparent atom” nears the point of closest approach to Positive Life, in which there are no atoms, there being no dimensions. At this point of closest approach the real atom is to be found, if it is findable, and it is Indestructible, Unconvertible, Eternal. The number of elemental atoms to be found in the final analysis is less important than to establish the atom as the Indestructible Unit . . the basis of all these partnerships and combinations which we know as Things.
These Expressions were formed by vibrations; that is, the Infinite Expression became a Thing, a Constriction, by forming a force within Life itself. This Constriction consisted of a vibration, and the difference of vibrations produced the difference in Things. This introduced Density and Motion, for, contrary to the teaching of Physics, all Life is not Motion, Infinite Life being Absolute Stillness, it having Nowhere to go and Nothing in which to move.
Expressed Life is Motion, moving easily through the Intangible and Unresisting Infinite Life. Movement itself implies the going of Some Thing from Some Place to Some Where. The introduction of the principle of Density was thus followed by Time, Time expressing the number of vibrations it required a Thing to make to go from one locality to another, and the possibility of considering Things in terms of Time and Space began. As has been proven by the patient and more or less accurate researches of the teachers of the theory of Evolution, everything began in its simplest form, but, impelled by the Infinite Urge, Atoms began at once to form Combinations.
These Combinations, impelled by the same Urge, formed other Combinations, these again multiplying into the myriad Expressions of Life we see about us. In these Combinations the elemental Atom retains its identity, which is Indestructible, though when associated with another or many other Atoms of its own or other kinds new Expressions of Life are formed. These Expressions are called Subconsciousnesses, and these Combinations are both formed and dissolved by the Eternal Urge of Infinity, in which Everything is, and which is in Everything. It is evident in studying the economy of the Infinite that it is necessarily true that these Subconsciousnesses be ephemeral in order that Progress may be made.
Thus by the constant dissolution of these Subconsciousnesses room and material are provided for other Combinations of a superior sort. The movements of these Atoms in seeking this progressive adjustment are known to us as Vibrations. Everything, then, from the first Expression of Life has been in the direction of Automatic and Progressive Readjustment, with one exception, everything being impelled by the Infinite Urge. In Man alone has this been different, he being the only Triune Expression, the Trinity being formed of the association of Atoms constituting his Subconsciousness; the presence within him of the Infinite with its Eternal Urge, which we call the Supraconsciousness, and the special Consciousness . . Reason . . which gives him his identity and superlative status.
Let us now take one of the many glimpses we will get of how exactly the workings of elemental so-called Physical and Spiritual laws are the duplicates of each other. We will take Reason . . the human Consciousness . . and the human Subconsciousness, and we will find a startling similarity in their workings. The Subconsciousness has charge of the nourishment and maintenance of the body. The mouth and throat furnish the intake for the food and drink; the stomach and digestive system change these things into blood, which for the purpose of purification is carried to the respiratory system, and passing through the lungs is clarified and “spiritualized” (made finer) by the air received through the mouth, nostrils and throat, before being put into circulation.
Thus we see that the nutritive system of our physical body has but ONE intake, the throat. Reason . . the human Consciousness . . which has charge of the nourishment and maintenance of the spiritual body, has SEVEN intakes whereby to obtain Knowledge, which is the nourishment required by our intellectual body. This Knowledge is taken in by the five senses . . Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Feeling. These enable Reason to adjust the intellectual body to the environment of NOW. By the Memory intake it draws from the Subconsciousness knowledge of what was good and bad in the past, and this is mixed, so to speak, with the information acquired by the Senses and digested in the Perceptive and Receptive departments of our Intellectual faculties.
Unfortunately this is as far as much of our most nutritive information goes, but it should go further. Like the digested food, which is only crude blood until it is purified by the respiratory system, the information digested by our Reason in the Receptive organs of our brain is crude until it is carried into the Reflective system, which has an intake which, like the Memory intake reaching the Subconsciousness, reaches our Supraconsciousness, the Infinite Life . . the Infinite Rightness within us. This Infinite Life, when sought for by us as we seek for fresh air for our respiratory system when we are in a badly ventilated room, we can draw into our Reflective faculties to purify and make right the thoughts we place there to be benefited by this process.
Drawing in this life is like breathing, only it is not automatic, as are all the functionings of Subconscious life; drawing it in must be Conscious . . i. e., we must know we are doing it, as we must KNOW we are doing everything that we do intellectually. If our thoughts are passed into our intellectual circulation . . the motor brain and nervous system . . in a crude and unclarified state, they weaken and damage us, just as blood not properly clarified by the respiratory system, going into circulation throughout the physical body, weakens and damages it. It will thus be seen that the seventh intake with which Reason provides itself with nourishment is the most important, though for the adjustment of our intellectual bodies Here and Now, what is acquired by the other intakes cannot be neglected. Thus when we Act . . which is but the expression of Thinking, which in its turn is but the expression of Reason after it has arrived at what it considers Rightness . . without using any one of the six intakes provided for the adjustment of our intellectual life to the environment of Here and Now, we are almost certain to get into trouble.
Thus, when we express ourselves by walking and do not use our Sight we are proceeding as a man does in the dark, and are apt to stumble and fall. If we do not use our Hearing, warnings of danger shouted to us will not be heeded and we are apt to get hurt. If we do not use our sense of Smell we are apt to be asphyxiated. A disregard of the precaution of exercising our Taste may cause us to be poisoned; and if we pay no attention to Feeling we will be damaged by excessive heat and cold, or suffer shock from experiencing too much pain.
If we are oblivious of what Memory tells us we will repeat the mistakes of the past, to our great detriment. Thus we see that we cannot afford to inhibit, if we desire intellectual life in its fullness, any of the intakes of Reason; while on the other hand we must come to the conclusion that we are making as great a mistake by feeding our Reason with the wrong things, or anything in indigestible quantities, as we are when we feed our stomach with too many sweets, spices, stimulants or fats, or indeed anything which cannot be properly assimilated.
Now that we have fully seized the facts with regard to the process of Reasoning, let us make sure that we do not confuse it with Thinking. Thinking is the result of Reasoning put into action . . into circulation . . by the Reasoning Being. Thinking in Unreasoning Nature is action without Reasoning . . action from the Point of Rightness set for each thing by the Infinite and caused by Its Urge. Of this we shall see much more; but in the meantime do not be confused by the intimacy of the two processes into misunderstanding the office of either.
Spiritual body is used in the above to designate the intangible something which is the essence, the meaning, of our so-called material body. It is that which gives motion and expression to the elemental substances of which our temporary bodies are composed, and is in fact the real body.
The seventh intake of Reason, we have seen, consists of its avenue of contact with the Supraconscious, that Infinite Life which indisputably . . as it is Omnipresent . . occupies a corporeal body to its fullness. It is to what it receives by this intake, which we will call Awareness, that we direct our attention in order to discover what may be received by Reason to influence its decision, which is not a part of memory, education, or experience . . that is, in fact, outside the reach of the senses. It is evident, in considering the Purpose of Man, as indicated by his progress and capabilities, that he was Expressed to arrive at Perfection . . not necessarily on this earthly plane, but ultimately.
It is also evident that this Perfection is to be of our own finding, and the only means given us of arriving at Perfection is the full and proper use of our Reason. In nourishing our fleshly bodies we have to draw the food and air to us. In nourishing our spiritual bodies we draw in from Memory, and to receive nourishment from the Infinite Life within us we must draw it into our Reason. This process consists of a sincere desire to receive it.
This desire can best find its expression by our mentally going into Stillness, there holding steadily the thought upon which we desire enlightenment for a period sufficiently long to fix it in our Consciousness, and we may be sure that into our Awareness will come that which we ask. This spiritual nourishment does not come suddenly or overwhelmingly, but the operation of receiving it is very similar to that of breathing. In breathing we require an intake of fresh air that is frequent and continuous.
In eating we require food less frequently, and in drawing upon the Supraconsciousness, which provides the corrective, a stimulant, we may get along by taking it less frequently than we take our food, but to obtain full benefit from it we should call upon its Infinite Rightness every time we have a question that is at all difficult to solve. That we can and do receive this nourishment of Rightness is the experience of everyone who has Consciously tried it. All who have sought it patiently and sincerely have found it. It steals into the Consciousness, begins to dawn upon us, and suddenly we see new Light. It is this we call upon when we “stop to think.”
We really never stop to think, because we think always. Thinking and Living are synonymous. Thinking and Reasoning, however, are not synonymous. Thinking is a creative process, which begins when we reason that we are right and determine to go ahead. Reasoning is the process of becoming Right. We may consider ourselves right when we are not, but at this point Reasoning ceases and Thinking . . action . . begins. This is why it is considered so useless to argue with a man who “knows it all” . . he has quit reasoning.
It appears, then, that Reason is the Consciousness of Man. It has been pointed out that a Consciousness is an Elemental Indestructible Thing, therefore Reason, and consequently Spiritual Man, is Indestructible, though his body, which consists of many Combinations, is therefore a Subconsciousness and can be at any time dissolved. Familiarity, then, with the nourishment of our Spiritual Bodies by the intake of Awareness is of the highest possible importance, as it is upon that we will have to depend when we drop these temporal bodies and continue our struggle towards Perfection on a different plane.
Neither must its importance on this plane be minimized, for by the patient practice of drawing upon our Supraconscious . . our Better Self . . whenever we feel our reasoning powers sluggish or inadequate to their task, we may become so proficient as to arrive at correct conclusions when considering whatever has been, whatever is, or whatever is to be.
CHAPTER III
Studying Infinity — Spiritual Insight
We are worshippers rather than students of Infinity, and it is not strange that our ideas of its characteristics and methods are nebulous and dim. Those who have assumed to be the interpreters of the Expressions of Infinity that have been classified for our use are by no means harmonious. The Theologians who assert that the Will of the Infinite as regards Man is completely and as a finality expressed in Holy Writings, differ amongst themselves as to what this Will is, but they agree that Man’s proper attitude is to be on his knees as a suppliant worshipper rather than gazing squarely at the Infinite and crying out, “O thou Infinite, what meanest thou?”
Indeed, the hierarchies denounce as blasphemous and sacrilegious all scrutiny of the Infinite Will except as revealed in Holy Writings, and declare all such questionings are not only futile, but meriting and receiving damnation as their only reward. Thus they exclude Reason, not only from their councils but from the inner workings of their minds, declaring that we are worms of the dust, and as such have no more right to raise our heads in questioning than has the worm to wonder why the sun is at times so intolerably hot. They forget that Man alone of all the Expressions of Infinity is endowed with Reason, and that while the worm is given instinct by which it unerringly finds its proper environment, Man must use his Reason to find a suitable condition, or perish.
Surely the Theologians do not assume that Man has been gifted with something less godlike than other creatures, yet how else can they blame him for seeking to know the Infinite law in order that he may conform to it and escape the consequences of ignorance? Scientific interpreters of the Expressions of Infinity to be found in Nature go to the other extreme, and as a school deny that there is anything but human Reason to guide the human mind in its search for truth, thus excluding Infinity from their equations and denying the existence of spiritual insight, which, as is clearly shown elsewhere, is possessed by every human mind and to be released for the seeking.
One thing only have these two classes of school men in common . . that Infinity is too Great to be examined. Both have been stopped by the mathematical fact that the less cannot comprehend the greater. They forget that mathematics deals only with quantities, not with qualities; that while we cannot compute the size of Infinity, we can very profitably examine its qualities. While Theologians are thus appalled by Immensity, they forget that they become Materialists in thinking of Infinity as something of Size and having a habitation.
The moment we give size and space to Infinity we limit it, and it ceases to be Infinite. The Infinite can have no boundaries, for beyond those boundaries, whether we picture them as the outlines of a body, as a fence, a wall, a bank of stars, there must be something, for the mind cannot picture Nothing. Thus it is to be seen that an anthropomorphic Infinity . . an Infinity built after the fashion of physical Man . . is nothing better than an idol, though it is an idol that has been fondly cherished for many centuries. Heaven, too, as a locality, cannot be the residence of Infinity and the Blessed, as such a statement is a contradiction of terms, for we are all agreed that the Infinite is Omnipresent, and being everywhere cannot be localized.
This contradiction of terms is as evident as it would be to refer to a motor car going both ways at once. However, we are all image-makers and have become so habituated to thinking in terms of Time and Space that we become overawed, stupefied, by images of our own creation. This is not the condition of mind of a student, but of a fanatic. When we learn to look at spiritual things from a spiritual point of view only, our Reason shows us that they are images of clay and disappear.
When we realize in its fullness in our image-making what the Theologians teach in Its limited sense, that we were created or expressed as images of our Creator, we find supreme comfort in thinking of the likeness we bear to Infinity. It cannot be that we are the images of the Infinite in a bodily sense, for it is gross idolatry to think of the Infinite having a body like ours . . personal to itself . . an exaggeration, as it were, of one of us in bodily size, power, passion and goodness. If we are images of Infinity in any sense it is in the spiritual one. To find the fullest likeness, then, by induction, we must divest ourselves of our fleshly bodies. But before doing this let us consider ourselves as we are.
All Expressed Life is intensely egoistic. Each atom, each combination of atoms, whether simple or complex, regards itself as the center of Life, and moved by the Infinite Urge works on that basis. This Egoism, then, is an Expression of Infinity, and as we can clearly see must characterize Infinity itself, which is the real center of all Life. So strongly is this developed that every atom resists everything not itself, except when moved into combinations by the Infinite Urge, which invariably respects its own creative fiat and never attempts to coerce the Consciousness brought into being by itself.
The expression of this Egoism is seen in the liking shown by everything for its own kind, thus accounting for the great masses of air, water, earth, rock, etc. In the animal and vegetable kingdoms it is the same, and in Man, the most complex being, it is most highly developed. We all like that which likes US. We like our horse, our dog, all our pets, because they like US. We like the clothing that becomes US, that is, that comes to be a part of US in appearance and comfort. The customer at a milliner’s will refuse many more beautiful creations and select one that becomes HER, thus making herself the center of beauty in that respect. We like our families because they are a part of US. We like our religious denomination because the people belonging to it think with US.
For the same reason we belong to political and other societies. We like our nationality and our race and language because of their likeness to US. We do not kill and eat our fellow men, because they are so like US. We are kind and considerate to our fellow creatures and animal companions in so far as we are moved by the feeling that they are like US. Our judgment of beauty and music, sculpture, painting, architecture, landscape, writing, is on the basis of it pleasing US, though we may sometimes affect to admire that which it is the fashion to consider beautiful. Our family, religious, business, political life is on the basis of what is good for US.
What does not appear possibly to belong to US or to be good for US is left out of our calculations. There are many people so miserably situated that they would be willing to exchange conditions with almost anybody else, but if we tried to think of anyone who would accept this change at the cost of the loss of his or her identity we would fail. If the beggar were offered the millions of the magnate on condition that he would cease to be himself and become the magnate, he would refuse, saying, “What good would that be to ME? It would be the end of ME.” It is doubtful, if the most devout and orthodox Christian were to be offered a traditional seat under the traditional Tree of Life near the traditional Great White Throne at once, on condition that he drop his identity and become an angel, whether he would not refuse, preferring rather to stay Here a little longer and take his chances of getting There on some other terms.
It is thus seen that Egoism is an Infinite impulse, and must govern us in studying Infinity. It accounts for the universal worship, in some form, of Infinity. Man has always felt in a more or less vague way that he was a part of Infinity and Infinity was a part of him. What part, and how this part was related to Infinity, he has seemed to be unable to discover except by special revelation. That these revelations, vague as they may have been in their character, indistinct as they may have been in their outline and detail, have come to him through various gifted men, cannot be denied, nor can these revelations be overlooked in a study such as this.
It must be remembered, however, that all such revelations have and can come only through the ordinary channel of Reason, in pursuance of a changeless scheme; we can only judge of their fullness and finality by the perfection of their workings; if they have not brought about that which seems to be their purpose we must consider them incomplete, misunderstood, or faulty. Nor are we to be confined as to what are the revelations, or as to who has done the revealing, to the sacred writings and writers canonized by the various hierarchies as such. By Reason alone can we judge of the value of anything, and as Reason has been shown to be the highest expression of Infinity it surely must be a safe court in which to try everything.
Now let us proceed on the basis of Universal Egoism to compare ourselves as spiritual beings with Infinity. Divested of our fleshly bodies we are removed from the at present unceasing task of keeping them nourished, warmed, sheltered and clad. The grinding struggle of providing these things is apparently the principal source of the evils which beset mankind. If we were freed from this struggle on this plane, what would we do? If it were not for the Infinite Urge we would probably all lie down and go to sleep.
It is certain that on the next plane of our progress we shall be relieved of the necessity of maintaining fleshly bodies which shall have disappeared. What we shall do as we keep up the struggle for Perfection is the subject of speculation in a later chapter. Here it is only necessary to consider what we shall be. This can be arrived at by considering what will remain after our fleshly bodies have been abandoned. We shall still have the spiritual body, of which our earthly body was only the Expression to afford us contact with the things of Time and Space as manifested Here and Now. That Time and Space will disappear after we abandon our earthly bodies is a popular misconception.
Our spiritual bodies are of Constricted Life, and though less dense must occupy Space and have dimensions, and where Space exists there Time must be. That our spiritual bodies are any different in size or shape from our earthly bodies cannot be shown. Anybody we possess is to us what our Consciousness considers it. As on this plane a man cannot be conscious of being tall when he knows himself to be short, or fat when everyone as well as himself knows he is lean, so the Consciousness which expressed itself in the body we have here will express the same identity in the spiritual body. Admitting that the spiritual body has size and shape, as it must to retain the identity fixed in its Consciousness, we find ourselves inhabiting Space exactly as we do now, except without earthly bodies or the necessity of sustaining them.
It must be so, in order to avoid the violation of the creative fiat of Egoism. In view of this, it must be seen that any comparison we make of ourselves with Infinity must contain the Egoism of our size and shape, and that the Infinite to US and for US must have that size and shape, and when we scrutinize this we find that it is only as it should be. All the Infinite we can conceive for us is that which is within us. Our Consciousness must always be the size and quality of our Infinity to us. The perfection we can conceive, as with the most perfect environment we can arrive at, is our highest ideal of Perfection, and in projecting this ideal as our conception of the qualities of Infinity we are projecting all that is or can be in us. We cannot do more.
If we do less we are presuming that Infinity is not as good as we might be if in its place. How good can we conceive ourselves to be? If situated as Infinity is, possessed of all things, we would be without avarice, envy, jealousy, or fear. Having arrived at conscious Perfection we would be ambitious to go no higher. Possessing all knowledge, we could desire to know no more. The Infinite Urge to Rightness will make us love everything, hate nothing, eager only that everything, everybody, be equally perfect and happy. This certainly cannot be considered a debased ideal of Infinity, as it is the best that can possibly exist in the best as well as the worst of us. It brings Infinity nearer to us, as it shows that we may and shall be infinitely good, never perhaps on this experiential plane, but certainly upon that plane to which our Infinitely Urged progress is taking us.
Thus, consider it from what point we may, Man’s ideal of the qualities of Infinity are those of his perfect self. So it is through all the Thinking Universe, each Consciousness obeying the laws of Infinity as the laws of its Perfect Self. Man alone reasons and must find his own Rightness. Until he finds this perfect Rightness he will not be perfectly happy; i. e., he will not be in harmony with his environment. Examining his progress by the light afforded us by history and science, we find how greatly Reason has widened his horizon. In his conception of Infinity, consider how far we have traveled from the Israelitish ideal! To the Hebrews the Infinite was their God and the God of nobody and nothing else.
This was the narrow Egoism of all the peoples of the world at the time. It found voice in the prophets, who, speaking for Jehovah, cried, “I am the Lord thy God. There is no other God before me. I am a jealous God.” Now it is dawning that the God, the Good, the Infinite, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, enlarged twenty centuries ago to be the God, the Good, the Infinite of the Gentiles as well, has again enlarged to be the God, the Good, the Infinite, the Father of everybody, of everything that is, the Mind of the Thinking Universe.
It is here we find ourselves thus early in this study: In quality the Infinite is our perfect selves. In quantity . . we must think of numbers in terms of Time and Space . . Infinity can be and is countless billions of billions of perfect selves of every species, class, and variety. Insomuch as the Infinite is Omnipresent it is everywhere, always in everything, and in everything is that thing’s ideal of Perfection. Now let us turn to an examination of the wonders of its workings.
CHAPTER IV
Infinite Life And The Beginning Of Its Expressions
The origin of Life does not concern us, as we cannot know of it. The human mind cannot conceive of the condition of Nothingness, which must have preceded Life if anything could have preceded it. We must all instantly admit that nothing appears in response to our mental search for anything that could have been prior to Life, Mind. It is not within us.
But Infinity is within us, and therefore we must reason that knowledge of its origin is not within Infinity itself, that it did not begin, that it has always been. The same line of reasoning leads us to the conclusion that it cannot and will not end, that it always will be. Speculations, therefore, with regard to the origin of Life must always be fruitless except in weakening the mind that attempts them. Though our minds cannot grasp a condition of nothingness, they can grasp a condition when there was only one thing . . Life, Mind. Accepting this condition as our first possible premise, let us examine it before proceeding to find the minor premise.
It is well described by the Hebrew seer as the universe “without form and without void,” that is, nothing had taken shape, yet there was no emptiness, Mind being All of it, Everywhere. It was, as it is, Indivisible, for there was nothing to divide, there being no dimensions, as there cannot be where there is no Thing. It was, as it is, Immobile, there being no place for it to go. It was its own Positive, its own Negative, the Absolute. We can conceive of no Mind desiring to be Alone. We know of no Mind so great that it does not desire companionship. To procure this companionship Infinite Mind expressed itself, exactly how or when we are not sufficiently developed to find out.
Our Reason, seeking the first Expression and founding our judgment upon the necessities of the case, concludes that Life, acting and re-acting within its Positive and Negative self, produced motion controlled by the Positive, by these vibrations of varying degrees of velocity forming constrictions or vortices of its Negative self, and these constrictions, dense or volatile according to their vibrations, constituted what we designate as “Matter.” Science teaches us that these Expressions were made in their simplest form, and are known as Elemental Atoms, between eighty and ninety of which have been discovered by research. This theory of the original Expression appears reasonable. By beginning with the protoplasm, Infinite Mind has been continuously occupied and interested by Development, as it would not have been had everything at once made its appearance in its most perfect form.
It thus appears that from the conditions we find today, Expressed Things are the Negative side of Infinite Life, as they are all in motion. Impelled by the Infinite Urge, every elemental atom is seeking perfection by effecting combinations, these combinations seeking further combinations, and these combinations seeking still further complexity of Expression. The movements of these atoms in continually readjusting themselves cause what we designate vibrations.
As has already been pointed out, the presence within Infinite Life of things having dimensions introduced the element of Space, which is not infinite, but the relativity of one object to another. The movement of these things in their readjustments introduced the element of Time, which is but our method of reckoning the number of vibrations necessary to convey a thing from one locality to another. So long as Expressed Life remains in existence, Time and Space must be, though our conceptions will always be relative to the number of vibrations they require in their movements.
Thus when the bodies we possess become finer in our development we shall move with the velocity of thought, though we shall never be able to escape entirely from our consciousness of being a thing with dimensions. Indeed, we never will desire this, for it would mean the loss of our identity.
The points you are desired to hold as established until further evidence is adduced are these:’
That Infinite Mind is Positive, Immobile, Indivisible, the Absolute;
That Expressed Mind is Negative, and controlled by the Positive. It is composed of the Elemental Consciousnesses, which are Indestructible. The Subconsciousnesses into which these elemental atoms are formed by combinations are temporary, being formed and dissolved by the Infinite Urge to progress and development;
That all things are, always have been, and always will be . . Mind, the only Creative Element.
The last point, that everything is Mind, may as well be finally dealt with at once. When Mind was alone there could have been nothing else. In its creative or expressional efforts it had nothing but Itself as material, no tool but Motion. Since then nothing has been imported into Life, as there is nowhere to bring it from, Life being everywhere and everything always.
Therefore everything has continued to be, and is now, Life, Mind; in various degrees of activity, it is true. These various degrees of activity in themselves are Mind, directed by Mind, never under any circumstances or conditions becoming anything but Mind, always acting and re-acting as Mind.
This is becoming quite generally recognized by scientists, who in their researches by inductive reasoning reach the same conclusion . . that everything is Mind. These scientists have found some eighty or ninety elementary consciousnesses in the world, which by their various partnerships and combinations have formed themselves into the varied Expressions of Life we see about us. They have traced some of these atoms, these consciousnesses, far beyond the range of vision, to where they measure one fifty-millionth part of an inch in diameter, and can have an existence as entities only in our mind.
No scientist has yet attempted to weigh or measure the atoms of which Mind is composed, and it may be reasonably concluded that there are no such atoms, Infinite Life being indivisible, and that the so-called material atoms finally disappear into the essence of Thought, of Mind. It is here contended that when the point is arrived at that the atom has its sole entity in the mind it becomes a Mind atom, and therefore can by no one be considered as anything but Mind. To hesitate further in calling everything Mind and assuming Mind to be the only creative element would seem to be merely materialistic and scientific pedantry.
It being admitted that everything is Mind, Positive or Negative, it follows that Unexpressed Mind, the Mind that did the expressing, is Positive, as the Positive is superior to the Negative as the Expressor is superior to the Expression. As the Positive it must be in a state of Equilibrium. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of that which is Everything, Everywhere, Always, moving when it has no place in which to move.
This must be apparent to the dullest sense. When we survey the heavens and the earth everything appears in a state of majestic stillness, Poise. The idea of perpetually being on the move conveys a repellent sense of fussiness to our conception of the Supreme, Superb control of the Infinite. Science confirms this view of Life, even while affirming that All Life is motion. It is known that the center of the cyclone is perfectly still, the Point of Poise, the Infinite. The absolute center of the huge driving wheel is perfectly still; though microscopic in its dimensions it, too, is the Point of Poise from which power radiates.
Writers and teachers on Dynamics are careful to show that when motion, when started from a given point, is deflected, the point of its deflection may in a diagram be indicated by a dot of pencil or ink as showing the instant of time that the deflection takes place. But this “instant of time” is not an “interval of time,” being miscroscopic in its so-called dimensions ; that is, when a ball thrown in a certain direction is struck by a bat and deflected, the instant of time during which the deflection takes place is not computable, no interval of time that can be detected taking place.
Thus it is seen that when the power propelling the ball in one direction is changed to a power propelling it in a different direction, a moment of stillness takes place, even though it is indistinguishable as an interval of time.
Infinite Life being Omnipresent, it is everywhere the center of all movement. If it were not so, the Universe, in popular phrase, would “go to smash.” Infinite Life, then, does not act; it causes and controls action; it is the Ultimate Cause. This attitude is the secret of power. In Man this equilibrium, this faculty of causing and organizing action, is what makes him powerful. As will be seen later on, his organization is a duplication on a small scale of the organization of the Universe, spiritual Man being the Positive and his so-called more material expressions the Negative. The man who always finds his balance, his poise, before he attempts to act, is the strong man.
Following the same line of reasoning we find Negative Life, Expressed Life, doing absolutely what it was expressed to do, Man alone apparently being the exception, he alone having the gift of Reason, the faculty of finding his own Rightness. Expressed Life is a pure democracy, a Government by the consent of the Governed; it being Mind, it Thinks and has a Will, but it always Thinks and Wills as it was intended by Positive Life that it should Think and Will, except in Reasoning Man. We find this in its instant obedience to all the physical laws that science has discovered. The stone thrown into the air drops to the ground in obedience not only to the will of the governor, but of the governed.
Let us always bear as distinctly and strongly in mind as possible that Infinite Life is motionless, while causing all motion; that it is without substance, consistency, while causing all so-called substance; that while being of no substance it is indivisible, that is, incapable of being divided into segments; that so-called substances pass through Infinite Life without the slightest resistance. As it is of primary importance that you should be clear on this point, let us illustrate it.
You pass a large tube open at both ends through water, and it meets with slight resistance, the water passing in and through the tube and out of the other end of it without obstruction. All the resistance found is that caused by the substance of the tube itself displacing a small amount of water. A ton of steel passing through Infinite Life would not cause the slightest displacement, as the Infinite Life would occupy the steel as easily and completely as if the space apparently taken up by the steel were empty. The importance of this point is that the reader shall at no time be misled by the thought that he or she contains and carries about with him or her a segment of Infinite Life.
No matter where you go, the body you are conscious of is always filled with Infinite Life, but as you move about it remains where it was when it was in you, but you are still and always full of Infinite Life. It is Expressed Life which you carry about with you and is especially yours, though the Infinite Life in you is yours, and is the Infinite YOU. It may seem to you that you are continually changing the Infinite Life within you as you move about. It would be so if it were a substance, but as it is not a substance you cannot speak of the Infinite Life that is in you at this moment as being different from the Infinite Life that was in you when you were a mile away, as everywhere and always Infinite Life is absolutely the same. Your corpse will be as full of Infinite Life as your healthy body now is, urging the disintegration of the useless tissue as it urged through your Expressed Life your operative tissue to perfect action.
While your corpse is still filled with Infinite Life, your un-sensuous, or spirit, body which has moved away from its earthly tenement will be just as full of Infinite Life as was your former sensuous body, and it will be just as much you, the Infinite you, as it was the Infinite you when you were in the flesh. In following this thought do not lose the identity of your perfect spiritual body . . the Infinite Life within you. It is the real YOU, and is constricted in its operations in connection with you by your Consciousness as much as if it had always been a segment of Infinite Life . . if such a thing were possible . . and had always existed in you as you. By this you will understand that the Infinite Life within you, your perfect spiritual body, only affects you as it is called upon by your Consciousness, your Reason.
That the Infinite Life in your corpse works disintegration and decay instead of urging it to upbuilding and progress, is because your Consciousness and Subconsciousness have removed themselves from the disused body and no longer direct the working of the Infinite Life within it, and the Infinite Life proceeds with the residue, the corpse, as if you had never lived in it. This is in pursuance of the unchangeable order of things, that combinations called Subconsciousnesses are subject to disintegration in order that the so-called material of which they are composed can be freed for the nourishment of other Expressions which have not become morbid.
CHAPTER V
Positive And Negative Life — Power And Its Expressions
There cannot be two Infinites . . if there were, one would be greater than the other, or they would be equal. If one were less than the other, the lesser one could not be Infinite, because it could not control the greater. If two were equal, neither could be Infinite if one could not control the other. Why, then, some may ask, speak of Positive and Negative Lift? What we cannot consider in terms of Time and Space cannot be considered. We have already thought of Life having been Alone, of its possession of everything, including Positive and Negative qualities, then Unexpressed.
Until Expressed neither of these qualities had a name, as neither existed separate from the other. How Life polarized itself and expressed its Negative quality must remain in the same shroud of mystery as the origin of Life itself. That it did so is evident, or there would have been nothing, and consequently nothing would have been Positive, nothing Negative, in this so-called material world. As everything has its Positive and Negative, we know that such an Expression was made. In order not to confuse ourselves in considering the subject, we adhere to the nomenclature in ordinary use in discussing the two extremes, calling Expressed Life the Negative, and Unexpressed Life the Positive.
They are in no sense both Infinite, Positive Life indisputably dominating the Negative; therefore we are in the presence of the Infinite and its First Expression. In considering the question of Power and its origin we may as well in advance meet a similar objection which may occur to minds given to superfine criticism. Life, being Infinite, can have no dimensions, and that without dimensions cannot have extremes. The Positive and Negative poles are extremes, therefore Life cannot have extremes and cannot have poles.
This would appear to be an unanswerable argument if mathematics could be applied to the qualities as well as to the extent of Life. We know that Infinite Life has no dimensions, but we know that it has the qualities out of which things of dimensions arose; therefore we must consider it, if we consider it at all, as always possessing the Extremes . . the poles . . necessary to the expression of Power.
Power is not Infinite, but an expression of the Infinite. Having its origin in the Infinite, it of course always proceeds from and is directed by the Law, the Urge, of the Infinite. In other words, power must radiate as Motion, from a center of Stillness. As it would be absurd to try to think of a thing going in two directions at once, and as there is no universal sameness of motion as to direction, therefore there must always be a point separating motion in one direction from motion in a different direction on the same line and the same plane.
This center is Stillness . . the Infinite. When two bodies in motion on the same line and the same plane meet, there is a demonstration of power. For instance, when a baseball thrown through the air is struck by a bat a demonstration is made, and which was Positive power is shown by Appearances. The ball deflects, or flies back towards the sender, and Appearances show that the demonstration has proved the power in the bat to be Positive and that in the ball to be Negative. Should the metallic ball projected by a heavily charged piece of artillery strike the bat, it would demonstrate that it was propelled by Positive power.
The elaboration of this point will find its place in the chapters on Mental Healing, where it will be shown that the human mind made – Positive by Rightness can project itself to a point of lesion in the human body and cause a demonstration such as the projecting mind desires, the demonstration being instantly and completely as desired, or slowly and incompletely accomplished, according to the Positivity of the mind projecting the thought. All thoughts are things, all things are thoughts, made “material” by the application of power. The painter’s picture is a Thing in his mind before it is put upon the canvas, and its perfection as a painting depends upon the power he puts into it . . the power of conception and execution.
Electricity, subtle as it is, is tangible and can be used as an illustration of the operations of Mind Force. At one time electric phenomena were regarded with awe and terror because the meaning and uses of electricity were not understood. It is not so very long ago that thunder and lightning were generally considered as the threatening ‘ voice and enraged glance of Deity. By no means the smallest benefit conferred upon humanity by scientific research has been the removal of the superstition that “He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.”
Perhaps emancipation from the thralldom of the superstition that the Infinite spoke to Man in the thunders of Sinai and manifested His anger by cyclones and electric disturbances has been an even greater benefit to humanity than the harnessing of electricity to light our homes and streets, convey messages instantly and afar, and propel our carriages and turn the wheels of our factories. Indeed, this mental release from the terrifying bondage seems on further scrutiny to be inestimably more worthy than the addition to our physical illumination and improvement in communication. Now no one knows what electricity really is, yet it is one of the elusive things that are every day being made more completely subservient to the uses of Man. How?
Through Reason made Positive by Rightness. In other words, we are becoming wise, that is, Right, on the subject of electricity. In our homes we touch a button and instantly the room is flooded with light. The cleaner comes in, attaches a cord to the lighting apparatus, turns on the current, and the “juice,” which would have become light in the bulb, passing through this cord and the transmuter of the vacuum machine, expresses its power in motion. We talk into the transmitter of the telephone; the sound is “changed” by our thought, expressed as a transformer . . a mechanical device . . into electricity, conveyed to a distant place, “changed” by another transformer into sound, and our voice is heard by a friend miles away.
All these electrical utilities are thoughts, “materialized” by the inventor, and few take the pains even to try to understand them, to say nothing of concentrating their attention upon the fact that they are “nothing but thoughts.” Wireless telegraphy relies still less on mechanical devices and connections, telepathy not at all, and it should seem evident to the thoughtful that we are approaching the time when by a scientific knowledge of ourselves we may render more fully operative within us the still .more subtle forces of Life itself, thereby increasing our health and happiness according to the limit of what we know.
CHAPTER VI
Negative Life — The Development Of Subconsciousnesses.
Scientists have demonstrated that the expressions of Life we see about us have developed from the simplest possible beginning. Animal life, beginning with but one cell, has become complex to the extent of a million or more cells in one organization . . the protoplasm existing in slime, perhaps a million years ago, is now the splendid horse or the still more perfect man. Wonderful as this change may seem to us, the way it came about seems on examination to be simple enough outside of the Infinite Urge to Rightness, which was of course the Cause of it all.
Constructing a building is simple to the competent architect who has the workmen and materials at his disposal. In his calculations he, as Nature does, begins with a unit. The atom is evidently the Creative Unit. Let us take this on the principle of mathematics, in which the numeral “one” is the basis of all calculations. Put another “one” alongside of it and what do you call it? Not “two ones,” but “eleven.” If you place one numeral under the other with the idea of simple addition, you call the result “two.” It will be seen that the placing of an additional unit in a certain position doubles the power of the original unit, while in another it multiplies it by ten plus its original self.
In this way we see that the original unit holds its identity, while the addition of each unit not only multiplies the original one, but changes its appearance, power and name. We add another unit and it becomes “one hundred and eleven.” We add one beneath the other two and it becomes “three,” each obeying the law of the ratio of increase. Add another unit still and it becomes “one thousand one hundred and eleven,” more complex, more ponderous. Of course how much complexity or ponderosity an atom obtained but four removes from a point where it became Negative Life, what has been called an apparent atom, i. e., taken on the capacity of becoming a distinguishable atom, does not greatly concern us.
It may have taken a million moves before it became large enough to be examined by a microscope, had one existed at that time. What we most desire to know is something of the plan, and it brings almost a sense of relief to find our simple mathematics so representative of the progress conceivable. Indeed, mathematics, being an exact science, must necessarily be found to express everything with regard to dimensions and construction. In the same manner music is the science of harmony. The size of the notes, their place in relation to the staff, the number of sharps and flats . . all these things express the arrangement and power of sounds. In our use of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet what wonders can be accomplished!
By their means everything known to any human consciousness can be expressed. By means of the atom Infinity has expressed Life as we see it expressed. To the student of Nature everything is wondrously beautiful, but he regards nothing as a miracle; he has watched the progress of things until he has come to an understanding that everything is governed by Law, and what has been will be again under similar circumstances, and that with improved environment what has been will be still more beautiful.
A discussion of how many removes the tadpole may have been from the protoplasm may interest the scientific specialist, but it has no place here. Nor does it greatly matter how long it took the tadpole to acquire a subconsciousness of sufficient cells to appear as a frog, a fish, a bird, a horse, or a man. The average person is mostly concerned about himself, as he is or as he may become.
Before passing to this, however, it is necessary to reiterate that the original atoms of the Universe being the fiat of Infinite Mind, as such became eternal. How many varieties of these there are does not affect the principle being demonstrated. The researchers in the laboratories may reduce the number now known by half, or to a very few . . or may increase the number . . the principle of the atom being the unit of the so-called material universe remains the same. Combinations of them, however, became Subconsciousnesses, and as such can be disintegrated, and are continually in a state of disintegration, and are being re-assembled in different forms.
Just as “one thousand one hundred and eleven” is a Subconsciousness of the unit “one” and can be wiped from the slate without any damage to the unit expressed by “one,” so all Subconsciousnesses can appear and disappear according to the law of the Infinite Urge which uses them for expression. A Consciousness is a purely selfish thing, and a Subconsciousness is the same. A Consciousness may be defined as something which knows what it is and is to itself the center of Life. It exists for itself alone. It combines with that for which it has an affinity, and repels that which it dislikes. In each Consciousness or Subconsciousness there is a Supraconsciousness.
This consists of the Infinite Life, which, being Omnipresent, fills to its fullness each atom or combination of atoms. While it fills everything it displaces nothing, and is within that atom or combination of atoms a continuous Urge to Rightness, and the response of each atom or combination of atoms to this Urge is their obedience to what we know as Physical Laws. By their obedience to these Physical Laws combinations of atoms . . Subconsciousnesses . . have reached their present high development. As an illustration let us picture the primitive hen developing her legs as a means of locomotion in search of insect and vegetable life on the surface of the ground.
As worms escaped her by going into the loose soil, she tried to stop their progress by the use of her rudimentary feet, then began to try to remove the earth covering the worms so as to reach them. In this way she developed her claws, and in boring for the worms, her beak. In struggling to a place of safety from destructive animals on the surface she developed her wings, and as protection against the weather evolved her feathers. Necessity in every case was the origin of her efforts, and the Infinite Urge caused her to make the efforts and in the right direction.
The wisdom and diligence of those who formulated the doctrine of Evolution are being every day more highly prized. In showing Man the wondrous progress he has made during the many centuries since the period the fossils of which prove his prehistoric ancestors to have been cave-dwellers, a strong light has been thrown upon the possibilities of his still further advancement. His physical progress has been that of the highest-grade animal. His intellectual development made it manifest to himself that he had something within him superior to the qualities of other animals. This quality he appreciated to be a capacity to judge for himself . . that he was capable of Reasoning. When or how he made this discovery is not nearly so important as a full appreciation of the faculty itself.
According to the Biblical account, Adam and Eve obtained their knowledge of the difference between Good and Evil by eating of a fruit in the Garden of Eden, having been tempted to do so by a serpent. There are many things about this story which discredit it. Apparently Adam and Eve had been newly “created,” and were without experience of any kind except such as they had acquired in their nude wanderings through the Garden of Eden. That such full-grown beings, so badly equipped for life’s conflicts, were ever launched into a contest so unequal, is incredible.
Their arrival on the scene as adults is opposed to every known law of progress and development. That the Evil One, disguised as a serpent, tempted them, is preposterous. A snake was never known to talk, before nor since. Satan’s presence there must have been known to the Infinite and the result of his argument anticipated. If so, the Infinite participated in the burlesque of tempting creatures that did not know the difference between Right and Wrong, to commit Wrong. What is worse, he is described as sentencing not only Adam and Eve, but all their descendants, to hard labor and other pains and penalties during life, which would be closed by death. The appearance of the Infinite in the garden in the form of a man and mistaken by Adam as the gardener (what did Adam know about gardeners?) is all terribly out of joint with the character of the Infinite as we have so far observed It.
Yet what could we expect of the Hebrew writers who at different periods compiled the story of Genesis? It was the picture that came to them of Man’s advent into this world. Vague and misleading as the picture is, it is one that we cannot pass over as entirely unworthy of attention. The Hebrew prophets, poets and historians were feeling feebly in the dimness of the times to find whence they came. They found something, as do all who seek, but the assumption that they found it all is as ridiculous as that Franklin discovered everything about electricity while flying his kite. What these seers evidently thought they found was Man thoroughly developed as an animal suddenly coming into the possession of REASON.
As light has been continually breaking upon us for these many centuries, this picture cannot be entirely ignored. Did Man come into the possession of Reason in his physical prime, or did Reason develop in the ratio of his physical progress? Now Reason is the Consciousness of being a Man, and of somehow knowing the way to be the best Man. A Man, conscious of being a Man, could never have been conscious of being anything else, for Consciousnesses are not interchangeable as to species. The ape, having a Consciousness of his species, could not by any psychological somersault suddenly become conscious of being a man.
If there has ever been anything nearer like a man than an ape, he must either have been a man or not one. If he was a man he had Reason, and he could not have had it except he got it from someone who had it, unless he were suddenly endowed with it by Infinity as a creative afterthought, so to speak. Such a thing would be entirely out of harmony with the progressive plan of development and could not, of course, be the result of eating a particular kind of fruit. But speaking of him as a man before he had Reason . . a knowledge of Right and Wrong . . is a contradiction of terms, for Reason itself is what constitutes a Man.
It would be just as absurd, if such a thing were conceivable, to speak of a dog which had been miraculously endowed with Reason and thereby given the status of a man, as having been a man before he received this endowment. It is inconceivable that Man was Expressed at all if not, on this experiential plane, to seek for a RIGHTNESS OF HIS OWN FINDING, and how could he seek for this if not possessed of Reason? It therefore seems that the impossibility of the Consciousness without Reason being instantly changed into a Consciousness with Reason proves that Reason has been inherent in Man during his entire evolution as an animal.
This is also borne out by the fact that Man was so evidently designed at some period and on some plane to reach perfection by means of his Reason, that that supreme quality must have been always in his composition, otherwise all the time spent in his development as an animal on this experiential plane was wasted, and Infinity knows no waste.
We are dealing here mainly with the development of the human Subconsciousness, and have been led into the above dissertation as to the point in Man’s development when this Subconsciousness began to be affected by his Reason. Having decided that Reason has always affected his development, let us return to the main topic. The Subconscious is man’s Memory Life, built up of the repetitional . . what is ordinarily known as habit. These habits are acquired, as all animals acquire them, except that the reasoning power of Man has, through his use of it and the use made of it by his ancestors, tended to make his Subconsciousness a somewhat more complex thing than that possessed by other animals.
It may as well be noted here that the human Subconsciousness does not reason, though it is affected by Reason. This statement may be at variance with the opinions expressed by writers who affirm that the Subconsciousness is capable of reasoning deductively, though not inductively, but it is nevertheless correct. The scientists referred to have found that subjects in a state of hypnosis when given a suggestion will reason from a premise assumed to a logical conclusion, but are incapable of anything but deductive reasoning. This is not reasoning, but the consecutive following of a principle through its workings. All Life does this. As has been shown, all Life has a Supraconsciousness as well as a Consciousness if it be an elemental atom, or a Supraconsciousness and a Subconsciousness if it be a combination of atoms. The Supraconsciousness is the Omnipresent, the Infinite Life, which directs the movements of the Conscious or Subconscious, and is always Right. This Unreasoning Life pursues an unvarying course of Rightness.
The human Subconsciousness is disturbed in this automatic pursuit of Rightness by Reason. In hypnosis it is noticeable that the subject under the influence of another’s Consciousness may be given the most absurd proposition as its premise of rightness, and he will carry the argument to its conclusion with all the gravity and profundity of something reasonable. This is because the Subconsciousness has been interfered with in its automatic pursuit of Rightness, by the suggestion of a wrong principle, which it seizes upon and follows with the same avidity as it always follows what it esteems to be Rightness, no matter how that sense of Rightness is acquired, whether by memory or the suggestion of Reason.
This is not reasoning, but being influenced by Reason, which is clearly an associate-Consciousness, not a component part of the human Subconsciousness. The human Subconsciousness thinks, as all Mind thinks, and, thinking, acts.
The illustration furnished by hypnosis, that the Subconsciousness is not only affected by Reason but is equally affected by wrong reasoning as by right reasoning, makes it clear to us how the wrong reasoning of ourselves and our ancestry has affected, and is affecting, our Subconsciousnesses. If it were not for this faulty reasoning the human race would be as automatically and generally healthy as other species of animals. Conversely, it seems distinctly to show that Right Reasoning would give us an immunity from even that proportion of sickness that comes to animals as the result of environment and the law of decadence.
Upon our Subconsciousnesses we rely for what we call the automatic functioning of our bodies, the workings of all our organs, the movements of our limbs, the distribution of the nutritive fluids, our respiration, the winking of our eyes, and all that sort of thing. The normal person is not conscious of normal bodily functioning . . it is all done subconsciously.
It is the result of thousands of generations of habit, moved by the Infinite Urge to Rightness. No sane person endeavors to change this normal functioning for the worse, but it often is changed by the exercise of Reason. Those desiring to become accomplished practice playing the piano until their fingers become so skilled in manipulating the keys that exquisite harmonies are the result.
This is Reason interfering with the Subconscious and giving it the habit of functioning the fingers almost automatically in response to the thought. Skill in everything is produced in the same way. Good manners, good habits of walking, standing, speaking, and so forth, are all the product of repetition. Many people go through the routine of their work so entirely subconsciously that when they begin to reason, that is, think what they will do next, they can scarcely remember what they have been doing. When people are awkward we say that they are “self-conscious,” which is simply that they are trying to reason and to act at the same time, instead of acting subconsciously. Thinking and acting follow one another so closely that the place between them is not distinguishable. Indeed, acting is but the physical expression of thinking, the working of what we call the motor portion of our brain.
Remembering and acting do not harmonize, and when attempted cause those who have forgotten the way to pause and look about them before going forward. As a matter of fact, one cannot act intelligently while trying to remember; neither can one reason and remember at the same time. These are different mental processes, carried on by different portions of the brain. The reasoning is done by the perceptive and reflective organs. Thinking and acting go together, as when we think we are right we act. Remembering is a struggle to regain Rightness, and when that is presumptively regained we think . . act.
All of which goes to prove that reasoning, remembering, thinking, are different mental processes carried on by different portions of the brain and should not be attempted at the same time If you are about to deliver an address do not mix your memorized and extemporary utterances or you will make a mess of both. We all know that we can do but one thing at a time, be in but one place at a time, go in one direction at a time, yet when we are working our intellectual faculties we slide so easily from one mental process to another that we are very apt to do a great deal of ineffectual brain labor. “Concentration,” writers tell us, is the means of getting the best out of our thinking. If they were to say concentration is the means of getting the best out of our reasoning they would be right.
It cannot be pointed out too often that Reasoning is primary to all conscious Thinking. Subconsciously we do all our perfect thinking and acting, apparently automatically. When we think consciously it is the result of having arrived at apparent Rightness by means of Reason, and then making an effort to act. Our actions in this state of mind are confused and awkward . . self-conscious . . for the Subconsciousness has not yet become accustomed to that line of action.
When we concentrate our reasoning faculties we have but to decide first of all what we are after, then how we will go about it, and if no solution comes to the reasoning mind hold steadily to the question we are asking ourselves, become static, that is, settle into a receptive state of mind, become balanced. In this state of equipoise our whole being is relaxed and, as it were, quietly listening for an answer to the question we are asking ourselves. In this way we become in harmony with our Infinite selves, and the urge of our questioning brings an answer.
The Infinite Urge to Rightness responds, our reasoning minds cease to be static and become dynamic with a glow of Rightness. This glow may be scarcely detected, but it is sure to come, and if we remain in Stillness a little longer it will develop into a pleasing sense that the way will appear . . and it will appear. Sometimes it comes like a flash, and it all depends on how complete is the harmony we establish between our Reasoning and Infinite selves. The establishment of this harmony requires careful and continuous practice, but in every way it is gloriously worth the effort.
To return to the effect of Reason upon the Subconsciousness, let us see if this Habit Mind ever becomes unresponsive to our ordinary Reasonings. Habit is said to be second nature, i. e., our Subconsciousnesses become so firmly set by repeatedly doing things in a certain way, apparently with the consent of our Reason, that any effort to change the method or leave the thing undone is met with stubborn resistance.
Beginning with the occasional use of alcoholic stimulants in their milder forms, it is well known that a man very easily becomes addicted to the drink habit. He takes it to excess, becomes intoxicated, foolish, helpless, and finally sick. He does this again and again. Each time his friends and his Reason tell him he is not Right. He argues with his Subconsciousness, but as it is an unreasoning thing he gets no satisfaction. He “makes up his mind” to quit drinking, but subconsciously he yearns mightily for his accustomed stimulants.
Only those who have been consumed by this terrible yearning can appreciate how paltry a thing Reason appears as an offset to it. The desire for drink seems to be a living, devilish thing. It grips the vitals with fingers of fire. Sometimes a great calamity, confinement in a hospital, the “gold cure,” the prayerful pleadings of a wife, of a member of the Salvation Army or a clergyman, may cause the inebriate to become static long enough for his better self, the Infinite within him, to become a source of strength, and the seventh intake of his Reason supplies him with strength, which for a time at least may make him positive, static, in Rightness, and thus able to resist.
Unfortunately, however, a return to old scenes and old associates, perhaps made necessary by his avocation, wakes up his memory life, startles his habit impulses into a renewed clamor, and he finds his Reason a willing tool of his Subconsciousness and returns to his old habits, less able than ever to control them. Why? He does not understand himself. He does not know how, at the moment of temptation, to seize the hand of his better self and be pulled away from danger. He has never really “made up his mind” to quit drinking. He has not “made up his Subconscious mind.”
The drug habit, the use of narcotics, is much the same. The power of Reason has been weakened by frequent yieldings to a habit so strongly established in the Subconsciousness as to become Its sense of Rightness. Chronic disease is much the same. It establishes itself in the Subconsciousness until it becomes Second Nature, and the Subconsciousness causes the functioning of the body to follow the line of disease instead of health.
The Subconsciousness in providing the body with diseased functioning thinks it is doing right, its idea of Right being supplied it by its frequent repetitions of diseased functionings. How disease starts is often apparently as obscure as the origin of life itself. Many diseases apparently mysterious in their origin are doubtless the result of a memory of that disease being in the Subconsciousness, possibly carried for many generations back and startled into asserting itself by some bodily condition, environment or occurrence. In this way odors have a remarkable effect upon some people, whose Subconsciousnesses carry a memory of that particular odor, which had that particular effect upon people generations ago whose experiences had their share in forming the Subconsciousnesses in question.
When the Reason accepts the working of the memory consciousness as something that cannot be combated it instantly forms an alliance with the sick impulse and aids in its development. On the other hand, when Reason, understanding the working of the Subconsciousness, sees an hereditary trouble developing, or in fact observes anything developing which is not in harmony with itself . . Reason . . it can very quickly stop its development by turning to its Infinite self and becoming Positive in its Rightness. These things will be further discussed in the chapters on “healing,” and have been noted here simply to make harmonious our progress in the study of Life and Living. What we need to fix firmly in our minds are these two points:
(1) Our Subconsciousness is not a weak thing. It is strong with the development of hundreds of centuries of unceasing struggle for animal perfection. Its strength is in proportion to the perfection of our physical breeding, and when we discover its strength, even when our Reason tells us it is pursuing a wrong course, we should be proud of it and not revile it, though it takes a mighty and prolonged struggle to bring it to the standard of our Reason.
(2) It is not a foolish, capricious or wicked thing. It is as absurd to consider it so as to take that view of the Subconsciousness of a horse, an ox, a dog or a tree. They are all developed on the same lines, except as Reason is interposed in the human Subconsciousness. Every Subconsciousness is wise with the wisdom of Infinity, as far as its own species is concerned. Every Subconsciousness, having been built up by the repetitional, the habitual, as moved by the Infinite Urge to Rightness, considers the repetitional, the habitual, the proper course to pursue.
When we consider how much of our living is made up of this sort of thing we will not wonder that it is so. All our functioning is Subconscious, and it is fortunate for us that it is so, for if we had to be conscious of every breath we draw, every movement of our hearts, of our digestive organs, we would not last an hour. We would not dare to sleep for fear we would forget to breathe or keep the heart at its work. These things are done by the sleepless Subconsciousness. The joy of living in a physical sense comes from the work of a normal Subconsciousness performing its duties without our being aware of it. Every Subconsciousness is, with its Supraconsciousness . . the Infinite Life . . complete in itself. This is in harmony with the Egoism of the Universe, that every Consciousness and Subconsciousness is to itself the center of Life; in no sense is it helpless. Affected, of course, by environment, the horse, the tree, the flower, sufficient to itself, pursues the path of perfection of species, in its growth and in passing away to make room for others. It must be evident to us, then, that every unreasoning Subconsciousness at least is so constituted as to be able to “work out its own salvation.”
Chapter VII
The Influence of the Subconscious on the Reason — Divine Hypnotism?
We have noticed how Reason, when diligently employed, can cause the Subconsciousness to acquire accomplishments entirely new to the development that it has found through centuries of progress and untold generations of our ancestors. Having seen how Reason can affect it, let us glance at how it can affect Reason. Perhaps no better description of the pertinacity of our Subconsciousness . . our Memory, our Habit Mind . . in asserting its standard of Rightness, acquired, as we have seen, as in all other animal Subconsciousnesses, through experience, often “red of beak and claw,” is to be found than in the seventh chapter of Romans:15. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
- If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
- For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
- For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
- Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
- I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
- For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
- But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
- O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
- I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
Paul, with all his mastery of logic, with all his skill as a Reasoner, at times was evidently fearful of his ability to overcome the “sin that dwelt in him.” When we have made some noble resolution and miserably failed to adhere to it, who amongst us has not cried, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Paul’s answer to his own question is not satisfying. Who can tell what he really means? The quips and quirls of his logic have made the Pauline Theology an almost fruitless study.
Putting this aside, let us face the situation as he saw it and as we all see it. Our Reason . . our un-sensuous self . . finds Rightness in a certain course. When we attempt to pursue this course our Memory Mind begins to raise objections. We have made up our minds always to tell the truth without a shadow of evasion or equivocation. Our Habit Mind tells us that “all men are liars,” that we will be misunderstood, misrepresented, find it impossible to live with people, to do business. We insist that we will pursue the course we have mapped out.
It comes back at us with the assertion that it is not worth while, that we will tire ourselves out and make everybody tired of us. We still insist that we will stick to our plan. It asserts that we will be really doing harm by pursuing such a course, that many untruths are merely diplomatic efforts to evade friction and “white lies” are the essence of true politeness; that we can do more good ourselves and enable other people to be better by ignoring faults or even quietly accepting them as virtues in disguise. Still we persist. We meet Mrs. Smith, who is wearing a hat ultra-fashionable to hideousness. She has paid a big price for it and wants to know, “How do you like my hat?”
We are determined to tell the truth, but we stammer and stutter and turn red in the face . . our Subconsciousness is telling us that we will make a mess of our friendship if we do not assert that her hat is pretty. She sees our predicament, also turns red in the face, becomes angry, and snaps at us, “You hateful old thing! You are just envious of me.” She rushes away. Our Subconsciousness whispers, “I told you so. You will always be in hot water if you try to tell the truth.”
We blame ourselves for not being prepared for the emergency; our only trouble is that our Subconsciousness is untrained in telling the truth nicely, and we have been guilty of doing a right thing wrongly. We have luncheon with Mrs. Brown. The coffee is vile. She admits it and we do not deny it. She thinks we do not care enough for her good opinion to assert that the coffee is good even when she herself knows it is bad. She is hurt, and we know it. Our Subconsciousness again whispers, “I told you so. You cannot be different from other people. They won’t understand you.”
We have a newspaper and tell the truth about its circulation. Our advertising agents quit us and we lose business. Again our Subconsciousness tells us we are making fools of ourselves. A friend asks us to testify in court, giving his version of what is in litigation. He explains what he desires us to say. We tell him that that is not our view of it at all. He wants to know if we cannot take that view of it, as it is the “right” one. It is useless to argue. He is hurt and we feel that he hates us. Again our Subconsciousness whispers, “I told you so.” A friend asks us to pledge ourselves to vote for him. We know he is unfit for the office he seeks. We also know that we can keep his friendship by promising to vote for him even if we do not vote at all or for the other candidate.
We tell him the truth and he leaves us in disgust, saying that he always knew we never wanted to see him get ahead. Again Subconsciousness reminds us of our “folly.” What is wrong? Trying to do right, evil is always with us. Why does our Subconsciousness fail to help us? Why does it persist in flouting us? Because it has been educated to believe that “diplomacy,” even to the extent of lying and perjury, is Right. It is fortified in this by seeing almost everybody doing the same thing, by its memory of what our ancestors have done. It is following the Urge to Rightness as it sees it. Whenever we follow a fashion we are apt to follow an unreasoning Urge to appear Right in the eyes of others. We follow the unreasonable fashions almost as slavishly as we do the reasonable ones.
The impulse is right, but it takes a wrong direction. The impulse is towards harmony, but it often results in a harmony of ugliness. Reason should correct our tendencies to follow our Subconscious urge when it (Reason) tells us that the impulse is that of our animal rather than spiritual being. It is not “sin dwelling in us,” but an Urge to Rightness dwelling in us, unguided by Reason. That is the trouble.
When we determine on any course of Rightness we must be prepared for the initial difficulties. We must be sure that there is no element of spitefulness in us, that our impulse is sweet and pure. If it is so, if we can go into our Infinite selves when the trial of our resolution comes, our good intentions will be made manifest and we will do the thing so sweetly, so gently, that there will be no sting, and instead of reproaching ourselves we will feel a joy at finding that doing right is not as hard as it is made out to be.
If it is known that we have not made truth-telling a mere excuse for saying wounding things, but that it is a principle with us, we will be loved, not hated, for it, and instead of losing popularity and business we will find people “putting things our way.” A sin is a mistake, not an entity cursed in its origin. When the Subconsciousness tempts the drunkard to take the drink that will make him fall down, it does it because it follows its “habit” Rightness . . its Urge to the Rightness to which it has become accustomed by habit.
It is the same Urge which makes the tree grow and the flower bloom, only in the man Reason lent itself for so long a period to strengthening the alcoholic Subconsciousness in its idea of Rightness, that when Reason attempts to re-assert itself it finds itself powerless in the presence of the “demon of drink.” Who is to blame? Infinity was not made for Man, nor were the laws which govern the Expressions of Infinity suspended in his favor when he was Expressed.
The laws were made for the progress and perfection of everything, including Man. The Urge to Rightness is universal . . Man cannot escape it. This Urge to Rightness works perfectly in every unreasoning thing. If Reason works rightly in Man, the universal Urge to Rightness in him works rightly. Are we so constituted as to be able by Reason to control and direct the Urge to Rightness of our animal natures . . our Subconsciousnesses? If not, Man is a miserable burlesque as an “image of his Maker.” It is inconceivable that the Infinite should express Man to be more helpless than the beast or the plant.
If Infinity gave Man Reason to guide the Urge to Rightness of his Subconsciousness and yet did not give him a means of enforcing this guidance, the Free Will of Man is a farce. Also if Infinity guided the Urge to Rightness as it guides that Urge in all Unreasoning Life, Man’s Free Will would become a farce, because he would be always automatically right and his perfection would be no more than the perfection of the plant or the beast, and by no means that Rightness of his own finding for which he is designed.
Now where do we find Paul with his controversial hair-splittings which are at once the puzzle and delight of Theologians and Doctors of Logic? Does his doctrine teach that Man can or cannot successfully direct the Urge to Rightness of his Subconscious mind? His cry, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” indicates that he considers himself unable to do so.
At this point we find our finger on the elemental fault of the Pauline Theology . . Man’s inability to help himself . . the doctrine of Helplessness. We know that Man can do nothing, which is but another way of saying that he can think nothing, which he is not conscious of being able to do or think. Therefore if Paul was not conscious of being able to direct and control the Urge to Rightness of his Subconsciousness, he was unable to do so. At present let us look at the situation entirely apart from the only remedy which Paul suggests.
A man can possess nothing outside of what he is conscious of possessing. Tons of gold may be buried in his cellar, but if he is unconscious of it he does not possess the gold. Undoubtedly he has powers which he never exercises. Being unconscious of the possession of these powers in his spiritual being, they are useless to him except as his Consciousness develops and becomes aware of them. Stop a moment and look at this. Everything outside of a man’s Consciousness is as if it did not exist; it does not, cannot, exist to Him. The air he breathes is useless to him until he takes it into his conscious body. All the water of the Great Lakes cannot slake his thirst until some of it is in his conscious body.
All the beauties of heaven and earth are nothing to him till they are brought into his Consciousness by a sense avenue. Outside of his Consciousness he can have no wife, father, mother, sister, children. All the food in the storehouses of the earth cannot satisfy his hunger until some of it comes into his Consciousness. There is no Infinity for him outside of his Consciousness. Outside of his Consciousness there can be no God, no Christ, no Truth . . nothing. This cannot be disputed. There is no means of injecting into his Consciousness a thing which is not there.
There is no one to inject such a thing, as it is the absolute law of the Infinite, a creative fiat, that no Consciousness shall be interfered with except by suggestion. If Paul had been conscious of no means of escaping “the body of this death” he would have been indeed helpless, “without God or hope in the world.” His consciousness of deliverance “through Jesus Christ our Lord” gave him hope. Let us examine it.
His Consciousness made him aware of the possession of a Christ, i. e., he had Christ in him. Now we are in the presence of the fundamental weakness of Christianity. That weakness is the Theologizing of Christ as a personage of twenty centuries ago instead of regarding It as a principle which we must personify as ourselves Now. For if Christ be a personage, even a spiritual personage, He cannot be in us and we cannot be conscious of Him.
As a personage He cannot enter us. Like the hypnotist, who substitutes his Consciousness for that of his willing subject, He, if He was a personage could, and if He is a spiritual personage can, control our Subconsciousness, but at the expense of our identity. As we must abdicate the throne of our Reason before giving it up to the hypnotist, we cease to be ourselves while under his influence. Is this Paul’s idea of conversion . . this giving up of our Reason, i. e., abandoning the purpose for which we were expressed . . to be Christ automatons? Is it possible?
Is there such a thing as “Divine Hypnotism,” commonly called “conversion”? We can only judge of its possibility by the performances of those who believe they have been so treated. If their Consciousnesses have been so replaced by the Christ Consciousness that their thinking, their living, is that of the Christ, the Immaculate, then we can believe that those who profess to have been thus converted have by a loss of their developed identity “put on Christ.” What do we find?
Are there any perfect men or women, judging them by the Christ standard? There are none who even profess such perfection, to say nothing of the non-existence of anyone possessing such perfection. If we compare the best “converted” with the best “unconverted” man of our acquaintance, we find no difference that cannot be accounted for by temperament and environment. They are equally good husbands, fathers, brothers, neighbors and citizens. Their habits may be different, but that is a matter of the Subconsciousness. Again, take the worst “converted” man of our acquaintance and compare him with the worst “unconverted” man we happen to know.
There is no difference that cannot be accounted for by temperament and environment, and again we fail to detect a change of Consciousness. In studying the behavior of a man but recently “changed” we find no great difference except perhaps in his habits. The most noticeable change is perhaps that in the behavior of the habitual drunkard. For a time at least he changes his habits, but many drunkards reform without being “converted.” Reformed men of both classes show their reformation by changing their places of resort. One goes to church instead of to saloons, the other goes about with his wife and temperate friends, and we judge the difference to be only that; in neither case do we see signs of Divine hypnosis.
Let us look at the history of the past, then glance at the condition of things today. What has been known as the “Church” . . the dominant expression in each country of Theological Orthodoxy . . has consistently refused to recognize Reason in its councils, and Reason, thus rejected, has sought other channels in working out the Infinite Urge to Rightness within it. This has been known as the conflict between Science and Religion. Galileo was imprisoned by the “Church,” then having temporal power, for asserting that the sun stood still and the earth moved. All scientific searchers for truth were treated in the same way.
Those within the Church or under its domination who dared to express the results of the workings of their Reason for Rightness in Theological matters, were punished by the pains of the Inquisition or burned at the stake These openly cruel persecutions ceased as Reason established a firmer foothold, but if we read the lives of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer and others who differed with Orthodoxy, we find that they suffered from the ostracisms and penalties inflicted by arrogant Orthodoxy that other men might be discouraged from adopting their views or lines of research.
Fortunately the Urge to Rightness in Man has been too strong to be overwhelmed by arrogant assumption . . which is but a perverted expression of the Urge to Rightness. The Church has been deprived, by its ostracism of reasoners, of the strength it should have had in developing the real meaning of the Infinite, while other avenues of expression have been chosen by great thinkers to work out their Urge to Rightness. Thus electrical knowledge, astronomy, all the sciences, engineering, hygiene and sanitation, politics and economics, even eleemosynary and educational pursuits of the higher order, have become divorced from the Church and made great progress, while the Church itself has not even been able to maintain anything like its old ascendency, and has even fallen into such a situation as to be regarded very much as a social club, as an easily obtained badge of respectability, or at best as a good organization to keep people away from worse things.
It is comforting to the extent that it ministers to and encourages a belief in personal helplessness in weaklings, while it at least partially satisfies the Urge to Rightness in others who are stronger, but in the largest sense is as helpful to neither as enlightened Reason would be. As a means of bringing about individual, family, communal, or national Rightness, what has it done? The Orthodox world is filled with lawyers, courts, policemen, and prisons, to enforce local or national laws, while the nations of Europe, so long devoting their spare strength to organizing and maintaining great armies, navies and arsenals, are at this moment of writing engaged in the deadliest conflict known to history. King George, “Defender of the Faith” in the realms of Great Britain, is allied with the Czar of Russia, head of the Greek Church; with Italy, the cradle if not the birthplace of Christian Theology, and with Catholic France . . the least religious of the allies . . to overwhelm if possible the Kaiser, who believes himself to be the Agent of God; Francis Joseph, the strongest earthly supporter of the Pope, and Mahometan Turkey.
Theologized Christianity has had ample opportunities for many centuries to bring about In these countries a state of mind which would have made war impossible, as impossible as it is unreasonable. The hierarchies and priests of all these countries are offering strenuous prayers for the success of the nations to which they belong. If the conversion to Christianity of the belligerent millions has been a change of that Divinely hypnotic sort we must presume to take place if a change at all is effected outside of the Reason, they would not by the million be calling upon the Source of their change for the overthrow of each other.
These nations, if their Christianity is of the sort that by their own consent they have abdicated Reason, to be controlled by the Consciousness of Christ, must all, with the exception of Turkey, be controlled by the same Consciousness and therefore express the same thing. But they do not. Christian Germany burns with blood lust for the overthrow of Great Britain, and Great Britain returns the compliment with an equally burning desire to wipe Germany off the map.
They certainly cannot be controlled by the same Divine Consciousness, and we must conclude that no Divine Consciousness holds any of these belligerent nations in its spell. On the other hand, we must conclude that this conflict of elemental passions, bloodier, deadlier, more widespread than any other war, is but a return of the belligerents to that state of mind which controlled half-developed Man who beat out the brains of his enemy with club or axe of stone to demonstrate the rightness of the idea known as the “survival of the fittest.”
The “survival of the fittest” was, and is, the standard of Rightness in animal life, rendered necessary by the development of the simpler into the higher forms of Mind. With the growth of Reason and the apparently complete development of our physical bodies, the standard of Might being Right was expected to disappear. Why has it not done so? There are many perfervid Theologians who assert that because Rationalism had so rudely crowded Religion this carnage became inevitable. This, of course, is rubbish, for Rationalism is Reason . . perhaps not sufficiently enlightened by a consciousness of the Infinite . . and of all terrible things since the world began this war is certainly the most unreasonable.
It would be nearer the truth to assert that because Reason has been refused its proper place in Church councils it has not found its proper place in national councils. If Reason, illumined, nourished, by the wisdom it can at its call receive from the Infinite Life within every reasoning creature, had its proper place, there would be no war. If the Church had taught the doctrine that every reasoning creature had a supply of this Infinite wisdom within himself, to be found for the seeking, individualism would have been so developed at this stage of Man’s progress that Nationalism in the form of bloodthirsty hordes, with fingers tingling with beastly hate, would not be urging on to murder and rapine.
Instead, the Theologians taught Man’s “helplessness in sin,” and pointed out the personal Christ, now located in heaven, as the only means of freedom from such evils as the lust for an enemy’s blood. Belief in such a doctrine left Christian Europe as helpless in the hands of racial hate as the cave-dwellers of the prehistoric age.
Even Paul, in the misery of his contests with the “sin which dwelt in him,” cried, “O wretched man that I am!” Then Paul was not fully “converted,” and if partially “converted,” why not entirely “converted”? If it is possible to be partially changed it should be possible to become entirely so. Is it the fault of the subject in his unwillingness completely to abandon his identity?
If so, it is because he does not want to be entirely changed, and he is not “converted” at all. Is it the fault of the spiritual Christ personage? It would be slandering His character to assert that He desires men to be only partially good, therefore but partially happy. It is therefore inconceivable, if He takes possession of a man as does a hypnotist, that He would not take possession of him entirely. Let us look at it as if He did. It would be the application of a force unrecognized by the Consciousness of the subject, for the subject must abandon his Consciousness before he can be so hypnotized.
It would be as if a long spiritual rope with a spiritual hook on the end of it were let down from a spiritual windlass in heaven. As the hook swayed about amongst men we will try to conceive of it catching on to the collar of the coat or the slack of the trousers of a man who had “elected” himself to be thus treated, or had been “elected” by Infinity to be so captured. We will have to imagine the Infinite looking down from His Great White Throne, seeing the situation, and calling to His angels, “Wind him up.
He is one of the elect.” The sinner on the hook, the evil in him still holding, would grab at the grass, the bushes, the trees, the telegraph wires, to try to stay here. The Infinite would say, ”Wind him up. He is one of the elect.” As they pulled this man off the hook and presented him to the Infinite, we must conceive of the Infinite embracing him with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.
Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” How does this harmonize with the doctrine of Free Will? Can we harmonize it? Yet it is practically what must be going on if there are “elect,” or those who successfully “elect” themselves to be taken into eternal goodness in spite of the evil that “wars in their members.” It is as impossible as it is grotesquely absurd. No force mightier than the Infinite Urge to Rightness is applied by Infinity to anything in the Universe. This calm, loving, and irresistible force is always bearing upon us, urging us to the Perfection at which we shall all arrive.
Let us now look at the operations of this Christ Principle when personified by ourselves. We recognize the fact that we are so constituted, so equipped, within our Consciousness, as to help ourselves. We look at the perfect animals, perfect trees, perfect plants, about us, and we see that each thing has within itself the machinery for complete and perfect development. In the acorn the oak exists in a state of embryo. With the environment which Nature affords, this acorn becomes a shoot, a sapling, a mighty tree.
We recognize that the Infinite Life and the Subconscious life were both IN the acorn, that they were both IN the shoot, they were both IN the sapling, both IN the tree. We recognize the fact that the Subconsciousness in the acorn knew that it was to become an oak and had the machinery within itself to do so. We recognize that the Infinite Life in the acorn urged the Subconscious life to its full development. We cannot conceive it to be otherwise.
We look at ourselves. We know that we were before we were born, that our animal cells were completely pictured in the fecundated egg in our mother’s womb. We recognize that Reason was also in that egg, intended to develop with our growth and to be one of the influences in shaping our advancement. Furthermore, we know that Infinite Life was in that egg, with its wondrous, mighty Urge impelling the growth of the Subconscious, the animal body, and also impelling with equal force the growth and development of our Reason.
We know that when the Subconscious, the animal, life, caused by the heredity which built it up, and often assisted by our mistaken Reason consenting to it developing in a wrong direction, seems to dominate our Reason, we can turn to the Infinite Life within us as to the Father Life, and find the strength, the wisdom, to set our Subconsciousnesses right. All these processes are within ourselves. There should be no looking for outside help, for our enlightened Reason must tell us of our own full equipment. We may be sick and our Reason may show us no way to get well. We send for a physician or a metaphysician. The doctor gives us medicine and good advice. Neither is any good unless we take it.
How does it do us good? The medicine may change our functioning through its inherent qualities or because we reason that it will do so, but we must become conscious of the change, or the forces within us will not make the cure. No reputable doctor pretends that his medicine cures any more than that the sticking-plaster over the wound heals the cut. They simply assist that which is within ourselves to do the work. The metaphysician, by substituting his healthy reasoning for our reasoning weakened by disease, induces the Subconsciousness to function rightly.
This is often helpful, and it gives our own Reason a chance to regain its equilibrium, that is, to become static, in harmony with the Infinite Life within us. However, this will be dealt with later on. Now what we desire to see is that the processes are all carried on within ourselves . . perfectly if the doctor knows what to give or the metaphysician knows how to apply his Consciousness as a temporary substitute for ours.
Why should we almost invariably have this impulse to send for help when we feel we are out of gear? We know that the horse, the dog, the tree, does not, cannot, send for help, yet they all complete their progress from seed to the summit of their growth in perfect health when they have a perfect environment. Are we as helpless in matters of sickness as the Theologians would have us believe we are in the matters of so-called sin? As a matter of fact, we are thoroughly equipped to help ourselves if we only knew how to utilize the forces within us.
We are better situated than the tree insomuch as we can change our environment if it becomes unwholesome, and in no respect is our equipment for perfection less admirable than that of the best other thing in Nature. The same Urge to Rightness is in us as in all other things, but it is interfered with in the human being by Reason. It seems evident that Reason, then, is the thing that makes our physical perfection so uncertain. Conversely, it is evident that if we reason rightly our physical perfection will be certain. We cannot hope to do this at once, but we can all begin.
We can at least begin to divest ourselves of that idea of helplessness we have been trained to entertain with regard to both sickness and sin. Many of us have ceased sending for a priest when we feel sinful, believing we can change our own state of mind by a proper effort. When we get to understand ourselves better we will cease to send for a physician when we feel sick, but instead will appeal to our Infinite self for relief. And who should know more about you than your Infinite self?
If you think for a moment that it is that Infinite self that has urged your growth and development from the tiny egg, you will be filled with wonder that you have never thought of appealing to it when you go wrong. It did not put you wrong. You, that is your Reasoning self, or your Subconscious self, got out of gear, and it is a law of your Infinite being not to interfere with you by force or it would step in and make you right without being asked. If it did step in and make you right without being asked you would be relieved of all further responsibility and would become automatically right, and no better than the flower or the horse.
CHAPTER VIII
Living Is But A Series Of States Of Mind
Presumably having arrived at the point of view from which everything appears to us to be Mind, we must be convinced that the difference in the things we see about us is nothing but a difference in their “state of mind.” They are different we know, there is but one Mind we know, and the difference then must consist entirely in the state we observe that mind to be in. The tree is in the tree state of mind, i. e., it expresses the Subconsciousness of being a tree . . it thinks itself to be a tree. The horse is in a horse state of mind; it is conscious of being a horse, i. e., thinks itself a horse. The man is in the human state of mind, he knows himself to be a man; he is conscious of possessing Reason, and that it is his special Consciousness, differentiating him from other beings. The tree has various states of mind; its stem knows itself to be a stem; its roots, its branches, its leaves, its flowers, its fruit, all evince a different state of mind.
Each one of these things passes through different states of mind in its progress to perfection. So in ourselves our lives are each a series of continually changing states of mind. Our heads, our hands, our feet, our organs, each have a state of mind continually changing as the central thought changes, and in changing makes a new expression. When our Reason decides that it is time for us to go to bed we think we will go to bed. Everything in us thinks of going to bed, and if we are in a normal state everything in us co-operates in going to bed.
We decide that we will not go to bed. Everything in us decides that it will not go to bed, and remains quiescent, waiting for our Reason to decide what it will cause us to think next. We decide to have some supper, and everything in us gets ready for supper. Then we decide that we will take a little walk before retiring, and everything in us gets ready for the stroll. Then we decide that the supper has made us feel ill, and everything in us feels ill. Or we decide, the weather not being good without, to have a game of cards before going to bed, and everything in us gets ready for a game of cards.
These are but simple illustrations of our continually changing states of mind, all instigated by the Reason. Perhaps we follow our first impulse and go to bed. We decide to go to sleep, but we find it impossible. How is this? In everything else Reason was in full control. Now instead of going to sleep we begin to remember all sorts of things. Something has aroused our Subconsciousness, our Memory Consciousness. Probably we have acquired the habit of remembering before we go to sleep . . that is, asking ourselves if we have forgotten anything, left anything undone, left some door unlocked. If so, it is this habit asserting itself.
We cannot blame our Subconsciousness, though it seems to be over-busy. We know that in the morning we would blame it, that is, ourselves, if we left the front door unlocked or the dining-room window open. However, we find this remembering business irritating because we cannot stop it. This is an undesirable state of mind, and we ask ourselves how we can change it into a sleep state of mind. We repeat the multiplication table, seeking to tire memory by making it stick to something dictated by our Reason. Or we count imaginary sheep jumping over an imaginary gate, thus seeking to change the memory state of mind to a mathematical state of mind at the direction of our Reason.
Very few of us appreciate the importance of knowing why repeating the multiplication table or counting sheep, if persisted in, would produce a sleep state of mind. These things are simply efforts of our Reason mind to dominate our Memory mind. If we succeed in changing our mind from a state of memory to a state of calculation we may be annoyed by finding ourselves calculating how much money we have spent, or lost, or saved, during the day, and then we have another fight to change our calculating state of mind into the sleep state of mind.
We see in this how possible it is for us to pass from one undesirable state of mind into another, and how difficult it may be to get into that state of mind we desire to be in. It is the object of this work to show how this can best be done. To do this it will be necessary to study the laws governing the transference of mind from one state into another, in order to find out how Reason . . the voice of which is the Will . . can control the operation. It is worth our while to make a careful study of this, for if successful in learning the operation of these laws we can at once cause our minds to pass from a diseased into a healthy state, and have our bodies perfectly express the state of mind we desire to be in.
It will be impossible to learn the operations of the law governing the change of the sap into the branch or leaf of the tree, and we would study in vain the blood of a dog for signs of why and how that blood changes into hair, or bone, or teeth. There are things, however, that we appear to be able by mechanical contrivances to change into other things of a different state of mind. We cannot change a sheep into a dog, not only because we do not know how, but because there is no how . . it is impossible to change one Consciousness into another.
And when we appear by means of the telephone to change sounds into electricity and back again into sounds, we must decide that we only appear to do this. As it is we talk into the receptacle made to receive the sound of our voice, and we know that the sound, as sound, cannot be successfully carried over the miles of wire connecting us with the thing the listener puts to his ear, so we crudely conclude that by some hocuspocus the sound is converted into electricity on our end of the wire, and back into sound at the other end. It is not so.
The vibrations of our voice strike the plate which in the telephone represents the tympanum of our ears, and it would be well to inquire here into what is the sound changed on the other side of our tympanum so as to make it audible to that most delicate of all mechanisms, our brain. Is it changed at all? What is “sound”? Sound is vibration. But then everything else is vibration. Everything we see about us is produced by vibrations of various velocities. Intelligible sounds are produced by an arrangement of the velocities of the vibrations in a manner which we are accustomed to interpret by usage, habit. In speaking into the telephone we must follow this usage to be intelligible, and we thus produce a set of vibrations which are heard and understood afar off.
Do these vibrations of the atoms in the atmosphere change into the vibrations of the atoms of electricity, no matter what they are called, ions or electrons? If so, there must be a point at which the sound ceases and the electric phenomena begin. This point of cessation must exist, whether the sound becomes electricity or, as is the fact, the vibrations of sound arouse electrical vibrations which are carried over the wire and there by mechanical contrivance arouse vibrations of sound, which are to a great extent identical with the sound vibrations made by the speaker.
It has already been noted that when power when expressed as action in a set direction is deflected by another power, there is an instant of time, though not an interval of time, during which the object propelled in one direction rests before starting in the direction to which it is deflected by the opposing power. We recognize the necessity of this, because we understand that no object can go in two directions at once, just as it cannot be two things at once; that is, when the ball thrown by the pitcher is struck by the bat expressing greater power, it rests for an instant of time, not an interval of time, before taking its deflected course.
So the sounds going into the telephone must rest, that is, fall into stillness, equilibrium, before they start on their way as electrical vibrations. The electricity stored in a telephone to receive and transmit these vibrations is adjusted in its power to the sounds expected, and we all know that if we talk unusually loudly or whisper we are not intelligible at the other end of the wire. So we can understand that the electricity stored to take on the vibrations of the sound is calculated for the purpose. As a perfectly clear understanding of this point is necessary, let us exercise our minds for a few moments with tangible examples that in changing from one thing to another we must go through something different from both. In travelling we learn that we must change railway stations at a certain point in order to continue our journey.
We learn that these stations are on different sides of the city, and of course we know that we will have to PASS THROUGH the city in making the change. Again, we learn that we have to change trains at a certain station, and we know that we must pass through some part of that station or yard in making this change; this is a less important change than the other, but it is equally necessary, and it is equally true that we must pass through something in order to make it.
Again, it may be that we change coaches at a certain point; it may be at some station or in transit. In making this change, though less difficult still, we know we must go through something different from the coach we are in or the one to which we are going, in order to accomplish it; i. e., we must go through something that is neither the coach we are in nor the coach to which we are going, though it is only the atmosphere between the platforms of the two coaches. We take our seat in the coach selected, but decide to change it for another seat. We know that we have to pass through a portion of the car that is neither one seat nor the other, in making this change.
Do we know that when we changed our minds as to which was the preferable seat we mentally passed through something in making the change? Having got back to the intangible, let us hold steady for a moment and ask ourselves through what our state of mind passed in changing from the state in which it preferred one seat, to the state in which it preferred another. It certainly passed through something, for in reality the changing from one state of mind to another was as actual as the changing from one railway station to another, from one train to another, from one car to another, from one seat to another.
Between the two states of mind there must have been Something or there could have been no change, for if there had been no Something the two states of mind would have been identical. In using the word “Something” we are technically incorrect, because that through which we pass is no Thing, it being Unexpressed Life, the Infinite. This must be so, as nothing can separate two Expressed Things which are so fine and closely associated as is the Expressed Thought changing into another Expressed Thought, except Unexpressed Mind, the Omnipresent.
We may not be able to conceive of the minutiae . . to use a term of Time and Space to make this discussion intelligible . . of intervening Unexpressed Mind, but we must realize its importance as a resisting or conveying power if we are to understand ourselves. It is Infinite Life, which, being indivisible, has all the qualities and powers, in those separating minutiae, of its entirety. Through it the Universal Urge must carry the thought desiring to change, or it cannot change. If owing to obedience to its own law it refuses to pass the state of mind desiring to change into another state of mind, the change cannot be effected; universal necessity requires this.
If one state of mind could change into another state of mind without the consent of Infinite Mind, chaos would be the result. Thought is so subtle a thing that its operations could not be controlled in any other way. If it were not so, and you properly appreciated the power of Mind and were sufficiently fond of being a bird, you might will to change your human state of mind into a bird state of mind and become an expression of the latter. This change of state of mind would not be passed by the Infinite Mind, because it is opposed to its creative fiat that one Consciousness . . which is itself a state of mind . . cannot transfer itself or be transferred to another state of mind involving a change of Consciousness. The Infinite Mind is therefore the censor which must pass one state of mind into another state of mind in every Expressed thing.
The rules of its censorship are what we call the laws of Nature, and have nothing to do with what we call moral laws, the questions of right and wrong, which arise only in the human mind, alone capable of reasoning, being left for decision to Reason. For instance, a multimillionaire may be in the state of mind to give fifty million dollars to educational and charitable institutions. Something disgusts him with the management of some such institution and he decides to build a chain of breweries costing fifty million dollars, instead of a. chain of hospitals and colleges.
Now it would suggest itself to every ardent Prohibitionist that the Infinite, including as It does all Wisdom, all Kindness, all Foresight, could not allow such a change of mind to take place. Even those not particularly concerned with the evils of the drink habit, looking at this question in the ordinary way, would say, “Surely if the Infinite censors every change in the state of every mind it could not overlook the good it would do to the community, to the nation, by refusing to allow this change of the millionaire’s mind.” The mistake in these opinions of what the Infinite should do arises from the judgment of Infinite Rightness from the standpoint of human Rightness.
If the Infinite assumed a moral censorship and made impossible the change in the millionaire’s mind, It would at once neutralize his Being, i. e., destroy his Free Will, prevent him using his Reason. This would instantly defeat the object of Man’s existence, for if done in one instance it would have to be done in every instance, for Infinity makes no exceptions, and the Free Will of the whole human race would be at once made impossible. “Aha!” cries the anti-Prohibitionist. “Then if the Infinite refuses to prohibit anything, what right have we finite creatures to enact prohibitory laws?”
The answer is simple. Our Subconsciousnesses, our individualities, are built up by testing the rightness of our Reason. The law of Evolution and of “the survival of the fittest” is nothing but Expressed Nature’s contest with experience. Even Unreasoning Nature has by the law of its Being a right to protect itself in every possible way. Reasoning Life has the same right, and if a community sees fit to prohibit the sale tr use of intoxicating liquors it has a right to do so in order to test the rightness of such a procedure. We may say that a prohibitory law unduly restricts human Free Will. It may be so, but it is not always so. What the human race has established as right and wrong is the result of Experience.
The measure of a nation’s civilization is to be found in the limitations within which it confines the individual. In all so-called civilized nations the rights of life and property are protected. Forgery, arson, theft and murder are very rightly prohibited, though, as we have seen, they are not prohibited by Infinite law or they would not occur as they do. Thus we see that ideas we have established as Right and Wrong are the outgrowth of Reason, Experience, and are not of Divine authority or patterned after Infinite Rightness except as they evince the working of the Infinite Urge to Rightness. When we transgress these right human laws we hurt ourselves; we cannot hurt Infinity. The opportunity to hurt ourselves is freely and fully given us by Infinity in order that we may learn not to do so by our arrival at a state of Rightness of our Own Finding.
Sometimes we are impelled by elemental laws that are not fully comprehended, to do what has been established as a Wrong thing. Let us take as an illustration a suspicious husband, who in the evening, during the absence of his wife, discovers a letter which he considers fully to establish her faithlessness. Almost instantly his state of mind changes from suspicion into murder. He resolves to kill the man who has dared to rob HIM of the complete possession of his wife. Here we see the elemental Egoism of all Nature projecting itself. Every elemental atom considers itself the center of Life, and, as has been shown, every man considers himself as the center of Life in his elemental concept of himself. He resolves to show this intruder who is the Best Man . . the impulse of the “survival of the fittest.”
The male of every species is willing to fight to the death . . unless governed by Reason . . to show that It is the best of its kind. This is an elemental impulse allowed by Infinity for the development of each species. We prohibit this sort of thing amongst men, as such contests are not ordinarily demonstrations of the survival of the fittest, but merely prove which contestant is better armed or takes the fewest chances of being killed. Moreover, Reason has shown better ways of allowing men to show their fitness to survive.
The murderous husband, however, in re-reading the letter has another change in his state of mind, and the change is as fully and freely allowed by Infinity as was the first. His stormily working Reason decides that his wife has been the temptress and is more to blame than the man. He resolves to kill his wife, that she is not fit to survive. He will show Her his Superiority.
How dare She betray Him, the center of the Universe to himself? Again the elemental law of Egoism! to be worked in the form made necessary in the development of the species when the Best Man selected the Best Mate for the propagation of the species, and felt that he had a perfect right to keep her or kill her as he saw fit. He puts a revolver in his pocket and hides by the front gate, prepared to kill her, and her ‘paramour as well if he accompanies her home.
As it happens, she comes home with some friends, and he defers carrying out his purpose until they leave. She then, seeing that something is wrong with him, asks him what is the matter, and he shows her the letter. Fortunately for her, she is able to convince him that he is absolutely wrong in his reasoning, and he again changes his state of mind. All of which goes to prove that our codes of Right and Wrong are established by our reasoning, not by Infinity itself, Which does no more than Urge us in the right direction.
These illustrations are sufficient to indicate the character of the censorship of the Infinite in merging one state of mind into another. It observes its own creative fiat; that is, it observes its own laws, or chaos would be the result; it sees that everything else obeys these laws to avoid the same result. Now we ought to be able to comprehend how universal harmony is preserved in Unreasoning Nature, where everything, being Mind, wills, thinks, in perfect unison with the Infinite Mind. The continuation of this study, the task of finding how Reasoning Beings, who are alone liable to get out of harmony with the Infinite, can restore this harmony, is the most difficult part of it.
CHAPTER IX
Law — The Infinite As It Works In Nature
Law . . Infinite and otherwise . . to be effective, must be intelligible and enforceable. Law is but a fixed method of doing things. Infinite law is the set method which we have observed in the conduct of all Expressions of Life, and have concluded, from its regularity, to be invariable. The basis of Infinite law seems to be simple. Infinity is Rightness, and the beginning of everything, then, was Right. Having started everything Right . . its first action . . its second is to keep everything Right. That everything, having been made Right and Indestructible, must remain Right after its Kind, is the only Infinite law.
Thus, Infinity itself will not interfere with nor change any Expressed Consciousness, and will not allow any Expressed Consciousness to interfere with or change any other Expressed Consciousness except by suggestion. The Infinite Urge to Rightness, i. e., the eternal impulse given to every Thing to become the best thing of its species, is the Expression of the only Infinite law. This law controls all Reasoning and Unreasoning Nature. In Unreasoning Nature it results in automatic rightness, no penalty being provided for its infraction, as infraction is impossible. In Reasoning Nature . . Man . . it works as certainly as in Unreasoning Nature, and carries no penalties except such as Man inflicts upon himself by his use or misuse of Reason.
The laws of Human Consciousness are those governing:
(1) The Supra-Consciousness, which is Infinite Life filling Man to his fullness. This, being Infinite except as it is limited by being a Consciousness, is governed by Infinite Law only, the Expression of which is the Eternal Urge to Rightness, and carries no penalty for infraction, as it cannot be broken. It is the law of the Rightness that is TO BE.
(2) The Sub-Consciousness. This is the law of Memory, of Habit, of what has been in the making up of this Sub-Consciousness. It carries as the penalty of its infraction the disturbance and unrest consequent upon going contrary to habit, which excites fear as to what will be the result if this course is persisted in; it is the law of the Rightness that HAS BEEN.
(3) Reason. This is the law of what we consider to be right at the moment when we are deciding to think . . to act. It carries the penalty of fear as to the result if we do not act as we consider right; it is the law of NOW.
While endeavoring to find the law of OUR Being, we find amidst the Expressions of Life in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms such a uniformity of principle and progress that we are bound to accept them as manifestations of an Infinite law. And reasoning by analogy we can obtain glimpses, faint but guiding, of the Law of Being itself. Science teaches us of the beginning of material things, and has demonstrated that they began, as they begin, in the simplest form to us conceivable.
Thus when we seek to formulate the idea of the first Expression of animal life within the means with which Reason and experience have provided us, we find it with but a single cell, adding to itself according to its necessities and environment such other cells as have at last produced that which appeals to us as the climax of complex cellular organisms . . the human body. As this rule seems to establish the fecundated egg of the simplest variety of each species in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms as the beginning of the Expressions of Life reachable by human knowledge, so we may conclude that the Law of Being, which has made the law of OUR Being progressive, contains all the elements of progress.
Furthermore, it having been established that all Expressed Life is known to us as motion, vibration, so we may reasonably conclude that Infinite Life contained, and still contains, though of necessity it is Still, all the elements necessary to the causation of motion, vibration. This we call the Infinite Urge. As astronomy has proven by the spectrum that conditions in the most distant planets and stars are comparable with the conditions existing here, we may again reasonably conclude that Life is Omnipresent, without center, circumference, or a particle of variation in its All-ness. Its Omnipotence, its Omniscience, are equally obvious.
It is important that we bear all these things distinctly and constantly in mind while trying to bring any operation of the Infinite within the scope of our understanding. For example, we must remember, when we desire to bring our Being into harmony with the Infinite Being, the instant thought of our Consciousness makes instantly operative the Law of Being which is in silent control of every cell of our organism. We do not need to go afield or afar to reach that which we seek. It is here, within us. As the Great Philosophy declares, “Say not lo here! and lo there! for the Kingdom (state . . condition) of Good is within you.”
The Infinite law . . as we have become aware of it . . affects OUR Being only, as it establishes the inviolability of Consciousness and urges us to Rightness. The best conception we can have of Creation is the Infinite Thought expressing itself as a Consciousness. We, having the power of thought, can create finite things. The author’s thought becomes the book, the artist’s thought becomes the picture, the architect’s thought becomes the building, the musician’s thought becomes the melody, in each case the thought preceding the thing.
We can conceive of the Infinite thinking a man and beginning him as a single cell. Equally reasonable is it to think of Infinite Life thus creating the many forms of Expression found in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. With these creations came the Infinite fiat that every Consciousness should develop according to its Kind. Thus every atom of Expressed Life has a Consciousness peculiarly and inviolably its own. The Consciousness of a Thing is what the Thing knows itself to be and what it is for. What it knows is what Life Expressed it to be. Unexpressed Life is the no-thingness of the Universe.
The Expressed Life which has been called into Being with a special characteristic or individuality is the Thingness of the Universe. The creative fiat controlling all Things is indisputably that no Thing can change or destroy another Thing . . change or destroy being used in the Infinite sense. This is the basis of what scientists were in the habit of calling the Indestructibility of Matter, which allows matter to change its form while the elemental particles retain their original individuality or Consciousness under all circumstances.
Thus oxygen may unite with hydrogen and appear as water, which in turn, when subjected to a certain amount of heat, becomes steam, or in a certain intensity of cold . . ice. But each original particle, each sentient thing, remains the same in all combinations. “Sentient thing” is here used in the Infinite sense, that every Expression of Life, no matter whether it be a particle of rock or a cell in the human body, knows something as a Consciousness, though the grades of Consciousness vary as widely as the vibrations of the Universe.
Thus when the globule of water meets the freezing air it knows what to do. It combines with other globules of its own sort, invariably taking the same shape and doing the same thing. The combined particles form prisms, snow or ice, and expand, and this we must attribute to Consciousness, as we attribute to Consciousness the budding of the flower, the instinct of the dog, the knowledge of Man. The various grades of Consciousness function in their own way.
When an alkali meets an acid it precipitates a salt. When one part of oxygen meets two parts of hydrogen, water is the result. In no case is water the result of the meeting of the acid and alkali, nor is salt the result of the union of oxygen and hydrogen; this is Law. Everything is Mind in some stage of refinement, and Mind is sentient always, though in its crudest Expressions, as in mud and rock, it is difficult to conceive of the atoms being possessed of any power of thought. Yet it is so.
The inviolability of Consciousness appears in its true importance when we begin to consider the Human Consciousness. Man in his development from the single cell had always within his Consciousness the developments he has made. The possibilities of a Shakespeare, a Napoleon, an Edison, were all in that original cell, which, had there been a microscope at the time it came into existence, might scarcely have been visible under the most powerful lens.
The development may have taken millions of years. Thought of from the point of view of Infinity, Man came up from yesterday, and with this in mind the most daring prophet could not exceed the truth in foretelling what he may be a million years hence; for Man alone, as far as has been discoverable, is possessed of reasoning faculties which give him the right and the power to change his own Consciousness . . an overwhelmingly marvelous privilege and power which by creative fiat Infinity withholds itself from exercising. The denial to Itself of the right arbitrarily to change the human Consciousness, that is, to change it without being invited by that Consciousness to do so, was the gift to Man of what Theologians call Free Will.
It is evident that Life with us, for us, began with the first Expression of Infinity of a Something cognizable by the human Consciousness. While forms of Expression, aggregate Expressiveness, may change in a million ways, the original Expressed atom remains inviolable, holding latent or developed all the possibilities of its species throughout eternity. Man, as such an Expression, is under the same law, for it must be remembered that, so far as is known, the human species is alone given power to change its own Consciousness; that is, to open or close it to the incoming of Infinite Life.
Without arguing this further at present, this necessarily postulates that the Infinite gift to the human Consciousness of the self creative faculty . . not as to species, but as to the manner and time of its development . . must make each such Consciousness as indestructible as is the original Expressed atom, known to science as the elemental, the indestructible. If this be granted, it of course settles the question of the immortality of the human Consciousness, which will be considered later on.
The Law of Being not only provides for the safekeeping of each of its Expressions, but makes infinite provisions for the conduct of all its Expressions as a Unit. Thus the Universe becomes AN Expression . . every Thing is Life, and all things are Expressed Life. The Infinite impulse of Expression finds its reflection in humanity, in its unreasoning eagerness to propagate and preserve the being of its species. All humanity is organized to a greater or less degree to preserve the unit and the unity of the race.
The normal man is a sociable being and desires contact with his fellows, hence the marked attractiveness of our great centers of population. This, however, is but the working out of the Law of Being, which causes the atoms of sand, and mud, and water, and metal, to associate according to their Kind, forming land as plains and mountains, water as lakes, rivers, seas, and oceans.
If it were not for this impulse of association the particles would remain diffused and there would be no land, only dust; no water, only disassociated particles of moisture. We speak of this association of particles as the law of Attraction, Gravitation, Repulsion, etc., and this leads us to the consideration of what is Law and the basis of the movement of things.
A law is an expression of Consciousness to Consciousness of a fixed method of doing things. A human law to be effectual must be intelligible, possible of fulfillment, and made by a power able to enforce it; less than this we do not expect of Infinite Law; of more than this we cannot conceive. History shows us that from the beginning of recorded events Man has patterned his laws after those he attributed to the Being, or Beings, which he reverenced as Supreme.
This indicates a universal impulse toward the doing of things in an orderly manner, and though these conceptions of Deity, Rightness, have varied from the period when might alone was right, up to the present day, when government by the consent of the governed is the established principle of lawmaking in all civilized countries, yet the fact that we have always been governed by laws of this sort proves that Man is moved to a greater or less extent by the Infinite Urge to Rightness.
From this and from observation of the workings of Infinite law in Nature, we may postulate that Life, Mind, are synonymous with Rightness. This being the case, we must incline, though not force nor distort, our finite reasoning powers to the establishment in our Consciousness of the Rightness of everything that is Infinite.
Let us then turn to the examination of Infinite law by the light of the principles predicated as essential in effective human laws. “LAW must be intelligible.” The green atom, or the combination of atoms which takes on a green color as its Consciousness, knows that it is the law of its being to resist light; it is its Consciousness of Rightness. A dark green paper blind a sixteenth of an inch thick, if placed over the only aperture in a room intended to admit light, will effectually exclude it.
Its power of what we call physical resistance is trivial as compared with the penetrating power of light, which will shine through glass ten trios as thick and dense as the green paper. Indeed, ‘t has been demonstrated by scientists that light . . whether it be a corpuscle emitted by the sun, or an ion of infinitesimal size which produces light by agitating ether into waves . . travels from the sun to the earth, ninety-three million miles, in eight minutes, or over 180,000 miles a second.
The idea of this incomprehensible velocity being stopped by a “mere scrap” of green paper by physical force, is as absurd as would be the project of stopping an express train going at sixty miles an hour by a little pellet of paper put upon the track. Yet sound, which travels at a much less velocity than light, is not excluded by the paper blind. Why? Because the Consciousness of the green atom, or the “green” Subconsciousness of the combination of atoms, its Mind power, is to resist light, though not sound, while the Subconsciousness of the atoms which compose the glass is to admit light.
To these atoms the law of being opaque on one hand, and transparent on the other, is instantly intelligible and meets with instant obedience, and by creative fiat this Consciousness is made inviolable. If there were no opaque Consciousness or Subconsciousness there would be no darkness, no shade, apparently so necessary in the Infinite economy. The stone thrown into the air falls to the earth. Why? Because of the community impulse or Consciousness of the atoms composing the stone, and of the same Consciousness in the atoms composing the earth.
This is called the Law of Gravitation, the desire of atoms to assemble themselves according to their kind and density. To them the Infinite law controlling their conduct is instantly intelligible; necessarily so, as is their instant obedience. To ensure the latter, Infinity has given them no power of choice, because if for an instant what we call the nonorganic atoms were to hesitate or refuse to use all their inherent power to assemble themselves, that part of the Universe which we consider solid would instantly diffuse itself and there would be no place for organic life.
Thus it is seen that in the Infinite economy the lowest order of Mind is constituted to develop the higher. Inorganic matter gives out in some instances noxious and deadly emanations. Why? To develop the habit life of those things which draw their sustenance from it, thus aiding the higher development of such life.
We can readily understand that the Consciousnesses of the particles in the vegetable kingdom find the Infinite law concerning them instantly intelligible, and though the law gives them a wider scope they, too, are instantly responsive; the seed germinating, the plant, the tree growing, whenever the conditions are Right.
If a wider choice were given to the vegetable atoms, if by consulting together they were able to “go on strike,” as it were, and refuse to germinate for two or three years, animal life would be deprived of its food and disappear. True, there are noxious and deadly vegetables, but their purpose is to train the animal life which feeds upon vegetables, to avoid them. Thus that which in itself seems to be useless and bad is shown to have its place in the development of animal life. Again we see this class of Consciousness so constituted as to develop the higher, and its limitations of Consciousness are seen to be just and necessary.
In the animal kingdom also we can observe how instantly intelligible to all creatures not gifted with Reason is the law governing animal life, and without going into details find justification for the limitation of animal Consciousness to its present status. Believing, as we do, and have done for many centuries, that Man has been given control by Infinite Law of all living things, it is impossible to conceive of animals other than Man being gifted with Reason, which would have made it impossible for Man to dominate them.
As it is, the higher animal Consciousness approaches so nearly the lower human intelligence that it is possible for Man to make laws governing domestic animals. As far as a man can make himself intelligible to his dog or horse, the dog or horse obeys him. As in the mineral and vegetable kingdoms, so in the animal kingdom there are Consciousnesses which are noxious or deadly, and for the same reason . . to develop the habit life of Man and brute alike. Thus animals gain an acuteness and an alertness in avoiding other animals dangerous to them, and Man also has his Consciousness developed by avoiding or overcoming dangerous animals.
Man’s capacity for understanding and obeying Infinite laws will be dealt with in a chapter on Human Consciousness.
CHAPTER X
Man Can Understand Infinite Laws And Is Equipped To Take Care Of Himself
Now let us examine Man’s capacity for understanding and obeying Infinite laws. With the law which has to do with his origin, i. e., “the starting of him right,” Man has nothing to do. He can only accept the fact that he is Alive; that his Being is controlled by the same power that controls all other Expressions of Life; that he has been brought to the degree of animal perfection at which he has arrived by the same processes that have brought about perfection in other animals, vegetable and inorganic things, all of which Think but do not Reason. Man alone reasons.
Thinking is that mental operation which causes action . . action being merely the expression of the thought. All Unreasoning Nature thinks as the Infinite intended it should think, and is consequently always right from the point of view of its Kind, for it is from this point of view that the Infinite causes it to think. Man, by the use of his Reason, must find his own Rightness; i. e., must find a point of view from which he must think, act. All penalties for his failure to find the Best point of view . . that point of view nearest to the Rightness at which he is intended to arrive . . are of his own infliction. True, he is so constituted that he must penalize himself for his mistakes, but this is necessary in order to keep him from repeating them.
Experience in this way teaches him, each time he uses his Reason and makes a decision, to get a little nearer Rightness. If his Reason does not do this, experience on this plane is a failure as far as he is concerned and he will have to wait until his environment is improved before he can expect the progress that he should make Here and Now. Looking about us we can see but few human specimens who can rightly be branded as failures Here and Now, and we can find their counterparts in Unreasoning Nature. As we attribute these latter failures to wrong breeding or bad environment, or both, so we must attribute similar failures in Reasoning Life to the same causes, as both are developed by the same processes.
The Infinite Expression we have accepted as a law is that which keeps our Expression right after it is started. This keeping of a thing “right” after it is made, means only the keeping it right after its Kind. The elemental atom . . no matter how far back we have to go for it . . is indestructible. The Infinite law makes it non-interchangeable; i. e., each Thing must develop as the thing it was Expressed to be.
As we have seen, Infinity is simplicity itself, beginning everything in its simplest form, supplying it with the Urge to Rightness, and leaving it to its own development, a development which it accomplishes by partnerships and combinations, often with millions of other atoms, each partnership or combination, however, impelled by the Infinite Urge, attending to and perfecting its own organization. Its law that the Consciousness or Subconsciousness of each thing must be inviolable . . absolutely free from the intrusion of any other Consciousness or Subconsciousness, even from Infinity itself . . is a law which on examination is seen to be a marvel of simplicity.
As we have already noted, Living, Being, is but a series of changes in the state of mind of each Thing that is. To preserve harmony, each change of the state of mind of every Thing is censored by the Infinite before it is allowed to take place. As there are countless billions, and billions, and billions of Things, each changing its state of mind every second, the task of censoring such changes would be too much for even Infinity itself if it were not for the law providing that each Thing shall start Right and stay Right.
As we are aware, nobody can do two things at once any more than you can turn a grindstone two ways at once; such a process involves a contradiction of terms. The Infinite, as well as the finite, is incapable of doing that which is a contradiction of terms. If the Infinite were to censor the moral right or wrong of doing things It could attend to one thing, that is to one Consciousness, but no more, for adjusting the rightness and wrongness of things as we understand these terms would mean a perpetual sitting in judgment upon that which is only relative and not positive.
But It does not do this. Every Thing is started right, after its Kind, and by the same creative fiat is compelled to stay right after its Kind, and there is nothing for the Infinite to do but automatically to inhibit every change of mind which would result in any change of Kind, i. e., the change of one Consciousness into another. This reduces the administrative task of the Infinite to the minimum . . the doing of one thing, or rather the prevention of one thing. Man can and does understand this law, and does not attempt to change his Consciousness into some other Consciousness, for he knows it would be Impossible.
The Expression of the Infinite law . . the Infinite Urge to Rightness . . works constantly and evenly in every Thing. Note that it works In every Thing. The Infinite Life, the Infinite Urge, is In every Thing, and from Within that Thing, as a part of the Consciousness or Subconsciousness of that Thing, urges it to Rightness. It does not urge it from WITHOUT; that would be coercing the Consciousness, the stronger pressing upon the weaker. It urges it from WITHIN as a part of the Consciousness, and thus achieves the perfect democracy in control of all Things by the consent and co-operation of the Things. It works in Man the same way, but he alone can resist the Urge.
He is a Consciousness, and as such cannot be interfered with. Reason is his Consciousness. It is Reason which differentiates him from other animals; it is what causes him to be a Man. It is by Reason that he is to find out Rightness . . the point of view from which he is to Think, Act. The Urge within him constantly suggests Rightness but does not compel it. In the tree the Urge suggests Rightness but does not compel it; it does not have to; the tree instantly accepts the suggestion, from the time when it was a seed until it reaches its perfection of development. It is to be feared that Man does not generally know of nor recognize this Urge.
His failure to know and understand it in his present stage of development is largely owing to his education. Infinity, however, knows that Man cannot and will not continue to ignore or misunderstand this greatest Force within his Being. Man penalizes himself for his mistakes, but this is unavoidable as long as he makes mistakes. If Infinity made it impossible for him to make mistakes, nothing would be left to be done by his Reason and he would cease to be a man. Would it not, then, seem that the most important task of the human race is to develop its Reason to a RIGHTNESS OF ITS OWN FINDING? For this is what it must do, either Here and Now, or There and Then.
Now let us glance at the mistaken education referred to as causing Man to misunderstand himself to the extent of ignoring or misconstruing the Infinite Urge to Rightness within his Consciousness.
Education is esteemed the shortest road to Experience. By school education we expect to arrive at a knowledge of the experience acquired by our teachers and the writers of the text-books we use. The graduate of a university too often regards himself as possessed of all the knowledge there is, excepting, of course, that possessed by specialists. Specialists, after they have graduated from a school teaching that which they have selected as their specialty, are too often satisfied with their knowledge of the subjects they have undertaken to master.
With this Egoism we cannot well quarrel, as it is the Egoism of all Nature, each Consciousness being the center of Life to itself. It is when this Egoism becomes Egotism, which is ordinarily understood as a man’s belief that he is better equipped than anyone of his kind, that we find it disagreeable. The egotist who “knows it all” quits reasoning, and practically his education is at a standstill until by some rude bump he is awakened to the fact that he does not know it all.
With the egoist it is different. He simply reasons that he knows as much as his kind needs to know, and as he finds he needs to know more, is prepared to learn more. He is in a receptive state of mind, and it does not take him long to become convinced that there is much that he needs to learn. He falls ill and sends for a physician . . not to teach him how to get well and stay well, but merely to help him get well. He has always been taught that if a man is seriously sick he is helpless without a doctor or a healer of some sort, that all he can do is to take his medicine or treatments without question and hope for the best. He may know what caused his sickness or he may not.
His doctor may know and he may not. Neither of them may know anything about the laws of causation any further back than overeating, overexertion, or exposure to the weather or contagion. The doctor is too busy or the patient too sick to go any further back than the conditions named. The patient may get well or may die. In either case the sickness becomes a closed incident, except in those cases where it is likely to recur under similar circumstances.
Perhaps the patient in the weakness of his sickness feels a conviction of sin and He or his friends send for a priest or a clergyman, believing that a sense of sinfulness is best treated in that way. In both cases the cure hoped for is by Proxy. If the patient gets well the sense of sinfulness disappears, and that also becomes a closed incident.
When the Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be;
When the Devil got well, the devil a monk was he.
Again, the sick man may send for a lawyer to make his will, bequeathing a large share of his estate to the Church or to charity. This is esteemed a wise procedure by a very sick man with a “conviction of sin,” as providing a certain insurance against fire in a “future state.” If he dies, no one knows whether his insurance policy answers the purpose for which it was designed, but if he gets well his rule is to destroy the will at once, all immediate danger of fire being past.
You may say, “Well, what is wrong about this?” It is not a question of the rightness or wrongness of employing specialists in emergencies, but of the education which causes the emergencies. This work is by no means a crusade against Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is an organized expression of those connected with a thing, as to the rightness of conducting that thing. Orthodox medical practitioners are those who conduct the practice of medicine in the way approved by the majority of their class. This is the result of the Urge to Rightness which impels us all to a greater or less extent. The orthodox lawyer is the one who observes the “ethics of his profession.”
This, too, is the result of the Urge to Rightness. Orthodox religion is somewhat harder to define, but it may be said to be the observance of the religious forms considered necessary to the salvation of a man’s soul . . whatever that may mean . . by each religious sect. In this way you may be an Orthodox Quaker, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Judaist, Episcopalian, Mohammedan, Confucian, Buddhist, or any other kind of Pagan that you see fit to be. Or, as is set forth in a verse popular during the vogue of Pinafore:
He might have been a Quaker,
A Methodist or Shaker,
Or perhaps believed in hell;
But in spite of all temptation
To secure his soul’s salvation,
He remains an Infidel.
Each expression of religious Orthodoxy is a manifestation of the Infinite Urge to Rightness and of the law of Attraction, tending to the cohesion of things alike in their method of thinking . . in these cases it cannot be said to be a likeness of reasoning, for Orthodox Religionists are proud in their denial that Reason has anything to do with their Faith. Of course this is impossible, as Faith is but Reason satisfied and shaped by the Intangible, i. e., by something which comes to the reasoner by other avenue or avenues than his Experience and Senses.
As Religion is an Expression of the Infinite Urge to Rightness, and as this Urge is the same in all instances, in all Nature, the differences in its Expression can only be accounted for by the extent to which Reason shapes its manifestations. In the absence of Reason all Unreasoning Nature does the right thing according to the law of its species, and in the absence of Reason Man would do the same thing; but such a condition is impossible, as in the absence of Reason Man would not be Man, but an automaton in Rightness, as is the tree.
Thus we can only account for the widely divergent “faiths” of the numerous religious sects by accepting the fact that “faiths” vary as the reasonings . . unconscious perhaps . . of the adherents of the various “faiths,” vary. In one thing alone do they all appear to agree . . that Man is of himself unable to secure His Own Salvation. This is the doctrine of HELPLESSNESS. It is against this doctrine that The Thinking Universe necessarily directs its crusade. The prayers of all religious suppliants alike are directed to some outside personage . . a personage whom they do not and dare not try to understand, but a Something or Somebody whom they are all taught to Fear.
Thus we are brought to the conclusion that all Orthodoxies teach the doctrines of unreasoning Helplessness and Fear; that the Infinite will hurt us if we do not “watch out” . . probably if we do “watch out” . . and that we are helpless to prevent this, though there is an alluring chance that by supplications, offerings . . burnt and otherwise . . and following certain lines of conduct, we may escape with a thorough singeing instead of eternal roasting. Nothing could be further from the truth as we have found it in our examinations of Infinite laws and their workings in all Nature.
The acceptance of such doctrines, more than anything else, has prevented Man from realizing and utilizing the INFINITE URGE TO RIGHTNESS WITHIN HIMSELF. Mark that the Infinite Urge to Rightness comes from the Infinite Life WITHIN Man, not from outside of him. If it worked from outside of his Consciousness it would be coercion, the stronger pressing upon the weaker, thus robbing him of his Free Will. The Infinite knows no coercion, and one of its elemental laws is the non-interference with any Consciousness except at its own request.
As we have seen, Man and every other Thing is filled to his or its fullness by Omnipresent Infinite Life, which works IN Man as a part of his Consciousness. According to Infinite law, as we have seen it, this is the only possible connection there can be between Man and Infinity; i. e., Man’s connection with the Infinite within himself. Then Man can only appeal successfully to the Infinite within himself, and if he appreciates this and only knows how to make the appeal he can have “whatsoever he (consciously) wills.”
This implies Man’s possession within himself of a full equipment for every emergency. What we are seeking is an understanding of how to use this equipment. To succeed in this search we must at once and for ever disassociate ourselves from the doctrines of Helplessness and Fear. This is the destructive part of our work. Now let us turn to the constructive part.
Where do you “go” when you “go” to sleep? Where do you “go” when you “go” crazy? Where does the light “go” when it “goes” out? Where does the sound “go” when it “dies away”? Where does the darkness “go” when it “disappears”? Where does power “go” when it ceases to impel an object which is turned back or propelled in a different direction? Into the Infinite. Into Stillness. Into Equilibrium. Where is this Infinite, Stillness, Equilibrium? Everywhere. It is Omnipresent, Unexpressed Life. “But,” you say, ” ‘going’ implies a change from one place to another.” Not necessarily.
It more frequently means “going” from one state of mind into another. This does not involve a change of location, but of condition. When we go to sleep we simply change our state of mind. We merge our reasoning Consciousness into our Supraconsciousness . . the Infinite Life within us. We have seen that Living is merely a continuous changing of states of mind. When we go to sleep, then, we go into a sleeping state of mind; i. e., our Reasoning Consciousness merges into our Supraconsciousness. Where else could it go?
We do not need a Reasoning Consciousness while it is in Supraconsciousness, as our Reasoning Consciousness is that by which we find Rightness, and when this is merged in Rightness itself, the Infinite Life within ourselves, its office is suspended until something awakes us and it resumes its domination of our Being. While merged in the Supraconsciousness . . Infinite Life, Supreme Stillness, Absolute Repose . . it Rests. Upon the complete temporary merging of these two Consciousnesses depends the amount of rest we obtain in sleep.
You do not need to be a physician to know that there is nothing more curative than a sound, dreamless, perfect sleep. This is a complete merging. If you go to sleep full of wine, rich food, or fever, your merging machinery is clogged and you sleep too near your Subconsciousness to obtain rest, and your dreams are filled with all sorts of disturbing things. This, however, will be dealt with later.
When a man “goes” crazy his Reasoning Consciousness, finding the physical machinery with which it manifests itself in Time and Space, Here and Now, out of order, “goes” into the Infinite Stillness and abides there until the physical machinery is restored to proper working order. Thus when a man is said to “lose his reason” he does not lose it at all; it merely merges into his Supraconsciousness, into Repose, into the only safe place it could be, Rightness, and there awaits the restoration of the physical machinery by which it expresses itself Here and Now.
Where does the light “go” when it “goes” out, the sound when it “dies away,” the darkness when it “disappears,” but into Infinity? That which causes illumination, when its supply of material for combustion is exhausted Rests, ceases to be active, becomes Still. It changes its State of Mind. Between one state of mind and another state of mind there can be nothing but the Infinite, and into this everything goes, and when in It rests, if it be only for an instant of time, and not an interval of time, as in sleep.
So the state of mind expressing sound changes into a state of Stillness, and the state of mind expressed by darkness fades away in the presence of a state of mind expressing Illumination. Action involves exhaustion, comparative or complete. Expressed Life, being always in motion, would exhaust itself were it not continually going into Stillness and finding rest.
This is obvious, and it is thus seen that every change of mind not only includes the possibility of the censorship by the Infinite of that change of mind, but also includes a rest before Power starts in the new direction involved by a change of state of mind. How wondrously simple, how absolutely perfect is the law of the Infinite as seen in this light! Could there be a nobler, grander, more sublime conception of “GOD” . . the INFINITE . . than of THAT into which all tired Nature pours itself for rest ? The call of the Infinite to every. Thing is, “Come unto me ye that are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.” O thou human Thing, thou weak and weary one, thou sick and suffering one, harken to this call, as does all Unreasoning Nature, and thou shalt find Peace.
Man, when he is tired, seeks repose . . Stillness of Body, Quietness as to reasoning what he will do next. He does not always seek sleep when weary; sometimes bodily repose is sufficient. But a mere cessation of bodily activity does not always bring repose; the Reason must cease its activity before he can obtain rest. When we cease to reason, and drop into the Subconscious, our Being is conducted on the basis of Habit Life; we become mere resting animals. If we go into the Supraconsciousness for repose we are at the fountain in which all rest is found . . the Infinite.
Our bodies rest, our Consciousnesses rest: this is what is meant by going into Stillness. In the Stillness, our bodies relaxed, our reasoning faculties merged into the Supraconscious . . the Infinite . . that thought which we took with us into Stillness becomes the Urge of our whole Being, which proceeds to adjust itself to the making of that thought a Thing. If our thought in going into that Stillness was Rest, then our whole Being proceeds to make that thought a Thing, and that thing Rest, and we become rested. With other things it is the same. If we go into Stillness with the thought of Bodily Wholeness we find it, though perhaps not as readily as we find rest.
Recovery from sickness is a slower process than rest from weariness. To obtain recovery we may have to go into Stillness very often before harmony can be induced in our whole Being. As has already been shown, the Subconsciousness, the Habit Life, in the case of sickness has, owing to some cause, established an abnormal standard of Rightness, from which it must be separated and brought to the standard of Rightness provided by our Reason before our Being can become harmonious . . well. Of one thing, however, we may be sure: the instant we make a call upon the Infinite with our Reason, made Positive in its Rightness . . i. e,. with the Reason fully convinced that its call will be answered . . the Urge of the Infinite causes that thing for which we ask to move towards our realization.
It may be as well to anticipate a question that may arise in the mind of the reader as to why we should have to “go” into the Infinite for rest or what we desire, as we are always in the Infinite, it being Omnipresent . . Everywhere. True, we are always in the Infinite, but we are not always CONSCIOUSLY in the Infinite. The Infinite never changes; its Urge to Rightness is always working within us. To be benefited by the Urge we must “go” into a receptive state of mind, i. e., become Conscious that we are awaiting the Urge, and that while we are awaiting the Urge we are holding the thought of that which we desire. If we do not “go” into this receptive state of mind we are not opening our Consciousness to admit the Urge and we do not receive the benefit it would otherwise confer.
CHAPTER XI
Looking Again At What We Have Seen — A Review Of Our Reasonings.
The ground over which we have come in our reasonings, at the outset was familiar to none of us, while it was absolutely new and unexplored territory to the great majority. The task of studying the Infinite may have been appalling to some, to none could it have appeared easy; to those who have followed these reasonings thus far it cannot seem to be by any means impossible. Difficulties have not developed, but faded away, and the wondrous simplicity of the ways of the Infinite has startled us lest the ease with which we comprehend them may only indicate that we are on the wrong track.
Lest this be the case, let us pause for a moment while we look about us and make new observations that we may be reassured as to the rightness of our course. We find ourselves accepting Infinite Life and Infinite Mind as synonymous, anterior to which nothing was nor could have been. We find it to be an eternal, indivisible Unit, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient, which was Alone when it first Expressed itself, and as Infinite Life is still Alone. Its first Expression we have found to be the polarization of itself; i. e., the causing of its Negative characteristics, as such, to have a relation to its Positivity . . its equilibrium, its poise, its Unalterable Stillness.
This was the advent of motion, and all Expressed Life became then, and still is, Motion. By the adjustment of the velocity of this motion to the purposes to be served, various Constrictions or Consciousnesses were formed in Expressed Life . . in Motion Life . . and these, being the fiat of the Infinite, became eternal, unchangeable, as their Expressor is eternal and unchangeable. These elemental Consciousnesses, or elemental Atoms, indestructible, indivisible at their nearest approach to the point at which they became Things, have by various combinations and partnerships formed themselves into the multifarious Expressions of Life we see about us.
These partnerships and combinations, whether simple or complex, we recognize as ephemeral, i. e., liable to a change of form or to disappear altogether from our observation in order that the atoms composing them may form new combinations and partnerships of superior usefulness or beauty. We find that all the organizations of the atoms in Expressed Life are left in their progress to perfection entirely to their own devices, except that the Infinite Urge within them all impels them mightily to the achievement of the supreme excellence of their Kind.
We never find the supreme Urge of the Infinite coercing a Consciousness, but always working within it and as a part of it towards the greatest perfection achievable. For these reasons we have concluded that the Infinite works on the basis of one law only, which involves the starting of every Thing Right and the keeping of every Thing Right by protecting it from coercion or intrusion by another Consciousness or Subconsciousness, or by Infinity itself. The Universal Urge to Rightness of every Consciousness or Subconsciousness is the only way the Infinite affects all Things. This causes the making of every possible partnership and combination of atoms necessary to the production of variety and perfection.
By this law alone Infinity, as Infinity, appears to work. In the terms of Time and Space, not technically applicable to the Infinite, we may subdivide this law into (1) The Law of what Was, (2) The Law of what Is, and (3) The Law of what Is to Be. Other laws expressing the relation of Infinite to Expressed Life we have not found traceable in Nature or deducible by reasoning, and therefore have concluded that these stand as Elemental and Alone. From the standpoint of the Infinite these three laws are but one law . . the Law of Rightness.
For the time being we will consider them from the viewpoint of Here and Now in order the better to comprehend the Infinite law which their workings express, and because this arrangement harmonizes so completely with the three laws of the Human Consciousness, viz., (1) What Has Been, (2) What Is, and (3) What Is To Be.
The two classes of Expressed Life . . Reasoning and Unreasoning Life . . are alike controlled by these laws only. The only difference in the control is that the Infinite Urge acts in Unreasoning Life from an established, a set, Point of Rightness in every Consciousness. From this “set” point every unreasoning Consciousness automatically works Rightness toward the perfection of its Kind. In Reasoning Life, Reason is left to find its own Point of Rightness, the Infinite Urge always impelling it and, when requested, guiding in the search for it. Because of this obvious arrangement we have concluded that the Infinite, which cannot be set at naught, will ultimately cause Reasoning Life to arrive at a Rightness of Its Own Finding.
As Man is the only Reasoning Being we have concluded that Reason is an elemental, indestructible Consciousness, and the Supraconsciousness (the Infinite within the Ego) and the Subconsciousness (the expressional power of the Ego) are not ephemeral, and the Ego, made up of these three, will have all eternity in which to arrive at Rightness of Its Own Finding. It has also been assumed that Man being, as far as is known, the supreme Expression of Infinity because of his possession of Reason, Reason is therefore the superlative Expression of Infinity, and is next to Infinity itself. Because of this obvious deduction we have been encouraged to employ our Reason in seeking out the purposes and methods of Infinity.
At the outset we found our only equipment for seeking out these purposes and methods to be Reason, and by many it may have been feared to have been insufficient. In employing it, however, we have found that the quality of the human mind is the same as that of the Infinite mind except that it is constricted by its Consciousness . . Reason. As our reasoning powers have expanded we have found ourselves approaching with startling nearness to the Infinite mind, which works in every way as our minds will work when our Consciousnesses . . Reason . . have arrived at the Rightness of Their Own Finding, which is the task set for them.
We have also seen how Theologians, by ignoring the all-important part Reason has in shaping Faith, and how scientists, who have ignored the Infinite and its Urge as an equation in their calculations, have both contributed to the hiding of THE LIGHT from Man. No better illustration has been found of the ignoring of the Infinite in the equations of the scientists than the declaration of Physics that “all life is motion.” All Expressed Life is motion, but Infinite Life is Stillness, Equilibrium, Repose. In the first place, Infinite Life, filling everything, has nowhere to move.
Expressed Life has a “where” to move. Motion implies the going of something from a given point towards some other given point. No matter how great the velocity of this motion there must be an instant of time between its departure and arrival. When we introduce the instant of time we at once inhibit the idea of Infinity, which knows neither Time nor Space. If the velocity of the motion were so great that its departure from a given point and its arrival at a given point, or its return in a circle to the point of starting, had no separating instant of time, there could have been no departure and there could have been no arrival, and there could have been no motion.
This is the condition of Infinite Life, for, being everywhere, that which starts from itself would always be within itself and would always be everywhere at the same instant. This makes motion unnecessary to Infinite Life, and to our reasoning impossible. It may be true that physicists have recognized the quality of Stillness as being inherent in Motion. If so, they have the cart before the horse, as Motion is inherent in Stillness, all Motion emanating from the latter. Thus it will be seen that the scientists, by refusing to admit the Infinite in their equations, have been unable to arrive at absolute Rightness. Theologians, on the other hand, by denying the superlative place that Reason occupies in Expressed Life, have been found pottering over the sayings of men who lived in ages much less enlightened than the present, and giving to them absolute finality as revelations of “God’s will to Man.”
In this way Theologians have assumed to be the proper interpreters of God’s laws as found in the Sacred Writings. If by “God’s laws” is meant the laws of the Infinite, we have found that the Infinite has nothing to do with moral or so-called religious laws except in its urging of Reason towards a Rightness of Its Own Finding; that while it censors every change of one state of mind to another state of mind it allows the human mind to change from a state of honesty into one of dishonesty, from a state of kindness into a murderous state; that it passes as readily a change of mind involving a departure from Rightness as it does one going towards Rightness.
This leaves so-called Divine laws as simply the expression by Reason of the Urge to Rightness, which men have felt at various times and with varying degrees of clarity. When Theologians allow Reason its superlative place in Expressed Life they will have arrived much nearer Rightness than they are now, and we will hear no more of the inconceivable barbarities of torture to be inflicted as the penalty of the Infinite upon those who displease “Him” or have omitted to take advantage, either personally or by proxy, of the cruelly grotesque and unnatural expiation of their “sins” by His Son on the Cross.
At the outset, in order that the reader might not be turned from the subject by too much abstract reasoning, it was thought well to assume as true such generally accepted principles as the indivisible unity of Infinite Life, its Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience, but now we might as well satisfy ourselves by examining the ground on which this general acceptance has been based. The beginning of everything must be a unit, and we have taken Life as the Elemental Unit of the Universe because anything prior to Life is inconceivable; it would require to be something without life.
A condition of “deadness” . . in itself impossible . . could not be conceived unless there had been a prior condition of life; and again it would be inconceivable to think of a “dead” thing projecting Infinite Life . . the less cannot produce the greater. We have accepted Infinite Life and Infinite Mind as synonymous. If Life, as the Elemental Unit of the Universe, had been devoid of Intelligence. Mind, it could not have produced Mind. As that which is without thought cannot think, Life could not think Mind.
On the other hand, Mind, Infinite Life, could not have existed prior to Life, and therefore could not think Life. For these reasons it is obvious that Life and Mind are different names for the same thing. The Unit of the Universe, therefore, is Life, Mind. It was the Universe and is still the Universe, nothing- co-existing with it when it was the Unit, and nothing having been brought into it from elsewhere, as there is no elsewhere, and there could have been no things. Therefore all Things are the Expressions of Mind, or produced by Mind of Mind, and are still Mind, and have the faculty of Mind, that of Thinking.
Again let us recall the fact that Thinking and Reasoning are entirely different processes . . that the whole Universe thinks, but Man alone reasons. Everything thinks with its whole Being; Man reasons with his intellectual faculties and thinks with his whole normal Being. It is obvious, then, that Life is Omnipresent, being Everywhere, Everything. Being Everywhere and Everything, and the Expressor of all that has been Expressed, it must know everything . . this is Omniscience. Being everywhere and knowing everything, it must have all power. We judge it as we judge of a man’s power by his favorable situation and his possessions, including knowledge. So it seems obvious to us that Life, possessing everything, knowing everything, being everywhere, must be Omnipotent.
Having fortified ourselves by this review of what we have gone over, in which we have found no cause to question the rightness of our conclusions, let us return with freshened zeal to a consideration of Man’s relation to the Infinite within himself, for that is the only relation he can have to the Infinite, as we have seen that the Infinite, by its own elemental fiat, makes it impossible for itself to work with or upon any Consciousness except from within and as a part of that Consciousness.
CHAPTER XII
Infinite Law Unbreakable — A Man Cannot ConSciously Act Unless At The Moment Of AcTion He Decides He Is Right.
It is most important at this stage of our study that we should settle as a finality that the Infinite works only from within us in its operations concerning us. Its gentle Urge, always impelling us to Rightness, works within us as it works in all unreasoning things. There are no exceptions of Kind, or Time, or Place. Let us use as an illustration of this a case selected from one of the lower animals. Not infrequently sows devour their young, sometimes eating a whole litter before their offspring can be removed from their reach.
This seems to be a case where all the laws of Nature are disregarded, yet the Infinite Life which censors every change of state of mind in every variety of Expressed Life does not inhibit the change of a maternal instinct into a state of ravenous appetite as it would have to do if, from within the animal’s Consciousness, it prevented her destruction of her progeny. To prevent it from without, the Infinite would have to spirit away the young pigs or muzzle the mother. Neither operation takes place, unless the swine-breeder attends to that which can be done outside of the animal’s Consciousness. Yet the law of Urge to Rightness is seen to work perfectly. If the sow is not interfered with she extinguishes her progeny and there is no danger of her abnormal appetite being transmitted to her Kind.
This is the working of the law from within, and it is seen to cover the case without any interference. No manifestation of power from without could have anything approaching the finality of extinguishing the swinish lust which otherwise might be transmitted. We cannot imagine in this revolting incident any “miraculous” removal of the progeny or the muzzling of the unnatural mother. The Universe is organized on a different plan, and, as we have before noticed, the Infinite itself could not attend to an administration of its laws involving any such “miracles” as have been suggested, as the Infinite, like the finite Mind, can attend to only one thing at a time, and while protecting the sow’s litter with a “miracle” would have to neglect the rest of the Universe.
Let us take another example of the operations of law from Within and Without. You are living in a rented house that is so badly in need of repair that you refuse to pay your month’s rent until a betterment is made. Your landlord by process of law seizes your household goods and thus forces you to pay. While resenting the injustice, you settle the debt. This is the application of force. The body you occupy at present is out of repair and you refuse to pay the tribute of praise and gratitude to God for an unhealthy body, which your religious education has taught you is His due.
This mental attitude, you have been taught, is liable to cause the seizure of your body by a still worse sickness. If it is the Infinite Law that you be so punished you cannot hope to escape, for Infinite Law cannot be evaded and works with absolute and invariable certainty in every case. If you pause for a moment, you will remember that in dozens, perhaps hundreds of instances you have felt, and probably expressed, “ingratitude” of this sort, and yet you have not been “seized” by a worse sickness. Then the “Law” has failed to work in your case and has demonstrated that it is not a law at all.
When your body is feeling perfectly well after an attack of sickness you are disposed to feel grateful and to give thanks for your health, and you feel better and stronger that you have done this. This is the Law working from within. Your “ingratitude” was caused by your Reason refusing to act when called upon to give thanks for something undesirable. Your “gratitude” was caused by the Urge to Rightness moving your Reason to give thanks for something deserving thanks. This latter state of mind benefited you, as you are always benefited by obeying the Urge to Rightness within you.
The “ingratitude” may have injured you and made you feel worse, because you resented what you thought was the uncalled-for action of the Infinite in making you ill, and an unreasonable state of mind is always detrimental to health. The Infinite had nothing to do with your sickness. Consciously or Subconsciously you were entirely to blame, and furthermore, you are always to blame when your Reason does not work for Rightness. It is an axiom of common law that “ignorance” of the law furnishes no excuse.
When we arrive at the point of appreciating our responsibility we will lose no opportunity of learning the Law of our Being in order that we may obey it. It would be easy to pile up evidence that Infinite Law does not inflict penalties from outside of the Human Consciousness. From childhood we have heard of “Ananias and Sapphira his wife,” who fell dead because they lied. Doubtless we have all been taught alike that this was the penalty inflicted by the Infinite for telling deliberate untruths.
Doubtless we have all alike, though in a vague and general way, decided that there was nothing in it, for we all know how prevalent lying is and always has been, and have never heard of an authenticated case of a similar punishment being inflicted on the liar. If every person who told a lie dropped dead, the population of the earth would be thinned down in an hour as the most devastating plague has never yet reduced it in years of a prevalent and deadly scourge. We know, too, that death is an unreasonable penalty for such an offence as telling an untruth . . fortunately for the majority of people it is not even a jailable offence in the eyes of those who make our criminal laws.
The punishment for lying comes from within our Consciousness, and we feel ashamed and cheap in the quiet moments when memory recalls some deliberate untruth of which we have been guilty and Reason turns it over and over again in its mental stomach, and the Infinite Urge to Rightness causes us to promise ourselves not to repeat the performance. Somehow we know we did not break an Infinite law, yet we do not know how we know it, for we have all been very nebulous in our ideas of Infinite Law. We know we were not struck dead for doing it, and probably that is the basis of our disbelief in the existence of an Infinite law against lying. At this point we may as well recognize the fact that AN INFINITE LAW CANNOT BE BROKEN.
We have seen that Infinite Life censors every change of one state of mind into another state of mind, and of course can prevent any action . . every action is the result of the changing of one state of mind into another state of mind . . transgressing its law. If Infinity had seen fit to enact so-called moral or religious laws they would have been of the unchanging, universal Rightness of Infinity itself, and It would have seen to their enforcement; breaking such laws would be impossible, and this would have robbed Man of his “Free Will,” of the opportunity of exercising his Reason, and he would have ceased to be a man, or rather he never would have been a man; he would be a righteous automaton, in no sense more responsible or uplifted than the highest type of animal or tree. It may occur to you that the Infinite Urge to Rightness, being an Infinite law, cannot, therefore, be resisted.
“How then,” you may ask, “do you account for the ignoring or resisting by the Human Consciousness of this Infinite Urge, as it must ignore or resist it when it does a wrong thing?” The Infinite Urge cannot be ignored or resisted in what it sets out to do, but we must be very careful properly to understand the office of the Infinite Urge. It has already been shown that the Urge bears alike upon all Expressed Life; that it COERCES No Thing, CO-OPERATES with Every Thing. The Urge is to the Rightness of each Thing . . towards the perfection of each Thing according to its Kind. Mark this: The Urge is that which moves each Thing in an uplift towards becoming the best Thing of its Kind of Thing.
This Urge is No Where and In No Thing resisted or ignored. Right and Wrong, as we ordinarily use the words, do not apply to the Rightness which has to do only with the greatest achievement possible of a Thing as its KIND of Thing. Rightness here is Positive, not Relative, and has nothing to do with Morals or Religion. Morals have to do with the relation between members of the human species; the word Religion is used to express the relation between Man and his Maker. Infinity does not interfere in these relations. If the Urge forced men to be right in these respects it is unnecessary to repeat that they would cease to be men and become automatons. As will shortly be shown, these relations depend entirely upon human Reason.
The Urge to Rightness as it affects Man bears upon his perfection as an animal and upon his perfection as a REASONING BEING. The relation of the Urge to Man as an animal is identical with its relation to every other Consciousness. Its relation to Man as a REASONING BEING is that of a power which prevents him consciously doing anything that at the moment of action his Reason decides is not right for HIM to do. This brings us face to face with the fact that IT IS AS IMPOSSIBLE FOR MAN CONSCIOUSLY TO DO ANYTHING WHICH AT THE MOMENT OF ACTION HIS REASON DECIDES IS NOT RIGHT FOR HIM TO DO, AS IT IS FOR HIM TO CHANGE FROM BEING A MAN INTO A MONKEY OR A TREE. We now see still more vividly the supreme place Reason occupies in Expressed Life. Infinity does not coerce the Human Consciousness into any set line of Rightness . . that would rob a man of his Free Will, individuality, of his status as a man, and make him automatic in the set line of Rightness provided by the Infinite. What the Infinite does force the Human Consciousness . . REASON . . to do, is to make a decision before it can Consciously act, and that decision must be in accordance with what the Consciousness . . REASON . . at the moment of action declares to be RIGHT. Note the difference between “Consciously” acting and “Subconsciously” acting.
Our Subconscious, our Habit Life, which is in charge of the things we do repetitionally, such as breathing, digesting, the circulation of our blood, the action of our muscles and nerves, in fact of all those things we call our automatic processes, does its work without reference to our reasoning Consciousnesses, and the reasoning Consciousness does not interfere with these processes when they are carried on with the perfection characteristic of a Subconsciousness in a normal, that is to say a healthy, condition. Those changes in our states of mind which call upon Reason for a decision as to what our state of mind shall be at the moment of action, are what we call Conscious changes.
These Conscious changes are what we call decisions as to what is Right and what is Wrong for US; i. e., what is the best thing for US to do. Thus we are forced to exercise our Reason in what it declares at the moment of action to be Right, before we Consciously act. This, then, makes Reason the censor of every Conscious action. In this regard it occupies the same place in the Ego that Infinite Life occupies in every change of one state of mind into another state of mind in the processes of every Thing in Expressed Life. Thus Reason, if it refuses to sanction any Conscious action, inhibits that action.
This forcing of Reason to censor all the Conscious actions of the Ego is obviously for the purpose of forcing Man so continually to exercise his Reason as ultimately to enable him by experience to arrive at a RIGHTNES’S OF HIS OWN FINDING. We have long known that we must come to a decision, i. e., our Reason must settle upon the course to be pursued, before it releases its “clutch” . . the Will . . and permits the mechanism of our Being Consciously to act. The view that the Reason at the moment of .action must consider itself RIGHT has not hitherto been distinctly stated.
On the other hand, it has been generally held that we are capable of deliberately doing a “Wrong” thing, knowing and deciding it to be wrong for US to do at the moment of action. Note carefully the “for US” to do, for we often do things which at the moment of action we decide are right for US to do, while at the same time holding a very decided opinion that the same act done TO US would be unqualifiedly Wrong. It is in this way that the Egoism of every Expression of Life declares itself. As has been previously stated, this Egoism, when manifested by the Infinite, is the Law of Rightness itself . . the one Law of the Infinite. Each Expression of Life, each Thing, represents the Infinite and to itself IS the Infinite, and assumes the Egoism, the Rightness of the Infinite.
In Unreasoning Nature this is justifiable, insomuch as each Thing acts with the automatic Rightness set for it by the Infinite. In Reasoning Nature the Infinite has obviously declared that each Consciousness shall act, and act ONLY from a Rightness set by that Consciousness at the moment of action. This of course is justifiable from the Infinite point of view, insomuch as everything must be done in accordance with the Urge to Rightness, each Thing after the RIGHTNESS OF ITS KIND. The RIGHTNESS OF ITS KIND of the Human Consciousness is obviously that which it fixes as such at the moment of Conscious action. In this way the Infinite Law is obeyed, both as to Rightness and as to the preservation of Man’s Individuality . . his Free Will.
That Man always justifies the choice given him of finding His Own Rightness is not so apparent, but on examination it is seen that he would otherwise have no opportunity of gaining the experience necessary to arrive at a perfect Rightness of His Own Finding . . a destiny which at every turn of these studies becomes more obviously the condition for which he is being prepared.
Now let us examine the grounds upon which we have based the assumption that at the moment of acting the Reason must decide that it . . the Consciousness . . is doing the right thing for IT to do, before the act can be performed. As before stated, we have all known, though perhaps not appreciated, the fact that the Reason must decide as to what is to be done before it releases its “clutch” . . the Will . . and our Being is permitted to think, i. e., act. It is our Reason that decides that we will walk before we Think walking, i. e., act walking . . walk.
We do not think that we will rise up from our chair until our Reason has decided that the RIGHT thing at that moment is to rise up. Then we Think rising up, i. e., we rise up. If our Reason decides that it is the wrong thing for us to rise up, we of course do not think rising up, and remain in our seat. Circumstances may be such that at one moment we decide to rise up, but before our state of mind has changed into a “rising up state of mind” our Reason decides that we will not rise up.
At one moment our Reason may favor one course of procedure, while at the next moment it decides on the opposite course, and a moment after returns to its original impulse, and at the next moment changes again. This is what we call the working of our spiritual digestive apparatus, the weighing of the “pros” and “cons,” the considering of the arguments for and against any proposed action. When Reason finally decides that a certain course of procedure is the right one, then we think, act, follow that course of procedure.
Let us take a more serious example. A man’s Reason is debating whether he shall commit a theft or leave the coveted object untouched. The Urge to Rightness within him tells him that the coveted thing is not his, that he has no right to it, that he would resent the stealing of a thing from HIM, and he decides that he will not steal the thing. His Subconsciousness, his Habit Life, tells him that everything is his that he can “get away with,” that the cheats, the impostors, the frauds who constitute so large a proportion of his business acquaintances, are all thieves, and he might as well be a thief as any of the rest of them. He takes another look at the coveted object and decides he will take it.
As he moves towards it he is stricken with fear. What will happen to him if he is discovered? He will be sent to jail, disgraced. He decides not to take it. Another look at the coveted object and he is again filled with a longing for its possession. He argues that there is no danger of him being discovered. No one is looking. No one will know he has been there. Others will be suspected. That he wants it so badly, he argues, gives him a title to it. Why should HE not take a thing which was evidently designed to be HIS or he would not have such a consuming desire for it?
Everything good was intended for HIM. He would make a better use of it than anyone else. It would not be wrong for HIM to take it, because it would do HIM so much good. At this point he takes it, because he has decided that it would not be wrong, but right, for HIM to take it. He did not take it when he thought of being sent to jail, for it would not be nice for HIM to be in jail; that would be wrong for HIM.
Let us take another case. A man is contemplating suicide. He has been taught that there is a Divine law against suicide. He knows that such an act is against the law of the community. He thinks of the disgrace it would be to his family; the family is HIS, it would be a disgrace to HIM, and he decides he will not do it. Ill health, poverty, suffering, are all threatening him. He cannot stand it. No other man has been in such a terrible condition; he has been made the victim of all the darts of outrageous fortune. It would be wrong for a man to commit suicide under ordinary circumstances, but for HIM, with nothing but dire poverty, continuous suffering, and unbroken loneliness, he has a RIGHT to end his life.
It is HIS life, he is the center of all Life to himself; he has a right to do with it as he pleases. It would be not only wrong, but foolish, for him to keep on living. “Yes,” he decides, “it is the right thing for me to do.” And he does it. But not until he has decided that it is the RIGHT thing for HIM to do. Lest he change his mind and decide that it would be a wrong thing for him to do, he does it hurriedly. We cannot conceive of a man committing suicide while he is mentally well balanced and prosperous and well, for we cannot understand why he would think it was right for HIM to do it. Indeed, if we look into it we cannot conceive of anyone consciously doing anything which he at the moment of action has not decided is the BEST thing for HIM to do, the RIGHT thing for HIM to do. Try for a moment to think of a man committing suicide against his will.
The suggestion is preposterous. What, then, is his Will but the voice, the decision of his Reason? Then no man can be conceived of as committing suicide when his Reason tells him it is a wrong thing for HIM to do. When Reason arrives at a decision it arrives at a something which it considers right for IT to do. If Reason has arrived at the decision that it is wrong for IT to do the thing proposed, how is the thing to be done? The Will does not start the Thinking . . the Acting . . and as far as acting is concerned the Being remains in a state of passivity. The man who commits suicide does not require to consider self-destruction right as a general principle, but only right for HIM.
As expressing universal Egoism it is easy for HIM to make the distinction. It is perhaps harder than any of us who have not been tempted to self-destruction can appreciate, for a man with Reason unbalanced by disease, misfortune, and black environment, not to make the distinction. One thing is certain, that no one commits suicide until his Reason, or what is left him of it, approves the act as right for HIM.
Without seeking further illustrations we have a right to assume that there is no crime so heinous, no folly so flagrant, that the one guilty of it has not found an “excuse” . . which is but a trick of Reason . . for considering that he or she had a RIGHT to commit it. The guilty one might easily be the first one to condemn the same act when committed by another, but this only proves that what we call right and wrong are not positive, but relative terms, as used in our ordinary reasoning. The old axiom, “Circumstances alter cases,” expresses this.
We not only know that “there is a right way to do a right thing,” but more frequently than we may be willing to admit we consider that there is a right way to do a wrong thing, as well as a wrong way to do a right thing and a wrong way to do a wrong thing. This phase of our study has shown us the origin of that very convenient thing, an Excuse. If we analyze Excuses we will find they are nothing but tricks by which Reason has been cajoled into asserting as right at the moment of action, something which it would have rejected upon more careful examination.
When we hear that some person has committed some folly or crime which was “without excuse,” we are apt to consider that it must have been pretty bad that an “excuse” could not be found for it. Yet the one guilty of it no doubt had an excuse, as everyone has for whatever one does. Is it not a fact that looking back at our own mistakes, or looking at the mistakes of others, we decide them to be inexcusable? We are almost certain to think or say, “I must have been crazy when I did it,” or “He must have been crazy when he did it.” There is more truth than we suspect in such a declaration, for we do not commit follies or crimes in moments of sound judgment . . i. e., when Reason is working Rightness.
Such things are the outcome of weakened Reason, and insanity is nothing but an impairment of the machinery by which Reason expresses itself. This machinery can be impaired not only by disease or accident, but by Habit. We can entertain thoughts of folly or crime until our Reason becomes so habituated to them, to the weighing of them as light and trivial, to the playing with them till they take on an Appearance of Rightness, that at last in a fool moment it decides that they are Right, the clutch . . the Will . . is released, and the folly or crime becomes an act. That we must reason at the moment of conscious action that the action is right, by no means relieves us of our responsibility; it should and must increase our sense of responsibility. How disgusted and sore we feel the instant we discover that we have been “fooled!”
What a contempt we have for ourselves when we find we have been the victim of some cheap fraud or smooth-tongued swindler! How we begin to suspect that our Reason, proud as we have been of it, is little better than that of an infant when we find we have made a disastrous and . . what should have been obvious to us at the moment of action . . a fool investment. Yet these things teach us commercial wisdom and we learn to avoid hasty decisions where things of monetary value are involved.
How else can we learn to become Right in our decisions when purely moral questions are involved? Surely if we teach ourselves, and those whose education we help to direct, that the decisions we are called upon to make so frequently every day Cause everything that Affects us morally as well as financially and physically, we will learn to lead more Reasonable lives.
Cause and Effect will be continually staring us in the face, and the same sense of “cheapness,” “nogoodness,” will come to us when we make a moral as when we make a financial mistake. This subject will be taken up again, but in the meantime we may be sure that if we follow where Enlightened Reason leads us we can make no mistake.
CHAPTER XIII
The Laws Of Expressed Life — Their Evolution And Scope — The Law Of Moses.
Having satisfied ourselves that there is but one Infinite Law . . Rightness . . and that it is unbreakable and irresistible, let us look at the laws that have been evolved by the combinations and partnerships of Elemental Atoms . . Consciousnesses. These combinations and partnerships, as we have seen, have produced almost innumerable Subconsciousnesses, and combinations of Subconsciousnesses, all of which work towards the perfection of their Kind with such unerring regularity and Rightness that we must conclude that they are governed by laws. In the near centuries scientists have been able to codify many of these laws.
Since Newton’s discovery of the Law of Gravitation research has become easier, and it may be as well to examine this Force and its relations in order that we may see that organic as well as inorganic life is ruled by the same impulse. The law of Gravitation is so invariable in its operations that it may easily be mistaken for an Infinite rather than a finite law. That it has to do with the assembling of atoms into a condition of density makes it evident that it is not an Infinite law, as it concerns Things only, and their relations to each other in Time and Space.
Each atom, filled to its fullness with Infinite Life giving out from its Stillness the impulse of Motion, moves as that impulse directs it to move; this impulse is the Infinite Urge, the expression of the Infinite Law of Rightness, to be manifested by the Atom, not by IT. This is a rather subtle point, but an important one. It has been seen that the Infinite works from within the Consciousness and as a part of it, thus causing the atom to move of its own free will, though its conscious will is exactly that which the Infinite determined it to be.
If it were not so, and Infinite Life acted upon the atom as a compelling force from without, then Gravitation would become an Infinite law, with a set line of Rightness for all Consciousnesses alike, thus depriving the Consciousness of its individuality, a procedure contrary to the Infinite law of Rightness, as well as depriving the inorganic Universe of variety as to shapes and magnitudes. In the working of Gravitation as a law of Expressed rather than Unexpressed Life, Geology shows that atoms congregate according to their Kind, i. e., their density.
While atoms seek the center of the largest body of density nearest to them, their whole tendency is to assemble according to their Kind. This is in obedience to the law of Attraction . . the law known in Reasoning Life as the Community impulse, the tendency to Colonize. When particles of gold are found in quartz we may be sure that individually they have been struggling to assemble themselves; when we find them in nuggets we may know that a certain number of them have succeeded in this. Such forces as water, wind, heat and electricity contribute to the assembling of atoms with their Kind.
As heat, through volcanic eruptions and other manifestations of its energy, releases the gold particles in the quartz and frees other particles from uncongenial surroundings, so wind and water and other forces enable them to get together in accordance with the impulse of their Kind. Thus we see great bodies of sand collected as deserts, each Kind of sand getting together as a separate colony. Even on the beaches of our coasts where the water is continually disturbing the sand, we find this colonizing continually going on, and the different kinds of sand getting together either in large bodies or layers.
Chalk cliffs, large deposits of clay, the strata of rocks, so-called deposits of iron, copper, etc., all show the working of this law of Attraction and declare the wisdom of the Infinite in Causing the law of Gravitation to be modified by the laws of Attraction and Repulsion, i. e., the expression of the individuality of the atoms, of their fondness for their Kind. If it were otherwise, we would find all density an aggregation of unassorted atoms unable to accomplish the purposes for which they were designed, everything huddling to a center regardless of individuality.
In Reasoning Life we find the same forces at work. We speak of the “gravitation” of human beings to the large centers of population. In large cities we find the law of Attraction colonizing people of various nationalities, and so obvious is the working of this law that in all cities attractive to foreigners we hear of the Hungarian section, the Polish section, the Itajian section, etc.
We find people segregating themselves socially according to their education and wealth, the habitations of the rich and the poor seldom intermingling. In Unreasoning animal life it is the same. In America the prairies were once alive with huge herds of buffalo that lived and moved as communities under recognized leaders. Droves of wild horses raced across the llanos of South America. Wolves traveled in packs. Wild geese and ducks migrated in huge flocks. These have disappeared or are disappearing. We still see swarms of bees, hills of ants, clouds of locusts, and so many evidences of community life amongst these beings that we can have no further doubt of the existence of the impulse that brings them and holds them together.
It having been seen how this central and centralizing law of Gravitation works in every variety of Expressed Life, let us glance at the evolution of other laws specially designed for the betterment of Reasoning Life . . Man. In his Egoism Man naturally regards all Physical laws as having been designed for his betterment, and takes no thought as to whether the fulfillment of the law of Attraction does or does not afford happiness and contentment to the Unreasoning atoms. Having come to the viewpoint that everything is Mind, and that everything Thinks, it would not be difficult for us to go further and try to appreciate a condition of contentment and pride as existing in Unreasoning Nature when it has arrived by combinations, partnerships and colonizations at the condition it esteems perfection.
It goes towards this perfection from a set Point of Rightness, while Man is forced to find his own Point of Rightness, but it is not difficult to believe that a similar enjoyable sense of achievement is relatively felt by both. Leaving this point as not strictly pertinent to our enquiry, let us glance at forces radiating from a center . . that which has been made familiar to us by scientists as Centrifugal. In Reasoning Nature this finds its counterpart in federations, first in states and nations combining for the common good, but ruled from a central point, as the United States is ruled from Washington, and Great Britain and her colonies from London.
Each state or colony has its own center of power, located in its Capital. Each city, county and town is a center of municipal power, as each collection of inorganic atoms has a center ol power. Each has laws locally adapted to its necessities, carefully arranged so as not to conflict with higher laws of greater centers.
Peripheral forces, those throwing out atoms from the circumference of a circle or an ellipse, find their counterpart in Reasoning Life as well as Unreasoning animal life, in the outcasts and unfortunates that in the daily whirl of things are ejected from ordinary community life, and colonize by themselves. These are found amongst wild animals in the derelicts left by the herds and flocks and swarms, to perish.
In Reasoning Life they are found in hospitals and asylums and prisons, where Reason attends to their comfort and betterment more successfully than could be done by ministering to them as individuals. In all cases we have seen that what in science are known as Elemental Laws have their counterparts in the laws established by Reason, and again must come to the conclusion that all Expressed Life is impelled by the same Urge to Rightness.
When we come to the laws established by Reasoning communities for moral self-control, we find ourselves in a new field of operation, but the same Principle prevails according to the nearness to which that community approaches Rightness. What is “moral self-control”? We know that physical self-control is the management of the Body by the Will. Perfect physical self-control is the full and instant response of the Body to the call of the Will . . the voice of Reason.
Thus if we have perfect control of our body, when we reason that the Right thing for us to do is to walk, the clutch of the Will is released and we walk perfectly, as our Consciousness esteems perfection in walking. Moral laws are those which express the relation between man and man, and moral self-control, then, must mean the controlling of these relations so as to obtain instant response by the body politic to the call of that which is its center. To obtain instant compliance to the demands of authority, penalties are provided for disobedience.
These penalties, great or small as Reason judges the offense to merit, from death or life imprisonment down to a few days in jail or a petty fine, have no counterparts in Infinity or the elemental laws of organic or inorganic life. They are purely the outgrowth of Reason . . the Law of Now . . and are built up from the Memory Life as to what is best fitted to compel obedience. It is here we first find, in all our tracings of the Expressions of Life, obedience by compulsion. In purely animal life we see the stronger animal take that which it desires from the weaker, but that is the outgrowth of the animal Subconsciousness, which considers as its own everything necessary to its betterment, and nothing is exacted as a penalty. In Infinite as well as in Unreasoning Expressed Life there is a set Rightness, and the law of this fixed Rightness cannot be broken, consequently there can be no penalties.
Communities, we know, in every instance desire their laws to express the combined Reason of the community, and the penalties for the infraction of these laws are invariably fixed, and have been from time immemorial, by the central power of that community. At one time this central power was vested in some absolute ruler, who by the force of circumstances or his own intelligence occupied for a time the chief place, made arbitrary laws, and controlled the lives, liberties, and pursuit of happiness of his subjects as he saw fit. These kings, or chiefs, were often bloodthirsty tyrants, though sometimes as wise and good as the Light of their Time permitted . . or, to put it more exactly, as the enlightenment of their subjects demanded.
None of them had any Light as we can find it except through Reason, and as the intakes of their Reason were opened or closed to the Infinite Urge to Rightness were they superior to or beneath their surroundings. As education became more widely diffused, as the experience of the past as provided by history became common, as a knowledge of the world’s surface as presented by geography grew general, as the laws of the so-called heavenly bodies were outlined by astronomy, and secrets of the world’s upbuilding were revealed by geology, and other hidden things were made plain by kindred sciences, the people became more capable of self-government, the individualism of the Human Consciousness declared itself, and Absolutism faded away until now no nation is without its parliamentary government, no matter what its Chief Executive may be called.
With the increasing share that the Reason of the individual has obtained in governments of all kinds, laws have been better adapted to human necessities, and penalties better fitted to the gravity of offenses. Hangings, burnings, and torturings for witchcraft and heresy have disappeared; minor offenses such as sheep-stealing are not punished with death; imprisonment for debt has been practically abolished, and slavery has become a thing of the past. What brought about these changes except the progress of Human Reason? Why have cruel penalties been abolished for offenses imaginary and real, except at the call of Reason?
What Light has there been to guide Man except his Reason, illumined, as often it was without him understanding the means of his illumination, by the Infinite Urge to Rightness? That the personal and partial illumination of a few individuals through having found, more than others, of the Infinite Light, has been sufficient to bring about these world changes except by a slow and faulty dissemination of their knowledge to the Reason of the masses, cannot be shown. The progress has been educational and made entirely through Reason, both as to the expression of such Light as we have and the use we have made of it.
The fact that the hanging, burning, and torturing of witches and heretics not only survived in so-called civilized countries for over three-quarters of the time that has elapsed since the beginning of the Christian era, but were indeed inflicted by the self-appointed custodians of Christian Truth, proves that until Reason abolished these things so-called Religion upheld them.
It is true there has always been a conflict between Reason and Revelation. Theologians until recently have been unanimous in denouncing the claim of Reason to criticize what purports to be Revelation. While doing this as a class, each sect of Theologians has been unsparing in its criticism of what is esteemed to be Revelation by every other sect of Theologians. Followers of Buddha, Confucius, Mahomet and Christ are each numbered by the millions, yet amongst the last named there are more, and more radical differences of “Faith” than amongst the other three.
The Theologians of the first three classes each claim a superior Light, but do not deny that the others have some Light. This denial is left to the Christian Theologians, who claim that their Sacred Writings contain it all, and that the others are impositions. Yet they do not agree amongst themselves. What is the matter? They are simply mistaken as to the manner, matter, and extent of the Revelations in Sacred Writings of all kinds. Their differences can only be accounted for by the different workings of the REASON which guided and guides each one of them. It is their only means of assimilating any knowledge which comes into their Consciousness. If they had no Reason, there would be no Revelation, for none would be needed.
Man would not exist, and the Thing nearest, most resembling Man, but without Reason, would be automatically Right, having in common with all Unreasoning Nature a Rightness ALREADY POUND FOR HIM. Then there would have been no Theology, no Theologians, and the world would have been at peace, but it would have been without that complex creature, Man, whose continual struggles for a Rightness of His Own Finding have so irritated the Doctors of Divinity. But glory be! He will find it in spite of them or of anyone whose ambition it is to hold a high place in the zone outside of Reason.
The code of laws with which the majority of us are most familiar as being the most ancient and reasonable extant, is that of Moses, but that he had these laws already graven on tables of stone handed to him by Infinity in the “midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness” of Horeb, is an account of their origin which we cannot accept. The fact that these laws were so reasonable, so well adapted to the necessities of the human race in general, and appeared at a time long considered to be one of ignorance and semi-barbarity, caused a considerable section of mankind for many centuries to believe in the miraculous nature of their origin, and the majority of our moral laws to this day have them as their basis.
The researches of science have not only shown the impossibility of such a Personal God as the one described as speaking to Moses, but have shown that a civilization vastly superior to that of the Hebrews existed long prior to the placing of these laws in the Ark of the Covenant. Moses himself, as described in the Holy Writings, was reared and educated in the royal household of Egypt, a country in which the arts and sciences had made great progress, and which had a history, and consequently an experience, antedating that of the Hebrews by many centuries.
A wealth of tablets and memorials has been unearthed not only in Egypt, but taken from the ruins of ancient Babylon and other Assyrian cities, which, as they have been deciphered, point very conclusively to the existence of laws, not only amongst the Assyrians, but further back still amongst the Chaldeans, and in a still more remote period amongst the Shemerians, similar and prior to those of Moses and containing accounts anterior to by thousands of years, and somewhat contradictory of, the work of Moses as an historian. Evidence of this sort has been piled up into such an irrefutable mass that all sincere students of it have ceased to regard Moses as the direct agent of what they esteem to be an impossible God.
To these students Moses remains as a wonderfully wise law-giver, who, anxious to impress his not too enlightened people with the merit of his laws, considerably overstated the share which Infinity had in their making. This overstatement, no doubt, Moses justified to himself in the intensity of the Egoism which the unusual gift of Light seemed to warrant. He argued, doubtless, that his people would obey these laws more implicitly if they believed them to come directly from the hand of God; it would be for their good, and consequently RIGHT to cause them to believe this. Like all lawyers, great and small, have always been, he was not above placing the law and evidence he adduced in the most favorable light.
Whether these laws would have been more effectual if he had founded them on the simple basis of Cause and Effect, thus making them intelligible . . reasonable . . to the ordinary mind, and thus inducing it to manage its affairs upon what is always to be found to work Rightness, rather than by obscuring their origin in a blaze of unnatural glory and thus causing the reasoning mind not only to doubt the origin of the laws but sometimes to dispute their wisdom, must remain a matter for conjecture. We know that if we are led to doubt the authenticity of the account of anything’s origin we almost invariably begin to suspect the rightness of the thing itself. Even with the “supernatural” stimulation to obedience used by Moses, it is evident that the Israelites must have had seasons of doubt as to the verity of the story which had been given them with their laws.
These “seasons of doubt” could not have been caused by any imperfections in the laws themselves, but must have resulted from the serious and very prevalent disbelief as to whether the story of their origin told by Moses was true. At any rate, the Chosen People were given to backsliding, to the worship of Baal, and to the making of idols of their own. Of the last named, the making of the Golden Calf will be remembered as an example. This breaking of the first Commandment was so recurrent as to lead us to conclude that it was the one in which they had the least confidence . . this, too, at the time when the evidence of its origin, if such evidence existed, was freshest in the minds of the people. Is it, then, anything but natural that decades of centuries afterwards, in an age of vastly greater enlightenment, these doubts have grown to such proportions as they have?
Inherently these laws contain nothing which a student of Egyptian and Babylonian history could not with enlightened Reason have written. The special illumination shown is the glimpse of Infinity as the One God, the One Good. Even with the blaze of glory which must have filled the mind of Moses when it fastened upon Monotheism, there did not come a conception of the Infinite as a Principle, but he beheld it as a Man in a condition of exaggerated Power and Splendor. The Infinite Urge within him, to which he was so open, found the limitations of his Consciousness too great to allow this high conception of Deity as the Infinite Principle.
It is not to be wondered that the mind of Moses contained nothing able to become Conscious of this Principle. He lived in an era when science had not shown the universality of law, had not become awake to the millions of years since the beginning of Things, and his perspective, limited to a few centuries, included nothing but Palestine and the countries contiguous to it. When, stealing into his Awareness, came the thought, “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other Gods before me,” had he lived in the present century it would have meant, “I am the Infinite; I am my own Good. I can have no other Good than that which is in myself.”
This is the Monotheism of today; of Science, as it opens itself to the Infinite Urge to Rightness; of Theology, as it ceases to worship an impossible Personal God, and recognizes that all the Infinity there is or can be for each one of us is that which has always been and always will be within us. “Thou Shalt Have No Other GOD Before Thyself,” gentle reader. You are incapable of it, or rather, you are CAPABLE without it. GOD is merely a different way of spelling GOOD. We are each one of us incapable of realizing . . mark this word realizing . . anything more perfectly good than we ourselves would be if we were perfectly good. We know nothing, can know nothing, more accurately than we know ourselves. We can imagine nothing and nobody more perfect than we would be if we were perfect. The law of Egoism prevents this.
Each one of us is the center of the Universe to himself or herself. It is the Infinite Egoism within us declaring what we will yet be . . PERFECT. THOU CANST HAVE NO OTHER GOD BEFORE THYSELF. It is because we do not appreciate this that we are the poor boobs that we are. It is because we do not appreciate this that we are almost appalled at seeing it in print and somehow vaguely believing it is true. It will be when your Reason becomes Positive in its Rightness that it is so, that you will think with your whole Being that it is so, and your every action will prove that it is so, and you will cease to follow after the false gods of Avarice, Passion, Folly and Lust, as the Israelites wandered from the vague GOOD of Moses after Baal and the Golden Calf. As we are told that “Enoch Walked with God,” so we will learn to walk with God, that is, with the Good that is in us. We will hold its hand, accept its guidance, as we cannot hold the hand or feel the guidance of the Jehovah of Moses.
CHAPTER XIV
The Law Of Christ — Its Origin And How It Became Theologized.
Twenty centuries ago Western civilization in various degrees of advancement had for its center the Mediterranean Sea and the Orient was practically unknown to it. As its name suggests, this sea was supposed to be in the middle of the earth’s surface, which was then considered to be flat. Greece, Rome, and Egypt were the centers of learning, the greatest university in the world being then at Alexandria, and to that great Egyptian port came the scholars and scribes to benefit by the manuscripts which had been collected by the million in the library of the university.
The Sun Worship of Persia was most popular, but the Hebrews were then, as they had long been, accredited with being the most religious people, with minds best adapted to Theological thought. A colony said to consist of over thirty thousand Jews was settled in Alexandria, where some of them preserved in its purity the Judaic form of worship, while others permitted themselves to be deeply affected by the cosmopolitan thought of that great center of learning. Students of history, led by the law of Cause and Effect, have with one accord looked to what at that time was the center of Light for the first Expression of the CHRIST PRINCIPLE.
The Reasoning World had grown tired of the foolishness of idols and was not disposed to accept the not too attractive picture drawn by the Chosen People, of the God who was the God of Israel alone. Were it not for the law of Egoism, the workings of which we have observed to be so powerful, we could not conceive of a small, crudely developed and vanquished people still hugging to themselves the belief that the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was the Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe, but the God . . the Good . . of Israel only.
If we pause to think a moment of the meaning of the Infinite being confined in His love and attentions to one beggarly people and caring nothing for what became of the rest of the world’s population, we must be stunned by the colossal impudence of such an assumption. This view of the Hebrew outlook must have dawned on the thoughtful men of that race as they mingled in Alexandria with students from countries in many respects more enlightened than Palestine dared claim to be. The deeply devotional nature of the Jew could not, however, be eradicated by the confusion which he must have felt in cosmopolitan Alexandria when he was discovered to be the possessor of a Faith so narrow and hide-bound.
Like their fathers, who dwelt in sun and sand-blackened tents and through long periods of fasting and prayer cried, “O thou God of my fathers, show me the way,” these students, too, reached out in the darkness in search of a Guiding Hand. As their fathers were answered by the incoming of Prophetic Light to the extent their Consciousnesses could comprehend it, so it is not difficult to believe these students, with enlarged capacity of comprehension, found still greater Light, and upon some One, or upon some Group, dawned the Christ Principle . . LOVE, hitherto unknown in Jewish law.
This new Principle at once obliterated the difference between the Jew and the Gentile and made all mankind the objects of Infinite attention and affection. That this should have dawned upon the seeker after Truth does not seem to be even strange, but it seems to have been abhorrent to the average Israelite. In Egypt there was a strong organization known as the Therapeutse . . the Healers. The adherents of this sect are described as garbing themselves in white, avoiding wine and meat, and living on the plainest diet, that their thoughts and actions might be pure and their spiritual nature dominant. This Order spread to Palestine, and amongst the Jews was known as the Essenes, the strictest sect of which bore the name of Nazarites, and, though they received no mention in the New Testament, the Essenes appear in Jewish history to have been a well-known and meritorious organization.
Josephus, the great Jewish historian of the period in which Christ is said to have lived, is described as choosing between the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, becoming a disciple of the last named for several years, in endeavoring to live a life of purity, and though he ultimately became a Pharisee he must have retained a strong affection for the Essenes. Two startling facts become apparent when we find that Josephus, though giving minute descriptions of the events of that era, makes no mention whatever of the birth, life or death of Christ. It is true that a sentence merely naming Christ is to be found in some of his works, but even the Theologians with one accord repudiate it as an interpolation and admit that Josephus either ignored or had never heard of Christ.
The other fact is that in the New Testament, much as is said about the Pharisees and Sadducees, there is no mention of the Essenes, though that sect would naturally be the friends and co-workers of one of Christ’s lofty nature and mission. What, then, can the inference be except that Christ as a person did not exist, and that the Essenes, who are known to have existed, were, as a few individuals or as a body, the local custodians of the Christ Principle, which was so unpopular amongst the Jews that Josephus did not mention it, while the writers of the New Testament narrative avoided the mention of the Essenes lest that Order might be called upon to prove or disprove the existence of the historic Christ at a time when such a thing might have been possible?
These are not the only facts that lead to a disbelief in the historic Christ. Unlike Moses, who had the tables of stone on which the law was graven to prove that he was an intermediary between God and Man and left them as a treasure to His people, the historic Christ is not claimed to have transmitted or written a line, though He is by none suspected of having been illiterate. It would not have mattered, if He was what He is claimed to have been, whether He had any schooling or not; He was capable of successfully disputing with the Doctors of the Law, and such a thing as learning to write was unnecessary to One who had power to raise the dead and could easily have covered every rock in Palestine with inscriptions graven instantly by the Almighty hand to bear witness to His mission as the Son of God who had come to save the world.
Indeed, as He had come to save the whole world, and as a real part of the Infinite Father was Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient, He could have placed His law and the story of His mission on the rocky faces of every mountain of this planet, and knowing, as the Infinitely Wise must have known, that both His personality and His mission would be denied before He was cold from the cross, He would have left some indestructible memorial, or such an array of memorials that no dispute could have arisen. Indeed, we cannot conceive that One who worked such wonders as we are told He worked, failed to bring to His way of thinking every reasonable being in Palestine and all the little world of civilization that then existed.
If the miracles He worked were not sufficiently great for this He could have worked greater; if they were not sufficiently numerous He could have worked many more if He was a Rea] Part, the Empowered Messenger, of Infinity. But not a line of writing, not a particle of evidence of any kind except the Gospels, the oldest of which . . said to be that of Mark . . is not even claimed to have been written for at least thirty years after Christ’s death. How do Theologians explain that such overwhelming evidences of supernatural power were not presented as would at once and forever have made dispute impossible if Christ’s mission and message were intended as a finality?
According to them nothing should have been left to REASON, as Reason has nothing to do with shaping Faith. If such is the case, and Christ was a supernatural visitant, why was the getting together of evidence of His existence not begun for thirty years after His death, and admittedly not completed by the other Gospel writers till they must have been in their extreme dotage, or left to be written after they had died, with no more accuracy than could be given to a tradition? Even the getting back of so-called Apostolic writings to within a generation, or two generations, after His alleged death is largely a matter of guesswork, for the oldest manuscripts of the Gospels that have been found were written in Greek and of a date over three hundred years after the time of the alleged Messiah.
How is it that nothing has been found written in the language of the country in which the tremendous events recorded are said to have taken place . . a country in which the Greek language was unknown to the peasants of the interior, such as the Apostles are claimed to have been? It is as weak, as evidence, as would be an account, written in French by a Franco-Scotchman living in Rome, of a series of events in the Lowlands of Scotland hundreds of years prior to its date. What would we think of the common sense of Captain Peary in his search for the North Pole if he had not written a line, nor registered an observation, nor communicated with any Geographical Society, nor taken any steps whatever to establish his point of geographical Rightness, but had left everything to a dozen of his illiterate Icelandic sailors to be described by them from memory after his death or handed down by them as tradition?
What sort of evidence would these traditions be considered three hundred years hence if found written in a language not spoken by Captain Peary nor any of his sailors? We cannot conceive of a course so obviously idiotic being pursued by any man deserving the slightest recognition as Great, yet it would very nearly parallel the alleged history we have of Christ and His work in Palestine.
That Christ was directly begotten of God and had all the powers of His Father, yet failed to exercise all His powers on a mission so important as the salvation of the human race, is not conceivable. If He had such powers and did not exercise them it is because He did not desire to, and willfully withheld such overwhelming and obvious demonstrations as would have been irresistible and never-to-be-forgotten. If He was a human being simply, with extraordinary comprehension of the Infinite law and the laws of Expressed Life as have since been demonstrated by science to exist, He would have taken some better means to establish the fact that He lived and worked, as it is alleged He lived and worked, than were taken.
No man, no superman, with knowledge and foresight such as Christ must have had of the superlative importance of His mission and the difficulties of establishing Himself and it in history, would have neglected this important feature of His work. Yet it was so neglected, for even His alleged immediate followers, who must have known how uncertain was their tenure of life, are not even claimed to have begun the work of putting His life and mission on record until so many years had elapsed . . in that country where communication was so difficult, where there were no post offices, no newspapers, no means of doing things as they are done nowadays . . that the genuineness of their testimony was left open to the gravest doubts.
No ordinary man would have left his business . . Christ’s “business” was the “work of the Father” . . in such a state, with premonitions such as He had of an untimely end. The more we turn over alleged facts in our Reason, the more the testimony appears to lose even the value of “hearsay” evidence. No written statements appeared until even “hearsay” denials of the truth of them had become practically impossible. We do no! know how much publicity Mark’s account of Christ’s doings was given at the time it is claimed to have been written.
Its circulation was probably confined to those who had assisted in its preparation, and as there were no newspapers published at that time there could have then been no discussion of its authenticity and no incentive could have been felt nor means easily adopted for anyone knowing the untruth of it to put a rebuttal of the story in a lasting shape. The strongest point the believers in the historic Christ have so far been able to present has been the survival and influence of the doctrines alleged to have been taught by Him. Nothing but “truth,” they say, could have thus survived through the centuries. This is admittedly true. The principles alleged to have been taught by Christ were sound and far ahead of their time, and if they had not been Theologized would have had vastly greater effect.
There is no dispute that at or about the time of Christ a propaganda for the spread of these principles was begun, nor that they were wider, deeper and greater than could be comprehended by those who Theologized them. It is not the purpose of this work to minimize, but to magnify the Christ Principle. It is unimportant, as affecting the soundness of the position taken herein, whether Christ as a man lived and labored as He is described in the New Testament to have lived and labored, or if it was John, the Alexandrian Jew and “apostle,” or someone unknown to us, who saw the Light and started the propaganda for its diffusion by projecting a theoretical Christ, clothing Him in the garb of a Nazarene, and having slightly varying accounts of His origin and doings written by pseudo-apostles.
If it was the latter, whoever evolved the idea did it for what he esteemed RIGHTNESS . . that which would be the most effective. It is not easy to teach abstract principles. Unpersonified virtues are not appreciated. Following a leader is much easier than following a principle. We are all willing to try to do that desirable thing said to have been done by another, while we might refuse even to attempt to follow the same line of conduct if it had never been demonstrated to be feasible. The problem of inducing the world to accept the Christ Principle must have seemed indeed difficult to him who first saw its force and beauty, and it could not have appeared to be a great task to such a mind to invent a personage to personify the principles and become a Hero whom mankind would follow.
The spread of the propaganda seems to have been most successful amongst the Jews living remote from Jerusalem, and we are told (Acts 11:26) “The Disciples (students) were called Christians first in Antioch” . . a city some three hundred miles northeast of Jerusalem. To this day Christianity, except amongst foreigners, has little hold in Palestine. Paul, whose writings are of a period about a hundred years after Christ, as he himself admits, before his conversion was a fanatical Jew, and his writings prove that after his conversion he became a fanatical Christian.
To him we appear to owe the first Theologizing of the Christ Principle, the working over of that which was Truth into what cannot be considered any better than human dogma and creed. Paul’s attempts to harmonize his faith as a Jew with his practices as a Christian; to hold to circumcision and yet reject it; to believe the Gentile has as good a status with the Infinite as the Jew while he was still unfreed from the prejudices of his race; to preach the Free Will of Man while holding to predestination, foreordination, and the like, show that, skilled as he was in logic, he had not grasped the true meaning of the Christ Principle.
After Paul, and with his writings as the principal basis, it was not hard for less sincere and less able men further to befuddle his Theology and to push the Light into greater obscurity. Nearly all the “miracles” ascribed to Christ are those of healing the sick, and upon these and a repetition of such wonders the author of the propaganda appears to have relied for the spread of the Principle. It is well known that the early Christians had great power for the healing of the sick and the control of their own bodies, but as the Christ Principle became enshrouded in Theological mummeries this disappeared.
What has just been said is based on the assumption that Christianity began with a theoretical rather than a personal Christ, and if we take one more glance at the picture which has been presented to us in the New Testament we will see how devoid of background and perspective it is; that it is like a photograph taken of a picture and not of flesh and blood. However this may appear to you, it is really immaterial whether Christ as a MAN ever lived or not; what is recognized as the CHRIST PRINCIPLE has lived in spite of the Theologians.
It is important, however, to establish that Christ as a GOD did not live and work as alleged. If His birth was a “miracle,” then what we had thought to have established as the law that Infinity does not interfere with nor intrude into any Consciousness, falls to the ground. If Christ had no earthly father, then the Infinite intruded into the Consciousness of Mary, contrary to everything which demonstrates the sanctity of the Consciousness of the minutest elemental atom. Even the writers of Genesis recognized that reproduction should be “everything after its kind.”
Every observer, every observation recorded in the history of Things demonstrates this law to be inviolable, to be the LAW OF RIGHTNESS ITSELF. Unless we absolutely deny our ability to arrive by REASON at any correct conclusion, we must put the Immaculate Conception into the book of myths with the stories of the supernatural origin of gods and demigods of all ages. Nothing in the alleged history of Christ or His claims supports the theory that He was actually a God, the Son . . without the intervention of a physical father . . of the Infinite. If He had been, there would have been a declaration of it made with such tremendous power that the whole Universe would have been shaken. Instead, we have but a voice reported to have been heard at Christ’s baptism saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Why, might we ask the believers in a Personal God, did not the Infinite appear in person and demonstrate the status of His alleged Son? But a small minority of the people nowadays believe in the manifestations of spirits through mediums or table-rappings, because they are incoherent and inconclusive, yet the whole world is asked to accept the Divinity of Christ on the basis of a similar manifestation said to have occurred half a lifetime before it was reported.
Why were the miracles, even if they took place as reported, done in such obscurity and locally so ineffectually that Palestine was not convulsed with fear and trembling at the presence of such a wonderworker? Yet Josephus and all the historians of that period apparently never heard of him, and Palestine as a community was unmoved. Why was anything left half done? If the Infinite sent His Son to do a thing, how came it about that it was not instantly done?
Sending His Son meant that the Infinite intended something to be done, and surely we cannot imagine that either His power or intention failed Theologians cannot argue that very little was given to us because we were able by means of Reason to complete the structure. They claim for Christ’s mission a finality that cannot be called in question. Then what was to have been done should have been done and left on record so that even the “wayfaring man though a fool” could not err therein.
If God sent His Son once and His mission failed to the extent that Christ’s did, why did not He send another Son, or the same Son again, and keep sending Him, if that is His way of doing business? That He sent His Son to be crucified as an Atonement for some preposterous sin committed by Adam before he was endowed with Reason and therefore could not have been a man at all, should not be entertained by any sane person. Indeed, the whole story of the supernatural Christ is a figment of the imagination; a picture painted in a little flat world filled with petty tyrants, ruled by gods and demi-gods who had to be propitiated by bloody sacrifices, burnt offerings, and unintelligible mummeries. That the world has worshipped this picture so long after the little flat world had been found to be a planet, one of innumerable celestial bodies governed by unchanging Infinite law, proves that religion with the majority of us is almost altogether Subconscious, and, like red hair and big feet, hereditary.
We have been seeking to see the Infinite from the standpoint of Reason enlightened by the Infinite Urge. And surely the picture of the great restful Everywhere, the reposeful Everything, the All-Wise, the Omnipotent Then, and Now, and Always, the Loving though Intangible in which every expressed Thing finds peace, is more beautiful to contemplate, more possible to realize, than the Yahweh, the Jehovah, the Personal Deity, full of jealousy and blood-thirst, who, if Hebraic history be true, was satisfied with being the God of nothing more important than the none too fruitful fields and not too lovely people of Palestine.
Before leaving this subject it might be well to answer the question, “How is it, if there never was a personal Christ, that to this day we reckon the year as it passes as being a certain number since Christ?” The present system of dating things as being in such a “year of our Lord” was not suggested until 526 years after the alleged birth of Christ. Before that time and long afterwards the years were computed according to the Julian calendar instituted by Caesar 46 years before Christ is alleged to have been born, having for its basis the foundation of Rome. According to this calendar, in 754 the monk Dionysius Exigius computed the present calendar . . the reckoning by Anno Domini.
But it did not for many years come into general observance, and not then in its present shape. In some countries and in certain periods the year was reckoned as beginning at the Annunciation, the 25th of March, while in other countries the year began at Christmas. Various changes were made at various times, but even yet the dates in the Christian and Julian calendars do not harmonize even after allowance is made for the different periods upon which they are based. This establishes the fact that our present calendar historically proves nothing, even if it tallied exactly with the Julian calendar, which it does not, as there is a discrepancy of some four or five years, which places the birth of Christ as commemorated by it some four or five years out of gear with the time it is said to have taken place.
Moreover, the Sunday of our calendar does not tally with the Sabbath of the Hebrews, the latter, as we all know, coming on Saturday. Again, Sunday and all the days of the week as we have them named commemorate the worship of Pagan gods, such as the worship of the Sun for Sunday, the Moon for Monday, Tiw for Tuesday, Woden for Wednesday, Thor for Thursday, Frigga for Friday and Saturn for Saturday. It is not possible in a work like this to go into further details, as it would take a book instead of a chapter to present the evidence obtainable that our calendar and many of our church services are founded on Pagan traditions. Indeed, our calendar, which was only put exactly in its present shape by Pope Gregory in 1582, when he annulled ten days and adjusted Leap Year, does not tally with the Greek calendar, which is also a Christian institution and has a Christmas and Easter of its own.
CHAPTER XV
“the Judgment Day” — Forever In Which To Decide.
We have seen in the course of these studies that everything is controlled by LAW. We have found but one law which is invariable, controlling Reasoning and Unreasoning Nature alike . . the Law of RIGHTNESS . . and have concluded that it is the only INFINITE LAW. The Finite Laws, those governing Expressed Life, we have found to be the co-operative impulses of the Consciousnesses and Subconsciousnesses of the Universe, acting and re-acting upon each other, and thus producing variety as the Laws of Attraction and Repulsion modify the Law of Gravity. The Infinite Law is Universal, Unbreakable . . Rightness must always and everywhere prevail.
We have seen that this RIGHTNESS is that of Each Thing After Its Kind and has nothing to do with what we call Moral Rightness, except that it exercises its Urge upon Reasoning Life as well as Unreasoning Life, thus giving to each an irresistible impulse towards the achievement of perfection from a SET POINT of RIGHTNES’S. In Unreasoning Life this SET POINT is fixed by Infinity in the Consciousness of each Thing, while in Reasoning Life the Consciousness must fix some POINT OF RIGHTNESS of its own at the moment of action before it can Consciously act.
In this way was the harmony of the Universe ordained, and in this way it is preserved, and we can conceive of no other way that either could have been accomplished. As the Infinite sets the will of all Unreasoning Consciousnesses and leaves them to work out their various partnerships and combinations and colonization’s by themselves, but always impelled by the Infinite Urge, it is evident that all Unreasoning Life is thus controlled by the Infinite, which at the same time divests itself of the management of the Things, which are thus left to manage themselves, yet without the possibility of mismanagement taking place.
Thus since the “creative” fiat or fiats which called the various Consciousnesses into existence, the GREAT RESTFUL INFINITE has had nothing to do with Unreasoning Life but put forth its Urge to Rightness. Its relation to Reasoning Life is absolutely the same. The purely animal Expression of human life has developed in the same way and by the same means as all other animal life, through experience and necessity, though the experience of Reasoning Life has been widened by Reason and has been modified by it to the extent that Reason has been brought to bear upon it. When the Infinite made it impossible for Reasoning Life Consciously to act without at the moment of action declaring its action to be RIGHT, it left Reasoning Life to its own devices, working upon it only as it works upon Unreasoning Life, by its general Urge to Rightness of its Kind.
Thus we all have to declare . . i. e., decide . . at the moment of conscious action that what we are about to do is RIGHT for US to do. When, judging from the effect of our action, we find we have not been RIGHT, we decide not to repeat the action, and have gained that much Experience. If again and again we repeat the same mistake it becomes a folly, i. e., the act of a fool. If, by reason of a Subconsciousness degenerated by repetitions of a mistake into the possession of a fool habit, as is the case with the so-called “incurable” drunkard, disease and the falling away from him of his physical body result, he certainly goes on to another plane of existence, where his experience will be more curative than it has been on this plane.
Of one thing we may be sure, that the Infinite, which censors every change of one state of mind into another state of mind, will as instantly pass the drunkard’s resolution of abstinence into his decision to take his last and fatal spree, as it will pass his decision to change from drunkenness into abstinence. He must gain his own experience and profit by it or suffer from it according to the extent that he has been guided by Rightness. That he is at the end of his experience when he drops this body given to him to express himself in Time and Space, Here and Now, is as unreasonable and contrary to everything that we see about us in Reasoning and Unreasoning Nature as it would be to consider him “dead” because he has taken off his clothing and gone to sleep.
His Consciousness . . Reason . . is Elemental, Indestructible, as is every other Elemental Consciousness. It is what individualizes him as a Man. Nothing like it is known to us in the Universe. It is one of the Elemental Expressions of Infinity, for it is Alone and did not come by chance, or partnership, or combination. It can be divested of nothing and remain Reason. It is indissolubly linked with the Subconsciousness, for without the Subconsciousness to prompt it to wrong decisions, or without the Supraconsciousness to prompt it to right decisions, it would have no office, and its indisputable purpose is to decide between what we call Right and Wrong.
The human Subconsciousness, which thus must continue to exist to provide employment for Reason, cannot lose its consciousness of shape and form, and the spiritual body when divested of its fleshly expression will always, as now, be filled to its fullness with Infinite Life, the Supraconsciousness. It must be evident, then, that this unique combination existing on this plane must continue to exist in progressive degrees of Rightness on all other planes. If it is not so, if the Subconsciousness falls away at what we call death and disappears into its elemental atoms, as is the case with all other Subconsciousnesses, Reason, incapable of making any other partnership, would be homeless, purposeless, meaningless, and therefore unlike any other elemental Consciousness in the Universe.
It is inconceivable that this Supreme Consciousness, the possession of which makes Man the pinnacle of Expressed Life, should, for lack of a Subconsciousness, be left as an indestructible, purposeless Thing. It is contrary to every manifestation of the Infinite’s purpose, which in all Things holds forth Perfection as the possible achievement of every Thing According to Its Kind. What, then, is the perfection of Reason . . the human Consciousness? It is the arrival at RIGHTNESS OF ITS OWN FINDING. It must decide . . and decide . . and decide . . and keep on deciding, through this life Here and Now, and through that life There and Then, until it reaches RIGHTNESS. Any other estimate of its purpose and perpetuity will not stand the scrutiny of even the unskilled.
Either everything is governed by law or it is not. If it is not, then the countless billions of Things are worked all at once in their different ways by the Infinite Mind without the intervention of an organized system which pre-supposes Law. To do this, the Infinite Mind must be capable of what to the Finite Mind is impossible, that of doing more than one thing at once, or of being in more places than one at a time, a state of things involving a contradiction of terms and instantly dismissed by the Reason. We cannot conceive of a motor car going in two directions at once, or of a man being in London and New York at the same time, or of thinking of food and philosophy at identically the same moment.
There is no necessity to think of the Infinite as we understand It being in two places at once, as IT is Everywhere and Everything always. That It can do two things at once is in every respect inconceivable. As we understand the Infinite It does but one thing, i. e., Urges everything to Rightness of its Kind, and as thinking and acting are the same to the Infinite as they are to us, the latter the expression of the former, the office of the Infinite is intelligible to us as it can be in no other way.
Try for a moment to imagine a lawless Universe. You can see nothing but chaos. The same argument that proves that the Universe is ruled by law proves that it is ALWAYS ruled by LAW, for if there was a moment when Law ceased to be it would be the moment when the Universe ceased to be . . Chaos. Next to Law comes Reason. Under the ONE INFINITE LAW . . RIGHTNESS . . Reason must and does rule all Reasoning Life. The Infinite does not reason, for reasoning is the process of arriving at Rightness, and the Infinite being always Right does not require to reason. Excepting Man, nothing requires to find Rightness, as each Thing after its Kind is ordained by the Infinite to a Rightness of its own. It is thus seen that Man stands beside and close to the Infinite, not “close” in a geographical sense, for the Infinite fills him to the fullness of his Consciousness, but close to the Infinite in the qualities and possibilities of MIND.
Between the Infinite and the Human Mind there is and can be nothing but that constriction which makes the human being a Thing instead of the Infinite itself. In other words, each one of us is the Infinite knowing himself or herself to be a man or a woman. That we know that this constriction exists is the reason that we know we are not in every sense the Infinite. It is because we have been taught that this constriction is greater, more tangible than it is, that we do not realize that we are as near to the Infinite as we are.
Again let us remember that this nearness is not special, as we are filled to our fullness with the Infinite, but that it ex-presses a likeness of quality, of purpose, which to each one of us should represent as an instant, propelling thing our possible perfection. When we fully recognize this we will cease to fumble in the darkness of Theological decisions to find the Holy Ghost or a personal Christ to act as an intermediary between us and that INFINITE of which we are, and which is of us. In the words of the Great Philosophy, “Why cry lo here! and lo there! The Kingdom of Good is within you.” If it be a Kingdom, you are King, and you have no over-lord; the over-lord is within you, it is the YOU that is to be. It then must be that all the God, the Good, that you have, or ever will have, is within you, and the Infinite, Irresistible, Eternal Law of Rightness, working upon you from within you, with unceasing Urge, will force you to decide . . and decide . . and decide, until you arrive at a Rightness of Your Own Finding, though it may take a million cycles of centuries before you arrive at the Perfection which must ultimately be yours.
“The Heavens and the earth may pass away,” or seem to pass away, the sun and the stars and the planets may disappear, but YOU, in a spiritual body, capable of joy or suffering as you may bring it upon yourself, will still be deciding . . deciding . . deciding . . until you become RIGHT. Would it not be well for you to begin to pay that respect to Reason which is its due NOW?
“This, then,” cries some weak spirit, “is all that your philosophy has to offer us . . an eternity of indecision.” Not an Eternity of Indecision, but of Deciding. What is life, as we are living it now, but a sequence of decidings . . of decisions? We decide to rise in the morning; we decide to eat our breakfast; we decide to go to work or play; we decide every hour how we shall conduct that which we engage in; and thus all day long we are deciding . . and deciding . . and deciding, until we decide to go to sleep, and wake up to begin deciding again.
What would life be if we had no decisions to make? Would it not be a dead level, an unendurable monotony, to those who are given Reason to use, not to fold up and put away ? Think for a moment of yourself with nothing to decide. You would be like the brute, the tree. If this philosophy, begotten of Science and Enlightened Reason, offers you an eternal opportunity of exercising your Consciousness . . Reason . . it offers you the eternal perpetuation of your personality by the exercise of which the Future becomes filled with possibilities of achievements and the joys they bring. Why do we keep our Reason busy with plans for Amassing Wealth, Obtaining Power, Becoming Popular, if it is not for the joy of achieving? The merest clod on the earth’s surface finds its or his joy in doing that thing best for which it or he is fitted. A Future without this would be a Blank.
Glance at the other side of the question . . at what Theology has to offer you . . a habitation in a City of White and Gold, Built Without Hands, Eternal in the Heavens. If you have the good fortune to enter this Abode of the Blessed . . an entrance obtained by chloroforming your Reason, not by means of it . . you will be privileged to gaze through countless years of “joy” at God seated on a Great White Throne, with Christ on one hand and the Holy Ghost on the other, and you will have nothing to decide, for everything will be decided for you . . you will be permitted to have no opinion, no vote. When the trumpet leading the orchestra starts Gloria in Excelsis, Gloria in Excelsis it must be, from the chief harp next the Throne down to the smallest penny whistle in the suburbs of the City of the Great King.
When it is the thing to loll around under the Tree of Life, then loll you must; you have no opinion, no voice in the matter. You are achieving nothing, you are going nowhere; in fact, you are nothing, for without Reason and its exercise you cease to be a Man. When you pass the Devil chained to the gatepost, as it is supposed he will be if he can be spared from the management of Hell, you won’t even want to give him a kick; you won’t have spunk enough even to make faces at him, for you will be wearing a Halo instead of a Consciousness. If it should so happen that you go to Hell, you have no choice whether you stay there or not, as to whether you roast . . and roast . . and roast, or not; roast you must.
As you are being taught that Reason is apt to lead you to Hell and not to Heaven, you perhaps may take your Reason with you, and if so, you will be able to spend your time in working out the problem of how you got there and why, and in cursing either yourself or the Almighty, or both, for having been born a Reasonable creature who was given but few moments on earth to make a final decision, without sufficient experience or evidence properly to decide whether you were predestined to be damned, or to be damned because you didn’t know enough to escape damnation. These are not alluring pictures, but Theology has nothing better to offer, and we must confess that the first one is no more inviting than the other is terrifying to those whose Reason finds them both impossible.
Revivalists tell us that “now is the accepted time” to make a decision as to “where we shall spend Eternity” . . that the decision must be final. If this decision is to be a general one as to whether we are to be or not to be on the side of Right, revivalists are wasting their time, for the Infinite has made the decision that everything must be guided by Rightness. It is the Infinite Law, Irrevocable, Unchangeable, Irresistible. All Unreasoning Nature, working out the purposes of its Consciousness, does RIGHT automatically. Reasoning Nature is forced to decide, at the instant of Conscious action, that for IT the action is RIGHT, or it cannot act.
So by force of the Infinite Law we are all on the side of Right. Reasoning Nature, however, every time it Consciously acts must decide that the action is Right, and though it may be mistaken in its view of Rightness it is at perfect liberty to choose again; it is impossible for it to make an irrevocable and final decision in any matter, even in such a grave matter as the salvation of the soul. Reason would not be Reason if it became set and fixed by an irrevocable decision. Reason is flexible; it is the Adjusting Faculty; it is the means by which we adjust ourselves to our environment, or our environment to us.
Moreover, it is not desirable that we should do all our deciding at once, on all questions or on any question, for it would leave us with nothing to do, or in one particular instance with nothing in that regard to do. It is obviously preposterous to think of Reason being worked in this way. Your “day of judgment” was the first day you were able to decide upon something that it was RIGHT for YOU to DO or HAVE. Your “day of judgment” has been every day since then, and will continue to be every day as long as you live on this plane or any other plane until you arrive at RIGHTNESS. It is a prospect, not of terror but of glory, full of the variety which is the only charm of life Here and Now; great with the prospect of that rich Awareness of the thoughts and plans which other spiritual beings will impart to you as the Law of Gravity, or what represents it in the Spiritual World, draws you to your plane of non-sensuous density, but permits you, by the Law of Attraction, to assemble with your Kind.
CHAPTER XVI
The Devil And How To Chain Him — Why Our SUBCONSCIOUSNESS IS SLOW TO RESPOND TO THE WlLL
How this dear old world could have got along without the Devil is beyond our comprehension. The record of Things, back to a point anterior to which the memory of Man runneth not, shows that the Devil has either occupied the center of the stage at all human performances or has kept the human race busy dodging His lures. Descriptions of His origin, begun in Mythology and continued in Theology, furnish no satisfactory information as to where or why He was born. In a vaguely general way we are given to understand that He is a Heavenly Backslider who turned bandit or revolutionist, or something of that sort, and sought to put God out of business.
If even a portion of what is said of Him is true He has kept the Almighty busy in holding His throne and supremacy against the onslaughts of Satan and His cohorts. Omnipresent, “almost” Omnipotent, very “nearly” Omniscient, it is prophesied that the traditional Devil will some of these days be captured and put in chains for a thousand years, though it is hard to conceive of an Omnipresent Satan, who is everywhere, and always, tempting everybody at the same time, being so materialized as to be held by chains. Who is going to do this, or how, we are not told, but are led to understand that the Almighty will at last, goaded to fury by the outrageous conduct of His rival, make a desperate sortie from Heaven and “get” Him.
When this takes place what will the world do without Him? Whom shall we have to blame when we go wrong? Or will it be possible for us to go wrong if the Devil is chained in the caverns of Hell or to the gate-post of the City Made Without Hands? If it is He who has been leading us astray, the cessation of His activities will remove from us all inclination towards wrong-doing and we will become automatically right like other animals and all Unreasoning Life.
Reason is that which enables us to choose between Right and Wrong, and if Wrong is so securely chained as practically to put it out of existence Reason will be left without an office, purposeless, and, like all unused faculties, the machinery for expressing Reason will become atrophied and disappear. This, of course, is on the presumption that Reason is merely a physical faculty, not the Elemental, Indestructible Consciousness which distinguishes Man from other Animal Life.
At the end of the thousand years, if the Devil is let loose again, Man, with atrophied Reasoning machinery . . if such a thing be possible . . will be an easy victim to His machinations. Reason, which of all things needs to be constantly exercised to keep its expressional machinery from degenerating, rusting, becoming atrophied, would by involution disappear, and even the Devil would lose His interest in going about as a roaring lion when all humanity would be under His paw and as easy a prey as Adam was said to have been when the Devil got him before he was endowed with Reason and knew that his taste for apples was to cause so much trouble to the human race.
Why the Devil came into existence, when the Infinite could have prevented it . . and there cannot be two Infinites, God and the Devil . . is by no one explained. We are led to believe that in some way He was a necessity, either to give a grimy background to the Glory of God or to work out the purposes of the Infinite. Surely the Infinite needs no background, and can have none, being IT all and EVERYWHERE. If Satan, then, came into existence to work out the will of the Most High, what was the purpose? Obviously it was to make Man possible, for Man would not be possible, he being the EXPRESSION of REASON, if he had no opportunity to use his endowment in a choice between Good and Evil. Was it necessary or possible to have a PERSONAL DEVIL?
If Man could have “had individuality and perfection from the beginning, doubtless the Infinitely Wise and Loving would have made him so and kept the Devil off the scene. But Man was obviously intended to develop as he has developed, and it is inconceivable that Lawlessness, embodied as Satan, should be permitted to use His cunning to trap unwary victims. The principle of NON-RIGHTNESS, the negative of RIGHTNESS, was necessary, that Man, by choosing the latter more and more frequently than the former, might ultimately arrive at REASON MADE POSITIVE BY RIGHTNESS. Man’s condition today represents the results not only of the decisions he has made, but to a greater or less degree the decisions his progenitors made. In this way he has not only his own experience, but to a greater or less degree the cumulative experience of his ancestors to guide him.
He shows this by walking upright instead of on all fours, by eating meat as well as vegetables, by the color of his skin, by the absence of a hairy covering to his body, and in many other ways. Reason has not only developed apace with his animal progression, but has gone far ahead of it while influencing him. His SUBCONSCIOUSNESS, his Memory Life, is a complete storehouse of not only what has happened to him, but to all who preceded him in the line of his Kind. He is the reincarnation of his ancestors. He may show the traits of character or the peculiarities in appearance of one more than of all the others put together, but they are all there.
He is not Conscious of this, but he is Subconscious of it. He is not Conscious of the millions of things that his Subconsciousness does for him every day: the respiration, digestion, circulation of the blood, distribution of the nerve juices, the workings of his muscles and joints and organs . . these things are constantly being done without his Consciousness . . Reason . . being appealed to. With almost undisputed sway the Subconsciousness controls our animal life and directs to a greater extent than we are aware our intellectual processes. In adapting our body . . as is its business . . to its environment, our Subconsciousness occasionally finds something which arouses its Memory force so powerfully that it instantly adapts itself to a condition in which we were years ago, or which our father or grandfather, or great-great-grandfather, was in. This means that the environment of the Subconsciousness is not only that of Now, but that of Then, and were it not for Reason it would be stirred as greatly . . if not to a much greater degree . . by the environment of Then as it is stirred by the environment of Now.
This recrudescence, caused by the outcropping of Memory environment, may take the form of sickness or the impulse to some unusual, it may be improper act. It is the business of Reason at this juncture to declare itself as the LAW OF NOW. If it declares that Rightness is the Law of its Being and, holding this thought, goes into the state of mind of the Infinite within it . . the Supraconsciousness . . and becomes merged in that Infinite, as it can by asking that it be so, then the great Infinite Urge accepts that fixed point of Rightness in the Consciousness as the SET POINT OF RIGHTNESS for the whole Being, and Rightness prevails.
If Reason, because of ignorance or sluggishness, does not resist but accepts the recrudescence, the re-opening of a Subconscious sore, the law of Then prevails and the whole Being takes on the symptoms and sufferings, and as a rule arrives at the identical result pictured in the Subconscious memory. We all know how a perfume, a picture, a sound, will often bring a rush of recollections filling us with joy or sorrow. We physically feel the result of this rush of memories as pain or pleasure, thus showing how intimately our Subconsciousness is connected with our physical expression and the Past.
In the same way our Subconsciousness is often aroused by a sight, sound, smell, taste, or feeling, to suggest to Reason that it declare some unusual or improper act to be Right; for the Subconsciousness knows, as we all ought to know by this time, that what the Subconsciousness cannot do without the sanction of Reason must be declared by Reason at the moment of action to be Right or it cannot become an act. In the recrudescence which took the shape of sickness, following the Law of ITS BEING the Subconsciousness started to function for that sickness without appealing to Reason, and Reason had to come in after the fact either to alter or allow it. In the reversion of the Subconsciousness, the Memory Life, to a moral condition of Then, we see it is forced to obtain the sanction of Reason before it can even begin to function the body into action.
Its suggestion to Reason of the wrong thing is all the “temptation of the Devil” there ever was or ever will be. To the Subconsciousness, which is the only Devil there ever was or ever will be, the suggestion was Right, not Wrong. It has no so-called moral sense; it acts purely as an animal thing, and purely according to the code established by experience. In acting thus it follows the Infinite Urge to Rightness of its Kind. So the Devil, after all, appears to be the Infinite itself, working our animal nature according to its Rightness at the same time that it is urging our intellectual side to Rightness of its Kind. We have already seen that the Subconsciousness begins its abnormal functioning in physical matters before Reason has a chance to become alarmed, but in so-called moral matters the Reason has to be appealed to before any action can be begun.
This clearly demonstrates that which has already been stated, that as the Infinite censors all changes of one state of mind into another state of mind in Unreasoning Life before the change can take place, so Reason must censor and permit every Conscious change of one state of mind into another state of mind in Reasoning Life before the action involved in this can take place. It is thus the traditional Devil disappears into nothing more serious than an opportunity for adjustment of the Rightness of our Animal nature to the Rightness of our Intellectual, our Spiritual nature. It cannot be otherwise, and Reason must do the adjusting, and do it in accordance with what it decides at the moment of Conscious action to be Right.
Let us breathe a sigh of relief! We have located the Devil and begin to see a way of doing all the “chaining” that is needed. This “chaining” consists entirely of our control by Reason of our Unreasoning but Powerful Subconsciousness . . of our mastery of our Animal Nature. The law of the Subconsciousness is what Paul meant when he said, “I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind (intellect) and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” And it is significant that Paul had not yet Theologized the Christ Principle to the extent of calling this “law” Satan.
That he cried, “O wretched man that I am!” as we all do when we find that we cannot immediately control our Subconsciousness, was due to the conviction that he had laid hold of a Principle that should instantly do this and his disappointment in finding that it did not work as promptly as he believed it should. Why should we hope instantly to change the direction of our Subconsciousness if we realize that this law of our Animal Being has been for centuries of generations, guided by the Infinite Urge, building up a masterful experience of what it is best for us as Animals to do? If it were made possible for us instantly to change the direction of our Subconsciousness we would very soon ruin our Habit Life, and our perfection as Animals would disappear.
It has already been seen that Reason does not always decide rightly, that it, as censor, often passes as Rightness that which is a mere whim or excuse. In nothing is the wisdom of the Infinite more clearly shown than in denying us the power of controlling our Animal Life by mere whims and fancies; by Reason NOT made POSITIVE in its RIGHTNESS. The incentive rendered necessary, of application . . continuous effort to form a habit . . would be removed if we could force our bodies instantly to conform to our whims. For instance, you might take a notion to be a pianist, and if you could force your Subconsciousness at once to function your fingers into skillfully handling the keys of a piano you would instantly obtain that which now requires years of practice to acquire. This would mean nothing to you, for everyone could do the same, or at least to that extent that they were appreciative of music.
This is not in harmony with the law of Progress; it does not conform to that continual grind we see Everywhere, in Everything, that perfection may be reached. It would upset Habit Life . . the Subconsciousness . . which would no longer be repetitional in its workings, but await the whims of Reason. Thus we would be left to reason each time we desired to breathe, or digest, or function in any of the innumerable ways now carried on Subconsciously, habitually.
That it is easier to change our moral than our physical condition, i. e., it is easier to regulate our intellectual processes than our bodily processes, must be apparent, insomuch as the processes of the Subconscious are carried on until interrupted by Reason, while intellectual processes cannot develop into action until permitted by Reason declaring them to be Right. Thus bodily sickness may have an apparently firm grip upon us before we are aware of its seriousness, and Reason comes into action, either by declaring Rightness to prevail or sending for a physician that he may cause it to prevail. As has been pointed out, Reason is thus called into action “before” the fact in moral matters and “after” the fact in physical disturbances.
It cannot be wondered, then, that Paul found it easier to declare his spiritual (intellectual) Rightness than to force his body to conform to this Rightness. That we can control our Animal Nature must be taken for granted, or our responsibility for yielding to our lower instinct must cease. Paul did not find this control, even though he describes himself as having been “converted” by what is regarded as a “miracle.” It is evident that Paul’s conversion left him just as other men are, in perpetual conflict with his lower nature and with nothing to overcome it except Reason. It has been shown that even by Reason we cannot always instantly overcome it, for the thing that we are trying to overcome may have become so firmly fixed as a habit as to deserve well the name of “second nature.”
Let us now examine the equipment we have for overcoming that which in our Subconsciousness our Reason has decided to be abnormal. We have seen that to establish a habit . . i. e., to induce the Subconsciousness to take some new direction, as in skillfully playing the piano . . we must firmly settle upon the course to be pursued and patiently practice towards the desired end. In eliminating the abnormal from the Subconsciousness we must conform to its law as faithfully as when we desire it to do something new; we cannot force it.
The Reasoning Consciousness has no more right to force the Functioning Consciousness than the Functioning Consciousness has to force the Reasoning Consciousness. Each is governed by its own law, and both by the Infinite Law of Rightness which inhibits the intrusion of one Consciousness upon another. If, then, one Consciousness be not permitted to intrude upon another, how can Reason affect the Subconsciousness? The law of the Subconsciousness makes it superlatively open to Suggestion; otherwise it could not become, as it is, a storehouse of cumulative experience with any advantage to itself.
Every experience has been a Suggestion to it, and the memory of that experience is a Suggestion to it still. It is worked by the recurrence, forcibly or otherwise, of the Suggestions provided by this experience. We obtain a foothold in the Subconsciousness for a new thing, such as piano-playing, by almost innumerable repetitions of movements of our fingers upon the keys. After sufficient practice these movements of our fingers become a Subconscious Habit, which through continued practice becomes more thoroughly established and we become more thoroughly skilled. This is the establishment of the new thing by repeated Suggestion. Then to eliminate the abnormal we must work by Suggestion, as it is the law of the Subconsciousness.
To those of US who have tried it, it is sometimes a very discouraging process, but if we examine ourselves we will discover that nearly all, if not all the discouragement has arisen because of our ignorance of what to expect and how to expect it to arrive.
In the first place, Reason must settle itself steadily, fixedly as to what it is RIGHT for us to have . . not generally, but specifically. Law does not deal in generalities, but with specific instances. You must definitely fix in your mind what it is you are going after and keep it from being mixed with anything else. This we call “holding a thought.” You must clearly see that the thing you are seeking is RIGHT for YOU to have. Do not think about whether it is right for everyone to have it, but concentrate upon it being RIGHT for YOU to have it. This we call “fixing the thought,” i. e., giving it a set position, making it the “Set” Point of Rightness from which your Subconsciousness is to act in that particular regard.
To be effective in this respect you must be clear in your conformity to the Law of Rightness, the Infinite, Irresistible Law. When you decide that it is RIGHT for YOU to have it, the “it” must be something which without equivocation it seems reasonable for you to have. If it is not so, Reason has not in its censorship actually passed the desired thing as Right and you cannot expect it TO BE.
In removing the abnormal from the Subconsciousness we cannot proceed by negation, i. e., to establish that the something there has no right to be there. The law of the Subconsciousness, following the Infinite Urge to Rightness, has placed it there, and consequently it has a right to be there and we waste our time disputing this right. Let us say that what we desire to remove from the Subconsciousness is its habit of functioning for Rheumatism. Every time we advance the subject of Rheumatism to the Subconsciousness we strengthen its Memory Life of Rheumatism and unintentionally fortify it in functioning for Rheumatism.
Then we must leave the subject of Rheumatism alone. The thing we desire is RIGHTNESS of functioning. Then this becomes our “set” thought. The Subconsciousness, however, has established a Rightness of its own and this Rightness has produced Rheumatism. It is quite true that the Rightness in our Consciousness . . in our Reason . . points in a different direction from the Rightness of the Subconsciousness in this matter, but it is not sufficiently distinct to become immediately effectual. Then we must find something within our Subconsciousness the Rightness of which is equivalent to the Rightness we desire.
This can be done by arousing the Memory Life to the Rightness of its functioning on some special occasion which we can distinctly recall. Every sufferer from Rheumatism, unless afflicted from early childhood, can vividly picture some occasion upon which the Subconsciousness seemed to be working perfectly. By repeatedly recalling that occasion and that perfect functioning we can gradually make the Subconscious law of THEN the law of NOW. You know that when you are feeling bad and a friend comes in and reminds you in a sympathetic way, i. e., in a way that harmonizes with your Reasoning processes, of what a splendid time you had had together a week, a month, a year, five years, ten years ago, you feel better, and to the extent that you enter into that thought of the “splendid time” you continue to feel better.
This is but the arousing in your Functional Life of the functioning of that “splendid time,” and if your ailment is not a serious one it is very likely that the abnormal functioning will be entirely replaced by the functioning excited by the Memory Life. Here is an old fashioned rhyme illustrative of this point:
Little Tommy Grace
Had a pain in his face,
So bad that he couldn’t learn a letter,
When in came Dickie Long
Singing such a funny song,
That Tommy laughed and found his face much better.
Amongst breeders it is well known that it is easier to revert to type . . i. e., to bring degenerate specimens of a certain class to a higher degree of development by the infusion of a strain from highly developed specimens of that class . . than it is to improve those same degenerates by infusing the strain of highly developed specimens of another class, and thus being forced to create a comparatively new class. Thus it is easier to bring degenerate Merino sheep, in the manner described, back into being fine Merino wool sheep, than it is by crossing them with Cotswolds or Southdowns to bring them up to a high standard of mutton sheep.
Thus in developing the Animal Life the appeal to the memory of the animal’s Subconsciousness is shown to find a quick response. It is this principle that in stubborn cases makes it necessary to find a responsive place in our Subconsciousness before we with marked success can appeal to our Functional Life to harmonize with our Reason. You will find it valuable to remember this, for while it is by no means the whole system or only means of controlling our Subconsciousness it is illustrative of its law and will be ‘found very effective.
CHAPTER XVII
Healing — How To Make Rightness Prevail In Your Physical Being.
It may have seemed a long road that has led up to the point of how we can make Rightness prevail in our Physical Being, but it has been necessary that we should understand the incalculable share of the Infinite in the activities of all Expressed Life. We have found ourselves to be Expressions of the Infinite to a greater extent than was at first conceivable. By a slow but it is to be hoped not too tedious process we have found that within each one of us there is a full equipment for his or her Well-Being. Within ourselves, it has been shown, each one of us has his own God, his own Christ, his own Holy Spirit, his own Devil, his own Past, his own Present, his own Future.
We see the Infinite filling each Consciousness to its fullness, thus being our Good, our God. We see it answering to our call for Wisdom, Rest and Rightness, thus filling the offices ascribed to Christ and the Holy Spirit. We have seen the workings of its Urge, causing our Animal Life to appear as our Devil, our Tempter, while working out the Infinite Purpose. We have seen that our Subconsciousness contains our whole past, the past of our progenitors from the beginning of Things, from which we can draw by means of Memory to an unlimited extent.
We have seen that our Supraconsciousness . . the Infinite within us . . contains and has always contained all that the future has in store for us until we reach Perfection, and have found that we can draw upon it to an extent limited only by our Consciousness . . our Reason. Situated as the adjuster between these magnificent storehouses of the Past and of the Future, WE . . REASON . . have the Glorious Privilege, the Exalted Opportunity of drawing upon both to create that NOW which we desire.
WHAT WE DESIRE is alike in all of us. As to Health, we are not seeking for more than to be Well. As to Wealth, we desire no more than Plenty. As to Happiness, what we all desire is to be free from Sorrow and Care. Wherein we differ is in the Measurement of these blessings. Each Consciousness demands its Own; it is the law of Egoism. No common standard can be invented, for no two things are alike. To force everything to be metered in one bushel measure . . were it possible, which it is not . . would reduce everything to a dead level and defeat the purpose of the Infinite.
Each Consciousness must, then, decide what it is Right for IT to have, and upon the POSITIVE RIGHTNESS of its decision depends its possession or lack of Health, Prosperity and Happiness. We cannot consciously act until our Reason at the moment of action decides the action to be Right, but the excuse, the whim, the pretense with which the Reason sometimes tricks itself or is tricked into a sense of Rightness sufficient to permit action, while often contributing to discomfiture or disaster, never brings permanent good.
If we are convinced that Reason, being the next greatest thing to the Infinite, can bring all good things to US, we must make our REASON POSITIVE IN ITS RIGHTNESS before we can hope for results. It is a lamentable fact that Reason is habitually employed by the majority of Reasoning Beings to bring into effectual action the desires of their Animal Natun. by trumpery decisions of Rightness. Degrading itself from the high office which the Infinite intends it to occupy, Reason for a time becomes the strumpet of the Subconsciousness. What a ghastly thought!
That which is separated from equality with the Infinite only by its Consciousness, becoming the prostitute of Animal desires, is a sight of ourselves from which we shrink. But we must not shrink. The picture is repulsive, but so true to Nature that it needs no further elaboration. We alone are responsible for this degraded condition of things. Not only individually, but collectively, we contribute to the continuance of this condition of things. As Religionists we have throttled Reason while we have built up a Theocracy, and as Reason had so little share in shaping it Reason does not accept it, and to a greater extent than any of us appreciate refuses to be controlled or even influenced by it.
While and where it appears to accept it, its acceptance is not POSITIVE) IN ITS RIGHTNESS; it is but an excuse that it is better than nothing. In their mistaken zeal for Rightness, Religionists have sought their Supraconsciousnesses for Warmth instead of Light, for Enthusiasm instead of Wisdom; and while from their Subconsciousnesses they have produced the picture of a God too human, too material to be accepted by Reason, they have enhaloed it with spiritual characteristics so unlike the spiritual characteristics of ourselves that on this ground, too, Reason rejects it, and we are practically left without a workable or controlling Ideal of Good.
Science, on the other hand, through the practice of caution in researches, has become over-cautious and has refused to give a place in its equations to anything that cannot be Sensed. It has been shown that in innumerable ways we all recognize as true things which cannot be Sensed but which influence our Reason Supraconsciously. In this way Science has left us without an ideal of Infinity to influence or control us, and both theologically and scientifically we have found ourselves unable to arrive at POSITIVE RIGHTNESS. By insisting upon ourselves being candid arid exact we can always know whether we are trying to trick our Reason into a momentary consent to some folly or using it legitimately to perfect our conduct.
We must use it with the same scrupulous care that we use electricity, potent drugs, and the little competence we have saved to make comfortable our old age. As we cannot be reckless or jocular with any of these things, we cannot be so in using our Reason. This is not a philosophy precluding jocularity and freedom from care. On the contrary, it is the only philosophy which will give you happiness as a permanent asset and perfect security from carking care. We do not need to spend our lives watching like a cat at a mouse-hole fearing lest our Subconsciousness will slip out and get away with us.
The less we tamper with our Subconsciousness, with our Habit Life, the better; its habits are mostly good and will not be bettered by being interfered with by Reason. It is when a bad habit develops that we must become alert and strong; when our Reason tells us that there is an outcropping of some trait, some vibration, some functionings, whatever we may call them, that indicate a reversion to a lower type.
Now let us examine the methods we must employ. These methods are not given as prescriptions, but as furnishing an intelligible outline of how to bring into operation the laws whose workings are necessary. Let us settle ourselves down and feel ill for a few moments. The room feels hot and stuffy; let us have fresh air, for fresh air, if it is not blown in upon us with violence, is always good. Our lips and throats are dry and hot; let us have a drink of water, cool but not immoderately cold. The bed feels hot and lumpy; we know it is not so, for it has been prepared by a careful nurse.
But we must have Ease. Where shall we get it? Where does all Expressed Nature find Rest and Ease . . Harmony? In the Infinite. How shall we get there? We are there. Let us become Conscious of being there. “Oh!” we cry, “we can be conscious of nothing but pain.” Steady! We can become Conscious of changing our state of mind into the Infinite state of mind . . Rightness . . as readily as we can imagine we are being changed from one room into another. As if you were imaging yourself being moved from one room into another, image your mind as changing from a state of almost intolerable pain into a state of perfect Rightness. You say, “I have done this, but I feel no change.” Ah! Your Reason did not really declare the change. Y
ou did not believe the change would be made or you would not so instantly deny that it had been made. You must believe in your doctor or he will do you no good. Try it again. Say to yourself, “I consciously change my state of mind into my Infinite state of mind . . Rightness.” “It won’t work,” you cry after a few moments. What won’t work? “Why, the cure won’t work.” What do you think is the “cure”? “The changing of my state of mind into the Infinite state of mind.” That is not the “cure.” The changing does not cure.
Now seems to be the time to take another view of Reason. We have found it to be our Adjusting, our Guiding machinery, but on no occasion has it seemed to be our Power machinery. It is the steering-wheel of the car, not the engine. It can compel or propel nothing. If you are riding a bicycle you can steer it by the handle but you cannot move it. You think you move it by means of your feet and legs, but you do not. Your feet and legs are as much a part of the mere mechanism of locomotion as the wheels and chains beneath you. What is it, then, that moves the bicycle? Infinite Life, wherein is the essence of all Power. You remember the trouble you had in learning to ride!
At first your handle-bar was not even sufficient to guide the machine. It wobbled all over the place and fell down, and you with it. What was the matter? You were not POSITIVE in your RIGHTNESS. You were not POSITIVE that you could control the machine. Suddenly you rode away quite steadily . . surprised yourself. You learned to swim, to walk, the same way. By holding the thought of learning to ride, swim, or walk, you “fixed” the Point of Rightness, and instantly the Power from the Eternal Stillness worked in you to the extent of your Consciousness. For an instant you forgot that you were on the machine or in the water, followed your instinct or the directions you had had, and away you went. In that instant you became Conscious of Power to do so. Remember, when you are seeking for Power from the Infinite, that it will accept no trumpery, “wobbly” decision from your Reason.
At the instant of action it demands that you be POSITIVE in your RIGHTNESS . . not momentarily, transiently, but fixedly . . before it permits its Power to act on your physical machinery and work your purpose. Your Subconsciousness coaxes your Reason when it suggests some Conscious action that is unusual or improper, and any excuse or pretense sufficient to release the “clutch”‘ of your Will is accepted as enough and the Subconsciousness bounds into action. Your Supraconsciousness . . the Infinite within you . . does not work thus.
It KNOWS when your Reason becomes “set” by RIGHTNESS, and recognizes nothing but this. We have seen the wisdom of the Infinite in refusing instant control of the Consciousness over the Subconsciousness, as that would upset the Habit Life of the latter, thus destroying our bodies, and at the same time remove the necessity of protracted practice and application for the acquirement of any accomplishment, thus stopping our intellectual progress. If it furnished Power in instant response to our passing impulses, our varying whims, it would be doing the same thing, both as to means and results.
In our studies Reason has been extolled as never before and exalted to the highest pinnacle upon which it has ever been placed, but we must recognize its limitations. It . . Reason . . is by no means the Infinite; it is the highest conceivable Expression of the Infinite, but it belongs to Expressed Life; it is a Thing. It has no power of its own. The Subconsciousness is the same. It, too, is a Thing, with no power of its own. They both work the Will of the Infinite. Each has a “set” Point of Rightness from which to work. The Subconsciousness works having as its “set” Point of Rightness that experience which at the moment of action is strongest in its Memory Life.
The Consciousness . . the Reason . . works having as its “set” Point of Rightness that which at the moment of action seems Right for it to do . . Best for it to do. To arrive at this point Reason is expected not only to find out by searching its memory . . the Subconsciousness . . for light as to what has been best for it under similar circumstances in the past, but to look into its Supraconsciousness for direction as to what will be Best for it to do in the light of the future. When it does this to the extent of its capacity it becomes “set” in its Rightness and its decision is accepted by the Infinite, which at once affords the Power.
Now, Mr. Sick Man, do you see where you are.’ You expected that the change from one state of mind into another state of mind would bring you relief. But it did not, for the “change” does not do it; it only places you where the Infinite will cause it to be done for you if you remain “set”‘ in that state of Rightness long enough to demonstrate that you know why you are there and intend to stay there long enough to receive that which you desire. Let us try it again. You are perfectly relaxed. You have become thus by the thought of “letting go” everything in your Physical Being. Take three long, deep breaths through your nostrils . . it is a good thing to give you a momentary grip of yourself.
Say to yourself slowly and firmly: “I consciously pass from my present state of mind into the Infinite state of mind, into Rightness. I merge my Consciousness into my Supraconsciousness, and I am Right. My Consciousness . . my Reason . . is merged in my Supraconsciousness, my Infinite Rightness. I cease reasoning. I am in Rightness, where I do not need to reason. It . . is . . RIGHT . . for . . ME . . to . . have . . EASE . . NOW. I am spiritually at ease. It is right for me to have Ease now. (Hush, dear man, that pain won’t kill you. You are looking into your Supraconsciousness now for what is best for your future.
Pay no attention to your Subconsciousness and its pain-moanings of the past.) It . . is RIGHT . . for . . ME . . to . . have . . EASE . . NOW. My Consciousness is merged in my Supraconsciousness, but my thought of Ease dwells in my Supraconsciousness as the “set” Point of Rightness for my whole Being. RIGHTNESS . . Ease . . is manifesting itself through my Being. I am becoming easier. Rightness holds the wheel . . the FATHER LIFE is at the helm.”
You begin to feel easier, and the longer you stick to it the easier you will feel. You may have to hang on to your bed-clothes with both hands, or clutch the hand of your nurse or friend, but do this as little as possible. Remain relaxed, SURRENDER COMPLETELY! “Surrender what and to whom?” you ask. Surrender your Reason to your Supraconsciousness, to the Infinite within you, as you do informally every night when you go to sleep. You have reasoned yourself up to a Point of Rightness as to what you shall do. You have resolved to go into Rightness and quit reasoning.
Do it. Stick to it. The Infinite will not touch the wheel while you . . Reason . . have your hand on it. Simply hold the thought, Rightness, Ease. If your Reason bumps in to say that it is doing you no good, choke it off. It is doing you good. Reason in moments of excitement, pain, or fear, is almost invariably wrong, for in such moments it draws all its information from the Subconsciousness, from the source of disturbance. When you were free from pain you made up your mind what was right for you to do.
Then your Reason was working properly; you came to a “set” Point of Rightness. Now demonstrate that it was “set.” You cannot reason and recover at the same time any more than you can reason and remember at the same time, or reason and intelligently act at the same time. You must quit reasoning, doubting, questioning, and remain in the Infinite Stillness till Ease steals through your Being, at first almost imperceptibly, then distinctly, and then you sleep.
CHAPTER XVIII
Hypnosis — Auto-hypnosis — Control Of The Subconsciousness.
We have seen that Reason by means of its “clutch” . . the Will . . fails sometimes completely to control the Subconsciousness. We will now see that it NEVER controls it. If we were so constituted that our Reason had any control at any time of our Subconsciousness it would be found that it had it always. If it were a safe thing for it to have at any time, it would be at all times. We have seen, however, that it would not be a safe thing at any time, as it would upset our Habit Life, thereby wrecking us physically and intellectually. Doubtless you have foreseen this conclusion, as it is the evident outgrowth of the postulate that no Consciousness can force its will upon another Consciousness, that even the Infinite declines to do this.
We have seen, however, that Reason greatly influences the Subconsciousness, which is necessarily very susceptible to Suggestion; otherwise its vast fund of experience would not be valuable to it as Habit Life. It is the creature of environment, i. e., subject to the influence of that which is contiguous. Rheumatic patients can anticipate the fall of the barometer, a change in the weather, consequent upon their Subconsciousness functioning in accord with the coming change of pressure. Every one of our five senses is continually suggesting to the Subconsciousness; Memory is continually suggesting to it. Reason when strongly developed furnishes a large and influential share of its environment, but it by no means controls it, as the Subconsciousness by no means controls Reason.
Experiments in hypnosis probably occur to the reader, in which it has been indisputably demonstrated that hypnotists can obtain control of the Subconsciousnesses of those who permit themselves to yield to the experimenter. This appears to demonstrate that the Consciousness of the hypnotist can completely control the Subconsciousness of another, and if of another, why not of himself? Indeed, it has been the ambition of hypnotists to discover auto-hypnosis . . i. e., how each person can obtain complete control of his Subconsciousness.
That this would be a distracting and dangerous thing, utterly subversive of the intention of the Infinite, has apparently not dawned upon them. The Infinite does not delegate any of its elemental or absolute power to any Consciousness, thus preventing one Consciousness from wrecking another. If, then, this be the case, how is it that hypnotists apparently are able to control the Subconsciousnesses of those who yield to them? In the first place, it is only those who “yield” to them, who consent to be hypnotized and manifest this consent by volunteering, coming forward, or in some other way mentally putting themselves in the position of consenting parties, who can be hypnotized.
“But,” you say, “if we consent to auto-hypnosis, to our Reason controlling our Subconsciousness, is it not the same thing? And if it is the same thing, why does it not work?” When we consent to the hypnotist taking possession of our Subconsciousness we abdicate our throne of Reason . . we give it up to another. In auto-hypnosis we cannot do this with the same ease; and though it is possible to produce an auto-hypnotic condition, there being no Reason to guide the Subconsciousness after we have given up our own Reason to our Supraconsciousness in order to become auto-hypnotic we can produce no results except falling into a state of swoon. It may appear to you that we do not have to give up our Reason in order to obtain a condition of auto-hypnosis; but it is so.
After recovering from an hypnotic condition the subject has no memory of what transpired during that condition, which proves that Memory Life . . the Subconsciousness . . is also alienated from its office during that state. We know also that we are not Conscious of what is transpiring while we are hypnotic. Does it not, then, appear that both our Consciousness and our Subconsciousness are temporarily alienated from their offices during a condition of hypnosis, insomuch as one ceases to be conscious of what is transpiring and Memory Life has no record of what has transpired during the condition?
If by gazing into a crystal or by some other means of merging our Reason into our Supraconsciousness we obtain a condition of auto-hypnosis, we fall into a state in which we are neither Conscious nor Subconscious, and are left without either guiding or motive power . . swoon. If we are not discovered while in this state and no means are taken to revive us, it means death if the auto-hypnosis is complete. Of course it is possible, where we are but partially autohypnotized, for something in our environment to arouse us to a more normal condition, but the experiment is certainly too dangerous to be tried. What, then, produces the hypnotic state from which we can be aroused?
We know that it is not Reason acting directly upon the Subconsciousness, for the Subconsciousness is an Unreasoning thing, and consequently is not amenable to Reason as such, though it is influenced by its repeated suggestions. You never saw a hypnotist argue a subject into an hypnotic state. How is it done? Invariably the operator declares a certain condition of things to exist. You are relaxed both mentally and physically, he tells you. You are not thinking about anything in particular, but gazing steadily, abstractedly, at some object. This puts you in the Infinite state of mind . . Stillness, Rest . . from which it is easy to move you into another state of mind . . Hypnosis. He tells you to close your eyes, and you do so; this is the first step towards being hypnotized, as you consent to do as he tells you.
Then he tells you that you cannot open them, and you cannot. What has been done? It appears unreasonable to you that you cannot open your eyes, but you cannot “reason” them open. By training he has enabled himself, by strong mentation, to “set” a Point of Rightness for YOU. Where does he “set” this? Not in your Reason, for you reject it. Not in your Subconsciousness, for he cannot effectually “set” a Point of Rightness there any more than you can; it creates its own Point of Rightness. There is but one other part of your Ego in which he can “set” it, and that is your Supraconsciousness. And it is here that, without knowing it, he operates.
By abdicating your Reason you merged it into your Supraconsciousness with the “set” thought of being hypnotized . . that thought being uppermost in your mind when you gave your consent, tacitly or otherwise, which was equivalent to your merging yourself . . your Reason . . into your Supraconsciousness, as in sleep. Without knowing why we have very rightly called this condition “asleep.” Now you are practically in an hypnotic sleep, and the operator’s Reason is in charge of your machinery. He declares to your Supraconsciousness that it is right for you to consider yourself a cat.
This mental declaration, clear cut, strong, he establishes as your Point of Rightness, and your Supraconsciousness furnishes the Power. Your Subconsciousness, having become alienated from its office, as your Reason has, its machinery is worked from this Point of Rightness in the Supraconsciousness by it, and produces the sounds and motions suggested by the hypnotist. It will thus be seen that hypnotism is not Consciousness . . Reason . . acting upon the Subconsciousness, but upon the Supraconsciousness, where it establishes the “set” Point of Rightness which enables it . . an outside Reason . . to manipulate the physical machinery of the Subconsciousness.
This, however, will only work up to the point of what the subject’s Consciousness, merged in the Supraconsciousness, considers right. If the hypnotist asks a strong teetotaler who is under his influence to take a drink of brandy, or supposed brandy, the whole relation is disturbed, a new Point of Rightness is raised in the Supraconsciousness, the one established by the hypnotist is displaced, and the subject is widely awake with a disagreeable sense of something wrong having been attempted. According to the “setness” of the Point of Rightness which is disturbed by the hypnotist, so the disturbance is . . from the mere refusal to obey, to waking up and wanting to raise a row without knowing just why.
We have seen that the operations of the human organism can be continued when both its Reasoning Consciousness and its Subconsciousness are temporarily alienated from their offices, i. e., merged in the Supraconsciousness. We now see the Supraconsciousness managing things alone as far as the Ego is constituted, such Reason as gives direction to the body coming from the outside through it . . the Supraconsciousness. This gives us a glimpse of the Supraconsciousness as the entire Power machinery, working independently of both the Reasoning and Functioning direction of the Ego.
The functioning of the body goes on as usual, impelled by the Urge to Rightness, but ceasing to store for future reference the experience it is undergoing. Why does it not put this experience in its collection? It is unconscious of it, as it is being worked from a “set” Point of Rightness in the Supraconsciousness, not on its own account, and what is happening to it is really not a part of its experience. This is suggestive of the part the Subconscious plays whenever the Supraconsciousness contains a “set” Point of Rightness and causes Power to be released in accordance with that “set” Point of Rightness.
Before we proceed with this, however, it is well to take one more look at the state of existence produced by Hypnosis. We have seen that Reason, which adjusts our intellectual Being to its environment, goes into the Supraconsciousness . . the Infinite within us . . and ceases for the time being to perform its office. Moreover, the Subconsciousness, which adjusts our physical Being to its environment, goes into the Supraconsciousness, leaving that Force to manage its machinery.
Both emerge from this unimpaired, each taking up its duties exactly where it left off. How has the physical machinery, used to express these Consciousnesses, fared? After a subject has been hypnotized it is known to be easy to repeat the process, therefore it must be that the “clutch” of the Reason . . the Will . . or rather that which physically expresses it, is somewhat weakened. Throughout the period of hypnosis the machinery of the Subconscionsness works exactly in its relation to its physical environment as it was working when the Subconsciousness became merged in the Supraconsciousness . . that is to say, no change is made during the hypnotic condition to suit the physical environment.
As this environment is always changing, the absence of the regulator cannot be otherwise than comparatively harmful. Running at a set pace, the machinery must run down if the condition is unduly prolonged. Such results, however, as can be found are purely physical . . ordinarily a slight impairment of expression. Thus we see that the Supraconsciousness is the mainspring of the eternal Ego, the activities of the Consciousness and the Subconsciousness not being necessary to its existence, but required only to give it individuality and expression in relation to Time and Space. This should answer the question, “Can Consciousness survive the disappearance of the physical machinery required to give it expression Here and Now?”
We have seen the Consciousness and the Subconsciousness both resuming their offices after a period of suspension as if nothing had happened. What happened during hypnosis was purely physical and took place without the concurrence of either. Does not this prove that they exist in relation to the Supraconsciousness independently of any fleshly machinery of expression . . machinery which we can understand as only for Here and Now? When we have parted from this machinery entirely the relation of the three Consciousnesses of the Ego to each other will remain unchanged. These relations, of course, are not those that exist in hypnosis, which is a temporary state, valuable principally as an experiment or an anesthetic.
The relation will be that of our normal condition, the Consciousness and the Subconsciousness continually adjusting our Being . . our Individuality . . to its environment as our Supraconsciousness in the course of our progress attains greater sway. To hold that human life ends with the final cessation of our physical activities, one must set in defiance the results of all psychological experiments and regard as untrustworthy all our personal experiences. Every night in sleep we merge our Consciousness in our Supraconsciousness, and awake in the morning refreshed. We see people lose their Reason for long periods and have it restored.
We see patients under the influence of anesthetics unconscious of the passage of time and insensible to pain, yet returning to Consciousness unharmed. Lastly, we have observed the Supraconsciousness . . the Infinite in Man . . managing the Ego without the aid of its auxiliaries, but guided by an outside Consciousness which has no physical relation to the Ego. Could stronger proof be required that our physical bodies are nothing but a mechanical means of expressing our spiritual selves in Time and Space, Here and Now?
To return to the relation of the Supraconsciousness to the Subconsciousness, and to the influence of a “set” Point of Rightness in the former upon the latter, it is well for us to remember that both of them are Thinking Consciousnesses, neither of them capable of Reasoning. It may seem unnecessary so frequently to recur to the difference between Reasoning and Thinking, but if you will examine your own habits of mentation you will see that you often confuse them. Our Supraconsciousness, being the Infinite within us, is always right and does not, and does not need to, reason, and as Reasoning is an active condition and the Infinite in us is in the condition of Stillness it cannot reason.
Our Subconsciousness has as its “set” Point of Rightness that thing which Memory suggests at the moment of action as the right thing to do. It does not compare one thing with another, as it would if it reasoned, but one thing occurs to it to do, and that is the thing it does. This is acting according to the law of Rightness of its Kind. We know we cannot reason our Subconsciousness into obedience to our will, though we know we can influence it by repeated suggestions. Is there any means of Thinking our Subconsciousness into action such as we desire? But thinking and acting have been seen to be practically the same thing . . action instantly expressing the thought. Then thinking our Subconsciousness into thinking would be like acting it into acting . . a confusion of terms leading nowhere.
First let us put Reason where it will not interfere with thinking, for we cannot think and reason at the same time. We have decided that we desire to be well. We will put it in a different shape. We have reasoned that we are spiritually perfect, perfectly well. With the Infinite everything is in the present tense . . NOW. Our Reason is the law of NOW, and when we emphatically desire to be well we take the spiritual standpoint and declare we are well NOW. With this declaration, absolutely true in the spiritual sense . . and we are operating on the spiritual plane to obtain results on the physical plane . . we merge our Reason into our Supraconsciousness, into Rightness; we become POSITIVE IN OUR RIGHTNESS, and Reason has nothing more to do with it.
We have closed the door, with Reason shut up with Rightness; it is the “set” Point of Rightness, emanating as its Urge within Rightness, “I am Well. I am Right.” Now we have the two thinking activities of the Ego face to face; the Ego is thinking, not reasoning, and what is the thought? “I am Well. I am Right.” The Subconsciousness, however, is thinking its Wellness, its Rightness, from its own standpoint, and is functioning for rheumatism, that being at the moment its strongest suggestion. We go back to our original definition of Thinking: “We Reason with our intellectual faculties, but we THINK with our whole Being.” This is obviously true. When we act we act with our whole Being, and thinking and acting are the instant expressions one of the other, so we must think with our whole Being. Thinking is a creative Force.
The Ego is thinking; which thought shall prevail, “I am Well” or “I am Rheumatism”? Shall the thought contained in our Infinite Rightness fail to assert itself because our Subconsciousness contains a different “set” thought of Rightness and one Consciousness cannot intrude upon another?
What is the Ego? It is the expression of the three Consciousnesses; IT IS THE HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. Shall warring factions prevent its perfection? What is to perfect it? The Urge to Rightness! It, the Ego, is thinking Rightness. The whole Being is thinking Rightness. The Supraconsciousness, guided by the Urge of Reason merged within it, is thinking Rightness. The Supraconsciousness pervades the Subconsciousness, and more than anything else constitutes its environment.
In obedience to its own law . . that it act from the strongest suggestion present at the moment of action . . it thinks as the Supraconsciousness thinks. Within the Supraconsciousness Reason is whispering . . whispering . . whispering, “I am Well. I am Right.” The Subconsciousness knows what this means, for it is not a fool thing, stubbornly as it may seem to act. It remembers when Reason was content, when it felt that the Ego was Well, and that condition, under pressure of the Urge, becomes its “set” Thought of Rightness. And now the whole Being is thinking . . thinking Rightness. It is harmonious in its ideal of Rightness. We hold the thought, our energy is concentrated in thinking, creating Rightness, and Rightness prevails . . instantly if we are sufficiently concentrated and strong, gradually if we have these requisites in a less degree.
CHAPTER XIX
The Healthy, Happy, Prosperous Ego — How We Can Affect Ourselves And Others
Let us remember that the Infinite Urge is as strong within us for physical as for moral Rightness, and that the effect of IT in both respects is commensurate with the rightness with which we employ Reason. In both cases Reason has to contend with the Habit Life . . our Subconsciousness . . built up by centuries of ancestors of varying degrees of intellectual and physical fineness. As every Conscious action must pass the censorship of the Reason it is not hard to see that our Intellectual life is more easily controlled than our Physical life, the latter being carried on by a Subconsciousness that acts almost automatically and autocratically, having seldom been restrained by Reason and even less frequently directed by it.
This being the case, disease and old age seemingly being beyond our control, things physical have been let go very much their own way, and we cannot expect suddenly to assert our Reasoning selves in the functioning of the body with complete success. “Complete success” would mean an assertion of Reason to the extent of living as long as we desired in the possession of unimpaired health and strength. Longevity has already been considerably increased by the greater prevalence of enlightened Reason in matters of medicine, surgery, nursing and sanitation.
Within the past few years life insurance companies have extended what they call the “expectancy of life” in respect to those below the age of twenty, i. e., amongst those who have not really arrived at the age when their own Reason is regarded as sufficiently strong for their self government. This would indicate that modern human beings have learned more about taking care of the health of those dependent upon them than they have about taking care of their own.
We can be absolutely certain of further extending this “expectancy of life” as well as the happiness and prosperity of it, by using our Reason in directing the Infinite power within us in controlling the Subconsciousness, and in doing this we will not only be benefiting ourselves, but doing much for our offspring and their descendants, who will come into the world each with a Subconsciousness better prepared for Reasonable direction, i. e., more accustomed and more yielding to the suggestions of Reason. The extent to which we can prolong our lives will depend largely on our desire to live and the degree to which we exercise our Reason for that purpose.
Excessive old age, accompanied as it usually is by mental and physical decrepitude, is not desirable, and if this decrepitude be reduced or caused to disappear the exceedingly old, until very old age is general, would still find themselves outliving the intellectual environment to which they were accustomed and secretly longing to join their friends of the past on the Other Side. These things and the general expectancy that people will at any rate pass away at from threescore years and ten to a hundred at the outside, will for many generations retard Reason from extending human life indefinitely.
However, we should not permit “general expectancy” . . the communal thought . . which in its power to affect us is an underestimated force, to make us realize that we are looking or feeling old, or that we are old, until we are ready to admit that we are ripe. If we permit this we will lose the vigor and freshness of youth long before we should, and almost insensibly slide into a senility which never need be.
When we are told we are sick, or feel we are so, we must instantly decide that there is a mistake somewhere. The Point of Rightness we have established is Wellness, and the mere suggestion that we are sick startles the Infinite within us into denying that it is so.
It may appear to you that when we make such a denial we are lying to ourselves, as the symptoms of sickness are apparent. For the last time let us endeavor to become clear on this point. We have already arrived at the conclusion that the Ego is Infinite within its Consciousness, and that this Infinity is that of the Thinking, not of the Reasoning Mind. The Reasoning Mind is powerless at any time to act except as an adjuster, and until it assumes a Point of Rightness the Thinking, the Acting Mind does not get under way. When this Point of Rightness is reached Reason must absolutely cease its conscious operations, or the Thinking Mind will act partially and clumsily as one in doubt of what to do.
By Reason we have reached the point of believing we have the elements of perfection within us, and we must assume that we are perfect NOW, for the Infinite recognizes nothing but the present tense. This is obvious, for the Infinite, the Thinking, Acting Mind, can only act NOW; you can only act NOW. You may regret your action of yesterday, but you cannot act in yesterday NOW. You may plan what you will do tomorrow . . this is reasoning . . but you cannot act in tomorrow NOW. There is no time in which you can act but NOW.
The only way to get health is to think it, act it, and that must be done in the NOW. Remember that when you are working your mind to obtain health you are working your Infinite mind and must Think in the terms of the Infinite. To do this, you must keep away from the past and future tense and express yourself in the NOW. You are not lying to yourself nor acting a lie; you are simply expressing yourself Infinitely, and Infinitely you cannot be otherwise than Well. The symptoms that annoy you are not recognized by the Infinite, because they are of mere Time and Space, Here and Now. When you assume the Infinite you must assume the same attitude towards these symptoms; they must be meaningless to you even Here and Now.
You have passed from your Reasoning state of mind into your Thinking state of mind and can no longer accept any evidence with regard to your Point of Rightness; that has been settled. Until you become Conscious of being in this Thinking, this un-Reasoning state, you are not endowed with power to become what you desire. This state of mind is expressed by the Christ Principle, “Ask what ye will, believing that ye have received it, and it will be given you.” Asking, believing, receiving, are all Actions. All Action is Infinite in its source of power. Infinity is all NOW : Action is all NOW. Therefore the three things are all NOW . . synchronous . . in the Infinite sense all happening together.
We must think in this Infinite way before we can obtain the use of or the effect of the Infinite power at our disposal. Do you now see the tremendous difference between Reasoning and Thinking? If you do, you have grasped the method of thinking with your Infinite Self; of using the Infinite power within you to the full extent of your Consciousness. Let us now apply our knowledge to the treatment of ourselves, but do not mistake illustrations for prescriptions, for we must all recognize the fact that no shoe can be made to fit the bunions of every foot. Reason must always adapt the practice to the principle.
You wish to be prosperous. You settle on some starting-point on the road to prosperity. What appeals to you as your greatest need is a certain kind of employment or a certain sum of money; settle in your mind which it is, what it is, or if money, how much. You must be reasonable in what you decide upon,.i. e., your Reason must settle to its entire satisfaction what or how much you have a Right to expect. If you need money, do not say to yourself, “I might just as well ask for a million as for a thousand dollars; I am just as likely to get one as the other.”
This is unreasonable, foolish. If your circumstances, or circle of acquaintances, or capacity, indicate that it would be Reasonable for a thousand dollars to come your way, while it would be Unreasonable to expect a million dollars to do so, you cannot possibly hope to fix the million-dollar Point of Rightness in your Consciousness and begin to Think that you have a million dollars. Perhaps your Reason may suggest fifty dollars as the sum, and to go beyond this would be to fail in fixing a Point of Rightness in your Reason. You may wish for employment as a private secretary, commercial traveler, salesman in a store, as a bricklayer or carpenter. Consider which of these things you are best suited for; fix it in your Reason as a Point of Rightness; then Consciously go into the Infinite.
You may exclaim, “This is easily said, but how is it to be done?” Relax your body and settle yourself in a quiet place, and thus, free from physical inconveniences and other disturbances, close your eyes and say to yourself, “I consciously go into the Infinite state of mind. I become one of the Thinking Expressions of the Universe.” You can do this as easily as you can think while sitting in your room, “I am going into the bank to get fifty dollars. I know it is there for me and will be handed to me when I present my cheque.” In this instance you are consciously in the bank, asking, believing you have received, and receiving, it all happening at once in your mind.
Thus you go into the Infinite. You have quit reasoning about the amount as you did before you filled in your cheque at the bank. You say to yourself, “I have fifty dollars.” Repeat this with the sense of satisfaction that you would feel if you had it, because in an Infinite sense you have it; you have voiced your faith that you have it, and your voice is heard throughout Infinite Life; it is whispered everywhere in the Universal Mind; it is in contact with every Consciousness, for the Universal Mind is Everywhere. No Consciousness may make immediate response, none that could be expected to respond being in a receptive state, but the thought that you, Jones, potentially have fifty dollars now in the keeping of somebody else remains ready to slip into some Consciousness as soon as it becomes receptive.
Repeated several times, the call to this receptive Consciousness becomes stronger and it says to itself, “I wonder how Jones is doing? The last I heard of him he was hard up. I wonder if I could put anything his way? I feel that I ought to give him fifty dollars for that good turn he did me! I will see that he gets it.” Did you ever have a thought like this? If so, it was the call of some “Jones” that came to you through the Infinite, for the Subconsciousness does not suggest that sort of thing and nothing comes by chance. Now do you see how it works? If you are an architect and know someone is about to build a house or a business block it is easily seen how you can put it in his mind that you are the man for him to employ. If you are an artist you can see how a picture by you can be suggested to a probable purchaser.
No matter what you want, fix it in your mind as a reasonable proposition, go after it, and you will get it. It is said that the most thoroughgoing cheat is the man who cheats himself in a game of solitaire; it is just as easy to cheat yourself with regard to having properly fixed a Point of Rightness as it is to take a peep at cards that the rules of the game demand should remain hidden. While nothing can be done to prevent people being dishonest with themselves if so inclined, it is well that we should make the process of fixing a Point of Rightness and making it POSITIVE in our Supraconsciousness so clear that there can be no misunderstanding.
We understand that the source of all power is the Infinite, which is Static . . Positive. As it is Omnipresent, it contacts Expressed Life . . its Negative . . Everywhere, the urge of the Positive from within the Negative, causing Motion . . Action. All Unreasoning Life, being continually in a state of Rightness, instantly responds to the contact according to the nature of its Consciousness. The Reasoning Consciousness contacting this Positive power cannot cause action until it fixes at the moment of action a Point of Rightness for itself, i. e., decides that it is right for IT to do the thing intended.
The instant it has fixed this Point of Rightness its contact with the Positive becomes operative and power is released by the Positive, which enables the Reason to cause action. Its only possible action, except in digesting knowledge and deciding what is Right, is the releasing of its “clutch” . . the Will . . which instantly passes the thought to the Thinking Mind, the distributing machinery of which is the motor brain and nerves; in this way the thought becomes the action. The office of the Will is to pass to the motor department the thought decided by the Reason to be right, and to hold it steadily there until it is told by Reason to release it and hold another thought. This is all there is of “Will Power;” it is no more than the “clutch” with which Reason makes its decisions operative; it has no power of its own.
To illustrate “fixing a Point of Rightness,” we will suppose that you are extremely anxious to catch a train, and glancing at your watch you discover that you have barely time to do this and must “make a run” for it. Reason has fixed running as a Point of Rightness, and away you go. You are doing something unusual, and your Subconsciousness tells you that you are making a mistake, that people are laughing at your haste, that you haven’t time to catch the train no matter how fast you run, that you are perspiring so freely that you will be in a mess even if you do catch it, that running will bring on heart trouble, that it isn’t worthwhile.
You have fixed your Point of Rightness and refuse to be dissuaded; your Reason adheres to its Point of Rightness; your Will fixedly holds in your motor department the thought of running, and you catch your train. On the other hand, your Reason may yield to fear of the bodily harm you may be bringing to yourself, or that you have miscalculated the time, and it causes the Will to let go the thought of running, you slacken your pace to a walk, and miss the train; you did not hold your Point of Rightness. It is quite possible that in the first instance you held your Point of Rightness and yet missed the train; it was your Point of Rightness to run, and you ran, therefore there was nothing the matter with your Point of Rightness, for you ran.
That you missed your train was caused by the miscalculation of your swiftness of foot or of the time at your disposal. To catch the train was not your operative Point of Rightness; if it had been, you would have remained at home until you dropped that Point of Rightness and set a Point of Rightness as to what you must do to catch the train. Do not confuse the end to be achieved with the means of reaching it. A desire to catch the train was the cause which moved your Reason to decide that you would run, and you ran.
Your Reason could not fix upon catching the train as its Point of Rightness if it considered it an impossibility, any more than it could have fixed upon running as a Point of Rightness if you had no legs with which to run. Its first Point of Rightness was to catch the train; it dropped this while it was deciding upon the possibility of it. It decided that you could do so if you ran, and thereupon it set its operative Point of Rightness, which was that you should run, and you ran. Do you see that each Point of Rightness was effectual as far as it could go?
Your desire to regain health causes your Reason to question the possibility of doing so; it decides that it is possible; it considers the means of doing so; medical aid having failed, it decides upon using mental means and studies every phase of this system of healing. It then directs its Will not only to contact its Supraconsciousness with the thought “I am well,” but to maintain this contact. The Supraconsciousness, being the Infinite Life within us, is Positive, and the conscious contact of the thought with this Positive Life, so long as it is maintained, excites the action contained in the thought . . the Positive acting upon the Negative and producing the action desired by the latter.
The Reason thus, while being Negative to Infinite Life, becomes Positive to everything else in your Being, and while receiving energy from the Positive passes it out as power to do the thing it desires. This is becoming POSITIVE IN RIGHTNES’S, and can contain no element of miscalculation, as Reason is dependent for results only upon Infinite Life, which is always Right; all depends upon the repetition and continuance of the conscious contact of the thought with the Infinite within you. To cause your hands to contact each other is easy; to keep them in contact requires concentration of thought; contacting your thought of Wellness with Infinite Life is just as easy; maintaining the contact may be a little more difficult, but quite as possible.
If you desire to have electric light in your room you touch the button which causes the Positive and Negative currents to act and re-act upon each other; to obtain health of body you must cause your Negative thought of Wellness to contact the Positive thought, Rightness. The law governing both operations is the same, and though the result may not at once be seen in the latter instance you may be absolutely sure that the law is working and the Wellness will appear.
In making your body Right never forget the power of Infinite thought to reach the point of lesion and restore it functionally. In a previous chapter it was noted that that incalculable energy which projects light from the sun gives it a velocity of 180,000 miles a second, yet the power involved can be successfully and instantly resisted by a green paper blind a sixteenth of an inch thick. This power of resistance was shown to be the unconquerable nature of the “green” Subconsciousness of the blind, as physically it could no more stop a stream of sunlight than a paper pellet on the track could derail an express train.
Your thought of Rightness which you project through your Being has even a greater velocity and power than the stream of light stopped by a blind, but it can be stopped quite as effectually by any Consciousness or Subconsciousness which has a right to resist it. Your only means of effectually reaching your disturbed function is by Consciously going into the Infinite, placing your fixed Point of Rightness there, becoming oblivious to the reasonings and clamorings of pain, and leaving the Infinite Urge of Rightness to do the work. “Becoming oblivious to pain,” you say, “is easier said than done.”
It is till you have tried it and learned to fix the “clutch” of your will so firmly in closing the Sense intakes of your Reason that while you are aware there is pain, even agony, going on, it has ceased to be a part of you; a mere incident which you cannot afford to cognize. This is a necessary attitude of mind not at all difficult to assume; you are simply in the Infinite state of mind, thinking, not reasoning, saying, “I am Right. Nothing can hurt me; do your worst!” It takes some fortitude to hold yourself in this state our mind if you are attempting to banish an agony of pain, but in a few moments you will settle down to it with ease which will surprise you.
Even in such serious matters as cancer, tuberculosis and heart trouble you can affect the functioning of the diseased part, and if this is done systematically and continuously you will become well. This work does not purport to be a “Family Doctor Book,” with prescriptions for every imaginable disease, but it presents you with a principle which, if applied, will be effectual to the extent that its application is sincere, persistent and patient. It is a specific, and medicine has no specifics upon which it always relies except in a few simple instances such as sulphur for itch, quinine for chills and fever. If medical specifics were in existence they would not be good for you; you would rely on them instead of yourself and defeat Nature’s plan by holding yourself helpless without them.
A mental specific has a different effect, for its use teaches you to help yourself; you always have it with you, in you, but you must learn to use it. If at first you find it difficult, employ practitioners versed in the art of helping others, but do so always with a view of learning how to treat yourself. Practitioners need not be afraid to teach others what they know of mental healing, for a diffusion of knowledge only extends the practice of that of which it is the basis, and it will be several generations before the human family will have so progressed as to be unneedful of help and instruction in this important matter.
You may have often laughed at “absent treatments,” i. e., one mind influencing the health of another though the bodies of the two are widely separated. If you examine the subject you will find it perfectly feasible. The mind desiring to affect another mind must have the name or description of the person to be so affected, in its Consciousness. By uttering the name or mentally giving the description of the person to be affected, while in the Infinite, the operating mind instantly contacts the Supraconsciousness of the mind to be operated upon, for the Supraconsciousnesses of both are identical in quality though differently personified.
If you are contacting the mind to be affected it is all that is possible, even if you are contacting the body as well, though in the latter case you have the opportunity of asking the mind to be operated upon to become receptive. This can be done in absent treatments by appointing a time at which the mind to be operated upon makes itself receptive, that is, frees itself from thoughts of other things; or it can be even more effectually worked when the Reason of the mind to be operated upon is in a state of sleep, i. e., merged in its Supraconsciousness. The operator in either case fixes his Point of Rightness in the Supraconsciousness of the Ego to be operated upon, and this Point of Rightness becomes that of the Supraconsciousness in which it is placed and its Urge works in the manner desired.
The working of this Urge can be simply shown in putting oneself to sleep. With the body relaxed and comfortably situated, say to yourself, “I merge my Reason in my Rightness, in my Supraconsciousness, holding the thought of sleep. I have ceased to reason; I think sleep, I think sleep now.” Refuse to listen to anything that memory or the senses suggest, and persist in repeating, “I think sleep NOW.” It is sometimes easier to vary the formula and dwell for a few seconds on the I (repeating your own name) SLEEP (merge my Reason into my Rightness), NOW. Persistently do this with the idea that you are causing, creating sleep, and it will never fail you.
CHAPTER XX
The Evolution Of Christianity — Christian Science.
The record of things since primitive Man worshipped ugly idols which he vaguely believed represented an unseen Power or Powers, but which he really held to be the Power or Powers, as he could barely distinguish between the Expression and the Thing expressed, shows a continual betterment of ideals caused by, not causing, intellectual progress. When Constantine declared Christianity the State religion of Rome it is well known that he accepted many conditions of the various forms of Paganism then extant which had been only slightly modified during the three centuries of Christian propaganda.
It could not have been otherwise, for the edict could not have instantly changed the people of the empire, composed mostly of Pagans of many varieties, into austere Christians. Probably seventy-five per cent, of them had never heard of Christianity as anything but the fad of a few fanatics, but in obedience to the law they changed their temples into churches and gradually began to use crucifixes to replace their idols. We can easily conceive that the forms and ceremonials were at first but little changed, as so many of them are still in existence, such as the celibacy of the priests and nuns, baptism, communion, the sing-song of responses and mass, bending down in prayer, penance and other self-inflicted tortures, including vows of chastity, poverty and silence.
Torturing others for heresy has been forced out of fashion by Reason, but many of the vestments and genuflexions we can see today could have been seen in the Pagan temples before the Christian era. The advance of “Reason has been shown by the weeding out of some of these things and the elimination by many sects of some of the more barbarous conceptions of the Infinite. If we examine the hymnals at present in use, however, we will still find many traces of Hebrew and other idolatries. For instance:
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
Could anything be more barbarous than this conception of regeneration, or more distinctly a feature handed down from the era when blood sacrifices, including the slaughter of human beings, were offered to propitiate enraged deities ? It must be remembered that the idolatries of the civilization centering about the Mediterranean Sea and Persia had assumed a refinement almost as tolerable to the Reason as the theologized Christian practices of the Dark Ages, and should not be mixed in one’s mind with the atrocious ceremonials practiced by cannibals and other remote and barbarous tribes.
The incense and the music, the dim light of the temples, and other sensuous surroundings were doubtless restful to the devotees. Without being aware of it, we still have these conditions in a modified form. The Reformation led by Luther somewhat loosened the hold of Ecclesiasticism, and this movement became broadened and strengthened by England’s acceptance of Protestantism. Afterwards the cold, cruel logic of Calvin was softened and sweetened by the emotionalism of Wesley and the writings and preachings of Bunyan. Literature of a secular sort began rapidly to leaven the lump of Unreason.
The last century developed many new movements to release Religion from the bondage of idolatrous and unreasoning beliefs and observances. Foremost amongst these was Unitarianism, which accepted the historical Christ, but only as a Man. Its leading thinkers and those whom it attracted as its followers were persons of such high standing, intellectually and morally, that they became a profitable object lesson to the other Christian sects, even though they were ostracized from all religious conferences and held to be heretics certain of damnation because they did not believe Christ was God. Not having arrived at Positive Rightness they were not constructive, and the movement never grew into great proportions, though it had an incalculable effect in broadening and making more reasonable other sectarian beliefs.
Universalism, born of the humane impulse to reject Eternal Damnation as unbelievable, had the same weakness as Unitarianism, but has done much to soften and make more humane the popular conception of the Infinite.
The non-sectarian movement led by Alexander Campbell, whose followers styled themselves the Disciples of Christ, had as its chief tenet the rejection of the direct operation of the Holy Spirit upon the individual, holding that conversion was through the power of the Word, i. e., through Reason. It has fought Calvinism, Ecclesiasticism and many forms of emotionalism, and found many followers in the United States, as it is purely democratic in its Church government. It has, however, by its confusion of the “miraculous” action of the Holy Spirit and the natural action of the Urge to Rightness upon the human mind, and its practical rejection of both, failed to come much nearer Positive Rightness than the others.
Theosophy and Spiritualism have been striving to obtain results from the occult without developing as a basis any scientific knowledge of the laws of the Unseen. They, however, have served the purpose of making us more familiar with the Intangible by teaching that the Real cannot be sensed.
To Mary Baker Eddy must be given the credit of leading the greatest movement towards the establishment of the true Christ Principle that has been made since the propaganda which established the Christian era . . the greatest movement, in fact, since the Beginning of Things, as the principle which she has revived has not been again Theologized, and is unlikely to be. With opportunities and concentration which came of protracted invalidism, she became peculiarly receptive to the Infinite Urge and conceived the truth which scientists were only beginning to demonstrate, that EVERYTHING IS MIND.
Her study of her own case and of the Christ Principle as seen by the Light given her, that everything is Mind, developed her faith that all disease was a thing of the Mind, and that Healing must therefore be a Thing of the Mind. That she did not base her Faith on logic is not surprising. It did not come to her as a logical sequence; it was more a revelation than a reasoning process. She expressed her contempt of the Physical Sciences because they were inconclusive, as they must always be until they accept the Infinite as a factor in their equations.
She did not recognize that she was in possession of the one thing that the Physical Scientists lacked . . i. e., an intake of her Reason kept always open to the Infinite Urge. On the other hand, she did not recognize the fact that the Physical Scientists were in possession of a vast fund of knowledge .that would have been incalculably useful in building her structure FROM THE GROUND UP, as she was unquestionably successful, so to speak, in building FROM THE SKY DOWN.
She reasoned Deductively . . i. e., from the higher to the lower; not Inductively . . from the lower to the higher. She was probably not aware how she became Positive in her Rightness; doubtless she underestimated the share her Reason had in bringing her mind up to the conclusion which her Supraconsciousness accepted as Positive Rightness and released the Power which she considered as a more or less miraculous revelation instead of as Light streaming into her Reason in a perfectly natural way.
Her omission of the use of Inductive Reasoning in its fullness lost her the appreciation and sympathy of the scientific world and was largely the cause of the existing New Thought movement. That she arrived at her conclusions without submitting them to the test of every form of Reasoning convinced the scientists that they were unsound and would not stand such a test. They were at fault in not tentatively accepting her conclusions as a factor and thus testing their own equations in order to find out why they were inconclusive . . always halting at the supposed Unknowable.
If she had accepted the conclusions of the Physical Scientists and reasoned them but one step further she would have found them Right. If they had accepted as a factor her main conclusion, that everything is Mind, and carried their own argument that one step further they would have found her Right.
Marvelous as has been the progress of Christian Science during the past half-century, it would have been incalculably faster had Mrs. Eddy given a REASON for the “faith that was in her.” There would have been less scoffing about people “thinking” they were sick if she had explained that, everything being Mind, everything Thinks . . that thinking and acting are identical.
This perhaps would have necessitated the establishment of the difference between Thinking and Reasoning, and required that Reason be given the high place which is its due in arriving at Positive Rightness.
She was right, of course, in her belief that reasoning was not a curative process, but at fault in not giving it the importance it deserves in arriving at Positive Rightness, from which Right Thinking must start.
It is a mistake to think that the great mass of humanity can be readily convinced of the truth of anything which with the light at their command they cannot reason out for themselves.
It is well known that not all who try Christian Science are able to “demonstrate” its truth, yet it relies almost entirely upon personal demonstration.
Those who cannot believe until they understand, largely fail to benefit by Christian Science, while those who have a strong hereditary faith . . i. e., a capacity to accept a thing as true until it is proved untrue . . find the results obtained sufficient to establish its truth.
It is said one must become spiritually minded to obtain the benefits of Christian Science, but many realize, when attempting it, the difficulty of becoming “spiritually minded” with no understanding of spiritual things except of a vague Theological sort.
It is to be hoped that the establishment of the truth of Christian Science by physically scientific tests and the diffusion of the knowledge of the Infinite and the simplicity of Its workings will make the task of the Christian Scientists a hundredfold easier.
It may be asked, “What will be the effect of the acceptance of the principle upon which The Thinking Universe is founded? Will it be to release the masses from the wholesome restraints provided by Religion?”
What are these “wholesome restraints”? The principles of the Mosaic Law . . the Ten Commandments . . are mostly embodied in our civil and criminal laws, as they have been found to have been embodied in laws prior to those of Moses.
Religion does not enforce these laws, or we would not have judges, and jails and policemen. They are the product of centuries of generations of reasoning beings who have found them expedient, and they will continue to be found expedient. All except the Hebrews have been released from the idea that the God of the Ten Commandments is the God of the Jews only, and the emancipation of the majority from a belief in a personal God resident in some aerial city is making great headway without any signs of increasing moral depravity.
Surely at this age of advancement the fear of Hell . . a place of unending physical torment . . is not held to be a “wholesome restraint.” Its very unnaturalness has given to inconceivable torture the name of “hellish cruelty.” The thought of it does more than anything else to excite disbelief in the reasonableness of all moral teachings, for people are apt to confound moral tenets with religious dogmas.
The thought that if we do not arrive at self-control on this plane we must go on, and on, and on until we do obtain it, cannot but have a sobering influence upon the reckless ones who are so successful in flouting the idea of Hell that they have resolved to have a “good time” Here and Now and take chances of what will happen There and Then. The men who squander their all that they may for a day live like millionaires are almost unknown amongst reasoning beings who hope for a competence always and liberty to enjoy it. Such prodigality occurs frequently amongst those who fear prison and resolve to have a “good time” while they are at large.
If we believe that our Infinite is within ourselves and that we have a capacity for Perfection no matter how humble our qualities and environment may appear, we are sure to be more self-respecting, and if we respect ourselves we will respect others. Amongst the millions who are already believers in or are influenced by Christian Science and New Thought, can you find any sign of a lowered moral standard? What better or more self respecting citizens have we than they? We are constantly hearing not only of wonderful restorations to health, but of equally wonderful cases of moral regeneration effected by Christian Science and its kindred cults. Drunkards and degenerates of all kinds have been uplifted by a restored confidence in their own worth. Indeed, if there be a generally accepted charge against Christian Scientists it is that they are offensively self-centered and contented with themselves . . self-satisfied. And why should they not be?
The man who feels that he is the Infinite within his own Being knows that everything he desires is his; that he only needs to become Conscious of having it to begin at once to enjoy it. The scrawny flower, urged to Rightness but retarded by its environment of unsuitable soil, finds its pollen borne by the winds to suitable mates in more favored places, and calyx and corolla are enlarged and filled till the starveling bloom becomes a full, shapely and beautiful flower. It is so with all things in this Thinking Universe; thinking so makes them so.
The Reason of the floriculturist may fix in his mind as a Point of Rightness that the single shall become a double rose, but it is his thinking . . acting . . that guides the Urge within the flower to its complex beauty. He does not make it so; it makes itself so. In a like manner the man desiring a fuller life needs but to go into his Supraconsciousness to voice his call, which is instantly heard the Universe over, echoing in every Consciousness, heard perhaps by but a few, responded to perhaps, alas, by none. Voiced again, and again, some Consciousness or Consciousnesses respond, and, in the parlance of the day, “things begin to come his way.” Is he less than the flower, which “toils not, neither does it spin”? It but Thinks.
If the man but reasons himself to a Point of Rightness and there quits reasoning, doubting, debating, and thinks for that which is reasonably his, he gets it. The Universe is responsive to Thinking, but human thinking must start from a Point of Positive Rightness arrived at by Reason. Whether we call this Point of Positive Rightness Reason or Faith means more than it seems to those who have faith but cannot give a reason for it. They are satisfied with what they have. But should they be? To leave such a condition unchanged is to invite disabilities in their work as well as to leave those who must understand before they can be benefited, unreached.
We have heard of Christian Scientists being hauled into court for practicing Healing without a license, or for neglecting to summon a properly qualified medical practitioner in cases of sickness which proved fatal. Why is this? Those who are prosecuted feel that it is unjust; but they must remember that the affairs of the world are managed by Reason, not by Intuition. The Christian Scientist may KNOW he is right, but he cannot explain it except by his demonstrations, his cures. These demonstrations, these cures, no matter how numerous they may have become, do not constitute a law.
Until all failures to demonstrate disappear and every case is cured, or until Reasons can be given why cures or failures to cure ever take place under such treatments, Christian Science cannot be regarded as a law taking its place with other accepted laws or as immune from them. It must become a reasonable thing. To do this, practitioners of all kinds of so-called Mental Healing should be required to pass a licensing examination . . not in anatomy, or chemistry, or medicine, or the fine arts, but in psychology, a knowledge of the operations of the human mind. As it is by mind that they seek to control mind, surely they should know its processes, both as to its control and its controllability, if they know anything. A man or woman who desires to practice Mental Healing could not reasonably object to proving, by submitting to examination, that he or she knows all that is knowable about mind and its processes.
The fact that a man or woman FEELS that he or she has the gift of healing is not enough in this age of reason, this age governed by habit and experience, to make them immune from various medical acts when they practice for pecuniary profit. We may FEEL . . i. e., spiritually know . . that our wives, and husbands, and mothers and dear ones are chaste and loyal, and no one has a right to demand that we explain why we know; it is our business, and our business alone, and how we know does not affect others. We may practice healing as we may practice the loving of friends, without enquiry being made; but when we make a business of it, it is the right of others whose businesses are affected to demand an explanation or cause our retirement from practice. This is the way the world is run; it is one of the “wholesome restraints.”
That Christian Scientists are sometimes brought into court for neglecting to call properly qualified medical practitioners in cases of fatal illness of those dependent upon them, only proves the strength of their Faith, and possibly their lack of Reason. If faith, for which we cannot give a reason, is so great a thing, it is hard to see how Religionists of every variety, who are so dependent upon this sort of faith for the existence of their creeds, should not solidly unite to prevent such prosecutions. That they do not, but appear to receive the occasional convictions with approbation instead of resentment, simply proves that they know very little about either Faith or Reason.
If death be the result of the Divine Will, Religionists have no cause to complain of this Will not having been interfered with by a regularly qualified physician. They preach this, but they do not believe it. Reason tells them, as it does everybody, that various means have been established to prolong life, such as surgery, medicine, nursing and sanitation, and they insist that everyone shall have the benefit of these. Fortunately for those concerned, physicians, surgeons, nurses and sanitary inspectors are not punished by fine or imprisonment when they fail while using every means at their disposal, to prolong life.
This is the recognition by Reason that the sciences referred to are not exact. That people should be punished for not calling a physician when he can by no means guarantee a cure, while they believe a practitioner of the healing art can, if not interfered with by a doctor, restore the patient to health, does not seem fair, and that such prosecutions are rare and generally unsuccessful is a credit to the administration of justice.
Christian Science instead of New Thought is used to bring out the above points, because the former has a well devised organization, which the latter lacks, and, composed as it is of incongruous elements, is incapable of concerted action. New Thought is really the impulse of those who recognize that there is something infinitely true in Christian Science but cannot understand it, to find something which they can understand and which will produce similar results.
They have’ found that in Stillness they find wisdom and strength, and though they recognize that it is from the Infinite they obtain these things by consciously going into It, they have been unable to explain why. The Urge within them impels them to seek the Truth, and in the Infinite they will find it.
Man is too easily satisfied that he has found enough for HIM, especially when he is Truth-seeking. Going into Stillness is not enough; we must go in and remain in it with a definite object in view, and the worthier that object the better it is For us. Going into Stillness in the spirit of near reverie may be restful, but it is otherwise useless. Going into Stillness with the object of inducing the condition of auto-hypnosis or partial auto-hypnosis, as is so prevalent in India, is idle, for we bring nothing back with us. Knowing where to go to seek something great . . as in Stillness . . is diminished in importance when such retirements are not for the purpose of developing some great or worthy thought.
As Formalism in Religion diminishes true Spirituality, so Formalism in everything kills that which it was intended to foster. This is suggested by the fact that New Thought . . as it is now generally known . . has not developed any Great Thought, though many followers of it have written volume after volume of beautiful and helpful things. We all know that our Reason must be kept busy, either believing or disbelieving some special thing. In pursuance of this, many New Thoughters have taken up Vegetarianism or Reincarnation, or both. They cannot see that Vegetarianism is not vital either as a diet or a doctrine, and Reincarnation physically and spiritually impossible except in the sense that our ancestors find reincarnation in our Subconsciousnesses.
This reincarnation, however, is carried on by the continuance of life and has nothing to do with the death of the body and the release of the spirit at that time. To thrust the Ego, recently relieved from a bodily environment, even into an unborn Consciousness, would violate the Infinite law of non-interference with any Consciousness. It would defeat all that is accomplished by heredity in the way of building up a Habit Life, and make the human Subconsciousness a much more imperfect thing than it is now. Another error into which too many New Thoughters have fallen is that of considering the human Ego to consist of a Consciousness, a Subconsciousness, and the latter’s expression . . a body . . giving no place to the Supraconsciousness, but exalting the Subconsciousness to the superlative office of the Infinite within us.
We can easily see that this error must necessarily do much to defeat the work of Healers who think directly to the Subconsciousness of their patients, when they can alone influence them through the Supraconsciousness, except as their thoughts offer to the Subconsciousness appealed to suggestions of no greater power than the suggestions continually being offered by memory and environment. They seem to recognize that Infinite Life does the work, but are quite at sea as to how it is done. That many of them succeed indicates that they have arrived at a Point of Rightness within themselves which is accepted by Infinite Life . . never jealous of its prerogative . . and healing power released.
If they better understood themselves and the processes of Mind their Consciousness would be enlarged and made more powerful to the extent of their knowledge, thus greatly adding to their success. All mental healing is accomplished through Faith . . Reason made Positive in Rightness . . but it does not follow that the faith is always well founded. Faith in anything, if sufficiently strong, will do the work. The intention of these studies is to establish a basis of ABSOLUTE TRUTH, so that all, not merely those gifted with strong hereditary faith, may benefit or be benefited. This basis can only be established by a knowledge of the Infinite law and the Elemental laws which express IT in things.
To return to the “wholesome restraints” which would disappear if this law of the Ego be established, we have found none. Fear, that most weakening of all things, would disappear, and with it the power of Ecclesiasticism. On the other hand, what incentive to Rightness would disappear? Can you think of any? Can you think of anything alluring to those desiring to be right or even to be thought right, which would lose any of its potency or pass out of existence? Would the desire to do right become weakened? The man who lives Conscious that HIS INFINITE is within him, like Enoch, “walks with God.”
No greater nearness to GOD can be conceived, no more constant or powerful influence to GOOD could be found, than the consciousness, I AM THE INFINITELY GOOD IN MYSELF.
“Will this consciousness come to us if we accept this law?” you may ask. It certainly will to the extent that you accept it. If you accept it to the extent only of ceasing to believe in a Personal God it will not be an abiding strength to you, but the Reason that can carry you that far will carry you further if you seek Infinite direction. “But,” you may say, “I may lose my belief in a Personal God and be left with nothing.”
As far as Truth is concerned, what you have at present is nothing; that you have been influenced by it must prove to you the strength of the Urge to Rightness within you which made of value to you as a guide something which did not exist. This Urge will not cease, and will be of as much value to you in finding your way as it ever was. Indeed, it will be more valuable, because, bereft of a false faith, one is always more receptive of Truth. You need not fear. When you ceased to believe in Santa Claus you did not cease to expect as good things from the real givers of them as you did from the supposed giver of them.
And you were not wrong, though you regretted the passing away of a pretty superstition. Surely you do not desire in your maturity to continue the Santa Claus illusion of a bewhiskered and impossible little fat man and a team of reindeer making a miraculous entrance into your house with Yuletide presents, now that you know that the givers of the presents are residents in the house with you. How, then, can you fear the loss of an illusion that an impossible Personal God, or His impossible Personal Son, makes miraculous entrances into your Consciousness, when your Reason tells you that the gifts and the giver are already within you?
The loss of the Santa Claus illusion did not diminish your generosity in giving nor your gratitude in receiving gifts, while your Reason was uplifted by release from a deception which can only be excused on the ground of fostering in the childish mind the idea that all good things come from the Unseen, and this should be explained to youngsters when the time for disillusionment comes; otherwise even the childish mind will resent, according to the strength of its Egoism, the thought of having been tricked.
You may fear the ostracism of Orthodoxy if you announce your acceptance of Truth, but it is far easier and safer to live in the open than in partial hiding. Orthodoxy respects Reason even if it does not follow it, while at heart it hates pretense, though busy itself in pretending. Loss of social position should not, and seldom does, follow Right Doing, and when it occurs it is only apparent and temporary. Failing to go to church and listen to things you no longer believe may separate you from some valued friends, but you will soon realize that this separation would not have been possible if you had not over-valued their friendship. You may be appalled by the thought that church-going will cease, singing and praying and preaching disappear. Not so.
The law of Attraction will not cease. Like will be attracted to like. The community impulse will be as strong as ever. People will assemble themselves as of old to hear that which pleases and uplifts them. There will be less noisy prayer, but more sincere turnings to the Infinite for guidance; music and singing will not be less popular, but more so, for the law of Egoism is the law of Expression, and he or she who feels full of Goodness and Harmony will voice the feeling.
Organizations of people of similar tastes will not be decreased in numbers and influence or the doing of good, and preachers will be changed into teachers with ample scope for their energies. Indeed, in looking not only at this life, but at life on the plane that will follow it, one cannot help being impressed with the great share that Teaching must have in developing Reason towards perfection in both. Doubtless the chief employment that we will find in our next state of existence will be that of Teaching. The Infinite Urge to Rightness is busied only in causing the various Expressions of Life to express their possibilities to the fullest.
What is this but Teaching? . . a thing which because of the popular underestimation of Reason has far too low a status in the professions, even if it be allowed the privilege of calling itself a profession. It surely cannot be that the education of the future, as it has been in the past, will be of the Outside instead of the Inside. “Outside” education is the acquirement of things we can “show off;” “Inside” education is learning how to DO things, BE things. The law of Cause and Effect will become more than a phrase; it will be the mainspring of our conduct.
CHAPTER XXI
The Future Life, Revealed By The Law Of Rightness.
The greatest difficulty of Right Living is to divest ourselves of the grossness of our way of thinking. We can only rid ourselves of the coarseness of our habits of living by the development of the spiritual side of our Ego. After we have learned that our thoughts, through the Infinite in the Ego, can control the body we are certain to become careful not to entertain thoughts which will damage our health, while on the other hand we will be persistent in inviting and holding thoughts necessary to our bodily welfare. More will have been accomplished at this stage of our progress than is apparent at first glance. All thoughts of grossness and excess become abhorrent to us because we know they damage us, and we consequently avoid the persons, places and things likely to suggest coarseness or excess; thus a certain amount of “spirituality” is obtained.
We examine our methods of making a living as to whether they are detrimental to our bodily welfare as well as our happiness, and learn that speculation, hazards, uncertainties of all kinds are disturbing and worrying and we avoid them, and the whole tendency of our thoughts is in the direction of legitimate business. In this way we become law-abiding, avoid idleness, gambling, profligacy, quarreling and war, and have unconsciously “spiritualized” our employments.
When we have learned to watch the workings of the law of Cause and Effect we will only remember Yesterday to the extent of avoiding its mistakes, and will look forward to Tomorrow with a joyous certainty of doing something better than we did Today. We have learned to pay heed to our Spiritual Selves, to watch and control our thoughts, knowing how much they mean as producers of health and happiness. If we have learned to watch our thoughts we are living on the Thought plane and have risen above that most undesirable of all things, gross Materialism.
Further to spiritualize our lives we must live as if Here and Now constituted but a rather pleasing incident preparatory to an endless life of progress There and Then. To do this it would seem profitable to have a more distinct idea of what we will do and be after we cross the Street we call Death and live on the Other Side of the Way.
Reasoning by analogy the only difference we will find on the Other Side of the Way will be the absence of our coarser bodies and of the necessity of ministering to them as to food, shelter, warmth and clothing. While we are relieved from providing these things, it will be seen that all employment connected with the production of them will also cease. All “material” things having been left behind us, it may seem puzzling what we are to do with ourselves, how we are to fill our time, what will be left demanding the use of our Reason. Supposing yourself to be in that favored condition of independence on this plane in which you would have to take no thought with regard to providing warmth, food, shelter and clothing for yourself and family, what would you do?
It is a position that we all hope to achieve even Here and Now. Would you spend your time in eating, drinking, swaggering about the city, and winding up the daily round with sleep? If so, you would be getting no more out of life than you did when you had to work . . not so much, for in working you were doing something useful. On the other hand, are you ambitious, when you become thus independent, to engage your faculties in making men happier, better and wiser? One is a material conception of the purpose of living, and the other the intellectual or spiritual view of what life is for. If on This Side of the Street you devote yourself so entirely to material things as to stunt your spiritual growth you will be lonesome and ill-at-ease when you move Across the Way, though you will find plenty of companionship among the spiritual runts in the sphere to which you will certainly gravitate, for the law of Attraction will cause you to assemble with your kind.
As there will be no eating and drinking to fill your time, your Reason, impelled by the Infinite Urge to Rightness, will cause you to seek to develop yourself intellectually. This you will find can only be done There as it is done Here, by either improving your environment or getting out of it. There seems to be no way of doing either of these things without making an effort to improve yourself, and to improve yourself you must try to improve others; others in the same fix will be trying to improve themselves by trying to improve you, and the friction and stimulus of rivalry will be mutually beneficial.
If we analyze our intellectual life as we find it Here and Now we will find that its chief impulse is a desire for companionship . . a sympathetic environment. As animals we seek to be well fed, kept sufficiently warm . . to be what is so well expressed by the word “comfortable.” This desire to be “comfortable” is nothing more than the animal expression of our intellectual desire to be in a state of contentment . . satisfied with the thoughts and impressions continuously afforded by our environment for mental digestion by our Reason. This intellectual environment must consist of fellow-beings with whom we are in sympathy, or the intellectual productions of fellow-beings which are pleasing to us . . what we know as “congenial companionship.”
We can find this companionship in books, music and works of art, more completely in many instances than in mental contact with our personal friends, for civilization is so advanced that reproductions of the works of the greatest minds are accessible to all, while personal contact with great men and women is limited to a few. The enjoyment we get out of a good book is afforded us by what the writer knows, not by what he is, for of the latter we may be entirely ignorant or unheedful. The intellectual pleasure we find in the personal companionship of our fellow-beings with whom we come in contact is of the same sort . . we like them for what they know more than for what they are or seem to be. It would seem, then, that intellectual companionship may be of a very impersonal sort, and intellectual contentment consist more of accessibility to what people know than to the people themselves.
It has become evident in the studies we have made together of the unchanging law of Rightness that the human Consciousness and the qualities it expresses Here will be the same There, and it will be worthwhile for a few moments to examine the means of communication which will be afforded us through which we shall have access to the thoughts of others when divested of our fleshly bodies. Though but little thought has been given to this subject, there seems to be an erroneous impression amongst those who have considered it at all, that on the spiritual plane everybody will know everybody else and instantly cognize what everybody is thinking about; or that everyone will be a stranger to everyone else and know nothing of what others are thinking, and have no means of finding out.
The latter is certainly so unthinkable as not to deserve attention. On the other hand, if everybody knows everybody else and is instantly aware of what everybody is thinking, such a thing as privacy will be impossible, and without privacy there can be no individuality. If Here and Now we knew everything about everybody else, and everybody knew everything there is to know about us, no one could have anything he could rightfully claim as his own particular possession. Acquaintance with anybody would be so instant and easy as to be undesirable, and if you think for a moment you will see that such a condition of things would bring us all to a dead level, and all effort to know or be more than we know or are would cease, insomuch as we would know everything that everybody else knows and be conscious of what everybody else is conscious of.
The human Consciousness will be as inviolable There and Then as it is Here and Now, and no one will know any more about you than you are willing for them to know. No one will see you because there are no eyes, no one will hear you because there are no ears; all communication will be through the channel of Awareness. If you do not desire others to be aware of your presence they will not become aware of you until you fix a Point of Rightness in your Supraconsciousness admitting their right to contact or influence you.
When Here and Now you do not desire to see a caller you cause your servant to announce that you are “Not at home,” which means that you are not at home to that person. In the spiritual world when others desire to see you they will have to contact you through your Supraconsciousness, which can say “Not at home” to them as easily as your servant did to your earthly caller. If through someone else who can acceptably contact your Supraconsciousness an arrangement for meeting can be made it will answer the purpose of an introduction, and your privacy will be preserved.
We are again back to the old subject of the “set” Point of Rightness. There and Then it will mean everything, as it does Here and Now, though we do not recognize it Now as we will Then. You will “set” your Point of Rightness as to how you will appear to others, as well as if you will appear at all. Instead of carefully dressing for the eyes of your caller you will think carefully of how you desire to appear, and having arranged all this mentally you will fix it as your Point of Rightness and you will appear exactly as you arranged you should appear. In this way you will always be to everybody that you allow to contact you just as your Reason settles that you will think you are.
If we examine this condition we shall find it very similar to the one which exists now, everyone practically accepting us at our own estimate of ourselves. If we are conscious of not being fit for good society we do not get into it; if, on the other hand, we are conscious that we are fit for such society we find means of getting into it. In the Future State we shall not be embarrassed as we sometimes are Here by not being able to dress in accordance with the usages of the society we desire to enter; if when There we are conscious that our “fixed” Point of Rightness in matters of attire will be acceptable to those with whom we desire to mingle, we shall know that we are properly arrayed.
You may think that this anxiety to appear well is a frivolous view to take of the Future State, but it is not; it is in accordance with the Infinite law of Rightness, and the further we progress the more anxious we will be to appear right as well as be right. Of course we shall make mistakes till we arrive at Positive Rightness; we shall often set a Point of Rightness and admit others to an awareness of it, and the point will not please those it was intended to please, and they will make us aware of this. Our Reason may tell us Then as it does Now that we have become perfectly wise on some subjects, and we will admit others to an awareness of this opinion of ourselves, just as in the present life we communicate this intelligence by words or actions.
Those who know we are wrong will make us become aware of this and we shall feel humiliated, just as we do Now when someone reveals our mistakes to us. We shall make friends and lose them; tiring of them, we will drop them; tiring of us, they may drop out of our circle. Our love of companionship will necessarily be greater than ever, as our only access to advanced spiritual thought will consist of the possibility of establishing an awareness with advanced reasoners or with those who have that privilege.
To extend as far as possible this companionship we will endeavor to fit ourselves for it, but as this will necessarily be a more or less slow process we shall be forced to content ourselves, as we are forced Here and Now, with the companionship of those we like and who are fond of us without being particularly uplifting in their influence. In this way we shall have glimpses of planes higher than ours, and lower than ours, but as Now the plane upon which we move will be the most important to us and the companionship of those upon it will be our chief interest. Is this not exactly the condition of things Here and Now?
Perhaps it is difficult for you to realize a phase of life which consists entirely of companionship through Awareness. Did you ever see a little company of children at play, or a child, alone as far as your vision goes, amusing itself talking and laughing with some familiar childish spirit which is as real to it as a fleshly playmate could be? The child may have a stick of wood with a rag wrapped around it, and you may hear it addressing it something after this fashion: “Now, Ethel, you’ve got the loveliest silk gown you ever saw, trimmed with real lace and all covered with frills and beads.
You have on the loveliest silk stockings and white kid slippers that I could buy, and your lovely blonde hair curls just beautifully. What lovely blue eyes you have, and such pretty teeth, and such del-i-cate hands! You’re the loveliest lady in the land, and we’re going to a ball right now!” And the youngster dances around with the doll or stick of wood, and it responds to her as completely as if it were alive. The youngster has simply fixed a Point of Rightness for the doll, and it thinks back to her from this Point of Rightness; it does not speak, but she does . . they are both on the same plane.
A little company of children are arranging something to play. A masterful little boy asserts: “I’m a millionaire and have just paid a million dollars for a yacht, and I’ll take you all out for a cruise. (Chorus of children: ‘Oh, isn’t he rich!’) Isn’t it fine sailing away out of sight of land! (‘I hope it won’t storm,’ pipes a little voice.) It won’t matter,” cries the boy. “This ship doesn’t rock. What’s that I see out there? It’s an island, and that over there is a sail! Aha!” cries the little captain, “it’s a pirate! (‘Will the pirate catch us?’ whisper the children in terror.) I’m afraid he will,” cries the captain, “before we can make land.” Instantly the scene changes, and the awareness of the children changes to the new Point of Rightness fixed in them by their leader. “You are all drownded,” he cries, “and lying on the sand of the island! (Instantly the children drop on the lawn and stretch themselves out as if dead.)
The pirate caught us and threw us all overboard, and I rescued you and brought you to this island, but you’re all drownded. Lie still! (‘Hurry up,’ whispers a little voice; ‘I don’t like to be drownded.’) Never mind,” shouts the lad; “I’ve been and bought a new yacht for two million dollars, and now I’ll bring you all to and we’ll start off again.” The little fellow had the power of fixing a Point of Rightness in the Supraconsciousnesses of his childish playmates, and they had not become sufficiently materialized to find any difficulty in being just the persons and in the conditions he asserted them to be.
They had not yet received those hard jolts which are almost sure to cause us in later life to demand an objectivity of our thoughts which we can sense. In other words, their thoughts instantly became Things, regardless of the fact that they could sense nothing in their environment to confirm their awareness; for the moment they and the things about them became what they thought they were; they were living on a spiritual plane, and their bodies and the things about them became unreal, while their thoughts, as in truth they were, became reality.
“Except ye become as little children ye can in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Harmony), says the Great Philosophy. Till you cultivate your Awareness to the extent of making real things that are not material, ye cannot enter the State of Harmony. The things we so much prize Here and Now and the senses by which we appreciate them are but shadows of the real things of life and the Awareness which will make senses unnecessary.
We have seen that the privacy and individuality of every Consciousness will be inviolable There and Then as they are Here and Now; Here we protect our animal selves from bodily intrusion by walls and doors and other physical means, while we maintain the privacy of our Consciousnesses by silence when questioned with reference to subjects regarding which we do not desire to express an opinion, or when asked to disclose facts in our possession which we do not wish to reveal. In the Future Life we shall have nothing to protect but our Consciousnesses, and from these we can bar intruders by simply refusing the intruder an opportunity to fix his Point of Rightness in our Supraconsciousnesses, as that would establish a temporary awareness of what we are thinking, i. e., how at the moment our minds are acting. Consider for a moment how important this is. In That existence, as in This, there will be outlaws, and the penalty of their outlawry will be their lack of access to the companionship of anyone but their own class, thus forcing them to herd together in a “hell” of their own making. Reference to “outlaws” implies the existence of regulations adopted by those of the spiritual world similar to the laws expressing the Community Consciousness here on earth.
These, of course, will exist and be administered as Here, locally and generally from centers of power. It is evident that the Future State will be a condition for the perfecting of Reason and will be ruled by Reason, and that its rules (laws) will express the degrees of perfection of Reason arrived at on its various planes. No penalty for infractions of these laws can be conceived except deprivation of desirable companionship . . much the same in effect as imprisonment in this life but radically different in execution, as this deprivation of companionship will be inflicted by the individual instead of the community. It will not be necessary or possible to incarcerate the outlaw, for, as there are no physical bodies to confine or injure and the spiritual body being uninjurable except by its possessor, there will be nothing to fear from the outlaw but the annoyances he may cause.
These annoyances must necessarily be unconventional attempts to enter into an awareness with those who do not desire such an acquaintance; they will be like the persistent ringing of earthly door-bells by peddlers, canvassers, tramps and beggars, annoying but not dangerous. That there will be such annoyances seems obvious, for life undisturbed by anything would be without incentive to effort. The continuous appeals of the unfortunate for better companionship will move progressive souls to missionary work . . to the uplifting of those asking to be raised. Responding to this soul-appeal for betterment, made continuously and continually from the lowest to the highest spirits struggling for perfection, will be the chief occupation of those in the spiritual world, as it should be the chief business of those on this material plane.
RECOGNITION thus seems to be the only worthy prize of the future, withholding it the only punishment. What is the prize for which we struggle Here? Is it not RECOGNITION? Putting aside our struggles for food, raiment, warmth and shelter, what is it we are so eagerly seeking but admission to a better circle of acquaintances, “recognition” by those esteemed our superiors? What is the “recognition” of others worth to us if it is not to enlarge our Consciousnesses of ourselves, to make us feel conscious of increased worth, this having as its climax a “recognition” of our own perfect Rightness? “Recognition” is nothing but Reason RE-cognizing . . taking a new view of ourselves or others.
We are all burningly anxious for others to take a new and more favorable view of us, of our attainments, our powers, our possessions, that we may be thus enabled to establish a new and more favorable view of ourselves. /a good opinion of ourselves, the best possible opinion of ourselves, is what we are after; this is the URGE TO RIGHTNESS in the Ego, impelling it Here and Now, as it will impel it There and Then, to PERFECTION.
These are not speculations with regard to the Future State, but reasonable deductions made from observations of the workings of the law of Rightness and its elemental auxiliary laws. Speculations have been avoided as unprofitable, and the space at hand will allow us to dwell but briefly on the workings of the laws we know Here and Now as they will be found There and Then. We have arrived at the principle governing things Here, and it remains for each one of us to reason out the workings of that principle There; it is a delightful and uplifting study.
For instance, the Great Philosophy says there will be no marrying nor giving in marriage There. Follow this out to its legitimate conclusion. Marriage is a ceremony dictated by Reason as necessary for the protection of both the individual and the community in order that legal parents may be cognized by the law as the proper custodians of and providers for all offspring. As there will be nothing to provide for offspring but companionship, marriage will be an unnecessary conventionality in the Future State. It does not follow that the propagation of the species will cease as that species rises to a higher plane; nothing in Nature indicates this.
On the contrary, we know that the higher an animal rises in its grade of breeding the more valuable it becomes, and as Man rises nearer perfection it becomes more desirable that the propagation of the higher species should go on. True, there are no physical bodies to produce physical children, but there will be spiritual bodies to produce spiritual children; if it were not so, the beautiful instincts of maternity would remain unused for the countless billions of years during which spiritual women will exist. The relation of men and women as Positive and Negative forces will remain unchanged, and though the method of selection will be unhampered by the conventionalities of Now we may be sure the proprieties of Then will be insisted upon.
Family ties, of course, will be loosened and the mere physical relationships of earth will gradually fade out of existence as spiritual beings find they cease to be helpful. Intellectual, spiritual attachments begun Here should develop in strength There, and every relationship that is reasonable . . right . . Here will find a congenial atmosphere There.
CHAPTER XXII.
Conclusion — The Office Of Reason In The Infinite Economy
If anything can be proven by Reason . . and we know of no other means of proving a thing to be true or untrue . . we have in these studies demonstrated that:
We are because Life is.
Nothing anterior to Life is conceivable; the non-existence of Life is inconceivable, therefore to us Life always was and always will be.
Life and Mind are identical, as neither could exist prior to or without the other.
While we cannot conceive of the non-existence of Life, we can conceive of it being Alone, the Essence of all things, the Expression of nothing; as the Universal Unit, Immovable, having nowhere to move, but possessing the power of causing Motion, it being Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient.
Without Motion nothing could be done, therefore its first process must have been conditioning itself for Action, which it did, insomuch as we see evidences that Action has been and is.
It polarized itself; became Positive and Negative Life, acting and re-acting upon each other . . the Positive emitting the Urge, the Negative responding by action. This being the law of Power Now, and as physical laws are unchanging, we have concluded that it was the law of Power Then
Positive Life, the Infinite Life, was Then and is Now Immobile, having nowhere to go, nothing in which to move.
Negative . . Expressed . . Life Then became Motion and is Now Motion.
Varying degrees of velocity in this Motion caused constrictions . . vortices . . of various densities.
These were and are Elemental and Eternal; known to science as Atoms, in this work as Consciousnesses, a Consciousness being that which knows what it is and what it is for.
The coming into existence of these Atoms or Consciousnesses was the origin of the period we know as Time and Space. The partnerships, combinations and colonizations of these Atoms have produced Things as we apprehend them.
Mind being the original and only creative element, everything was and is Mind, having the function inseparable from Mind, that of Thinking.
In the above conclusions we have taken nothing for granted, but have reasoned from what we know to what must have been. Everything we have found being Good, we have concluded that everything is Good, and that the cause of everything is therefore Good, and that everything will be Good. It has been proven that:
Every Thing, being Mind, Thinks. Man, being a Thing, Thinks, but he also Reasons.
Man is the only Thing that Reasons.
All Unreasoning Nature automatically Thinks from a Point of Rightness set for each thing by the Infinite.
Man alone Thinks from a Point of Rightness he is forced to set for himself. He is given Reason with which to “set” his Point of Rightness; he is given nothing else not possessed by Unreasoning Nature with which to find this Point of Rightness.
No provision has been made by the Infinite to prevent mistakes in reasoning, or to provide against an initial mistake.
The possibility of Man making mistakes is a part of the Omniscient economy; without it Reason would be useless, and Man impossible. Man would be impossible if he had no opportunity to choose between Right and Wrong; his Rightness would be automatic like that of the horse or tree.
The Infinite, being the Essence of Goodness, gave Man a sufficient equipment . . Reason . . to arrive at Positive Rightness.
Man, to be a Man, must gain his Point of Rightness by his own experience or by profiting by the experience of others, and though this seems to us to be a tedious and painful process we cannot deny that it is so because we make it so. This in itself is a part of our experience. The length of time it takes Man to arrive at Positive Rightness is not considered by Infinity, because Infinity cognizes neither Time nor Space.
Man cannot complain of the length or unhappiness of his experience, because he has the equipment within himself to shorten it or render it less unhappy. If he had not this equipment he would have a right to complain, but a right to complain against Infinite Goodness involves a contradiction of terms which makes it impossible to believe that Man’s equipment is deficient.
Man’s special equipment . . Reason . . being sufficient to enable him to arrive at Positive Rightness, is therefore sufficient to enable him to arrive at Rightness with regard to everything, regardless of the gravity or unimportance of the subject being considered.
Man, therefore, can understand himself and his relation to the Infinite.
If Reason can prove anything about itself, its office and capacity, the above conclusions are unshakable. Now let us consider the conclusions Reason has arrived at with regard to Man’s relation to Infinity. It has been proved that:
Infinity is the Supreme Ego.
Man, with the supreme endowment of Reason, is the Lesser Ego.
Every Consciousness and Subconsciousness is an Ego.
Each Ego, Infinite or small, is to itself the center of the Universe, each being conscious of its complete equipment for its own good. This is true of Man, limited as his Egoism is by his neglect of his Reason.
Perfection of Reason will alone make perfect the Human Ego.
The Infinite Ego compels the Lesser Ego’s obedience only to its law of Rightness . . the only Infinite, consequently the only unbreakable law.
Each Unreasoning Ego acts automatically, obediently, in harmony with this law.
The Reasoning Ego is forced to fix at the moment of conscious action a Point of Rightness of its own before it can act.
Living is a continuous, progressive series of changes of the state of mind of each thing.
Each change of mind in each thing must pass the censorship of the Infinite Ego before it can become the desired state of mind.
The changing states of mind in the Human Ego are seen to pass the Infinite Censor without reference to what we call moral laws, and without regard to what is good or bad for the body or spirit of the Human Ego, these things being left to the censorship of Reason.
Every conscious change of the state of mind of the Human Ego must pass the censorship of Reason.
Reason is thus seen to run on the only line that parallels Infinity . . running beneath it, it is true, but paralleling it in the geometrical sense expressed by the axiom that two parallel lines, if produced indefinitely, will never meet. The meaning of this axiom is thus fully seen, for nothing can be conceived except Reason and Rightness which could forever approach one another without meeting, the meeting somewhere of tangible bodies being considered inevitable by the assertion that they are approaching each other. Reason can never be Infinity, no matter how nearly it approaches it, because it is a Consciousness, an Eternal but an Expressed thing, separated eternally from the Infinite only by its consciousness of itself.
The Ego possessing it is Infinity to itself, the Ego being filled to the fullness of its Consciousness by the Infinite, which to the extent of the Consciousness becomes it, taking on its characteristics and shape. This explains why Man, at all stages of his advancement, partially recognizing the Urge within him, has so long given human shape to Infinity, thus confusing HIS Infinity with THE Infinity.
The proper recognition of Reason by each human being will spiritualize instead of materialize the human race.
Materialism, that gross conception of Man’s composition, purpose and place, which asserts that “Death ends all,” has been stubbornly opposed by Religion of every sort, with but partial success it is true, because Reason has remained unsatisfied and true faith made difficult. For what Religion of every kind has done to stem the tide of Materialism, it is to be praised; for what it has left undone in this matter, as for what it has contributed to the continuance, the deepening, the strengthening of Materialism, it is to be censured. It would be as idle to assert that everyone who goes to church does so because he or she Believes in what is taught there, as to contend that everyone who stays away from church is actuated by a dislike of Goodness.
In each case how they act demonstrates how they think; the Infinite Urge to Rightness is the same in both; in their Reasoning alone do they differ. Those who go to church in search of Goodness are no better than those who stay away for the same reason; those who stay away in obedience to a low impulse are no worse than those who go in obedience to the same impulsion. If there were more secular resorts where intellectual uplift could be obtained on the Day of Rest there would doubtless be fewer churches, though better ones, insomuch as the competition with Enlightened Reason would discourage useless harangues and wearying attempts at Emotionalism.
Emotionalism has its place, but it is thinking . . acting . . not Reasoning. While the rhetorician convinces by his logic, the orator moves his audience by the magic of his thinking . . acting. Not all preachers are orators; many of them can never hope to reach that distinction, but they all attempt to move their congregations without first convincing them. They would be more successful if they gave Reason its proper place and made it their business to convince their hearers of the logical soundness of what they have to say, before attempting to move them into action by Thinking . . Acting . . a part they have not mastered. We love the actor who has mastered his part; thinks, acts it; who at the moment of expression feels that he is it.
We know that it required careful study . . the exercise of his Reason . . before he reached his Point of Rightness and was able to feel at the moment of expression that he was the thing he expressed. On the other hand, a poor actor may fume and strut about the stage shouting his tragic lines, with no effect but to weary or amuse those of his audience sufficiently cultured to recognize his failure to reason himself Right before beginning to Think . . Act. Even those persistent theatre goers, the “gallery gods,” hoot in derision, for they know what he does not, that he is not Right. Occupants of pulpits are not immune from the same judgment and must learn that Reason rules every conscious human action . . not some actions in some things, but all actions in everything. Elemental laws are universal, nothing can escape them; for if one part of the Universe were immune from such laws, such immunity would bring into the chaos of lawlessness those sections which were supposed to be law-abiding.
If we are to be guided by Reason at all we must be guided by Reason entirely. No section of any civilized community is immune from the ordinary civil and criminal laws enforced because they are considered right . . in harmony with Reason . . by that community. Archbishops, bishops, ecclesiastics of all sorts must pay their debts and respect the personal and property rights of others; their Reason tells them this is right. Can these same ecclesiastics expect what they preach, and how they preach it, to be kept out of the Court of Reason . . to be immune from the laws of Reason? What have they that other men have not that would justify this?
They preach many things which time and again have been proved to be scientifically, logically impossible, and their only defense is that they have a right to the “faith that is in them,” obtaining this faith, as they claim, by a means superior to Reason . . Faith. How do they explain how this “faith” is produced by “faith”? Did they get it in their hands or feet, or through anything but their intellectual faculties? If through the latter, they must get their faith in a Personal God as they get their faith in a stationary Sun, through Reason, with its seven intakes . . the five Senses, Memory and the Supraconsciousness, the Infinite Life within us all.
They do not claim that the Personal God or the stationary Sun is revealed by the five Senses or by Memory; it must be that it is suggested by the Urge of the Infinite Rightness within us, and proven true or untrue by our Reason. It does not matter whether it is suggested to us or was suggested to one of our progenitors; the suggestion must have come by this route. How did the suggestion receive expression if not through the Reason? How can the suggestion coming into the intellectual faculties of anyone, prophet, priest or poet, find expression except through the Reason?
If it comes through the Reason it must be shaped by the Reason, colored by the Reason of the one receiving the suggestion . . for it is the business of Reason, the only business of Reason, to digest, adjust that which comes to it; have it purified in its reflective department by the Supraconsciousness before releasing its “clutch” of the Will and passing it to the motor brain and nervous system to become the thought . . the action . . of the whole Being.
A Personal God, and a Sun which rose and set respectively in the east and west, alike were beliefs of Paganism and early Christianity. The stationary Sun and the moving Earth when announced by Galileo were treated as heresies, and Galileo imprisoned. Science has since so amply proven Galileo’s theory to be true that all civilization, including the ecclesiastics, has accepted it; not that the Senses convince us that it is true, but because science has shown beyond question that it must be so. Science has been equally explicit in showing that the Personal God believed in by Christians is even more impossible than a Sun circling around the Earth, but Religionists have refused to accept its proof and have branded the scientists as heretics, though restrained by Enlightened Reason from imprisoning them.
What more evidence have Theologians of a Personal God than their forebears had of a stationary Sun? Indeed, their ancestors had their Senses to convince them of the moving Sun, while of a Personal God we have no evidence, not even of our Senses, only an unauthenticated tradition which arose in the age of myths, while we have every scientific proof that can be desired that a Personal God cannot be Infinite and that the Infinite cannot be a Personal God.
Can Theologians suggest any other means of Inspiration receiving human expression than through Reason? Of course there were the tables of stone containing the Ten Commandments, but who ever saw them, except Moses, and could personally testify that a Divine hand chiseled the inscriptions? The Israelites themselves, in the days when these tables were alleged to have been brought from Horeb, were distinctly dubious about their alleged supernatural origin or they would not have been so prone, after receiving them, to follow after strange gods.
It is idle to claim immunity from the Court of Reason for the so-called Inspiration contained in Holy Writings. We must consider its validity, and in exactly the same way that we consider the validity of any other evidence offered to our judgment. We must keep open all the intakes of our Reason to obtain a proper verdict. It may be said that by closing all the intakes except the one admitting Light from the Infinite, we may obtain pure Truth.
Not so. In such a condition Reason suspends its office and does what has herein been described as “going into the Infinite,” from which it emerges without the record of any communication or knowledge of anything having transpired. This must be true, because Memory is inhibited both from furnishing information and recording what happens. This condition is called Repose and, like sleep, is restful, but the only other result of it is upon the Consciousness . . Reason . . which emerges with THE KNOWLEDGE WHICH WAS IN IT subtly purified by contact with the Infinite.
Thus it is seen that the only effect of such a procedure, outside of its restfulness to the body, is upon Reason, which has been enabled to do better work. Mark that the effect of the Infinite Life is upon what is already in the Consciousness; the Infinite Life does not implant knowledge, it develops it. To implant knowledge would be to inject something into the Human Consciousness . . Reason . . and that would be an interference forbidden by creative fiat and destructive of Man’s Free Will, his Individuality. Infinity does not take the initiative; Man must do that.
Every possibility is within him in the shape of ungerminated seed, valueless to him of course if he does not by Reason cause these thought-seeds to grow. Causing them to grow is the process we know as Study. We start to study a thing because something in our environment, or those in charge of our education suggest it, that is, stir some particular seed within us into germination. We become more perfect in the things we study than in the things we do not study; if we could go to the Infinite and successfully apply for knowledge to be given us directly without the process of study, we would at once drop the tedious preliminaries and cease developing Reason in a search for Rightness of its Own Finding”. This would cause our reasoning faculties to shrivel, become torpid, and then atrophied.
Man has not been provided with any machinery for either intaking or expressing wisdom, except the machinery of Reason. Why do those who intend to become professional puppeteers go to college? Is it for the smattering they obtain of science, literature, arts and the dead languages, or for the training of their Reason? We recognize the necessity of any public speaker being able to express himself grammatically, for if he fails to do so we instantly reason that if he does not know how to talk he does not know how to think; or rather, does not know how to reason, for by reasoning he gets his language right before he thinks it, speaks it, unless his Subconsciousness has been so thoroughly trained by study . . exercising his Reason . . that his expression, like the expression of the trained pianist, is almost wholly Subconscious.
College education is only useful as it places us nearer some Point of Rightness desired by Reason. Theological students do not go to college to strengthen their Faith unless Reason has a part in the upbuilding of Faith; and if it has a part in the upbuilding of Faith it cannot be denied that it has a share in the shaping, coloring of that Faith, or that it has all to do with that Faith except the suggestions invited by it . . Reason . . from the Infinite within us. These suggestions can come in no other way, for if evidence were to be offered a man through some supernatural channel, such as a ghostly apparition, he would first of all be forced to convince his Reason that what he saw was a supernatural apparition, not a trick being played upon him by some of his fellow students.
He would search his room for evidence that no one could enter except by supernatural means; take pains to convince himself that he was awake; tax his memory with the details of what he saw and heard; examine the communication he received as to its reasonableness, and probably scrutinize himself as to his sanity . . his possession of Reason. This would be Reason’s share in the incident, and it is a share which could by no means be dispensed with. All this is so evident that we cannot but wonder that clerics insist upon occupying the anomalous position in relation to Reason which has resulted in their being classified as belonging to the “third sex” . . men, women and parsons. The first possible act of Infinity was the polarization of itself . . becoming Positive and Negative; this is the relation of the male and female found to exist in all Nature.
In endeavoring to hold to the tenets of his “Faith” the parson refuses to accept the Elemental law of Reason, while in other matters he admits the necessity of observing this law. Thus, being neither Positive nor Negative, neither male nor female, it is not strange that his mentation is ascribed to a sex found nowhere else in Nature. If he examines his position in the community of which he is a part he will find plenty of evidence that he is tacitly regarded, as is well expressed by a phrase of the day, as being “Not quite all there.”
His congregation does not allow him to talk politics, does not expect him to take an active part in business, his amusements are restricted, his methods of living and bringing up his family over-scrutinized, and a “daily walk and conversation” demanded of him unlike that of his fellow citizens. These disabilities excite our sympathy but not our surprise. If the pastor demands unreasonable things of his flock, as he does when he asks them to accept unreasonable doctrines, it is not surprising that his flock and all similar flocks are unreasonable in their demands upon him.
Without appreciating it they reason that their pastor cannot amount to much intellectually or he would not be a preacher; he would be a lawyer, or a doctor, or something economically useful. As a rule they pay him less than anybody else with a similar “education” is expected to receive, but, if we regard them as properly or even partially ”converted,” as much as they think he is worth, if not more. True, some churches pay their pastors what they consider a large salary, but they do it because they desire an attractive preacher, and from much the same motive that they individually pay their cooks unusual wages for serving unusually good meals.
Successful revivalists are said to make money and to be the objects of disgust or envy, or both, of clerics who do not desire or do not know how to turn religious services into a circus, and these men should probably be classed not as clerics, but as clowns. These remarks are not made in any spirit of levity or fault-finding, but to show the existing and natural relation between those of the community who make their living by reasoning and those who get it by following a calling which rejects Reason as unnecessary and dangerous.
Reference has been made in this chapter to the censure merited by the “Church” for what it has left undone to stem the tide of Materialism, as well as for what it has done to deepen and strengthen this tide. Of what does this consist? Telling a man that he is a spiritual being and must live forever does him no good if accompanied by a picture of the Hereafter so dull, uninviting and unnatural as to Heaven, so horrible and fiendishly cruel as to Hell, that his Reason rejects both and in his weariness he decides that death ends all. Man is not naturally a Materialist, for the most barbarous tribes believe in a Deity and future life of some sort.
Materialism obtains its grip through the materialization of our Deity and future state. Christianity is only ahead of Paganism in this respect insomuch as its pictures are more refined though perhaps less alluring, but none the less impossible . . they are still the pictures of a Material God and a Material Heaven. It claims its God as the Infinite, which is impossible if God be a person at all, even a spiritual person, for to be a person God must have form and size, which the Infinite cannot have, as it is Everywhere, Everything, Always, with no possibility of having outlines, as there is nothing to outline and nothing from which the outlines could separate It.
Neither can there be a Material Heaven or a Material Hell, with material pleasures in one and material tortures in the other, for all sensual pleasures and pains must be left behind with the bodies that can apprehend them. The real pleasures, pains and possibilities of the future as suggested to us by Reason are never depicted, and the great masses of humanity cling to material things as being all that is worthwhile, or so nearly all that is worthwhile that they are willing to take chances of getting their share of what is left over.
The doctrine that Man is completely equipped to take care of himself Here as well as There is never preached. In matters of health he is encouraged to believe that his spirit does not control his body, and that when he is sick he is the victim of an “act of Providence,” whatever that means. As to “Sin,” he is taught that he didn’t start it, can’t stop it, and can only escape from its penalties by “clinging to the Cross.” To change Man’s attitude towards Infinity; to uplift him into a consciousness of being his own Infinity; to stir his Reason into grasping the fact that he is perfectly equipped for every emergency; to point him to the power he has within him to grapple with sickness and sin, is the aim of The Thinking Universe.
That its logic will be at once accepted by the Theologians is not expected, nor is it feared that all the seed sown will fall upon rocks and desert places and fail to germinate. The comforting thought remains with us that no matter what happens Man will go on Reasoning until he becomes Positive in his Rightness, and the Universe will continue Thinking, always Positive in its Rightness. There is no end. Until we meet again,
SALUTAMUS.
The End