CONTENTS
Preface
Can Death Be Overcome?
The Writers of the Bible Believed That Death Could Be Overcome
Immortality in the Flesh Rests Upon the Fact That the Highest Always Has Power to Control All Below It
From the Standpoint of Personal Experience
The Effort of Jesus to Overcome Death
How I Tried to Bolster Up My Hope by Searching For Others Who Would Believe in It
The Growth of Public Opinion in the Direction of the Conquest of Death
Every Hope is the Sure Prophecy of its Own Fulfillment
The Endless Creativeness of the Human Intelligence
All Growth is a Revolt Against the Claims of the So-Called Law of Gravitation
The One Mighty Factor in Race Growth is Thought
Man Has No Fetters But Those of His Own Ignorance, and Nothing But His Own Intelligence Will Liberate Him From Them
Desire, the Organizing Principle
Beliefs, Both Fixed and Unfixed
The Law of Attraction
The Ego
Endless Progression: Its Retardation by Fear
Man’s Power to Speak the Creative Word: Evolution of the Ideal
Health and Strength and Beauty And Opulence Are to Be Found in Greater Fullness in This New and Wonderful Thought Than In Anything Else In The Whole World
The Study of Man
The Body Built the Brain: But Now the Brain is Leaning How to Build the Body: The Action Between Brain and Body is Going to be One of Reciprocal Interchange
Man is One and Indivisible: He is in the Likeness of the Universe: It is Impossible to Divide Him Into Two Parts, and the Attempt is Death
The Life Principle Yields Its Power to Man in Proportion as Man Comes Into an Intellectual Understanding of it: There is No Limit to the Supply: There Need Be No Limit to the Demand
From This Chapter man may See How it is That His Destiny is Always in His Own Hands: And He May See Why it is That He Can Shape His Future as He Pleases
From Selfishness to Selfhood
Expectation
Doubt
A Conquest of Fire by the Human Body
Thought as a Force Has Scarcely Been Tested: It is Only Now Beginning to be Believed in: Its Power is Something Not Dreamed of at This Time
The Power of Thought in the Development of the Will
Without the Will There is no Individuality: And in Proportion as the Will is Strong or Weak, So is the Individual Strong or Weak: The Will is the Individual
The Conquest of Death: The Greatest Effort of the Age: Coming to Florida to Create a Nucleus for the Growth of this Idea
Honor is to Him First Who Through The Impassable Makes a Road
Come Up Higher
The Uses of Beauty
The School of Research
A Bit of History
Our Location
Courage
Length of Life is Increasing
Life Must be Expressed in Action
To Know Truth is to be Redeemed by It
Believing
How to Grow
The Substantiality of Thought
Mental Science is the True Interpreter of the Bible
Man a Magnet
Whatever Is, Is Right
Preface
The strangeness of the title of this work, The Conquest of Death, will doubtless prompt some, into whose hands it may chance to fall, to lay it down without reading; for the conquest of death, they say, is impossible. Yet, who knows if it be so or not?
The author of this work has discovered that the conquest of death is altogether within the law, and has sought herein to give some reasons for her belief, which she knows to be worthy of the highest consideration of all the people.
—Helen Wilmans
Can Death Be Overcome?
To many, probably the majority of people, the question, “Can death be overcome?” will appear a foolish one, and a person a foolish person who would, in seriousness, ask it, expecting a serious answer. Yet the question has been asked in all seriousness by some of the greatest minds the world has known, and one whom the Christian world regards most highly has answered it affirmatively, if not with absolute directness. He said, “The last enemy that shall be overcome is death.”
Where is one to whom has been given rightful authority to interpret this saying of St. Paul as meaning other than what he says—that when man should have overcome all other enemies, should have learned the law of the lightning and have harnessed it; when the winds and the waves had become his servants, and did his bidding; when on land and on sea man commanded the forces in nature, and was master over the elements, which, in his more ignorant state, he conceived to be engines of the gods, who used them in their anger for his destruction—who has authority or where is the reasonableness in saying that Paul did not mean to express that when man had thus far conquered he should also conquer death? I insist that the language quoted can, in reason, be given no other meaning, and has been otherwise construed simply because the mass of humanity has been unable to conceive of the possibility of immortality in the flesh, and so has been compelled, since it felt that it might not reject the saying, to attribute to it a meaning other than that which it was evidently intended by its author to convey.
Death is everywhere and universally understood to mean the dissolution of a bodily form. Where form does not exist there can be no dissolution, no death. It is absolutely certain, then, that when the apostle used the word, he did so because of the meaning which attached to it, and must, therefore, have meant one of two things—either that men would eventually learn the law by which life could be perpetuated in these bodies indefinitely, or that there existed spiritual bodies which were subject to dissolution and death, but which might be some time, though they were not yet, able to overcome death.
This latter supposition, that the spiritual body, of which the theologians make so much, is subject to death, is altogether antagonistic to the teachings of every religious organization founded upon the Bible; and, since there are but two horns to the dilemma, it is to be hoped that in deciding between them theology will accept the former and concede that which is altogether the most reasonable; namely, that Paul intended to be understood as referring to our present fleshly bodies when he said death should finally be overcome.
The writer of this is not a theologian—not, at least, in the commonly accepted meaning of the word. She does not believe that all wisdom resided in those men who lived two thousand years ago, or that it died with them. She does believe, however, that there were minds in those days, as in more recent times, whose grasp of natural law so far exceeded that of the mass of humanity as to make their utterances unintelligible to other than the very few. The same condition of things exists today, though in a much less marked degree, the general diffusion of knowledge and the commingling of men and of nations having lifted the race to a plane so much above that upon which it stood two thousand years ago, as to have gone far toward obliterating the line between the most illumined of minds and the many.
But, though the line of demarcation is less distinct, it still exists, and exists largely because of the tendency of the race to cling to old ways and old habits of thought, rejecting the new, simply because it is new, and which, because it is new, appears strange and improbable.
The tendency toward investigation, due to the wonderful discoveries and inventions made within the last half of the century, has, however, so increased in all directions and among all classes—even the most stubborn adherents to ancient lines of thought—that no one need longer fe3r being considered mad who advances a new idea, provided he can sustain his proposition by a fair show of fact or logic; and it is because of this fact that I anticipate at least a respectful and thoughtful consideration of my work at the hands of the public. Conceding that I am off main-traveled roads, I yet insist that I am not only traveling in the right direction, as designated by the compass of reason, backed by logic, and not unsupported by fact, but that the way has been blazed by others who have preceded me in other centuries. I would not have it understood that I care very greatly whether anybody has ever passed along this way before, for I do not value truth because of its long residence among men; but I wish to give credit where credit is due, and, further, I am not above quoting precedent, if thereby I can gain a more attentive audience. I believe most sincerely that heaven is a condition, and not a place, and that it cannot be attained while the fear of death exists; death, which is nothing less than the removal by force, and without their consent, or of that of their friends, of human beings from all their associations and interests just when they are best prepared to be of most service to themselves and to the world.
If the reader likes, he may consider these writings as a protest against such a condition of things; but I would wish him to first ask himself if he is satisfied with such conditions, and if he knows to an absolute certainty that the power through which he came to exist as an individual is incapable of continuing, or has any settled objection to his continued existence.
The author of this work believes it entirely possible for the human race to overcome death. She believes that Jesus believed it, and that both before and since his time there have been others who believed in and sought for the overcoming of death, and that it will yet be attained. That it has not been is no argument to prove that it will not be. A very great many things that have not yet been proven will be some time. We knew little about steam or steam engines, electricity or magnetism, or sound waves or the ether a century ago. And the most we now know about some of them is that there is much more to be learned than we yet know. We are only just beginning to get under the blanket beneath which Nature has hidden her secrets; just beginning to learn a little something about her and about ourselves. We are her children, the eldest and best beloved of our mother—the immortal, the deathless. Shall she not impart the secret of life to us, if by diligence in searching and faithfulness in obeying we prove worthy?
Most implicitly do I believe so.
When I say I believe it possible to overcome death and continue to live in our bodies, I do not mean that our bodies must, necessarily, continue exactly as they are. It is reasonable to suppose that they will gradually refine and become more beautiful, and that other senses than the five we now possess will develop, and men become more perfect in every way, physically, mentally and morally. This will be a growth, as all things else are, but growth will be much more rapid, though endless, when the fear of death has been removed through a knowledge of the law whereby life may be sustained indefinitely.
The Writers of the Bible Believed That Death Could Be Overcome
If we are to give credit, as I suggested, to those who before us sought to blaze the way to continued existence in our present bodies, we must begin with the author of the Book of Genesis. Turn now to that book of the Bible, and read that man was, according to the account there given, created immortal; that for eating of the forbidden fruit he was condemned to die. Death must here refer to the body; if not, then it could only mean annihilation—the absence of any future life whatever. If this latter construction be put upon it, it would utterly annihilate every proposition put forward by the theologians, and remove every stone of the foundation upon which rests the Christian church; nor would the Mohammedans fare better.
It would mean the rankest of materialism; for, if to die meant the death of what remained after the dissolution of the body, there could be nothing upon which to base a theory of salvation, since there would be nothing to save. Hence, when it was said to our first parents (as reported in Genesis, chap. 2: v. 17), “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” it must have referred to the death of the fleshly body. If he did not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil—that is, if he did not violate the law of his being, and so become conscious of being out of harmony with it, he would continue always to live; if he did do this, he would die.
I am not now arguing the inspired character of the Bible, nor do I intend to do so in any part of this work; let that be as it may, and let each student of it judge for himself. Whether it is divinely inspired or not is not a vital issue in this connection. Neither is it of vast importance that we agree as to who wrote the Book of Genesis, or when or where it was written. What I am seeking to point out is, that whoever the author may have been, and whether divinely inspired or not, he conceived man to have been possessed, at his first appearance upon earth, of the power to continue in the body indefinitely; that he lost this power through ignorance or failure to obey the law laid down for him; that thereafter he could have regained immortal life in the body and become as the gods, had he but eaten of the tree of life; i. e., gained such knowledge of the law of his being as would have put him in harmony with the one universal life. Put into plain, everyday language, the Bible statement is that in ignorance mm violated the law of life and became subject to death; but that if he had known more; if he had known enough to eat of the tree of life, which would have been to come into an understanding of the law of his being, he could have continued in the body as long as he wished, and could then have shaped things to his liking, as the gods were supposed to do.
That this is the thought which the authors of Genesis intended to convey is made doubly apparent, when we consider the fact that nowhere in the Old Testament is it made clear that its authors believed in an existence of a soul after the death of the body. This being the case, there is no other possible construction to be put upon the language in Genesis other than that its authors, whether inspired or not, conceived it possible that men might acquire the knowledge which should enable them to command the life forces, and so continue to live in their present bodies as long as they wished.
The authors of the Old Testament, then, were the first to suggest the possibility, if not to point the way, to immortality in the flesh through a victory over death. That Jesus of Nazareth believed also in immortal life in the flesh is evident in the restoration to life of Lazarus and others, and in declaring that he himself would return to life (restore life to his body) on the third day, and in the repeated healing of diseased bodies, which, if not healed, must speedily have succumbed to the disease by which they were affected.
And now I wish to ask the reader’s thoughtful consideration of this proposition. I ask it because of the magnitude of the interests involved, and because I believe that any who may have read this far will have become sufficiently interested to, at least, be willing to give the author a hearing, and the subject of which she treats a thoughtful consideration.
The question I wish to ask is this: If by any purely mental process health can be restored to a diseased body, is it not reasonable to suppose that the process can be continued indefinitely, and health, which means continued life, made permanent? In other words, if there is a law by the application of which disease may be eliminated from the system for a time, may it not be that the effect can be made continuous, and disease prevented from ever causing the dissolution of the body?
I do not forget that many—perhaps most people who believe that Jesus really did heal the sick—believe that he possessed miraculous powers; but I would call the attention of all these persons to his assertion that those who believed on him, or as he did, should do greater works than he had done. If he had considered his acts as outside of natural law, and due to some special relation which he bore to Godhead, he would not have declared that others who bore no such special relation should do greater things.
Let us be logical. The interests at stake are the greatest possible to conceive of, and no one among us can afford to do less than to bring to bear the best reasoning power of which he or she is possessed. Jesus did not claim to heal the sick by a power which might not be attained by anyone who would follow his instructions, and he did say that others who should come after him should do more than he had been able to do.
Again I ask, if there exists a law by which, through purely mental processes, and without the use of drugs, diseases of the body can be removed, does it not follow logically that when we have a fuller understanding of the law by which this is done, we shall be able to remove all disease and continue life in the body indefinitely?
Dismissing as not vitally essential to the matter in hand at this moment the question of whether or not Jesus healed through an understanding of natural law, or by virtue of a special relation to a supreme power, I appeal to the ten thousands of giving witnesses—people who are alive today because they have been healed by mental processes purely, after all efforts at healing by drugs administered by the most noted physicians had failed; I appeal to these witnesses to prove the existence of the law for the healing of disease, and claim that in their evidence is conclusive proof of the existence of a law, which, if understood and applied, will annihilate disease and give the victory over death.
Immortality in the Flesh Rests Upon the Fact That the Highest Always Has Power to Control All Below It
I am far from being alone in my search for immortal life in the flesh, or in faith that it can be accomplished, though all who search and hope have not the courage to declare their purpose. Eminent physicians talk of “increasing the tenure of life in man,” and of “a renewal of youth” after old age shall have stiffened the joints and lessened the flow of the vital forces. Today, as I laid aside my pen to scan the papers I found in two dailies of wide circulation and influence a half page in each devoted to accounts of declared discoveries, by a noted professor, of a lymph that is to renew youth in age, and extend the span of life from three-score and ten to many times that number of years. This professed discovery is treated by the great journals of the land with respect, as being a thing that their editors conceived to be possible. They do well to give such encouragement. Every honest searcher after a knowledge of the hidden laws of being is worthy of commendation and support, however mistaken he may be in his conclusions, or however misleading the clew which he follows. As in ancient times all roads led to Rome, so, in science, all research leads in the direction of ultimate truth. The victory over death will never be gained through the introduction into the circulation of the blood of any lymph or other fluid or solid; but investigation and research bring an increase of knowledge, and every advance in knowledge brings us one step nearer the truth.
We concede to lymph and to drugs a character, an individuality, and the authority which individuality implies. Individuality, whether of the lowest or the highest form, implies character; implies it in the rock as certainly as in the man. The character of any certain drug is the same always, but its relation to, and power over, other individualities vary, as the mental characteristics of individuals vary; hence, the improbability of a science of medicine. Prof. Metchinkoff, or another, may discover a lymph or a drug that will have the effect of helping to sustain life in human bodies beyond the present average of years; but nothing except an understanding of the law, and a coming into harmony with it, by which means it is possible to command it, will ever enable man to continue existence in the body at will. These men are not wiser in their day and generation than was Ponce de Leon in his. They seek for the elixir of youth at the same fountain-head. The only difference between the de Leon of 1512 and these searchers of 1900 for lymph, is that these seek to produce what he sought to find—a combination of material substances possessing the power to remove the effects of old age. They search amiss, yet do they approach the truth, who seek through physical means to preserve the physical body. For in the last analysis the physical is one with the mental; and through searching they will arrive at the great truth that, though one in essence, yet is the physical but the visible expression of the mental, which latter is the overseer and rules; and to it, and not to the physical, must the appeal be made for the renewal of youth and the conquest over old age and death. That this is true we have demonstrated again and again by actual test. That it is true can be logically demonstrated to anyone capable of deducing a logical conclusion from a presentation of self-evident facts.
For example, the rock crumbles beneath the action of the elements and becomes soil; slowly, but certainly, the soil becomes soluble, and is drawn into the life of the vegetable whose roots have found lodgement and a home in its depth; the vegetable is consumed by man and goes to form the tissues of his body, including the brain, which evolves thought, as a flower gives off perfume; is consumed in thought much as the body is wasted by physical exertion. By a perfectly natural process the rock has evolved into the finest and most powerful element possible to conceive of, proving beyond possibility of mistaking that the physical is in essence one with the mental. And as of the rock, so of every other material object perceived by the senses, including drugs of whatever character or class. They all possess character, but it is of the crudest, and becomes nil when brought into collision with the finer forces on the mental plane. The highest controls by virtue of being highest. If this were not so, then there could be no progress, no growth. If the lowest had power to command the highest, then, indeed, would the race be without hope, and utter annihilation and a dreamless sleep be of all things most desirable.
But it is not so. The higher forever dominates the lower and the preservation, indefinitely and at will, of the coarser elements of the body through the action of the finer, the mental, is possible of accomplishment.
From the Standpoint of Personal Experience
I had written a good many pages in this book—not those which appear at the beginning as it is at present arranged, but others further on—when a friend asked permission to read them. As he was a man whose literary ability I greatly respected, I gave him the manuscript. When he returned it he said, “You must not make this a heavy book. You know that it is to be the book of life, and, therefore, it must be a live book.”
“But how?” I asked.
“You must write it from the standpoint of your own experience,” he said. “Then you would put yourself in it, as well as your ideas.”
I hesitated. I am always somewhat daunted by the charge of egotism; and one cannot introduce one’s self into his writings without being open to this accusation.
Then I reflected a little while, and I said, “Surely there is nothing that holds the reader like the personality of the author. His ideas may be fine, but they are all the finer if he vitalizes them by putting himself into them.”
I am not a person to treat lightly such a suggestion as my friend made. No one places more value upon the word “alive” than I do. If I read a book, it must be a live book, or I lose interest in it and cannot finish it.
This aliveness is not only the great charm of books, but of everything else. Artificial flowers can be made quite as beautiful as the real ones, but who cares for them? They are not alive; they do not call out your affection.
The one charm above all other charms, when I see a new face, may be expressed by the word “aliveness.” Beauty and even superior intelligence dwindle into insignificance in comparison with the look of vital power to which I am referring. After all, this look of vital power is beauty; and it is intelligence, too; so my comparison falls dead.
I do not think I exhibited more vitality than other children when I was a child; if I did, it was not in the ordinary way, for I never climbed a tree in my life, nor did any other Tomboy act that I can recall. Indeed, if it shall ever be written of me, “She is the woman who conquered death in the body and thereby redeemed the race,” my biographer will have nothing remarkable to record of my youth. I was a responsible child, and was much trusted by my mother. But the best part of me was that I had no appetite for what is called the truth. I had the most marvelous imagination, and could not be impressed for any length of time with the actual condition of my surroundings; but lived in air castles, of which I surely was as great an architect as ever existed. I can recall how, when my mother was scolding and threatening me with severe punishment, and sometimes administering it, I would be adding to the last chapter of some wonderful romance that was passing through my mind, so utterly absorbed in my thoughts as not to be aware of what she was saying or doing.
I think that I was born without any conception of death, though the thought was engrafted upon my thought as I grew up. But this was because I was not old enough; neither was my experience ripe enough, to reason upon it. I did reason on it when I became older, and I cast the belief of its power entirely out of my mind.
“What power is there in death,” I said, “when death is not a power at all, but the absence of all power? Life is power, and death is nothing but a contradiction of life.”
For years and years I puzzled my brain over this thought. I read the Bible, thinking I should find in it the sure way. I did not find it, for it is not there; but I found many things that illuminate my way now, though they did not do it then. T had to ascend to a higher plane of thought than I had previously attained, in order to make a safe application of the things I found in it.
The Old Testament interested me most, and it still does; for truly it points to the kind of immortality that I have always been searching for—immortality in the flesh. In the meantime the years were doing their worst for me. I was growing old, in spite of the fact that I cherished my dream of ultimate conquest over the enemy that had, so far, submerged the entire race.
During all these years which were passing so rapidly my ideas were dreamlike, and had not yet taken the form of an absolute determination to conquer death. I could see quite clearly, I thought, that the people were going on to the time when they would conquer death, but I placed this time away off in the future—not knowing that the hour for the execution of a hope comes with the birth of the hope.
So I kept reading the Bible and praying to the God of the Scriptures until my whole life became one unbroken aspiration for truth. I had been a church member, but got nothing from this experience except disappointment; the heaven of the future was not the thing I was searching for; just to think of my soul and its after-death salvation made me impatient. “Others,” I said, “may comfort themselves on a promise, but I will not invest my hope in that which requires me to yield up what I have, and desire to keep, for that which, even if attained, I may not find desirable; for how could any reasoning creature really desire the heaven depicted by the orthodox clergy of fifty years ago?
And yet I was in the dark about the final outcome of my ideas. I knew nothing of how they were to be executed, though I clung to them with the greatest tenacity, and tried many an experiment in working them out.
At one time I was strong in the belief that the favorite disciple of Jesus was still living on the earth; some words that Jesus spoke at his last meeting with John the Divine induced me to believe this, and I built up a theory about it that would read like a romance if I should write it out.
My husband laughed at me for my beliefs, though I only told him a very few of them. I had no idea that he himself had imbibed them, until he came to me one day with beaming eyes, and brought a paper containing a strange theory concerning the power of the race to overcome death. It was founded on the Bible account of creation; but, beyond showing me that there were others besides myself who were striving for the conquest of death, it did me no good. And yet it did me good in one way; the circumstance itself revealed the fact that my husband was with me in the thought, though he had never admitted it. This strengthened me, and we got in the habit of discussing the matter together.
I think I have never seen anyone who dreaded death so much as he did, unless it was the little child we lost when she was only nine years old, and whose terror concerning it she must have inherited from her father. For my part, I did not have it at all. I have never met anyone so entirely free from this fear as I have always been; but, in spite of this absence of fear, there is no one living more determined than I am to overcome death. With me it is just as if the life principle itself kept pouring its vitality into me, and thus asserting itself through my body, whether I cared or not. And, in a sense, this was the case, only I did care; I did recognize it, not only bodily, but in a dim way I recognized it intellectually; and my salvation lay in this fact. At least, it will lay in this fact when I am saved; and it would be difficult to convince me that I am not being saved at the present time. But for feeling my own power in the matter of conquering death, I would not now be writing this book. I am as sure that this power is vested in my brain and body as I can ever be of anything in the world.
The Effort of Jesus to Overcome Death
Up to this time—I was fifty years old, or thereabouts—my search for eternal life was confined to persons and things outside of myself. I was constantly looking for someone who knew more on the subject than I did, in order that I might hitch myself to his ideas and get a free ticket, as it were, into the Promised Land. I had tried religion without success, and had be sought the help of God until I grew to be ashamed of myself, feeling that God must be too tired of me to tolerate my petitions any longer. These words are not written irreverently; they are absolutely true. We judge others, even those in the highest places, by ourselves, and I knew how it would be with me. Certain people in my experience, who had been dependent on me, and to whose borrowing and begging I had at first responded freely, but toward whom, as the thing continued, I became first annoyed and then disgusted, furnished me with a reason for believing as I did. So it came about that I felt a little bashful in approaching the “Throne of Grace,” and I finally quit it.
But before I quit I had “searched the Scriptures” until I became convinced that they could do nothing for me, except in a general way. They showed me—so I believed—that they were the compendium of the best thought furnished by the world’s greatest thinkers of an early age, on the very subject I was spending my life investigating; namely, the conquest of death, not in an unknown future life, but here on our own planet. I followed this idea through the various books of the Old Testament, and saw how, by slow degrees, the feeling of postponement stole in upon the writers, until at last they concluded that they could not save themselves, but that sometime in the future, and as the result of a certain line of descent, a man would be born with power to conquer death for the whole race. When this idea became fixed in their minds, their hopes went away from themselves and centered in a time yet to come. This state of thought—this postponement of effort—was so ruinous that the lives of the people, from lasting many hundreds of years, dwindled to less than a hundred. The reason of this will be explained farther on, when I show the importance of having the thoughts and hopes that the body and brain generate express themselves in and through the body, instead of gadding away from their proper seat of action and leaving the body to starve. It is an unknown fact at this time that thought feeds the body, but this is one of the greatest of the new truths just beginning to dawn on the race.
Recently, as it seemed to me, as I continued to read the Bible, the first idea held by the old thinkers, the idea that death in the body could be conquered, dwindled out completely; and all their hopes now pointed to the future coming of the person on whom their salvation depended. Then Jesus came, and though his coming was not in the line of descent prophesied, this line being on Joseph’s side and Jesus being the child of Mary, he was nevertheless accepted by enough of the people to become a great character of history, and to project his influence two thousand years into the future.
It is my belief that Jesus taught, as nearly as he dared, the conquest of death in the body. He realized that the faith of the old prophets and seers had departed, and he knew the savagery of the people too well to try to change their opinions by any sudden declaration of ‘his belief. And yet there are times when his belief crops out in his sayings. For instance, when he was preaching in the Temple and the Jews said to him, “Our fathers taught different from this,” Jesus answered, simply, “Your fathers are dead.” It was equivalent to saying, if your fathers had taught what I teach, they would have been alive today.
The account of the life of Jesus is too brief to give any fixed opinion of him or his views. I have my own opinion, which I shall give. All down the ages there have been men who thought themselves favored of God, and who believed that they could build up a kingdom of which they would be the head. Someone has written a book called “The Sixteen Crucified Saviors.” The history of anyone of these would stand for all of them. They were all the sons of virgins, begotten of God; and, if I am not mistaken, every one of them was murdered for his opinion’s sake. An account of one is an account of all, which is a fact to shake the faith of every person who prefers truth to fiction.
Jesus claimed to be the person predicted in the Old Testament, of whom his biographers made such clumsy statements, as that he did thus and so that it might be fulfilled as predicted in the Scriptures, as if he sought the Scriptures to find out what he was to claim and how he was to act. Nevertheless, though it seems a contradiction, he had a certain amount of conviction regarding his claim, and the conviction grew constantly stronger as his power to speak the healing word that cured the people’s diseases increased. I have no doubt he became a marvel to himself, and gradually established his claims in his own mind. His disciples believed in him in proportion as his belief in himself increased, until the full force of the entire number of them became an almost irresistible power among the people.
When Jesus began to see unmistakably, as he thought, that he could overcome death, and when threatened and evidently in great danger, he refused to make an effort to escape, though he might easily have done so. When his disciples, who knew that the officers were after him, urged him to go away and thus avoid death, he said something like this to them: “Oh! ye of little faith; knowest thou not that my Father can send more than twelve legions of angels and take me from the cross?”
If these words mean anything, they mean that Jesus expected that which would justify his faith in his claims. They point unmistakably to the fact that he was working a grand coup de main that would establish him at once and forever, in his own and the world’s belief, that he was the Son of God and had a right to stand at the head of all men, the Savior and King—the crowned Prince of Peace.
We find still farther confirmation of this in the last words he ever spoke. He had waited in agony for hours, and the help he expected had not come; life was ebbing rapidly, and the end had almost been reached, when he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
It seems a strange thing that people do not see the truth in the Bible statement; but the people are not doing their own thinking to any great extent. They are going to begin to do it very soon, and when they do, we shall see and know and do things that are now considered impossible.
How I Tried to Bolster Up My Hope by Searching For Others Who Would Believe in It
In the last chapter I referred to the fact that in my search for an escape from death, I kept constantly looking for some person or persons who had gone farther on this line of thought than I had done, and who, therefore, knew more about it. I actually unearthed several fossils, each of whom had some idea to which he was married, and which never expanded beyond its then shape and size. One woman whom I met by appointment, after several quite sensible letters had passed between us, actually told me that she was the Virgin Mary, resurrected and appointed to save the race. Several experiences of this kind threw me back on myself for personal investigation. No one ever called me a fool, even though I made no concealment of my hopes. I talked my ideas to my neighbors, and made many converts among them, and was acknowledged as a leader in thought as far as I was known. People who themselves had quietly cherished the hope I had begun to exploit abroad came long distances to see me and hear what I had to say, and left me entirely convinced of the possibility of the thing, though I frankly admitted that I did not know how it was to be done. I always declared that I was growing up to a knowledge of it, and that nothing in life could stand in the way of my discovering it.
And nothing has done so; and I have discovered it.
Year after year slid by, and found me always a more interested searcher than before. Year after year I was compelled with greater force to abandon all hope of help from other people; I was being turned home toward myself, and at last began to get a growing conviction of the fact that there was no help for me but in myself.
What a revelation this would have been had it come to me suddenly. But it could never have come in this way. It was a matter of brain development, and slow development, at that. How was it possible for a woman whose whole life had been enslaved by service to others, and who was crushed, as such women generally are, to have confidence in her own ideas, and to believe in herself as the discoverer of a truth that would bring salvation; a truth that would light the world with the blessedness of undying hope? It was not in me to think this, nor even to accept the thought when others spoke of it who believed in me. It is true that—led away from all sense of personality when fired by the full scope of the idea— I would talk of it with such vitality as to bring conviction to nearly all who heard me. I talked with great fervor when aroused, but when alone, and the thought came to me that I—poor little I—was really and truly the leader in so tremendous a thing as that which was to conquer death in the bodies of the people, I would shrink from it and reject it; reject the glory of it, even while seeing that it was true, and that every atom of my body and brain was full of such confirmation as I could not wholly disbelieve.
But, though I could not disbelieve it, since it was born in me like the lily in the bulb, and was growing out of me the same as the lily grows out of the bulb, I yet could and did ignore the sense of personality that would have forced the conviction of ownership upon me. I knew that an understanding of how to conquer death was in my grasp, and was unfolding more and more to my perception, but, while I cherished this great fact, I yet kept my thought from dwelling upon its greatness; or rather, perhaps, it was so big that my unaccustomed thought, not yet free from the world’s old beliefs in the power of death, could not grasp it.
I think I should have felt more comfortable, under the circumstances, if some other person had been developing the idea, and had been accepting it second hand. I must say of myself that I had no desire to become famous; there were certain things I wanted to do, certain problems I wanted to solve; but it was not for popular applause that I was working. Indeed, I shrunk from notice, and, unless swept to the front by the force of my thought, I was always in the background. As a child, I had shunned attention; I was usually so busy carrying out my own ideas, or thinking my own thoughts, that I wished to be left alone. I am this way even now; I am never lonesome, and I court solitude; but if my solitude is broken in upon by pleasant people, I enjoy their company as much as anyone. I am fond of people. All expressions of life are engaging; but man, who stands at the head and represents the best of everything below him—what shall I say of him? I am not satisfied to say simply that I love him; I see in him such possibilities of unfoldment that I look upon him as the miracle of all time; and he excites my wonder and stimulates my admiration to the highest point of grandeur.
With this feeling about others (I may say all others, since even the most degraded tramp contains the seed of immortal growth) it is no wonder that I turned my thoughts inward upon myself, and began to admit to myself, in spite of my natural timidity, that I, too, was capable of everything that my mind could suggest to me as possible of attaining.
I am sure that no one will look upon this as egotism or vanity, since I did not set myself up above others or value my powers above the powers of others. But I did begin to value my own powers in proportion as I discovered the powers of others; for I could not help seeing that the race is a unit, and that the same law of vital force runs through us all, making us all brothers. And gradually I began to claim my own. I was growing into a proper sense of my own valuation. I was beginning to see such strength in myself that I no longer desired to lean on another; I was approaching a position of individualism: and I say now, and shall prove it further on, that strict individualism is the salvation of every member of the race, and that there is no salvation outside of it. It is individualism that conquers death.
It is the insanity of egotism that causes men to claim that they are the specially endowed messengers of God to a dying world. There are several of these persons who are flourishing in a small way at this time, and making a good living out of their dupes; but their influence is growing more and more limited as the process of individualization in the people goes on. I can readily understand the situation; there having been a time when I myself was so weak in self-confidence that I searched for a leader; but with an understanding of the law, the preposterous claims of these modern Christs became at once apparent. There are others who are yet in the condition that I once was; they are filled with the desire for something different from the old-time ideas about salvation, but have been taught from infancy to regard themselves as “creeping worms of the dust,” unworthy of even decent treatment from the hands of the God who is supposed to have created them; they are weak; they must lean; and they lean on any inflated, deluded and deluding creature with sufficient egotism to publish his claims to the world. And so our modern messiahs make their appearance and flourish for a time before their course ends in such characters as Weary Walker and Dusty Rhoades.
My mind being filled with thoughts relating to the subject of conquering death, I soon—without an effort—tested public opinion of a highly cultured order on the subject. I had left California by this time and was living in Chicago and doing editorial work on a paper there. Of course, I found many acquaintances of a very superior degree of mental ability, and we discussed all the leading ideas of the day. My opinions on every subject except that of the conquest of death were kindly accepted by my friends, but they rejected the idea that eternal life could be achieved in this world, and especially at this time. Some of them were willing to accept the theory if its fulfillment could be put off a few hundred or thousand years, but none of them could be induced to consider the possibility of it in the present generation. These were educated people; they were college-bred men, and their minds were stuffed full of what the world calls learning; and “learning” is the fit name for it—it is far from being wisdom.
It was here that I saw the difference between the natural mind and the mind that had been thrown out of its natural direction by filling it with what is called “learning.” In my previous association with the people of the little place where I lived, I found many original thinkers and reasoners; minds that were not overcrowded with the rubbish of dead centuries, but fresh and vital and able to do original thinking. These were the minds I impressed with my ideas; and when I contrasted the two different casts of mind as L have described them, I valued book learning less than ever. I had never valued it very highly. I wanted to delve down in the ground; I wanted to get to the root of things and discover the cause of growth. I knew that I must find the law of growth or I would never conquer death.
I have found it, and I shall make the whole thing .so clear in these pages that a child can understand it.
In regard to what I said about the indifference of my book-learned friends to my ideas concerning the conquest of death, I must refer to an experience that seems strange. It only required a slight acquaintance with a man or woman to find out just what reach of mind he or she possessed. In most people I soon came to a mental dead wall beyond which I could not go, and beyond which there would have been no use of going, because there was nothing there. Those persons carried within themselves the stamp of death; they had not advanced far enough in ideal lines of thought to release the dead weight of the old.
But there were other minds into which I could look down and down the perfectly clear depths, and find no obstacle to the upward moving current of life, which has its rise in the beginning of the person’s individuality. These persons never rejected a thought because it was new; they were always ready to consider it, and accept it if their reason confirmed it.
From the intellectual capacity of some, when contrasted with this quality of luminosity of others, I perceived that a portion of the race had progressed far enough to throw off the incubus of disease and death, as soon as more knowledge should be evolved on the subject, and that another portion of it had not.
The Growth of Public Opinion in the Direction of the Conquest of Death
It was nearly twenty years ago that I severed my connection with the paper that I was then on and with the friends I made while there, and I have often wondered if these friends have relaxed their opposition to what they called my pet hobby. I doubt not that many of them have. The idea is no longer regarded as absurd; it has become one of intense interest to millions of people. The interest in everything written on the subject is so great that it threatens to become a mania. Every city has its Century Clubs, and its Live-Forever Clubs, and they have spread to the country, and the villages are discussing them. The books that have been written on this subject, and almost forgotten, have been revived, and new editions of them are on the shelves of the bookstores.
There is the beginning of a groundswell of inquiry on the subject; the whole thinking public is slowly awakening; and as it does it draws its hopes from the distant heaven of delusive promise to the prospect of present salvation. Who does not know that “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?” and who is going to walk in the dark when once he has glimpsed the rising sun?
Introspection is a neglected art. If man would look within himself in his search for truth, he would gain more useful knowledge than all the colleges and all his travels through foreign countries could give him.
Nay, more; the man who goes outside of himself in his effort to gain wisdom bankrupts himself; and the knowledge he acquires may delude, instead of leading him in the direction of highest truth. Nothing can possibly lead any man to a higher growth but the understanding of himself.
What is the most important thing man can possess? I answer, it is himself. And when I say himself, I mean his body, and not his soul. Men have been soul-saving for thousands of years, and all that time the body has been dying of neglect.
Is the body of no importance, that we can afford to ignore it in this way? Is it true that the soul can exist without the body? Who really knows anything about the soul? And who does not know something about the body? We, at least, know from observation and practical tests that the body exists, and that it is a very convenient thing to have; we know that it is a machine or a combination of machines through which we transact all the business connected with life, and without which we would have no life on the terrestrial plane where we execute all the desires that make life worth living.
That we know almost nothing of ourselves, our resources and undeveloped powers, is because for thousands of years we have devoted our time and talent to exploring the soul—or some imaginary thing we call the soul—to the utter neglect of the body, which there is no doubt about our possessing. Owing to this blunder we know almost nothing about our bodies, and absolutely nothing of our souls, in spite of the fact that we have claimed to know so much about them for so long a time.
The soul—admitting its existence, which I am more than willing to do—is a secondary matter on our present plane of life; we are in a world where bodies, and not souls, do the work which is necessary to be done, in order that our lives be protracted in the fulfillment of those desires which belong to the body, and which are essential to its existence here.
We run this wonderful engine, the body, in a way that would shame a ship’s captain in the command of his boat. The captain would want some knowledge of his vessel in order that he might control her properly and keep her from drifting at the mercy of wind and tide; but man—who owns the greatest piece of mechanism in the world, a piece of mechanism that combines within itself every law of mechanics known and unknown—makes no effort to understand it, and has no conception of the hundredth part of its meaning, nor of the thousandth part of its worth to himself.
What it is that lies back of this mechanism, no one knows. What the “I” that is always speaking for itself may be, is a secret. Whether this “I,” which says, “My body,” is really the body’s very self, or some unseen thing hidden in the body or behind the body, no one can tell. The assertion “I” stands for the man, and the “I” not only says, “My body!,” but it says, “My soul,” also. Is the “I” one with the soul or one with the body? Or is it the intelligent union of both?
For my part, I believe that the “I” is all the soul a man has, and that it is the sum total of the body’s entire life; its memory, in fact; its record of all the body’s transactions, and that it is one with the body, the body being the external expression of it. The “I” records all the experiences through which a man passes; and if it takes note of these experiences and reasons on them, it becomes wiser every day. That the “I” says, “My body,” is only a habit of speech, and does not prove that the body is one thing and the “I” another.
It is because I perceive the truth of the above statement that I have grown into a conviction of the immense importance of the body. The body is the man, and the man is adapted to the place he occupies now; his body correlates the needs of his life here, and this fact leaves the soul out of this treatise. If the soul is needed in another world, we will find it there.
What is the greatest desire of the human being? Let us be honest with ourselves. It is not for the salvation of his soul. We desire the salvation of our souls if it proves impossible to save our bodies; but first of all we want our bodies saved. The most delightful heaven the imagination of genius has devised does not allure us so much as the remnant of this bodily life with all its trials and sufferings.
“All that a man hath will he give for his life.” It has always been so, and with the growing refinement of the race it becomes more so. In the early history of the race men yielded their lives far more readily than they do at this time. Would a man of the present age die for opinion’s sake, as the heroes of old once did? No, he would deny everything in order to save his life, wisely thinking that life was far more valuable than opinion, as, indeed, it is.
Life is above all things; life right here, handicapped by our environments, and blurred in every conceivable way by our ignorance, is still more valuable than all else.
In spite of the body’s disabilities, and the pain that racks it, and the penury that starves it, we yet value it so much more than the prospective heaven of the future, that we will not end it voluntarily, though we might do so at the cost of a meal, and with less pain than an ordinary spell of indigestion. Does this mean nothing? Do not all things mean something? I assert that the simple facts I am stating will prove to be the most important truths of which the mind can get any conception, when once understood.
The inherent force and determination which always point in one direction, which begin in the elementary life cells themselves and increase with every step upward in race growth, have a meaning that no power of imagination can ever extend to its legitimate limits, for, indeed, it has no limits.
This force and this determination are expressed in the love of life in the body, and the avoidance of the body’s death. They are manifested in every object in all the world. They manifest in the lowest forms no less than in the highest, as all persons must have observed many times. Turn over the half decayed piece of wood, and see with what hurrying fear the little creatures under it rush to safe places out of our sight. And the vegetables and trees also; note with what tenacity of life they mend their broken limbs, and go on growing in spite of the most adverse conditions. Even the crystals and rocks strive to assume shapes and enter into conditions of greater permanency.
It is the love of life—not of soul life, but of body life—and the hope of prolonging it that makes cowards of us all; in fact, it is the love of life that prompts every action we ever will or can make. No principle within us is so strong as this. “All that a man hath will he give for his life.”
Looking through nature everywhere it is the same; the one great desire, first of all, is for life; after that come the minor desires. Often when it is necessary to kill something, my sympathy is so drawn into the effort of the creature to save its own life, that I become weak and faint and seem to partially die with it. At least, there is an approximation in my feelings toward this extreme point, and it shows how high my valuation of life is.
Down through the ages all men have accepted—apparently without thought—the belief that death was an unavoidable thing; they have accepted this belief in spite of their desire to live. I say all men; yet, as I have pointed out, there have been exceptions, the writers of the Old Testament having unquestionably had faith in the power of the body to conquer death sometime in the future, if not in their time.
The two facts—the desire to live, and the belief of the people that it is impossible to prolong life eternally in the body under present conditions—are at the foundation of all religions. Every creed in the world has been projected by the human brain, because, first, the desire to protract life was an unconquerable thing; and, secondly, because it did not appear possible to attain it here.
Suppose that men had seen the possibility of overcoming death here, and had gone to work to realize that possibility, would they have projected a place of future abode for themselves after this life was over? It would never have been over; then what need would they have had for a creed to save them in a hereafter? They would have labored to strengthen themselves in the present; to fortify and improve their external conditions, and to improve and develop the mighty tool for doing this; the only tool any man ever owned or ever will own—his body.
I have said that as the race refined death became greater terror to it; this is because man’s increased knowledge of the body has rendered the body more sacred to him. He begins to perceive not only the uses of the body, but the beauty of it, and the happiness to be gotten through it, and his valuation of it increases with his knowledge of what it is worth to him; of not only what it is worth now, but of what it would be worth under more favorable circumstances. His hopes are for his body; his desires are centered upon its perpetuation. In proportion as his respect for his body increases, and his desire for the perpetuation of life in this world keeps growing, his concern for his soul and for the heaven of the future decreases.
It is this direction of growth in the race, all pointing to farther development here and now, that is causing the churches to go empty on Sundays; it is at the bottom of the complaints that the clergy are making, though they are not aware of it. The preachers are searching in a hundred different directions for the reason of the decline of religious influence, and because they have not yet looked in the right direction they have failed to find the cause. At a recent meeting in Brooklyn where many of the leading ministers of the country were in council, there were those among them who actually said that the indifference to Sunday service was the absence of fear of the devil and hell, which had become almost obliterated from the public mind; and they advised taking up this old piece of idiocy, and again working it in order to get their churches filled. It also came out at this council that there were nearly five thousand Congregational preachers who were without charges.
These facts are stated here in order to strengthen my argument concerning the growth in the race in its valuation of life in the body, and of its increasing indifference to the promises of a future heaven. The race is becoming more practical every day. It really does not know why it is neglecting the religious services upon which it was wont to give such regular attendance; it only knows that the Sunday sermon does not interest it as the Sunday papers do; and as the growing intelligence of the age has—unconsciously to itself—dulled its fear of the devil, if is not afraid to do what its inclination leads it to do.
Loss of interest in the next world, which has come from an increased interest in this world, is responsible for all the complaints the ministers are making about the falling off of church influence. Concentration is killing theology; it is drawing the powers of the intellect to the work of the present hour; it is bringing the scattered forces and the far roaming hopes home, and centering them upon what there is to do right here in this world, and right now. The visionary is doomed; the practical has arrived.
Every Hope is the Sure Prophecy of its Own Fulfillment
In looking back I now see that a belief in death as a fixed and unalterable fact never had full possession of me. I doubt whether in a true sense it really has full possession of anyone; for, while it seems real enough so far as the dying of other people is concerned, we rarely think of it as being an inevitable reality to ourselves. It always seems a far-off and shadowy possibility, but not an irresistible fate, such as a man feels it to be who is under sentence of death for some crime.
And yet reason, so far as our reason is based on observation, tells us that death is as certain to come to us as to the condemned felon in his cell. And why are we so little disturbed by it? Is it because we anticipate life beyond the grave? The felon also anticipates this; and moreover his expectations for happiness in another world are usually as bright to his imagination as ours can be. Then why does he dread death while we do not? It is because he realizes that to him it is inevitable, while we can never quite bring ourselves to do so.
Our reason, based on observation, admits that it is inevitable. No person has ever escaped death yet; but in spite of this fact there is some hidden impulse within us that denies the inevitableness of it. And this hidden impulse betrays the presence, deep down at the very foundation of individual existence, of some unseen spring of ever present vitality, the discovery of which will overcome death. We feel it though we do not see it; we know it to be true though as yet it has never been proved; and there is an undefined something in man that exists more by feeling than by seeing, and so death is inwardly rejected, while verbally accepted.
If man accepted the belief of death in every part of his consciousness, in his inner as well as his outer self, he would feel about it very much as the condemned felon does. It would occupy his every thought and render him unfit for any effort in life, except a preparation for death. In short, the certain knowledge of coming death would be equivalent to present death, so far as the uses of life are concerned.
But men are not expecting to die; their lives prove it; they are intensely interested in a thousand schemes of activity on the earth plane; and they find their greatest happiness in bettering their conditions and in surrounding themselves with objects that are beautiful and pleasing. And these objects do surely give them happiness, which, even though it may be fleeting, stimulates them to greater efforts in the same direction, and ends in the further accumulation of treasures such as the clergy caution us against, and which certainly are not those we are requested to lay up in heaven. Everywhere and all the time in these latter years men are living more and more in the present; and the wisdom of this has already born results in the increase in the average length of human life, which is becoming greater every year.
“Death is inevitable.” Men almost universally say this; but their words do not touch their own convictions; they do not excite any emotion within them. It is only when they feel its icy touch that they begin to have even the slightest realization of it as applicable to their own cases. As soon as they begin to feel that death is impending, their fears are aroused and they seek to escape from it.
That they do fear it and seek to escape from it is proof conclusive that there is a way of escape. There is no truth in the cosmic growth of the race more true than that every hope is the sure prophecy of its own fulfillment.
No matter whether we take the evolutionary view, that man created himself, or the Scriptural view, that he was created by a personal God, the very fact that his hope stretches forward into the future is absolute assurance that the future exists, and that it exists for the purpose of fulfilling man’s desires. This thought came to me before I had the intellectual grasp to follow it out in all its details, and thereby to prove it conclusively to myself. But I never ceased to believe and to trust it with all the force of my nature; and it was my solace in hours that were dark as midnight. I accepted it as truth, never for a moment clouding it with doubt, even before I had followed it out to the absolute knowing. I felt that it was invulnerable, long before I found out why it was so; long before my reasoning faculties were sufficiently awakened to understand it fully. There was the statement just as I have made it. Every hope is the prophecy of its sure fulfillment—a mighty and incontrovertible truth, that became a part of my brain structure and eventually worked its way to externals, and left its impress upon every atom of my body. It took the form of a fixed principle that each succeeding experience confirmed, until I began to feel the power of a conqueror, and was lifted from a position of pitiful weakness and self-distrust to one of unswerving strength. In this position fresh vitality was generated by my body, which poured its power into my heretofore sluggish brain, until by slow degrees the whole problem of growth was unfolded.
There is many another expression that helps to unfold the problem of growth or life, but not one of them struck me with such force as this. Every hope is the sure prophecy of its own fulfillment.
And why? Because hope is related to the thing hoped for; this being so, it is inseparable from it. Suppose that there is a God that made us, and that He is great and wise and above all things good and true, then how would it be possible for Him—our Father—to plant a lie deep down in the first impulse of our individual lives, that would prove a most deceptive allurement, holding out promises that He never intended should be realized? Could anyone believe in God and accept this fact?
But suppose we reject the belief in special creation, and dwell for a moment upon the theory of evolution; there will be no difference in results. If the life cell, or the first principle of individualized life, whatever it may be, contains the essence that later, under higher development, expands into this hope, then the hope points to the time of realization and to the conditions that will render realization possible, as surely as the grain of wheat planted in the ground will germinate and unfold itself until the full prophecy of its being is fulfilled.
Hope, which is an expression of the law of growth in a man, cannot possibly point to that which does not exist. It always streams forth in the direction of the object which is correlated to it; of the object which is its complement, and the acquisition of which fixes it in living substance as a new creation.
The idea that projects life beyond the grave does not fully allay the fear of death; nor does the promise of heaven, with all its attractions, reconcile us to it. So long as even a modicum of the old vitality lasts, we prefer this troublesome and poverty-stricken world to the “spheres of the blest.” It is only when the vitality is too low to permit further resistance to death that men, as a rule, become reconciled to go. To be sure, there are abnormal instances where men’s imaginations have been so stimulated by descriptions of the world to come, that they have let go the hold they had upon this one, and have seemed anxious to go. But we all admit that men, in such conditions, are unbalanced.
We do not want to die—this is the plain fact. We do not want to die, no matter how hard life seems, or how enchanting the future is painted for us. We not only do not want to die, but we do not expect it. Death always comes upon us as a surprise.
The race believes that it believes that an implacable and inexorable God has passed sentence of death upon it; it also claims to justify God in having done so; but its position is self-deceptive, and its actions contradict its assumed belief in God’s power and wisdom. It is constantly seeking remedies by which it can thwart God’s purpose in killing it; and, deep down in the soul of it, it rests more hope in the power of a pill than in the power of God.
It has its body tinker and its soul tinker; and it clings to its body tinker until hope deserts it, and then, in despair, it turns to its soul tinker. And when a loved one has passed through the veil and from out our sight, though we say, “He is happy now; he is in the bosom of God, and sorrow, sickness and death shall touch him no more,” we weep and refuse to be comforted. And I say that it is not the mere pain of separation that wrings our hearts, for he might have gone to another country, or even to another planet, and if he had gone alive, we would not have felt as we do.
And this feeling we have for him—what is it; and why is it what it is?
Now, listen: It is the intuitive perception of a truth that has not yet been made apparent to our reasoning faculties. It is because death is a violation of some natural principle, with which we are not yet acquainted. And, because it is a violation of some natural principle, some innate possibility of infinite value, hidden at present from our dwarfed perceptions, we are rent asunder by it, and cannot reconcile it with our long accepted belief that death is a blessing in disguise. It is human nature overturning human religion.
It seems to me, judging by my own feelings, that if man actually knew that death was to be his doom, from which there was no possibility of escape, he would so dread the event as to make life one protracted horror, and would be prompted to hasten the thing in order to relieve himself from the thought of it; just as men condemned to hang will hang themselves in their cells to get the fearful catastrophe off their minds.
The fact is, men do not anticipate death for themselves, whatever they may do for others. Undefined in their own minds, there remains fixed forever that intuitive perception of immortality, which belongs to the unchanging and undying life principle of which they are the expression, or the visible manifestation.
Undefined by themselves, I say; so undefined is it, so misunderstood by them, and yet so potent that out of it, out of this simple, intuitive perception, this vague feeling of immortality, has arisen every theological creed ever yet projected for the perpetuation of individual life in another stage of existence. Thinkers and reasoners on this subject actually believe they have accepted as inevitable the death of the body, but they still hold fast, with unswerving tenacity, to the feeling of immortality which they find implanted in all men; and they have, as a last resort, endowed each individual of the nice with a soul that is supposed to live beyond the death of the body. This soul they have provided, out of their ample imaginations, with many and various modes of escape from annihilation.
Theology offers another world to us as a substitute for its unconquerable desire to live. It was the best thing that could be done in the past, while man was so ignorant of the powers of his body; but this ignorance is beginning to pass away, mid the splendors of the heretofore misunderstood functions of the body are on the verge of asserting themselves in a manner that will soon astonish the world.
The belief in the power of death belongs to the unawakened intelligence of a baby race, not yet grown to even the faintest conception of what it is, or what it can do.
Religion is but the pointing of infallible intuition, indicating the fact that there is a road through the untrodden wilderness of fast-coming thought, which experience must traverse, but which has never yet been traversed; and which, when once traversed, will put an entirely new face upon our implanted belief in immortality.
Han may possess a soul that lives beyond the body, ‘and I hope and believe that he does; but I know that he possesses a body, and I know, and am proving individually, that this body possesses the power to conquer all its disabilities and save itself here, in the present world, and in the present generation.
The Endless Creativeness of the Human Intelligence
I am familiar with the phenomena of spiritualism, and I will say that it—of all the theories extant—furnishes by far the best basis of belief in life beyond the grave. Spiritualism is not humbuggery. It is a genuine thing. Spirits, or what seem to be spirits, do make themselves visible to spectators under certain conditions. The only doubt concerning the matter is not in the genuineness of these apparitions, but in the character of them. Many a time, when entirely alone, they have appeared to me; and at first I thought them veritable messengers from the other side.
Later, I did not know whether they were genuine spirits of the departed, or thought images, projected by my own mind. Not that they were unreal, for they were not; they were not pictures; they were tangible shapes, and lasted for several minutes at a time; but were they spirits?
At this time the human mind begins to reveal itself to me as a mighty, but an unknown thing; as the seed germ of a power whose possibilities no one has ever tested, or ever will entirely test, because its unfoldment must go on forever.
That the human mind is a great creative power I do know; that its power to create is absolutely limitless I believe.
By “creative power,” I mean the power of making manifest the wonders that are capable of being manifested out of the unseen life principle, the animating spirit of all creatures and all creations; the possibilities existing in latency in the Law of Being, or the Principle of Life, or the Law of Attraction; these wonders, which depend for their manifestation upon individual recognition.
The three terms, Law of Being, Principle of Life and Law of Attraction—spirit of all things—are different modes of expressing the same thing. There are times when one of these modes of expression seems best adapted to convey my meaning, and times when the other modes seem best. But for this I would simplify the matter by using one of these expressions only; and, really, it would be more strictly correct to do so; but I have become so in the habit of using the three terms indiscriminately that I must beg the reader’s indulgence, and keep on with it.
Individual recognition of a power heretofore existing in latency in the unseen spirit of life may be called a creation. The power to recognize is the power to create, if, by the word creation, we’ mean the making manifest that which has always existed, but has not existed for us, because our intelligence had not ripened to the point where we could see it.
By recognition, then, the subjective power embodied in the life principle, the spirit of all manifested creatures, becomes an objective creation, or use, or knowledge; it becomes manifest or made visible.
The spirit of all things is self-existent; all truth already exists. The universe is a whole: it is complete; nothing remains to be added to it. It is the absolute allness of being.
The word truth is another name for life. Man, in his individual capacity, is the recognizer of truth. He correlates truth, or the principle of being, to the extent of his capacity to recognize it. By his recognition of it, he shows it forth in his person. A man is as he believes. This is so because he is all mind. The entire argument in favor of Dian’s power to conquer death rests on the fact that he is mind—active, vital, undying mind—and that there is no dead matter, as has been supposed.
All things which we call matter are resolvable into one and the same element, as I conclusively proved in a former treatise, that element being thought, mentality, mind. Forms change; the body may perish, but life, mind, is immortal.
Man, being a mental statement, shows forth in his personality as much of the truth of being as he has the intelligence to recognize; that is, as much of the power of truth, or the Principle of Attraction, as he can understand, he makes manifest, gives form to, in his person. It is by his power to recognize that he creates or gives form to that which always existed potentially, but was heretofore formless.
Thus, in the absolute sense, there is no new creation; in a finite sense creation is continuous, and will never cease. When men know their power it will be their privilege to forever make visible, in the objective world, the powers that exist in the infinitude of being, or the principle of life, in such form as they will.
The human mind is constantly revealing new good, or new uses, or new knowledge, out of the Law of Being, simply by recognizing them as possibilities to be attained.
Thus, a faint conception of some power beyond that which has ever yet been manifested by any member of the race flits through a man’s mind, only to be discarded as absurd and impracticable. But it comes again, and stronger; and yet again, and more powerfully still, until he begins to give it credence. At this point his mind goes on exploring trips into unprospected realms of thought, and brings home much evidence to sustain him in his growing belief, until, at last, he knows that a thing, heretofore considered impossible, is possible; and he goes to work and demonstrates it to others. We call his work a creation, and in a limited sense it is a creation.
The creative power is the power to recognize the possibilities for .development existing in the spirit of life, or the Principle of Attraction; it is a power vested in intelligence; and it is by this power alone that nature, with man at its head, exists; it is by this power that nature, with man at its head, is on the road of endless progression through an infinite realm of ever widening possibilities.
Life is thought to be dual, simply from the fact that it is both seen and unseen. On its unseen side there is the law of being, otherwise called the Law of Attraction, or the principle of life—the spirit of life. On the seen side there is this same law of being made manifest, individualized, personified, by its own recognition of its powers of individualization.
All nature—every living form, everything that is visible or external—is intelligence; it is that which has recognized the unseen moving power, or the Principle of Attraction; and that which recognizes is mind, or intelligence. Therefore, the whole objective universe is mind; living, thinking mind, and not dead matter. All the substances we see or feel, or that in any way appeal to our senses, are mind, and not matter. Mind or intelligence ranges the entire visible universe; it is real substance; we handle it; we weigh and measure it; we cut it into lengths for building material; we melt it and run it into bars for our railroad cars to run on; our cars and everything we manufacture are made out of various conditions of the one substance of mind.
Mind, in its myriad forms, ranges every degree from solid iron and granite to the rarest ether.
The diamond is one condition of mind; the perfume of a rose is another condition of the same substance; and thought is still another condition of it, and the most subtle and powerful condition that we know of.
The most difficult task the metaphysician has to perform, is that of rendering apparent to the conception of the student the fact that mind or intelligence is an actual substance, that can be seen and handled.
We have always believed mind to be an unsubstantial thing; a principle that invaded the dead substance of matter and imparted a temporary show of life to it; but we have never conceived the fact that it is matter itself.
We have never conceived the fact that matter is mind; that matter is the visible side of the law of being; or, in other words, that it is the law’s recognition of itself, as light may be said to be heat’s recognition of itself.
But this is so, and must be so, because no logical philosophy can admit the idea of deadness in the universe. The universe is a universe, and not a diverse. It is all life, pure life; there is not a dead atom in it. If there were even one atom of death in it, or the possibility that there would ever be one, the universe would not be a whole, and it could not endure.
But it is a whole; it is the unchanging principle of life; it is—on its unseen or spiritual side—the Law of Being, or the Principle of Attraction; the law or principle whose one function is to draw or to unite. It is love in its unalloyed essence; and the recognition of it is intelligence, or mind, expressed in a million varying beliefs, ranging the entire visible creation.
The tree is the externalization of the Law of Being, or the Principle of Attraction, to the extent of the tree’s intelligence. The tree shows forth as much of the good or the life embodied in the Law of Being as it can recognize.
All potentiality, all power, all possibility, reside in the spirit or Principle of Being. To conceive of, imagine, think or desire a thing without giving it form, calling it out of the unformed Principle of Being is, therefore, an impossibility. That which we conceive, we create; that which we imagine to be, is; that which we have ceased to believe, no longer exists to us, and never can until we again accept it as being a truth.
Every belief assumes a form—the form of that particular belief. No matter how short-lived the belief may be, nor how frail, if it is a belief at all, it is, for the time being, a recognition of the possibilities resident in the spirit of being. In co7iceiving a form, we create it within the one universal substance, wherein all creation takes place, the primary or mental.
A belief differs from a thought only in the matter of fixedness; a thought is a transient thing, unless it becomes fixed in a belief, and then it is more permanent, and, therefore, more apparent; it is a fraction of the spirit of being in more decided objectivity than a mere passing thought.
Our thoughts, then, are real things; and though usually invisible, being in a great measure under the control of our bodies—which are the sum total of our fixed beliefs—they are too frail and fleeting to assume the substantial appearance of bodies. Nevertheless, they are real substance and have form at their inception; and, though invisible, they do become objective to our bodies, and go forth as living, but probably as short-lived, entities.
Thoughts are real because they are intellectual conceptions of something; and there can be no intellectual conception that is not, in its degree, a recognition of that which is—a recognition of sonic phase of the Principle of Being. There can be no recognition of that which is not, and, therefore, even the frailest and most fleeting thought has form, whether we see it or not.
But there are certain conditions of a man’s mind, usually conditions of negation, conditions of abstraction, during which he is not noticing what is transpiring in his mind, when it is possible for his thoughts to express themselves without the help, or’ even the cognizance, of the person by whom or from whom they are expressed. In this way they may abstract enough of a man’s mentality or body to make themselves visible, not only to the man himself, but to others.
The first time I saw “a spirit” was when a student at a Catholic school. It was a bright moonlight night, and about twenty of us had taken a run from the hall door, down through the crisp snow, to an old tree that grew near the house. I stood for a few minutes quite apart from my companions, and found myself looking up into the tree in that condition of thought which is almost entirely unconscious of itself. I was looking at a woman, who was standing far out on one of the limbs of the tree, and who was balanced lightly on one foot, with her other foot swinging, and her arms raised as she held a pale, blue scarf that the wind filled and swung to and fro. I stood looking at this marvelous sight without one particle of fear or wonder, or any other feeling that I can recall. The woman’s dress was like that of a ballet girl, and the limb on which her foot rested was not larger than a riding whip.
But, as I continued to look, without any special interest in the sight, I was conscious of the babble of voices kept up by the other girls, though unconscious of what they were saying, until one of them cried out, “Oh! look up in the tree.” A momentary silence ensued, broken by the simultaneous rush which they made toward the house. In another instant I became conscious of the situation, and, turning, I ran after them, becoming more frightened with each step.
Was this a spirit, or was it a projection from myself?
Since then I have had many experiences similar to this, and they are all marked by the same absence of a certain part of myself, that prevents the feeling in me of fear or wonder, or any emotion whatever. The remembrance of things of this kind has often frightened me after they have passed, and I have many times felt a great dread of their recurrence; but never once have I been frightened, or even astonished, at the time.
In the same frame of mind—a condition in which I, the person of the house, seem to be almost out of my house—I have heard voices that spoke to me; but they never told me anything beyond what I could have conceived without them.
But, perhaps, the most singular of these experiences has been a manifestation of a power that lifts me up, and makes me feel that I do not weigh an ounce. I have lain in bed in a room where the light burned brightly, and have been lifted—bed and all—until I could touch the ceiling with my hand. I have sat on a stout table and been lifted with the table until my head touched the top of the room.
Friends have said that such marked and various manifestations as these could not be accounted for, except on the theory of spirit agency.
But I am not convinced of this, though I would have been glad to accept such a conviction if I could have rested in contentment upon it. The very wonders of the human mind, as they begin to disclose themselves to me during the years I have been devoting myself exclusively to its study, have made it impossible for me to rest such phenomena upon the generally accepted conclusions of spiritualism.
This chapter is the first of several chapters, all of which aim at the establishment of the principles on which I base my belief in the power of man to conquer death. I hope I have made it clear that the whole visible universe is mind in different forms of expression, but, lest I have not, I will venture to repeat. I say there is no such thing as “dead” matter. That which we call matter is but varying expressions of the one omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent mind, or mentality; that which was and is and ever will be; that to which nothing can be added, neither taken away. The unseen is as much “matter” as the seen. The seen is as certainly “mind” as the unseen; the two are one in endless round of varying expression, in which there is never any death of life, but only changing forms of life. The flint which is today—the flint of which you say, “It is matter, it is dead”—tomorrow shall have crumbled, shall have become earth; shall have been absorbed into the stalk of growing wheat; shall have been eaten, and in the brain of man be retransformed into its original element; that from which all things have birth—namely, mind. All things, therefore, are mind; nothing but mind; always and forever mind; no difference what the form assumed may be.
When I say that all is mind, or that there is no such thing as matter, I mean that there is no dead thing—nothing that is not of and resolvable into mind; mentality; potentiality; that which, though not discernible by the physical senses, yet contains all that is or can be. I do not mean that matter is nothing, that it has no existence. I mean that in its last analysis it is mind, intelligence, and it is not dead; neither can it ever die.
The infinite mind is measureless. It is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. In it is all potentiality, the all of all, and outside of it nothing is or can be. Does life exist, and the desire for life in man? It exists also in the infinite, and it was the desire that called forth form, which first caused the invisible to become visible; which caused mind to assume the form of rock and tree and animal, and finally of man.
And when men clearly perceive this truth, and when the knowledge of it shall have become truly part of them—shall, as it were, have infused their conscious selves, will they not know that they can control that which they are? Knowing is being. When men know that they are deathless they will have become so.
If man and all nature were dead matter, then there would be good reason for death to hold the scepter over life; but the fact that what has previously been called dead matter is an ever living, ever progressive substance, which constantly evolves individual life out of itself, cannot fail to destroy the power of death as soon as the truth and the law are made known.
In order to make all clear I must show the reader something of the wonderful powers vested in mind. I have spoken of what appeared to be spirits, but which may simply prove to be some, as yet, misunderstood function of the mind. As I go on I shall speak of other things that prove the almost undreamed of power of mind; I do so in order to show that there is nothing impossible to the human mind, and in this way lead the reader to see that death is not going to be a difficult thing to conquer, since its conquest only depends upon the farther expansion of our minds. And this expansion depends exclusively on our own effort.
All Growth is a Revolt Against the Claims of the So-Called Law of Gravitation
No man has tested the powers of his own mind; no man knows its mysterious complications, or dreams of the strange seed lying dormant within it, and capable of springing up into the blossoming and fruitage of such wonders as it would be madness even to name in those pages.
But in these years of study that I speak of, enough has been revealed to me of the giant power sleeping in the brain of the race, to keep me from wandering off to other worlds for a solution of its exceptional actions. Many things concerning it that will seem fabulous to others, I know to be true; and, indeed, so great have become my conceptions of its possibilities, that at this time I have pulled up all the stakes that have ever, to me, environed it, and have established it in my belief as respondent in all particulars to that omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent principle of life that men call God.
I think it will readily be seen tow—there being no nothing, and thoughts being things—that a thought may appear in objectivity from the thinker, and thereby become discernible by the physical senses of the thinker, and to others who may be present.
The same thing may be said of the voices we hear.
But these explanations go for nothing, so long as it remains that some seemingly invisible power can overcome the law of gravitation in the human form, and lift it from the earth with evident ease.
This matter remained a mystery to me for years, until I learned that man had the power to become master of the law of gravitation, after which he could float in the air at his will.
“But,” someone remonstrates, “you had no knowledge of this power, and yet you floated; therefore, it must be that some power outside of yourself lifted you.”
For a long time I reasoned this way myself; and I believed that I was lifted by spirit power.
But after a time I considered how it had ever been, that some seemingly accidental exhibition of a new power had come as a forerunner to open the eyes of men to a new possibility within themselves; and I began to see that this experience of mine might belong to this same class of premature revelations.
I could readily admit that if it were in a man’s power to overcome the law of gravity (so-called), accidental conditions of thought might arise within him, unanalyzed by himself, that for the time being would lift him into the air.
The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced of it. The more I reasoned on the law of gravitation, the law which seems to draw all things to the center of the earth, the more clearly I saw that it was the Law of Attraction in its action upon—so-called—dead matter; and that there was no power that could of itself draw anything toward the earth’s center, provided the thing to be drawn did not want to be drawn in that direction.
That any substance or thing, no matter how powerful, could refuse to obey this law, proved at once that there was a higher power than the law, or else that the law was not understood.
Of course, I at once assumed that the law was not understood.
The law of gravitation is that power which draws towards the center of the earth; but what is the Law of Attraction?
I answer that there is but one law, and I shall call it the Law of Attraction. The—so-called—law of gravitation is the negative action of the Law of Attraction. In other words, it is the Law of Attraction in its action upon what is called dead matter; it is powerless upon all substances in proportion to the intelligence of the substance. It cannot compel the intelligent will of any creature to obey it. Indeed, I may state it in this way; that while the law of gravitation, the law that draws to the earth’s center, is operative upon mind in its unawakened condition, it is powerless to act on mind in which a will has been developed. As weak a thing as a blade of grass obeys its own will; a will that leads it upward instead of downward toward the earth’s center. I saw it rise out of the earth and begin its little journey toward the sun. I saw as feeble a thing as a crawling worm overcome the earth’s attraction, and mount a tree trunk, climbing upward in obedience to its own awakening perceptions of the Law of Attraction expressed in itself as will power.
I saw that while “dead matter,” which is mind unconscious of its own will, was held to the earth’s center, that “live matter,” which is mind conscious of its own will, was on a journey in another direction.
Then there is no law that holds objects to the earth’s center, provided the objects have a will to travel toward the sun. This so-called law is the law of inertia; the law of death to the dead; or, in strict truth, it is the absence, as nearly as can be, of the Law of Attraction, which is the only law of life; the law of growth.
The law of gravitation is the negative pole of the Law of Attraction, or the law of being.
The peach ripens and falls; it falls toward the earth. Why?
Because it is so much inert substance, and it is drawn to a larger body of inert substance. If the peach had been larger and heavier than the earth, it would have drawn the earth to it.
In bodies of equal deadness, by which I mean bodies that are equally lacking in consciousness of will, the power to draw each other is dependent on their size and weight. But once introduce into inert mind (matter) the vitalizing principle of conscious will, and the whole statement is changed. Size and weight have nothing to do with the drawing power; the conscious will is under obedience only to its own desire. The latent power slumbering in matter has awakened, and it has come under obedience to the Law of Attraction.
It has evolved a will that its intelligence recognizes as its leading power, and it goes to any place toward which the will may point, whether toward the earth or away from it. If it goes away from the earth, as all advanced life does in its growth, it goes as far away as its intelligence permits it to go. That is, it goes as far as it believes that it can go; its belief in this particular marking the limit of its intelligence. Flying creatures are more unlimited in their belief in this one matter than the creatures that remain on the earth. And it is because they do realize more of the Law of Attraction than other creatures that they have sprouted wings. The law of cosmogony expresses itself in conformity with a belief in the Law of Attraction; and evolution has steadily proceeded on this principle from the first effort of individualism to man.
The Law of Attraction is the law of gravitation raised from a basis of unconscious life or ignorance of life, to a conception of life in which the will becomes the principal factor, and elects for itself the direction in which it shall be attracted. Intelligence refuses obedience to mere bulk and weight, and follows any attraction that seems good to it.
A grain of sand is under obedience to the law of gravitation; the earth holds it to itself. But imagine the grain of sand changed to a minute insect; it instantly declares its freedom from the law that influences the grain of sand, and lifts itself up above the earth. And it will maintain its independence of the earth until it dies; then the earth, by the law of deadness, in which bulk and weight make the attraction, claims its own, and the insect lies helpless upon it.
The whole tendency of evolution is from inertia to activity; from deadness to life; from obedience to the law of inert or unawakened substance—the law of gravitation—to the intelligent attraction which is the law of awakened or conscious substance.
In strict truth there is no dead substance, because all substance holds life in latency; but until the latent life principle begins to express itself intelligently, this substance is under obedience to the law of gravitation only.
But, as substance does express itself more and more intelligently, the law of gravitation loses its force, and the Law of Attraction is substituted. Thus all individual lives work out their own freedom through intellectual growth.
Intellectual growth is the liberation from the law of gravitation, which is the law of death, or rather the law of life; because death has no law, but is simply the negation of the Principle of Attraction, which is the law of life.
Man becomes more free from the—so-called—law of—so-called—dead matter with every acquisition of intelligence he makes; and he is now approaching a plane of knowledge, where he will realize that by the Law of Attraction he can break his allegiance to the earth and float in the air. And this will simply be the beginning of his exploits in this direction.
As I—from some peculiar and accidental consciousness of this great truth—actually floated in the air, so the time will come in which I shall learn how I did it; and thus be able to do it again.
It is probable that in my then negative condition a higher sense of freedom took possession of me, which my uneducated faculties would have denied, and thus have frustrated the phenomenon, but that—for the time being—they were inoperative, and did not put in their ignorant protest.
The One Mighty Factor in Race Growth is Thought
Man is a compendium of all the lives that have existed before him; but he does not show forth the full power of all those individual lives. He is—in his present stage of development—a compromise of them all.
The power of all of them, and vastly more power, lies stored in his brain, but it has not yet been expressed in his personality. It is in his power to express, and by his intelligent belief in its presence he will be able to express it.
Belief in self is the key that unlocks all this stored power. If I did not believe I could draw a bucket of water out of the well, I would never draw it. If I did not believe I could write an article, I could never write it. The paralytic believes he cannot move his hand, and he does not move it. The mental healer, in his treatment of this disease, does not even think of the hand; he directs his thought to the patients’ brain, and corrects his mistaken belief in his own power. All disease is of the brain. A belief in disease is the brain’s own under-estimate of its power. The brain has weakened in its belief of what it is and what it can do, and the body shows forth the brain’s error.
A woman came to me one day with the sickness of a decade in every part of her body. Long years of a life totally unappreciated by others, and a lack of self-esteem on her own part, had brought her to the condition in which I saw her. Her wonderful eyes, and the entire wreck of her queenly beauty, impressed me greatly. A few minutes’ conversation showed me the situation. I did not offer to treat her; I told her how beautiful and how great she was. I told her what splendid possibilities I saw in her mind; she knew I was telling her the truth, and she was well in that hour. Day by day from that time her body showed forth her renewed trust and confidence in her own intellect; her individuality strengthened until the negations that had once submerged and held her under, became the servants that ministered to her uplifting.
The intellect is the shaping power in the body. It is true that the body builds the brain; but the brain reciprocates by building the body. Every higher thought a man has records itself in some added power in the body; and if this could go on day by day, the body would become more and more a revised expression of a revised mode of thinking.
And just so, in the opposite direction, the body may and does deteriorate.
How is it that the man of science can take an animal’s skull, and from its shape tell us just what the animal was like, and what it fed on, and all the particulars concerning it? It is because the brain shapes the body; and when he gets a correct idea of the brain from the shape of the skull, he has no difficulty in describing the animal that owned it, and naming the family to which it belonged.
Familiarity with the correlation between the brain of the animal and the different members of the body of the animal, also enables these men of science to work the same problem backward. They will take any well defined bone of the animal and describe all the animal’s clearly marked characteristics. The relation between the brain and the different parts of the body is exact.
Surely there is a big lesson in this for him who thinks. From the very earliest forms of organization clear up to man, there has been a steady increase of brain power, and a steady improvement in the shape of the head. Not in a single instance has there been a sudden jump from low to high. And never has there been any real retrogression. There have been instances in race growth which seemed like retrogression, but which were truly a kind of a retrogressive progression; being but a temporary halt in the upward journey of the incessant brain, or a going back a few paces to bring up the lagging forces.
There is no missing link. Race growth has been as even and steady as the growth of a child from infancy to manhood. And the one factor in its growth has been thought.
Let no one imagine that thought is confined to human beings alone. All creatures think. Animals think; plants think; and even crystals think. They think the thoughts that render them obedient to the operation of the Law of Attraction, by whose power they are drawn into certain forms. The grass thinks; it aspires or desires, and its aspirations or desires find a ready response in nature, and the result is growth. Every upward step in the scale of creation is marked by a greater power of thought in the creatures; and this greater power of thought produces more powerful creatures. And so thought, even in its lowest forms, expressed in desire, relates the creature, under the ever active Principle of Attraction, to that which it desires; and the stones emerge into gigantic vegetation; the vegetation becomes concentrated into a drop of protoplasm; the protoplasm, by the same potency of thought, expressing the ever growing desire for an enlarged life, greater happiness and greater freedom, sprouts a digestive system; puts forth from its body the necessary instruments by which to supply the digestive system with food; eyes, ears, claws, legs, members both offensive and defensive, until the ripened man, with his noble brain, is here.
And still the same system of growth goes on. The ripened man is man only in his form; the strength and character of his animal progenitors have passed into his brain and live there in disguise, or show forth in cunningly devised methods for the attainment of that power which the beasts—his forefathers—took by force of muscle and cunning. Society is a compromise based on fear; religion is a superstition founded also on fear, and rotten with hypocrisy.
And yet this condition is only an attitude in race growth, .and it is all right for the stage of growth it represents. It is not the desirable thing anymore than the bitter and unripe peach is the desirable thing; but it is on the way to becoming the right thing. It will always be becoming more and more the right thing; for it, like the individuals that compose it, is on the road of endless progression—forever ripening but never ripe; forever incarnating in itself more and more of the vast possibilities latent in the law of being—the Principle of Attraction—but never exhausting the fullness of the law, and, therefore, never ripe.
Man Has No Fetters But Those of His Own Ignorance, and Nothing But His Own Intelligence Will Liberate Him From Them
To think in the old ruts is to remain in the old conditions.
To think expansively is to grow endlessly in the direction of freedom and happiness.
Death is not growth. It solves no problem.
Man at this time is all that his animal progenitors are, and more. The strength of muscle which they exhibited, finds its expression in him, in his brain and not in his muscle. The quality of every faculty they possessed is condensed in his brain; in ceasing to become animal, and in becoming more and more man, the attributes that expressed themselves in the body of animals express themselves with ten-fold more force in the brain of the man.
In fact, the process of growth has been a process of brain making. The awakening of life from the inertia that holds it obedient to that downward attraction, called the law of gravitation, has been one steady advancement of all things toward brain; toward the power to think; toward the freedom that thought alone can insure; toward the conquest of environment that thought alone can master.
I am not making an exaggerated statement when I say that the road of life, the road of progress, is from a belief in that inert substance we call matter, to a belief in mind.
This inert substance we call matter, and which is under the (so-called) law of gravitation, is, in point of absolute truth, all mind or brain or thought; but it is unawakened mind, and, therefore, unconscious or “dead” mind; mind whose powers are latent or unexpressed.
The steady effort of the ages has been to liberate this substance from its unconscious obedience to the law of gravitation—the law of the dead to the dead—by awakening it to a consciousness of its power to think; thus demonstrating to it that it is mind, living and active and free, subject to the Principle of Attraction only.
I cannot repeat too often the great fact that there is no dead matter; that there is no death in the universe; that what is called dead matter is unawakened mind; that every atom in the world is mind, either awakened to a sense of its own power, or holding its power in the unconsciousness of latency. It is on this mighty truth that man’s salvation depends.
What we call matter is the recognition of something. Every atom of it is a magnet. A magnet is that which recognizes the Principle of Attraction within itself.’ If the recognition is so feeble that it yields obedience only to that comparatively unintelligent force expressed in bulk and weight, it recognizes bulk and weight, and yields its recognition to it, and is then said to be under the law of gravitation.
But no matter what it recognizes, the fact that it recognizes anything at all proves that it is mind. ‘Dead matter cannot recognize. Recognition is a faculty of mind.
The law of being, the Principle of Attraction, exists. No one knows anything about it except that it exists.
It is that unseen principle running through all things, and to whose power man can add nothing. It is unchangeable. Our recognition or comprehension of it changes constantly, but it never changes.
All nature, with man at its head, is the recognition or the comprehension of this principle. Not a perfect recognition or comprehension of it—it can never be perfectly comprehended—but a partial and constantly improving and’ growing comprehension of it.
Men call this Law of Attraction God; but the word is unscientific and misleading. Substitute the word “law” for “God,” in Pope’s lines, and they would explain all. “The universe is one stupendous whole whose body nature is, and law the soul.”
As our bodies are the perception, or the understanding, or the recognition of our spirits, so is all nature the perception, or the understanding, or the recognition of this infinite spirit—the unseen life principle which I call the Law of Attraction or the law of being.
Understanding, recognition, the power to perceive, does not belong to anything but mind; therefore, all visible things are mind; no matter how apparently dead this substance called matter may seem, the Law of Attraction is latent in it, and in the farther process of evolution it will recognize the fact, thus proving that it is mind.
And mind, no matter how crude it may be, is one form of brain, out of which the higher or governing brain proceeds; the brain which begets the intelligent will; whose mandate governs the entire body.
It may be said that nature is all brain, ranging numberless degrees from coarse to fine, from the crudest substance to the highest thought, as water ranges from solid ice to the invisible gas generated by steam.
That wonderfully volatile fluid we call electricity is, in its own way, a certain form, and a very vital form, of recognition of the Law of Attraction, and is, therefore, mind, brain, intelligence or thought.
Nature, being in all particulars the recognition of that vital principle called the Law of Attraction, it will be seen that she is all mind, whose power to grow lies in her continued power to think more intelligently than she has previously thought.
Our visible world has now thought itself up to its present position, which is a higher point of intelligence than it has ever before reached. From the fiery mass that it was in our first knowledge of it, where the Law of Attraction between the atoms seemed so feeble in its power, because so little recognized, that it appeared to be rather a law of repulsion, on up through every grade of ripening recognition of the law, with its consequent forms of greater intelligence—we have come to this, our present plane of thought.
And right here, in spite of our past record, with its unflagging development in every direction, there are thousands of our people who affirm that the world has ceased growing.
Or, rather, I may say, there are tens of thousands—nay, millions, who do not know that the whole visible world is a growth in the understanding of the law of being; who do not believe it; and who are, therefore, unprepared to accept the statement that its position in growth is still in infancy, and that its power to keep on growing is endless.
But, whether they accept it or not, it is true; and no truth even approaching the glory of this truth has ever been announced before.
The visible world grows by its acquisition of intelligence, or rather, by its development put of itself of more and more power to recognize the unfailing, the infinite possibilities of the Principle of Attraction, which is the law of being.
Thus, the potency of mind increases daily, and as it increases its environments give way, and happiness and freedom come more readily within its grasp.
The idea that the race has achieved even a minimum of the power that is in store for it is absurd.
The idea that the race must continue to wear its fetters because they are ”God-imposed” is still more absurd.
Man has no fetters but those of his own ignorance, and nothing but intelligence will liberate him from such fetters.
You may take from him every visible environment; you may heap him with wealth; you may place him in high position; but, unless he has come into the saving knowledge which an intellectual perception of his own boundless resources yields him, he is not free. Ignorance still holds him and will pull him down to old age, feebleness and the grave.
And what but these—old age, feebleness and the grave—are our real fetters? What have we gained, though we conquer everything else, and these remain? It may be that the spirit survives the body, as Spiritualism believes it has demonstrated; but even in this case, a man’s sphere of activities is removed from his workshop, the earth; and his death is a break in what should be an unbroken line of growth.
I do not believe that true, healthy growth can proceed through the tortuous weakness of old age, decrepitude and death. True intelligence, the farther recognition of the Law, which alone is growth, is not in these conditions. Nothing is in these conditions but the denial or the non-recognition of the Law; which is a slipping back from a certain condition of incarnate intelligence into a condition of ignorance, wherein the previous condition of intelligence, the incarnate condition of it, is denied or cancelled.
Even in this denial or cancellation of the previous condition, it may be that the spirit survives, and I believe that it does; but I do not believe that the person has gained by the change; indeed, I feel certain that he has lost; and, though the loss may not be irreparable, yet it is a mighty loss and ought to be avoided.
And it can be avoided.
If I did not know that the loss of the body—which is the condensed bulk of the man’s beliefs—could be avoided, I would never have written so much as the first line of this book.
But I do know it.
I have frequently been asked to establish this statement by ‘producing an instance in which someone had conquered death.
There was a time when there was no animal life on this planet at all; did the fact that there was none then form a true basis of belief that there would never be any?
Because the cave-dwellers had never produced a Plato, was that a valid reason for supposing there would never be one?
Those who are limited to a belief that the race is ripe, and that there will be no farther development than there has already been, are in no condition either to deny or affirm the statements I am prepared to make on this subject. They do not know that the race is a growth. They have never examined its past history; this history that began millions of years before it actually appeared in its present form; and their opinions, as weighed against the opinion of one who has learned the situation by heart, are absolutely worthless.
I have studied this matter of race growth for many years. I began to be the race’s champion and defender when a child. I was scarcely out of my teens before a burning sense of disgust for the foolish and false theologies of the day took possession of me. I knew that we were not willful sinners against a higher power, but simply ignorant children feeling our way through intellectual darkness, and stumbling at every step. Without knowing it, having no positive information by which to bolster up my belief on this subject, I simply held to it because it was part of me, and I could no more get rid of it than I could get rid of my head. It became the dominant force of my existence, and the chief source of my vitality. In the midst of sickness, it kept me whole; in positions that would have been death to another, I was unscathed.
In point of fact, it was nothing more than a larger seeing, a deeper recognition of the Life Principle, than that possessed by the average person.
Having more life, I felt more life, and death seemed farther away and more indefinite to me than to others.
As I grew older, the possibility of avoiding it entirely began to take form in my intelligence. It was not that I feared death, for it never seemed sufficiently real to fear. The idea of overcoming it came to me as a part of my growth,, in which it seemed better to acquiesce consciously, so that I might thereby note every step of its progress. Naturally observant and introspective, I was curious about it; all my interest was aroused and something firmer than interest; a deep-seated determination to carry the thing through to success became a fixed factor of my mind.
It is strange how, by simply holding an idea or belief, it aggregates to itself certain mental building material, until it stands impregnable and apparently deathless. This is now the condition of my belief in the possibility of immortality in the flesh. I have not read books, I have not sought outside of myself for reasons to strengthen my position; I have held to it simply because it has held to me; and out of my own organism has been unfolded the course of reasoning by which I have demonstrated its truth to myself. I believe in it as firmly as I believe in my personal presence in this room; and the world is going to believe it before many years shall pass.
It is true that the spirit of Malthus is widespread at this stage of human development, and questions are frequent as to what will become of the earth’s overflowing population if immortality in the flesh should become possible. The natural Malthusian is one who has not penetrated even to the slightest degree into the realm of the ideal, where alone immortality in the flesh can become possible. He does not know that life, when lifted from its belief in the deadness of matter, enters the thought realm, in which the supply is equal to the demand.
But this is so. As soon as a man steps up from a belief in matter as dead substance, and perceives that all is life, and that every form of life is on the wing, as it were, from lower to higher, and that there is no stagnation possible to growth—he will then know that the earth will not be overcrowded by a too rapidly accumulating population.
The old saying that “there is room at the top” applies here. The pioneers in civilization or in thought always find themselves rather lonesome than otherwise. The space outside the herds is unlimited. Especially is this true in the realm of thought; the realm of the ideal, which we are now on the verge of entering.
It is true that the world would soon become overcrowded, if people should keep producing children who would never die, unless some way should be provided for them to leave the earth.
But the entire range of creation is open to man, and there is nothing but his ignorance of his own powers and privileges that will keep him in one place.
It is true that no God will ever interfere in his behalf to lift him into more enlarged spheres of activity; but no God will ever prohibit him from lifting himself into these spheres.
Indeed, such lifting is correlated to the man’s lifted and enlarged thought. As the man expands in his thought life, he will be met by more expansive conditions; and the possibility of fettering him to one point in the universe will cease. It is by thought expansion that a man’s fetters fall from him.
Thought is the conqueror of everything that hampers and hinds. It cannot make even the smallest conquest over its surroundings, that it does not come at once into relation with external conditions better suited to its enlarged sense of freedom.
Indeed, it almost seems as if these freer conditions constantly pressed in on the thought of the race, as if consciously resolved to be recognized.
The croakers of the world cried out that the coal beds were becoming exhausted, and that the race was doomed in consequence. A wider range of thought was correlated by the substance of electricity, and the world came out of its nervous chill on the subject of coal.
Because balloons have proved a failure, does anyone suppose that the air will never be navigated? Even if gas and machinery fail to accomplish this thing, there is a power latent in man’s organism that will do it; namely, the power of thought, to which all substances are negative.
Immortality in the flesh would be neither possible nor desirable if man were to remain the helpless and ignorant creature that he now is.
It would not be desirable because the universe can furnish no excuse for the perpetuation of ignorance. It would not be possible, because ignorance is death already; at least, it is the nearest approach to death that life renders possible.
To keep the race forever alive in its present animalized condition, would be to perpetuate ignorance; to keep it as a stagnant pool in the heart of universal progression; and this could not be. Perpetual change is the order of life. He who catches on to higher thought and holds it with a faith so firm that it crystallizes into belief, is on the upward move, where higher influences meet him, and fix his thought in tangible substance.
He who turns from his higher thought, doubting its practicability, pinches himself into constantly lowering conditions, until ho is pinched out. There is progression for the one, and, at least, a temporary retrogression for the other; but there is no standing still. Therefore, immortality in the present status of universal race thought here in this world is not possible now.
But the dawn of it is here. The beginning of that credence in the human ideal, which alone will usher it in, is here. It is here for no less a reason than because woman, with her strongly intuitional nature, has come to the front. Woman has brought the morning of a new era with her; and, as her feet obtain firmer standing in the slushy quagmire of the world’s present condition of thought, the morning of her day will brighten into the full splendor of a noon, that will arrest and hold the entire interest of the millions of dying souls about us.
This much is already accomplished. The beginning of the dawn is here. Universal thought has begun to move. A ripple runs along the full length of its connected links, even though it is only the few who stand in the front that are capable of seeing the light that shines so brightly ahead.
If this movement had to be confined to our earth, as the Malthusians all must imagine, then its scope would be so small as to furnish a reason for their doubts. But, because man’s growth is limitless—and by his ever increasing power of thought I know that his growth is limitless—the fact shadows forth the possibility of his leaving the earth when lie shall have learned how to do so.
More than this. In the economy of nature the time will come when generation will lose itself in regeneration.
Conditions adapt themselves to each other. When one thread is spun out, there is another thread waiting there to meet the outstretched hand of him who has resolved to go ahead. To him who is not so resolved, and who does not know his power to go on, though the thread is there, it is not there for him, because he does not see it. And so he falls, not because life was lacking, but because the individual intelligence with which he should have grasped it was wanting.
Desire, the Organizing Principle
Since the first two atoms came together under the Law of Attraction and produced the earliest specimen of individual life upon our planet, the vitality of the race has been slowly ripening up to the point where immortality in the flesh could become a possible thing. As the vital powers have ripened, conditions have also ripened, to meet the needs of more vital creatures, and thus the supply has been equal to the demand.
Indeed, the saying that the supply is equal to the demand is grounded in the Principle of Attraction. It is one of the absolute truths.
Whether what I call the life of immortality in the flesh is desirable or practical hinges on one point. If the substance all about us that we see in existing forms of life, the forms of minerals, plants and animals is dead matter, infused by living spirit, then our only hope of prolonging our lives will be by some method that will release the spirit from the matter. And this position is accepted as the truth almost the whole world over.
Dead matter can never be permanently enlivened by spirit, nor is it desirable that spirit should load itself down with something that is forever dead. Moreover, if this is the true condition, it never has been necessary for spirit to be so loaded with the dead weight of matter; and the entire combination has been a very grave mistake, ruining, or, at least, deferring, the happiness of every spirit that ever entered the material life.
If I knew this to be the true situation, I would never move my hand to save my own life; I would look forward to the time when my spirit would drop its load of death, as the chained and barred prisoner looks forward to the hope of freedom.
Long and earnestly I pondered the subject of dead matter with its infusion of living spirit, and wondered why a union of two things so diametrically opposite to each other should be either necessary or desirable. Presently I knew that it could not be; because, if matter is dead, then the Law of Attraction cannot exist in it, and it is absolutely immovable by any force whatever. It has no power to respond to anything; it is helpless; without the principle of cohesion; and entirely useless in the building of worlds or of men.
In this thought, which I knew to be correct, I touched the negative pole of the truth I was seeking.
If matter was a dead substance, it was dead, and there was no inherent power in it, and no latent life. It was simply dead, and had no place whatever in the universe of uses. That the substance called matter did exist there was no denying, even through the visionary process of Christian Science. The substance existed; it was an ever present and an indispensable reality.
“Indispensable”—this was a fortunate word. Dead matter could not be indispensable; the sooner dead matter and every form of death could be dispensed with, the better.
What, then, was the substance called dead matter? Did it have life of itself? I answer—yes.
Then, if it has life of itself, what need has it of the infusing spirit which seems to be a different thing from it; the infusing spirit that only infuses it a few years and then deserts it, leaving it to be again infused by other spirits, or to remain forever helpless?
The more I pondered on this subject, the more I became convinced that matter had life of itself.
To have life is to be capable of thought. This proposition brought me face to face with the great truth that every atom in the universe had power to think. In other words, that every atom was transfused with the Principle of Attraction, and responsive to every other atom; and on this fact alone rested the possibility of organized forms.
By slow degrees and never ceasing thought, I found myself in an immaterial universe; that is, in a universe where all is living, active, vital intelligence, or mind, or thought, or brain, or knowledge.
Each atom was not a dead thing infused by something else; it was not a dead thing that yet had the power to recognize the transfusing principle of life within it; if it were dead it could not recognize anything. But still it existed, and was responsive to other atoms; what, then, was it?
It was mind itself; and mind, which is the recognition of the Law of Attraction, or the law’s recognition of itself—substance; actual substance, to be seen and handled; to express in its own appearance its own belief in the law, or as much of the law as it could comprehend.
Here, all in an hour, the whole system of evolution opened up to me. The external world, the world of mind, is in constant effort to express more and more of the law of being, the Law of Attraction, which is the principle of life; the unseen side of itself; the positive and unchangeable I AM; the constantly growing recognition of which gives ever improving expressions of itself, from the smallest and weakest individualized life up to man; and from man as he now stands in his ignorance and helplessness, up through an unending process of improvement, by a constant acquisition of new truths, or an ever widening recognition of the power of the Law.
The Law of Being, or of Attraction, is to the visible universe what heat is to light. It is the magnetism in the magnet. Every atom is a magnet, and the external or visible part of it is the magnet’s recognition of itself, just as light is heat’s recognition of itself.
All power is in the law.
By all power, I mean all power of organization.
In our first knowledge of the world, as stated before, the atoms were so widely diffused as to be almost beyond the reach of each other’s attraction. Ages passed; and the law—always constant to itself in its drawing power—had condensed the fiery mass somewhat; had brought the atoms closer together, so that its drawing influence began to have a greater effect. Then, as the ages went by, the drawing power overcame the distances more and more, and masses began to assume form.
Through this same process, always increasing in strength, the world was brought to a condition where it became possible for higher conceptions of the Law to be formed. Rocks adhered; waters gathered themselves together; a blade of grass put up its daring head, and the first protest of intelligence against bulk and weight, the first rebellion against death, recorded its tiny oath.
But the poor baby life did die; recognizing nothing but the first faint monition of endless individuality, its little effort lost itself to become merged in another and greater effort.
And so one species merged into a nobler one; one genus disappeared, because its power to recognize nothing farther of the possibilities of the Law became its environment; an environment that nothing but dissolution could break.
But always the power of the Law was drawing the atoms to closer cohesion; and the atoms thus cohering were, by their very existence, proving the greater potency of individuals to recognize the Law of Being or the Principle of Attraction.
And so the recognition of the Principle of Attraction or of Being has proceeded right through the ages; and so it can continue to proceed.
And although recognition of the Principle of Attraction is the externalizing power, the power that makes visible, or marks the showing forth of its capabilities, it is a fact that up to the present time, this recognition has been an unconscious recognition; by which I mean a recognition that has expressed itself in uses, and not a recognition that could give a logical account of itself, and thereby become a conscious recognition.
Life has heretofore proceeded entirely on the unconscious plane. It has proceeded in the individual by the individual’s recognition of his own personal desires.
Desire is the organizing principle; from first to last it has been so.
The recognition of desire is the recognition of the law as expressed individually. It is the individual’s recognition of the magnetic or attracting power which he sees within himself. He recognizes this attraction or magnetism in himself and it becomes the law of his individual life. It is that unseen something within him that always cries out for something more than he already possesses. It is the Principle of Life; the growing principle; and his recognition of it has brought him steadily up through the centuries from the lowest condition imaginable to his present form, intelligence and strength.
In obedience to his unconscious recognition of this life principle expressed individually as desire—he, as the tiny drop of protoplasm, acquired a digestive system and all the appendages necessary to supply it with food.
In obedience to his love of life, or his desire to have his life perpetuated, his organism produced a reproductive system; which as yet only serves a part of his purpose; since it is only far enough evolved to perpetuate his kind without perpetuating himself.
While generation proceeds in one unbroken stream on the unconscious plane of life, regeneration in not possible except upon the conscious plane; a plane that the race is now on the verge of reaching.
All growth depends upon the recognition of the law; but nothing, and no man, can recognize the law in its fullness. Man only recognizes the law in himself, as it is expressed in his desire for something more than he possesses.
The recognition of my desires is the recognition of the Law of Attraction in my own life, as separate and apart from the Law of Attraction expressed in other lives.
The desires I see in myself are evidence of my own selfhood. They form my ego. That I am not in all particulars like my neighbor is because my desires differ from his; I recognize in the law more good than he does, and thereby show forth an organization superior to his; or I recognize less good, and show forth an organization inferior to his; or both of us may recognize an equal amount of good, but of different kinds, and may show forth organizations equally good, but different from each other.
And this has been the case all down the scale of being. A blade of grass shows forth as much good as it recognizes; so does a tree, a horse or an angle worm.
Our bodies are the records of our beliefs; and just to the extent that we have believed in our desires, which are of the Law, individualized within us, we have been true to the Law, or the principle of growth, and have manifested that which seemed good to us; therefore, I say that as much “good” as we have recognized in the Law, we have shown forth in our bodies; thus making our bodies the record of what we desired and believed in.
The forms of life have been growing more complex from the first inception of the first form, which was nothing more than the cohesion through the Principle of Attraction of two or three of the primordial life cells.
They have been growing more complex, because as they aggregated to themselves more and still more of the life cells, their desires became more numerous. This increase in the number and character of their desires was all the time making more powerful magnets to them; and so evolution proceeded.
Every visible manifestation of life—mineral, plant and animal—is self-created.
Life may be called two-fold, even though it is a unit. It may be called two-fold because there is a seen and an unseen side to it. On the unseen side we have the Law of Being or the Principle of Life, which is the Law of Attraction. No man knows anything about it except that it exists. We see its effects in the magnet; we see that every life cell is a magnet, and we know that it is both external and internal; both seen and unseen; both positive and negative. The positive side being the Law, which is unchanging; the negative side being the recognition of the Law, which is the external side, and which is constantly changing through the increasing or lessening power of individual recognition.
The more an individual recognizes of the power of the Law, the more positive he becomes. Man, recognizing more of the power of the Law than any other creature, is positive to all other creatures; and being positive to them, he is their master. They supply him in all his many wants. He cuts down the magnificent tree and holds its individuality in subservience to his needs; he kills the animal and eats its flesh in order to satisfy his desire for food; he becomes greater and stronger all the time by sacrificing lives that are negative to him. These lower lives pass constantly into his life; his life would pass into some life higher than his own, but for the fact that his constantly growing brain renders unnecessary any life higher than his. If his brain found its limitation in serving a non-expanding range of uses, like those of the cow or the horse, then nature would beget an organization superior to his, into which the increasing knowledge of the growing race might extend.
But it is not necessary from the fact that man keeps growing and increasing in knowledge all the time; in this way proving that he has no limitation. In consequence of this fact there will be no higher organization, except that into which his present organization will expand by the, farther expansion of his intelligence; or his farther recognition of still greater power existing in the Law.
Intelligence or mind is the visible substance of the universe; it is simply the recognition of the Law of Being, which is the Law of Attraction, or the Life Principle.
Another statement of this idea would be that the words “love” and “intelligence” are an explanation of it all—love being the unseen principle of cohesion. The idea expressed in this manner is not new; it forms the basis of Swedenborg’s theory, a theory that he fails to carry out into particulars in his very voluminous writings.
The entire trend of thought is from physical to metaphysical; and it cannot be otherwise, since race growth is in this direction.
A belief in the physical as dead matter is all that now holds the race back from the most rapid and startling growth. Freedom—the goal of the world’s desire—lies just ahead, and here we remain, tethered to a mistake, a mistake that could not hold us one moment, but for the fact that we are all mind, and that our mistakes are our bodies. Our mistakes are our beliefs; they are our fixed modes of thought. Therefore, they are our beliefs; and belief is the body of the individual. The body is not the record of our beliefs; it is our beliefs; it is the sum total of all our beliefs; for belief, being a mental thing, is real substance; and, whether belief is true or false, it is a substantial thing so long as it lasts.
Believing ourselves living spirits chained to dead matter is a mistake as potent to hold us down to what we call the law of gravitation, as if matter really were a dead substance, instead of being what it really is—pure mind, the recognition of the Law of Being—from which it is inseparable.
The inseparableness of substance from the Law that is its invisible partner, when once seen in its true light, immediately suggests the idea of immortality in the flesh; especially when taken in connection with the fact that man is self-creative.
Indeed, but for man’s belief in the deadness of matter, and his still more foolish belief that a God made him, he would even at this time be diseaseless and deathless; he would, even now, be on the road of endless progression, led exclusively by his desires for happiness. He would be trusting the Law, and externalizing his desire—which is the Law individualized in him; and his body would be showing forth greater power and beauty daily. He would be on that plane of thought where his body (which is the condensed form of his thought) would be growing each day into a new and ever beautifying revision of his new and ever beautifying acquisition of intelligence.
Beliefs, Both Fixed and Unfixed
I now leave it to the reader to say whether death is a necessity of our organization, or a desirable thing, since spirit and matter are not two separate substances; and I will return to again consider what seems to be the spirit forms described so frequently by Spiritualists, and seen by thousands of people.
Our bodies are the condensed forms of our thoughts, or our beliefs. Thought and belief are in some degree synonymous; both are forms of recognition; both are mental expressions. A thought seems not to have the fixed character of a belief; but it may become a belief, and in doing so it will take its place among other fixed beliefs, and be a part of the risible body. Belief is simply thought that becomes fixed. The body is thought, but it is thought that is fixed; thought whose correctness is not questioned, and (on the mental plane, where we do really exist, whether we are aware of it or not,) it becomes visible. Fixed thought is belief; and belief is visible thought expressed in a thousand different forms, each form being its own individual recognition of the possibilities contained in the Law of Being.
Thought—before it becomes fixed in belief—is invisible to our undeveloped perceptions: it is a reality, though intangible, just as the perfume of flowers and many other ethereal substances, which we are not able to perceive except by their effects.
And yet the power to see these fine substances is latent among the undiscovered possibilities that will some time awaken within us. Even now we get occasional evidences of their existence, when we are off our guard against everything but the commonplace and orthodox attainments of the present. We sometimes forget that we believe in nothing but what we call ”established facts,” and in these moments of forgetfulness, it may be that some mighty power within us steals a march on us, and shows itself in something unexpected to, and even unacceptable by, our “sober senses.”
Then it is not impossible that the thought which has so far mastered us as to render us in a measure unconscious of what we are thinking, and watchful of the action of our mind, should suddenly appear before us in the objective.
It is a living thing: each atom of its frail being is transfused by the Law. For the time being, it actually has an individuality of its own; an individuality quite negative, however, to that of its creator, myself, for instance, and holding its objective form in ready obedience to my caprice.
This is the real condition: I have been in a reverie, a careless state of mind, when my thoughts were shaping themselves uncontrolled by my will. My will, which is my ego, being off guard, there is a tendency to disintegration in my body—the sum of my fixed beliefs. Then, stray thoughts, beliefs which are not fixed, may start up from the careless or indolent brain, and actually become sufficiently fixed to be visible. In becoming thus partially fixed, they draw upon the fixed beliefs (my body), which for a time are in a measure unfixed.
And here we have the double presence, the second party, which may either be an exact resemblance of ourselves, or the resemblance of some picture that exists, or has existed, at some previous time in the mind.
I recall an occasion when for a few hours I was so exceedingly negative that these thoughts took objective form by the hundred. They were literally annihilating me, and I was too weak to resist them. My life seemed to be passing out into them, when the physician was called, and by giving me a stimulant reestablished the ego in my organization, which actually appeared to call into itself and absorb every one of the wandering shapes that were disintegrating my body, and thus becoming objective to me.
That thoughts are things is a fact that cannot be disputed. We might as well say that ether did not exist, because it is invisible, as to say that thought is nothing because it is not seen under ordinary conditions.
There is no nothing. Wherever the Law of Attraction is recognized, even in the feeblest manner, there, though unseen, exists the form of that recognition. Recognition is form. Recognition is the making visible of the Law. The Law is the only thing that can be recognized. It may be recognized in weakness or in strength; but wherever it is recognized, no matter whether the recognition is weak or strong, a manifestation of it is inevitable.
Whether this explanation will apply to every phase of spirit materialization or not, I cannot say. Nor have I given it in the hope that it will do so; for there is no pleasanter thought to me than that our loved and dead do really live after they have left this sphere, and can return to us again.
Nor does the fact that our thoughts may take shapes which—under certain conditions—become objective to us, invalidate the claim of Spiritualism, that the spirits of the dead can return and take form.
My real object in saying what I have said is to prove to the reader what I know to be true; that there is no nothing; and that thoughts are things. I also wish to establish the fact that the human mind is an unprospected field, and that no one has even the faintest idea of its latent powers.
In the matter of being lifted from the floor, to which I alluded a few pages back, in connection with other Spiritualistic phenomena, I wish to say that this, too, may be, and is, a power that belongs to man; one that he can exercise at will when he comes to know more of himself and his relation to the Law of his being.
The Law of Attraction
In attempting to define the seeming difference between the law of gravitation and the Law of Attraction, I showed that this seeming difference was a difference in the degree of intelligence in the objects that were attracted. I showed how the words “death to death” would explain the law of gravitation, and “life to life” would explain the Law of Attraction; in short, that the law of gravitation was the negative pole of the Law of Attraction, since its effects were manifested in objects too ignorant of the Law of Attraction to be lifted by it.
I said that with the first awakening of intelligence, which in all objects, from a grain of sand up to a man, is the recognition of innate desire, the objects were lifted upward instead of being held downward. The Law of Attraction is therefore the Law of Life in evolution, while the law of gravitation is the same law of life in latency. All is life either in action or with its powers of action latent.
Therefore, the law of gravitation is the Law of Attraction; but being the negative pole of the Law, it seems to be rather a denial of the Law than the Law itself.
The law of gravitation glides by imperceptible degrees into the Law of Attraction. They are the same Law, the seeming difference being the different degrees of intelligence that recognize it.
The speck of mold lies close to the earth. It does not recognize the principle of life within it. That principle of life is desire. The Law in individual expression is desire; and after a time the speck of mold feels the monitions of the law; recognizes the desire—the law—and becomes what we call a living organism. It was alive before, but did not know it. That is, the Law of Attraction was in it because it is in all things; but the recognition was wanting; or rather, the degree of recognition within it was too undeveloped for observation.
So long as the recognition was wanting, or too feeble for expression, the speck of mold was simply acted on. With stronger self-recognition came the power of independent action; and then it became obedient to the Law of Attraction within it as expressed in its own recognized desire; and with even this small amount of freedom it moved upward from the earth. The law of gravitation in it had developed into the Law of Attraction. In strict truth, it had always been the Law of Attraction, but was only the Law of Attraction to the intelligence that recognized it as such.
Thus it is seen that a recognition of the Law of Attraction emancipates from a belief in the law of gravitation, or from the non-belief in the Law of Attraction; and thus intelligence becomes master of death to the extent of its power to recognize the Law of Attraction.
I shall have to go over this again in order to make it clear.
There really is no law of gravitation; that is, if I am permitted to define the law of gravitation as that power which draws all objects towards the center of the earth. For there is no such power.
Every atom in the world is mind, intelligence, recognition of the Law of Life within itself, that when expressed at all is expressed in desire. This Life Principle which is expressed in the individual as desire exists in latency in every atom; and it is no sooner recognized by the atom than the atom acts in obedience to it. The desire in the atom always leads away from the earth, and not down into it, showing that the real attraction to which every desire points is upward, and not downward.
The tree is attracted upward and goes on being attracted upward, in obedience to its desire, until its very roots—in a broad sense—are freed from the earth, and it walks on top of the earth in a form of greater freedom. It may have a multitude of feet on the ground, and may move with difficulty, but the same Law of Attraction keeps growing upon its recognition, until in the lapse of ages it stands upon four feet. And so the power of recognition goes on for ages again; and it has so far emancipated itself that it stands on only two feet.
And still the power to recognize the Law, as expressed in desire, goes on; and the freedom from the so-called law of gravitation continues.
This is the case today. It has been the case always; and who is there to limit its progress in the future?
Man, as to his personality, is clear mind or intelligence. He is the Law in the objective. The Law as personified in desire is his subjective side; and the seeming two are one.
The Law is inexhaustible. Man’s recognition of the Law has its limitations, and these limitations establish his shape, and the shape of every object in nature.
But though we see in man’s present shape, and in the power or lack of power manifested by him, the limitations of his intelligence, yet there is no valid reason why there should ever be a limit to his intelligence, or his recognition of the Law. The Law being limitless, his power to recognize it is also limitless. And as every fresh recognition of its power releases him more and more from the deadness called gravitation, and puts him more and more under the influence of the Law of Attraction, which is not towards the earth, but away from it, I say the time is coming when he will float in the air; and that, too, without any foreign appliances, and without any effort beyond the simple recognition of the Law of Attraction. In other words, he will float in the air because he wants to.
It is impossible to form anything like an adequate idea of the power of the Law of Attraction. Every form of organization depends upon it. Every organized form, according to its needs, recognizes the power of the Law, and becomes just what it recognizes; or shows forth in its external self that which it perceives to be good.
Recognition is the externalizing power; and it is something that grows. The Law does not grow; but the recognition of the power of the Law grows constantly in the mind of the untrammeled thinker; and this is why life is a progression, and not a creation.
Nothing is created; nothing ever has been created. What we call creation is the thousand forms of recognition of the power of the Law of Attraction.
If recognition may be called creation, and in one sense it may be so called, then forms are self-created.
They are, at least, self-manifested.
It is a half-intuitive perception of this fact that has started the belief called “free moral agency.”
If free moral agency means the power to act independently of the Law, then there is no free moral agency; for the Law is one with the power that exerts it; and the nearest approach a man can make to freedom is through greater knowledge of the Law, or closer conformity with it.
The Ego
Out of the night that shelters me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods there be
For my unconquerable soul.
—From “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley
The much repetition of the foregoing pages would be unpardonable but for the fact that nothing short of repetition over and over again would make the subject clear to those to whom the idea is new.
There are two parts to this subject. One relates to the Law of Being, or Attraction; the other relates to individual life tinder the Law.
We know nothing of the Law except that it is the moving spirit of all life, the Life Principle; that it fills all space absolutely full, leaving no room for the least particle of death. We know that this Life Principle is altogether alive and vital, and altogether good, and as it fills the universe, therefore, the universe is altogether alive and vital and good. This statement excludes the idea of either death or evil. And, indeed, there is no death and there is no evil.
The Life Principle, the Law, is the containment of all possibilities. Man and all creatures externalize in their own personalities these possibilities as rapidly as they recognize them.
Recognition makes apparent or visible those possibilities of the Law, that were unapparent or invisible before they were recognized. In this sense—the sense of externalizing or making visible the possibilities of the Law—the power to recognize may be called the creative power; and from this time on I shall speak of it as creative.
Recognition, then, which is intelligence or mind, creates.
I, therefore, come to the second of the two parts of this subject; that which relates to creation.
The old question in the catechism, “Who made you?” has never been answered correctly except in one instance; at least, there is only one instance on record, and that will be found in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
When Miss Ophelia propounded the question to Topsy, it was answered correctly: “Nobody made me. I just growed.”
On the hypothesis that there is a personal God, who, in spite of His personality—which means His limitation—still fills all space; and on the still farther hypothesis that He made man and all the other creatures, I think it must be admitted that, for an individual of His power and boasted judgment, He made a very poor job of it; so poor that it is no wonder He got tired of the work of His hands, and gave us over to His coadjutor, the devil, to hide it out of His sight.
Compare this theory with the theory that the race is a growth, and that it takes no step forward in the scale of being except by recognition of more truth, or the gain of more intelligence; and compare it as it now stands with what it was at the time of the cave dwellers, and see if it, as its own creator, has not the right to be proud of its work.
On the first hypothesis the work was finished at one blow—as it were—and it was a wretched piece of work. On the second hypothesis we see the never ceasing effort of intellect to climb higher in the intellectual scale; and as a result, an unfinished, but a constantly progressing race; a race that we admire and respect because we know that it is where it is by its own effort; by its own unceasing struggle with ignorance; by the daily heroism of its past as it journeyed through untrodden wildernesses of thought, without a solitary guiding light except that which its slowly growing and hardly gained experience yielded it.
Take this glorious race just as it stands today, still fettered and still clinging to its chains, but still advancing slowly along the road that promises relief from them, and compare it with the cut-and-dried and finished race that God made, and note the difference in your feelings for the two.
In God’s race there is no hope. It was completed at its birth and has done nothing but degenerate ever since. God made it dependent on Himself; and it now finds itself in the dilemma of an abandoned job; God having in a measure washed His hands of it, and left it to the tender mercies of its arch enemy, whom God also made, apparently for no other purpose than that of a scapegoat for His own mistakes.
But the man-made race of evolution began in the smallest possible way. It was not only not perfect at its inception, but it was merely the seed germ of a race. It had no God to depend upon and no inspired guide to lead it. It was self-creative and self-dependent from the first, and it felt its slow but sure way up from its beginning, through the darkness of absolute ignorance. It had no guides but its mistakes. These mistakes which have been imputed to it as sins have been its only guide-posts to point it in the right direction. And yet it has forged its way through earth and air and fire and water and tempest, and the dense blackness of its own intellectual night, to its present standpoint, where it sees the dawning of light at last. It has scored its triumphs in the conquest of a myriad of obstacles; it has covered itself with bruises and wounds too grievous to tell of; it has left thousands of its numbers to mark each upward step in its progress; and it is here today, blood-stained, sick and sore from its head to its feet, but dauntless still, and covered with the glory of its undying courage.
O, beautiful race! A baby race even yet; still foot-bound in the long gowns of its infancy, but ready now to tear away each hampering bond, and walk forth in the broad road of an infinite freedom towards infinite wisdom.
Which will you have—the race that God made, or the race that is now making itself?
Those who look upon the race to condemn it exhibit about as much judgment as one who, coming to the orange tree at my window, should taste the unripe fruit and pronounce orange culture a failure.
If God made the race, then there would be no need for any action upon its part at all. It is made and finished, and that is all there is of it. But if the race made itself, which it surely did, then it has an endless work before it in making itself over in accordance with its ever enlarging and ever beautifying ideal.
And who will deny the presence of the ideal in man? Man, God-made, could have no use for an ideal, since God’s work must necessarily be perfect; it might have the power to retrograde, but it evidently could have no power to progress.
And yet we find in man an ideal that is always far ahead of his present attainment. This would not be in him if God had made him; it would be in him if he had made himself; it would be the beautiful implanted hope ever leading him to higher growth, to nobler attainment.
And this ideal is not only in man, but it exists in every organized creature from the lowest form of life on up through the scale to man. It is the aspiration, the desire, the Law incarnate, whose never ending possibilities are foreshadowed in the creature’s intuitive or latent powers of recognition. It is the very, basis of growth in all creatures, and links all creatures together on the road of infinite progression; proving not only the oneness of the Law, but the oneness of the Law’s recognition of itself. For the Law’s recognition of itself is one, though expressed in individuals. It is one unbroken chain of recognition that establishes not only the brotherhood of man with man, but the brotherhood of every expression of life with every other expression. For as the Law is one, so the recognition of the Law is one; thus demonstrating the wholeness and infallibility of the universe.
Every life cell is an ego. It is a seed germ. When—under the Law of Attraction—two or more of the life cells unite, they come into one understanding of the Law, not into two or three understandings, and the two or three egos become one ego, and possess greater drawing power than the single life ceil.
This is shown in the common magnet. It has its positive and negative pole and demonstrates its power as a whole magnet. It may be broken into a hundred pieces, and each piece will be a perfect magnet with its positive and negative pole. Weld the pieces together again, and the many magnets become one magnet. The magnetism is indivisible; the recognition of the magnetism may be individualized; and it is individualized endlessly in the primordial life cells. The drawing together of the cells and their cohesion in more complex forms is individual growth.
In individual growth the drawing power of the individual is constantly increased; as it increases it becomes constantly more positive to the less complex individualities about it, and masters them; by mastering them it unites their power to its own. The strength of the conquered does, in a sense, pass into the conqueror; and so we have the law of individual growth, which is by the survival of the fittest.
The magnet’s recognition of its own magnetism is its recognition of the Law of Attraction within it.
The man’s recognition of desire within himself is the recognition of the Law of Attraction within him.
The leading difference between the magnet and the man is that, while both recognize the Law of Attraction within themselves, the man’s recognition is of such a character as to give birth to will; the conscious ego; while that of the magnet has not advanced so far on the road to consciousness.
In the early stages of individual growth, the creature’s recognition of the Law of Attraction within it is perceived to be simple desire. But this desire is the basis of all future growth. The more we gratify desire, the more it grows. This is equivalent to saying, the more we recognize the Law, the more of the power of the Law we embody; for the recognition of desire is the recognition of the Law.
The desire thus recognized by the creature has no moral character whatever; nor has the Law itself any moral character. Morality is an external thing, and belongs to the intelligence.
Desire is a purely selfish attribute.
What then, is the Law of Attraction, the Law that men call God, a selfish principle?
The Law of Attraction has no character whatever; it is neither selfish nor unselfish; it is simply the drawing power, whole and indivisible; utterly regardless of morality or individual rights.
With individualization comes the consciousness of the Law, taking the form of desire. It is utterly selfish; it is the ego; it is the “I” in a struggle with every other “I.”
Its selfishness, from its first inception, is only limited by its lack of power. It is its own center of the universe, and its own effort is to draw to itself all there is.
The selfishness of the creature increases step by step with the development of higher and still higher types of life. Why? Because development is nothing else but the still greater recognition of individual desire; and desire is the starting point and the basic principle of self; it is selfishness or selfhood.
The desire of the individual is only limited in its selfish grasping after everything it sees by a still greater desire; the desire for a secure life.
So long as all creatures act from selfish desire, there is one constant state of warfare, and the world is under the dominion of fear. The desire for peace and security dominates the desire for possession, and gradually it becomes the highest desire that justice shall reign, because justice guarantees the greatest happiness. The desire, without ever forsaking the central standpoint of self, always bent on its own happiness, has developed a better conception or a better recognition of what it takes to produce happiness.
Individual life rests exclusively on selfishness; the effort of each to attain its own ends; its own happiness. The best method of attaining these ends, true happiness, is a matter of intellectual growth; a matter of greater recognition of the Law of Attraction; the law of infinite union; the Law as expressed in greater and more complex desires.
The renunciation of one individual to another and the folly of self-sacrifice, become apparent when it is seen that such renunciation and sacrifice rest on the same foundation that all our other actions rest upon. They are performed for the purpose of yielding us the greatest happiness, either here or hereafter.
So it happens that no man can resign the ego. Let him cover it up as he will, it is always the motor that moves him, and always will be. What is religion but giving up something in the present in order that we may get it in the future with infinitely compounded interest? I am willing to give the heathen the twenty dollars I have saved for the purchase of a new dress, if I am convinced that God is my security and will pay me back a hundred-fold. It appears to me as a first-class business transaction and I will risk “the sacrifice.”
The mother love, that beautiful and tender and holy feeling, is self-love. The child is the object of the mother’s desire; probably the very highest object of her desire; and she holds it more tenaciously than anything else.
Every form of love rests on desire; rests on the basis of self. Indeed, every good and beautiful attribute has self-love for its starting point; self-love worked out through higher and nobler recognition of the Law of Attraction, and individualized in higher and nobler desires.
The growth of desire is the growth and strengthening of the individual.
Society, when it shall have reached a more ideal condition than at present, will have reached it through the strengthening of the individualities composing it; and these individualities will have become strengthened by a better recognition of their own selfhood as expressed in their enlarged desire.
The total sacrifice of the selfish principle as expressed in desire, if such a thing were possible, would mean the destruction of the ego, which would be annihilation. And this is the impracticable and the impossible religion preached from thousands of pulpits today, whose effects are not the making of men, but the prostitution of them to a mistaken renunciation and self-deceptive and often a hypocritical humility. Religion is based on fear. And I now state boldly that everything in this world that is based on fear must die. It must die, that man may live and love and expand to the glory of true and free individualism through the power of love, whose very nature is incompatible with fear.
The love that is preached from the pulpit is an impossible thing in the character of the religion that preaches it. And why?
Because the religion itself is the most diluted compound of weakness ever concocted for the abject prostration of individuality. It is a doctrine that teaches men to resign their own strength, and to lean on the strength of another; a doctrine that ignores individual power, and throws itself in abject helplessness upon some imaginary power external to the individual. Under such circumstances the very effort of a person to love his neighbor as himself becomes a hypocritical pretense. He is not capable of generating love; love is the child of freedom, and the slave of fear is powerless to beget it. No one who is weak in his own selfhood can give himself; and this is love. No one who leans on a power outside of himself can be anything but weak.
It is only when men come into a state of freedom from the ripening of the ego, that it becomes possible for them to fulfill the claims of the so-called gospel, and love others as they love themselves. For love is the overplus of strength, and they who lean and beg will never be strong enough to generate anything but a counterfeit representative of it.
Love is the outflow of individual strength; the outflow of the individual’s very self; there is no outflow to individual weakness; nothing but the absorptive drying up that we perceive in stagnant water.
The time is fast approaching when men will love; and that, too, because self is the moving spring of each person. When we shall become free from fear through the growing knowledge of our own power, we will see in others only the qualities that attract us, and we will flow out to them in desires for their good. Beautiful deeds will become the spontaneous outgrowth of free souls. In an atmosphere of freedom, the kingdom of love will be established.
We would love now if we were free and strong; but we are so fettered and so weak and so full of fairs for our own safety, that we cannot get away from the clamoring ego within us for an hour. We cannot come into that condition of noble and lofty repose which enables us to say, “All things are well at home. I will, therefore, go abroad and see if I cannot make them better for my neighbors.” This would be love. It would be the superabundant outflow of strength.
But why should I care—being happy myself—whether others are happy or not? Am I not under obedience to the law of selfishness? In what particular is this personal ego I find within myself to be served by serving others?
I answer that in my still farther recognition of the Law of Attraction I have come into closer relationship with my neighbor; the drawing power of the Law has so shown me his oneness with me that it has become my desire to help him; my whole nature has warmed towards him, because the Law in its fuller manifestation is Love. My more complete recognition of the Law has filled me with love, and love seeks an object; it is the expression of the Law of Attraction, and being full of it, my happiness is best served by manifesting it in noble words and generous deeds. And thus, even in the execution of man’s loftiest ideal for the universal good, we see that he acts in obedience to his self-love; the love so misunderstood and so condemned by the superficial thought of the age.
The tendency of evolution is the perfecting of individuality; the concentration of power in the ego. Man must learn that he is self-creative, and that his only hope, lies in this fact; that his only salvation is knowledge; that knowledge is a constantly growing power.
Seeing this to be so, let every human being take fresh hope.
So long as salvation is supposed to depend on another, it must always seem doubtful; and this doubt cannot but keep one more or less under the influence of fear.
But when self-salvation is seen to rest on self-dependence, on individual effort, then native courage and will power come to the rescue, and a man shoulders the burden of his journey, and trudges along the road of endless progression with faith in himself to overcome all obstacles.
And in this frame of mind he grows stronger every hour, no matter how rough the journey; the rougher the better, since every conquest adds to his strength until he feels his position to be God-like and irresistible.
Endless Progression: Its Retardation by Fear
Self-dependence in the pursuit of wisdom—this alone is growth.
Whenever a man is in a position that entails the necessity of leaning on some external aid, he is a dying man; his tendency is downward; he is under the so-called law of gravitation. Knock the props from under him; then, if he can stand alone, with faith in his own unaided self, and with the resolution to follow his highest aspirations, indifferent to the criticisms of his neighbors, he has passed the line that lies between the so-called law of gravitation and the Law of Attraction, and has entered the outskirts of a diseaseless and deathless domain of pure life.
That this is a difficult thing to do, no one can doubt. We look abroad and see disease and death everywhere. They seem to be the established order of nature; to break away from them looks an impossibility. We have not yet discovered that there is no established order in nature; we cannot yet realize that nature is an ever varying series of conceptions of the Law, and that disease and death are among these conceptions.
That they are mistaken conceptions, or conceptions based on our ignorance of absolute truth, has not occurred to us. We have not yet found out that all is life, and that the whole chain of growth, from the lowest organic form, up to man, is a gradually growing consciousness of this great truth; this absolute truth; the most important of the few absolute truths we know at this time.
The entire procession of organic forms, I say again, has been but a series of gradually enlarging perceptions of the undeniable truth that there is no death, and can be none; that all is life.
Individual intelligence, individual, knowledge of this one mighty truth, is positive salvation from disease and death.
That disease and death should be among the conceptions of nature, is because nature in its conceptions of the truth is a growth. It cannot conceive the full possibilities of the Law of Attraction in a moment, any more than a peach can conceive the possibilities of its fully ripened condition at the moment of its inception.
Let us imagine that nature could be absolutely perfect and beyond the possibility of any farther growth; that man, as a part of nature, was also perfect. In this case, he would have nothing more to desire, and no farther incentive either to thought or action. Is there anything desirable in such a condition? Is it not the most terrible form of death that one can imagine? Dead, and yet conscious of the situation; dead and yet sufficiently alive to know it. For my part, I should prefer an eternal sleep.
On the other hand, look at nature with man at its head as an ever growing thing. Look at the Law as expressed individually in desire. In this condition there is always a future; there is always some happiness to be attained, which, when attained, projects its hope of some other and greater happiness. There is always some obstacle of ignorance to be conquered, the conquering of which brings a greater consciousness of strength and power to him who conquers. There is an ever enlarging object in life; an ever enlarging hope for that which lies beyond; an ever enlarging future, which, in passing behind us, strengthens our position in the universe and confirms our mastery more and more. There is always something to live for; always an object to stimulate effort, and always the deepening and broadening and beautifying manhood and womanhood that is the result of effort. There is always the closer approximation of our external selves to the glorious internal ideal born of desire, and bringing us more and more into a position of oneness with the Law of Attraction, thus uniting us in love and harmony and power.
And in all of this growth, we will eventually exhaust the latent powers of the earth, and enter other spheres of thought and action, whose possibilities will far transcend those of the earth.
And on and on, through a never ending series of conquests in obedience to the ideal, which allures forever to higher heights and to happier happiness, and to tenderer and nobler love.
There is perfection, but man will never reach it. It is an infinite thing and belongs only to the Law, the unchangeable Principle of Life; the Eternal Unit; the One. Man is many; he represents a million phases of the Law; but not the all of it. His happiness depends on his finite-hood; on the absolutely limitless capacity of his power to grow.
The basis of individual life is desire. Desire is the Law incarnate in the individual. It is the diseaseless and deathless principle. This fact shows that it is of the Law, and not of the intelligence, or the recognition of the Law. The desire exists whether it is recognized or not. Indeed, it is very seldom that the desire is recognized in a man in a way that will make it apparent in his consolidated intelligence, which is his body.
He desires and he recognizes that he does desire, but he does not recognize that his desire is a power to be relied upon. He desires, but he fears to trust his desire and trusts his fear instead; thus giving the superior recognition to his fear, and ignoring his desire. In ignoring his desire, he in a measure paralyzes its effectiveness; in recognizing his fear, he makes the fear paramount in his mind or his intelligence, and it is the fear that is recorded in his intelligence, and rot the perfect desire. And this is why these human intelligences—our bodies—are so weak and wretched and diseased, and why they die.
To fear is as much a function of the intellect as to hope. To fear is to believe something that you do not wish to believe. Every belief is a form of intelligence or ignorance; (the two words are off the same piece, being negative and positive poles of truth.) To believe what you fear is to make manifest a certain state of mind; it is a negative state of mind, but this does not prevent it from being a belief; and to believe anything whatever is to make it manifest or visible; whether it is a negative belief, by which I mean a belief that denies the absolute truth that all is life, or a positive belief that affirms the infallibility of the Life Principle.
If a man believes that which he fears, his belief is a traitor to his desire; it is not at one with his desire, and, therefore, it does not properly clothe his desire or make it manifest.
There is no belief entirely free from the recognition of the desire; there must be some recognition of desire in every belief, or else the body of man’s belief would scarcely cohere enough to give him a personal appearance at all. And men do trust their desires deep down in their intuitional natures much more than they are usually aware of; from this fact, they live longer than would appear possible when we consider how very much people seem to trust their fears. Desire is so positive a thing that it commands a certain amount of recognition, even though it is unconscious or intuitive recognition.
Life, freedom from disease and old age, depend entirely on the amount and kind of recognition a man gives to his desire. One man recognizes his desire as something dangerous to his own salvation and to society, and goes to work to crush it. This crushing process usually strengthens the desire and thereby the individual; but it is apt to render him an inharmonious element in society, not because his desire is evil, but because his mistaken intelligence imputes evil to it. With this imputed character, and with the recognition he has given his desire in trying to crush it, he has become a strong man in a mistaken direction.
For the desire is the Principle of Life in the man. It points forever in the direction of happiness; it is altogether good and diseaseless and deathless, without knowing this fact. It is a part of the altogether good and diseaseless and deathless Law, awaiting individual recognition in order to become manifest or visible on the external (the mental) plane, in an altogether good and diseaseless and deathless individual existence.
When a man—in order to attain some form of that happiness toward which his desire is always pointing—makes the mistake of injuring another, it is not his desire that has erred, but his intelligence. His desire never points toward the injury of another; it cannot possibly do so; it is a portion of the eternal unity, an intelligent recognition of which leads to a condition of unbroken harmony, undying brotherhood, and ever enlarging love.
The intelligence—which is the individualizing factor—does little else thus far in its growth than make mistakes, as it gropes blindly in the direction of the absolute truth that there is no death; that all is life.
The truth that all is life comes only with a recognition of the Law of Attraction. Ever since the first tiny creature, and before, the trend of ages has been towards the knowing of this truth. And now we know it.
To know it is to be conjoined to it in its diseaselessness and deathlessness. To know it is to be one with it. To know that it is diseaseless and deathless is to know that it is also sinless; it is to know that the so-called sins of the race have been like the so-called diseases, nothing more than the mistaken beliefs of a baby race, following the dim and murky lights its half-awakened intelligence yielded it, in the direction it thought would lead to happiness.
No man desires to be a criminal. All men desire happiness. It is the mistaken efforts to gratify a desire that can be nothing else but holy, that create the mistaken appearance of sin in the world, and fill it with poor, benighted blunderers whom we call sinners.
Until the growth of intelligence in the race shall demonstrate this to be true, society can do no better than protect itself from the consequences of these mistakes and their mistaken perpetrators, as it is now doing. But a time is coming when a true knowledge on this subject will convert our grate prisons into colleges, where the truth will be taught.
More and more the power we have ascribed to “God”—the Law—seems to be centering in the individual. It is evolving through the individual’s organization and is being expressed by him; and in proportion as it is so understood and expressed, man trusts his fears less and his desires more.
Man’s organism is the intellectual laboratory for the expression or the making visible and available the power of the Law of Attraction in our world of uses.
The power exists; the Law exists; but it might as well not exist as to find in external life no recognition of it. “Man is God’s necessity.” The law is simply the invisible framework upon which man strings the wonderful creations of his genius; it is the infinite breath of life that flows into his every thought, and makes his thoughts external, visible existences.
It is true that without the Law, man could not be; but it is also true that without man to interpret the Law, and so make it manifest externally, the Law might as well not be.
The belief that the invisible is more important than the visible is a mistake. The belief that individual life, as it refines and spiritualizes, becomes less allied to the visible plane and more allied to the invisible plane, is another mistake.
Individual life as it refines and spiritualizes will attain a stability and a fixedness, a power of cohesion and concentration on the visible plane, infinitely greater than it now possesses. It will be as much more solid than it is now, as steel is more solid than water; it will become as much more delicate and compact as alabaster is more delicate and compact than sand. The refining principle that comes through the growth of a superior intelligence will not disintegrate individuals, or cause them to disappear from the external world. Intellectual growth is the constant replacement of a low grade of thought by a higher grade of thought; it is the constant acquisition of new truth. New truth relegates to the past every particle of old truth, which in the light of the new truth, has become error, and, therefore, useless.
Every atom of this truth, new and old, is substance; the identical stuff our bodies and everything else we see are made of; and it changes constantly. If we keep on learning new truth; the substance of our bodies refines; grows stronger and more beautiful. If we cease to learn, this substance dries up and falls to the earth under obedience to the negative pole of the Law of Attraction, which says, “The dead to the dead.”
Jesus understood this and said, “Let the dead bury their dead.” The dead are burying their dead today all over the world. But the life of a nobler intelligence has appeared, and death itself is dying.
Man’s Power to Speak the Creative Word: Evolution of the Ideal
The visible universe is the universe of uses, and man’s theater of ever progressive action. To pull out of his own brain, as the spider pulls out of its body, an unending web of creations; creations that suggest other creations in a never ending procession of higher and still higher and more potent uses—this is man’s privilege and his destiny.
At a certain point in the acquisition of intelligence, a man arrives at a wonderful fact; he perceives that he is personally creative; sees that his spoken word has the power of life in it; that it heals the sick, banishes old age and drives death away.
He does this through the power of the Law made personal.
That man should be able to make the power of the Law personal in himself is so wonderful a truth that the world is not going to accept it until it sees it demonstrated. But ever, now the fact is being demonstrated in sufficient force to prove to the unprejudiced observer that the statement I have made is true.
The people, as a whole, are not looking for anything out of the common occurrences of life; their preachers and their teachers, their body tinkers and their soul tinkers, are on top of them, and are holding them down with a weight as of mountains. When one poor, struggling creature gets from under, and begins to breathe the pure air of higher intelligence, he distrusts it because of its very purity. He is afraid of it; its grandeur terrorizes him; he is tempted to crawl back to his old stifling position in order to obtain again that mental stupor he is fain to call “his peace of mind.”
The rapidly enlarging thoughts that spring from his liberated brain can find no soil for their germination; as far as his vision can reach, he sees but an arid desert waste, incapable of responding to his mental touch. He grows hopeless; the belief in himself and his own ideas, that would make them manifest in external form in spite of the most unfavorable conditions, is wanting; the disregardful world drifts over his genius and he is lost.
Belief is the clothing power of which desire is the spirit or soul.
Belief is the fruit of intelligence. A man believes what his intelligence shows him to be true. His belief is his fixed perception of certain facts. As his perception of facts changes, his belief changes.
No one doubts this; but when I say that his body is a faithful record of his beliefs, and shows forth every change of his perceptions, very few people will believe it; and yet it is true.
Beliefs with slight variations run in grooves that produce established types. Cattle represent a certain set of beliefs, and we have their type. Horses represent a set of beliefs, differing somewhat from those of cattle, and we have another type. Man represents another set of beliefs—a more intelligent set of beliefs—and they are faithfully registered in his higher organization.
There has been very little change in man’s beliefs for ages. In all important particulars, he believes substantially what he believed thousands of years ago. He represents the inherited beliefs of many generations. His beliefs have been somewhat changed in a few particulars, but the body of his beliefs is the same. He believes himself to be a limited creature; he believes that God made him in His own image and that God holds his destiny in His hand. He leans on God or on some other imaginary power; and it is his disbelief in himself as his own maker and the master of his own destiny, that keeps him from farther marked and substantial advancement in his beliefs.
His intellect is locked up within a limit of his own making, and though he is slowly widening this limit in spots, he is contracting it in other spots, and his average growth out of his fetters is very slow.
The belief lying at, the root of all his hampering beliefs is a belief in the deadness of the matter out of which he thinks his body is made. He carries the body of death with him from the cradle to the grave. In spite of his ever present intuition that death is not for him, he admits its existence in his external senses, and he takes the consequences of the admission, and dies.
The few years of his life are insufficient for anything more than the round of ideas pursued by his father; and so he dies without having found any new line of thought by which to change his fixed beliefs. And thus, with human belief in a state of stagnation, the race itself is stagnant. It cannot improve in any decidedly marked manner.
The idea that the race has reached its ultimate development is one of the most absurd of all its ideas. It may be that the human form has become a crude expression of the shape best adapted to the highest use; and, in that case, there will be no higher race of animal creatures than man. But if this is so, and I believe it is, then the improvement to be made in him by a constantly growing belief in his own unlimited power will show forth—not in any marked change in his bodily structure—but in an ever strengthening, refining and beautifying process of his present structure. A man can be just what he believes he can be, after he understands the Law. He can do just what he believes he can do, after he has come into the understanding of being.
Therefore, personal power is simply a matter of the understanding of truth; simply a course of mental training in the right direction; the direction towards freedom from every one of his old hampering beliefs in his own limitation, and a consequent emancipation from every description of fear.
All power is in the knowing. By the word power, I do not mean some abstract, far away force, but a present personal power; a power vested in the individual himself; the power to be precisely what he wants to be, and to do precisely what he wants to do. A man has no limitations but those imposed by his ignorance of his power.
This is because the external of man is belief. What he believes, even in his ignorance of the Law—he is. When he shall come into an understanding of the Law, and know that it does not circumscribe him in any direction whatever, he can then consult his desires as to what he desires to become, and, recognizing that the Law does not stand in the way of his becoming what he desires to be, he slowly begins to grow into it. He speaks the word of his own renewed creation. He begins slowly to grow into the new form of life projected by his ideal.
I say “slowly,” because at first this complete change of belief is very slow indeed. At every step of his progress in it, he is met by the solid wall of his previous beliefs, which have been compacted in him by a thousand generations of ancestors. He not only meets this solid wall in himself, but he can scarcely take a step outside of himself without meeting it in a still more unyielding form from those in whom it has never been shaken at all, and who turn upon him like enraged beasts when they begin to feel the change that is going on in him. Truly, he who would step up to a higher plane in life must be brave, as well as faithful to the best he knows.
And yet, to one who is thoroughly tired of the world as it is—tired of its mediocre attainments, tired of the entire range of its cheap and wretched thought—any change, however difficult, seems a relief. The energies are stimulated by it; and under the stimulus greater hopes are born and greater courage to insure their ripening.
Anything more dismal than the eternal round of small events that swarm our pathway from the cradle to the grave, to be repeated in each successive generation, I cannot imagine. No wonder if death should be welcomed by the weary pilgrim after his third or fourth journey over this arid and unchanging scene. If a continued existence has nothing better to hold out to us as an inducement to our prolonged lives here, I want nothing of it.
The same thing over and over and over for thousands of years—this has been the history of the race. A generation is horn; it drags through untold hardships, gives birth to another generation, and dies.
And, under the circumstances, it ought to be glad to die. It has no incentive to live. Moreover, there is no reason why it should live; its only use, so far as its growth has carried it, is to propagate its kind in order that the highest form of life on our globe shall not become extinct until the knowledge of self-salvation, through a continued growth, unbroken by death, should come to it.
The possibility of this unbroken line of growth in the individuals of the race has been the ever alluring, though never defined, hope by which it was possible for the generations to repeat themselves, until such time as human intelligence had come to that point of development where it could grasp the idea of perpetual and undying growth, and hold fast to it until it became fixed in these forms of personal beliefs, which we call our bodies.
Indeed, evolution, in its whole course, has flowed steadily up to this one hope; or rather, because self-perpetuation was an ultimate possibility, all life has ascended the scale in one unbroken stream of higher, and still higher forms towards its actualization.
To believe it possible to live forever in constant progression towards more refined and more powerful conditions, is the beginning of growth towards these conditions. This belief is the seed germ in the primordial life cell; it has developed in us on the unconscious plane; that is, without any help from our reasoning powers, until the present time.
The development of this seed germ can only go a certain distance on the unconscious plane, The time comes when unconscious growth—having ripened an intellect of sufficient power—demands the cooperation of that intellect; or at least, the recognition of its still latent possibilities by that intellect; or it develops no farther. This is the period when a transition from unconscious to conscious life begins; in other words, it is a transition from the plane wherein life lived us, to the higher plane where we begin to live ourselves, or to do our own living by our own knowledge of how to do it.
The unconscious plane of life is that plane in which we recognize the Law without knowing what it is, and without giving it any special thought. We simply recognize it as we make it manifest through use. We perform all the uses of life because life is in us; but our intelligences take no thought about it in any way that can lead to practical results. We know we live, and that is about all we do know.
When unconscious life, as expressed in uses, begins to become conscious life, it shows forth in a strange and heretofore unknown awakening of the intelligence; which, as it proceeds, lifts life from its unconscious plane, its plane of uses, to a plane of conscious power in its own ability to express itself in logical statements of itself, and free from compulsory expression in those uses, which, previously, had been its only mode of expression.
It is emancipated from the position of drudgery that was the natural result of its ignorance of its own ability and power, into a position of mastery, when its own logical statement of truth, as it has learned it by self-introspection, establishes its station in the world.
For instance, the man reasons this way: He says, “I have got an understanding of the power vested in the Law of Being; or at least an understanding of enough of that power to know that nothing can circumscribe it. This for the first part. For the second part, I perceive that desire is the individualized expression of the Law; and that desire is made manifest or visible in the external world by belief. I have believed in the power of the Law unconsciously, and that belief has manifested itself in all the organs of my body, and in the senses that relate me as an individual to the world of uses. Having realized its power even before I learned to observe it and reason on it intellectually, now, at this time, when I do observe it and reason upon it intellectually, I am beginning to be amazed at my own stupidity, and the stupidity of the race, that so little should be understood about it.
“For if an unconscious or dumb and blind belief should have brought me up to my present standpoint in creation, what will not a conscious or intelligent belief do for me; a belief, that, knowing something of the Law, can cooperate with the Law in its manifestation in my body?”
If the Law can manifest through blind belief, as it does do, how much more powerfully can it manifest through the intelligent belief that meets its every manifestation with a ready understanding of its meaning?
The action of the law is correlated to the action of the intelligence; the greater the activity of the intelligence, the greater the activity of the Law in manifesting. So long as the power of the law to manifest was confined to the dumb intelligence of the body, an intelligence that reciprocated only in added functions to the body, it continued to build the body until the body needed no more of those functions that expressed life only in uses. It had reached a shape of such proportions as, perhaps, best fitted it for its journey through eternity.
But suppose the Law could—at this stage of man’s development—simply hold the man in existence, without any farther attempt at the recognition of truth on his part, what object would be served in the economy of human development?
None at all.
We should have a race stagnant at the completion of its animal life; a race not able to go alone in its own growing strength, and not worth carrying because of its helplessness, its disease and deformity and brutality. Such a condition would furnish us with a spectacle of arrested growth on so huge a scale, as to be beyond comparison with anything of the kind ever witnessed in the universe.
But this is precisely the spectacle we have been looking upon for thousands of years here on this planet. What does it mean?
It means that the Law reciprocates our unconscious recognition up to a certain point only, and never goes beyond that point. It reaches that point with each generation. Each generation then falls away from this unconscious recognition; it dies, and another generation follows in its footsteps, to again cease its unconscious recognition of the Law, and die.
And what cares the Law? The Law is unheeding. The Law bends to no one’s cries or prayers. It is not generous; it has no moral quality; it is simply the Principle of Attraction; the attractive and cohesive power of the universe. It is unchanging; it simply is. “Men may come and men may go’ but it exists forever.
But in all these wretched rounds of the ripening generations, the upper brain has been building; the brain that begins to realize and trust and believe in the ideal. And what has the ideal promised? It has promised us happiness; and happiness means freedom in its best sense; freedom from the bonds that have been festering more and more in our worn senses as the ideal brain grew; freedom from all our past conditions. “Conditions” is a word that, being interpreted by the new meaning which the advancing truth has placed upon it, is synonymous with “beliefs.” For, if a man is all mind, as to his personality, then his conditions are his beliefs, and his beliefs are his conditions.
And so the ideal brain is promising this relief from the old beliefs, that have held us so long in the ruts of dead but unburied thought. It is not only furnishing us with new hopes, but it is showing us the feasibility of trusting these hopes to their utmost; and trusting them, they will lift us away from the broken generations that are the result of our unconscious recognition of the Law, into the one unbroken generation that will begin as soon as we yield to the leadings of the ideal, and place our trust upon the infinite possibilities latent in the Law; possibilities we have never yet prospected for.
It is the growing brain, the development of the ideal faculties, that gives us power at this time to perceive more of the power latent in the Law than we have ever before seen. And as it is a fact that—the body being all mind—the more we see of the power of the Law, the more that power becomes incarnate in us; it, therefore, follows that the race is going to accomplish the effort of centuries, and cross the line between its unconscious life of the past, and enter a condition of conscious life for the future.
The ideal faculty in its development makes our desires seem plausible and possible of realization. No inferior faculty of the brain has ever done this, or ever can do it. The ideal has not only opened the external world up before us, and given us new incentives to life and effort, but it has opened new departments in the body that correlate the external; that are adapted to the external, and that—under the Law of Attraction—will unite with the external in a new growth, and a nobler growth than the race has yet had.
There is no doubt at all that it has been exclusively by the race’s growing recognition of desire, that the ideal faculties have been built. The ideal brain is the new laboratory which desire has formed for the expression of its own peculiar characteristics. Desire has formed it in order to make itself visible and audible in the world of effects. Desire, as a latent and greatly ignored function, desired to be recognized by the individual in whose economy it played so important a part; and in order to do this, it had to build a laboratory in the human brain for the expression of itself. And so we have the faculty of ideality. And it is the growth of this faculty that is now pledged to lift us to a recognition of the vast importance of the Law of Attraction within us as expressed in desire.
It is teaching us even now, in spite of the contempt heaped on our desires by generations of theologians, to respect desire in ourselves and others. It is teaching a few of us to stand by our desires, and uphold them as we would stand by and uphold our own lives; for we know that desire is the Life Principle within us, and that it is death to ignore it.
In speaking of desire, the Life Principle in man, it seems unnecessary to guard it against the misapprehension that has always clouded it in public opinion. Public opinion is a very shallow stream; and no defense that I can make of a word which has lain so long under the drifts of theological rubbish will be understood. To the thinkers, I have only to repeat what I said once before in these pages; that desire is the implanted Life Principle, without which no plant or animal, no organic form, could ever move at all; indeed, there could be no organic form; for the principle of cohesion would not be expressed in individuals were it not for desire. Desire points always in one direction; the direction of happiness.
That the individual makes most grievous mistakes in seeking the happiness towards which desire always points, is because the individual in his external life is a mental creature, whose only chance to grow is by projecting experimental efforts here, there and everywhere; and by the results of these experiments he judges for himself whether he is right or wrong. In this way he has built himself from the smallest possible life, up to the most powerful life on our globe. And in the same way he will go on building himself until experience shall teach him that his highest happiness hangs on the great moral law laid down by Jesus: “Whatsoever ye would that others should do unto you, do ye also unto them.”
In believing in my desires, I believe in the Law of Attraction in my body. The Law of Attraction is the power that holds the atoms of my body in cohesion. In our unconscious life, the Law acts without our knowing it; it holds the atoms of our bodies compact until we reach the point of our highest development, or until we are grown. Then, if our conscious knowledge of its power could hitch on to our unconscious knowledge of it, the power would still operate to hold the atoms in such close relation to each other that we would not grow any older.
But when we fail to recognize the Law in our bodies as expressed in desire, then at the point when the unconscious life drops us, we begin to grow old. The growing old process is simply a process of disintegration or falling apart of the atoms, because we do not begin the process of conscious recognition, and the power vested in unconscious recognition begins to fail. We are then in a condition of negation, wherein the atoms or cells lose their magnetic relation to each other more and more. As this goes on, the different organs of the body become deadened to each other’s magnetisms, and become slack in their action, until the whole system gets to be like an old machine, whose wheels have worn smaller and smoother until the cogs do not act in a way to move all its parts harmoniously. This is the condition we call old age.
A similar condition may exist in youth. There may be a non-recognition of the Law of Attraction on the unconscious plane of a child; and the child may express the condition in many forms of error called disease. And every form of it is non-recognition, either consciously or unconsciously, of the Law of Attraction in the individual as expressed in desire.
A sick person may have a hundred desires, and the desire to live, more than all others; but even having the desire in its greatest development, he does not trust it; and it is powerless to save him.
He must not only be conscious of his desire, but he must know that desire is the saving power, and that to trust it fully, to believe in it as a saving power, is to be saved. This is what the Bible means when it speaks of the saving power of God, and of how God will save to the uttermost all who trust in Him. The old prophets and teachers of that long past age, when the Bible was written, had an inkling of the truth of this matter. For their God is the Law; it is expressed in man in desire; and when comprehended and trusted, the result is absolute and indestructible and ever refining and progressive life.
By the understanding of his own power as related to the Law of Being, a man’s spoken word will recreate him.
Health and Strength and Beauty And Opulence Are to Be Found in Greater Fullness in This New and Wonderful Thought Than In Anything Else In The Whole World
From the mental standpoint, disease is error; it cannot consistently be called anything else.
If all is life, as it surely is in absolute truth; and if man is an individualized understanding of the life, then he may be said to be a mental statement of the Law; and a statement which he himself has made. Not knowing the absolute truth that all is life; knowing, indeed, nothing of the Law; not being able to give anything like a reasonable account’ of himself; simply feeling that he lives—it cannot be otherwise than that his statement of being should be extremely weak, and full of errors.
Errors of intelligence are simply negations or denials of the Law, through ignorance of its existence. These negations or denials of absolute truth show forth in a hundred forms of weak and erroneous beliefs. The body being mind, fixed beliefs, no matter how erroneous, are recorded in it in the degree and character of its weakness.
Everybody was ignorant of the Law. No two persons were ignorant precisely in the same way and to the same extent. So these various shades and grades of ignorance were so many different erroneous statements. These beliefs were predicated upon a fixed conviction in the perishability of matter. Beliefs based upon the accepted .idea that matter is perishable could not do otherwise than result in death sooner or later.
The race takes the consequences of its beliefs; a thing it could not do but for the fact that it is all mind, and that even’ man’s body is a statement of his beliefs, either acquired by himself or inherited from his parents, or both; modified in nearly all instances by the beliefs of those about him.
For, until a man has learned to think himself out of the fixed beliefs of the race, by the recognition of his own freedom through a knowledge of the Law, he meets with constant environment from the opinions of others; and this environment does have its influence in shaping him.
No man has any mode of thought that is absolutely and unalterably fixed, until he comes into the knowledge of the Law. Then all his thoughts begin to adjust themselves to his knowledge of absolute truth, and gradually the entire bulk of his former fixed beliefs (his body) begins to change.
It does not change its type, but its type begins to relax, so as to admit of a series of all over improvements, corresponding with his revised beliefs in absolute truth; the truth that all is life; and, therefore, good and desirable.
When a man arrives at the knowledge of this one mighty and absolute truth, he has a firm foundation under him for the first time in the history of the race. He now has a logical basis of fact from which to make a new statement of himself. The statement of himself which he has inherited is not, and never has been, a statement for which he, as a reasoning creature, is responsible. It is a statement of the developing animalhood of all the past, which has culminated in him, and which he has accepted in unconsciousness of the fact that he could make a statement that would suit him better.
But he could make no better statement so long as he believed himself to be a creation of some force outside of himself. He could make no better statement so long as he did not know by what means his present statement had been achieved; he could not even make any special change in the statement of himself: he was helpless as a log in his ignorance of the Law, and of his own power under the Law. And so the same statement simply kept repeating itself over and over as the race proceeded, without any marked departure from the fixed type, until now.
But now the greatest truth that has ever dawned on the race is here; the absolute truth that all is life; that disease, death and old age are erroneous statements regarding life; and that this truth simply awaits universal recognition in order that its vitalizing influence shall be expressed in one unbroken current through all the members of the race.
I refer again to that wonderful book, the Bible. “Believe,” says the Bible, “and you shall be saved.” How can belief save a man unless he is all mind?
Believe in whom?
“Believe in God;” these are the words.
Believe in the power of the Law; these are equivalent words.
‘God and man are one; the Law and man are one. God, the Law, is subjective man. The race is God, the Law, made objective.
The Law being the unchangeable Life Principle, it cannot he diseased and it cannot die. Intelligence may weaken in its recognition of the Law on the unconscious plane, and this weakening may be called disease. Or it may cease to recognize it altogether on the unconscious plane, and this will be called death.
Is it really disease and death? Certainly not. It is simply the individual cessation of any farther power to recognize life; but it is not the death of life.
Non-recognition of life, life that is self-existent and eternal, is no more evidence that death exists than a blind man’s belief in darkness is evidence that there is no light.
Therefore, disease is error; it is a mental mistake, and it cannot rightfully be called anything else.
If you knew your neighbor was laboring under some mistaken opinion, would you prescribe a porous plaster and a dose of calomel in order to change it? Would you not, rather, expect that the best course would be to reason with him until you had convinced him that he was in an error?
Even if his condition of error had culminated in the almost total destruction of his mind, and his conduct endangered the lives of those about him, so that he had to be tied or put under the influence of a narcotic, until such time as the truth could be implanted in his intelligence so firmly as to convince him of his mistake, would not this course be more reasonable than the former one?
If I have made it clear that man, as to his external or visible side, is mind, and not matter, I know that every reader will answer, “Yes.”
Being actually startled with this idea when it was first presented to me, I kept experimenting with it, until I demonstrated that it would work perfectly in nine cases out of ten.
And perhaps the strangest part of it is, that in making the argument that convinced the patients of their error in believing in disease, I always did it silently. I seldom spoke aloud to any of them; and when they were cured they knew no more of my method than when they first came. Some of them said God worked through me to perform the cure. Others believed that I had an exceptionally strong “power in prayer,” and did not know that prayer and every other form of leaning and begging were as far as possible from my method. Some unusually ignorant people thought it a species of witchery, and held me in great awe. It came to be believed that I could raise the dead, and do many other things that I was not able to do. The report of my power over disease spread far and wide by word of mouth, and people came to me from across the continent, not only to be cured, but to know how it was done.
It was done by thought transference, but it was the transference of a very unusual character of thought.
In the early pages of this book I tried to establish the fact that thoughts are things. They are substantial, though, usually invisible entities; and it is in the power of the thinker to send them from him into the organisms of others, where they are not only the messengers, but the messages themselves, that are transferred from one brain to another. They leave the strong and positive brain of the person who is grounded in the belief that there is no disease and no death, and they take their abode in the brain of the one whose beliefs are so lacking in knowledge of the absolute truth, as to render him negative to higher thought forms than his own; and here they remain, carrying conviction to the patient, of his mistake, and thus healing him by changing his belief. In healing a patient, there are two points to be noticed in the silent argument applied.
The first is a consideration of the fact that disease of the body is of mental origin; it is the disease, lack of case, or mistaken conception of the Law showing forth in the body. It is the fruit of mistaken reasoning made apparent to the senses. This truth is universal. But in spite of the fact that it is universal, and, therefore, of the first importance, it goes for nothing unless individual application can be made of it.
The Law is one thing and the understanding of the Law is another thing. The Law—in its majesty—simply is. Man, who is the individualized interpreter of the’ Law, changes perpetually; changes in proportion as he knows more and more.
It seems easier to define the Law than to define the man. He is a bundle of desires. By these desires, he is related to everything that he desires. The existence of his desires proves conclusively that what he desires exists, and is for him. His desires—taken in the aggregate—are the sure prophecy of their own fulfillment. They point towards happiness, and thus include health, opulence and beauty.
Under no influence imaginable but that power vested in the Law of Attraction could the man be related to the object of his desires in a way to insure their fulfillment. He is, therefore, allied to the Law of Attraction and dependent upon it.
But he is not dependent upon it as a slave is dependent” on his master. He depends upon it as a freeman depends upon his own efforts. He knows that it will serve him in every effort he may make.
These efforts are all intellectual; they are all of them the strivings of an earnest soul in the pursuit of truth. Knowledge of truth is the only savior, and he knows it. Knowledge of truth means greater knowledge of the power of the Law.
This is what he desires; greater knowledge of the power of the Law. All of his desires, even unknown to himself, tend to this. Each acquisition of knowledge he may make helps to liberate him from the bonds of his past ignorance; from the wretched beliefs that made themselves manifest as disease, old age and death.
Knowledge is power, and power is freedom, and freedom is happiness. This is the happiness that includes all those minor details of health, opulence and beauty.
Therefore, as close a definition of man as we can come to is to call him an ever growing desire; approximating—in his growth—more and more closely to a comprehension of the power of the Law.
The more a man perceives of the power of the Law, the more of that power he incarnates in himself. He thus becomes, at every step of his advancement, to use an old phrase, “nearer to God;” a state of at-one-ment with the Law, that theologians would call making the atonement.
Perceiving, then, that man is a bundle of desires, all of which point to the attainment of truth, we recognize his desires as legitimate; and in our silent reasoning with him we strive to justify him in his own estimation by removing the prejudice he has always had against desire.
The masses of mankind are not only prejudiced against their own desires, but they are afraid of them. Their knowledge of desire is confined to the many mistakes heaped upon it by the experimenting ignorance that necessarily marks the growth of an infant race.
Therefore, to justify the patient, in the promptings of his own spirit, as expressed in desire, is one of the first efforts of the silent argument made to him. He is doubtful whether he has any true right to live at all. He sees himself a bundle of desires, all leading—as he believes—to narrow and selfish ends. He does not see the great object towards which the race is being drawn, and into which it will all be harmonized; his opinion of his own utility, as a member of society, is more than doubtful; and he says, “I would like to live and get well, if it is God’s will.”
His intelligence has yielded him no truth that will justify his desire to live and get well; and so he leaves it for someone else to decide. He is completely off his own base; and in endeavoring to rest upon another he has become as a plant whose roots are pulled up out of the ground, and can find no nourishment in that condition.
And so it becomes the effort of the silent argument addressed to him, to strengthen him in his belief of himself; to justify his desires to him, and to establish the ego firmly in his thought.
This gives him mental strength, and as his mental condition is his bodily condition it gives him bodily strength.
To recognize desire in the patient is to recognize what he fails to recognize in himself. This recognition on the part of another has the same effect in his body as if he recognized it intelligently and consciously himself. And so the patient may be healed without being aware of the character of the great truth that has been poured into his body.
His body, being to a degree a fixed thing, possesses less vitality than his active thought; and very much less than the thought of the person affecting the cure. The body of the patient, then, is decidedly negative, in comparison with the living truth being poured into it, and it gives an unconscious response to it; in the meantime, the patient’s own thought is comparatively untouched. At least, it has not been sufficiently influenced by the more positive thought of the healer to come to an understanding of the truth, by which the body is healed.
That the patient’s thought is more or less impressed by the healer’s more positive thought, is often proved by the questions he asks afterwards; but I have never known a ease where his thought—his active intelligence—received the whole truth, as communicated silently by the healer. The patient, in submitting himself to the healer, does practically submit to him his own beliefs, in order to have the healer change them. But he does this when he consults a physician; the physician then proceeds to change the patient’s belief by his own more positive belief in the power of medicine, and he very often succeeds in doing it.
Where a person rejects the new truth, the truth that there is no disease, and refuses to submit his beliefs to manipulation by the mental method, he creates a barrier that presents the natural tendency of higher thought to seek its level. But even in this case, the higher and more positive thought will eventually break down the barrier and enter.
Even now, in this silent way, there can be no high and positive thought generating anywhere that does not raise the average thought of the entire race a little higher.
The patient who believes in the power of another’s thought to cure him removes all barriers to the entrance of that thought, and soon feels the effect of it. It was on this plan that Jesus healed; and it was his knowledge of the matter that caused him to say, “According to thy faith, so be it unto thee.” He made no test cases of unbelievers; he knew he was hedged out of their minds. Nor did he heal all he attempted to heal. For, “when he went down into Capernaum, he did no mighty works there, because of their unbelief.”
Individuality is a very potent thing indeed. It stands above all things except the Law. It shall not be set aside and overcome even that the person be made healthy and opulent and beautiful. Clothed in the rags of error, and too wretched to make farther effort in its own behalf, it is still the seed germ of all future growth; its ego is obscured, but not destroyed; and no power can prevail against it until it resigns itself.
I cannot enter the realm of your ego without your consent. I may conquer you bodily and make a slave of you, only to groan in despair at the knowledge that the independent ego within your breast scorns me, and holds fast in its own right every thought that fortifies the citadel where it resides—unassailable, indestructible, haughty.
A realization of the majesty of the undying ego is a strong point in the argument addressed to the patient. The more it is dwelt upon, the more firm and invincible it seems, and the more irresistible its demands. Indeed, as its strength grows upon one’s thought, the desires that proceed from it seem commands that no power can disobey; it becomes a focus for the centralization of all things desirable; and to the opened spiritual sense all things appear to be drifting to it in helpless obedience to its calm mastery.
Thus is individuality more powerfully individualized in the patient, until a sense of strength comes to him that causes him to lose sight of the negative beliefs that formerly held a place in his mind; and he knows that he is well, though he knows not why.
And so the two points in removing his false beliefs have been freely used; sometimes one and sometimes the other, as each in its turn appeared the more impressive.
There are occasions when it is enough for him who is required to make this silent argument to merely bring himself into a clear perception of the fact that there is no disease and no death. This is rising into the realm of absolute truth, and seeing all things from that standpoint; but it is a universal and not an individual argument. The individual argument is that which perceives the ego, and makes every effort to strengthen it by justifying its desires to itself.
That thousands of cures are made by the mental method, which I have faintly described, no person who has taken the pains to investigate the matter can doubt. The sweeping charges brought against the method rest on no better foundation than ignorance and prejudice. Many people are willfully blind, believing it to their interest to learn no more than they now know. For my part, I let go all hold of the past years ago; resolved to remain no longer in the wornout fields of thought that I so heartily despised, no matter where a fresher and braver line of thought might land me. I was so tired of the dead past, that I knew I had nothing to lose in leaving it, and it was with a feeling akin to that of the most reckless voyager, that I plunged into The New.
And who can tell of the reward that has met me every day?
Each day the light shines a little brighter on this wonderful journey through the realm of The New. Old beliefs are fading fast. The vitalizing power of the new and positive truth is literally making me over. Each opening day is met by a brighter recognition of all the joy it holds for those who are looking for joy, and who are expecting the good, and not the evil; until little by little, and by slow degrees, all power to recognize the evil is fading from my intellect; and only the power to perceive the good is remaining.
Do you know what this means?
It means that heaven really exists; that it lies all about our daily pathway; and that—at last—through the unveiling of our mental perceptions; we are growing into a recognition of it. There is now a more subtle suggestion of beauty to me in the tiny seedpod then there was once in the splendid promise of a gorgeous dawn, clothed in its translucent garments of pink and amethyst and blue; all trimmed with golden-broidered fleece of downy white. And there is more happiness in the unexpected flower by the roadside than the richest pageant could once yield to me.
Heaven is here, but it only unfolds itself to those who unfold to meet it.
I laugh at the idea of going to a heaven more beautiful than this world, before we have learned to see the beauty that meets us here at every step.
What could we do with more beauty, when we are blind to that which we have?
Before closing this chapter I will answer an objection that is often brought against the mental method of healing. There is an idea quite prevalent that any mental application of power must be purely mesmeric or hypnotic.
Just what the relation of hypnotism to mental healing is, I do not know; but I know this: that while the operator in hypnotism gains control of his patient by the subjugation of the patient’s will to his own will, the mental healer does nothing of the kind.
Indeed, what the mental healer does is just the opposite.
He knows that the entire result of his efforts in healing depends on his power to strengthen his patient’s will.
The mental healer has learned the inestimable value of individual will, and has cultivated his own will by a calm and logical perception of its power and its value. He sees that it is the bulwark of his own character, without which he would take his position among the negative forces in life, whose only use is to be expended in the service of others.
He sees that his will is his only salvation in a world whose law of growth is the survival of the fittest, and it assumes such proportions in his estimation that he looks on it as the most important factor in his makeup. It has kept him in the ascendency on the brute plane, and it is pledged to hold him on a level with the most progressive on the intellectual plane.
Realizing, then, that the will is the man, he immediately perceives that the trouble with the patient is his failure to recognize his own will. Therefore, instead of trying to weaken still farther the patient’s will by subjugating it to his own will, he begins to strengthen the will of the patient by the mental argument he understands so well.
Surely there is a power heretofore unrecognized in the mind of man; a power that promises so much, that to neglect its investigation would be an infinitely greater piece of folly than to turn indifferently from a collection of treasures richer than anyone has ever heaped up before.
To investigate this mighty subject is all I ask of the reader.
Health and strength and beauty and opulence are in it in greater fullness than can be found in the whole world of thought outside of it.
This much I know.
[Note—There is a set of lessons most logically written that will open the student’s mind on every point treated in this book. These lessons are called The Wilmans Home Course in Mental Science. The International Scientific Association, Sea Breeze, Fla., Publishers.]
The Study of Man
A few men have cherished life-long visions of cheating death, though without that belief in their hopes that would prompt them to search for a continuance of life in a way likely to lead to the desired result. There have been many Ponce de Leons in the world. History is strewed thick with them. Writers have embodied their hopes, half disguised, in many writings. Bulwer-Lytton, Hawthorne and others I can recall. Elixirs have been concocted as life protractors, and have sold readily until found to be failures. There has been more than one Brown Sequard who deceived others by being honestly deceived himself.
But back of all these comparatively modern searchers for the fountain of perpetual youth, there existed in the long past many men, who believed with all their minds that the time would come when the race would conquer death. This thought was the goal to all their hopes. They did not seem to expect this conquest to happen in their time, but they believed that the race was gradually growing toward a period when it could be done.
Has the Bible student observed that the Old Testament does not treat of the soul of man? If it does, I have not found it out, either from my own reading or from my talk with other Bible students. From one end of it to the other it seems to consider man in the light of a bodily creature, as if his life were purely external, and related to the external world alone; in other words, as if man had no soul, but looked forward to the time when he would conquer death in the body. If this is true, it seems astonishing, in the light of present knowledge, that these prophets of the old time should have so correctly predicted the course that future events would take. But they were natural men; they were at one with the law of growth—the Principle of Attraction—as it manifested itself in them. They were simply a part of nature, like the trees and animals; and it was nature itself that shone through their sayings, and prophesied its own power when men should have ripened to an understanding of them. This is the true explanation concerning the power of those old seers to predict coming events. They were in the direct line of growth, and the growth principle made utterance through them.
They did not talk of their souls; at least, it is my belief that they did not. They seemed to be unconscious of their souls, even if they possessed them. They did not project their thoughts and hopes into another sphere beyond and outside of the present world; the full force of their entire being was centered in the world in which they lived; and what was the result?
Why this—they lived hundreds of years right here in strength and health.
I know how the claim to longevity as related of these men in the Old Testament is now scouted and rejected by persons who consider themselves thinkers; but if these thinkers would think farther on the subject, they would sec no folly in accepting the statement as recorded.
For my part, I perceive the probability that these accounts are true; and I perceive it—not because the Bible has recorded it, but because the study of evolution shows the possibility of it, and, indeed, confirms the fact that this strange phenomenon was one of the natural periods of growth through which the race would necessarily pass.
It begins to be seen that there are two distinctly marked periods in the history of man. One of these periods I call the period of his unconscious growth, and the other period that of his conscious growth.
Man has ascended from the forms of life that lie below him, and, though he stands at the head of them, he is nevertheless composed of the same material that they are, and partakes of their nature.
The animals and plants all belong to the unconscious plane of life; and man, so long as he remains in his condition of animalhood, belongs to this plane also. It is only recently that man is beginning to emerge from this plane, and step forth into the plane of conscious existence, where his deviation from his previous condition of animalhood is showing forth in an increased intelligence, so marked as to change the entire basis of his life from physical to mental.
The difference between conscious life, and life on the unconscious plane, is in the use of the reasoning powers. On the unconscious plane men do not reason to any great extent. It is this fact that gives me the right to call them unconscious; and the word “unconscious,” as I use it, only relates to their power, or lack of power, to examine the operation of their own minds as the law of growth operates in them.
In one sense all life is conscious; but in the sense I speak of there is a growth which proceeds without being observed by the person or persons in whom it is going on. This is what I call growth on the unconscious plane. A man grows; he lives his allotted number of years and dies; he may have been a thinker on many subjects, and may have brought forth great truths, but until he turns his attention to himself—to the study of man, to the law of growth as it proceeds in his own body, he will not have ascended to what I call the conscious plane of life. This conscious plane is that plane where the man no longer lives the vegetable life of his predecessors, but uses his reasoning powers to the extent of their development, and from the animal stage of life on to the thinking, reasoning stage; and this ascent may not only be called an ascent from unconscious to conscious life, but from a condition of ignorance to one of intelligence; from animal to human; from physical to mental.
Life on the unconscious plane, the plane where man is ignorant of himself and his powers, may fitly be called the vegetable plane. It is true that even on this plane a man has advanced a long way above the vegetable, but he is still under what he calls the law of heredity, which holds him in the path his fathers trod, and which he accepts as an inevitable necessity, just as the vegetable does. This feature of growth marks the unconscious plane—the unreasoning or ignorant plane; the plane where men accept things as they find them, without examining themselves to discover whether they have not the power within themselves to project entirely new conditions, which shall forever obliterate the old ones.
On the unconscious or comparatively unthinking plane, man is stationary and helpless as compared with man when he has ascended to the conscious or reasoning plane. On the former plane he accepts his condition as final, or nearly so. It is true that he sees some chance of improvement now and then, and tries to develop this chance. In this way there has been a slow but sure upward movement, from the unconscious .or ignorant plane to the conscious or intelligent plane; so that, as the ages have passed, the race has kept slowly becoming more intelligent, until there comes to be among its numbers a few who perceive that the source of all power lies embodied in man himself, and that the great study by which race advancement may be quickened a hundred-fold is the study of man.
The study of man has begun, and as it proceeds the change from unconscious to conscious life proceeds. The condition of the animal man is no longer such a compact and formidable state of ignorance as it once was; it is being broken into, by the new thought of the few independent thinkers, who are investigating themselves and their wonderful powers, and whose freshly acquired knowledge is filtering down among the masses, where it promises to make great changes in the thoughts and beliefs of the unconscious multitude.
The conscious life into which we are entering by the simple unfoldment of our reasoning faculties is called the mental life. And all nature, everything, is on its way upward from the unconscious or animal plane to the conscious or mental plane.
In strict truth, the animal or unconscious plane is mental also, the same as the conscious plane; but it is a more ignorant form of mentality than the high, reasoning, or conscious plane. The word “mental” is as applicable to one plane as the other. All the expressions of life from low to high are mental, as I have constantly endeavored to prove to the reader; and the difference I am attempting to explain exists only in the quality of the mentality, as manifested by different creatures on different planes of development.
The transposition from what is called the physical forms of life to the mental forms of life is in the different degrees of intelligence that the creatures on the different planes are capable of showing forth. It is on this account that Mental Science makes the statement that “all is mind;” mind in a state of unconsciousness with regard to itself, and mind with sufficient knowledge to be conscious of itself and the faculties it possesses. Therefore, the difference between conscious life and unconscious life is a difference in the degrees of intelligence manifested between different classes of beings.
Man in his early stages of growth makes a closer approach to the conscious state than the animals below him in development. Thus the human being, even in his most savage state, is more conscious of himself and his power than the monkeys or other animals.
All is mind, of which every creature and plant from the lowest form of life up to the most gifted human being is a mental expression, and the form that each creature or plant shows forth marks the degree of its mentality.
Each creature or plant, no matter how small and inferior, has aspirations or desires that reach higher than its present conditions. These aspirations or desires ascend higher than the environment of its life will permit it to realize in the undeveloped state of its intelligence; so the mere fact of the existence of these aspirations or desires calls for a higher grade of creatures in which to become embodied. They form a basis of life, as it were, or serve as a demand upon nature for the next higher type, which shall show forth more intelligence than the former one; and thus the chain of being is preserved, even though the forms of being are always changing. And so evolution proceeds.
I will repeat this idea, which I consider very important, as showing the march of mind as expressed in desire.
Every sane desire of every creature is finally attained. If this attainment fails to show forth in the creature itself, it goes on to development in some other ego. In the scale of evolution it is the ungratified desire of the lower creature that produces another grade of creature higher than itself—so mighty is desire, and so unerring is the fulfillment.
It is the desire for food in the first jelly-like forms of life: that prompts their development on a higher plane. These little forms of translucent jelly, having neither hands nor feet nor mouth nor eyes, are nevertheless attracted to som3 tiny bit of food floating in the water, about which they put forth parts of themselves until the object is enveloped within their bodies. After the nutriment in the food has been absorbed, the body unfolds and lets the residue pass out. Here is (he beginning of hands and feet and eyes and ears and a brain and a digestive system. This development was by desire; desire for food. The desire for food being gratified led to a thousand other desires; the number a7id greatness of desires kept increasing, and the higher grades of life increased in consequence until man came. The increase of desires in the creature added link after link to the chain of being from the atom to the man.
And what is man but a bundle of desires? His desires are much more numerous and far reaching than those of any of his predecessors. And as he is the culmination of all the desires of all his predecessors, not one single desire of which has failed to be gratified, he has a perfect right to believe that his own desires, great as they are getting to be, will be gratified also.
It is evident that desire is the mainspring of all growth. It is also evident that no desire can exist that cannot be met by the object desired; and thus a new marriage is formed; new desires are begotten, and growth proceeds.
The Body Built the Brain: But Now the Brain is Leaning How to Build the Body: The Action Between Brain and Body is Going to be One of Reciprocal Interchange
Desire is the infusing principle of individual growth. It is the factor by which our bodies have been built; first of all the lower or more inferior parts of our bodies have attained form and power, and finally other and higher parts; and last the brain, which is the machine that investigates the desires and generates the thought that assists in executing them.
The importance of desire can never be overestimated. As the brain strengthens we get a better idea of desire, and our respect, yes, our veneration for it increases constantly. It is the propelling power within the man, and the brain is its interpreter; and thought is its means of communication with the external world.
Man is the culmination of all the lives that existed before him: he is the sum total of all the previous growth on the planet, whether expressed in mineral, vegetable or animal forms of life. He is the complete compendium of all the lives that ever existed; and he has reached his high position through the medium of that impelling impulse which underlies every manifestation of life; that impulse we think of so seldom, analyze so little, look at so critically when we attempt to give it a partial analysis, and in many instances condemn as unnecessary and even unholy.
“Crush out your desires,” says the voice of ignorance that runs through every class of society; not knowing that to crush out desire is to crush out life.
But desire has never been crushed out. It has advanced steadily toward its own fulfillment, in spite of the misguided intelligence that could not comprehend its mission. Desire instead of being crushed by the half-formed intelligence of past times, has gone on in its efforts and developed the intellect until the time has arrived when the intellect perceives the mighty mission of desire and begins to attach the valuation to it that it deserves.
This investigation of desire is the beginning of man’s conscious or reasoning life. It marks his ascension from the animal or physical to the mental plane; the plane where we shall soon perceive that ail things are mental, and from which we shall speak a new tongue never spoken before in all the world; a language from which all helplessness and all disposition to lean has disappeared; a language so full of strength that its every word is creative; a language that endows desire with the power that belongs to it; and which proclaims this power abroad, until the entire race feels that it is no longer weak and helpless, but that the force within itself as expressed in desire is a sufficient guarantee, that what it wants to be it will be, and that what it wants to do it will do.
Desire gratified has all along built the brain, and the brain has built the body; so that at this time the body is the brain’s tool; its medium of communication with that which is Outside of itself; it is the one necessity without which neither desire nor thought has any need of existence.
The body is one; it comprises the desire, and the intelligence that recognizes the desire. It is complete in its oneness. It is not only the home of the “I,” but it is the “I” itself.
Once it was believed that the soul or spirit was some intangible thing that permeated the body, but could do even better without the body than with it. Mental Science proclaims a different thing from this. It teaches that man on his present plane has no use for any kind of power but that which the body generates, and which is first expressed in thought, mid afterward in action. It does not deny the existence of a spirit that lives after the visible body dies; it has a theory of its own concerning this matter that I will explain later. But while not denying the existence of soul or spirit, it does deny the use of yielding up the body, ignoring “our present lives, for the sake of magnifying the spirit. Mental Science, which is another name for common sense, centers its hope on the body because the body is ours now, .and its uses are manifested to us every hour of the present time.
In the face of the whole world’s belief to the contrary, I am going to state as the most potent fact of the age that the body is all there is of man. If he has a spirit that lives after him, it is a part of his body here on earth, and the seeming two are really one; they are both body. All there is of a man is body. If there is a spirit—which I believe, though I cannot prove—then it has been created by the body and is detached from the body at death, because it is a substance so fine and volatile that it cannot help but ascend; the grave cannot hold it, for it is thought. It is the complete thought-life of the man; the record of all the thought his brain ever created.
The reason I attach so much importance to the body, and so comparatively little importance to the soul or spirit, is because I know if there is a soul or spirit that survives the body, that we shall find it all right when we come to the need of an acquaintance with it. In the meantime it is proving a ruinous thing to the body to attempt to live in the spirit until we can no longer live in the body.
We must get better acquainted with our bodies; greater knowledge of them and their wonderful, though undeveloped, powers is all we need in order to come into the thought that will conquer disease, old age and death. We have been traveling deathward because we imagined that we had to.
We thought the body, was a weak, destructible thing, that could not aid us in our effort to attain everlasting life; but, on the contrary, that it retarded us, and that our only hope lay in the power of our soul or spirit to escape from it.
It is this undervaluation of the body that has destroyed it; it is the postponement of the life force—desire; the putting it off to some future time, ahead of our present lives, that has impoverished these present lives and that is responsible for all the weakness they exhibit. Man has attempted to live two lives at once, and has thereby virtually lost both. I am quite sure that the heaven of the future he has built for himself in his imagination has done his soul or spirit no good, while it has done his body great harm. It surely seems to be the proper thing for a man to live one life at a time; and it also seems a sensible thing that the life he ought to lead is his present life. To one acquainted with the mighty power of concentration there can be no doubt about this, and I state boldly that the effort made for the salvation of the soul is ruinous to the welfare of the body.
Again, I say that so far as we are concerned while in this world, the body is of infinitely greater importance than the soul. There is nothing of which we can form an idea that will compare with its value. Its uses are legion, and its power to work out happiness for us is far beyond our present ability to conceive of.
And the world knows this, in a way, at this time, though it does not know that it knows it. “The body is of little worth,” it says, and then it goes ahead and builds magnificent palaces for it to live in, while thousands of workshops are devoted to the manufacture of clothing and adornments for it. Here is nature speaking above the world’s accepted beliefs, and making itself heard through the din of ignorance, as it howls out its reproaches and threats. The world’s uneducated beliefs keep crying out, “Soul!” “Soul!” but the world itself holds fast to the body, and ‘cares not one fig for the soul. The body carries the stamp of the world’s wisdom; the world in which the principle of desire has manifested itself the whole length of its chain of growth, from the atom to man.
This idea of the soul and a future life may be called a recent invention of man’s brain. So far as I can ascertain the history of the very early men shows nothing of it. They did not talk of their souls. All their consideration was of their bodies, and all their hopes and desires pointed to bodily salvation. It was only as the ages passed away, and bodily salvation was not achieved, that men began to talk of the body being dual, and making an unseen part to it that survived the death of the body, and passed on to a new condition, where it was claimed that immortal life was a fixed fact.
The race came to this conclusion in the natural process of its growth. The animal man was verging into the reasoning man; the man was becoming more brain and less body; his body was weakening as his brain strengthened, and life began to grow shorter with him. This seems strange, but it is easily accounted for. The body builds the brain; the time is coming when the brain will be intelligent enough to reciprocate by building a better body; but in the earlier part of this transaction, the brain, while it absorbed the forces heretofore given to the body, required ages of growth before it became intelligent enough to understand the situation. It was growing and increasing in power, unconsciously to itself and unconsciously to the body. All that was known about it was that life grew shorter and weaker as the brain grew stronger and more forceful; diseases multiplied, and the surrounding conditions of man became more distasteful. Instead of becoming happier and healthier, he became more unhappy and discontented.
From the foregoing a glimpse of nature’s way of doing things may be observed. The man was nearly all animal at first. He became less animal as his brain developed, and his brain kept developing more and more in proportion as he thought more. He grew to be less animal and more mental, and his body registered the fact. This change has been constantly going on, and is still going on. The brain is being built at the expense of the body. But this need not continue any longer, and why?
Because the brain is now sufficiently intelligent to know that, no matter how much of the bodily forces it may consume, it can generate a power that will return to the body all the force it draws from it, and more. And this power it gives back to the body in the form of intelligent thought. And right here is the origin of Mental Science—the science of mind unfoldment.
All things come in the line of growth. Man’s brain was being built without his knowing what was going on within him; the coming era will be marked chiefly by the fact that man will have achieved this knowledge concerning the relation of his brain to his body, or his thought to his body; for it is thought generated by the brain that will eventually make the explanation that will unite the two—brain and body—in an endless circuit, from which the life forces will cease to trail off and be lost, as they now trail off and are lost; and when this condition comes, disease, old age and death will cease upon our planet.
I have said that the idea of a soul and an existence after this life is over seems to have been of somewhat recent date. We find no reference to it in the Old Testament. We have accounts in the Old Testament of men who lived for hundreds of years, and who evidently looked forward to the time when death should be conquered in this world. They did not die, because their lives were not broken by the mental division of themselves that separated them into body and soul. And yet they would not have conquered death upon the earth, even if they had never made this separation. Something more was needed to achieve the conquest of death than the continuance of the animal lives which they represented.
Man is One and Indivisible: He is in the Likeness of the Universe: It is Impossible to Divide Him Into Two Parts, and the Attempt is Death
The men of the old time to whom the hope of eternal life in the flesh was a constant source of vitality, even though they placed the fruition of this hope ahead of their own generation, owed their longevity to the fact that they did not cut mail in two and make body and soul of him, but thought of him as a unit, who would either die all over or live all over.
It is not astonishing that men of all ages have tried to save their bodies even after death; the pyramids are standing today because the Egyptians believed in the body and expected it to be resurrected some time. The desire for an extension of life in the body is worldwide, and efforts have been made in a hundred different ways to accomplish this result. Strange stories of persons who have conquered death have lived in the imagination of the people until they seem like fixed facts in history. The Wandering Jew had such fascination that it is a popular book even yet. The stories that reach) us from the far East of people who are hundreds of years old linger in our thoughts, and seem true in the face of all our experience to the contrary. “The masters” who are supposed by many to be living somewhere in secluded places in Tibet have their existence vouched for by thousands of people, some of whom claim to have seen and conversed with them. “The secret brotherhood” has existed hundreds of years, and it is affirmed that there are still living members who were initial members at its far away beginning.
I am not pretending to vouch for the truth of these reports. I am only trying to establish the fact that the idea of conquering death is as old as time; that it has been, a race desire from the first.
In a former chapter I wrote a sentence that may seem strange; an explanation of which will go a long way toward showing the amount of intellectual growth that had to take place in, the race before the conquest of death became possible. The desire was implanted and the men of that time believed it, but they did not believe it possible of achievement to them. They believed it sufficiently for it to show its effect in their living to a great age. They had no idea of a soul, and they attributed great importance to the body; much more than their followers did, who afterward invented the idea of the soul, and began to think that the body was of little worth; and who began to die much earlier than their fathers on account of this belief.
“As a man believes, so is he.”
This sentence contains a volume of wisdom; for below its surface meaning lies the implied fact that a man is a mental creature; that he is all mind; and it is because he is all mind that he has the power to save himself from death. Evolution has proved that not only is man all mind in every atom of his body, but that all things in the universe are mind; that the universe itself is but a mental statement.
The reason for the assertion that all things are mental is apparent, since it is now known that there is no such thing as dead matter; that what was once called dead matter is only a low form of mental substance, on its way upward from still lower conditions by virtue of the innate power of growth which is latent in all things. And how are all things coming upward in the scale of being? I answer, by the power of thought. It is a demonstrated fact that everything thinks; or, at least, that it possesses in latency the power to think, and in the natural process from low to high will in time begin to think. It is because this is true that we say, “All is mind.”
This fact, for it is an undeniable fact, confirmed by the highest authority in the world, and published in the works of such scientists as all students look up to, establishes a most remarkable truth, namely, that every atom or molecule, no matter how far back we trace it, nor how apparently dead it seems, is really a seed germ of immortal unfoldment. And, what is more, its unfoldment depends upon the principle of desire within it. And to desire is to think, even though the thought is of too low a grade for us to understand.
To desire is to think; and to think proves that the creature, rock, tree or man, that does the thinking, is a mental creature; therefore, we say there is no dead matter, but that all is mind ranging the whole universe of intelligence from abject ignorance up to the wisdom of the gods.
Emerson says that there is but one God, and that we are all different expressions of it.
The Mental Science student means the same thing when he says there is but one life, of which we are individual manifestations. If there is but one life, then life is omnipresent. It fills all space. There is nothing outside of it. There is no outside.
There is but one life. This life is the universal Law of Attraction which permeates all things, and which is the basis of being; the power that men call God.
This Law of Attraction holds the visible universe in place; adjusts the atoms to each other by a method that cannot err; arranges and holds the planets in their relation to other planets by the same law. It is a self-existent principle. Perhaps it would be more nearly correct if I should call it the Principle of Attraction, since the word law suggests formulation into established rule, and this will not convey the meaning I wish to give.
All races of men have felt the presence and the power of this Principle of Attraction (whose ultimate expression is love or life) in a myriad of different forms. Feeling it and not comprehending it, being governed by their own narrow and childish ideas, they conceived a personality for it, and said it was “somebody who made all things”—and they called it God.
“God,” they say, “created.” He first made the world out of nothing, after which he had material to make other things, and so He made man and the animals out of the dust of the earth.
This idea belongs to the early intellectual awakening of a baby race. The race had grown to a place mentally where it began to ask questions of itself, and its answers were suited to its infantile development.
But to retain these answers now, at a time when the great body of the thinking world has outgrown them, and to bolster them up by every system of popular education in vogue, is a fearful thing and must be ended, so that Truth shall have her say and be glorified, even as error has been glorified in the past.
But the Principle of Attraction exists; the undeviating principle of life exists. It has never been violated and never will be. And this is our hope. It is unchanging, diseaseless, deathless; and it is a complete understanding of this fact that conforms us to it in a way that renders us diseaseless and deathless.
The Principle of Attraction does permeate all visible forms. It is one with all substance; and no doubt an expanded and spiritual interpretation of the word “God” has been the foundation for the expression that “God and man are one.”
For in spite of the personal and, therefore, limited interpretation of the word “God,” there have been in all ages a few thinkers who were not confined to its narrow meaning, but were able to see it in an enlarged sense; in a sense that represented it as the moving impulse of all visible life. And these men have said, “God and man are one.”
A more scientific statement of the same truth would have been “the Principle of Attraction and man (or all nature, for that matter) are one.”
This last sentence is the very quintessence of the reasoning whereby I have based my belief in man’s power to save himself from death. If man is all mind, if he is infused by the Principle of Attraction, and thereby one with this principle, and if the principle is indestructible, then man is indestructible also, provided he understands the truth of the matter. The truth that man is one with the Principle of Attraction—the life principle—exists beyond the power of the universe to disprove; but even though it does exist, and is the truth of all truths, it is also true that man must recognize it before, as an individual, he becomes consciously joined with the principle; before he becomes “one with the Father.” It is the consciousness of the truth that makes man one with the life principle.
Man is the Principle of Attraction as expressed in use. He is this principle its very self in objectivity, while the principle is the man in subjectivity, and the two are one. The man is the self-conscious side of the principle, and unless his self-consciousness leads him into a knowledge of his relation to the Life Principle he will die. It is only his knowledge of his relation to the Life Principle that can save him; but when he comes into this knowledge he is one with the Life Principle, and as indestructible as it is.
When he comes to this tremendous place in his knowing he begins to see his unlimited possibilities as an individual resident upon the earth, working on the external or earth plane; and he is no longer willing to surrender his chances of carrying out these possibilities by yielding up his body. He wants his body, because it is his body, not his soul that is the expression of the Life Principle. His soul is but a “makeshift” invented to tide him over from one life to another when he should lose his body—a loss which he supposed to be inevitable.
Man is a consciousness of the Life Principle; he is a recognizer of it, and he shows forth as much of its power and possibilities as he recognizes.
This sentence explains the whole philosophy of existence. It is the key that unlocks the entire mystery of the universe. Here is a condensed statement of it:
The Life Principle exists.
The Life Principle draws; it has but one function; that is to draw or attract. This attracting power is the seed germ of every manner of growth, and exists in the atom as well as in the planet; it holds the atoms together and it holds the planets together also.
Each creature or thing is made visible, or manifests its objective existence, by its recognition of the Principle of Attraction within its own body. The tree recognizes a certain amount of the Principle of Attraction, and this amount shows forth in the form and character of the tree. An animal recognizes more of the power embodied in the Principle of Attraction and is possessed of more intelligence, which shows forth in superior powers; as, for instance, the power to roam about.
We are in the realm of mind; there is no dead matter; the world is all mind; its mountains and seas and rocks are all mind. But they are mind of a very low grade of intelligence. The smallest blade of grass that grows has more intelligence than the earth, and proves it by its power to ascend above the earth. So long as the blade of grass can recognize a higher good than the soil beneath it, it can, by virtue of this recognition, overcome the earth’s attraction. It feels the superior attraction of the sun.
In the universe of mind it is intelligence, and not bulk, or what we call dead weight, that makes the strength of a magnet.
Every creature that obeys the Principle of Attraction, and simply lives and grows, without a knowledge of how it is done, is on the plane of unconscious growth; and not until men acquire a consciousness of what growth is, and by what means it proceeds, will they conquer death. They are only partial developments of the one great truth that allies them to the Life Principle, and they must become whole in this particular or they will surely die.
The Life Principle (which is the Principle of Attraction, these two expressions meaning the same thing) must have intelligent recognition; a recognition so full and complete as to render the creature a constantly growing exponent of its own possibilities and power. This involves the constant acquisition of knowledge; the constantly widening recognition of the Life Principle. The Life Principle then being individualized in the man, becomes the overflowing fountain of perpetual being within him. This was the fountain that Ponce de Leon was seeking; but he made the mistake of seeking it outside of himself, when it was within him. If he had sought aright he would have found it, for it surely does exist, and its deathless waters are for us, who, by searching within ourselves, can find them.
The procession of ever enlarging growths on the animal plane, all leading up to man, are more or less unconscious of the power they represent. Their recognition of the Life Principle is expressed in what they are and what they do. Their brains have not ripened to that point where they can say, from the basis of reason, “There is a supreme power within me, which I recognize as being able to overcome all obstacles to never ending growth, and to liberate me entirely from the world’s ignorant beliefs, into which I was born and which I still represent.”
This thought movement, which begins to be universal, and which points in the direction of the conquest of death, is the most important step in advance that has ever been taken. It is nothing less than the passage of the whole people from the stage of blind, unconscious growth to that of conscious growth.
Blind, unconscious growth, be it remembered well, is growing as the trees and animals grow—without a knowledge of how or why we grow. All growths that do not expand to an understanding of the Principle of Attraction within them, and thereby learn to do their own growing, must, necessarily, die after a time; they are abortions of truth, whose mission was unfulfilled by reason of their ignorance.
Every ascending step in the procession of creatures, from the beginning, has been marked by a fresh accession of vitality in the new species, or race. Vitality is the result of intelligence. In a universe that is all mind there is but one way to develop vitality; it is by the constant recognition of more and greater truths. Man has completed his animal or unconscious growth, which has developed him into a working organism, or laboratory for the manifestation of conscious intelligence. He stands at this point now—the point where there is no further progression for him under the law of unconscious growth, or the method of growth expressed blindly in uses.
He stands at the point of the new and great departure; that departure to which all nature has been silently approaching. So important is his position and responsibility that one backward step now would plunge the world into another dark age, from which it would take centuries to recover; from which it might never recover, for worlds die in the bud, before their possibilities are unfolded, the same as plants do.
So important is the present situation that the failure to use it judiciously would, to millions of us, render the world a nonentity, and make life as if it had never been.
The Life Principle Yields Its Power to Man in Proportion as Man Comes Into an Intellectual Understanding of it: There is No Limit to the Supply: There Need Be No Limit to the Demand
Desire, just as we all recognize it in ourselves and others a hundred times a day, is the Principle of Attraction in its external expression through all things—plants, animals and man.
Desires increase with increasing intelligence; hence, man has more and more varied desires than any life below him; and his desires will constantly increase in numbers and daring as he goes on gaining ideas and working out the possibilities contained in the Principle of Attraction.
As these possibilities are unlimited, man’s power gets to be unlimited also, in proportion as he becomes consciously, or intelligently, one with the Life Principle, which he does by learning his relation to it.
The race, as it stands today, has almost no recognition of the truths I am trying to make apparent to the reader. It has made for itself a personal God, on whom it has bestowed such powers as its limited intelligence has been able to suggest. But even from this God it has divorced itself in belief, and has devised various ways of becoming one with Him.
It is a little singular how close an approach this comes to the true saving thought. Theology believes the race to be separated from God, and that it must make the atonement (atonement) with Him before it can be saved; before it can become whole or “holy.”
Its mistake is in supposing that God is a person; what theologians call God is really the Principle of Attraction, which runs through all things and is impersonal, and truly omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, which it is beyond the power of a personal being to be, no matter how great a God He is.
Theology declares that man has to make a conjunction with its God, by prayers, in order to be saved. Science says that a man must make a conjunction with the Principle of Attraction, through an understanding of it and of his relation to it, in order to be saved. Theology goes no further in the matter than the prospective saving of the soul. Science declares that, through an intelligent recognition of the truth, the body can be saved.
There is a close resemblance in these two plans; no doubt the first is a foreshadowing of the second.
But I must speak further of the God of theology. If anyone doubts that He was the creation of an infant race, he has but to examine His character in order to believe it. In what I am saying I wish to appeal to the reason of the reader; and I ask him to put aside his inherited prejudices and think for himself. He will probably consider me irreverent in much that I say, simply because he will not reason, but prefers to cling to the foolish beliefs of a dead past, and die with these beliefs, rather than to think for himself upon lines of truth that are new to him.
With regard to a personal God, what but a baby race could imagine that a great being would be pleased with an unfailing stream of obsequious praise, poured constantly into His listening ears? What but a baby race could suppose that this unbroken deluge of flattery was a necessity to the happiness of a great being, or that it would turn the tide of His wrath away from the unfortunate wretches he had made, apparently on purpose to curse, if they failed to render Him the proper amount of praise?
That this personal God was the creation of the half-civilized chieftains of a semi-barbarous race is to be seen by its resemblance to its creators. The chieftains loved power and praise and spoils, and were unmerciful to those who refused to yield to their demands. The God they invented was no larger than themselves. No men can create a God larger than themselves. Having made a God in their own likeness and of their own size, they supplemented His deficiency by giving Him some supernatural power, either to destroy or bless. And this, with some improvements due to the growth of the race, is the God of theology at this time. Is it any wonder that theology is alarmed at the falling away from the creeds? It surely has a right to be.
It is because the word “God” does really mean, in the eyes of the public, just what I have described that I cannot use it to express my meaning. If the word was universally accepted as meaning the Principle of Attraction that runs through, and infuses with life, every atom in the universe, I would use it. But there are only a few who give it this meaning.
To be divorced from this personal God, if such a being could exist, would be no great disaster. Indeed, the race would be better off without Him than with Him.
But to be divorced from the universal spirit of life—the Principle of Attraction—would be instant annihilation. On the other hand, to know more of the Principle of Attraction than we know now would be to have more life, more health, more strength, more intelligence, more beauty, more opulence. Or rather, it would be to be these things, instead of having them. To mental creatures, such as we become by our conjunction with the Life Principle through our ability to recognize it, knowing more is being more.
The crying want of the race is a remedy for present conditions of sickness, poverty, the feebleness of old age, and death. The whole strength of my effort in writing is to furnish a clue to this remedy. Now is the time to be saved. Tomorrow will not only bring its own needs, but its own remedies.
The great and comprehensive statement of Mental Science is this: Man is conjoined to the eternal Life Principle. He is that principle its very self in objectivity; and in proportion as he becomes intellectually conscious of this, the greatest of all truths, he finds an unfailing supply to all his needs, and grows constantly more and more into a knowledge of his own mastery.
We are manifestations of the unchanging Life Principle; of the Universal Spirit of Being: the inextinguishable “I AM.” This hidden fund of vital power is the internal man. Man is the external of it. And the seeming two are one. Whoever sees this truth and believes it perfectly has made the atonement—the at-one-ment—and he can proceed in the read of eternal knowing until he has conquered every disability in life—disease, weakness, old age, poverty and death.
When the race understands the truth I have just made plain, it will appreciate its own dignity and worth and power; and then there will be no more trouble, no more shedding of tears, no more poverty or sorrow, no more anxiety or fear. We shall know that we are one with the deathless, diseaseless, opulent Life Principle, and that our progression through the realms of the universe will be by constantly knowing more and more of the power of the principle which is the vital spark within us.
A condensed expression of the ideas I have been writing out would read as follows: There is but one substance; this substance is both seen and unseen. On the unseen side it is the Universal Principle of Attraction; on the seen side it is intelligence, or mind, falsely called dead matter.
All nature is but the comprehension or the understanding of the Principle of Attraction. All nature is intelligence in a myriad varying shades of recognition of the power of the Life Principle. Intelligence is cot to be confounded with the words soul or spirit, for intelligence is substance; the substance that is mistakenly called dead matter. It is a thing to be seen and handled and smelled and tasted. All of the so-called matter in the universe is intelligence or mind; it is not dead; it thinks. It is the recognition of the Law of Attraction inherent in all things. That which recognizes is intelligence; it may be called brain; it is a particled substance, and all the visible things are made of it; and it is not dead.
The Life Principle yields its power to man in proportion as man comes into an intellectual understanding of it. There is no limit as to the supply one may receive. There need be no limit to anyone’s demand.
All growth is by desire. In the animal desire seems not to soar away from the body, but to be expressed in it and through it. Thus, the little amoeba, which is but a tiny drop of protoplasm, becomes hungry. It floats in the water, and, in coming in contact with some other form of life which will serve it as food, it folds its body about it, holding it enclosed as one might hold an acorn in his hand. When it has absorbed the nutriment it unfolds its body, and allows the residue to fall out, as one would open his hand to let the acorn fall.
The amoeba has neither mouth, hands, feet, eyes, ears, nor anything resembling a digestive system; but it has a desire for food. In a higher organization, to which it would seem that the desire of this little creature had ascended, the demand increases, and the result of this increased demand is a compulsion upon nature to furnish it with a better digestive system. So it, or the desire within it, evolves to higher and still higher forms of life, growing stronger in its demands with each upward step—calling louder, and yet louder, upon nature for better means of supplying its desires, until it comes to possess not only a digestive system, but eyes to see its prey, olfactory nerves to smell it, ears to hear it, feet to run after it, and claws to capture it.
All this is the development of use, through blind and unconscious desire. It is by this kind of development that the body of the man has been built, and his brain ripened to his present plane of intelligence.
But he may stand at this point till the crack of doom, and be nothing more than the animal man, unless he begins to make his brain serve him in his farther development. It was at this point that the characters of the Old Testament stopped. They were a splendid type of men on the unconscious, plane of growth, but they had not advanced to the conscious plane; that plane where men can shape their lives as they please through their reasoning power. And no man can conquer disease and death until he arrives at this point in development.
The moment man’s brain begins to serve him in a reasoning capacity he is passing out of the domain of unconscious, unreasoning or blind growth into the realm of conscious or reasoning growth.
There was never a time during the period of man’s unconscious growth when he could have escaped the penalty of unconscious life, which is death.
Desire is the infusing principle of man, and of all things below him. Desire is the Principle of Attraction drawn to organization through recognition.
All desire points to the attainment of more light, more life, more intelligence, whether the creature that projects the desire is conscious of it or not. A man may think he desires nothing but wealth; but it is not so; his desire is surely pointing beyond wealth to the high knowledge that will redeem him from all his disabilities.
The upward struggle of the immortal mind is always from darkness to light; from ignorance to intelligence; from death to life. The animals have desired this light and intelligence and life unconsciously, and their desire has met with ready response; their aspirations have been answered; gradually the principle of desire, as expressed individually in the lower order of creatures, has lifted all expressions of life from low to higher until man is here as the highest of all.
How does it happen that man is so in the dark concerning himself?
To answer this question will be to go over a good deal that has already been said. But this matter is so new in public thought, and so difficult to understand, that I must repeat many things again and again, even though I violate all literary precedent. I am not trying to do brilliant writing; I am trying to make the greatest idea that ever came into the world so plain that everyone who reads may understand. I know that this idea is true, and that it embraces the salvation of the race here, in the world where we live; and how can I attach importance to the manner in which I communicate it? I have tried to systematize the subject so as to avoid repetition, but it is too big; I can only handle it in detached masses. The reader will have to connect the parts as the entire argument becomes familiar to him.
My question, “How does it happen that man is so in the dark concerning himself?” will at least take the subject from a different standpoint and help to make it clearer.
It is because man was not created a perfect creature; it is because his individual existence is of a comparatively short duration; it is because he is a growth that is still growing, and has not yet attained the full stature of the truly wise man.
Man has created himself little by little all through the ages. Always latent in the Principle of Attraction as a possibility, yet there was a time when two or three atoms—tiny points of recognition impelled by desire—came together and formed the beginning of his personality. These points of intelligence being fused into one, became a magnet of greater potency than the single magnets or atoms around them, and as a center of attraction had more power to draw others to themselves; and individual growth commenced.
The tiny creature thus begun kept on growing all the time, both internally and externally, as its desires increased. The more it recognized as needful to its use the more effort it put forth. Its trust in the principle of attraction was not clouded by doubt as man’s is. Doubt is one of the first fruits of reason, and reason had not yet arrived. Doubt came later and did all it could to kill desire and to destroy the individual life; but the refining intellect of the constantly developing creature reached the stage of clearer perception, and grew out of the doubt that kills into the faith that cures.
The basis of all growth is desire. Desire is the unacknowledged factor in the evolution of man. It is the “corner stone” which the builders have rejected.
The Life Principle in man has only one mode of expression, only one voice; it is the voice of desire. It is the feeling of some want. It is, as it were, the projection of a little voice that cries, “More,” “more!”
The mighty power of this tiny voice—not loud, hut never relaxing its insistence—has proved more magical than the enchanted wand, even in its first faint, almost inaudible cry. A mere speck, invisible through the most powerful microscope; an almost infinitesimal drop of protoplasm, perhaps, yet £0 much incarnate desire, and crying for food; crying for a more enlarged life; a wider comprehension of truth—the little voice reaching upward and expanding outward, and the very universe stooping to fill the baby mouth, as it always stoops in beneficent motherhood to the demand of desire.
The first life that sent out its cry for “more,” “more,” became a standing demand upon the infinite life, and the supply was equal to the demand; is always equal to all demand, when the demand is accompanied by faith.
All through the period of unconscious growth the little beginners of life never lost faith in the mother. Such intelligence as they possessed never once suggested the idea of curtailing their demands or of crucifying their desires. To crush their desires was to crush their lives.
Desire is the Law of Attraction individualized in the creature. In other words, the Principle of Attraction expresses itself individually in desire. The Principle of Attraction becomes clothed upon by the recognition of the creature, and individuality is the result.
So the desire in a man is the deathless principle in him; it is the Principle of Attraction drawn to cohesion by his recognition or understanding.
A belief in our desires is necessary to insure their manifestation on the external plane.
All through the period of our unconscious or unreasoning growth we did not question our desires; we obeyed them; we yielded them a blind obedience, and what was the result? Why this, that desire was drawn forth to organization until the tiny drop of protoplasm had created itself a digestive system, and a most complex and beautiful form, adapted to every possible emergency. Speaking from a mechanical standpoint, desire, which we will say corresponds to steam, had built itself a splendid engine, and even an engineer (the brain) that was to direct the engine. But the engineer at first did not know his duty, and for thousands of years he has been trying to learn it. It has taken him all this time to get acquainted with his engine and the power that propels it.
As it is man’s highest privilege to make mistakes, since it is the only way he has of learning how not to make them, his first mistake was to imagine that his propelling power—the steam in his boiler, his desire—was a dangerous foe, and to endeavor to repress it.
“I must crucify my desire,” was the first exclamation he made upon becoming conscious of its presence. “Desire is the devil,” shouted the voice of the clergy for two thousand years; and numberless monasteries were built in whose seclusion it was easy to crucify desire; easy to dam up the Principle of Attraction in the man and prevent it from flowing forth.
It is a matter of history how even kings and princes voluntarily submitted to whipping on the bare back as a penalty for having entertained desire. Desire was the inveterate foe of the race. Desire was the serpent in Eden that tempted Eve. Put it this way, and let us see how that fable stands.
Let us say that the Garden of Eden was man’s condition of unconscious or unreasoning growth; it was that early condition in which he conformed to the demands of his animal being unquestioningly. There was never a conscientious scruple to trouble him in the gratification of his wants; his life, though on the animal or unreasoning plane, was whole in itself; no side feeling ever pulled him from the path of his leading inclination; he devoured other animals without compunction; he regretted nothing; consequently he was in a condition of ease, or repose.
This was the animal Eden; it was man’s condition before his reasoning faculties were awakened to vex him with questions he could not answer, and to arouse his doubts concerning many things. In this Eden he did not work for a living; he lived off of what came to his hand. But Eve, the intuitional part of man, whose desires reached upward into aspiration, partook of the tree of knowledge in the midst of the garden, and her eyes were opened so that she knew good from evil.
Here came to the race the first faint intimation of the existence of a principle of justice, and this feeling kept growing until it gradually brought some illumination to the dull intellect, and pushed conditions to a higher level. Thus as the animalized life broken into. Life and its relations assumed a moral aspect, and the first Eden, the Eden of unthinking animal ease, had disappeared. Men began to labor for their bread; their growing brains projected new questions for solution, and these questions were answered by the faint light of such intelligence as they had; and false beliefs—beliefs in their own weakness and helplessness—were the result. They were intellectually weak and their opinions were weak also.
In the old Eden only the brute instinct was recognized; this instinct was devoid of conscience. But the mother love for the child, and, farther on, the mother sympathy for other mothers, interposed a check. Eve has always molded Adam. Her tenderer nature has constantly stood at the portals of his more robust intelligence, and when he saw her as she really was he saw that she had the apple in her hand. She had eaten first of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and she begged him to eat. He did so, and the primitive Eden of animal content was closed to the race forever.
They went forth (if I may pursue the fable) to learn the lesson of how to attain another Eden—that Eden in which they shall have conquered all the “curses” they were doomed to pass through, and become masters over them.
These curses were only curses in name; they were blessings in disguise, because they were experiences that strengthened the intellect of man, and made him a more powerful creature. He began to conquer the earth, and his conquests demonstrated his own power of mastery to himself. He began to get an idea of his own strength and ability; he began to trust himself more, and to lean less on the imaginary God that he had previously been leaning on; the God upon whom he had leaned for thousands of years before finding out that there was no help to be obtained from Him; that the only help a man could have had to be evolved out of his own creativeness.
This is the great lesson he has been so many centuries in extracting from his experiences. These experiences have seemed very hard to him; the more so because he did not know what they were for. Hundreds of generations he waded through them, finding life to be little more than the Slough of Despond, and never learning any better during the term of his earthly existence.
The race was gradually improving, but it almost seemed as if it was at the expense of the individual, whose sufferings were building a foundation of hope for it in the future.
And all of this gradual growth was by the increasing desire or aspirations of the people for something better than they had known.
Desire is the unacknowledged factor in personal growth.
But is not desire a selfish thing?
It certainly appears to be a selfish thing, but self is the basis of individual existence, and selfishness must continue in the individual until an understanding of high truth comes to him. Then, by degrees, from selfishness is evolved selfhood, and, with this more intelligent form of selfishness there proceeds a gradually growing sense of justice that modifies the injurious effects of primordial selfishness.
As the intelligence grows, the selfish principle, without ever ceasing to be the principle of self, ceases to manifest its power on the animal plane. Growth in knowledge eventually makes all things right.
Selfishness is the basis of individualism. Perhaps I had better say “self,” instead of “selfishness,” for in the long run this word self is the proper one. But let it go; let the word selfishness remain, and let it stand in its blackest colors until the explanation comes that will convert it into an angel of light.
Self or selfishness is the basis of individualism; and individualism is the one potent fact that stands head and shoulders above every other fact, except that great and inclusive truth, that the Law of Attraction exists and fills all space, being absolutely omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, and that mind, or intelligence is the visible expression of it.
Individualism, then, is the interpreter of the Law of Attraction; and the Law might as well not exist as not to have the interpreter, who has the wisdom to render its power apparent on the external side of life.
Individualism is, therefore, the necessity of the Law; and, while it begins in a grade of intelligence so low as to be rightly called ignorance, instead of intelligence, yet, like everything else, it grows out of its narrow bounds until it sees in its neighbor another self, and one similar to the self it finds in its own body; and its brain goes to work to bring forth an adjustment that culminates, first, in a sense of justice, and later still, in the lovingness that is to become the breath of the new life in the whole race. This change from what appears to be the very fiend of individuality to the God-man, with supernal powers, both to do and to love, is a mere matter of growth through the acquisition of knowledge.
Every living creature, no matter how selfish or ignoble it may appear to be, is an interpreter of the Law of Attraction; it is the spoken word of the Life Principle. Wherever the Life Principle speaks, it utters but one word, and that word is the indivisible “I.”
And so man’s selfishness, or what appears to be selfishness, is based upon the fact that he is the spoken word of that universal spirit of life which is the Grand Unit or Universe, and which cannot speak a word that would invalidate its wholeness; a word that is less than “I.”
And thus it is that every man, and everything on its way up toward man, is a unit and only knows one word; only knows and recognizes the “I.” This is imputed to him as selfishness, and is selfishness, until knowledge comes to correct his mistakes and to justify him in his self love.
So it is now seen how man is the representative of all. “Man is a microcosm,” said one who was beginning to see the light. “Man is a macrocosm,” said another, who saw far and away over the head of the other.
Man is a macrocosm because he is nothing less than a universe. This is the fact he must learn; it is in learning this fact that he will know that he is no longer under the dominion of disease and death.
I have written much of the Principle of Attraction, and how it is expressed in the individual as desire; often as desire of an intensely selfish character; but I have now justified it by showing its origin. As life proceeds, a better word may be substituted for desire—a word that will seem to draw atoms into closer relationship with each other: that word is Love. With every step in evolution from lower to higher, our desires become not only more numerous, more complex and varied, but they also become stronger end warmer. They are felt to be the moving spirit of every action, as, indeed, they ought to be, for they are nothing less than the voice of the one eternal Life Principle, that for all these years men have supposed to be a personal God.
From This Chapter man may See How it is That His Destiny is Always in His Own Hands: And He May See Why it is That He Can Shape His Future as He Pleases
There is only one attracting power; it is the Life Principle. It is the same in essence in the horseshoe magnet and in the mother’s yearning for her child. It is this same thing that brings lovers together in marriage, and partners in business. It is a hidden motor to every movement that ever was made, unintelligent movements no less than intelligent ones. It is this that draws the moisture out of the earth on which the tree feeds, and the substance out of the sun’s rays with which it colors itself in beauty. The Principle of Attraction accounts for all things and is responsible for all things. Being perfect, it is, therefore, unchangeable. It is the spirit of vitality in man, and in the flowers and beasts, and it has but one voice—the voice of desire, and the voice speaks for just one thing; it speaks for happiness. The methods by which man pursues happiness may be just or unjust. The desire which is the Principle of Attraction has nothing to do with his methods. The desire exists, and this is all. The desire is the vitalizing spirit in the man ; it is his true, pure, unsinning self. The methods by which he attempts to actualize his desires have, in the main, proven to be mistakes; and these mistakes, forming his personality, are expressed not only in his individual character, but in his body. The greatest mistake man has ever made is to attribute his mistakes to the Divine Spirit of desire within him, when nothing was wrong but his limited intelligence. It is because he has made this vital mistake that he has spent ages in crucifying his desires, instead of cultivating his intelligence concerning their gratification. “What he now needs to do is to learn the immense importance of his desires, and to seek just and humane methods of gratifying them.
In proportion as he sees the strength and importance of his own desires, he will see the strength and importance of his neighbor’s desires; and as desire is pure love drawn from the infinite Principle of Attraction, he will hold his neighbor’s desires as sacredly as he holds his own; and so justice will be enthroned among men. Justice, that factor which harmonizes all influences and in the end produces heaven on earth, can never be born of anything but man’s recognition of the noble character of desire; for when man recognizes desire he recognizes love, and love is the Principle of Attraction in individual manifestation. So when man recognizes desire within himself and understands its origin and meaning, he will have found his own moving spirit, and he will see its relation to the infinite Life Principle. He will also see that every step of his growth, from his first inception, has been by the greater and still greater recognition of this living spirit of vitality within him; and that his farther growth, all through eternity, will depend upon the still increasing power of his intelligence to recognize more, and yet more, of the vital Love Principle within him as expressed by desire.
If this and similar statements have made their proper impression upon the reader, he will perceive how it is that man, as to his personality, is simply intelligence or mind; and how the whole visible universe is mind in different degrees of unfoldment; and he will also see from this fact how it is that his destiny is entirely in his own hands, and always has been, though he did not know it. He may see, too, how from this point he may begin to do his own growing.
Since man as to his personality, and this is the visible part of himself, is altogether intelligence or mind, it therefore, follows that the more truth he possesses the more he shows forth; the truth being that the Principle of Attraction is the one diseaseless and deathless thing, and that this Principle of Attraction is the true self within him—his untrue or false self being the mistaken estimate he has placed upon his true self.
As man’s intelligence is expressed in thought, which shapes itself into beliefs, his body or his personality is made up of his beliefs. A man shows forth his beliefs in his person. Knowing this to be so, Jesus spoke that wonderfully condensed sentence, the most comprehensive sentence ever yet spoken, “As a man believes, so is he.” When he believes error he shows forth error, or incarnates error in his personality (his body). As error cannot endure, it, therefore, follows that unless the man corrects his erroneous beliefs his personality (body) will fall away from him. All sickness and weakness and deformity are the effects resultant from our beliefs, and end in the complete dissolution of the body, unless saving knowledge comes in time to arrest them.
It is an undeniable fact that, in spite of the improved condition of the world, its better sanitary influence and better food, its fewer hours of labor and its greater spread of books, diseases are multiplying all the time, and that lives seem to perish more easily and with less apparent cause than ever before. This is because the new light is dawning more and more clearly, and the old consolidated beliefs of a hundred ages are losing their hold upon the people, before the new knowledge has come in such power as will save them.
Because of this fact the most intelligent of the world’s physicians have lost faith in medicine and stand aghast at their own helplessness. Many of them have retired from practice from motives of pure conscientiousness.
To repeat my ideas of desire—for I can never make this point too strong—the basis of all growth is desire. Indeed, the Principle of Attraction itself, that one and only principle on which every external manifestation of life depends, is desire” and desire is love in expression or externalization; love seeking and attracting that which is related to it.
All growth of the individual, therefore, is effected through desire, and desire is the motor power of every effort; and external life means effort, and has no other object but effort exerted in the direction of happiness. The secret of the steel magnet is desire, and, no doubt, the entire universal system of planets is regulated and sustained in equipoise through this great factor alone.
The words desire and love are almost synonymous. Both are love; but, while love seems to be quiescent, desire appears to be the reaching forth or the yearning of love, or love in motion, reaching out after an object.
Man, in his growth, has nothing to do with the Life Principle, or the one vitality. That is to say, no effort of his can add to it or take from it. It exists independent of him. It simply IS. His prerogative is confined exclusively to the recognition of it; to the getting of a large enough perception of its greatness, or a big enough estimate of it, and of his connection with it. It is so mighty a power that human intelligence has but the faintest fraction of an idea concerning it, and yet this majestic power is within the individual in indescribable greatness. It is the force within a man that actuates every movement he makes. To connect the belief of sin, disease and death with this ever flowing, eternal potency is an absurdity, and yet our minds, in ignorance of this mighty truth, have done this thing, and in this way have given to the external world our weak, wretched personalities, that are standing libels on our real selves, the great and undying possibilities within us.
This Principle of Attraction and love which manifests itself in numberless desires in the man is the real man. It is the universal spirit of life focused to expression; an upspringing jet from that one unquenchable force which men have called God. The infusing Life Principle within a man is a power all his own, which has been drawn to coherence or personal comprehension out from the same source that sends the world spinning through space in obedience to its unerring law, and it is as great, as unconquerable, as its source.
This mighty creature, then, is the real man; is the true individual; he is the Principle of Attraction individualized. Jesus saw this whole truth, and when they asked him, “Art them God?” hoping he would condemn himself by his answer, he could not deny it, even though he knew they were ignorant of his meaning, and would probably murder him for the truth he spoke. For my part, I think I can say, without boasting, that I am rapidly growing to the point in intelligence where I can understand such a man, for instance, as Mohammed, a man who lived comparatively alone with himself, and who studied himself until he gained a perception of his own greatness; gained a constantly growing perception of the power within him, until, looking at it in some supreme moment, he could not restrain his convictions of truth, but cried in exaltation, “Surely I am God.” There are days when it is as easy for me to believe this of myself, and of every living soul, as it is to believe ourselves men and women. Mohammed’s mistake was in believing the stupendous fact of himself only, whereas he should have seen that all arc gods in the same sense that he was.
The difference of seeing for ourselves alone, and of seeing for ourselves and all others equally, is the difference between injustice and justice, or between hell and heaven. To see within others the same sinless spirit of life that we see within ourselves is to abrogate those lines of inequality we have considered as race fixtures, and liberate every living soul to the freedom of the infinite possibility of growth. This wipes out hell in every one of its varied forms, and establishes the harmony of an acknowledged and deeply understood fraternal equality. Your desire for happiness is as sacred as my desire, and my desire is as sacred as yours. When we shall learn the binding claim of desire through knowing that it is the voice of infinite wisdom within us, it will become the most loving pleasure of our lives to help each other actualize it.
I have made much of the word “recognition,” and no wonder; for the word means nothing less than the Principle of Attraction in external expression. It means vitality as showing forth in nature. Recognition and all of its kindred words, such as intelligence, mind, thought, are synonymous, and the mental word which harmonizes with them is light. Intelligence, mind, recognition—this is all there is of nature. It is all there is of man so far as his visible life is concerned, and his visible life is the only matter of vital importance to him, because it is that side of him from which the activities he delights in are projected; the side from which all his holiness comes; the side that makes room for his effort.
What does it matter that the Life Principle exists, unless there are creatures to recognize and make use of it? Recognition of the Life Principle is as important as the Life Principle itself. Man is God’s necessity quite as much as God is man’s necessity; which is to say, that without expression of itself the Life Principle cannot exist. Let us, then, stop belittling ourselves, since in doing this we belittle the eternal Principle of Life.
It has often been said that a man’s estimate of God was a measure of his own size, and this is true. It explains many things in the popular theologies that are, otherwise, inexplicable; for instance, the little, revengeful and jealous character so many men attach to their personal God, making Him not much larger than the heathen idol whose worship they condemn so loudly.
“God and man are one,” which means that man is one with the Principle of Attraction that animates all nature, all things. On the invisible side of life that one is the Principle of Attraction; on the visible side it is nature, with man as its head; and visible man is the great fact that concerns us now. The Principle of Attraction forever is. We can do nothing for it; but we, on the visible side, are growing creatures, and we grow by a recognition of the infallible character of the Principle of Attraction. There is no more limit to growing than there is a limit to the omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence of the Life Principle itself. Therefore, it is man we have to deal with in this external life, which will always be external to us, and which is of infinite importance. Let us not, therefore, belittle it, or belittle him and his desires connected with it.
Each individual “I” is forever the center of the universe to himself. All things exist for the “I,” even the Life Principle. Without the “I” the Life Principle would exist in vain. Man and the Life Principle are forever reciprocal in interchange. Life exists, the one unquenchable fire of divine passion. Man recognizes this passion, and by reason of recognition becomes its unquenchable expression, forever growing in brightness, in illuminating power, as he recognizes it more and more. Man in his weakness has all of these ages been looking for a God upon whom to lean; but man himself is the only god there is. Upon this point my whole theory hangs; and this book is the cudgel taken up in defense of the long abused race. It is the race’s champion against its own accusations.
I know what I am saying; the truths I am now writing with so much ease I have wrenched from death in a hand-to-hand struggle. For years and years I fought the charges hurled against poor, deluded humanity from pulpit and press, until by slow degrees I crawled from under the old beliefs that had made this world so potent a hell to me, and stood in a fair open space, where, even though my conquests were unacknowledged by a single soul, I yet knew myself a conqueror. For my fealty to humanity I was called a traitor to .God, and I even believed that this was so, but now comes my day of justification in the knowledge that God and man are one.
A knowledge of one’s own self existence—this is strength. Strength is the first and most desirable attribute of man, because every noble quality is strength’s overplus. No man can be wise who is not first strong. Wisdom expresses itself in strength. No man can be generous who is not strong. No man can live nobly and worthily until he has acquired that measure of intellectual strength, where he can stand alone in his individuality and give freely without asking anything in return. All giving that is not from an overplus of strength is selfish giving; it is giving for a motive. The motives that prompt this kind of giving are various. One person gives for a greater return; it is a business investment. Another gives for the love of approbation; another to satisfy the claims of his conscience. All give with an ignoble motive except he whose giving is the overplus of strength. The giver may not realize this, but the very nature of the case makes it true. Weakness leans and begs perpetually; its every act holds self in reserve—but strength flows outward; it overflows—and it can only overflow in love; pure, unadulterated love. Being full, it asks nothing in return for what it gives. It simply seeks to make others as strong and loving as it is. This is the point toward which humanity is now tending by a better recognition of its individuality: for there is nothing in the world that gives a man strength but the knowledge of his own power.
There is brute strength which dies with the brute; there is intellectual strength, which is the vitalizing spirit of the man; the real true man—and this is the strength that cannot die. This is the strength I am now writing of, whose overplus is love.
In order to be in much greater health and strength and beauty than we have ever realized, nothing is necessary but a better knowledge of ourselves. The reader will have learned from the foregoing pages that man is not simply a physical creature, subject to what is called the “laws of causation,” but that he is purely a mental statement, or a mental estimate, of a certain amount of power which he has imbibed from the Principle of Attraction through his intellectual faculties. Moreover, man has himself made this statement or estimate of himself, and has the power to correct the errors he has made as rapidly as he discovers them. The errors in his statement show forth in weaknesses, diseases, poverty, old age and death.
Since I have explained man’s relation to the Principle of Attraction; since I have shown that he is one with that unalterable and undying power; that he himself is all mind and records in his body as much as he can understand of the Principle of Attraction—it must be seen that he makes a great mistake in calling himself a weak and feeble creature, “a worm of the dust,” and other expressions like this. I have shown that man is purely a mental creature, and since he is so, a belief in weakness will make him weak, because his beliefs are his external conditions. Therefore, let every student of these truths begin to reason on the foolish old charges against himself, which he has all his life been taught to believe would be pleasing to God; let him discard all feeling of humility, that attribute so lauded by the creeds, and learn to believe that the universe needs men, and not things.
Humility is the most accursed of all the so-called virtues. It is usually born of sycophancy, and it blights every man who assumes its hypocritical garb. Sycophancy is the child of fear, and until men are fearless they will never attain that freedom which means perfect health and strength. Humility has nothing to do with aspiration. Aspiration is the man’s true means of growth, and aspiration is bold. It claims its own and gets it, while humility, like some slimy moisture, clings to the man and poisons his very nature. Humility, if men were conscious of its character, would be an insult to the Life Principle.
In a book like this repetitions are essential; so I say again the reason that each individual “I” seems to himself to be the center of all thing?’ because of the omnipresence of the Life Principle. There being no circumference, each “I” is the spoken word of the infinite and omnipotent, and its own recognition of itself renders it the center from its own point of view. This thought will bear immense elaboration; but much must be left to the developing thought of the reader.
The spiritual interpretation of each individual “I” is eternal life; therefore, the man that understandingly proclaims the “I”‘ proclaims the universal life also, and announces the fact that he is one with it. The person who denies the “I” denies the Life Principle. Let the reader discard at once and forever the soul-crushing humility he has been taught to cultivate as a priceless virtue, and begin to extol himself. Let him not extol himself in the spirit of vanity, based on the groundless and ignorant assumption of his own superiority over other people, but let him, after perceiving the great truth of his being, and realizing his oneness with the Principle of Attraction within him, begin at once to declare his own strength and worth. Let him not hesitate to declare his own Godhood, not in the spirit of boasting, but in the understanding of truth. In this declaration, if made understandingly, a grand sense of justice takes possession of the man; he perceives that what he declares for himself he cannot help declaring for his neighbors, and even for his worst enemy. This declaration of the man’s individual Godhood is the one unerring peacemaker. It is the beginning of the harmony that means heaven on earth. It is the only way to realize the all-important and all-inclusive commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Every good thing in the Bible is condensed in these few words, and the whole of it is made attainable through the knowledge that the Life Principle is in us and is we, and that we are in it and are it. “Ye are the temple of the living God”—the Life Principle made manifest, made visible and audible—the spoken word. Is not the word one with the speaker? Then put away all foolish humility and stand forth in the self-confessed dignity of Godhood.
From Selfishness to Selfhood
In proportion as we become self-centered by a recognition of the great importance of the “I,” we come under the principle of attraction where our own comes to us. What is our own? Everything that we desire or aspire to in the process of true advancement. We often think we desire things that we do not really desire. What we do truly desire is happiness. Happiness is the ultimate of our every aspiration; it is the constant craving of the spirit of growth within us; it is the reaching out of the spirit of growth for a better recognition of its own power.
Suppose we desire that someone may die, who stands between us and an inheritance. This intermediate desire has nothing to do with the spirit of life within us; this spirit simply points to happiness; it does not suggest methods for attaining it; this suggestion comes from the intelligence of the person, and is liable to make mistakes—does often make mistakes—and has no other way of learning how to conform itself to the Principle of Attraction that holds the universe together than by making mistakes.
The true desire, that is always pushing its way into the observation of the individual, is really the very essence of love, always seeking greater expression and always aggregating to itself greater power.
Understanding at last that desire is the infusing spirit in man, it is plain to see that it is of greater importance than we ever before imagined, and that, instead of attempting to crush it out of our organizations, where it is really the breath of our lives, we must learn to direct it properly.
I wish to emphasize this point of holding for self. I wish to do so because the race has been filled full of false ideas regarding the virtue of self-abnegation.
Self-abnegation, or self-denial, is the most deadly and paralyzing mistake ever made. It is the letting go of one’s hold on the Life Principle, abandoning all one has gained in his previous growth through the ages, and drifting backward, as nearly as one can do so, into nothingness; and every bit of undue or unconsidered concession to the opinions of others partakes of the nature of self-abnegation, and should be promptly stopped. A man should ask himself if he has not as much right to his selfhood as another, and when he answers this question affirmatively, as he cannot help doing, then he should stand for himself boldly and manfully.
It may at first thought seem that men do, even now, hold for themselves with great firmness, but this is not so. The very opposite is so marked among the people that Emerson speaks of society as “a mush of concession.” There is so little of true self-holding in the world that, where one meets a really individualized man or woman, it is an event never to be forgotten.
The opinion of the world is worthless. The majority of the people have no opinions of their own, but have simply accepted those that have been thrust upon them. In this way we are saddled with the beliefs of men ages dead, whose opportunity of knowing truth was a thousand times inferior to our own. Is it any wonder that such utterly negative creatures die? They ought to die. Life and its tremendous mission, involving such thought and such effort as they have never imagined, are not for them. The grappling hook of divine purpose passes through them as if they were made of jelly. They afford not the slightest obstruction to it. It is all self-abnegations with them, though partly of an unconscious character.
Unconscious self-abnegation, or the lack of intelligent self-assertion, is the bane of humanity at this time.
The belief in self-abnegation comes from the awakening intelligence that, in looking back, sees only the horrors of animal selfishness, and does not look forward to where this same selfishness is modified by justice, and through this modification can become the very essence of true manhood and womanhood.
The child is not polite. It grabs its toys and holds them firmly away from the little friend who has come to visit it. Later on it will value the happiness of its little friend more than it values the toys, and then it will give them up gladly. Nor will this giving be in the spirit of self-abnegation. It will be because the giving yields more happiness to self than the withholding. Self is forever at the bottom of all things, as it should be, for self is the individual center and the change from selfishness to selfhood, which is selfishness lifted to a higher plane, will come through a growing infusion of the love principle in the race—an infusion that makes the happiness of others our dearest happiness.
All of this comes under the head of evolution, and there is no logical interpretation of humanity except by the evolutionary theory; but even the most timid sticklers for Biblical authority need not be afraid of it. Darwin never taught the evolutionary theory half as strongly as the Bible teaches it.
I have now shown the selfishness of the animal as changed to selfhood in the man, by man’s constantly increasing recognition of the Principle of Attraction within him. It must be remembered that this Principle of Attraction, in its true essence, is pure love. As he recognizes more of the Principle of Attraction, his power to love increases. Love always comes from a more thorough recognition of the infusing Life Principle, and will keep on increasing as this recognition keeps on growing. All this growth of the recognition of the Principle of Attraction is tending in the direction of universal brotherhood, which means a state of the sweetest harmony among the people, a condition of high and mighty and living restfulness, in which the seeds of new faculties, now lying dormant in the human brain, will take root and grow into undreamed power.
As all our past unconscious growing has been from the basis of self, so will our future growing be from the same basis, for there is no other basis of growth.
Harmony, universal intelligence, is not achieved by individual concession or self-abnegation, but by the assertion of self under the influence of the ever growing idea that he who asserts self asserts the divinest of all possible power in humanity. To deny self is to deny this power in humanity, and thus to make as nothing—so far as such a thing is possible the work of organization—that work which men have called the creation. Therefore, I say, stand by self, for in so doing you are standing for the Life Principle; you are standing for just as much of the Life Principle as you can recognize; and by holding firmly to this position, you will recognize more, «until it will fill you and overflow in one broad and deep steam of life, that will embrace every living soul. And this will be your true self flowing forth. The same self that flowed forth in the animal in getting the most good will, by reason of your increased intelligence, now flow forth in doing the most good; but the doing shall also be the getting.
And thus the competitive systems of business, which are all animal in their origin, and all aim at getting the most good, are even now ill process of becoming emulative systems, wherein each will try to excel the other in doing the most good.
On its own plane, competition is right. It is the unchecked development of individuality, and individuality is the one jewel above all price. When competition has ripened into emulation, heaven will be here, and that, too, without one particle of concession from any soul.
Concession, self-denial, self-abnegation, is ruinous. It is the denial of our own individuality; it is the direct road to nothingness; it is the resignation of that which alone makes the man or gives him, as a factor of any worth, to the world. An ignorant man, standing firmly on his selfhood, uneducated as yet in a true sense of justice, may be a very disagreeable member of society; but his position denotes strength, and there is hope of his learning; but the man who has entirely dropped down from the claims of self, who has resigned his individuality—who is he? A mere vagabond—listless, hopeless—a drifting scum, awaiting removal from human sight.
I have made the foregoing points with a purpose, and a strong purpose. The person who is afraid to stand for himself and to declare himself will always be looked upon as weak.
The patients whom I cannot cure are the patients who will not hold for self. I find it discouraging to have a patient say, “I want to get well, if it is God’s will.” What does anyone know of God’s will, except as he finds the power within himself that is expressed in his own will?
Looking within, you may perceive the self there, and you may conclude, that it is a very selfish thing, a thing to be thrown overboard, while on bended knees you beg for a nobler self. This nobler self you are begging for is the very self you are misjudging. There is nothing the matter with yon, except that your dull intelligence fails to recognize this beautiful vitality which is individualized within you. This fact explains why all religions are made to hang on to one word, “believe,” and why Jesus said, “When you pray, believe that you receive, and you have.” “Not that you shall have, but that you have now—showing that all truth is within, and that all a man has to do is to believe it.
Prayer is merely desire, or aspiration. We are asking or praying with every breath we draw. “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, unuttered or expressed.” It is a tentacle of the Life Principle within us going out in search of what it wants. And prayer is answered from within.
I am now treating of the growth of the man, and not of the conditions he shall inaugurate afterwards. A man once builded in the knowledge of himself and of the power within him, conditions then build themselves about him; conditions become responsive to his own strength, even as they are now responsive to his own weakness.
To build institutions is not the first thing to be thought of. Institutions will seem to build themselves, after true men and women are built, and all by a natural law—the Principle of Attraction.
Every thought or belief in this Principle carries us more fully within the power of it; and in this condition our own comes to us. Everything that is related to our peculiar faculty, whether near or far, will come to us in acknowledgment of our ownership.
In man’s operations from the central point or a basis of self, he is entitled to what he wants. And he need not beg for what he wants; it is his own under the Law of Attraction by inalienable right, and unless he take it as his own, he will never build his life up in the strength of true manhood. All through the period of his unconscious growth, he took; he did not beg. He did this regardless of his fellows. What he took represented to him his highest ideal of happiness. Now his ideal is enlarged; it is so greatly enlarged that it raises him quite out of the physical realm into the intellectual one, and what he demands as essential to his happiness is the knowledge that will secure him health, strength and beauty. Of these things he may demand what he will, and no one will be robbed; for he is now in the high place where the supply is equal to the demand, and where he is getting more and more into harmony with the Principle of Attraction, where his own comes to him because it is related to his needs.
Therefore, men need not beg. A true analysis of things past and present will show us that there never was a beggar on earth until man came, and that beggars were never needed, neither were meant to have existence.
To get the things he needs in the present transitional stage from animal to human, each human being is forced to become as aggressive as any warrior. Everything he attempts to take out of the mental world, the world of unorganized intelligence, is denied him, and its very existence disputed by a thousand race beliefs that rise up before him and threaten him with destruction.
This fight for mastery, being at this lime entirely in the realm of the intellect, we must begin, not by begging our way, but by claiming it. Discard every thought of humility; make a statement of what you want, and hold it as your due. Take this one fact into consideration, that man has no God-given place in the universe, and no natural sphere, save that which he has wrested from the universe by his own intelligent demands. Remember above all things, that man is man-made, and not God-made. Individuality is of such tremendous importance that we are not trying to lose it in God. We are trying to bring God forth and establish Him in these personalities. I speak the word “God” as if I accepted it in its present meaning, which I do not, although it is sometimes very convenient to use.
Mental Science, unlike Christian Science, believes in the present and in the personal, the visible and audible. It believes in the evolution of the Life Principle into the personal and the present, through the intelligent recognition of men and women, and it is in this way we will banish disease and death and establish heaven on earth—for the more of the Life Principle a man recognizes in himself, the stronger and more positive he is; and thus will disease and death be overcome, for they are simply the negations or denial of man’s power to conquer. They are nothing in themselves, and have no power, except the power men confer upon them by believing in them; and as men believe in their own selfhood more and recognize the Godhood of selfhood, the fear of disease and death will be effaced, and life, with health and happiness will become the heritage of the race instead.
I say to every human being—assert your desires and prove your noble nature. The desire, which is the voice of life in you, does not include any methods your brain may suggest as being the right way to attain the desire. The desire is the essence of your being, and it asks for happiness, and nothing less. It will be your individual mistake, and not the mistake of the vital principle, if you seek happiness by methods that will wrong others. Therefore, as we are still so ignorant, the proper thing to do is to ask for happiness simply, or rather to claim happiness as our right. Of course, every idea of happiness includes ideas of health, strength and beauty, and it is these things that make the real man. After man is established in such glorious health, strength and beauty as makes every moment of his life a joy to him, he may then turn his thoughts outward towards the building of new and better conditions for himself and fellows; for man is the Builder, arid when he has built himself, he will begin to build externally in a stronger way—yes, in a thousand stronger ways, for man’s sphere is here on earth, and he will build outward from the earth, until the space between the planets will show forth the wonders of his inventions and discoveries.
Once more I say—stand by self. Self is not a sinful or dreadful thing. It is the glorious basis of everything that is visible in the universe. In each individual thing, whether crystal, tree, animal or man, it is the wresting from negative by more positive expression that brings the mastery. Therefore, let no one be horrified because I have rescued selfhood from the mistakes that have so long overlain it. The truth seeker is the image breaker, and no one need be grieved to see his pet hobbies fall before him. It is time they all fell. It is time for us to turn our backs on the past and accept the instruction given to Lot’s wife, never to look behind; for now that the dreadful old charnel houses where we have been entombed alive for such a long time are falling, we must escape from them forthwith.
From now on, I ask every seeker after the truth to keep up the investigation of self; and when by much thinking, he learns to stand up for it, and to hold it sacredly above the old-time beliefs that have made a devil out of it and prepared a hell for its future reception, he will begin to realize a strength he had never dreamed of before. Therefore, I say—stand by self. Magnify it if possible; but, indeed, no one can magnify it, for no one’s conception of it can do it justice. But a person can magnify his ideas of it, and thus conquer the race beliefs concerning it.
And this is the battle that will have to be fought by the truth seeker. The battle is between the new truth that Mental Science brings and the old crucifying belief born of an age of rankest ignorance, that has so long held the people in darkness concerning their own strength and worth. “No one can stand too strongly for the right. Each one of us should make his own statement of personal goodness and power, and reiterate it in the face of every old world belief as rapidly as it shall confront him. He should say, “I am here for myself, to build myself up in health, strength and beauty, by claiming my own. Nothing is too good for me. I claim the best and I shall get it.”
Expectation
Expectation is the natural offspring of desire.
In unconscious growth, expectation always comes with desire. If it were not so, the desire which is of the Law of Attraction, would never be manifested or externalized, and there would be no visible universe.
It is self-evident truth that the Love Principle, the attracting forces that men call God, cannot exist without giving expression to itself. Such expression becomes what to us appears as externals, and the principle and its expression are one. The same truth was given by another in the words, “Man is God’s necessity.”
Expectation, which is an act of the intelligence, clothes desire and makes it apparent in the visible world of effects. Every power now possessed by the individual has been first caused by desiring something, and then by expecting it. It was in this way that man’s entire organic structure was built.
As time passed on and man’s brain began to develop the reasoning faculties, it transpired that desire and expectation, which on the plane of unconscious growth had gone hand in hand, became separated. This was in the process of transposition from the animal to the intellectual plane. It is in this process of transposition now, and though it is advancing more rapidly than ever before, it lacks much of being completed. As soon as the reasoning powers began to depend upon themselves for a solution of the many problems of life, they received answers to nearly all of their questions from the negative pole of truth; that is, answers which were in accord with their limited knowledge. They made a critical examination, as they thought, of desire, and exclaimed, “Why, this thing is of the devil!” But in spite of their opinion of it, it did secretly mold the race’s every action until it began to be acknowledged as the basis of all growth.
It was now promoted in public opinion, and was called prayer; and the people were exhorted to pray in faith for what they wanted, or in the expectation that they would receive what they asked for.
One of the most common fallacies was to conceive of desire as being both good and its opposite. One kind of desire they pronounced carnal, the other divine. Now, all desire is the same in essence; it is all divine. It is all a reaching forth of the spirit of growth after greater knowledge and happiness. As before stated, expectation accompanied every breath of desire during the period of unconscious growth, and desire was fully realized by the animal. In this way the animal powers increased and ripened up to manhood. When man had learned to reason, the first use he made of it was to doubt. He recognized his desires, but began to imagine that they were mostly evil; and those he did not consider evil he ridiculed and called them wild and visionary. He said they belonged to the imagination, and, of course, amounted to nothing. He became that anomaly of creation, a chronic doubter. He accepted nothing on trust and looked upon credulous people with contempt. For ages he has plodded along in the same grooves, and has thrown dirt and stones at every one who had intelligence enough to climb out of the grooves he lived in. This is the case even to this day. Why, it is a tremendous thing to make the statements made in these pages, and only the most improvident and reckless thinker would dare do it. Yes, improvident and reckless—a thinker who does not care what the world thinks of him; who is resolved to burst the bonds of race ignorance and set the people free in spite of opposition.
I stand in the position of one who is willing to be a fool for truth’s sake. There is an ever present atmosphere of triumph surrounding a position like this. I feel the glow of the conqueror, because I know that the thought in these pages is true, and I know that those who now reject it will soon embrace it and be saved by it.
The opposition one meets with under such circumstances has no more effect than a blow which a mother may receive from the sick and suffering little one in her arms. This was the feeling of Jesus, when He said, “If one smite thee on one cheek, turn the other to him also.” This sentence alone proves that He recognized the great fact of Mental Science; that all these errors we call sin are merely ignorant beliefs; the result of misdirected intelligence on the part of the people: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Desire attended by the expectation that the desire will be realized—this is the mental attitude that brings all things to the individual. Before this happy conjunction can be effected, however, it is necessary that a man should know his position in the universe, and his power. It is necessary that he should know how greatly he has been belittled in the past, and how this belittling influence has kept him from expecting that his desires would be realized. A sense of unworthiness has crushed his desires and deadened his expectation until he is a dwarf on the face of the earth. His imagination is a part of himself that he cannot understand. He thinks it is a sort of devil within him that lies to him whenever he stops to listen to it. No one has ever known what the imagination is, but recently it is given to me to see that the imagination is the wings of the intellect, and that the seeming impossibilities it unrolls before us, are all possible to us, and will all be made manifest in the farther unfolding of our latent faculties. The imagination is the advance courier of the future, and its mission is to lure us onward—farther and farther from the hardened, fixed bounds of our daily walk, to which we have tethered ourselves in resolute disregard of the beckoning of the bright angel in front of us.
We have turned our backs on the imagination, as if it were our bitterest foe, and we dwarf and dwindle and die with our eyes glued resolutely to the past. We will not look ahead, and so expectation dies.
Growth is dependent upon two things: desire, which pulses through all existing things, and expectation, which I know to be of the intelligence. It is true that the desire and the intelligence are one, but the desire is internal and the intelligence is external. In other words, desire is the soul of which expectation is the body; or, in other words still, expectation is the materializing power of desire, and makes it visible or manifest. Therefore, expectation is to desire what nature is to the Principle of Attraction, and desire might as well not be as for expectation not to clothe it and cause it to show forth.
From the foregoing statements, the entire position of the race is defined. Man has crucified desire because he thought it was selfish, unholy. Nevertheless, desire has pushed through and beyond his conscientious scruples, and has come into acknowledged recognition under the name of aspiration, or prayer; but even as aspiration or prayer, it is held back from fulfillment by the lack of expectation, so that the things that we desire are not clothed upon and made manifest to us.
Thus, after getting the consent of our conscience to desire something, we immediately begin to belittle ourselves, and instead of claiming boldly what we want, we pray, “Oh, Lord, if it is Thy will that we should have this thing, please deliver it to us.” The consequence is that our weakness receives the answer which it merits, and we fail to get the thing desired. As I said once before, there never was a beggar on the earth until the advent of man; and looking over the past history of man, it really seems as if God, by which I mean the Principle of Attraction, is absolutely resolved to establish us in our independence by refusing our requests. And, indeed, this Principle of Attraction is indifferent to us, and it speaks to us through its indifference, saying, “Oh! men, I exist for your taking; take me or let me alone; learn by my silence that you are my spokesmen, and I the infinite reservoir from which you draw as you need, and behold, the supply will ever remain equal to your demand.”
Man is thus thrown entirely upon himself. During the period of his unconscious or unreasoning growth, he does draw upon the limitless reservoir as he needs, and does his own growing. His brain has yielded him no thought of his unworthiness, and he takes what he desires, always expressing it in use. This limitless reservoir is as free to us today as in the past period of our growth, and when we fully know this, we shall reestablish our growth at the point where unconscious growth dropped us; but in coming into this position, we must gradually learn that we are perfectly individualized beings; that no God holds us accountable for past or present sins; that there are no sins and never have been; that what the world calls sins are merely the mistakes our ever growing intelligences have made in coming up to our present standing place. Being thus exculpated from the accusation of conscience, we begin to see ourselves as we are.
And what are we? I answer that we are wonderful creatures. Only think how we have forged our way up from such small beginnings, and where we stand now; think what conquerors we are; how we have bursted first one bond of ignorance and then another; and how lobe after lobe has put forth in our unfolding brains, like buds on flower stalks, and how as each one put forth it held in latency the germ of another yet to appear; and how it is evident that there will never be any cessation of the unfoldment of fresh buds of unimagined power within us!
Can anyone fail to see that man is a scroll unfolding outwardly continually? And it is because he only unfolds outwardly that his habit of looking backward stultifies him so.
Whatever you desire, claim it. This is not the expression of an anarchist, and does not relate to external wealth at all. It relates to such things as build the man into health, strength and beauty—things the taking of which robs no one.
But how shall I claim health, strength and beauty?
Make a statement of your desires, then ask yourselves the question, “Do I not know that these things exist? Do I not see their manifestation every hour in the wonders of the lily and the rose? How did the lily and the rose get them?”
The flowers get their health and beauty by desires unclouded by a doubt of their power to obtain them.
Desire and expectation did the work for them, and they, will do it for you, if you learn to expect as well as to desire.
The chief obstacle to overcome is the thought that there is some impediment in the way of your getting what you want. When the truth that we may have what we demand first dawned on me, it seemed as if there were mountains of impediments to overcome before I could realize my desire. Presently I knew that the only impediment was my belief that there were impediments, and when I realized this I felt as light as a bird. Do you not see how this fact brings us face to face with that great truth that all time is now? and that eternity and immortality are ever present with us?
When I knew that there was no impediment to overcome in the realization of my desires, except my chronic habit of doubting, I saw what a mighty power I embodied in myself— no longer weak, no longer dependent on any power in all the universe—the very fountain head of all power, the great and mighty Life Principle itself to minister to my claims. Do you not see how this knowledge of my position placed disease and death under my feet in an instant? and do you wonder that it is difficult for me to write of these shadows of the intellect as if they were, indeed, the realities the world believes them to be?
To make this perfectly clear, I shall again recapitulate. Man is all mind. He ‘has been built by beliefs. It may be said of him that he is his own statement of being. What he owns? What he has claimed through intelligent unfoldment, and this includes such health, strength and beauty as he possesses. It may be that instead of health, strength and beauty, his body shows forth nothing but weakness. If this is the case, then he must change his statement of being, which he can only do by an intelligent recognition of truth. No amount of begging for health and strength will do any good. Begging implies that the man is not entitled to what he asks for. To cast such a shadow on your perfect title in your thought will ruin your demand; for what you want is yours; and unless you know this and make your demand on the ground of your knowledge, and not base it on any ideas of generosity from a higher power, you will not get it. Slake your demand, then, from the basis of your understanding, and say, “I am entitled to every good I can recognize;” then strive to see that your position is right from an intelligent point of view. At first it will almost seem as if your position is an aggressive one, as if there were someone to dispute your right; but there is no one to dispute it, unless it may be some lingering doubts existing in your own mind concerning it, and these you must cast out.
And is this all? No, it is only half. After you have taken your position and made your demand, look forward to its realization; expect it. Shut out every doubt. Be patient with it and faithful to it. Days and weeks and months may pass, and your desire may seem as far away as at first, but continue to hold, for the Principle of Attraction exists within you, and the objects you desire will surely come to you.
It is a tremendous statement to make, but the entire universe of unorganized forces is negative to your strength and resolute expectancy, and it is from out of the unorganized forces that you draw a response to your desires.
So potent is expectation, that when the soul is given up to it, it can draw from organized forms as well as from inorganic ones. It puts its compulsion upon all things. The tiny amoeba expects that it will be fed. Though the food were the space of worlds removed, yet it would come.
The reason we call children innocent is because desire and expectation go hand in hand with them. It is said in the Bible that people will have to become as little children before the gates of heaven open to their entrance.
We must expect what we desire. A single doubt is to desire what frost is to the tender buds of spring, and doubt is the enemy against which one who is striving for the upward life must turn his back remorselessly.
This faith or expectation is a thing of cultivation, and it is of very easy cultivation, too. It grows in the poorest soil, and with very little attention. A person with very limited brain power can raise as good a crop from it as the most gifted man or woman. Let us say that I, for instance, have a desire for health. Let us suppose that the doctors have decided that by all the laws of causation I must die. I say I will not die, because I do not want to die. My “do not want to” is an assertion of selfhood that no power in the universe has the right or the ability to contravene, so long as I hold to it in unshaken faith. It makes no difference what my physical condition is, I do not want to die. This fact, coupled with my knowledge of my own rights as a self-built citizen of the universe, places me in an unassailable position. I made myself; I can continue to make myself. It is a position so strong as to double, and more than double, my powers of magnetism, and I can feel the life forces flowing tome; but everybody says that you had better prepare for death, as it is quite impossible for you to live. This kind of talk may weaken my expectation in the realization of my desire to live. If it does this, I shall die. If, on the contrary, it arouses my opposition, and makes me come up to a still farther declaration of self I shall declare more positively than ever that I am going to live, that nothing can weaken my hold on life but an overshadowing of my hope or expectation, and I am determined that it shall not be overshadowed. I have now advanced from the negative assertion, “I will not die,” to the positive assertion, “I will live.” If I wake up some morning, after a very discouraging night, and find my expectation weakening, I immediately begin to say mentally, “I do hope. My faith is good. I surely am expecting that my desire is in process of manifestation.”
All day long, and perhaps for many days, I refuse to have my expectations clouded. I drive the clouds away, and constantly affirm that my faith is bright and cheering; and little by little the waste of tissue is arrested. If I will not die, how will the negatives compel me? I stand at the head of creation—I and my kind, I mean—and we are the most positive creatures there are. I realize my own positiveness individually, and I know that so long as I realize it the negatives cannot harm me. All disease is but the negation or denial of the power of individual mastery, and unless I yield my position and cease to believe in my mastery disease cannot finally overcome me. Indeed, there is no power in disease to harm the individual. All the power to harm, as well as to save, is in the person himself. It is in the individual’s belief, cither that ho is not master or that he is master. If I believe myself master, I am master. If I believe that the negations or denials of my mastery have a power superior to mine, why, then, I give them a power which they never possessed and permit them to master me.
The negations we call disease and death have no power save that which we, their rightful masters, confer upon them. Then consider yourself from the standpoint of belief in your own mastery.
All disease is ignorance, and so is death ignorance. The time is coming when disease and death will appear as reprehensible and disgusting as any other form of ignorance. All permanent healing is knowing the truth. True healing means the acquisition of the patient of beliefs that will banish his old race beliefs in disease and death, and establish him in permanent paths of progress.
As regards the giving of mental treatments to the sick: It is simply recognizing for the patient the truth that he is himself unable to recognize, and is, therefore, only palliative in its character, yet it often leads the sick to a desire to understand the truth for themselves, and thus becomes the beginning of wisdom to many; but unless it does this, while it brings relief, and in the sense of the world’s belief cures the disease, it does not correct the patient’s belief in the power of disease, old age and death—and until these beliefs are corrected, no man can be considered absolutely well.
It may appear to the student at first glance that desire and expectation are almost the same in character; but this is not so, since the larger part of our desire is altogether unaccompanied by expectation or any hope of realization; and since, also, the larger part of our expectations is unattended by our desires. Indeed, we are very much in the habit of expecting what we fear, instead of what we desire,, and this thing must positively be discontinued by whomsoever expects to conquer his negative beliefs and establish his mastery in’ the world.
We are rudimentary creatures as yet. All our senses are rudimentary, but their constant improvement is awaiting our growing knowledge of our privileges as citizens of the world, every condition of which we are capable of mastering and will eventually master. We will master it not by leaning or depending on anyone, but by a declaration of our own rights as the highest form of organized intelligence, and, therefore, superior to all other forms of life, whether organized or unorganized.
Doubt
The recognition of desire is the great motor of unconscious life, and expectation that the desire will be realized is as essential as recognition; these are the two factors in building every organized form.
Desire, which is the reaching forth of the spirit for happiness, is of no avail unless it be accompanied by expectation.
The precise measure in which desire is accompanied by expectation is the measure of development attained by all organized forms, whether mineral, vegetable or animal. In the various forms of organized life below man, desire is accompanied by expectation always. Desire and expectation are one in the animal, in consequence of which the animals’ lives are whole or holy—and this condition constituted the primitive Eden.
Unconscious life, life that cannot give an account of itself, cannot endure, because individual consciousness of the situation is necessary to individual mastery, and no man can be master in a true sense who does not know the reason therefore. This is to say, that a man might as well not have strength as not to know that he has it, and he can only know that he has it by learning how he came by it, or by learning the law of his being.
In learning the law of his being, that law by which he has acquired his strength, he also learns how to still further apply the law so that he may get still more strength. If he has acquired his strength all through the period of his unconscious growth, by sending forth his desires without the shadow of a doubt concerning their realization, it stands to reason that he can supplement unconscious growth with conscious growth, by still sending forth his desires and teaching himself to expect that he will get what he desires. To this end, then, he knows that he must conquer doubt. He must trust his desires as the devotee trusts his God. Indeed, the desires in the man are God, and he cannot trust them too implicitly. To trust them one day and then fall into a fit of impatience the next, and to trust them again the third day, will not do. The desire should be trusted all the time. Broken efforts to trust the desires are like the floundering of the animal to get itself out of the mud, which often results in sinking it deeper. It is the steady pull of expectation that does the work, and little by little clothes the desire. It is a process of growth that requires time.
It may be, after sufficient knowledge has come to the world on this great subject, that it will be as Paul said, “We shall all be changed in the twinkling of an eye;” but now there is no help for us except in slow, steady pulling. We can cultivate the habit of steady pulling by efforts of concentration. We wake up some morning discouraged, and we begin to treat ourselves mentally. We think of all that lies back of us in the past, of the conquests we have made and of the height of our present attainments, knowing that we stand at the top of creation; and we refuse to be discouraged. We say mentally, “I am not discouraged; there is some trifling shadow floating between my desire and my expectation, but it will pass—yes, it will pass; T know that it will pass. I know that I am really as happy and hopeful as usual; I know that the philosophy of my life is true and I must be constant to it. I know that desire is the basis of growth; and I will not stint my own desires in their ripening towards materialization by doubting. I fully expect to realize them, and I will not back down from my present ground for any reason whatever.” As a person goes over this little formula, varying it to suit himself, he will feel strength coming to him, until in a few moments his position of firm faith is restored.
We are so vacillating that we are true to nothing but our own inconsistency. We do not sufficiently estimate the fact that the faithful pursuit of one thing or of one idea, turning neither to the right nor to the left, always wins. No one in the universe has the power to refuse us what we want but ourselves, and we can only do it by doubting ourselves and our natural right to strength, health, beauty and happiness.
I have said this a hundred times, and may say it a hundred times more.
The statement is a very strong one, and as there are always persons who are making mistakes, it may be necessary that I should guard it. I do this by saying that this teaching relates to the getting of health, strength, beauty and happiness, and not to the getting of good through riches. My effort is only to build the man, and when he is built properly he will then be able to call about him such conditions as are related to the character of his individuality.
But until man has built himself into an intellectual will, he is nothing but a floating leaf on a turbulent stream, and has no power to build aright and comparatively no knowledge of how to do it.
Man’s first duty .at this stage of the world’s progress is to himself. At this time he can more greatly benefit the world and himself by stating his own desires than in any other way. Every man or woman interested in the sublime study of self holds within his or her hand the scepter of more than world-wide influence—for I say, with a knowledge that corroborates the statement—that the era of death and decay is past. The earth is to be no longer a graveyard, but a wonderful theater of undreamed activities. There are more Edisons than one who are overcoming the world’s forces and making servants of them. Thousands of brains are planning the discovery of new motors in elements so fine and intangible as to have long escaped man’s scrutiny. I am glad that I can believe where others doubt. The believer, though he may be a thousand times deceived, is the man who learns. His face is bright with the absorption of the coming light, while the doubter’s face is dark and leathery with its rejection.
In considering the new ideas now coming into the world so rapidly, I say to the reader, “Do not shut yourself against them. Pull up anchor and sail away on the wings of them, even though they should land you in strange places and under inhospitable skies. Then believe again, and keep believing. Do anything to break up the chronic habit of doubting.” Truth holds in close charge the honest believer, and soon leads him to where his believing is planted in firm soil and yields him generous reward; but truth cannot reach the chronic doubter. There is not a solid spot in his makeup where she can fasten her hold upon him. The old couplet, “‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all,” applies with great force to the doubter. For all believing is a certain form of loving. There is life in it, but there is nothing in doubt but the negation or rejection of life. Therefore, believe rather than doubt, until intelligent experiment determines the character of what you are believing. And above all things believe in yourself. Believe in yourself as the highest expression of the Eternal Life Principle. Believe in yourself with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it: believe in your neighbor, in the divine possibilities latent in him; and believe this with the same force and fervor that you believe in yourself.
A Conquest of Fire by the Human Body
Man is entirely a mental creature; he is a mental statement of what he believes; his body is mental substance, and has been built by his thought, his thought as expressed in belief. If it were not for this fact, there would be no use in trying to conquer death. If we were made of dead matter, and if dead matter were subject to decay and dissolution, then, of course, our continued existence, so far as life in the physical form is concerned, would be impossible, and not only impossible, but undesirable—undesirable, since the true personality of the man would not be in the physical, but would have to carry the physical—a dead weight to itself—all through the ages.
But man is altogether mental. His body is mental, as well as his thought. His thought is—so far as we now know—the finest strata of his personality. Next to his thought comes his brain; then his nerves; then the blood vessels; then the other parts of the body.
No one knows the precise process of body building; but a little is known about it; and this little suggests more that seems true, and that I fully believe to be true. We know that from the brain there proceeds a regular system of nerves, and that nerves go with each blood vessel. We know also that the blood builds the body, muscles and bone and all the parts. What we have not considered is the starting point of this building. It begins with the deathless principle of the seed germ which is in the brain, and every part of the body is built by direction of the brain, and always was, and always will be.
If the brain had no messengers with which to send its ideas to different parts of the body, there would be no body; nothing but brains; but then again, if there were no body there would be no brain, because the body feeds the brain. The body and brain are reciprocal in their action; the body sends food to the brain, and the brain sends thought to the body.
The brain sends the best thought to the body that it has. If the brain is ignorant of the great truths concerning its own powers that I have been telling of, the thought it sends into the body is as liable to be error as truth.
Every particle of disease originates in the brain; every particle of thought that shows a lack of knowledge of the power of the individual to overcome all sorts of weakness, and establish his mastery over all things and conditions, originates in the brain.
Weakness originates in the brain during the period of man’s ignorance concerning himself and his relation to the Principle of Being or the Law of Attraction; strength will originate in his brain, also, as soon as he learns this relation, and thereby comes into a knowledge of his own power. If the Principle of Attraction, the spirit of all organized forms, is powerful, then man must be powerful also as soon as he knows this, since he will also know that he is one with it—its spokesman, as it were, its manifestation drawn into shapes that are available in use.
Man in his ignorance of his high connection with the infinite power that infuses his body with life, is necessarily weak. No wonder he calls himself a worm of the dust. He sees all the elements of his destruction, and none of the mighty powers latent within him, the development of which will make him so strong as to lift him above the death plane of humanity.
But there is absolutely nothing on earth that can lift him above the death plane but thought. And it must be a different kind of thought from any that he has ever yet entertained.
He has been generating beliefs of disease and death in his brain all these ages, and the nerves that run from the brain to every part of the body have carried these beliefs, and the body has accepted them and showed them forth. The body could not help, but accept the beliefs sent through it by the brain, because it is negative to the brain; that is, it is less intelligent than the brain, and the more intelligent part of anything rules its less intelligent parts.
The nerves not only convey messages from the brain to every part of the body, but they make a turn at the extremities of the body, and go back to the brain; they are carriers both ways. The brain has a firmly fixed belief that fire will wither up the human flesh and destroy the life of one who is too severely exposed to its heat. Therefore, when the hand touches fire, the nerves tell the brain instantly, crying out, “I am burned.” The brain accepts this as an undeniable fact, and replies, “Yes, you are burned.”
But there are people today who heat immense furnaces as hot as fire will make them, and who go into them and walk about and sit down on the stones that are white with heat, and talk with each other, and come out without a hair of their bodies being scorched.
It is easy enough to deny these matters, but they are absolutely true, as has been proven beyond contradiction. We have taken the greatest possible pains to ascertain the truth of these statements, and are entirely convinced of their correctness.
Fire will not burn the body if the brain sends word to this effect along its nerves to the surface of the skin. It is essential that the brain should have knowledge unequivocally that the body will not be hurt, and in the test the body is not hurt.
It makes no difference what the brain tells the body it can do, the body will actually do it, provided the brain entertains no doubt about the possibility of its Icing done. In the first instance, which I reproduce here, together with copies of the photographs taken on the spot, the actors in the marvelous performance no longer hold to a belief in the legendary account of how it was first given to the members of their family to withstand fire; they only know that they can do so, and that their savage ancestors for generations had possessed the same power. They do not understand how it h that they can do it, neither do they know how the first progenitor learned how; they have a belief which, being absolutely perfect, amounts to the knowing, and the result is in accordance with their perfect faith.
The account which follows first appeared in a London (Eng.) magazine, and after full investigation by us and satisfactory proof of its genuineness obtained, was reproduced in Freedom, with illustrations made from photographs taken on the spot. It was called, “The Fiery Ordeal of Fiji.”
The account of this most remarkable affair is taken principally from an extended article by Maurice Delcasse, which appeared in the May, 1898, number of the Wide World Magazine, published in London, England. The article did not, however, come to my notice until two months later, when I at once wrote to London to obtain, if possible, some further proof of the authenticity of the statements made, and also to procure illustrations from the photographs, if satisfied of their genuineness.
From the editor of the Wide World Magazine I received the following:
“London, 5, 10, ’98.
“In answer to your letter, I beg to say that the Eight Honorable Lord Stanmore, Ex-Governor of Fiji, has seen the ceremony time after time, and the photos were taken on the spot by Mr. Lindt of Melbourne.”
The photos referred to are those from which the illustrations accompanying this article are made, and were procured through Knops Electrotype Agency, 19 Ludgate Hill, London, Eng.
And this is the legend lying back of the performance as told by the Fiji natives:
“There was once a storyteller in the village of Narakaisese, and when his story was done on one occasion, the spokesman among his hearers asked, according to custom, what each of the listeners would give on the morrow by way of recompense for his entertainment. Each then proceeded to name the offering lie would present, and one, Tui Qualita, said that his gilt should be a fine eel. Now, Tui Qualita was a man of renown in the tribe, and he went out on the morrow among the hills, until he came to a pool at Namoliwai, which seemed a likely place to catch the fish. There was a narrow mouthed hole by this pool, into which Tui Qualita promptly thrust his arm, and began feeling about for eels. After a time, he grasped something, which, on being pulled out proved to be a piece of wasi—a waist-girdle. Tui Qualita thrust his hand in again presently and enlarged the hole. By groping about, he found it widened into a cavern, and at last he succeeded in catching a living form. What was his amazement on drawing it forth to find that, instead of an eel, he had secured the storyteller himself, Tui Na Moliwai! Moliwai, finding himself a prisoner, proceeded to beg for mercy.
“‘I will watch over you,’ he pleaded to his captor, ‘and be your war god.’
“‘That won’t do,’ replied Tui Qualita, doggedly. ‘Don’t you know that my tribe is always victorious, and that I am its foremost warrior?’
“‘Then let me be your guiding spirit in dancing and song.’
“‘Not enough,’ was the reply. ‘Every time we dance, it is Qualita’s tribe who leads the van. It shall be your fate, Moliwai, to be baked in the love with the masawe for four days and four nights.’
“Then Moliwai recommenced his entreaties and promises.
“‘I will be your guardian spirit at sea,’ he said.
“‘No good,’ was the reply. ‘I am no sailor and I hate the sea.’
“Next the fairy promised to be his captor’s god of riches and bring him wealth, or his god of beauty and make him beloved of fair women. It was all in vain, however. At last the Moliwai said, impressively, and desperately, ‘Tui Qualita, I will do all these things and more. If you will let me off, and not insist upon baking me with the masawe for four days and four nights, but merely allow me to walk through the oven, I will ordain that, in future, when the masawe is baked, you, too, may be baked in the love with it and yet shall emerge unscathed.’
“This tempting offer was at once accepted, and Moliwai was immediately liberated, lie then gathered the stones and brushwood necessary, and made an oven in the ground. Next, when the stones were red hot, he led Tui Qualita into the furnace, and they sat down together on the red hot stones, which, far from hurting them, were merely cool and pleasant to the body. They did not, however, stay the full four days in the oven, but on coming out the fairy said to the Fijian brave, ‘This power shall be yours and your descendants’ forever. Both you and they shall at all times walk unharmed in the masawe oven.’ And having said this, the fairy, Tui Na Moliwai, vanished forever.”
It appears that the ceremony was formally performed only in secret, and most probably as some sort of religious rite, but of late years has been frequently witnessed by white people, including officials, missionaries and others. The statement is made that some of these have attempted to pass through the oven, with most disastrous and horrible results.
Of the photos from which the illustrations were made,” Mr. Delcasse says:
“It is questionable whether more picturesque compositions were ever produced by a camera. There was no posing, or anything of that kind, mark you, the natives simply going about their curious business in their own way, quite unconscious of the fact that they were being photographed. I desire to acknowledge here my indebtedness for the loan of the photos, to Lord Stanmore, some time Governor of Fiji.”
The Island of Benga, where these photos were taken, is not far from Suva, the capital of Fiji. This mysterious fire-walking ceremony has puzzled experienced scientists who have witnessed it, and no satisfactory solution of the feat has yet been discovered by them.
The Island of Benga, where this fiery ordeal took place, was the supposed residence of some of the old gods of Fiji, and was, therefore, considered a sacred land. Naturally, also, its chiefs took high rank. First of all, it is necessary to explain the native low, or oven, in which the masawe root is baked. This oven is merely a more or less circular hole, or hollow, dug and prepared in the ground, with a diameter of from eighteen feet to twenty-four feet. The oven is next filled with rough logs of firewood, piled up nine or ten feet. The photo shows the natives preparing the oven at this stage. On the logs are placed a great number of water-worn stones, varying in weight from eight pounds to one hundred pounds.
The fire for the ordeal is lighted in the masawe oven before daybreak, and burns for several hours—that is to say, until all the stones on the top, big and little, have fallen through into the hole and become almost white with heat.
Then, of course, nothing remains but a quantity of charred embers and a few half-burnt logs. The heat given oil’ by the red-hot, stone-lined pit, was so great on the occasion we are describing, that Lord Stanmore’s aide-de-camp declares it to have been intolerable, even when he was standing ten feet from the edge of the oven.
In due time the embers are dragged or fished out by means of vines attached to long sticks, the end of the vine having a running loop which is placed over the log. The partially burnt logs and embers having been removed, long green sticks, eighteen or twenty feet in length, are then inserted into the oven among the heaps of hot stones, and using these as levers, in the manner shown in the second photo, the stones are distributed evenly over the surface of the whole floor of the earth oven.
Sometimes the heat is so terrific that the operators are unable directly to manipulate the levers themselves, so they are compelled to rest the poles on the side of the oven, and then pull on them by means of vine ropes. The Fijians who take part in this ceremony make for themselves out of the broad banana leaf a special kind of garment, to shelter their bodies from the heat given off by the white-hot stones.
When the big embers have been removed, the wood ashes are swept away by means of whisks fastened to the ends of long sticks, as shown in the picture, and then nothing remains in the oven save the clean layer of glowing stones. These preliminaries, after the fire has burned itself out, occupy about half an hour, and then all is ready for the ceremony itself. At a given signal, the performers, bare-legged and bare-footed, excepting for the anklets of dried fern leaves, crowd into the pit and commence walking leisurely about as if on a fashionable promenade. The illustrations show this in the most vivid manner possible. Here is the narrative of a person who witnessed the ceremony:
“Jonathan, a native magistrate, led the way into the pit, closely followed by fourteen others. They marched round about the oven, moving slowly and leisurely, and treading firmly on the red-hot stones. The spectacle held me spellbound. Every moment I expected my nostrils to be assailed with the smell of burning human flesh, but it was not so, and as I looked in the faces of the men strolling about in the lovo I could see no emotion whatever depicted, but merely the inscrutable impassivity of feature common to many savage races. Some of the bystanders threw bundles of green leaves and branches into the oven, and immediately the men inside were half-hidden in the clouds of steam that arose from the hissing, boiling sap. Handkerchiefs were also thrown in, and afforded an unmistakable proof that there was ‘no deception.’ Before these lace trifles reached the floor of the oven, they were alight, and almost consumed by the great heat. Presently Jonathan and his followers marched out of the inferno, and were promptly examined by the Governor’s commissioner. Not only was there not the least trace of burning, but even their anklets, which were of dried fern leaves, and, therefore, extremely inflammable, were not so much as singed.
“Jonathan himself was closely cross-examined by the Government official present—of whom he stood in great awe —and he declared with perfect candor, ‘There is no trick; why should there be? I and my forefathers have done this thing for generations, long before the white man came into the island. Some of us may not believe the legend of the fairy chief Moliwai, but I do believe that it has been given to my tribe to pass at all times through the masawe oven.’
“Another official witness state that ‘the men had not anointed themselves with anything whatever.’ To a statement made by someone that the soles of the feet of the natives became so hardened that they could walk comfortably over stones heated by the sun, until they would blister a white person, Lord Stanmore replied to Mr. Delcasse in a letter that this was no explanation even if true; which it was not, as he had himself seen the natives repeatedly run to escape the heat of stones when passing bare-footed over beds of ‘shingle’ along the banks of water courses. Beside which is the fact that the dried fern leaves of which the anklets of the performers were made were not burned, while handkerchiefs and other articles thrown into the over were.”
I now submit another account of a similar occurrence. It is from the New York Herald. Evidently, the Herald account is of the ceremony held upon a different occasion from the one just given. In the former, fourteen persons took part, and there were present Government officials. In the Herald account, there were but seven islanders entered the pit, and the principal witnesses were the two physicians mentioned. The Herald says:
“Two New Zealand medical men, Drs. Hocken and Colquhoun, recently visited Fiji, where they had an opportunity of witnessing the now rare fire ceremony of the natives. It is so rare that the power is now confined to a single family living on an islet twenty miles from the Fijian metropolis, Suva.
These people are able to walk, nude and with bare feet, across the white-hot stony pavement of a huge oven. An attempt was made on this occasion to register the beat, but when the thermometer had been placed for a few seconds about five feet from the oven, it had to be withdrawn, as the solder of the covering began to melt. The thermometer then registered 282 degrees, and Dr. Hocken estimated that the range was over 400 degrees.
“The fire-walkers then approached, seven in number, and in single file walked leisurely across and around the oven. Heaps of hibiscus leaves were thrown into the oven, causing clouds of steam, and upon the leaves and within the steam the natives sat or stood. The men were carefully examined by the doctors both before and after the ceremony. The soles of their feet were not thick or leathery, and were not in the least blistered. The men showed no symptoms of distress, and their pulse was unaffected.
“Preliminary tests failed to show that there had been any special preparation. Both doctors, while denying that there was anything miraculous about the experiment, expressed themselves as unable to give any scientific explanation.”
The next mention of this subject is found in Freedom of January 25th; here a ceremony similar to those already described is given. It occurred in India, land of many mysteries. It is copied from The Lahore Civil and Military Gazette:
“It was during the recent convention of the Theosophical Society that a good many of us who are interested in the life of India below the surface, being present, some Hindu friends arranged with a certain sect of Shivaite Hindus, who claim the power of rendering fire harmless, to give an exhibition of their powers. Accordingly a trench was dug in the grounds of the Tagore Villa, about fifteen feet long by four wide, and this was filled with logs of wood, which were left to blaze all day. In the evening the trench was filled by a thick layer of glowing coals, giving off a tremendous heat. At seven p.m. we repaired to the scene of action. Our party consisted of Mrs. Besant, Countess Wachtmeister, Dr. Richardson, late professor of chemistry at University College, Bristol; Dr. Pascal, a French doctor of medicine; Mr. Bertram Keightley, barrister-at-law; Miss Lillian Edgar, M. A.; Col. Olcott, and others. Chairs were arranged for us on a kind of dias formed of the earth thrown out of the trench, and about eight feet from it. This was the nearest point to the big fire at which one could bear the scorching heat. At our back, and surrounding the trench, was a dense but orderly crowd of hundreds of Hindus. All awaited with eager expectation. At last a hubbub approaching from the gates of the villa announced the arrival of the procession.
“It consisted of a chief priest, who presided, carrying a sword; two others who were going to pass through the flames, and an image in a glass canopy borne along by others. The leader intimated that his two colleagues would pass through the fiery furnace, and afterward anybody who liked of the male persuasion might follow them through unharmed, but no women were permitted to go through. Then ensued a most extraordinary, and in some respects painful, spectacle. It is a doctrine of Hinduism that all the functions of nature, fire, rain, etc., are presided over by nature spirits. This particular sect of Hindus claims to have preserved the secret of being able to control the fire spirits, so that for the time they are unable to burn. Whatever may be the explanation, these are the facts.
“Certain mystic ceremonies having been performed, and cocoanuts having been tossed into the flames, the two junior priests apparently became possessed. With frantic shrieks and cries, they passed twice around the blazing trench, preceded by the chief priest with his sword, and followed by the brilliantly illuminated canopy. Then, still in a frenzy painful to behold, they plunged up to their ankles in the scorching furnace, and passed backward and forward several times, the rod-hot coals and sparks scattering about their feet. The crowd followed in their wake, first one or two individuals, until the others, gaining confidence and caught by enthusiasm, rushed through in hundreds, even little children of four and five years old running up and down the trench over the burning coals exactly as if it had been a soft carpet. All were unhurt. Among those who ventured was a brother of one of our party. This gentleman walked through the trench twice very slowly, and described the sensation afterward as having been like walking over hot sand.
“A skeptic among us having propounded the theory that the feet of natives were covered by an integument so dense that it was proof even against live coals, Dr. Pascal carefully examined the feet of this witness immediately after his performance, and found the skin of the soles was of the normal thickness of European feet, and that they were untouched by the fire. I saw one man deliberately pause in the middle of the trench to pick up a handful of the flaming embers, which he then carried through to the side. A linen turban which fell from someone’s head lay on the coals without igniting, as did the cocoanuts. The priests remained on the scene for about twenty minutes, during which time the two apparently possessed men were held by others. After they left, the crowd was advised to cease experimenting with the fire, and no more passed over. At this stage Dr. Richardson and myself left our seats and attempted to approach to the brink of the fiery gulf, but the heat was so great that we had to turn back.”
The next time this subject appears in Freedom, is the issue of October 4, 1899. It is headed:
Walking Through Fire
“I am printing this week another account of the performance above named. It was sent me from Fiji, and was published in the Fiji Times, July 22, 1899, and sent me by a friend and student of mine who lives there.
“This friend promised me that she would go to the next of the fire-walking performances that occurred on the island, and she did so. She went to it and saw it for herself, and I am giving her letter in this issue of Freedom without the alteration of a word.
“Question: If people can walk through fire without being injured, what can they not do? Is there any greater proof than this that mind is all, and that our beliefs determine our conditions? I now give the letter:
“‘My Dear Mrs. Wilmans:—The much talked-and-written about fire-walking ceremony was held at Beqa on the 25th of July, and according to my promise to you I went with the excursionists to see if it were a feat as wonderful as it is reported to be.
“‘We left Suva in the steamer Upolu, one thousand tons, at nine a. m., and reached the rocky and hilly isle of Beqa, at about twelve noon. It was not a favorable day, as rain was falling all the time. We had to anchor some considerable distance from the shore, and take to the boats. Still later we had to resign ourselves to the arms (or back) of the natives, who did not fail to Silim yarama (a shilling, lady,) or Silim turaga (a shilling, sir,) as the case might be. Presently we came to more shallow water; here the natives promptly set us down, and we plodded along the mud-flats for some distance, alike wet under foot and over head. On, over rough, loose stones, then through a bit of scrubby land, and a native village, or koro, and amidst surrounding coconut palms, we came to the lovo, or oven.
“‘This was a hole in the ground probably eighteen feet in diameter, filled with burning logs and stones. You could not possibly have better illustrations than those given in Freedom on 23rd of November, 1808.
“‘There is no possibility of doubting the genuineness of the fires which were still glowing red amongst the stones as we crowded round the lovo; immense logs were still burning on top, and, indeed, underneath, and were dragged out with great difficulty.
“‘The stones were at white heat, but it took fully half an hour to level them down for walking on. I had been told that the natives merely walked hurriedly through the lovo once. But they went round quite leisurely, and presently when one sat down it gave me quite a shock, for I thought he had fallen. He then began to strew green leaves over the stones, and about a dozen of the men sat down with him. There is no need to question what they do to their feet; they would need to prepare their whole bodies, as they kneel and sit amongst the stones.
“(Signed.)
- E. Bishop.
“Nansori, Fiji.”
In Freedom of November 1, 1899, I find the following account of this wonderful performance, copied from the Springfield (Mass.) Republican. It is entitled: WALKING ON GLOWING COALS.
UNIQUE PROCESS OF PURIFICATION AS WITNESSED IN A JAPANESE TEMPLE APPARENTLY A PAINLESS FEAT.
[Springfield (Mass.) Republican.]
“We found our friends, and on again a half hour more through the crowded streets to the temple. There a crowd was gathered. It was about five o’clock, and at dark the priests were to begin to walk over the fire—for that is what we were there to see. Twice a year the gods are prevailed on to take the heat from the fire, so that the devout may walk upon it unharmed. The skeptics in our party outnumbered the believers, but you shall see.
“At the steps we must take off our shoes and contribute our one yen to the support of the temple. Arrangements had been carefully made beforehand, and for the Europeans a small veranda was reserved directly opposite the whole length of the fire, and so close that our faces grew hotter and hotter as it burned brighter. Half Tokio was there; Russians and French, Swiss, Germans, English, Scotch, Americans. Some of us slipped away to see the ceremony preceding the fire walking. In the temple a crowd was collected, and in the chancel, as I may call it, for want of another word, two rows of priests sat facing each other. Several were in robes of white silk, one in blue and one in green. The effect was brilliant and made still more picturesque by the close-fitting horsehair caps with long tails of the high priest and his subordinates.
“After some muttered invocations, the high priest turned to a cupboard-like shrine in one corner of the chancel, where he burned incense and performed other acts of devotion, apparently. Behind him in two long lines, like a flying wedge in a football game, knelt the other priests, now joined by two women of the temple with reverend faces. The half-intone service was not unlike a Gregorian chant, and was accompanied by a continuous response from the congregation. Throughout the latter part we stood in the doorway of one of the temple apartments opening out of the chancel. Here refreshments were provided for guests—oranges, tea—and for courtesy, not for payment. Later, in response to thanks, the high priest presented his card to one of the visitors.
“As the priests filed out of the temple, we took our places on the veranda, a proceeding less easy than it sounds, as we had to find ourselves places on the already crowded floor, and sit or kneel in them as gracefully as might be. The bed of charcoal was already lighted when we arrived, and was now fully on fire. It was, we agreed, some sixteen feet long, four feet wide, and perhaps a foot deep. It was in a space fenced off from the courtyard, and on the side opposite us the crowd of men, women and children pressed against the barrier. The fire was at present covered with ashes, but soon attendants entered the open space, and with long-handled fans blew away the gray covering and fanned the charcoal until it was a mass of blazing, glowing embers. Little flames sprang up over it in all directions, and one lady among us put up her umbrella to protect herself from the heat. Another of the party began to feel the headache which the charcoal always caused her. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the fire was hot— blazing, burning hot, and something like sixteen feet of it, too. ‘O, les malheureux, les malheureux!’ exclaimed an excited French woman, as she fancied walking over those embers.
“When all the ashes was fanned away and the fire had been beaten to a fierce glow with long poles, white-robed priests entered, one of whom, taking salt from a supply placed near us, attended the high priest as he went to each of the four corners of the pile. At each he clapped his hands, clasped them and raised them high as if in supplication, bent his head in prayer, and ended by strewing a handful of salt about him. It was the motion of a man sowing seed, and but few grains can have fallen in anyone spot. At the middle of each side and end this was repeated. It was now growing dark and the blazing embers threw a glow over the white dress of the priests. The high priest was a striking man. His motions were quick, decisive, intelligent, as he rapidly passed from one place to another. We could see his face distinctly, we were so close.
“The darkness lent added effectiveness to the next ceremony. Each corner and side was now purified again, for purification it meant this time. The attendants struck a flint as the priest prayed, the sparks flying off in thin, yellow lights against the rich, glowing, red mass of charcoal and the darker crowd of figures beyond.
“A drizzling rain was falling, but it affected the fire little. It was now beaten with poles until it glowed again as the high priest ended his invocations. And before I understood what he was doing, a little scream from one French lady startled me into realizing that, making no break or pause, with one of his swift motions he had stepped out and along the fire path. The glow of colors from below on his white dress and dark skin was worthy of Rembrandt. He trod on the fire firmly but quickly, and the other priest followed. The high priest walked nine times. He set each foot down firmly and only once appeared to feel the smallest discomfort: then he stepped somewhat to one side, by mistake, it seemed, and visibly winced, carrying it off by a series of affected steps, high in the air, as if it were all in his part. After the priest came the crowd—women carrying children, a man with a sick person on his back, boys of all ages. Each stepped over a wet mat, through a small pile of salt, on to the fire. The salt was ordinary coarse salt (we had it analyzed). At least six steps were necessary to cross the fire: some walkers took more; nearly all were fairly deliberate. One or two, I fancied, felt the heat uncomfortably, if not painfully, for on coming off the fire they wriggled their feet about in the pile of salt at the farther end, as if it cooled them.
“Most of them disregarded it altogether, often stepping across it without touching it. One child was afraid to walk and threw up its arms before its face, as it stood by the fire, as if to ward off the heat; it was finally persuaded to venture, and, stepping bravely on to the coals, apparently felt no discomfort. As pain would be a confession of impurity, of course there is a premium upon concealing it. But there was no concealment in the old woman who tucked up her kimono and trudged along the fire as prosaically as if she were going to market, planting one sturdy foot after another in the red charcoal.
“We left them still walking, men, women and children, as they chanced to leave the crowd, the high priest stepping forward now and again and tramping across with his spirited, quick, audacious tread, as if he defied the fire to harm him. We left them walking and set out to ride miles and miles to Szabu, an hour away, in kurumas. The stars were out after the rain and the city was very still. Behind the shogis we could see the lights of the lamps and the shadows of those within, but the streets were empty and dark. Now and then a guruma, gay with paper lanterns’, passed, but few walked. It was a long, tedious ride, but the pleasant cosmopolitan high tea which awaited repaid us for all. At one hospitable table English, American, French, Swiss and Scotch guests sat down together, equally tired, equally hungry and equally grateful to their hostess for her bountiful supplies. We reached Yokohama at midnight; we had set out before nine that morning, but we had seen the new blossoms and a miracle. One day was not too long.”
I have introduced the foregoing accounts of walking through fire, because fire is considered the most deadly foe to human life that is. These facts prove that any certain beliefs that destroy for a time man’s fear of fire give him mastery over it, and are incontrovertible evidence of man’s power to conquer death here in the world, and at the present time. I now pass on to still farther establish the truth of this assertion.
Thought as a Force Has Scarcely Been Tested: It is Only Now Beginning to be Believed in: Its Power is Something Not Dreamed of at This Time
I have spoken of the connection between the brain and the body by means of the nerves. When the brain comes to the conclusion that such and such things are possible, such as walking through fire unharmed, the nerves carry this conclusion to every part of the body, and the body being negative to the brain (less intelligent) accepts it as true. And it is true. It is true because the brain creates. Every statement of the brain is a creation. In the realm of mind, and there is no other realm, for all is mind, it is a perfectly reasonable conclusion that the statements of the brain create, and that nothing can successfully stand against them.
Man has thought himself up from the primordial life cell; that cell that is a seed germ; the first faint expression of the Principle of Attraction.
He has come up from his earliest beginning all the way by thought. In every upward step in evolution he has known more than he previously knew. He has had a larger range of experiences, all of which are recorded in his brain and impressed upon his body by the brain’s messengers, the nerves. His body has refined and strengthened continually because he kept gaining more knowledge, which to the mental creature is power.
Knowledge gives the only power there is. I think everyone will admit this. Then, if man is all mind or intelligence or brain—stuff that thinks—it must be that with every bit of added knowledge he becomes a greater creature. It is because man is a mental creature that his growth proceeds by the acquisition of knowledge. A man made of dead matter, such as God is said to have made, could only have increased in strength and size by the addition of more dead matter. But the mental man, every atom of whom is a spark of pure intelligence, susceptible to infinite development through his constantly growing experiences, is a different creature. He is alive all over. He created himself through his power to think; he did this on the unconscious plane where he was always thinking, though without observing the trend or character of his thought, until he has brought himself up from the first life cell to his present state of development. Think of what this means. If man has reached his present state of development by thought, and if every atom of his body is involved in his power to think, thus proving that he is a purely mental creature, then it shows forth clearly that he is in his own hands. He was not made; he unfolded out of himself by the power of thought inherent in him and in all things. He has now reached a certain stage in his unfoldment, and has stopped because his thought tells him that men die at “three-score years and ten,” or thereabouts. Man believes he must die because all his predecessors—so far as he knows—have died. He does not consider the facts in the case, and cannot consider them so long as he is ignorant of them.
He does not know that, being a purely mental creature, he has built himself up from his far-away beginning by a mental process, namely, the acquisition of more and more knowledge continually. If he really knew this, he would see that he had always been in his own hands, even when he was in much lower grades of belief than at present—grades of belief that showed him forth in vegetable and animal forms. And if he has been in his own hands in these extremely low conditions, and even then had the self-building power that pushed forth to constant unfoldment, what has deprived him of the power?
Surely, nothing has deprived him of it. It is as strong in him now as it ever has been; the only trouble is that he has not known it.
The science of mind unfoldment, the beginning of which this book is endeavoring to make clear, will show him how to use this power in his farther conquests through life. This book is written with no other purpose than to show thinkers the possibility of conquering death. Life is now much more precious than it has ever been, much more enjoyable, much more alive. Every year discloses more and more of the vital principle. We traveled by stage coach once; now by steam car; presently we will go through the air, and even then we will be dissatisfied and will keep on exploring the elements for other means of propulsion for our inventions. For we stop absolutely nowhere; there is no stop to us. The idea that we must die and leave the world undeveloped, when we want to be here and have a hand in its development, is absurd. We are not dead enough at this time to accept such a possibility.
We are in an age of the aggregation of enormous fortunes; and even after surrounding ourselves with all the luxuries the genius of man can suggest, there are millions of money left over uninvested. And in what shall this money be invested? In something that will add to our happiness.
Yes, but we die; and so far as we know, the thing ends there. At all events, whether it ends there or not, the strand of our efforts is broken; and this is not what we desire. We can scarcely find a man or woman so old and decrepit that he or she does not still cling to life. Pain, disease, poverty are all acceptable before death, even with the glittering chance of the Christian’s heaven on the other side.
What in the name of all that is true does this mean?
It means that the world is here for men to live in. The idea that it is not worth trying to do anything with is passing away. Look at the inventions that have been constructed out of its resources; and here are men, physical scientists, who tell us that we have scarcely reached the outward verge of these resources; and again there are those who tell us they are endless.
Thought as a force has scarcely been tested at all. It is only now beginning to be believed in; its power is something not dreamed of at this time.
One thing certain—it is thought expressed in and through the body, by means of the nerves leading from the brain, that has lifted life from its lowest to its present high plane. Such a force as this need not, and will not, stop where it is.
Thought is not only the greatest of all forces, but is what no other force is; it is an intelligent force. It is not propelling an engine on a track; it is doing work that is a thousand times greater; it is bringing forth the Law or Attraction into externals, and thereby increasing life and decreasing death.
I have observed for a long time that as I acquired more knowledge of the latent resources of nature, or as I let my imagination dwell on them, so that wonderful possibilities not yet actualized appeared within the range of my intellectual vision, my body would grow stronger. I would seem to go up a step higher in my power over the negatives of life, so that my treatment of the patients who applied to me for cure was more effective, and cured more rapidly. My power to speak the word for the greatness, the undying potency of life, was stronger.
And what assurance of endless development toward happiness and freedom from the thousand disagreeables of life this gradual growth of power indicates! How can anyone be timid or fearful, or apprehensive of fate or luck or circumstance, who feels within himself that this strange power of overcoming obstacles is increasing constantly? I tell you this is mastery; and its meaning is endless conquest. It means freedom. And oh, what a meaning this is! I think that the single word “freedom” embraces every hope and aspiration the human heart can feel.
When I was a child I heard grown-up people talk of the happiness of childhood; but I knew that I was not happy. I could not do as I pleased; I was not free; the control of my parents galled me constantly. I thought I should be happy when I got to be a woman; but when I grew to that estate I found more bonds still. And it is a fact that my bonds increased constantly with the years until I came into the freedom of that greatest of all truths, namely, all is mind; and that, therefore, progression is a mental movement; and the liberation from bonds is the liberation from ignorance; in consequence of which all one has to do—in order to achieve freedom—is to emancipate himself from the deeply seated race beliefs that hold the world in chains, and to use his intellect in prospecting for new truth.
To answer for one’s self—independently of the opinions of others—the questions that arise in one’s mind, is the path by which all freedom if attained.
And freedom means nothing less than life; life in the fullest and completest sense; life in absolute exemption from every shade of fear and anxiety.
To be afraid of anything, to dread any event the future may hold for you, is to be enslaved; is to be held in bonds that gall; is to be unhappy and wretched and sick. To be afraid of anything or to dread anything argues ignorance on our part; for ignorance is the matter of fear, and fear is the one tyrant; the one and only enslaver of men.
And yet men will not seek answers to their own questions; they will not gratify the bristling curiosity of their ever searching minds. They content themselves with shirking these questions, or answering them by platitudes handed down through a hundred generations of unthought. We consider it cruel to stifle the breath of a young creature at its birth; it seems an awful thing to cut off life in its budding source; but we do not dream how cruel it is to cut off the tendrils of the growing mind as they reach forward in the spirit of longing inquiry.
And yet this is murder no less than in the former case; and it may be murder in a much higher degree; murder that is more far-reaching in its stultifying effects upon the growth of the people.
I begin to regard a mental question as a sacred thing; a thing that must not be ignored; a thing that must be cherished, held fast and never lost sight of until the answer to it comes. How often have I said that the question and answer were only the two poles of the same thing! The question is simply the forerunner of the answer, and the growing mind that projects the question holds in latency the power that answers it.
These mental questionings are sign manuals of growth. They are to be, held quietly in the thought until the thought answers them. Do not refer them to your preacher or your doctor, and do not hunt their solution in books, but simply wait in faith, knowing that the answer will soon be born out of your own organization. The answers to your mental questionings that you get from other people are not your answers. They may be correct, but they are not yours; your answers, when evolved out of yourself, will become a part of your body; they will actually take the form of flesh and blood and be a portion of your visible existence.
I would not give a cent for any truth that does not build my body into greater strength, harmony, beauty, endurance and power. I use the thoughts of other people and their writings as stimulants only to the questioning capacity of my own mind.
Every day I want my mind to suggest more questions. Very few things pass unnoticed by the mind that is put in train for true growth; every little thing and every trifling event have their hidden cause which the growing mind questions, and whose answers add to its caliber. For a man is a purely mental creature, and he grows by stimulating his intellect to ask questions, which his intellect also answers.
It does me very little good to read a book that is in consonance with my own opinions; but a book that disagrees with me in many particulars is a source of interest and growth to me. There is greater stimulus to the mind in a line of argument that carries you out of your own peculiar beliefs and methods than in one that agrees with you. Only observe closely what you read, and what you hear and see, and your mind will find food in everything.
I find a great amount of mental apathy among the people. This condition is deadly; get out of it by all means. One had better center his intellect on the veriest trifles than to feel that his interest in all things is on the wane. The cause of this mental apathy is apparent enough. It is the result of ages spent in farming out our thinking. We pay the preachers and lawyers and doctors to think for us. We even pay gardeners and artists to find out for us what is beautiful and what is not. And see how utterly dependent we are upon the opinions of others for every conceivable thing; we consult the fashion magazines when we have a dress to make, and we observe closely just how the trimming on hats is worn when we contemplate the purchase of a new one. We scarcely know how to express an idea on a new book until we have read what the critics say of it.
We will not do our own thinking, and we do not dream of what we miss by this neglect. To think is to live. Thought is life and builds itself in the body as a constantly increasing vital power. It is the power whose increase is pledged to banish disease, poverty, old age and death.
It is necessary that we should form the habit of thinking. It is essential to our healthy and prolonged existence that we should do it. Go to work and learn how to think; take some subject and examine it mentally on all sides, and form conclusions of your own about it. This will be the beginning of the growth of your reasoning powers, and if you keep it up for even a month you will be stronger—not only mentally, but physically. Do you know why? It is because body and mind are one, and you cannot strengthen one without strengthening the other. And there is nothing but your lack of faith to prevent this strengthening from going on until disease and old age and death are beneath your feet.
Studying man from the standpoint of evolution, we cannot find a stopping place for him. He is made of mental stuff, and he generates more and finer mental stuff; namely, thought. And with this thought—self-evolved—he can do anything he wants to do.
What is to prevent him from going on in self-creation until he becomes absolute master of his body and his surroundings? Nothing but his inherited belief in his own limitation; a belief which he holds in common with the rest of the race in its present plane of development. As he created himself, there is no one who can limit his further creation except himself. He can do it by his ignorance of the mighty fact that he is a seed germ of unending growth. Because men are dead intellectually to this great truth is the reason their bodies die. Moreover, in proportion as the race is dead to this truth, just in that proportion does it show forth disease and old age.
Being haunted by these thoughts for many years, and feeling great discontent with even the ultimate of race progress as expressed in our institutions and society generally, I conceived the idea that there was something better in life than anyone had ever found. I had long believed that happiness was not only a legitimate pursuit, but by far the highest pursuit of a human being; and my thoughts of happiness did not point to a heaven after this life was spent, but to happiness here on earth, and now.
Having made man the great study of my life, I had come to believe in him. He assumed vast proportions in my sight. I looked at him from every point of view and felt that the noblest part of him, and by far the largest part, had been entirely overlooked in his estimate of himself. That part was his imagination.
And what is the imagination? It is a portion of man’s mentality so full of vivid and glorious prospects of what might be that his ordinary brain cannot credit it. It is that region of the mind which holds in latency the power of his redemption from every bond that clogs his footsteps at this time. It holds the promise of his release from disease, old age and death. It gives him the assurance of his power to live here as long as he wishes—not in age and decrepitude, but in constantly replenished youth, vigor and beauty, and to build the earth into a paradise fit for the gods, such as he will become simply through a knowledge of his own limitless capacity, and the self-trust which develops it.
The imagination is as much a part of man as that portion of his mentality which he is now expressing in everyday use. What does it mean? Is there anything that means nothing? Only the unperceiving dullard will say so. To me the imagination is the forerunner of higher development than any person has yet believed in. It has been said that the imagination is full of idle wishes. Ah! but wishes are not idle. They are promoters to investigation, and stimulants to action in unexplored realms of thought.
Long ago I knew that every wish is the sure prophecy of its own fulfillment, provided the intelligence will hold faithfully to a belief in it. Everything the heart desires will come, if one is only true to it long enough. What does this prove?
Simply that man is his own creator, as I have already stated so many times, and that the method of his creation is to trust his desires long enough for them to become fixed in organic form.
The imagination is the intrepid advance courier of individual progress; it is that stirring in the bulb which heralds the coming of the lily. But it will die, and its hopes will die, unless the practical everyday intellect now in use recognizes it at something near its worth. And as long as its neglect continues, the human lily will not advance beyond the bulb—which is its present condition—and man will perish in the beginnings of his existence, and will not reach the blossoming of his glorious promise.
The Power of Thought in the Development of the Will
The main point m these writings is this: we are not pensioners on any power outside of ourselves.
If we fail to get this fact well fixed in our minds, we cannot become established in the positive pole of our being, where the negative conditions of weakness, deformity and disease fall away from us.
Consider, then, that we are not beggars dependent on the mercy of a personal God. We are freeborn citizens of the universe at large. We have actually builded ourselves step by step, first in the thought and then in the body, through our own individual conquests over ignorance; and we are in the world today as masters and heroes, and not as slaves and underlings.
To remember this fact and to hold it always in view is so important as to put its compulsion on all negative forces and make them our servants.
And what are the negative forces? The reader must excuse repetition. I am writing a philosophy, and not a novel, and it takes “line upon line and precept upon precept” to get a clear comprehension of it in answer to the question, what are the negative forces? I say that all unorganized substance is negative to organized substance. All lower forms of organization are negative to man, the highest form. Lightning, clouds and the elements generally are what I call unorganized forces. The animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms are organized substance, but their organization is vastly inferior to that of man, and he is, therefore, master of them all.
“Peace, be still,” said Jesus to the storm, and everything quieted down. “What manner of man is this,” asked one, “that even the winds and waves obey him?” This question was asked nearly two thousand years ago, and I now answer it for the first time. Jesus exercised his own mastery; and this is all that is necessary in order to check the storms or quell the waves; to stop the African simoon and to forbid the approach of wild animals. It is all that is necessary for man’s perfect protection.
Organization confers power. Even the lower forms of organized life possess wonderful power in warding off danger, though unconsciously to themselves. The mere fact of organization puts a certain compulsion on the unorganized elements. Organization, no matter how unconscious it may be, is a form of protest against dissolution; and this protest is its protection to the extent of its knowledge of its own power.
No form of protest against dissolution, however, is perfect, except that which emanates from an organization that has come into a highly conscious perception of its own rights and its own power. This high form of organization is then proof against every negative form of organization and against the unorganized elements.
It is plain to be seen how, as we grow more and more into a knowledge of our own power, we become more and more free from fear. Just as soon as we see that life and (he universe are not our foes, but that all things are awaiting the development of our intelligence in order to serve us, we are lifted out of fear.
From my own experience I know that it is not possible to come into this position suddenly. For years I seemed to be held just in the turn of the tide, where the old thought was swerving round into the new. It was all I could do to hold my own against the downward current of the world’s long established opinions. I seemed to gain nothing and to lose nothing; or, more truly, there were times when I appeared to gain rapidly, and then I would lose it all and find myself in the same old tracks. Another strenuous effort to hold my own would keep me from drifting quite away from my stronghold, which was always self; and standing on self, I would breast the waves once more for the sake of truth and manhood. Latterly I can see that I am gaining. But the effort is still enormous.
The effort is not that of bulldog determination; such an attitude becomes unbearably tiresome in time; but it is an intellectual one; it is the unflagging endeavor to recognize that the bulldog determination is within you every moment whether you hear a bark or not. You need to keep constantly in view the knowledge that your will is equal to any emergency, whether great or small.
And yet you need to avoid that irrational muscular tension which is the manifestation of the animal, and stand in the reposeful attitude of self-conscious mastery.
A person can lose sight of his will power entirely by habits of postponement. Do not postpone any necessity for action, nor defer doing what you really wish to do. The habit of tying up your will is like tying up an arm or leg; you lose the use of it in time; and note this; the great necessity for death in the world is to remove paralyzed wills—inactive and inoperative wills—crippled and weak-kneed wills. Death has small power over vital wills; and when the vital will comes into consciousness of its own strength, death cannot touch it at all.
Every form of disease you may have is simply a negation of your will, or a non-comprehension on the part of your intelligence of the strength of your will.
“But who is it that negatives my will?” you ask.
You, yourself. Your will exists in untold power. It cannot possibly l)e diseased or maimed or crippled in any way; it cannot be deaf or blind or weak. It would not be your will if it were any of these; it would be your “won’t” or your “cannot,” or something other than your will, and something not belonging to you. But your intelligence does not recognize this fact, and, therefore, everything in the shape of weakness or disease is the non-recognition of the truth concerning your will.
You see from this that disease is unreal. It is a false belief that you will surely cease to accept as soon as you know the truth. “The truth shall make you free.”
“But,” you answer, “the truth is here; the intelligences of many people have accepted it just as you state it; and yet their bodies show forth very slight results. How is this?”
This is a question that I am glad to answer.
Why are our bodies not showing forth the truth, now that our intelligences have accepted it?
We are just emerging from a world of unconscious thought. The thoughts of, or the beliefs in, sin, sickness and death, into which we were born, form the thick, heavy, miasmatic mental atmosphere that everyone of us breathes. It is dense as any fog, and no living will can beat it back entirely and at once. I can seem to clear the space about me for a time, and then the heavy vapors of a world’s ignorant beliefs close in on me again, and paralyze my efforts. Then I rest a day or two, realizing fully each hour that “they also serve who only stand and wait;”‘ for in these spells of rest I hold fast to my faith that I shall overcome; and when the time for action arrives I am stronger than I was before.
“And what is the time of action? And what kind of action do you mean?”
I mean mental action; times when I turn my whole organization away from the old world beliefs in sin, sickness and death, and hold myself closed against these beliefs with a mental force not to be described. In this way I isolate my entire organism from its surroundings, and my own new and revised thought has a chance to work out the redemption of my body. And in each of these efforts of isolation I gain a little. But the holding is hard work, and the least relaxation gives admission to the old deadly beliefs, and I find myself slipping backward again; backward to a place where I must take another rest, but always holding firmly to my faith in myself, and in the truth as I see it, and in the firm conviction of ultimate victory.
The average tendency of the world is to grow in the right direction; that is, in the direction of external manifestation. It is now, and always has been, tending more and more to the externalization of the will. Active, outdoor sports are becoming more popular than ever; woman is being drawn from the seclusion where the ignorance of past ages had placed her, to take a share in them. Lawn tennis and that glorious invention of modern days, the bicycle, are leading forth her beautiful vitality—her will.
Dress reform begins to mitigate the rigor of her utterly defenseless costume—the costume of the slave; and a few more disciples of Delsarte and Jenness Miller will liberate her to such splendid activities as would make the world smile derisively just to hint at.
But I shall hint at them, nevertheless, regretting that it is only a hint I can give, since a full revelation is locked up from me and from us all in the unopened storehouse of the latent brain.
But the hint; yes, the hint shall be given. If the “bumble-bee” can set the laws of causation at defiance, and lift himself through the air on wings that have been incontestably proven to be a laughable failure, then the people are going to fly without wings. The will power is all the wings that anyone needs. The will power is being developed more and more into activities, even without the knowledge of its still latent possibilities. When these possibilities become generally known, then bolder activities will be projected, and still bolder ones, all leading up to a degree of muscular activity that will enable one to hold himself in the air and to float in it at ease.
I have spoken of muscular activity, but muscular activity is mental activity, for body is mind; and when it is once perceived to be a fact that there is no limit to the power of mind, the feat of flying will no longer be considered impossible, and the one and only impediment to its realization will be removed.
Even in this age and generation—material as they are—we do not live by sight. Every particle of life we show forth is by faith. With more faith—faith in ourselves, in the God-power within us and not without us—we will recognize more life in ourselves—a thousand fold than we now do.
And this extra life will be expressed in undreamed of activities. Our present condition, as compared with what it will be, is dull and heavy as that of the old saurian monsters contrasted with the fleetest horses of our time. What a lesson there is in the fact that our fleetest and noblest animals are legitimate descendants of some horrible creature that took to itself form, perhaps, even before the waters separated and dry land appeared!
If, with our growing recognition of the will power within us, we felt ourselves less inclined to activity, it would be a clear indication that the will was not to be expressed in activities; for the inclination is the best guide we have. But one will find by examining himself that with every fresh accession of will power (or fresh recognition of it) he is prompted in some new action. It is the constant effort of the will to externalize itself. But persons of leaden temperament may resist this effort of the will so much and so continuously as to almost lose sight of it. I often feel the presence of the will moving me to action; but I postpone the action, and thus lose sight of the will that prompted it.
Does your will appear to be inactive? Then you must develop it; you must bring it into view by watching for it and expecting it. The will has been so systematically crushed out of sight through a mistaken system of education, that it is going to take a good deal of effort to make people see that in crushing the will the man is crushed.
You who have lost sight of your wills must surely find them, and when found, you must stand by them as you would stand by your life. Let your intelligence reason on your will from the basic principles set forth in these pages, until you know that it is not evil but good, and that it desires nothing but good.
The will lies at the root of the whole complex organization of man; and this organization is all intelligence; and intelligence is mind. The body is mind; it is condensed thought, and is of the same substance as the more etherial expression of the brain everywhere called thought. The body, which is condensed thought, bears, in a way, the same relation to that invisible substance which we all call thought, that water does to steam, or that the flower does to its perfume—which is a part of the flower, composed of the same material, but possessing a more rarefied form.
But here are these old bodies of ours, misbuilt; shaped in the form of the world’s beliefs, and not in accordance with our wills, and held in the atmosphere of the world’s ignorance while as yet there is no purer, truer atmosphere for them to inhale. What are we going to do about this?
We are going to clear a space about us by planting the seed of the new life in virgin soil, right here in this beautiful spot, where we now live. It was for this purpose that we came here.
First of all, if I know anything at all I know that the world’s belittling, limiting find hampering beliefs, so inimical to progression, are all wrong. I say I know this. Then, as a matter of course, I refuse to be held by them. I stand on guard against them every hour I live. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” in this case as in many others; and I fear there are many of you who will say as some of the disciples said to Jesus, “This is a hard saying,” and turn back. But I can assure you that the hardest of the fight is now. After the first few conquests, the way will be easier. But now we have the whole downward current of the world’s ignorant thought to meet and turn aside. Therefore, there is nothing to do but to hold the fort sternly and gallantly against the beliefs that are now, and have always been, sending the generations down to death. We do not have to believe these old beliefs, and really we do not believe them. As fast as they arrive before us we can understandingly deny their right to existence, until we have cleared a space about ourselves where they cannot live. This is what we have been doing for years; this is why we are here in this comparatively isolated spot; denying the old beliefs that planted the seeds of disease and age and death in our bodies. And though from day to day or from week to week we perceive no change, yet in looking back to the beginning it cannot be denied that we have gained a good deal. We can stand alone now while the tide of adverse opinion washes about our feet, as the waves beat against the impregnable Gibraltar. We have thought ourselves out of the miasmatic race beliefs, and now understand how the power of thought, having begun the work, can do the rest.
Thoughts are things; they are forces; and forces are not impalpable nothings. Thoughts are as tangible as the nerve centers in your bodies, and they can act on your nerves as the nerves act on the blood vessels, and the blood vessels on the muscles.
The will is the man; it is the function of thought to develop the will and to establish it in our bodies—thus bringing forth the Life Principle into the activities of this busy world.
Thought, having broken the hold of the wretched old race beliefs, now begins to formulate what it conceives to be truer and nobler beliefs.
The will, which has always been crying out to the intelligence against the belief in disease and death, now has a response from the intelligence. “At last I perceive that there are no disease and no death,” answers the thought. No sooner are these words spoken with the keenness of conviction than the nerves thrill with the news, and rush to tell it to the blood vessels, which, in their turn, leave the message at the door of every atom in the body.
As powerful as thought is known to be, and as numberless as the incidents of its accidental cures, so great is the stupidity of the age that its functions in the human system have not yet been discovered. Or perhaps I should not say this. A good many Mental Scientists know it. Prentice Mulford hints at it. Dr. Holcombe, of New Orleans, a long established physician of the old school, understood it and made use of it in his practice. But that the great body of medical men should know nothing about it with all the experience they have had with it, is but an example of lack of readiness of men generally to grasp and follow new lines of thought.
Dr. Holcombe says: “When one has grasped the idea that by creative laws mind is dominant in all things over the body, the minutest changes of which are in reality organic manifestations or showings forth of mental conditions, many things before incomprehensible become clear. From the standpoint of this truth we see how emotions (which are produced by thought) determine the most rapid changes in the secretions of the body; how fright turns the hair gray; how terror poisons the mother’s milk; how great mental excitement or the slow torture of mental anxiety write their baneful effects upon the tissues of the brain; how the images made upon the mother’s brain are transferred and photographed upon the body of the unborn child; how epidemics are spread by the contagion of fear and the transference of thought; the thing feared in the mind being reproduced in the physical system.
“Physical appearances are only the external forms or natural embodiments of mental causes (human wills) which are the real motor powers. Effects are produced, not by the apparent external means, but by internal and corresponding mental means. When these internal and intellectual forces (the will) can be evoked and set in action from within, the external means may be entirely dispensed with.” (Which is equivalent to saying that the will, as a healer, is so far superior to medicine and all other external appliances as to make nothing to them.) “It is, therefore, the maxim of the metaphysician that the cause and cure of disease are always mental.
“The part which the mind has always played in the cure has been ignored or not recognized, because of the prevalent and dominant spirit of materialism. The mind (thought) has been all the time counted out, while in reality it may have been the chief, and perhaps the only factor in the case. When we are confronted with cures of the most remarkable character, cures entirely beyond the reach of our best anti-anxiety medication, we attribute them to imagination, faith, hope, expectation. And we do rightly, for imagination, faith, hope, expectation, are states of the mind; are the mind itself in substantial activity and creative energy; and when these vital forces can be evoked and directed there is no limit to the possibilities that lie in store for us.”
In another place the doctor says: “Thoughts are things: ideas are forces; and the mental life is a transcendent organized sphere, of which the material cosmos around us is a reflection. Nothing stands alone; no thought, no mind, no faintest trace of an idea. All are associated and linked together by innumerable laws.” (In my opinion there is but one law; it is the adaptation of this law to innumerable needs that gives it the appearance of many laws.) “Every thought we think is a ray of mind which radiates from us and is reflected from all other minds associated with us. The transference of thought is as simple a thing in the mental sphere as the radiation and reflection of light are in the physical sphere. The mental solidarity of the race is perfect. All the states of mind represented by faith, hope, imagination, fixed opinion, expectation, etc., may be exercised by the physician or by friends, and projected with more or less force and power upon the interior and unconscious minds of all who are supposed to be incapable of exercising mental powers of their own. This is the keynote to the sickness of children, and also to the secret of their cure.”
Dr. Holcombe’s testimony to the fact that thought can make sick and make well is all the more valuable because of his long study and practical experience in the old schools of medicine. I recognize his contributions to the literature of the day on this subject as invaluable, even while I fail to endorse all his conclusions.
That thought can produce sickness of the body is the inevitable consequence of an ignorance of the fact that it acts on the nerves which carry its messages through the whole organization. And if it can make one sick it can also make one well by the same process. Thought can be educated in a knowledge of truth until it becomes—not only a curative agent—but a perfectly irresistible factor in the reconstruction of the whole human body. And now I want to tell once more, and in as concise manner as possible, how it can be made to do it.
All sickness and weakness, deformity and old age are but denials of the individual will, which is the real individual. They are denials of the power of the will by the uninformed intelligence. Let the intelligence once come to recognize the standing and importance of the will, and to feel a measure of its strength, and the person is then ready to heal his own infirmities and those of other people. His thought becomes charged with the truth; for it is a fact that as the will pervades every part of the body, it also pervades every part of the thought. The thought, then, being infilled with the force and fire of the will creates an atmosphere of strength about the person which is drawn into the body; it establishes its own character there, and builds a foundation for the new temple of grace and beauty that is to be erected. It infuses every atom of the body with a fresh sense of power, and thus makes it ready to hold fast to the new truths that will be planted from time to time. It actually tells the nerves, as it were, of their latent health and vigor, and awakens them to a knowledge of the fact. The nerves are the connecting link between the thought and the more external parts of the body; and through this link you can impart your best thought accompanied by the strongest possible recognition of your will. But this is only the beginning; it is the breaking up of old conditions preparatory to the separation of the true from the false.
For self communion, sit alone and draw your thoughts home; let them dwell on the power involved in the creature man; let them see him in his greatest possible strength as the master of all things. Let them then know that the will was built up by desire, and that there is nothing in it that it does not desire; that indeed it is the representative of the best it has ever known—the image of its own highest ideal. When the thought reaches this point it will see how greatly the body misrepresents the will, and it is then ready to correct the errors of the body. At this juncture permit the thought to sink down into the body; it will do this if it is held firmly from wandering. The will which the thought carries into the diseased body meets and arouses the will in the diseased part, which had become inoperative from lack of recognition by the intelligence. Being thus aroused, it arouses the intelligence in that part, and the old fossilized conditions begin to break up.
It very often happens that the effect of a strong and continuous recognition of the will, and the holding to it firmly, as being the real and true man, makes one sore and lame and miserable, discouraged and ill-natured. This condition is the rebellion of the old consolidated mistakes that have been built in the body by race beliefs. Take no notice of this condition if it comes. Hold on to the belief that the will is the rightful master, and ignore as far as possible the rebellion of the old mistakes.
Concentrate your thought more and more firmly until the whole mentality seems tense with it. Say, “I do not have to be hoodwinked by the old race beliefs thrust on me; it is time I should judge right and wrong for myself.”
You can scarcely prevent your thoughts from entering your nervous organization, no matter what their character. They form an atmosphere about you that you live in; and if you keep them always true to the truth that disease is simply ignorance of your own power, and always see that they are charged with your unconquerable will, they will cure you of all beliefs in weakness and disease, and will lead you up from the death plane to a clear knowledge of the fact that you do not have to die.
You see from what I have said in this chapter how very essential it is to keep in a hopeful state of mind. It requires firmness and an exercise of the will to do this; but you can do it. You will have to learn how to be firm. A firm mind is a firm body, for body and mind are one; and a firm body is a healthy body. And so this whole chapter hinges on this point. The recognition of the will is the evolution of the will in the body. There is nothing in all life so firm as the will; learn to establish your will as master in your body, and it will show forth in just what you desire; health, strength, beauty, happiness and prosperity, and eventually in the conquest of death.
Thought, and thought alone, has power to develop the will. And the thought must be intelligent as well as persistent in its efforts to search for the evidence of the will within the body; for in no other way can the old race errors be driven out and the true man and woman established in each personality.
Let the thought always remember that it was the will that built the body, and that nothing but the will can ever restore it; because the will is the vital part, the propelling power of it, and can still infuse life into the deadest member wherever the faith and understanding exist that can clothe it, and thus make it manifest.
It would be weakness to distrust the power of thought after the many instances of what it has done. And thought is not only an agent to be used close at home; it can be sent any distance and carry its message. The healing of absent patients through thought transmission is now too common for even the most ignorant to deny.
Actually a new world is opening through the, as yet, little understood power of thought transmission; but why anticipate? Almost before I can rush this book into print there will probably be published instances that will establish my predictions.
Without the Will There is no Individuality: And in Proportion as the Will is Strong or Weak, So is the Individual Strong or Weak: The Will is the Individual
When desire has proceeded through unconscious growth accompanied by expectation so clear as to admit no shadow of doubt to cloud it, it becomes what we call a will. What, then, it a human will? It is desire ripened into a knowledge of power; ripened to the point where it feels that it is master and can stand alone, commanding what it pleases, begging and borrowing of none. At this point, if a man will learn the Law of Growth as he may learn it, he can take himself up where unconscious growth dropped him, and go on growing through all eternity. This he must do if he is to continue his existence on this planet. He is a self-created being and cannot shuffle off the responsibility of his existence. He must do his own growing. Even the death of the body, should his spirit survive it, will not release him from the work. Death is one of the things he must conquer before he can make further advancement. He must conquer death for himself, or he must so recognize the principles of its conquest by others as to become a participant in this conquest. This latter kind of conquest is salvation by belief. It is a species of mental healing, a kind of self-hypnotism. In time it may ripen into a more positive kind of salvation.
Desire, in its forth going in search of happiness, never positively commands that for which it is reaching until it comes to the place where it sees its own power. As soon as it sees its power it knows what its true character is, and is able to pronounce its own name, and that name the Human Will.
The human will—these are words of unmeasured and immeasurable power. What strength the thought of them confers! Whosoever can pronounce them understandingly is no longer under the bondage of fear, no longer compelled to submit to sickness, poverty or death. Such can truthfully say, “I am what I desire to be. My intelligence has at last crowned my desire and shown me my own mastery. I have that measure of understanding that enables me to see myself as I am. I have been building myself all through the ages without knowing what I was building. Now I know. I have been building a human will, the world’s conqueror.” Intelligence has ripened blind desire into that positive personality, a human will.
Let us look at the will for a moment—the will which has come to a knowledge of man’s true relationship to all things. Why! what a vaunting thing it is! It sets aside all those limitations so long prescribed by its fear. It tells him at once what he wants is incarnate in himself. The intelligence recognizes the Tightness of desire; desire is guided by the intelligence; the two are at one—that one the will of the man—and it in harmony with the Law of Being.
What we will we love; therefore, to be a human will is to be a human love. We do not will that to be which we do not love.
Intellect in man has been shaped by contact with the outside world. It has been pressed into a mold, as it were, by its environments, and these environments seem to it to be utterly unyielding and inflexible. Therefore, the intellect in its present phase of development prescribes boundaries to the will, to the vital life force within us, and it has been imposing these bounds for centuries to the retarding of our growth.
The man who is afraid of his will is afraid of his love. He is afraid of the best part of himself, for the will is the highest attribute he possesses. It is not only the highest, but it is the strongest; it is that which makes him go. To go aright is a matter of experience with him; but to go at all is the great point. The will turns ever in the direction of happiness. It never seeks unhappiness. All so-called sins are simply mistakes; they are misdirected efforts at the attainment of happiness that everyone will avoid if he certainly knows how to do so. The old idea that human nature is depraved, and that we would rather sin than not, becomes positively absurd when the character of sin is understood. A sin being the mistake a man makes in the pursuit of happiness, it is folly to suppose that he will make mistakes willfully, when every mistake he makes helps to retard the pleasure he is seeking. It is as if we said a man would go the way he does not wish rather than the way he does wish to go.
Christian Science in denying individuality denies not the functions of the will alone, but those of the intellect also. This is a very grave mistake. Individuality is the visible expression of the universal will. If “at the beginning” was “The Word,” then individuality is the spoken word, the word made manifest. Without the will there is no individuality, and in proportion as the will is strong or weak so is the individual strong or weak. The will is the individual.
^Nature is not a myth, as Christian Science asserts. Man’s personal life is an assured reality, and all the efforts of Mental Science are directed toward the establishment of the man more firmly in it. This is the one matter of infinite importance, and instead of ignoring it, every aim of my life and of every word I have written, or shall write, will be directed toward the establishment of it more firmly in race belief. The will is a force. It pushes onward; it is expansive, and if an uneducated intellect did not hold it in check, it would soon carry the race out of the ruts in which it has been moving for ages.
That desire should be held in check until the intelligence had ripened to a comprehension of its uses seems to have been a wise thing. No doubt it has been the proper thing, for in nature “whatever is, is right.” But now that the intellect has grown to an understanding of the uses of desire and begins to cast about, wondering how it can cooperate with, instead of seeking means to crush it, desire may wisely be given leadership. As soon as the intellect learns the value and uses of desire, the seeming two will have become consciously one; that one, the indestructible will, and in the language of theology, man will have made the atonement (at-one-ment) and may rightfully exercise authority over all things below him, both animate and inanimate.
The evolution of the universal will through our personalities will bring heaven to the world, for the universal will is love.
Without personality there would be no uses, nothing to do, no works to bring forth, no faculties of brain to develop. A heaven without personalities would be even more uninviting than the one where saints wear crowns, play on harps, and have one eternal Sabbath.
To be forever busy in making our surroundings better and enlarging our sphere of activities, knowing that there is no limit to our faculties any more than there is a limit to the Principle of Attraction—this is heaven.
Obedience to the will, which is the voice of the Life Principle in man, involves constant effort. Will inspires to perpetual conquest. Conquest is life; there is no life but by conquest. Anything short of continual conquest is death.
Irresolution or weakness expresses itself in all the various forms of disease, including old age, and ending in death. The constant conquest essential to one who means to outlive and outdistance all the weaknesses incident to humanity on this present plane looks appalling to a person of ordinary habits of indolence; for, I repeat, that constant conquest involves constant effort; and habits of indolence are among the first things to conquer. If one yields to habits of indolence in thought he expresses this condition in the absence of action, and sinks deeper and deeper into a state of lethargy leading down to death. We must patiently cultivate a dauntlessness of will that is ready to overleap any barrier and undertake anything, and we must begin this in the small things of everyday life.
Small conquests are great in their time, and no conquest goes uncounted in the general makeup of character.
Perhaps you feel too weak for the day’s work. Say, “My intelligent will is competent to manage this;” then put your hands to the work, remembering that the will in you is from that unfailing source, the vital principle itself—the steam power in every motion ever made, whether great or small—and see how fast the strength will come.
Perhaps you hesitate over some business undertaking, the success of which rests with you, and with no one else. Look to your intelligent will for moral support. Trust it as the saint trusts his oracle. Do not cloud it by doubt, and it will lift you over every difficulty and crown you with victory. Note this—that I use the words “intelligent will.” I make a distinction between intelligent will and the brute will, though they are both one in different states of development. The brute will and the intellectual will are the same thing, only that the intellectual will has been lifted to a higher plane through the development of the reasoning powers. Man has been invincible through the strength of the will on all the lower planes of existence. The will he exercised was the will of the brute. Man may become absolutely invincible by the cultivation of the intellectual will, and may wield an infinitely greater power than he ever before wielded. Disease, old age and death are but intellectual negations, or denials, of the strength and perfectness of the will. The will is the moving power of the man. It is a man’s very self. It is great and strong in proportion as the strength and power are recognized and confided in.
The will should be the executor of the intellect and our bodies the executors of our wills. It is said that man is dual. Very well; he is will and intelligence, or love and intelligence. These two are one. A knowledge of this fact is the marriage everywhere spoken of in the Bible. It is that union which will produce the fruit of righteousness (rightness) or holiness (wholeness); that is, it will make us right, or whole, put us in harmonious relations with the principle of being, and so enable us to command it.
The will is the man.
The will alone has rights.
Nothing besides the will has any rights whatever.
The whole aim of life should be to live the will and to .make the will personal in our bodies.
Every place in this chapter where the word “will” is used the word “love” may be substituted without changing the meaning materially. The will of the man is the love of the man. That which he loves he wills, and when intelligence is truly married to desire, the resultant will is rightful ruler of all things.
But to go back to the word “desire.” Desire is love in its outreaching form. It is love before it comes to an understanding of itself, reaching out towards an understanding of itself. It cries, “More! More!” every moment. More what? More food, the creature thinks. More knowledge, more recognition of itself, is really what it wants—a better understanding of its infusing Life Principle—and this it gets constantly, and as constantly yields a better materialization of itself, or a better personality.
At last it reaches that point of understanding of itself where it gets an idea of its own power, and then desire takes on a more positive character and culminates in will. That is to say, when the intelligence recognizes the true nature of desire, all that out-reaching which had appeared as desire simply, feels the power enshrined within it, and so calls itself a will.
So long as the idea of force alone enters into an understanding of the will, it has not been lifted out of the realm of brute instinct. To lift it out of this realm we must get into the knowledge that there is a higher force than brute force. This higher force is love.
During the period of unconscious growth, desire was always accompanied by faith or expectation. It was blind faith, to be sure, but it was faith of a most unquestioning nature. This faith was based on the creature’s dumb recognition of one of the greatest facts connected with the revelation of the new truth. It was based on the fact that there is no time but the present. The eternal now contains all, and the creature in its gut reaching desires held within itself the positive promise of fulfillment of its every wish. Indeed, because there is no future, but only one eternal now, the desire of the creature and the fulfillment of desire were blossom and fruit on the same stem. The asking for a thing was simply the making it apparent in the creature’s personality. It was an out-blossoming of itself, like the newly opening buds on the plant. The animals demonstrated this fact simply because their intelligences were too undeveloped to contradict it. It has only been during the period of man’s ripening into a consciousness of the truth that faith has been separated from desire; but this, too, is passing with the growth of his intelligence, and we are now rounding the last turn in the road, into a fully matured understanding of the Law.
“When you pray, believe that you receive and you have.” This sentence from the Bible contains the whole truth as regards both the conscious and the unconscious growth. Whatever you desire, be sure the tiling exists, or you would not desire it. As it does exist, it is yours by reason of the fact that you do desire it. Therefore, rest in faith—nay, in absolute knowledge that you already have what you asked for, and it will soon begin to materialize to your conscious perceptions.
Your desire is co-related to that which you desire, and the one cannot exist without the other. This is an eternal fact, and I think I have repeated it more times than there are pages in this book. But the hope of the race, and the stimulus of the race to greater effort, are in it. It is absolutely indisputable, and it is the containment of all hope.
When desire culminates in will by the knowledge of many things, chief among which is the fact that we have built ourselves through our growing intelligences, and are, therefore, masters of our surroundings; and furthermore when we know that all we desire exists now, and is ours for the clear seeing of these great truths, we are in a position of mighty strength. We have emerged from the negative plane wherein we felt dependent upon so many things, and, indeed, where we seemed but as pensioners on an unknown God, and beggars on the face of creation—to the strong place in a personal intelligence, where we perceive the independence and majesty we have attained to, resting as it does upon our personal conquests through a period of thousands of years—and we are strong. We are human wills—human loves, and we glory in the freedom of our condition.
For though, as concerns our internal and unseen selves, we are of the universal Life Principle and dependent upon it, yet our external lives are in the personal. Our work is in the personal. The universe of uses is related to the personal, and these personalities that we are building will always endure for the purpose of materializing more of the universal vitality—the Principle of Attraction—or drawing its eternal harmonies forth into organization.
Though the true power within us is of the Principle of Attraction and invisible to us, yet the life we are seeking is not in the invisible, and is not to be found by a denial of our personalities. It is to be found and made available in the world of uses by drawing these powers out and adapting them to our everyday work. It is for this purpose that we investigate the unseen force, which seems to lie behind or within these personalities. We want to know what it is. We want to know its strength, its power and majesty, because the knowing makes every glorious attribute of our unseen selves visible and available in the external life. Our whole duty as citizens of the universe is to make visible the unseen powers that already exist, and have always existed.
Man draws all his power from the great unseen, the universal life or vital force. Theology has taught this in a crude way, making man absolutely dependent upon an all-powerful personal God. The truth is that, while men and all things have but one source from which to draw, each may draw in infinite variety and without limit. It is simply a question of the knowing; of a recognition of the relation of the personal to the impersonal will; of man to the infinite. There is not a creature nor a power, either seen or unseen, that can say “no” to him. The power to know is man’s, and to know is to be. He can know what he wishes by giving himself to the effort. This places him in a position of absolute independence. He can stand up in the face of all creation and say, “I am monarch of all I survey; my right there is none to dispute. No man or power can claim mastery over me. I am myself by virtue of what I know, by virtue of intellectual clear-seeing, by virtue of my intelligent desire being in harmony with the infinite will. Seeing myself but incarnate will, and knowing that in the realm of the high and positive forces the supply is always equal to the demand, I feel myself more than a king. I walk on thrones. There is nothing greater than I.”
Let those who will, teach poor, deluded humanity how to die; I teach it how to live. The reign of the world’s negative religions is passing. I call them negative because their every idea negatives man’s power as a self-savior. The reign of the positive religion, the religion that teaches self-salvation, approaches—is here. The stale-junk-and-hardtack-ideas packed into books so carefully by our forefathers do not feed us. We have grown luxurious and demand the very best there is because we know there is nothing too good for us. Princes unto the manor born, we claim our own. We are what we are by virtue of claiming, and not by begging, and we beg no more. Living human wills, with every possibility enshrined within us, what more do we need? Whosoever can climb to such heights can rejoice and say, “I glory in my freedom; the freedom to know all there is to be known, and I know that by the knowing I shall grow and keep on growing. By the knowing, which is the growing, I shall make my body, this personality of me, a newer version of new and higher thought daily.” To whomsoever would be free I say—hold yourselves in freedom, for you are an intelligent human will. Do not let prejudice set a limit to the operation of your cultivated will. Remember that the cultivated will is always umpire, and give your thought its proper place as its executor.
Remember also that the foes to the operation of the will are only imaginary. You are your own will, your own love; and love dissolves all opposition. The very moment you weaken in your desire for something, fall back on your will. “Oh! divine will, where art thou? Manifest thyself! Conquer and preserve now in my time of need.” This is the prayer to offer. It is a prayer that is always answered, and it is one of the prayers the answer to which comes to stay.
One thing more remains to be said of the will. Desire always seems to hold what it wants in expectancy, but will has learned its power to command. It makes a statement of what it wants, and then falls into a reposeful attitude of kingly possession. “These things are already mine,” it says. “I have them now. They are a part of my individual being.” Then it dismisses the matter, and behold! that which it spoke for shows forth when the hour of use arrives.
The Conquest of Death: The Greatest Effort of the Age: Coming to Florida to Create a Nucleus for the Growth of this Idea
We located in Florida to work out an idea. We wanted to clear a space in the atmosphere of the world’s diseased and dying beliefs, and plant our new hopes and aspirations in it.
We held to beliefs far beyond the world’s power to accept at the time, and we wanted to give our beliefs a chance to prove their reality as nearly as possible, unmolested by opposing thought; so we came to a place where we were, in a great degree, alone at first, and began to make preparations for the coming of others; we knew we had the right to expect others who would be drawn to us under the Law of Attraction. And we were right.
A friend wrote, “Now, don’t go to squandering money down there on a wild goose chase. Take what you have and put it in four percent bonds.”
This suggestion of prudence did not influence us. Prudence goes hand in hand with ignorance of one’s own power, and we were trying to conquer all such ignorance. Money is a good thing, a backing for one’s plans; but when it assumes a position of such importance as to abolish the plans for fear of harm to itself, then it is time for its owner—its slave, rather—to examine himself and see where his spirit of manhood has fled.
I have had the most intimate acquaintance with poverty, and I am not afraid of it. All the mental and moral strength I have has been acquired in the hand-to-hand conflict by which I conquered it. Having conquered it joyously, hilariously, jubilantly, and experiencing the vitality that comes of such conquest, am I to stop conquering now (this was my reply to my friend) and lay down my arms and go to sleep, rocked in the security of four percent bonds, and let the ashes of the dying years drift over me and snow me under, as it has done to thousands, and as it is doing to nearly every one of our wealthy men and women today?
I want money only as it serves a higher purpose than its mere getting. I only want it in order to see what can be done with it. I want it that I may appropriate it to higher and nobler building than the world has ever seen. And I do believe today that it has been this lofty aspiration alone that made me master of poverty, and bestowed on me the purse of Fortunatus; that purse in which only one coin finds lodgement, but is still inexhaustible; the purse whose momentary replenishment depends on the courage of its possessor to spend—in perfect trustfulness—what seems to be the last dollar he possesses.
For wealth is in the man and not in his money. Money hoarded is a more serious impediment to a man’s progress than most people will readily concede or are aware of. It deprives one of the necessity of effort; it stultifies genius; it lulls to sleep; it destroys the stimulus to conquest, and eventually the power of conquest. And when a man’s power of conquest is destroyed, he is dead—even though he still creeps abroad in the sunlight and makes an obstruction of himself in the pathway of live men.
If I never see the day when I can pile one bank bill on top of another I am still going to express my life in works. If I have to die as the majority of the people are dying, I had as well die in a poor house as in a palace. But I do not intend to follow the beaten track that every soul has traveled since the beginning of time; the track that leads only to the grave; a fact that utterly condemns it for me, and that has already turned every thought of my life in an opposite direction. I am going to do that which will make money my slave, and not my master. Therefore, all I now have and all I shall get shall be appropriated to solving this great mystery of life and death; this mystery relating to the Law of Growth; to the powers of the individual to conquer all things.
And we have been talking about it long enough. We have already written volumes about it, and it is time to act.
Intellectual power in the individual comes from the concentration of the mind upon an idea, until the truth or falsity of the idea becomes apparent. Likewise the power of the race in the unfoldment of a race problem must come from a concentrated effort to discover a hitherto unfolded racial capacity; and this is the meaning of the movement we are inaugurating here.
“Suppose that it fails,” says doubting Thomas. Well, suppose that it does. Who is afraid of a failure? We are not. It will only be one more failure in a world whose every effort has failed; failed and yet succeeded; for each failure has pointed more clearly toward final success; the success that enables man to conquer his every environment and prove his ultimate mastery of his own life and all the conditions that surround him.
When I first began to study Mental Science I was in Chicago. The thought swept that city like a tidal wave, and it brought war and not peace. It was an awakening that aroused souls to their deepest depths, and brought to the surface the dregs of all characters, in order that these dregs might be cast out. I found myself in the very center of a swirling storm of contending ideas that carried many off their feet.
There was no peace to be had there. There was no chance for that ‘concentration of the intellect which alone divides error from truth. I needed solitude. I did not know that I needed it then, but I now know it. The burning desire within me for greater knowledge of the truth put its demand upon my surroundings, and almost against my seen and felt desires I was swept down to a little country town in Georgia. There I found the silence so requisite to the thought that unfolds all lives who trust and believe in nothing but the absolutely good.
By slow degrees one great truth came to me. By slow degrees it strengthened in my brain until it stood forth perfect and invincible. This truth is, that man is a creative force; that he has created himself on the unconscious plane of his existence until he has attained his present position as a citizen of the world, and that the same creative power resides in him now, enabling him to continue to create himself consciously, or from the basis of a clear understanding as to the method by which his creative force can be exercised.
Having reached this truth, its vitalizing influence carried me away from the quiet village where I was living, and took me and my class—which had grown larger than the town could accommodate—to a splendid summer resort, where there were room and lovely quarters for all of us, and where, between the Mental Science lessons, we had every amusement and recreation our expanding, happy lives demanded.
But this condition was not the ultimate toward which the truth I have spoken of was pointing. I knew perfectly well that something more and quite different would come; but I did not hurry, I rested quietly in a conviction that as I ripened in a knowledge of the Law of Attraction (the Law that men call God) in time I should know, and have the power to act.
The attrition of different minds develops—not always positive truth, as many believe—but it does develop—a splendid vitality that leads’ in the direction of all growth in truth. This attrition is what is now needed; and to effect this, undisturbed as nearly as possible by the world’s hampering beliefs, was the object of our coming to Florida. We wanted to build a nucleus or starting point for the new thought where the truth would have a chance to grow in freedom. We agreed that the place should not take the form of a community; that not even any promises of cooperation should hamper our inclinations. Those who desired would own their own homes; others could live at the hotel, or rent rooms for private housekeeping. For my part I love a home of my own. I love to beautify it both within and without. I think half the pleasure in life consists in the cultivation of beauty; and I believe that the love of the beautiful will eventually make our bodies as beautiful as the angels. We ought to dwell in an atmosphere of beauty every day; and this atmosphere must be evolved from our own selves, and it will be; and presently our town will be a marvel of beauty, so the fame of it will go out to all the world, and people will cross the ocean to see it. It is already coming to be so, though only four years old in the year of 1900.
But not only will they cross the ocean to see; they will come for its life-giving and healing influences. Eight in this spot will the healing power be generated by our deep intent and never ending search for more and more truth, until people will come from the ends of the earth to breathe it in and be healed by it. “All that a man hath will he give for his life.” Even now, with the small amount of truth I myself, alone and unaided, have evolved by deep, interior, honest thought, the conviction of my power to heal has crossed the seas, and is bringing me cries for help from hundreds of the afflicted souls who have not found relief in medicine.
From the intellectual growth developed here, new lines of activity will spring into life. Healers and teachers will be educated, and the place will become a center for the dissemination of truth and the evolvement of peace, beauty, happiness and freedom.
I do not doubt that those who come here to live will soon learn the true reason of their coming. They will be taught this from the expansion of intelligence that will come to them. Their destinies will be changed in the mere fact that they have abandoned themselves to the realization of the ideal. Their lives will then, henceforward, be spent in higher pursuits than any of us can, at this time, more than faintly outline. It is time civilization took a long step upwards. It is going to do so from the very movement that holds, even in imagination, the possibility of such a step.
Honor is to Him First Who Through The Impassable Makes a Road
Life on its present plane is beggared; it is animalized to the core. Its small allurements are soon spent, leaving nothing but old age and the grave. Its so-called wealth is rotten rags, and its possessors—those who have struggled half their lives in its attainment—know it, and are asking, “Is this all?” Why, every brain in which experience has planted a thought is bitterly dissatisfied, and many lives have lost hope and faith.
This thought takes me back a few pages. For anyone to imagine, even for a moment, that I would invest money in bonds while the race needs work that calls for its honorable investment, is an insult to every particle of womanhood and motherhood in my nature. That I am traitor enough to humanity to do such a thing is simply impossible. Nor am I coward enough to hoard a dollar. Moreover, I have too much faith in my own ability to create opulence to allow me to feel like saving money. All I have can go, and I can forge more out of the same mental laboratory that forged the first. I may starve to death when the time comes, but I will never be frightened to death through apprehension of starvation, and I will never hold back a cent. All I may ever have will be used in prospecting for better conditions. If money will not serve me, I am not going to serve it.
But it does serve me; it serves me simply because my condition does not cease with its possession; it comes to me as I build; it flows into the work I am doing, no matter what that work is. With me it is an ever flowing stream, rushing into and filling the path dug by the ideal; and the more the ideal digs, the deeper the excavation and the broader the channel, the more rapidly it comes into it, and the greater the propulsion it gives the movement. The present plan, being by far the greatest we have undertaken, will not lag for want of means.
A very practical question often asked is this, “Do you know of anyone who has conquered death?” To which I answer, “No.” But my philosophy, carefully reasoned out, teaches me that the thing is possible at this time. I am sure there are people—more than a few—scattered over widely separated parts of the world, who are capable of prolonging their lives on the earth indefinitely; also that they are held back in the appearances of weakness simply from the race beliefs in sin, sickness and death. These beliefs are so deeply graven upon every atom of present existence, and so fill the very air we breathe, as with a miasmatic poison, that at present we cannot escape them long enough to show forth in on- bodies the widely differing truths which our philosophy teaches us. To believe against the world’s beliefs at this time is like sweeping back the waves of the ocean as they roll in on the beach. All we have been able to do in these—the first years—has been to hold our own, and to gradually perceive a growing strength within ourselves that surely does prophesy absolute conquest in the future. We have stood up against the floods of antagonistic thought like impregnable rocks in mid-ocean, and though our progress is not visible to the casual observer, yet the progress has been made.
We have progressed from the first intimation of a possibility of conquering every negative belief, including disease, old age and death, to a fixed conviction that it can be done, and to a well digested philosophy concerning the way to do it. We have unfolded from our own minds a knowledge of the Law of Growth; the law that operates in the blade of grass and in the adjustment of the planets; that regulates all lives from atoms to archangels; and we know that it is the same in all things. We know that to understand a law is to be master of it. Everything that our intelligence explains to us serves us; and already we begin to perceive the immense power this knowledge is capable of yielding. We begin to feel the power; we now have courage where we once feared; we have understanding where we once had blind faith. Once our position seemed weak to us because we were so alone, while the whole big world was against us; now our aloneness seems strength when contrasted with the quaking, unstable, unsubstantial drivel of the world’s unprogressing intellect. In the whole ocean of weak, wavering mentality, the knowledge of our powers—gained from the study of the law of growth—stands like the one piece of solid land looming firmly up in the dreary waste. Our aloneness appalls us no longer. We know how continents are built in the evolution of nature, and we know that by the same process we are building a continent ill the realm of mind.
A coral reef—the unseen growth of ages—reaches its topmost cell above the water; the floating debris gathers about it; presently a soil has covered it; the birds bring seeds to it, and a continent is begun. So with this slowly ripening thought of the best brains of a thousand ages. It has been struggling upward through the heavy body of ignorance that kept it down. But now it is above the waves; the sun of a heretofore unknown intelligence is bathing it in splendor; new growths unknown before are ready to spring into life upon it; a new continent in the world of mind has become apparent.
“Honor to him who first through the impassable makes a road.”
The road through the “impassable” has been made.
How easy it is to pass the impassable when the courage of a burning conviction has given thought the wings to make the attempt. Because the impassable has never been passed before is because it has never been attempted. And yet I will not be too sure. The mysteries of India are not altogether laid bare to us yet. The belief of millions of the Oriental race must go for something. These millions claim in utmost faith that they have wise men living in communities, far from the business marts of the world’s common herds, who have overcome death; and who, from their high place in the realm of intelligence, are even now sending out thought waves into the wide, brave, untrammeled West that are breathing the breath of life into such movements as the one we have begun here in Florida.
This may be an accomplished fact; or it may simply be a prophecy projected from the brain of a people, who, in the mysteries of the occult, have ripened far beyond our new world conception of the possible.
The religion of India is one of repression rather than of effort. It teaches the effacing of desire, the absorption of the individual into the universal, as the only means of escape from the sorrows of existence. From such teachings and practices I can conceive the possibility of the preservation of the body for a greater length of years than is usual among men, but I cannot conceive that a life so lived would be worth the living, neither that it could be made immortal. The stifling of all desire, all emotion, all love, all hatred may, as it were, leave the body free from wear and tear, and so preserve it until its inherited vitality escapes by slow degrees, even as a piece of machinery, whose motive power is a spring, on being wound up, continues to run while the spring continues to uncoil, but will stop unless periodically wound. Unless our supposititious India “masters of the occult” have knowledge of the creative power of thought they may not possibly make these bodies immortal, though they n ay by inaction and the avoidance of all thought prevent their dissolution for a considerable portion of time. It would seem that if they had really found the road to eternal life, which can only be through mental processes, they would be more active in the dissemination of their knowledge. That there are those in India who are able to master the destructive element in fire, as shown in an earlier chapter, is proof of the possession by them of a power not yet attained by the greatest scientists elsewhere, and compels to the withholding of any positive denial of any claim to a knowledge of the so-called occult which they may make, or which others may make for them. Had such demonstration of power over what we call natural law, as that referred to in the fire test, been made in any so-called civilized country even so late as a century ago, the demonstrators would have been canonized by the church as saints, and used to help hold the masses in a still closer mental bondage; or else would have been denounced as emissaries of the devil and burned—no, not burned, because, apparently, they could not be, but anathematized and hung. It is among the possibilities that there are those in the remote hill country of Tibet who, learning the secret of immortal life centuries ago, learned also the inability of the masses to grasp the mighty truths which had come to them, and so hid themselves away to await the slow development of the race; and that they now are, as claimed by certain Theosophists, allowing this knowledge to slowly filter, as it will be received, through the cloak of ignorance and prejudice that still darkens the minds of men.
But I accept nothing that I cannot demonstrate, and, therefore, offer what I have as a mere suggestion. I have always doubted the existence of the so-called masters, for no other reason than because I want tangible proofs before I affirm with positiveness that these men really exist.
Of the atmosphere of repose that seems to banish all belief in the power of time, I must say that the deeper I come into a knowledge of the truth that all is mind, and the greater my own sense of power in the conquest of environment, the more I feel that time is for slaves, and that freemen are not bound by it; and as I realize this, that same sense of deep, mighty reposefulness, comes to me; and this, too, when I am entirely alone; showing how the world’s atmosphere of thought will eventually be changed as we go on in the further pursuit of that knowledge which is pledged to our liberation from all fetters.
That solitude fosters and nourishes thought I have discovered by experience. But there is something better even than solitude. It is the mingling of minds attuned to one purpose. A person may stand alone as firmly grounded in a truth as the Rock of Gibraltar, and he can hold it until the firmness of his position attracts others, as it is bound to do. This position he may attain in solitude with much less effort than among the distracting and conflicting waves of opinion, and the clashing hopes and fears of the populace. Let us suppose we have found one soul that (even under favoring conditions of absolute quiet) can hold fast to the highest ideal the topmost chamber of his brain is capable of generating; he will stand forth as the great mental Gibraltar of the new civilization. But one such rock is not enough to form the mighty continent of mind that is essential to the uplifting and saving of the race. Others of like caliber and fiber must be added; the growth of these great principles must be achieved through the union of all who know there is something better to be attained than the race has yet attained, and who are willing to work to that end. It is as Jesus said: “When two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I also.” Let us multiply two or three into the thousands, and then we will see how powerfully, how wondrously, the truth will be among us.
Do you not see from the foregoing what the meaning of this movement is? Oh! the happiness to come from it! Oh! the wisdom to be evolved from the attrition of many minds, all attuned to the one effort of ultimate conquest over sin, sickness and death! Who cares if the world laughs—the world that has never taken the trouble to think, but presumes to sit in judgment on those who do?
And yet how many are held in check out of fear of the opinions of those who really have no opinions at all, but who are satisfied to carry their mental grist just as their fathers carried the grist of corn—the grain in one end of the sack and a rock in the other end to balance it?
Take this position as almost universally accepted by the Christian world. Sickness, they say, is sent from God; or at least, God permits it, and has an object to serve in doing so. They believe this, and yet they go to work to thwart God’s purpose by taking medicine and doing all in their power to get well. Possibly they have an idea that God not only visits them with sickness, but sends the antidote to his visitation in the shape of medicine, thus manifesting his inconsistency. The whole thing shows an entire lack of effort, a reasoning regarding the matter that does no credit to anybody.
Let no one who is capable of accepting such statements and such conclusions as true or logical, attempt to sit in judgment upon the statements or reasoning of others; for unless the blind are fitted to lead the blind, such are not competent to judge of any matter requiring thought above the capacity of an infant.
Come Up Higher
We will have to come up higher if we conquer death; and to conquer death is the next great movement of the race.
Nothing short of the conquest of death here in this world, and in the present generation, will satisfy my demand.
And I hold to this demand: every atom of my body clings to it. I wonder what death can do with me under the circumstances?
But I am not holding death as a foe; I feel as if it were already conquered, and well conquered, in my knowledge of its weakness. The thoughts of it no longer clog my ascending hopes as they go out in the wake of the ideal, that I never lose sight of any more.
All life points toward an ideal. The very first effort at organization points toward it. When the first two atoms come together under the Law of Attraction a hope is born that leads in the direction of something better; something as yet unattained. This hope is the motor of every individual growth.
There is always a light shining ahead toward which the lower atoms of an organization are drawn, no matter whether that organization is vegetable, animal or human. The Principle of Life is the same in every expression of itself.
The ideal of the child is—unconsciously to itself perhaps—to become a man or woman; to attain what it considers the freedom of its parents. It attains this stature and ceases to grow. No God decreed that the height of a man should be six feet; his environment decreed it, and the type was formed. Thus on the unconscious plane of existence all forms of life bear a certain relation to each other, dependent upon the innate strength or power of each form; and thus—on the unconscious plane—there is harmony. That is, there is a balancing of forces whose grand total is harmonious. This condition is the primitive Eden. But the serpent entered Eden, the serpent whose other name is Wisdom, and there was a fall. That is, there was an unbalancing of natural or unconscious forces; a breaking up of the old conditions, in order that higher conditions might be attained.
This is the true process of growth; a thought in advance of any previous thought is born, and it calls upon all below it for support or sustenance. Then, all that is below it begins to arise in obedience to it. In this upward flow the apparent solidity of previous conditions is disturbed; all nature, everything, finds the impediment to its upward progress removed, for a space at least. The birth of the new thought is so much release to the whole pent-up spirit of growth, and puts all things on the move toward a higher ideal.
The knowledge of the fact I have just stated lies very close to the foundation of Mental Science healing. There is but one fact underlying it; the fact that all is mind. Put a higher thought in the head, and every other thought is attracted upward toward it. Man is purely a mental creature, and what I have just said discloses at once the law of his growth. If he were dead matter he would be immovable; the atoms of his body would be subject to that force called the Law of Gravity, and no thought—no matter how high or how powerful—could attract them upwards.
The reason I make so much of this point, and go over it so often, is because it lies at the base, and is the foundation of all my argument in favor of the conquest of death in the present generation.
But all thought bears a certain relation to all other thought. All thoughts are inter-related through the law of their being, the Principle of Attraction, this law being life itself, or love, the creative and generative principle. And so in this sense—looking at them from their subjective side—they are all one; the grand total forming that unseen power men call God, and that we call the Principle of Attraction.
All individualities are in process of ascending from the earth. Every new thought that is horn into the world is positive to the thoughts below it, and calls upon them to rise to its plane. And they do rise. Not a student of human nature hut has the ability to lift every organized creature, if he will only follow his ideal and be so faithful to it as to gain from it new and heretofore unknown impressions concerning his own power and the power of the race. But people will not trust the ideal they find within themselves; they remain in the roots of their being and will not break the sod over their heads and come out in the stem and flower and fruit of the higher unfoldment. They are like seeds planted in the soil, which, when a few rootlets have struck out into the cold sod, say, “Behold! here I am, alive and all right, and this is all there is of me;” and so saying die, instead of having faith to follow that small, dim hope within themselves that leads upward toward light.
The men and women of this generation are nearly all like these senseless seeds. They say, “If we trust the ideal, heaven knows where it will lead us; we don’t want to be made fools of.” And again, a few start and fall back saying, “We cannot accept all the glory which dawns on us as we ascend; it is too luminous to be trusted; it is too good to be true; it is like a constantly brightening pyrotechnic display, each succeeding burst of light being more brilliant than the former one. We had better stay on the ground where we belong, than to take the risk of being disappointed at last, for surely this thing cannot continue.” With this latter class it is as if the seeds had advanced their stalks to that point where the warmth and brightness of the sun began to be seen, and had then retired within their shells again.
Few persons have ever yet quite climbed out of their shells in following this ideal. They have not dared trust it. But I dare. I am going to find out the potencies bound up in a human being if it leads me into the very heart of the inferno.
But truly I have been through it, and I got out of it by following my ideal; by trusting it. And I shall get still farther away from it by following my ideal still farther, and by putting still more implicit confidence in it. I am putting all I have and all I am getting into an idea; an idea that is to be the test of humanity; an idea that is to discover whether man is a bond slave to his conditions and environments, or whether he may not develop out of himself the capacity to break through his environments and prove himself Maker and Creator.
The intensifying consciousness of my long fixed belief in the possibilities of men to overcome all things, even death, has cast its light ahead of itself: and while I am not yet free, I feel a strange elation that renders me fearless even while I know that dangers environ me as well as others.
As an idealist I see enough in the might, the grace, the purity, the justice, the beauty and the opulence of the ideal—before whose shrine every particle of my lower being is in obedience—to trust it utterly; and this trust banishes fear, even though I know that the same foes to human progress exist today that always have existed.
Those foes have never been anything but consolidated forms of ignorance, and will never be overcome but by growing intelligence; and intelligence—at this day can only conquer ignorance by following where the ideal faculties lead. Ami this is why we came to Florida resolved to concentrate in this choice spot the highest intelligences of the nation in the formation of a nucleus to the world’s new civilization.
Let no one imagine for a moment that the arrogance of an overweening egotism is m this assertion; it is not so; it is rather the embodiment of a tremendous hope founded upon our unfaltering belief in race capacity; race genius. Nobody knows how much we believe in ourselves and others; not more in ourselves than in others; not more in others than in ourselves. The race is one in universality of intelligence, and we value every soul of the race as some specialized expression of the infinite opulence of mind.
And we see so clearly that all things, all conditions on the present plane of life, are exhausted; we see that the vital principle is entirely sucked out of them, and that nothing but burnt-out ashes remain; and, therefore, we are the more willing to abandon them and turn our eyes in search of something better.
It is a fixed fact that no person can search without finding; and what a wonderful thing this is, and what a field of thought it opens up! If no one can search without finding, it proves that all things desirable exist, and can be called into external manifestation simply by searching; or, in other words, each desire of the human mind is co-related to the things desired; and search (which implies belief or faith) will reveal it. This being the case, there is no excuse for poverty or disease, old age or death, and we are the prime fools of all the planets for believing m them.
Slowly, but with certainty, we come up higher into a knowledge of the great law revealed in the foregoing paragraph, and as we do so we can feel within ourselves the growth of fresh powers; powers that add to our ability to conquer every obstacle in the way of the actualization of the ideal.
We see the ideal before us all the time, and the more we contemplate it, the more we lose sight of the world’s old beliefs in sin, sickness, poverty, old age and death, and consequently the more we become liberated from these things.
Actually and practically liberated from them. The more the mind frees itself from them the more the body frees itself from them; and this is because mind and body are one. “As a man thinketh so is he.” Therefore, in following the ideal with our best hopes and desires, and in gradually coming to believe in it with greater fervor than we have ever believed in what we call “the real,” we are casting off all our previous convictions as to man’s limitations, and getting into a wonderfully large, clear place in our understanding of human life.
When I treat a patient I see him mentally from the ideal standpoint, and I address myself to the ideal self that resides in him. The ideal residing in him is a free thing; it is not hampered with any perceptible limitation; it is not diseased; no one can have a diseased ideal; the ideal is that which we hold before us as the most desirable thing we can imagine. Therefore, I recognize this ideal part of him as by far the stronger part, because all his hopes and desires are centered in it, and all it lacks of being the real, visible part of him is that he has not clothed it with flesh and blood by believing in it. He not only does not believe in it, but it has never occurred to him that it was worthwhile to do so. He is utterly ignorant of the importance of believing in it; and the law of growth which declares that belief is the power that clothes the ideal, thus bringing it from the subjective into the objective domain of life, is a dead letter to him.
But I know that this law is one of the unalterable verities of the universe, and that from the beginning of individual existence it has been the means, and the only means, by which creatures have climbed the scale of life from the monad to man. I not only believe in this law (belief is a dead word with which to express my attitude toward it) but I know that it exists; I know it with the fullest understanding of it in all its bearings, and in all its relations to all things from atoms to planets; and it explains them all. It is a key to new knowledge that will recast every work on astronomy, and relegate to the lumber room of wornout ideas a hundred theories now held in high esteem by scientific men.
As I search for the ideal in a patient, and as my recognition of it and of its importance and power grows stronger, all his old beliefs are lost sight of. I no longer see them; they make less and less impression on me with each treatment, until in the course of a few weeks or months they disappear—not only from my view, but owing to the fact of thought transference, they disappear from his view also; and he sees that he is well.
In this slight description of individual treatment, I have conveyed a hint concerning the salvation of the whole race. This salvation is to be accomplished by the practical recognition of the ideal faculties within it. The race is not living in this recognition; it is living almost exclusively in recognition of the lower faculties; the faculties that ally it with the heavier and deader forces of the earth; hence, it has trials and tribulations without number. It is in a hand-to-hand struggle with these deader influences, so that it even earns its bread by tremendous effort, and in the long run it earns nothing but its bread. Life is one constant conflict, and death gains the victory at last and closes over every antagonist.
The understanding of mind and its power alone brings relief. The first suggestion of this thing implies the getting away from matter, by the intellectual conception that matter is not matter (in the old acceptance of the word) but mind; farther, that there is no obstacle to the constant progress of mind, in which progress every new thought is a conquest that lifts the thinker in the scale of being from death, toward more life. Every step in the study of this great truth liberates the student to a certain degree from every one of his previous environments, and makes the next step easier.
Contrast this progress with the old way wherein a man’s struggles become greater at every step until they crush him, and the grave closes over him. The new thought leads in a direction diametrically opposite to the old thought. The latter leads to death; the former to the complete triumph over death; one leads to the abandonment of the ideal; the other to the practical realization of it; one is submitting to be conquered; the other is conqueror.
Some say, “I dare not pursue the ideal; the effort to overcome is too great.” It is not near so great as the constant fight with the dense, and still denser, forces one must contend with as he travels the downward road toward death. In going deathward the poor pilgrim weakens with each foe he meets. In going lifeward he is strengthened by every foe that besets his path; for he conquers one at a time, and each conquest makes him stronger for the next one. Indeed, in the direction he is traveling he is gradually getting out of the realms of foes; he is finding that what at first seemed to be his foes are really his servants and assistants. This change in the situation comes about through his finding out that an obstacle is simply a gymnasium bar on which to strengthen his muscle.
And yet in all this long chapter I have not really reached the point I particularly wanted to make. It is this: The beliefs of the world in the deadness of matter, and in sin, sickness, old age, poverty and death, are the only foes we have to overcome, and we do not need to overcome them at all. All we need do is just to leave them. We can go away from them by looking toward the ideal with all the faith the most earnest desire can prompt, until a belief in it (strong enough to overbalance the world’s beliefs as organized in our bodies) comes to us. It will come in every instance where the idealist is faithful to his highest aspiration.
The Uses of Beauty
In starting a town here in Florida, we have but one object in view. This one object, however, is ulterior and circumferences many others. We want to work out our conceptions of the beautiful through it, and we want to see other people do the same. It is in the pursuit of beauty that the competitive spirit demonstrates its great worth. The competitive spirit appears to be a sordid, mean thing so long as its object is an unworthy one; but once let the object become noble, divine, and then the spirit of competition does, indeed, become the very life and breath of all great unfoldment.
Simply to see a flower bloom, has been incentive enough to get me out of bed at daylight morning after morning for a week; and oh! the swelling tide of life within me to behold the deepening tint and the advancing unfoldment of the beautiful thing from day to day. I am sure that a flower is more than a flower: it represents effort; and effort in a diviner way than effort expressed merely in bread getting.
The bread is a necessity not to be dispensed with; but bread is worthless, and the life it feeds is worthless, unless it is fed to an aim leading in the direction of beauty.
The evolvement of beauty is the divinest ambition that can ever actuate a human life. All uses are but preparatory steps leading to it. Uses must necessarily be supplied before the love of the beautiful which lives in each person’s inmost thought can become unfurled. There can be no freedom for anyone until the uses of life are met and disposed of. With freedom secured, comes the diviner sense that starts on an endless search for the beautiful; or, rather, I should say—with freedom comes the artistic creativeness; and this artistic creativeness is the goal towards which all growth points.
The old woman who sits in the cabin door, piecing calico scraps into a quilt, is actuated and made happy by this slight expression of her ideas of beauty. It is an escape for her from the more sordid duties of her life. She fries the bacon and bakes the corn cake with more alacrity because her pleasant sewing beckons her on; and when the drudgery is done her very thought escapes into a new realm. The hollyhocks in the yard are another record of her protest against the sternness of eternal necessity; a breath of freedom lies where their roots are planted, and its fruitage is a “useless” blossom.
Think of calling a blossom useless! “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” It more than all the uses in the world—unlocks the storehouse of man’s slumbering powers. In the process of evolution, a rose is worth more than a diamond; a butterfly or a humming bird outweighs a crown. Why? Because they stir man’s latent poesy to its deepest depths; and poesy is the wings of the intellect.
Who wants to creep forever in the mire of an unfinished planet—a planet that will never be finished until we have first found our wings, and have also discovered the atmosphere in which they will float us? It is a mental atmosphere and is correlated to our unfoldment in the direction of the aesthetic, the divine, the beautiful.
I am so tired of the sordid; I am so tired of content with the merely necessary; I want the supernumerary; I want the fifth wheel to the wagon, though I will take it in a shape that will dispense with the other four wheels; a shape that will float the wagon in the air. I am tired of all things as they are, and look upon them as nothing more than a substantial foundation for something infinitely better. Above all things, I am tired of the feeling of satisfaction which some people have in present conditions. Of course, this feeling only belongs to those who have achieved a certain measure of affluence; and even among these—I am delighted to say—the new truth is pouring a strangely decomposing element that turns all things to ashes before their mental vision. There is no phrase upon the tongue of wealth, as it exists today in its awfully sordid expression, so frequent as that one little sentence which discloses the growing power of higher thought and aspiration, “is this all?”
Oh! the depths of discontent made manifest by these small words! The dream of a life has been realized by the accumulation of that which renders farther effort unnecessary; and the result is—what? Either a gradually deepening disappointment or a fierce, discordant gloom that makes all things seem unbearable. Many men die within a year or two after retiring from business; there is nothing more—on their plane—to live for, and so the end for them has come the very day they turn their faces from the work that has occupied them always; and as they walk away, they walk by the shortest possible route to their graves.
“Is this all?” These are the last words for all men who do not find an answer to them by stepping up into a higher plane of thought and action; and there is no higher plane in all this world, except that which is revealed by the truths of Mental Science. Wealth is a millstone around any man’s neck, and is bound to sink him into the grave, unless he makes it a foundation or a platform from which to build higher up into the realm of the ideal, the beautiful, the divine.
I use the word “build” in full realization of its meaning. Every upward step a man takes in the realm of thought, the more he adds to the strength, the ability, the greatness of his own being, and the more firmly he establishes his position as a builder in the world of effects.
Heaven is not reached at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly ground to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland in “Gradatim”
“Only in dreams is a ladder thrown from earth to sky.” Yes, and the most unsubstantial of dreams, too; for it is a fact that the race has no help in its effort to ascend but the power it draws out of its own brain; that power which results from the acquisition of more wisdom, and which enables us to conquer more and more the obstacles we find in our path.
Do you know what an obstacle is? It is something to climb over; something to dissolve by that most powerful of all solvents—thought. It is a gymnasium bar which we break for the mere sport of testing our strength. Having broken it, we go on and break others of ten-fold resistance.
We are now standing face to face with .a stone wall that has for ages seemed to shut off our further advancement. That stone wall is the blended monuments of all the dead who have ever died; it is death itself, and disease, and every denial of our power that ever hemmed us in and made the earth a prison house of trembling, aspiring, but helpless beings; helpless because aspiration never ripened into effort for them, but lay down and died in view of the obstacles ahead.
I am now making a call upon those whose aspiration for something better than life has yet yielded, has conquered—not only their fears, but the race belief in the power of negative environment to hold them down to conditions they are heartily tired of. I am calling upon men and women to take the risk of losing something, in the hope of gaining other something that promises more. To me it appears to be an exchange of death for life; an exchange of the prison for freedom; of the charnel-house for the free airs and the flowers of Paradise.
To start untrammeled on an upper path in pursuit of freedom, happiness, all that the ideal brain suggests as most desirable—this is what we are doing. To test the power of man’s creativeness on a higher plane of effort than has ever been done before—this is what we are doing. If there is no outlet to this undeveloped genius of the race, then we had better all die, never to be resurrected; for the development of individual genius is the only happiness there is, the only freedom there is, and the only possible progression. And without happiness, freedom and the power to progress, life is utterly worthless. I recognize present good, and I recognize the power of money and I enjoy its possession; but if I had millions of it I would give it all in exchange for one single new thought that held the promise of greater freedom than life has yet yielded. Is this recklessness? Not a bit of it; it is wisdom untrammeled by the caution whose further continuance will prove the curse of the race; it is exchanging a negative good for a positive good. It is exchanging conditions we do not like, but only tolerate, for the prospect of conditions that will be for us the realization of happiness—heaven.
But suppose one risks and loses? Loses what? That which ensnared him and made farther effort on his part unnecessary. I would rather be a tramp on the road today than to sit down in that security from want that would stultify the farther outgrowth of my capacity to create opulence. For I say that the pleasure is in creating it, and not in piling it up and sitting like a Watch dog beside it to keep others from getting part of it. The creative ability is what I prize; that which I create takes a back seat in my mind, or is forever abandoned, while I go on to more advanced creations; to a fuller development of my creativeness. And this is mind in constant expression. It is life in ever progressive unfoldment. It is the bridging of the chasm of death by the continuity of endeavor.
Endless growth admits of no cessation of the creative principle. To stop is to stagnate; to gather wealth is all right, but the chief right is in scattering it; to sit down by it converts it at once into trash; it becomes as the green scum that conceals the dead water of the standing pool; it hazes over all the bright energies of the brain, and at last the brain has lost its powers of action and become a useless thing.
In heaven’s name, let me preserve the activity of my mind, even though I have but one meal a day.
And yet this suggestion is contradictory; for if I preserve the activity of my mind I shall never lack for what I want. Mental activity insures the fulfillment of every desire. Therefore, I must guard that power in myself which is capable of projecting new conditions, even though I never invest in four percent bonds, as my friend suggested.
I do not want four percent bonds; I want something to do that expresses me. I want to plant a hollyhock when I get the dishes washed and the beds made; I want to escape from necessity into the unconfined atmosphere of the “useless,” the beautiful, the divine; that place which represents my highest ideas of freedom. And this is why we are here. We have planted our hollyhock here and are watching it grow. We are sure the growth of it will reveal untold tomes of wisdom to us; and we are fast approaching the day when wisdom will feed and clothe us; for wisdom circumferences all things; it yields us bread and houses and diamonds and everything opulent. To simply own the bread and houses and diamonds is no insurance against want, but to have wisdom is to be the master of all wealth, and to command it at will. This is the Law, and it never fails.
It is time someone started out to discover something better than the Heeling possessions that pass for wealth. Great mental strength, a complete sense of mastery, is what men need, and must have before they are fit for the conquest of the, as yet, unconquered world. The world lies before us with all its vast resources, and is ours for the taking; but only wisdom can reach it. We are poverty stricken because we lack the wisdom I am speaking of. Let us come here in peace and comfort, and with beautiful surroundings, for a part of each year, at least, and meet together often in that interchange of ideas that develops the highest thought. Who knows what great things may result from an effort like this?
The spirit of liberty lies at the bottom of our writing, and of our work here. We are not proposing cooperation in business matters, but only in the field of thought. All reform must begin with the individual. Given a community of individuals with correct standards, and the business relations of its members will be adjusted upon principles of justice and equity.
At this time the higher desires of humanity point toward the acquisition of knowledge that will raise men in the scale of humanity, and give people more individual power in the subjugation of everything in life, that is oppressive and demoralizing. We want the wisdom that will enable us to overcome disease, inharmony, old age and death; the wisdom that will develop out of our own organizations the good naturally inherent in us. As seed germs of endless growth, we have discovered that we are not evil, and that farther development will not make us evil or dangerous to each other; but that it will enlarge every faculty of our whole bodice, and bring forth other faculties that we do not now know of. Wisdom can only make us better; ignorance alone is the root of unhappiness, and wisdom is its corrective.
The School of Research
It was not by accident, but rather by what seemed to be some undefined mental leading that the founders of the School of Scientific, Philosophic and Ethical Research came to establish first their home, and later the college, at Sea Breeze, Florida. The idea had long been growing and taking shape in their minds of founding an institution, which should be at once an instructor of youth in the ordinary branches under influences that should help them to become Independent thinkers; and also to furnish facilities for investigation and research by the ablest and most mature minds, that could be induced to enter the field, on lines hitherto not only excluded from all regularly organized institutions of learning, but until recently regarded by an orthodox public as not legitimate subjects for investigation.
Finding themselves in some measure relieved for a season from pressing business cares, and thinking to spend a few months in partial rest and recreation, they turned their thoughts and their steps towards Florida. Having received from a lady, who had been healed by the author of this work after having been given over by the doctor?, a description of Daytona, they decided to spend a few weeks of their vacation there before visiting other portions of the State. They reached Daytona, then the terminus of the Florida East Coast Railroad, late one evening in September. As the train backed down through rows of stately palms and wide spreading live oaks, to the then little depot building upon the banks of the River Halifax, the travelers thought they had never anywhere seen anything so beautiful. The moon, nearing its full, threw a band of burnished silver clear across the half-mile of placid waters, softened the harsh outlines of the not too ornate depot buildings, and of the gnarled and twisted tree trunks whose branches overhung and interlaced above the shell road, that wound along the river bank in the direction of the hotel to which they were driven—the whole aspect of the place calling up memories of fairyland, as pictured to the imagination in books for children written by men who are artists in the use of words.
The travelers were never able thereafter permanently to leave the place. They saw other portions of the state, and there are many beautiful spots in Florida, both upon its coasts and in the interior of the state, but none that, in their opinion, nearly equal this. They remained in Daytona, which is upon the mainland side of the Halifax River, .during the winter, and then purchased a home upon the peninsula side, thinking simply to spend the winter here. Then they went forth and bought a residence on one of the most beautiful boulevards near Franklin Park, in Boston, thinking it better that their publications date from that city of culture than from what the world would regard as a wilderness. They would spend the winter in Florida on the banks of the Halifax, they said, and they did. And gradually they got to prolonging their stay, letting the season get farther and farther advanced until spring drifted into summer, before going North, until finally it dawned upon them that right here on the Halifax Peninsula, with the river on one side and the ever sounding sea upon the other, was the most pleasant spot they had ever found in summer, as well as in winter. Then they began to plan to put into execution here their long contemplated, though heretofore but half-digested plans, for the founding of a college, that should offer to the thinking men and women of the whole world opportunities for investigation into the laws of life and of being, never before offered to them by any institution of learning anywhere. Land was comparatively cheap as yet, and they bought a tract and began to make improvements, such as would attract people to the spot, and gain for it such a reputation for healthfulness as would remove from the public mind any prejudices that might exist against it, due to its location in the far South. As opportunity offered and as they acquired means that could be diverted to the purpose, they purchased more land, being compelled—owing to the advance in price—to pay many times more for later than for earlier purchases, but knowing that, since of all places in the state this is the most desirable, either for winter or for all the year-round residence—it would continue to advance, and thus enable them to contribute largely to the endowment of the institution which they were planning. For six years they worked and planned and said little of their intentions. The first tract purchased was platted, a park laid out and some hundreds of dollars spent upon it. Two boulevards were built, extending from river to ocean, each sixty feet wide; and these were lined upon either side with full-grown palm trees transplanted from the native forest. A hotel of one hundred and. twenty rooms, a store-building, a pavilion upon the ocean front with a pier extending six hundred feet into the ocean, a dozen cottages—all these were added as time passed, until the place, from the beauty of its’ surroundings and the improvements made, came to be known as “The City Beautiful.” It was not, and is not, a city. Perhaps it will never be a city. Certainly we do not expect it ever to become a great city. But it is, and will ever continue to be, one of the most healthful and attractive spots to be found anywhere in this or any other country, though one search the whole world over; and so say ninety-nine out of every hundred of the thousands of tourists who annually spend some portion of the year in the state. The declaration of principles and form of organization, which have been made a part of the general plan of education and investigation, were given to the public some months before this work went to press, and met with a reception most gratifying to the originators of the enterprise. Local associations organized upon the plan suggested were immediately formed in numbers, both in this and in most European countries—in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji—wherever there are English speaking people—evincing the widespread and deep-seated interest existing in the subject of man’s relation to the life forces, and in the proposed founding of an institution which should give the widest possible scope to investigations into the, as yet, hidden laws governing the same. Few, perhaps, believe in man’s ability to overcome death, but millions hope that at least the span of human life may be greatly lengthened, and thousands desire that their children be educated under influences that shall tend to make them independent thinkers, rather than mere echoes of the thoughts and opinions of generations of men who are dead. The property deeded by Mr. Post and Helen Wilmans Post to the college consists of a tract of land extending from the River Halifax to the sea, an even half-mile in length, and having twelve hundred feet frontage on both bodies of water. This has been platted into two hundred lots varying somewhat in size and in value. Lots similar to these in all respects upon the adjoining plat are even now selling at from $500 to $1,500, and cannot be purchased for less. Of the proceeds arising from the sale of these lots it is proposed that one-quarter go to the improvement and beautifying of streets, and for necessary incidental expenses; and three-quarters to a fund for buildings and the conduct of the institution. Upon this basis the college proper should realize at least $150,000 out of the donation after deductions are made for street improvements. This sum will not be realized all at once, but only as lots are sold; which will, in the main, doubtless be to parties desiring to locate here while their children are being educated; or for the erection of cottages in which to spend some portions of the year for health, and the opportunities which will be afforded for attending lectures upon different subjects, in which they may feel an interest. It is the expectation of those most immediately interested in the matter that the institution will be able to secure the best of talent for lectures upon every branch of science—not of the metaphysical alone, but of the physical also, and that these lectures alone will attract many to the place for a longer or shorter stay.
We do not profess to believe that the donation which we have made of a few hundred residence lots, will produce a fund sufficient to meet the needs for money of the institution which we have founded. What we do believe is that having founded it and endowed it to the extent of our present ability, and after having made the purpose of its founding known to the public, whatever amount of money may be needed for carrying on the proposed investigations into the laws of life and of being will be forthcoming from men and women interested, as all must be, in the work to be done. If it requires a million, then a million let it be; or if two million it is still small in comparison with the results possible of attainment. Whatever the amount may be that is needed we have a perfect faith in its being forthcoming as needed; for rich and poor alike are interested and will give each as he is able, that it may be made possible to discover the law whereby Death may, at least, be forced to delay his coming, if not defeated and overthrown.
The needs of the institution will undoubtedly be great; will be so because it is intended that it shall offer facilities for research such as shall attract the best minds of the age—and such facilities cost, and cost heavily. But there is need, pressing need, that such facilities be afforded; and we have no fear that they will not be supplied through contributions, endowments and such fees as may properly be charged to students in attendance, either upon the ordinary course of instruction, as in other colleges, or from those attending courses of lectures.
A Bit of History
Almost four hundred years ago (1512) one who loved life far more than he feared death, crossed a stormy sea and faced the dangers that lurked in the unexplored forests of a newly discovered continent, in search of the fountain of perpetual youth. Ponce de Leon represented in himself the sole desire for eternal life and youth in the body. He differed from the mass of his fellows, not in his desire for eternal life, but in that he had the faith in the possibility of its attainment, which they lacked, and in the possession of the courage to proclaim his belief and to act upon it. He failed in finding that which he sought, and perished in the attempt; yet because he dared hope to conquer the archenemy of mankind and to strive for such conquest, has his name and fame been perpetuated through all succeeding’ generations.
Half a century after de Leon, the French Huguenots, under Riboult and Laudonniere came seeking fortune and freedom from religious persecution in the new world; and a little later the Spanish expeditions under Menendoz arrived. The former fixed upon a location on the banks of the River May, now known as the St. Johns. The latter landed at St. Augustine, near the inlet to Matanzas River, and opposite Anastasia Island. Although Spain and France were at peace at home, yet in the new world the most cruel and fanatical war arose between the French and Spanish colonists. Cruel as a tiger by nature, to a bitter hatred of the French Menendez added that of a fanatical Catholic towards those whom he considered “heretics and traitors to the church. With the cunning of the fox and the courage of the lion, he trapped and massacred the greater portion of the French, surprising some and slaying them without mercy; he secured the surrender of others under pledge of honorable treatment, only to order them executed the moment they had laid down their arms.
D’Erlach alone, with a few followers, escaped the massacre, which took place near the head of Matanzas River, a day’s march below St. Augustine. He fled southward, and at a point possibly twelve miles above the spot on which the new college building is to be erected, found friendly Indians of a more civilized character, and less warlike than those living farther north; and these, having a fear of the Spaniards, united with the fleeing French, made a stand upon the peninsula opposite to their village on the mainland and defeated the Spaniards, who had marched down the beach in eager pursuit. There is not a foot of this coast from the mouth of the St. Johns River to the Everglades, that has not at some time since the discovery of the continent been witness to scenes of battle and adventure and romance, worthy of the pen of the novelist or historian, and the brush of the painter. This more than any other section of our country is historical ground. But of the events which go so largely to the making of written history, much the greater portion occurred so long ago as to give in the reading a feeling that one is dealing with ancient, rather than with modern events.
The author of this work is acquainted with an old lady, whose grandfather was brought to this country either from Greece or the island of Minorca, more than a hundred years ago; yet he knew nothing, and knew of no one who knew anything—of the ruins of buildings existing near New Smyrna, twenty miles below the spot selected for the college. The rude vats in which was cured the indigo plant raised by these same Minoreans and Greeks a hundred years ago, are still easily pointed out in the midst of the forests of oak and palmetto and bay, where once was grown corn and sugar cane and the indigo plant. A new pleasure yacht, named the Princess Issena (after the Indian princess of the tribe that supported the French at the battle above referred to, and who married D’Erlach’s young brother, Ernest, and went with him to France, when at last they managed to leave the country) has just been placed in the waters of the Halifax, at Ormond, only a few miles below the point at which the Indian princess and her French lover met, and where he was wounded in battle and sought out by her, where he lay bleeding and insensible in the thicket where he fell.
What have these tales of old-time wars and adventures and loves to do with a belief in man’s ability to overcome death, or in the endowment of a college for investigations regarding the law of life?
Not a thing.
Only that it seems appropriate that here, where in the New World first began the search for eternal life, the search should again be taken up after four hundred years have passed. What might not have been done to advance the race of men in a knowledge of themselves and of the infinite, out of which all things come to be, if only there had been liberty of thought, and institutions for investigation such as we are founding here on this east coast of Florida? Does anyone dare attempt an estimate of the advance the race would have made in the past four hundred years, if just such institutions as we propose, and have founded, had been in existence during that time? Religious fanaticism, race antagonisms and opposing interests spread death and desolation in the fair land where de Leon hoped to find the elixir of life—just as in the centuries which have followed, religious fanaticism and a conservatism, which feared everything new in the realm of thought, have choked off investigation and research, and held each succeeding generation to the grooves in which it had its birth; until now, at last, it has broken its leading strings and started out upon the sea of investigation and newer thought, alike fearless of the future and regardless of the anathemas of those who would bind the living present to the dead past.
Our Location
A chain of natural waterways, broken here and there, where, for a short distance, the main land reaches a finger down to the sea, extends from the mouth of the St. Johns River, near Jacksonville, to the extreme southern section of the state. A portion of these waters is navigable for craft of considerable size; at other points the waters are shallow and dotted with oyster bars; but all could be made navigable at a cost small in comparison to the advantage it would afford to commerce and to the nation in the possible event of a war, wherein it should become necessary to protect our southern coast from invasion. Indeed, the state, at one time, made an appropriation of lands for this purpose, and a no inconsiderable amount of dredging of the channel was done; but as so frequently happens in such cases the appropriation was not properly guarded, and individual interests crowded those of the public aside and the work was never completed. Our new ‘relations with Cuba and Porto Rico, together with the projected Nicaragua Canal, must eventually bring this matter prominently before the general public, and compel action on the part of the general government in opening this most magnificent natural highway to the commerce of two continents.
Upon a peninsula formed by one of these estuaries in connection with the sea, and one hundred and ten miles south of Jacksonville, is the spot selected for the location of the institution which is to offer in addition to the ordinary course of studies for youth, facilities for investigation along all lines in which science is interested, and more especially along lines usually regarded as “occult” or “hidden.” The work heretofore accomplished has been in a great degree, and of necessity, theoretical. We must now make it practical; we must prove by actual demonstration many things which, as yet, we have been unable to do for lack of facilities. And we must, at the same time, push investigation and research; and whatever the result obtained it must be made known to the world of men. The race is entitled to know, and shall know, all that can be learned by the most fearless experimenters of the laws which govern in the unseen world. We are already connected through Mental Science organizations by means of our paper, Freedom, and through the International Scientific Publishing Association, having its chief office here—with interested people in every country on the globe, and believe that we possess every facility necessary to success in our undertaking.
No more naturally healthful spot exists anywhere than that selected, and no more delightful climate. The summer heat at the extreme seldom reaches 90 degrees, and always tempered by the softly blowing breeze from oft the sea, with nights never too hot for sweet sleep, yet without the chill which in many latitudes comes with the setting of the sun—with only enough of winter to remind one of that deliciously invigorating autumn weather of New England, with its days of clear skies and starlit nights—those days and nights when “the frost is in the pumpkin and the corn is in the shock;” with such a climate and such surroundings and with the sound of the limitless sea forever in the ears, where could be found a better spot for the founding of an institution pledged to a study of the Law of Life and a contest with the powers of death?
The peninsula at this point is a half mile wide, the average level above high tide probably fifteen feet. Rising rather abruptly from the river (the Halifax) it lies in ridges with lower grounds running parallel with river and sea coast, thus giving absolutely perfect drainage, and offering a most pleasing contrast to the flat pine lands, through which all lines of railroad entering the state pass in some portion of their route. The soil here is sandy and covered thickly with vegetation, consisting of several varieties of oak, pine, sweet bay, white bay, myrtle, “cabbage” and “saw” palmetto, etc. From trees at the river side comparing favorably in size with those of a northern forest, vegetation gradually diminishes in height and size until at the immediate sea front it is “scrub,” mostly of .the lower growing varieties of palmetto, not exceeding in height a tall man.
Though not by any means rich, the soil is much more productive than appearances would indicate to the inexperienced in its cultivation. Fine lawns or pastures of Bermuda or other grass adapted to the climate are easily attainable without fertilization, and by a moderate use of fertilizer all, or nearly all Northern vegetables and vines can be successfully grown, together with some which cannot be produced at the North. The lack of seasonable rains, which do not always fall at the time most nee led, is a far greater obstacle in the cultivation of vegetables on the peninsula than is any sterility of the soil. This lack of rain at convenient season is much more noticeable on the peninsula than on the mainland, immediately opposite, the river frequently being the line of division between copious showers and gardens languishing for want of moisture. The cheapness of water supply is, however, in very great measure an offset to lack of rain, in so far as lawns and small gardens are concerned. An artesian well, sunk to a depth of one hundred and eighty feet, will furnish a never failing supply of the best of water, and a little added expense will carry this over a bit of ground sufficient to supply an ordinary family with vegetables.
Of floral beauties most varieties grown in the North do veil here, and roses are seldom out of bloom the whole year round.
On the mainland side, and lying immediately back of Daytona, a city of two thousand five hundred inhabitants, are several thousand acres of what are called “hammock” lands; that is, land covered with a heavy growth of hardwood timber—oak, bay, magnolia, hickory, soft maple and other woods interspersed with varieties of palmetto. These lands are expensive to clear, but are productive, and could be made fine agricultural lands if in the hands of enterprising farmers. Since the injury to orange groves by frost in recent years, little or no effort has been made to utilize these lands; and except where stands some deserted orange grove, the forest trees usurp possession of what a century ago was fields of sugar cane, corn, or indigo.
Of the ocean beach it is difficult to give a clearer impression than that conveyed by the illustrations, one taken at high, the other at low tide. The difference in width of the beach exposed is three hundred feet. This three hundred feet exposed at low tide is, for all purposes of riding or driving, as hard as a cement floor and extends the entire length of the peninsula, a distance of twenty-five miles. No other beach in the world equals it in extent and hardness, and in connection with a shell road along the river side of the peninsula offers one of the finest opportunities for driving or wheeling to be found anywhere. Neither is it possible to conceive of better facilities for surf bathing than is offered by this same beach. As the rise and fall of tide on this coast is little more than two feet, it is evident that even the timid, bathing at or near high tide, may safely venture the entire distance left bare by the receding waters at low tide; in other words, that the level of water at a distance of three hundred feet out does not exceed two feet in depth. At the same time they “swell”—or in case the sea is a little rough the surf—rises or breaks a foot or two higher, to subside in a moment only to rise again continuously, making the most delightful bathing imaginable, accompanied by an absolute minimum of danger.
A government lighthouse stands at the southern extremity of the peninsula, the light being plainly discernible from this point twelve miles away, and is supposed to be perceptible for a distance of twenty miles out at sea. While this immediate coast for a distance of a hundred miles has never been visited by a really destructive storm, yet vessels dismasted or becoming unmanageable, as the result of the gales that annually strike the Carolina coast; as also ships bound North from Havana and other island ports, caught in typhoons from the tropics—occasionally drift in here.
At times it is quite possible for a common row boat to pass safely through the surf, and to return without serious danger to its occupants.
These things which I am recounting—the short descriptions of the country which I have given, and the illustrations which accompany them—are all for the purpose of interesting the reader in us and in the institution which we are founding; an institution of learning for mature men and women as much as for youth; an institution unique in its character, in as much as it is established to encourage freedom of thought as an important factor in the education of the young, while affording facilities to the ripest minds of the age for investigation and research into the hitherto hidden laws of being. We wish the readers, whoever or wherever they may be, to be able to think of us and our surroundings, and our work in some fair degree, as they would see them to be if they were present in the body; and so for the hour we have offered them our eyes with which to see things as they are, and as we see them. It has been the easiest, and perhaps the pleasantest, part of the author’s task, and she trusts that after the brain exhaustive work of following her through her metaphysical writings, the reader will have found a pleasure and a rest in this lighter reading.
Courage
One great need of the race today is courage. Not exactly the courage that is shown upon the field of battle; of that there seems to be plenty. Dewey and his men had it when they sailed into Manila Bay, regardless alike of the guns of the Spanish fort and fleet and of possible torpedoes, such as blew the Maine into fragments in Havana harbor. Nor can the Spaniards said to be lacking in valor, who fought a losing fight from ships utterly unable to withstand the fire of our better aimed cannon. We read, too, of the gallant charge of the British troops, and the desperate defense of their position by the Beers, proving that in obedience to discipline, or in defense of what they consider their rights, men everywhere are ready and prompt to risk their lives in combat with their fellows. But there is another kind of courage in which most of us are badly lacking, and that is the courage that refuses to recognize the difficulties, mostly small ones, and really insignificant when faced boldly, that lie in the way of attaining our desires.
I read, a few days ago, a story—half a love story it was, yet professedly authentic—of a clergyman whose wife was in great danger from savages. With a companion she was making a hard race from a large body of savages for a place of at least temporary safety, while he, a half mile in the rear, was riding straight ahead regardless of the fact that to reach her side he must ride into and through a hundred of her pursuers. Suddenly while still far in the rear of the main body, a half dozen savages rose directly in his path, but he did not see them. The author of the tale does not mean that his hero actually failed to note their presence in his path he means that so intent was he in overtaking the larger party and rendering assistance to his wife, that he did not regard the presence of the smaller party that rose _in front of him. He made no effort to avoid them; did not sway to the right or the left; did not cease to keep his eyes fixed upon the object of his pursuit, but rode straight on as if they were nothing and no one were in his way.
His courage, his seeming consciousness of superiority, of ability to ride through or over them, so far daunted the half dozen savages that they gave way before him; and though they threw their spears their aim was uncertain and harmless. What we all need is the same kind of courage applied to the everyday affairs of life. We want to “not see” the savages that rise in our pathway and threaten to prevent the accomplishment of our legitimate desires. We need to be so much in earnest to accomplish our purpose that we do not turn aside, or consider as of importance, the difficulties that rise in the way of accomplishment. Difficulties are things to be swept aside, or ridden over. The obstacles we encounter are trifling if we do not give them thought. They are savages in war paint with eagle feathers in their hair—if we stop to gaze at them; and they grow more numerous the oftener they are counted. Looking over and beyond them, seeing clearly the object we are in pursuit of, and riding straight at it, obstacles are swept aside or become powerless to stay our onward course. It is courage for the everyday affairs of life that we need, and it is this courage in which the race is most lacking: it is this courage, or the lack of it, that distinguishes the master from the slave. For he is a slave to conditions who does not master them, and he who sees obstacles, in the sense of fearing and turning aside from them, will never attain to his desires.
To succeed one must first have an object, a purpose in life, and then must ride straight at it, regardless of the obstacles that rise in the path. This kind of courage is lacking in a vast majority of people, and accounts for their failure to accomplish anything. They never ride straight at their object. They see savages in their path and either stop and turn back, or swerve to this side or that, keeping their eyes on the obstacle instead of on the object to be attained, and pretty soon the object has faded from view and nothing remains but a memory of what was once a purpose in life.
I suppose the truth is that most people do not desire strongly enough. They do not care enough really about accomplishing what they start to do to give their undivided attention to it. They do not pursue an object with determined energy because their desire for its attainment is weak, and it is this lack of determination that appears to us as cowardliness. Men lack faith in themselves. They do not know, and will not believe, in the power of the will to overcome—of a positive mental condition over the negative forces in men and in nature. When all men have learned this we shall hear less or nothing about obstacles and failures in life, for all things array themselves on the side of those who have a knowledge of the law, and the courage not to see obstacles in their road to success.
Length of Life is Increasing
The brain or thought factory has always led. What it said was true was instantly built upon by the digestive system” and became flesh and blood.
No matter how erroneous the statement may be which the brain makes, so long as that statement is accepted and believed, the digestive system builds it into veritable flesh and blood and it becomes living tissue.
Take for instance the race belief in death. Because at this time we have seen that all lives terminate in death we say death is the one inevitable thing. This statement formulated by the brain is accepted by the digestive system—which always builds under orders from the brain—and the result is that everybody dies. The digestive system which is that part of ns that clothes beliefs with flesh, builds in the direction of death instead of building in the direction of life. It builds the human body in weakness instead of building it in power, as it would do if the brain made a statement of power instead of weakness.
It makes no difference what the brain says, whether disease or health; whether old age or perpetual youth; whether death or the conquest of death; just what it says is the thing the digestive system will build and make manifest in the body.
This was the method of growth on the unconscious plane—by which I mean the plane below the reasoning plane—the plane where creatures simply grew in blind obedience to the Law of Attraction, before they were prompted to investigate the law.
We have the most undeniable proof of this fact; we see it in the gradual improvement of the different species of plants and creatures clear up to man. Everything—no matter how low in the scale of lift—projects some belief that reaches beyond its present condition, and is an improvement upon its present condition. This belief is gradually clothed by the digestive system of the creature, so that in time there is an improvement; a gradual growth toward the making of more powerful beliefs and to the inevitable sequence—namely, the clothing the new beliefs by the digestive system.
Here is the whole scheme of evolution. The digestive system is always negative to the brain or thought-projecting power, and its building efforts flow constantly into the last, best and highest statement of this power.
What will seem a strange thing is the fact that creatures have the privilege of building below their present manifestation or bodily expression quite as readily as they build above it. They have the privilege of degenerating as well as that of improving. They may and do—under certain environments which they cannot overcome—grow so much weaker than their progenitors that their brain yields them a feebler statement of life; a weaker belief with regard to their ability to do certain things. In this condition, and because of their weakened belief, they degenerate.
The mind or brain must carry a constant belief in its own power, or else it loses that power. When a certain breed of monkeys found its members could no longer obtain their favorite food from the trees on which they had once lived, and were obliged to live on food they gathered on the ground, they gradually lost the use of their tails, and in time they lost their tails. It may look like folly to say that this whole process was mental, but it was. The monkeys forgot that they had tails; their tails dropped out of their minds and no longer called on the digestive system for the food that had previously supported them. .Let us now suppose that these same monkeys in the course of time found food growing scarce again. It became an absolute necessity for them to think about getting food somewhere else. They were not aware of the fact that they were thinking, for they had not yet emerged from the unconscious plane of growth where thought takes no notice of itself. But it is a fact that they did think because they had to think in order to even know that they were hungry, or to take a single step in the direction of obtaining other food. Let us now suppose that the new food they found was less nutritious than what they had previously lived upon; it would then follow that they would degenerate, and lose to a still farther degree a belief in their power, and so be forced to make a still weaker statement of themselves.
So we see that degeneration is a possible thing. No matter how high a creature’s belief may be, if there is nothing for the digestive system to build the belief into flesh and blood, the inevitable result is seen in loss of power.
This fact teaches us a very important lesson; .namely, that we are dependent on Mother Earth for the visible continuance of our lives.
The folly of ignoring the visible part of us, and putting our faith in something which is invisible and beyond the plane of our present efforts, is beginning to be very apparent to all persons who will do their own thinking. Evolution is destroying the heaven of the future by showing man that he created himself in all his past, and predicting grounds for a belief that he can continue to do so. Evolution shows the necessity of drawing our sustenance from the earth and its surrounding fluids; it has established the fact that our lives are dependent on the things which nature yields, and that our lives are of a more developed type in proportion as it yields us more and better food.
Eight up to the present moment we see that food has been our great developing agent; and it is also true that this will always continue to be the case.
But I am not going to stop to discuss this matter now. I want to speak again of the degeneration sometimes apparent in plants and animals, and even perhaps in men. That there are negative influences as well as positive ones no person will deny; but it is observable in the long continued course of growth that the positive influences gain on the negative ones, and life proceeds more rapidly and with less and less of the degenerating impulse. In other words, life makes a constant gain over death. In other words still, there is a constant increase of vitality visible as evolution proceeds.
There was no conscious life on the planet at first, even though all was life in undevelopment. It was life so entirely unconscious of itself that it might have been called dead. But the vital principle of the Law of Attraction manifested more and more all the time, until plants appeared, and then animals.
But the vital power—which is life—kept on manifesting. It kept conquering death in one form or another all the time in spite of occasional retrogression. Indeed it began to gain rapidly over its earlier condition of deadness; it produced animals that constantly improved upon former species in every way. It is plain to the commonest thinker that the whole trend of things was from the deadness of early beginnings to a constantly increasing aliveness. The world is more alive today than ever before. It will be more alive tomorrow than it is today. And why?
It is because all creatures and things, even the lowest forms of life, point upward. It is this upward pointing of all things that leads from lower to higher species constantly. There is nothing that does not aspire to higher conditions; in other words, there is nothing that does not desire something more and better than it has. Its growing intellect speaks in desire, and desire is builded into organism by the digestive system; and so growth proceeds.
It is a tremendous thought, this of the world’s becoming more alive every day. Think of it will you? Why it is an absolute guarantee of the conquest of death in time. This result is inevitable. From death to life is the road the race is traveling now, though it is not aware of it. It still remains on the plane of unconscious growth; it is only here and there that a thinker gets up and expounds the situation; a thinker, who by much reasoning on the subject of evolution, and by a close inspection of the always growing faculties of man, has arrived at an understanding of the whole matter.
This is the transitional period from the unconscious plane of growth to the conscious plane. Only a few of us have reached the conscious plane yet, but still the vitalizing principle increases just the same as it has done in the past; the world is growing more highly vitalized every day. Thought is responsible for this; intelligent thought that is constantly recognizing more and more of the world’s unexplored and undeveloped forces.
The vitalizing influx proceeds whether the race applies itself to the effort of understanding it or not. The period of such application is not yet reached except by a very few. When it is reached by all, the transposition from the unconscious to the conscious plane of life will be complete.
And when this time comes life will bound forward with lightning speed; it has been slow while confined to the unconscious plane—the plane where there was almost no thought to recognize it. It is recognition of this vitality—this everlasting life principle—that lifts the race from the unconscious to the conscious plane of growth; and it is on this latter plane of growth that man comes into a knowledge of his own mastery and begins to create from his own reasoning powers, instead of from his blind, groping desires, as he created on the unconscious plane.
The difference between the conscious and unconscious planes of life is this; on the unconscious plane the creature pushes forward in the direction of what it wants, through the power of the unreasoning brute will, without any reflection on the matter. In the course of race growth the reflective faculties are developed, and the creature, instead of pushing forward through the force of the brute will, begins to reason on his own innate, but undeveloped powers, when he discovers that he can accomplish his desires through the channels of thought; through belief in his ideals; together with a steady work in the effort to execute them or bring them forth on the material plane.
The first position is one of constant warfare with other creatures on the brute plane, and the entire condition is inharmonious in the extreme.
Such a position necessarily favors isolation; creatures, or even men, that belong to this order, fear and avoid each other.
The Law of Attraction—which is the life principle—manifests in seeming weakness, and race vitality is at a low ebb. Indeed, the farther back we go in the investigation of our earlier existence and our earlier conditions and surroundings, the plainer we see that there was a time when the manifestation of life was so feeble that it was hardly perceptible, and that from this low plane the constant increase of life as expressed in the constantly improving races of animals shows a tendency toward a sort of half conscious understanding of the rights of each other, together with less fear of each other, and consequently a closer approach to each other, thus showing the growing power of the Law of Attraction; and with this growing power was more life evolved constantly.
This evolvement of more and more life has been going on from the start—if there was any start—and it is still going on. It was so weak at first that death was more apparent than life; so that the people said, “Death is the one inevitable thing.” But now the life principle is asserting itself so rapidly that the thinker who investigates the matter honestly, begins to see that life is conquering death; it is getting the start of death.
All things prove this. Take, for instance, the race methods of locomotion. See how we have conquered space and time by the inventions of our brains. And another instance is found in the fact that improved foods and improved sense of personal power are now yielding longer lives. It seems hardly anything now to cross the century line; all the papers are stating such instances. In addition to this, statistics are showing that the average length of human life is increasing rapidly.
And yet people look you honestly in the face and tell you that “death is the one thing inevitable.” If this were so, and if death were more powerful than life, why is it not driving life out, instead of being driven out by life?
Life Must be Expressed in Action
It is the instinct and the effort of all life (animate and inanimate) to rise continually to higher expression of life. The life of man lay locked in the heart of the earth. By and by vegetable life shook off the more negative conditions of its remoter earth state, and rose and stood erect, still keeping the life of man secreted in its bosom. Time passed on, and animal life appeared, born from the life of the plants; and all the while our human life lay folded in the animal. But before manhood had evolved from animalhood, man was in the Garden of Eden. That is, while in the animal form, he had not reached that point where he recognized his own individuality, his free moral agency; his reasoning powers were not awakened. In the Bible statement of it, he had not reached forth his hand and taken fruit from the tree which revealed a knowledge of good and evil—error. He was governed by instinct, as every unreasoning creature is; and instinct is unerring in its guidance. Therefore, man in his instinctive condition was in his Eden. He did not trouble himself about ideas of justice and injustice, but obeyed his instincts which taught him how to select his food and defend himself, and he was happy. Literally, as the Scriptures state it, the life of man is found contained in the dust of the earth; for each dusty atom embodies the mighty power of the whole, and is on its long journey ever upward, through the Great Forever.
But time passed on, and man rose out of his animal Eden into his human form, and stood erect, and reasoned about himself. And this is why he makes mistakes. He is expressed in the image of “God.” God is a name for the power of the law. The law is unlimited; man is finite—limited. Man, this child of the law is creative too; because law contains all; man also contains all; but the all is latent in him. Therefore, man being a limited concentration of the unlimited whole, it follows that the limited being must (since creativeness is one of his attributes) create error for himself because he is limited. A limited creature with unlimited power latent within him cannot use and develop that power without creating in the direction of error. For remember we are emerging from negative conditions (not having fallen from a state of perfection) and, therefore, the negative pole of a truth is the one we naturally encounter first. And it is by means of our experience with the negative pole that we are finally enabled to reach the positive pole. Having gained the positive pole in this manner, we fully understand our position, being thoroughly acquainted with the ground we traveled over to get there. If we had grasped the positive pole first, we would not have earned it by the necessary conquest of the negative, and would, therefore, be in danger of falling. Our errors mean much. Taken in consideration with the good growing out of them, they prove that we are the beginning—the incipient developments or incarnations or expressions—of the unlimited law.
The moment a negative condition (pain or other sickness) dominates a life, that moment is the one in which to overthrow it, since it is by the overthrowing of these conditions, either in yourself or in others, that the strength is gained. If the conquering a pain does not teach anything to the patient, there is always someone else who learns a lesson by it. In the first place, the healer has added the strength of the conquered to his former strength, and his gain is an additional power to help others as well as himself. In the second place, the patient is relieved from suffering. If he is ripe for that relief, the suffering will not come back; if he is not, it will return and rule until sufficient strength is developed for its entire overthrow.
The race is one and inseparable, so that the conquest of one is the conquest of all, the good of one the good of all.
But there must be two sides to a conquest, the conquered and the conqueror, and the part enacted by the conquered is as essential to the complete lesson as the part of the conqueror. Both are instrumental in the performance of an experience which contributes a lesson to the great whole, themselves, of course, included.
Students who are new in this science are often timid about trying to heal; about putting their powers to the practical test. Yet this is just the thing they must do; for I have discovered that no matter how great our power, it avails us nothing so long as we do not make occasion to use it. It is like the miser and his money. He possesses it; still he does not have it in the true sense of possession, because he never uses it, and he occupies the same attitude that he would occupy without any money. He does not use it; therefore, it is an unknown power to him. There is scarcely anything in the physical world that money will not buy or do, but he is with- out the result of its power, even though it is in his possession. Why? Because he does not use it, and test and lead out its strength. Now, I advise my students to let it be known that they wish to teach these truths for the practice. Tell your friends that you wish to make a beginning, and if the results are small at first neither you nor they have a right to be discouraged; for with your effort they will grow larger and larger until you will see your way clear to attain your highest conceptions—so great is the reward of a faithful following along the line of these truths.
To Know Truth is to be Redeemed by It
The fact that men do not anticipate death for themselves, furnishes a tremendous argument in favor of the ultimate conquest of death. It shows that there is an intuitive perception within man of the eternal spirit of life that pervades all things. This spirit of life is the one fact upon which I wish to dwell at some length. I have thought about it a great deal, and yet it seems to me that the one and only thing I could say about it is simply that it exists; that it is. The world—the universe—is full of this spirit of life; it transfuses everything from the atom to man; from the grain of sand to the planet. It is never for a moment absent anywhere. Wherever it is, there life manifests in form; there it shows forth in living creatures. This spirit of life which is eternal and unchangeable, seems to be one thing all by itself; while the creatures which are infused by it appear to be apart from it and not of it. But there is a great fact to be brought to light here; man is one with this spirit of life, and not separate from it, as he appears to be, and as he has always believed himself to be. It is this spirit of life that has been called God, and worshiped as some supreme personality. But to assign the idea of personality to this universal vitality or life principle is one of the cardinal mistakes of the race. This principle of life exists as an essence, or spirit, or vital flame, that springs into manifestation wherever it is recognized and always in the degree in which it is recognized. For instance, the blade of grass recognizes a certain amount of the spirit of life, and shows this spirit of life forth in what it is. Higher grade of life, as the animals, show forth more of this transfusing spirit because they recognize more. Han shows forth more still because he, with his tremendous intellect, has the power to recognize more than an}’ other creature.
Ever since the beginning of the manifestation of life there has been a steady increase in the power of the creature to recognize it.
Evolution has been brain-building. The line of continuity, so far as the unfoldment of the life principle has gone, has never been broken from the first life cell to man. It has been a continual increase of the consciousness of the law on the part of the creature.
In looking back down the past, I perceive that every step from the beginning has been the acquisition of more of the life principle, solely on account of the creature’s power to recognize more of it; and I perceive, also, that at this time man, the most advanced of the creatures, is recognizing more than ever before, and that within the last few years his increasing power to recognize it has been truly a phenomenal thing. Every truth has its bearing on the whole truth; and the fact that men have grown steadily in intelligence as the ages proceeded, and that they have acquired more vitality in proportion as they grew in intelligence, would indicate that they have the power to acquire still greater intelligence; and with greater intelligence an augmented amount of vitality. Vitality is life. Vitality in the human organism is the life principle drawn to coherence through recognition on the part of the individual. Enough of this vitality will conquer death as easily as a superior amount of vitality now conquers disease. How do we conquer disease? By stimulating the vital powers so that they generate more force, more strength, more health. The power to conquer disease, which no one will deny, prophesies the power to conquer death. Disease is the negation or the non-recognition of the life principle. Death is the still further non-recognition of the life principle: it is the culmination of the non-recognition. Death is not something separate from disease; it is simply an extension of disease, or a deepening of disease: it is ‘sinking still further and further in the direction of weakness; and weakness is nothing but the failure to recognize the life principle; the universal vitality. No doubt this will seem a very strange statement when I say that the simple recognition of the life principle, which comes through the superior intelligence of the individual, will ward off disease and conquer old age and death. I know that this statement will have no meaning whatever to the majority of people, but it is simply because they have given the subject no thought. When the fact is known that the life principle exists and is ubiquitous; that there is not a spot on earth nor in the universe that is not transfused by it, it will be absolutely necessary to accept the statement that there is no death. This is pure logic; the allness of life shuts out all possibility of death; and as man is pure intelligence, the simple knowing of this fact is his redemption.
Believing
Desire, hope, belief, faith—the knowing; these are the rounds of the ladder by which we reach the goal of our aspirations.
First comes the longing for something, we hardly know what. We are conscious of something lacking, something needed to round out our lives, to make us contented, satisfied, at ease, of a vacancy rather than of the want of some specific thing. But by and by this longing materializes as it were into something definite—a want to which we can give a name; something that appeals to us as the one thing necessary to our happiness, and as we dwell upon it, Hope, the child of Desire, is born in our hearts; the hope that, somehow, sometime, the desire may he gratified. We do not see the way by which, or in which, it will come; indeed, it seems at first impossible that it should come, but in spite of the seeming impossibility, we hope until from hoping we pass to belief; we believe that our desire will be gratified. This is evolution, the evolution of desire into belief.
But belief is not faith. Faith is the fully developed flower of which believing is only the half opened bud that may yet be nipped by the frost of doubt. Faith opens its every petal to the sun and the breeze and does not close them when night sets in and the rain descends. And from the blossom comes the fruit; knowing comes through faith as faith through believing; believing from hope and hope from desire. It is the law, the mental law, of evolution. All forms have their inception in the mental, and that which is conceived in the mental must have birth in the physical if it perish not in the womb for lack of nourishment.
I say must be born into the physical. I mean just that; it must be. Desire is a seed germ and if it be not pinched back at the moment of putting forth its first tender shoot, it will grow and thrive and its leaves will open as hope, and hope will grow into belief, and belief blossom into faith, and faith bear the fruit of knowledge—we shall know that we have that which we desire.
This is as certain as that from the seed of a tree will come, first leaves, then a slender stem, then branches, and finally bloom and fruit. It is the law that it should be so, and the only power in the universe that can keep us from having our desires met and satisfied is the power within ourselves to doubt.
Desire may not ripen into the specific thing which we expected when we planted the seed of desire in our hearts, for with growth and changing conditions the desire ceases to be for that specific thing which first attracted us. An object may appear very beautiful and desirable at a distance, which upon a nearer view becomes less so, becomes even repugnant to the sight. Yet if it be not so and if we continue earnestly to desire the one thing, it is within the law that that particular thing shall come to us, or that we go to it.
How can it be otherwise when desire is the seed germ wherein all things have their origin? Will not the seed of the plum produce a plum tree? If left alone it will, but if a peach be grafted upon it, it will bear not plums, but peaches.
So with our desires. If we cling to the first original desire, it will bring us to the specific thing desired, but if upon this first desire we graft other desires of a different nature, then the fruit will be either a cross or the fruit of the tree from which the graft was taken.
The reason most people never feel their desires met is because they put too many and too frequent grafts into their root desire, and do not give any of them time to blossom and hear fruit. The law of evolution is a law of growth, not of miracles, and growth requires time.
Of the seed planted today, you do not expect to eat fruit tomorrow; neither of the fruit of the graft the same season it is inserted. But next year, or the next, they bear fruit.
If yon form a battery by chemical action, you must wait a bit, after placing your materials in proper relations to each other, until the chemical force is called into action. It must take place before it can give expression to itself; so with desire, and hope, and faith; these also must have time in which to act, or to show forth.
You say it is hard to have faith, to hold to it when conditions oppose. Exactly. But you can hold fast to desire, and desire will beget hope, and hope is father to belief, and belief ripens into faith. Faith, as I have been telling you, is a growth, an unfoldment.
It is not a miracle, and it cannot come unless you are true to your desires and follow them.
If you plant an acorn only to dig it up the next month or next year, and plant a peach only to replace that with a walnut, when are you to expect fruit, or of what kind?
Just so with desire. If your desire changes from day to day, or from year to year, from any cause, what fruitage are you to expect?
Because your desire constantly changes, because you replace one seed with another before the first has had time to fruit, you say, “The things I desire do not come to me;” whereas you have no fixed desire, but only a fleeting fancy; or if a real desire has been born into your heart you have throttled it by doubting that it could ever be, and have not followed it.
Again I say, desire is the parent of all growth—of all things—and without desire there is no growth. Desire long held to creates the conditions by which hope, and then belief become possible; and from belief, faith; and of faith, knowing; which is the attaining, is the natural and lawful fruit.
How to Grow
Affirmation is creation. When the student in Mental Science has come into sufficient understanding of the principles underlying this mighty truth, he may begin to affirm for himself, and his affirmation creates.
Let us say that he knows he is all mind; and that his mind, which is himself, has risen to a condition of positiveness—through the acquisition of truth—where he knows himself master of all other minds, that; by reason of ignorance and undevelopment, are negative to him. It is then that he can make his affirmations, and they begin to create.
He has passed through his denials; he has denied the existence of evil, and of all the world’s fallacies based on that belief. He knows that the whole system of the race’s accepted convictions is pure nonsense. How can it be otherwise when it rests on a false premise; the premise that evil is a self existent power equal to good, and far more prevalent in its operations? From a clear understanding of the situation has the student denied this until his conviction stands unalterable. One might suppose that he was done now; and that he had reached a place where he could rest and let the universal Life Principle grow for him. But just let him try this, and see what happens.
The thing that happens is this. His sense of freedom from the old world’s beliefs will not be a clay old before he is overtaken by a feeling of despondent helplessness. He then begins to wonder what ails him, and to go down within himself in search of a new and more sustaining truth. Here he perceives what he had previously learned, but had half forgotten; namely, that man is his own creator. Then he wonders for a moment how a man can create himself. Again he finds answer from out the unlimited storehouse of self, which says, “Have I not cleared off this garden spot which is my me, and got it ready for the planting of a new growth quite different from the weeds eradicated by the denials? Then let me plant what I most want.” But how? Quick as a flash the me responds, “By affirmations.”
At first this almost dazes the student. It seems too easy. “Can a man affirm himself to be what he most desires to be, and have an unfailing result in consonance with his affirmation?”
It may take days, even months, for his faith to accept such a tremendous truth; but gradually he does accept it. It is the natural sequence of all that he has learned before; he simply must accept it. And ^he does accept it, though in weakness; not doubting it, but held back from a full realization of it by the entire body of race beliefs, which—at this stage of race progress—permeate the very atmosphere he breathes. And it is this fact that makes the result of our best affirmations so Blow to show forth. It is the affirmations themselves, thousands of times repeated in the light of our fullest intellectual recognition, that .have to drive back or change this great worldwide unbelief that the whole race has accepted as the truth of truths. It is the affirmations, and nothing else, that have the power to banish the widespread error that we are born into, and that is the breath of our lives, until we acquire the knowledge that contradicts it.
And so our affirmations—those assertions born of the ideal—are the only weapons in our power by which we can recreate. The denials made clear a space in our minds where we could begin to plant our affirmations; but unless we do plant our affirmations growth stops right there. Those who wait for some outside power to affirm them into strength drift backward again. Those who expect some god to do it for them will soon find themselves on the down grade. Those who lie back and call on “the spirit” to come and make them over will wander into many a labyrinth of feeble ideas without finding the way. It is only he who has got it fully imbued in his mind that man is self-creative, who will feel the boldness and the courage to begin to make the affirmations correctly.
And what is the correct way? It is the plainest and simplest matter in the world. I have proved intelligently that I am all mind; and I know that in the past I have been a statement of the world’s beliefs. But I no longer believe the world’s beliefs, although my body still shows them forth; I have denied the world’s beliefs until I am comparatively clear of them in my thoughts, even if not in my body. The next thing to do is to begin to affirm that I am what I’ desire to be. I am what I desire to be in my thoughts, at least, and from my thoughts or from my ideal I make the affirmations. Among these affirmations are the following: “I am well and strong and vital; I am on the road to eternal youth; I am beautiful and pure and good; I am opulent and happy and free.”
Now, of course, I am aware all the time I make these affirmations, that on the old plane of thought they are not true. But I reason with myself again, and assure myself that I have left the old plane of thought, and that it is my privilege to create a new plane of thought; so I try to drop all the old beliefs out of my mind, because when I drop them out of my mind they are dropped out of my body; for mind and body are one. Therefore, I let go of them; they are there; oh! yes, there is no mistake about that, but I have withdrawn the sustenance of my belief from them and they will gradually fade away. They being born in a belief of evil, are negative to these later thoughts which were born in a belief of absolute good; and if I hold faithfully to the truth in the matter they will slowly disappear, while my affirmations will slowly become established in their place.
In making the affirmations, our best attitude toward the old beliefs is that of relaxation; as if we were not holding them in thought at all; as if we had nothing to do with them, and were not concerned about them.
It is very difficult to ignore the old beliefs at first, but it can be done after it has been practiced awhile. Every time your thought would touch them, abstract it, as if there was nothing in that direction worthy of your attention. Don’t fight the old beliefs; don’t assume a position of antagonism against them; to do this would be to recognize them; to recognize them would be to hold them in your mind; to hold them in your mind is to hold them in your body, for body and mind are one.
There is a great deal of talk about practicing a certain kind of breathing. There is a peculiar kind of breathing that comes with the creative thought; but when one comes into the proper thought the breathing comes too. To imitate this style of breathing is an easy thing to do, but to do it does not bring the right thought, and is of no consequence whatever in the new growth we are formulating. The right effort is purely of the intellect; it is an effort to comprehend certain high truths that bring us in unison with the Law of Life; in proportion as we come in unison with the Law we come into the universal or “divine breath.” But to counterfeit the divine breath, which any one can be taught to do, does not bring us into an understanding of the Law, and does not lift us one particle along the road of deathless progression that we are seeking.
I suppose even the most casual observer has noticed that certain states of thought and feeling affect the breathing. But if anyone will think a moment he will know that it was the thought and feeling that produced the unusual breathing, and not the unusual breathing that produced the thought and feeling.
To watch every breath ‘you draw would be a very foolish thing to do. But to think with concentration, to bring forth new truth from out our organizations through our power to abstract thought from our surroundings, and focus it upon some object under investigation—this is an effort towards real growth; and then when our intellectual light has become strong enough to establish us in the great fact of man’s creativeness, and we begin to affirm ourselves to be just what our highest ideal prompts, then there comes a breathing very noticeably different from the ordinary breathing. But if at such a time we drop the intellectual effort and concentrate our attention upon the breathing, in a moment the spell is broken for the time being.
The Substantiality of Thought
You cannot tell me, neither can I give you the component parts of thought, or explain its action except by its effect. But I do know that thought produces an effect as surely and as unerringly as electricity or magnetism, which is equally as invisible to the naked eye as is thought. Indeed, the fact is already demonstrated that thought is infinitely more powerful as an agent than electricity. What is more, it is an intelligent agent, which electricity is not; and to me it does not appear a wild idea to suppose that the time will come when thought will supersede electricity as a motor power, just as electricity has superseded steam. This idea may seem like pure insanity to the reader, but it is hardly sixty years since the idea that electricity would take the place of steam seemed like insanity to our grandparents.
Thought transference is a common theme of discussion nowadays; even as slow a coach as the public press begins to be exercised about it.
If your attention has not been called to it, you may not have noticed it; but to those whose interest has been awakened, and who are perhaps a little on the watch, it would almost seem as if everybody had suddenly discovered that he was a member of a committee specially appointed to investigate and report instances, going to prove the frequent occurrence of the transmission of thought messages between people long distances apart. And now that your attention is called to it, I venture to believe that you will yourself find evidence within a week of the fact that the transference of thought, of ideas from yourselves to others, and from others to yourself, is of daily occurrence.
How often do you hear people in reply to some remark made by another say, “I was just on the point of making that same remark myself!” How often have you thought of some person of whom you had not heard or thought for years, and have had that person spoken of almost at the same time by another person; or perhaps the person himself whom your memory had recalled would be near at hand and hastening to your presence.
His thoughts had reached you before he did.
And what do such things prove? Simply that thought is as capable of producing an effect as electricity, or magnetism, or drugs, all of which are in use for the healing of the body by the recognized schools of therapeutics.
And if thought can affect the body, which is corporeal, why not other equally dense substances?
Do not certain drugs possess certain chemical properties? What is the effect of the mingling in solution of an acid and an alkali?
You perhaps feel inclined to smile at the implication that thought substance may have the effect of an acid or an alkali; but did you never come into the presence of a person whom you temporarily felt to be an acid while you were an alkali?
I tell you that thought is as much a substance as any drug; and when backed by a human will, gifted with an understanding of the Law, it is as much more powerful than drugs as it is finer, higher, more closely related to the vital power.
Ignorant of his own power, faithless with regard to his right of present dominion, man abrogates his authority and descends to the plane of animalhood in his contentions with animals and with the grosser forms of nature, when he could and should assert his power as a superior by virtue of his nearer approach to godhood.
But, someone may ask, “Do you, or do Mental Scientists claim to exercise the power to affect dead matter? Can you indeed say to the mountain, ‘Be thou removed and cast into the sea,’ and will it be done?”
We claim nothing but what we can prove by the force of reason and logic.
Do you suppose the king who from his birth had denied his kingship, asserting that not he, but another, was rightfully entitled to rule, will be recognized and obeyed by all the moment he is ready to proclaim his rightful sovereignty?
Since the race had birth, countless ages ago, men have refused to ascend the throne and wield dominion in their proper personalities, their true selves; and they have publicly by word and act, proclaimed themselves the thralls of circumstances and conditions; bound slaves to coarser, cruder, less perfect creatures than they themselves are.
They do so still.
Is it fair, then, is it reasonable to expect that when only a few thousands have come so recently into partial knowledge of their heirship, that all men and all things else will acknowledge their claim and obey their commands?
Yet who was it that said, “If ye have faith even as a grain of mustard seed you shall say to the mountain, ‘be thou removed and cast into the sea, and it will be done?'” Oh! friends, there is no soul in existence who even dreams, in the wildest flights of his imagination, of the power that is vested in man. For man is the seed germ of all possible development; and every bit of new wisdom that he acquires gives him added power over all things in the external world. As his power to accrete wisdom is not limited, so neither is his power over external nature limited. Thus he conquers his surroundings by widening the realm of his own thought sphere, by making the most of his own intellect and by believing more and more in himself.
But to go back a moment to the power of thought in its influence upon others, and also in reference to its being a substance. The very air is full of thoughts, or beliefs, of various characters, and men breathe them into themselves unless fortified by a high knowledge of the power vested in their own individuality, to control all objects negative to themselves. These thoughts and beliefs are legion.
Go into a forest on an autumn morning, just after the sun has risen and melted the first frost from the leaves of the beech and maple and oak trees, and when the fresh morning breeze is stirring the branches, the fallen leaves shall not be thicker about you than are the thought forms that meet you in the village street on your return, or of as many shapes and colors.
And of these, many shall pass you by, or fall unheeded at your feet; others will touch but lightly your own lightest thought; while others shall mingle with your own well-spring of ideas, so as to seem, and really become, a part of its overflowing motive power to action.
To ignorance all things, the cause of which is not clear to the understanding, are miracles. To the intelligence of the Nineteenth century there is nothing outside of Law, hence no miracles in the common meaning of the word.
Bead by the light of an understanding of the Law the statement that Jesus went to a place where he could do no mighty works, because of the people’s unbelief, is that the very air was permeated with doubts; so much so that he was met by a sea of adverse thoughts, and could not do the things which he had found it easy to do where there was more faith and less opposition in the mental world—the world of first cause, the world of creativeness.
One strong in the faith based on a fuller knowledge of the Law may heal the sick, may do much even against the unbelief of those about him; he may do more with those who put forth no opposing force, but until all men cease to deny the kingship of the real man, the rightful ruler, the mental man, the will man, there will be opposition and doubt to face and conquer. This will, of course, diminish in force as time proceeds and intelligence spreads, and every year will make a difference in this respect in favor of the growths of new truth.
Mental Science is the True Interpreter of the Bible
Every age has had its philosophers, every cycle of years its prophets; in fact, it may be truthfully announced that every advance which the race has made, that has been worthy of being regarded as a New Age, has been the result of new truths proclaimed by the prophets and philosophers of that time; or of some old truth newly stated in language with power to take hold upon the people and clinging to which, they climb higher and draw nearer to the infinite All Truth, leaving the old behind, and thus inaugurating a “new departure.”
Seldom indeed has prophet or philosopher been acceptable to the age in which he lived and taught, for prophets and philosophers are image breakers, and this is the one thing that average people will not submit to. They cling fast to their old beliefs and theories with such tenacity that it usually takes generations to reconcile the race to any considerable change of beliefs. But it is these thinkers who, in spite of the slowness of the people to accept new ideas, do in the course of time, reshape the mental images of men and women. And it is this reshaping of public thought, of human belief, that marks the advent of a new age; that truly of itself constitutes the new age.
Mental Science, or the power of the human mind or will, is not a new subject for thought; far from it. No theme is older. Nothing in the history of the race antedates it. The first man who began to reason regarding himself and his relations to life and the source of life, had commenced the study of Mental Science, and he who said, “Man, know thyself,” struck the keynote to all wisdom.
Every advance that man has ever made has resulted from a clearer perception of himself as man; a better seeing of his’ own mental powers; a better understanding of himself as an intellectual entity, and, consequently, of his relations to the universal Law, the Law of Being and the Law of Doing.
Men have not always realized this, may not do so to any great extent now, yet in the nature of things it is true, and a moment’s consideration will make the fact clear to anyone.
For men must first believe before they are ready to act; they shape their lives in accordance with their faith, no matter what their faith is; and in proportion as they know themselves, ‘in proportion as they have faith or lack of faith in their own powers, will be the extent of endeavor they put forth; and as no progress was ever made without endeavor, so no endeavor was ever made without progress.
If it were possible that effort could be put forth without result, then could a cause exist without its corresponding effect? For the expressions ”effort and result” and “cause and effect” are synonymous terms.
So it is in proportion as man has learned to know himself, to understand the greatness of his own mind and will, that the race has progressed and will continue to progress.
The study of Mental Science is simply a study of the powers of the human mind and will, and Mental Scientists are those who, having made it a study, have gained some knowledge in tins direction in advance of those who have not made a study of it. That is all.
Mental Scientists do not claim to possess all the truth there is, for truth is infinite; it is measureless, limitless. It is by this one fact—the fact that truth is limitless—that we prove the infinite possibilities of the human intellect for perpetual unfoldment; for truth must be correlated to that which recognized it, or it might as well not exist.
It is this fact alone that justifies the hope of eternal life which we all find within ourselves; for if the wheels of progress were to stand forever still within our intelligences, then death were preferable; indeed, this would be death.
What Mental Scientists do claim is a greater faith in the possibilities of all the race than the world is at this time ready to admit; a greater faith in man and woman; a stronger belief in the power of their intellects and their ability to do more and to be more than they have ever done or been before. In other words, we believe the race is ignorant of its own great powers; ignorant of its ability to control matter and to mold its surroundings to suit itself, which it surely could do if it but believed in itself, and in the latent possibilities that are incarnate in it, as the head and crowning of all nature, and the leader in all advancement.
We believe the race has been, and is now, held back from its high destiny by man’s ignorance of the wonderful powers he already possesses; powers that are adequate to his full and complete salvation from all the ills of life, such as weakness, disease, old age, poverty and death.
Some may be surprised that I speak of man’s power to overcome poverty; but this is one of the truths we hold with unflinching firmness, because it is a truth we have demonstrated practically among those of our most advanced students, who have learned the wonderful secret of attracting to themselves all the externals of life that they need.
That the statement provoked doubt I know full well; and to the doubters I will say that knowledge is power, and that of all knowledge that of the occult or hidden is the greatest; that it is this knowledge which has worked all the miracles in the past ages; and which is even now working, similar results in many places on our earth today.
That I have included old age as one of the disabilities of life that can be conquered, is another truth to which we firmly hold, and which is in process of demonstration. Old eyes are being restored; white hair is returning by natural process to the original color of youth. Many patients are being treated mentally by our most powerful healers for the lines and symbols of age in their faces, and these lines and symbols are disappearing.
It is said that truth will make you free; and no greater truth than this was ever spoken. And this truth that is to make you free relates entirely to the latent, but mighty powers vested in the human mind, the knowledge of which unites a man to the great infinite power and makes him one with it.
“I and the Father are one,” said Jesus; meaning that he was one with the Law of his Being, with which much study and thought had made him familiar.
We believe in man’s ability to progress in a knowledge of the infinitude of his own powers; and we believe that the place to begin the search for truth is in a man’s own self; in the study of man; and in the application of his powers of mind and will—as rapidly as he discovers them—to the conquest of the grosser substances of his body and of outside natural objects.
As stated before, we have demonstrated the powers of the mind over the body in the healing of sickness and disease in thousands of instances; aye, in tens and hundreds of thousands. What in a mere ignorant period of the world’s history would have been esteemed miracles of healing are things of common occurrence in the everyday practice of more than one of our Mental Science healers; and the number of families that depend upon some member of their own family, or upon some Mental Scientist outside of the family, in case of sickness; or upon themselves and their own knowledge of mind to control the body in the prevention of sickness, is already great, and daily becomes greater.
We make no war upon medical practitioners; the shoe is on the other foot in this particular. They have made war upon us to the extent of their ability in those places where our best healers are located and curing diseases declared by the “regulars” to be incurable.
At their instigation, our healers have been fined and imprisoned for curing the sick given up to die by them as incurable and dying; yes, curing them.
This is a positive fact and has occurred often; one of the most notable cases being that of a certain Mrs. Post of Iowa, who saved a child’s life that the regular M. D. had given up. This and similar cases have become matters of history.
The Liberty League of Boston successfully fought the Legislatures of Massachusetts for ten years to prevent the passage of laws for the total extinction of every demonstration of this new mental power.
The effort to have the laws passed was inaugurated and kept up by the old school medical practitioners of that state for many years. In Iowa and Illinois and several other states these laws have been passed, and now stand on the statute books of those states as marks of eternal disgrace to the men through whose influence they were placed there.
I do not wish to be understood as implicating the entire medical profession in what I have just said; for the fact is that many of the most able opponents of this infamous business were medical men themselves. They were men who had the breadth of intellect to know that prison bars would not confine, nor even hinder for a day, the spirit of progress that marks the history of the healing art. Their own experience has shown them that all healing was more mental than through the power of drugs, and they were watching the trend of every forward movement with the interest of big souls and brains, who have the welfare of the race at heart more than the private interests of their own pocketbooks.
Unfortunately for the history of the old schools of medical practice, this noble class of men were too limited in number to control the vast body of doctors who are doctors for the money in the business solely.
It was queer, though, the way the matter progressed. The allopaths, who had formerly made war on the homoeopaths, until the latter school had become too firmly established to make this warfare pay, joined with them in persecuting us; and every other little “pathy” that had anything like a secure footing joined in with them; they ceased quarreling among themselves, for the time, and “joined hands” to defeat the terrific new monster of healing, that did surely heal in a manner that was appalling to the pecuniary interests of the members of the fraternity.
That the time will come when drugs and medicines of all kinds will cease to be used we do not at all doubt; but it will only be when men have learned that the mind is by natural right the master of the body, and absolutely supreme in its mastery.
Many have learned it already, and all will learn it in time.
This truth, like every other truth, is for all; because every living soul is related through the mighty intellectual powers he holds in latency (as the acorn holds the oak) to all possible truth that the ages have the ability to reveal. There is scarcely anyone now who has not in some way learned that there are those who hold ideas on this subject far out on the road of progress beyond the accepted beliefs in such matters, and they begin to have some faith that there is truth in the claims put forth by us, and they desire to have farther knowledge of our teachings.
This subject, taken on its smallest and lowest basis, that of healing disease alone, is of immense interest to the general public, weakened as it is through and through with the old race beliefs in the infallible power of disease; for it is a fact that the belief in the power of disease is far ahead of the belief in the power of health in the minds of the people.
That we teach the very opposite of this is alone a matter of mighty interest to the public, and” it insures us a hearing wherever we choose to speak. A knowledge of our teachings spreads, and the truths that we proclaim are being introduced to the people everywhere.
Our teachers and our healers are in every great city and in large numbers of our towns and villages.
We have already several well supported papers devoted exclusively to our teachings; books and pamphlets devoted to the subject of mental healing and the powers of the mind by the hundred, and more appearing almost weekly. In fact, we have every evidence of the assumption that our teachings are acceptable and accepted by the people in a way, and to an extent, which marks this as the beginning of a new and better age than any which has preceded it since the history of the race began.
This could not be—this so general acceptance of our teachings—did they not appeal to the reason of men and women.
It is because they do appeal to their reason that they are so commonly and generally accepted where taught.
The people, the race of intelligent men and women, have outgrown much of the teaching of the past. They are now ready—more than they have ever been before—for the coming of the image breaker, and the image breaker has come.
There is an idea quite prevalent that Mental Science is a religion, and that its teachings are antagonistic to the religious of the day. It is necessary that this idea should be corrected. Mental Science is not a religion at all; it is the science of mind, pure and simple, and its whole mission is to establish the prominence of mind, in human affairs.
It is a fact that in establishing the prominence of mind, many of the old beliefs, once supposed to be religious, undergo a radical change; but when this change takes place, the unbiased thinker will readily perceive that it tallies infinitely better with the texts of that occult book—the Bible—than any interpretation of it previously given to the world.
Indeed, I should never have understood the Bible or the teachings and works of Jesus, but for the fact that Mental Science illuminates them and brings their long hidden meaning forth, making them all as plain as day.
Mental Science teaches that men are not helpless worms of the dust, to be crushed by external conditions and circumstances.
Everywhere in the Bible the promise is to him who overcomes, and not to him who succumbs. “Said I not ye are gods?” spoke up the genius of past ages, in that book so venerated by mankind. And what does this mean, unless it means that man has the power to master all his conditions; that he alone is architect of circumstances; lord of creation, in fact—through a knowledge of the Law of Being that unites him to the infinite potentiality of the universe? You may doubt this now, but you will come to believe and to know it to be true when you have studied the underlying principles of this mighty subject—the faintest hint of which it is hardly possible to give in one chapter.
What is it, that part of the man that you have always been taught to believe immortal; that should live forever?
Not the body, but the unseen man, the mind, the will, the soul. This is the true man; the real man.
And shall not the true man and the real man be master over the body, which is but that form of the real man built up by the errors of the age, instead of being built by the unerring knowledge of truth?
When he comes into the knowledge of the truth, which is a knowledge of his own power—the power of his own mind over his body, he will be able to rebuild his body to suit his aspirations after perfection.
The master is never a master, and the slave is never a slave, till each comes into a recognition of the situation. Therefore the body—which is the sum total of the world’s beliefs in weakness, disease and death—will always be master until the mind shall acquire the intelligence to assume control, and assign the body to the position of servitude to which it is rightly entitled.
The mind is now enslaved by the body, and will remain so until it sees the situation and perceives its own supremacy; then the situation will be reversed, and the mind will control the body, cast out its beliefs in disease, old age and death, and make it the deathless medium of its own transmission to the world of effects, the external world.
Until men understand their true relation to their bodies they are slaves to their bodies. But knowing the Law, and recognizing the superiority of the mind, the position of body and mind with relation to each other will be reversed. Then the true man—the mental man—steps into mastership, assumes the throne and is absolute ruler over everything below himself in the scale of being.
He is master over his own body, and over conditions that would fetter his progress; over circumstances and over time.
That this is to be so when the real man—the mind— comes into possession of his power I think no one anywhere will deny —the common belief being, however, that this can only occur after the dissolution of the body, sometime, somewhere, in a place called Heaven.
In the spirit—after the body is laid aside—so runs the old belief—then man would be superior to, and master of, grosser substances.
With such teachings and such beliefs Mental Scientists differ only by asserting that the time and the place when the real man may successfully assume his rulership is now and here; provided only that he recognizes the fact.
Man a Magnet
The man who possesses the most powerful selfhood attracts to himself what he considers the most good, and his power to attract it is not limited to those unseen elements which we call spiritual, and by which his character is said to be built up in force and strength; but he also attracts from the world of visible things just what he desires.
It is only in proportion as his character is built in strength that he finds the power to attract outside things to himself, such as friends, wealth and honors.
As a man can only increase in truth and lasting power by increasing in a sense of justice, it is, therefore, impossible for him to become a dangerous person in this way, as seems to be the general belief. No man gains in strength by attracting to himself what we call evil (mistaken) influences. He weakens himself in this manner and limits his influence.
A belief in evil, like a belief in disease, is really a belief in nothing, and is therefore powerless to do anyone harm except so far as to arouse a needless fear in others. All beliefs in evil influences, and all forms of disease, are simply so many denials or negations of the power which rightly belongs to the man. To deny this power within a man does not nullify it, but only blinds the person who denies it to the sight of it. This is all.
To illustrate: People may believe in evil as much as they please, and may attempt to heap evil influences upon me. Suppose that T, too, believe in evil influences, and thus make a mental admission of their power over me. I then take the consequences of my belief in evil and begin to show it forth, for a man shows forth for the time being just what he believes, whether good or evil. But suppose, on the other hand, that I know the Law. I then laugh at the futility of their attempts, and go on believing in the absolute good, and showing forth its power. All beliefs in evil and disease are based on fear. Their effects upon people arc psychological; that is, the belief being thrown upon a person and the person not standing in the stronghold of self, is like a mirror that reflects or shows forth that which is thrown upon it.
Disease may be called a weak belief; that is, it is a belief in weakness. If you have the belief, then the cure for you is to convince you that you are strong. This is the only cure there is for you. Being altogether mental, it is a fact, and the great truth above all other truths. You are, therefore, as far as your body is concerned, an intellectual statement. You have accepted the statement of yourself almost unquestioningly from others; you are dissatisfied with the statement because it is a weak one and you want a better one. You cannot have a better one until you see wherein your present statement is wrong. As soon as you see this yon will be well, and this is all there is of it.
You have never thought of yourself as a magnet, and have probably connected the idea of magnetism with mesmerism, and have been frightened by the thought of it. But you are a magnet, and when I say this I mean that you have something within yourself that is forever true to you. It is always with you and always holding the fort against outside invasion. And yet this inner stronghold you have been taught to look upon with suspicion, and have tried to lay it down or yield it up as a sacrifice to your miseducated conscience.
The steadfastness with which you stand true to this inner fort marks your power as a magnet; and the more you recognize this power, this magnetic force, the more you come within the line of the Principle of Attraction, and the more you will be able to draw to yourself such good as you may desire.
I have spoken of your coming within the line of the Principle of Attraction. In strict truth, you are always within it and cannot be outside of it; but you might as well be out of it as to be in that condition of ignorance regarding it that deprives “you of claiming and using its power.
If you are a magnet and do not know it, you are on the animal plane of growth, and your growth will soon find its limit, as all animal or unconscious growth does; but to know that you are a magnet and that you are under the Principle of Attraction, places you in the line of conscious growth where you have nothing to do but to recognize your power as a magnet, in order to keep on growing or acquiring a greater power all the time.
To recognize that the will or intelligence within you is a magnet must show you the true situation regarding yourself. A magnet draws to itself. With each evolution of the magnet to a higher form of life, it defines its wants more and more, or knows better what it really does want. The blind cry for “More! More!” becomes a definite cry for some well understood need; and thus we ripen into power; for what we need and demand we must get. There is not an opposing power in the universe to anything we want. Whatever we want we can have, and it will come to us soon or late in proportion as we hold this inner fort for ourselves. Let us say that the will which is the inner force is now crowned by a recognition of its power and authority. It stands a unit, and is the unit which is a magnet of irresistible strength. It recognizes its strength and above all its right. It says, “I am master of all things; I created myself; I had the universe out of which to create myself; I have reached a position of true and genuine manhood by perceiving the facts concerning myself; true being is right seeing, and I now sec rightly. Having made myself, I am my own man. Every good in the universe belongs to me, and being negative to me cannot help but come to me as I demand it. Do I demand health? It is already mine, and the diseased beliefs which appear upon me are but denials or ignorance concerning this fact. What, then, do I demand? Am I satisfied with my advancement? Certainly not; my previous advancement has been comparatively nothing. While my body did its own growing I could not be said to be an individual at all in the high sense of the’ word. Now that I have learned how to grow I have but just arrived at the condition of individuality. My individuality is just born, as it were. This being so, the entire process of my future growth lies beyond the experience of any person on the face of the earth, and the road I am to travel is quite unknown to me. Indeed, there is no road. My path lies through a trackless expanse of unknown country, and I have only one guide in traveling it. That guide is faith, faith in the Principle of Attraction and in my own power to express it on the external plane; faith in the outcome of my untried faculty, for I have learned to believe in myself. I have learned how to grow, and I mean to keep on growing. Here I stand true as steel to the incarnate “I” within me. Here I stand with my intelligence reaching forth in my outgoing thought that will bring me whatever I demand. In this way the awakening power will find its co-relative among the unknown elements and become bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
And how can the things I desire come to me? I am pervaded by the Principle of Attraction. I am a magnet, and it is the nature of a magnet to attract. Under a consciousness of the Law, it can do nothing else. But what do I want to attract? That which will build me up in a greater knowledge of my own strength. This is what I want to attract every hour. Perhaps my ignorance is so great that I cannot name what I want. It makes no difference. I want just that which will make me conscious, and still more conscious, of my own strength. Whatever this may be, it is related to my desire or will, and my intelligence being one with my will makes me a perfect unit, and therefore an irresistible magnet. My own comes to me.
But I have got to know this; I will not get what I want if any doubt weakens me as a magnet and destroys my power. Therefore, as I have said, do not ask or beg for what you want, because the position of the supplicant is a weak one, implying doubt; but demand your own. The demand shows forth the conviction of your right. It is full of faith, or of something even better than faith, and that is understanding.
Take your position as a citizen of the universe with latent powers that co-relate every external thing, including the thousand unexplored atmospheric forces, and make your demand for that which will develop you to much greater power and strength than you have ever known.
We can never make much advancement in the new road which we are now traveling until we cease to believe in what is termed the impossible. So long as we believe that there is anything impossible that our intelligent desires project, we will stand where we are—right in these same old tracks where our forefathers have stood since the dawn of reason. We must pull up stakes and away. Nature has been trying to give U3 hints on this subject always. She calls to us constantly by all her myriad voices, “Go on, go on, or else die.” She will not permit us to stand still. The whole tendency of life is to still greater life. It is to carry out life into greater uses than the generations behind us knew anything about. “Learn a thing and leave it,” cries our stern old mother, Nature. “Do not stand one hour to con over the lesson you know; hasten on to the next one. There shall be no standing still in my world; hurry up, or hurry out!”
Individuality is the one guarantee of success in this life or any other; and a person’s destiny rests on his power to stand alone. No man will ever be the magnet to attract success until he can stand alone, straight and tall as a liberty pole, glorying in his position, free from fear, independent of public opinion, and daring to be himself. Here is the strength that draws still greater strength. Here is that which all men adore and before which all false assumptions of greatness doff their tinseled crowns.
Let a man once achieve this position permanently, and Fate kicks and starves him no more. She has found her master, and no old livery hack submits to the collar or bit more mildly than she. When once man has emerged into a so-called lawlessness by speaking the best he knows, regardless of what anyone may think, he has ceased to be a citizen of the negative world, and has entered into the freedom of universal truth. And yet the man who is speaking the best that he knows may be very far from speaking absolute truth. But it is his attitude that nature endorses. It is an attitude where the best there is can eventually reach him. It is an unfettered attitude, the attitude of a demigod. To be a fool for truth’s sake is to put truth in your debt where you can compel its best services!
The effort on the part of nature, however, to make a man stand alone does not end with the simple understanding of himself. Many people who are forced into this situation are starved as a result of it. To stand alone without an intelligent understanding of the position is often weakness instead of strength, a weakness that degenerates into mere vagabondage. To stand alone without being conscious of the strength of the position will not do. While the attitude is essential to the perfect magnet, it takes the intelligence to complete it and show forth its true strength. If a man understood this he could well afford to cut himself loose from all his possessions, every hampering tie, in order to feel what fearlessness is. To be fearless is to be where no adverse thing can touch you, where disease cannot affect you nor poverty cast a shadow over you, where death cannot reach you.
Disease and poverty and all those conditions we dislike so much are founded on fear. Every condition to be found in the negative pole of life is based on fear, and without fear it could not possibly exist.
To cross from the negative to the positive pole of life is to pass from belief in disease and death to the knowledge of the fact that in absolute truth there is no disease or death, and this can only be done by getting rid of fear, and we will never be free from fear until we stand erect and alone with a consciousness of our true situation.
To be able to stand alone with a consciousness of the power in so doing will be the crowning act of the magnet, man. He will then have been born into the positive pole of life, whore his career of self-ownership will begin, and where lie can send out his thoughts and they will bring him what he wants. He will be a magnet revolving about other magnets as powerful as he. For men and women must come into this strength and knowledge before the ideal society will be here. And the ideal society is one of man’s indispensable necessities. “Ye are the temple of the living God.” Not the temples, but the temple. Society must be composed of units, each of which is a perfect whole, else there will be no true reciprocal interchange.
By the expression perfect whole, I do not mean that man coming into the position I have described will cease growing. I simply mean that he will then be individualized. He will be a true individual, standing in a mastership of his own faculties, and in this respect drawn apart from the influence of other men, and capable of living the life indicated by his peculiar genius. He will no longer be in that indefinite frame of mind where he, with thousands of others, can be pressed into the same mold. Once individualized he will simply be perfect in being in the right condition to begin his endless career of development, to continue all through the ages of eternity. He will be perfect as a magnet and will have the power to acquire whatever his will or desire may call for.
Whatever Is, Is Right
If the rock had not been ground into powder by the force of the tempests and the action of nature’s chemicals, there had never been any vegetation; and if the coarser vegetable growths of the earlier ages had not perished, the finer ones—those adapted to the use of the higher animals and of man—would not have appeared; neither, without destroying these, can man at present continue his existence. Without driving out the savage the civilized man cannot remain. Even though he did not use the sword and rifle in the work of extinction, yet will the savage who cannot or will not rise in the scale of being dwindle and finally disappear from before the face of the white man. It is the law, and it is good that it should be so. All that is, is good.
Does not everybody know that in proportion as we become wise we increase in power to shape circumstances? And is it not good that it should be so? Would it be good if the sickly, the ignorant, the indolent, the imbecile, possessed the same power as the healthy, the intelligent, the industrious, the wise? Where would be any incentive to action, to invention, to progress in any direction if that were the case?
He argues foolishly who argues that a thing is evil because it is not the highest good that can be conceived of, or because his sympathies are aroused in behalf of a suffering people. It is regrettable that anyone should suffer for food or clothing or warmth, and I understand perfectly that such things need not be, if the people were wiser and refused to follow blindly wherever they are led by partisan leaders and theological doctrinaires. But until they will consent to think for themselves, such will continue to be their condition. It is in accordance with the natural or economic law, and is therefore good.
Is it good that the strong and cunning consume the substance of the weak? Until either the strong have evoluted beyond the desire to consume the weak, or until the weak have learned how to escape from the strong, it certainly is good that the weak be eaten by the strong. It is hard on the rabbit, but good for the fox and the wolf; and it is through fear of his enemies that the rabbit has acquired the degree of speed which he possesses, and the length and quickness of hearing of his ears. It has therefore been good for the rabbit family, although individual rabbits innumerable have been eaten.
Would you argue that it is not well that the lion loves to hunt?
So long as he remains a lion it is good that he hunts and kills, and while the human race remains divided into rabbits and foxes it is good also that the one hunts and the other be hunted. Each is carrying out his nature; is obeying the law of his being; that law by which each has been raised up to his present condition, and through which alone either may rise higher.
Do I wish to see the race continue in its brutish nature—divided between the hunter and the hunted?
Certainly not. I spent years trying to scare off the lions and foxes and hyenas, and other years in trying to shame the rabbits into revolt, and did not succeed to any very noticeable extent in either case; so now I am trying to show to all alike the true road to happiness, which is through such knowledge of the law as will enable all to rise above the selfishness which would prosper at the expense of one’s neighbor, into that consciousness of a noble self-hood, which, while claiming from an absolutely inexhaustible source of supply all that he himself desires, seeks to lead others to the same inexhaustible source, that they may be supplied also.
Unless there are laws in nature that should not exist there can be no such thing as evil. That which men call evil and seek to shun is an effect. I challenge anyone to dispute this last premise. It may become a secondary cause, but is never first cause. Is it evil that effect follows cause? It would be a queer kind of a world if it did not. If, then, men and women, desiring happiness, search for it in a manner not in harmony with natural law and reap suffering instead, is it evil that it is so? And if by reason of weakness, even though the weakness be born of good intentions, is it evil that the law does not bend to them, but is immutable, changeless, always the same?
It is good that the law is immutable and without pity. Ever would chaos reign throughout the universe of worlds, and there would be no possibility of progress through a study of the law if it were not so. It is good, therefore, that the rabbits be eaten until they cease to be rabbits, or, taking advantage of the superiority of their numbers, compel the foxes to cease feeding upon flesh and adopt a vegetarian diet. And it is good also that the foxes continue to feed upon rabbits until the rabbits have forced them to do this, or until they themselves have evolved to a higher plane.
One may be very sorry for the rabbits, and very indignant at times over the cruelty of the foxes, but then it is an undeniable fact that if there were no beasts of prey the rabbit would take the land; and the rabbits, while they remain rabbits, are not entitled to it. Until their brains develop to an extent which in some degree corresponds to the length of their ears and their legs, they cannot be other than what they are, prey to fiercer animals, unless the fiercer animals can be taught that they themselves would be happier not to eat rabbits.
We learn mainly by our mistakes, and occasionally, perhaps, by observing the mistakes made by a neighbor.
It is unquestionably a mistake to suppose that the few can obtain happiness by poaching off the many; the general opinion, however, is that they can. It is the opinion held not by the few who succeed, but by the many who fail. The victim is as ready as the victor to proclaim the righteousness of the principle, and only objects to its application when he is being’ eaten instead of being the eater. Eating and being eaten in turn, he will finally come to an understanding of the law and ‘ t>w himself to be an integral part of one great whole, and that no one can gain anything worth having if it be taken from another without returning an equivalent to him from whom it is taken.
We never get anything but truth. Even when we feel ourselves defeated, the situation is what we need; it is what is best for us; there is a lesson in it we must learn before we can go farther. For many years I have known that my defeats were as valuable to me as my successes, and at this time they do not daunt me in the least. And again, the success of another person becomes my success through the bond of an intelligence that is universal. If I keep my mental eyes open I do not have to go through every piece of experience necessary to my education; I can look on and get it from the experience of my neighbors; so in this way their failures and successes too—the same as my own—are lessons to me. Thus education is hastened. We are hurrying forward in these latter days with great speed; infinitely greater than in the old time, simply because our intelligences have become so quickened that we grasp facts with a cool, almost unerring vitality that is simply wonderful. And what does it mean? It begins to look as if we knew it all now, and were slowly awakening to the fact of our knowing. What a thought this is! And in one mighty sense it is true. We are seed germs of an infinite potentiality, and now that we are evolving into the conscious process of growth we are able to note our own unfoldment. It is as if the lily bulb should become conscious of the stalk and leaves it began to send forth, and of the gorgeous flower that would soon appear. Becoming conscious of this the bulb would seem to itself to be the whole plant in full development. And what is this but the banishment of time, and the condensation of the all into the present moment? This is exactly what it is, and it is by this process that we become bigger; our growth on the mental plane is entirely in the consciousness; it is an enlarged mental seeing. What we see we are seeing is being.
This enlarged mental seeing I am speaking of is breaking bonds more and more every moment. There are no bonds but ignorance; to be ignorant of our own possibilities is our only bond. This it is that checks our thoughts which would lead to effort and eventually to a series of grand successes, such as make life valuable. To come into this power is to come into a higher state of consciousness concerning ourselves, our antecedents and our possibilities. We have to learn thoroughly the fact of our own creativeness. This fact puts us entirely in our own hands and makes us masters of ourselves and our surroundings. There is nothing in all the world that so quickly establishes us in every desirable condition as the knowledge of our own creativeness. A consciousness of this one thing is enough.
The way of the transgressor may be hard, but it is not half as much uphill as that of the man or woman who tries to impart to him a knowledge of the law.
The number of sick people who have been healed through purely mental processes, by the different schools, during the past five years, reaches up into the hundreds of thousands and includes every disease known to the regular profession, yet there are still those who refuse even to investigate the claims of the people who perform these cures to having discovered a law of mental healing, and when a demonstration of the power of mind over the body is given by a lecturer upon the stage, ninety per cent, of those who witness it are content to have been given an hour’s amusement, and continue in their way unthinking.
Is it evil that these ninety are sick, that they die?
Verily it is good and not evil. They have performed all the service to themselves and to the race of which they are capable when they have had such experience as they have brought upon themselves, and have begotten children who, profiting by the mistakes of their parents, may become wiser and happier than they.
To him who hath shall be given ; from him who hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.
That saying is true. He who will not receive that which is offered, who is content with the little he has and will put forth no effort to attain to greater knowledge of the law of his being, shall lose his life. That man or thing that will not, or cannot continue further to grow dies by virtue of the law by which all things come.
And the law is good, and all things are good; there is no evil.
The End