CONTENTS
Chapter 1 – UNIFICATION & SPIRALS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Chapter 2 – CONNECTING WITH THE POWER WIRE
Chapter 3 – INVOLUTION AND INTENTION
Chapter 4 – EXTENSION
Chapter 5 – ANCHORS AND RETROVERSIONS AND WHAT TO DO WITH THEM
Chapter 6 – THOUGHT AND SUGGESTION
Chapter 7 – HOW TO UTILIZE COSMIC ENERGY
Chapter 8 – HOW TO ANALYZE YOURSELF
Chapter 9 – SELF-ANALYSIS EXORCISES FEAR
Chapter 10 – THE THREE PLANES OF READJUSTMENT
Chapter 11 – THE THREE PLANES OF READJUSTMENT(Cont.)
Chapter 12 – THE PROCESS OR INTUITIONAL KNOWING
Chapter 13. – SURRENDER AND THE NEW DAY
Chapter 1 – UNIFICATION, AND SPIRALS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
MOST of those students who turn to New Thought or to any of its allied philosophies or systems of living, do so with one or more of three basic motives urging them forward.
First in numbers comes those who desire physical healing.
Second are those who desire financial betterment.
The third class is composed of those who are being forced out of the old routine by a vague but very real and insistent unrest — a desire for a new vision of life, of its meaning and its possibilities.
This primal motive is apt to be lost from view early in the student’s progress; but it is important to note, at this time, that it is always one of unrest, of dissatisfaction with present conditions of living. Something more, something different, is desired.
What is really needed, first of all, whether or not the need is recognized, is a broad outlook upon the whole problem of personal unfoldment or personal evolution. In the successful execution of every worthwhile purpose, there exist certain divisions which may be called “dynamic elements,” or fundamentals. The supreme importance of this law of fundamentals is that unless each of these dynamic elements is understood and is properly co-ordinated with all the others, distortion of effort and meagerness of results must follow.
It is the purpose of the present course of lessons to bring into the focus of the student’s attention those dynamic elements or fundamentals which must be understood and properly utilized to achieve harmonious living. Some of these fundamentals are generally agreed upon, and the methods of applying them to everyday living are at least partially understood.
Others of them are practically unknown by most men and women. The unrecognized effort to make part of the functions of complete living perform the work not only of themselves but of other faculties which are allowed to remain latent causes much of the misery which we see about us and sometimes within us.
With this principle in mind, let us consider the various factors which must be co-ordinated in organizing a life program fitted to bring real success and happiness. The primary factor to be considered is that mainspring of all actions and all desire, Consciousness. Consciousness is an evolutionary product. After having reached the human level, it may manifest itself in one of three forms:
First, personal consciousness, which is that of the average human being of today. Personal consciousness is limited to the range of thoughts and sensations of the individual himself.
Second, Cosmic Consciousness. This is an extension of personal consciousness, which at times or perhaps almost continuously becomes fused with the mind of nature, or the big creative consciousness directing the universe. Many great and successful men have attained a measure of this Cosmic Consciousness without being aware of the nature of the gift which lifted them above the heads of their fellows.
Third, Absolute Consciousness, or Spiritual Consciousness. This is intention of consciousness, rather than extension; it is a fusion of the life of the individual with Spirit, eternal and primal Being,
The evolutionary spiral here indicated is that which all life at the human level is following, blindly or consciously, swiftly or falteringly. Happiness results from going forward with mastery along the path. Unhappiness results from progress arrested while the ego strives to burrow under or tunnel through obstructions.
Progress evidently results from understanding the nature of the work to be done and of the tools, equipment, and methods to be used in doing it. The nature of the work set before each individual has been indicated in these three steps through which consciousness must pass. Here are the means of attainment, or the dynamic elements or fundamentals, which must be utilized.
Development or intensification of the personal powers of mind and body comes first. This intensification falls under the heads of physical and intellectual education.
Unification is the next step. The isolated faculties of mind and body must be grouped around a master-center, or dominant faculty. Organization of this kind takes place in the world of business in a partial degree when the successful business man succeeds in bringing all his thoughts and feelings under the domination of his ” business sense.” He will not play golf or go to the opera or make an investment unless this action has been censored by the dominant center, and passed upon as either favorable to the master motive or at any rate as not unfavorable to it. Complete unification is like that magnetizing of the iron bar which sets the attractive power of each molecule within the bar to working with all the rest, instead of in an opposite direction or at right angles. The effectiveness of the individual is increased a thousand-fold when this unifying process is even partially accomplished — but in the world of common affairs there is no master motive sufficiently powerful to dominate and co-ordinate all the others. We will return to this subject in a subsequent lesson.
Intensification of the individual faculties, unification — and then comes extension, which enables the individual to work with the Soul of Things – to become consciously one with the universe. This third step is often referred to as the attainment of Cosmic Consciousness. Spiritual Consciousness lies beyond, and is reached by making the fourth turn of the spiral journey.
The use of unfamiliar terms, or of terms which through past association have come to connote nebulous and impractical concepts, is apt to awaken distrust within the minds of practical men and women. For this reason let us pause to consider just how far we are willing to go, in this journey we are planning to take together, in formulating philosophies and in putting them to the test of experience. The only satisfactory criterion is an absolute and undeviating determination to test anything which can be put to the test of experience and which offers a probability of “working,” but to carry forward on the journey of life no useless baggage.
A theory has got to WORK or it should be discarded, no matter how “beautiful” or attractive it may be. I shall ask my readers to make this test their own in the journey that lies before us.
It may be well at this time also to consider briefly the order in which the various divisions of our subject shall be taken up. Two options exist — we may choose the logical order, which considers each division and subdivision with reference to its relations with other divisions; or we may follow the psychological order, which takes up each topic solely with reference to the student’s needs. Successful teaching and learning is based on following this psychological order; and as we have made results rather than form our standard of measurement, we will take up each branch of our studies into human unfoldment and its methods in the order in which we can best put these theories and methods to work. Eventually it will be possible to go back over our journey and to organize into a logical and symmetrical system these apparently isolated steps.
In connection with each lesson, an assignment will be given. The use made of these assignments is of great importance, for it is not understanding a thing which helps, but rather putting it to work. I may know that a fire in my kitchen stove will cook my dinner, but if I do not, kindle the fire and keep it going, my knowledge will be but a dead possession. I am afraid that a few students along metaphysical or spiritual lines have been trying to warm their hands or cook their meals by the heat of a fire which they have neglected to light. They have stopped with a theoretical grasp of their philosophy, rather than make the effort to put it to work.
The assignments connected with each lesson, therefore, will have two characteristics: they will take advantage of the psychological order of presentation; and they will be useful only if applied. I have no mental magic to offer those who are too lazy to carry out the latter condition.
As the assignment for this lesson, I am going to ask you to read and reread, until it is impressed indelibly upon your memory, a truth statement which you may have heard many times without really considering:
AS THE HART PANTETH AFTER THE WATER BROOK SO PANTETH MY SOUL AFTER THEE, OH GOD
In making this statement your own, realize that what you have in mind in voicing this aspiration is complete consciousness — that consciousness of ever-present and eternal Good which is symbolized in the word “God.” You desire that full awakening of your being which shall make you conscious here and now, of harmony, of health and power, of abundance. And that consciousness of wholeness is what you desire before all else.
The law is that an ideal, whether presented by desire or by fear, tends by an orderly but unseen process to work out channels of expression through which eventually it shall become manifest. If you fear a thing long enough, it will come upon you — through this law. If you desire a thing long enough, it, too, will come. This law never fails. The trouble is that because you do not see the roots of your ideal working their way down through the earth of your own or of the universal subconsciousness, you do not think anything is “happening.” And because of this lack of vision, you sometimes forget to fear a thing before it comes upon you, thus accidentally shutting off the cause and so the result; and often you cease desiring a thing, or expressing your desire for it, before it can reach you.
This law of the attractive power of fear and desire is a basic and eternal one, however, and before we go deeper into this philosophy of masterful living, before we take up those methods and concepts which go beyond the range of everyday experience, I am going to ask you to set this big ideal to work. For it will work, if you meditate upon it with even a partial understanding of its wonderful meaning. Don’t be afraid of it — it will not change you into a dreamer or a mystic — or even into a “good” man, in the usual sense of the word good. But it will set into motion in your life forces of which you have little comprehension — mighty forces and practical ones.
Repeat the truth statement again and again, trying at the same time to feel that this desire of your soul symbolized in the word ” God ” is really consciousness:
FULL CONSCIOUSNESS, the consciousness of glorious and all-fulfilling life.
Chapter 2 – CONNECTING WITH THE POWER WIRE
FOR THE sake of reminding the student just what we are endeavoring to accomplish, it may be well to review briefly the preceding lesson.
An axiom of all experience is that Consciousness is cause. That means that your environment today, including physical health and financial condition, is a reflection of your condition of unfoldment. If there are in your circumstances factors which you do not like, it is because somewhere within that unseen empire which is your “consciousness ” exist dynamic elements which are not in harmony with your desires. These dynamic elements may be negative — may be occluded faculties; or they may be positive, as in the case of active faculties turned to the wrong uses.
Consciousness is cause — the one final and ultimate cause; and consciousness can function on all of three planes: the personal, the cosmic and the absolute or Spiritual. Animal man is limited to that range included within the limits of what he calls “I,” or “myself.” He is unaware of being part of an unbroken circuit of life, and of course does not know that it is possible for him to extend his consciousness far beyond its present bounds.
Cosmic consciousness is simply personal consciousness extended so as to take in a large part of the cosmos, or physical creation.
Spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, is a journey inward. It is intention rather than extension of personal consciousness.
This understanding of the nature of consciousness and of the three directions in which it may function leads up to a consideration of the steps which complete personal unfoldment. Unfoldment, or awakening, is what those who seek for the details of health and prosperity are really hungering for without knowing it; and unfoldment results from
(I) developing the faculties of the personal man;
(II) unifying these around a master center;
(III) extending them and making them part of the great World Soul, or cosmic consciousness; and
(IV) finally turning them within until the center of all Being is reached, in the awakening of Spiritual Consciousness.
Development of these faculties is partially a matter of inner urge or impetus to development, which comes from the cosmic center; and partially a matter of individual effort. The cosmic impetus is evident in what may be called the “phases” or “cycles” or development of an average human being, from babyhood to maturity. The first decade is one largely of animal activity — the youngster is learning to manipulate his own body. The second decade is mental — he is becoming acquainted with his mind. The third decade is social — usually he gets married and goes to work in the world of grown-ups, and both of these experiences bring to bear upon him socializing influences of the highest importance. Finally, between thirty and forty, he begins to feel the stirrings of spiritual unrest; the desire to awaken to ranges of possibility beyond the physical, the mental, or the social.
During each of these four decades, the cosmic urge is the determining factor in starting and maintaining development. This is recognized in modern pedagogy under the doctrine of “delayed instincts.” There was a time when the teacher sought to pound desirable qualities into his pupils by a vigorous use of book and rod, regardless of the particular fitness of the recipient for instruction. Now wise educators worry very little about the apparent moral turpitude of youngsters who are disorderly and inclined to mix truth with vivid imaginings. These teachers know that disorderliness is typical of the child who is retracing the early stages of race history and development, and that order and a real understanding of the nature of “truth” are delayed instincts, because they developed at a comparatively late period in the history of the race.
The application to personal unfoldment of this principle of the cosmic urge is direct and important: the student who is striving to attain full consciousness is working with the order of Nature, but there are times and seasons appointed for the emergence of these faculties of the complete man. “Pushing on the lines” will not do any good. There are the two elements to be considered: the cosmic, which both makes unfoldment possible and which makes it an orderly process, taking place in a definite way; and the personal, which makes personal desire and activity necessary. If the student does his or her part, without anxiety or tension, final success is certain — because it is part of the order of Nature. An understanding of this principle will help relieve the seeker of personal anxiety, because he will realize that by attending to his part in the best way he can, and then by letting the Greater Wisdom do its part — give its increase — results are certain. Temporary failure comes from overlooking certain parts of the complex process of unfoldment.
One of the things most frequently overlooked is the necessity of a harmonious and complete development of all of the faculties and powers which go to make up the personal man. These faculties can be divided roughly into three groups: the physical, the mental and the psychical. If any one of these groups is left out of the plan of unfoldment, distortion will result. It is like trying to walk on the hands, or to see with the ears. Each faculty or group of faculties has its part to contribute, and ignoring any of these, causes an arrest of development until the mistake is discovered and corrected.
The two ends which most New Thought students have in mind, are: first, physical healing or betterment; and, second, financial healing. Some are seeking one, some the other, while many are seeking both. Probably few of these seekers realize that both health and prosperity are simply manifestations of a common cause: wisely directed power.
Sickness is primarily a result of lack of energy. When vital pressure is reduced below a certain level, all manner of disintegrative processes begin. When vital pressure is high, the disintegrative action of the various infections is powerless. Germs do not cause disease, any more than the barbarians destroyed the Roman Empire. These disintegrative cycles begin within, and the final dissolution brought about by the Vandals is simply the tearing down of effete and lifeless tissues. Every wise physician knows that if the tide of vitality turns and rises high enough, disease will disappear. It is in the endeavor to cause this turning of the tide that most drugs are used.
Financially, too, disease is caused by lack of well-directed energy. What the world lacks is not the physical means of subsistence on any scale for all its inhabitants, but rather the man-power and the brain-power to create and coordinate.
All of which brings us face to face with the three-fold problem of human energy: What is it? Whence comes it? How can it be increased? This problem is of such importance that we will be dealing with it, in one form or another, for some time to come. Just now, however, it will be best to simplify the answer sufficiently to make it applicable at once to the problems of most students, even though later we shall have to go more deeply into the subject.
From this standpoint of simplicity, we may consider that the main stream of power has three tributaries: it may be said to be derived from the physical, the mental, and the cosmic springs within the individual. Little need be said about the first two of these sources of power — just remember that both the physical and the mental or intellectual groups of faculties act as generators of energy, when they are harmoniously used, as well as being consumers of power. Wholesome physical and mental activities contribute more energy than they consume. Use your body and your mind vigorously every day — the higher faculties do not awaken to do away with normal and wholesome activity on the lower plane, but rather to increase its range and power, and to co-ordinate its parts.
These principles are well known to most people nowadays even if they are not always put into practice. Here is a fact connected with the third source of energy, the cosmic inflow, which is not so generally known: There exists a boundless tide of energy which can be specialized through human activity so as to show forth as health of body, power of will and mind, wisdom, etc., and the inflow of which, usually meagre and uncertain, can be immeasurably increased. The process is similar to that by which the trolley car draws energy from the power wire.
You can learn to draw more power from the big power wire, and to do it at will.
You need never remain tired or discouraged, for literally within you — the real you, not your physical body — is a spring of this cosmic energy which merely needs opening to fill you with more strength, physical and mental, than you ever dreamed of. This is only one of the things we are going to take up in this course of lessons, but it is an important one.
Here is the first step in this process of increasing the inflow of cosmic energy:
After dinner this evening, arrange to have a quiet half hour with yourself. Go into a room where you will be undisturbed, if possible, and lie down. If there is no bed or couch in the room, the floor will do. Experiment with your body until you find that position which, for you, is easiest and most nearly self-supporting. You want to be able to forget your body, and you will not be able to do this if part of it must be kept from slipping.
Now breathe deeply but easily a dozen times. Don’t imagine there is anything magical in this breathing business — you simply want to relax all surface tensions, and easy, full breathing will help you do it.
As you exhale the twelfth breath — the exact number is of no importance—let your attention sink down to your abdomen. Make yourself acutely conscious of the “feeling” in the muscles, and be particularly sensitive to any muscular tension. Relax it. Take another breath, and as it drifts easily out drop your attention down through your thighs, knees, and on into your feet. Relax all muscular tension.
Continue this process with neck, arms and hands. You probably will have to go over and over this circuit, relaxing tensions again and again. Do not be discouraged about this, as you are now beginning to free yourself from the grip of a race habit millions of years old. It is a survival of the time when men had to be tense as steel springs if they were to keep out of the clutches of their fellow cave men and of the beasts of the swamp and the jungle.
In connection with this work in releasing the physical tensions and inhibitions, continue to use the key thought I gave you last month. And here is a statement you may alternate with it:
THERE IS NO LIMITATION: FOR THOU ART THE SUPREME AND SOLE REALITY OF BEING, AND THOU ART THE GLORIOUS FULFILLMENT OF EVERY DESIRE.
Later I will tell you why I call this a “master affirmation.” Just now I want you to put it to work in your life. Simply repeat it, if you can make no sense of it. The wisdom within you will understand.
Chapter 3 – INVOLUTION AND INTENTION
IT is only after considerable hesitation that I have decided to place before the student at this time a principle and related methods which may truly be called “miracle working,” but which in the usual order of unfoldment are made available late in the life of discipleship. Several factors have induced me to change this order. One is that even if this part of the philosophy of masterful living is presented too early to be fully grasped by the seeker, no harm will be done: it will simply pass “over his head,” and will leave him as it finds him. Another is that before the individual is able to get the utmost out of this method, usually he will be able to get something.
The foundation principle, has already been stated: Consciousness is cause. This means that whatever you are fully conscious of will be reflected into your environment. The reason this law does not always seem to work is that few people recognize the full extent, the breadth and the depth and the fullness, of Consciousness. They limit It in their concept to that surface mind which is closest to them during their working hours.
The consciousness which is the real cause of whatever comes into life is compounded of the so-called “conscious” and “subconscious” minds. It is dynamic blending of those fragments of personality which, collectively, constitute the ego. In the normal individual in the lower spirals of evolution, the subconscious elements of personality play the major part in determining consciousness. Never mind the apparent contradiction of terms in this statement; eventually you will grasp the truth for which it stands, although probably you will find the same difficulty all teachers and all students find in expressing this truth in words.
Consciousness is Cause. That means that if you can be fully conscious of absolute harmony for even one second, harmony will begin to manifest itself in your environment. This principle is more or less clearly recognized by all metaphysical, mental, or spiritual systems of teaching. The trouble is that the fundamental difficulty in attaining this full consciousness of harmony is not grasped. Perhaps I should have said the “fundamental difficulties,” for there are at least two stumbling blocks in the way of the seeker when he undertakes this journey toward the goal of harmony.
The first of these barriers has been indirectly stated: consciousness, in the average human being, is not a unit or even a harmoniously working system; it is a conglomeration of conflicting elements, somewhat loosely grouped around one or two master centers. Fractured personality and multiple personality, about which so much was written a few years ago, are not exceptional states: they are the usual condition of the average man and woman of today.
Any dominant interest, such as art, music or business, tends to introduce superficial order into this chaos. It brings the various complexes into subjection to one or a few dominant centers, much as the planets are held in their orbits around the sun. The trouble is that the dominant center so organized is limited in its orienting powers. It has not within it that element of absolute mastery which will enable it to harmonize and co-ordinate perfectly the lesser stars in its system.
For this reason, conscious harmony even for an instant cannot be secured while one of these dominant centers evolved by racial experience is the nucleus of the system of personality. Subconscious and almost unrecognized protests from faculties and sub-centers which are being arbitrarily suppressed or warped in their activities are constantly radiating their disturbing vibrations into the inner kingdom. The right center for a final organization of personality, a unification of consciousness, has not been found; and the results are necessarily imperfect.
A more weighty reason even than the foregoing for the failure of many earnest students to attain a consciousness of absolute harmony, however, lies in the nature of the effort which is made. We have been taught, both directly and indirectly, that “thinking” is the sole method by which consciousness can function during its waking hours. Now, thinking in its final analysis is simply a matter of making comparisons. Logic recognizes this: when I decide that the distant moving speck which I have discovered is a man I am making a mental comparison between this new percept, or impression upon one or more of my senses, and a mental category. I am comparing present sensations with past sensations, and am placing my newly discovered percept in its class because of its general agreement — brought out by comparison — with the class called “Man.” This is a crude and simplified example of the nature of thought. Practically all thinking, all acts of “judgment” are modifications or extensions of this simple process of comparisons.
Naturally the student of spiritual things carries with him into his new field of interest his old habits of mental action. This is wise and good, because there is much thinking to be done in every worthwhile undertaking. The mistake lies in assuming that this thinking process, this matter of making comparisons, classifications, and judgments, is the final and complete method of functioning of consciousness. As a matter of fact, the consciousness of absolute harmony which we are seeking cannot be secured by following this route; for always that remorseless mental activity which psychologists call “association” will drag into the concept of harmony so synthesized inharmonious details — hints or suggestions of inharmony and ugliness. The consciousness which we are seeking cannot be pieced together from fragments of a past which held ever within it elements of distortion and imperfection.
A NEW MASTER CENTER MUST BE FOUND, and a new functioning of consciousness must be developed. That much is evident. But how? By turning within and letting go, for “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” This is not a matter of suggestion or affirmation, for you will learn eventually to perform this inner journey as directly as you now turn your eyes, and with no more of that mechanical effort which comes under the head of suggestion. I think we can best get at the real nature of this new activity of consciousness by following it through a typical case of “curing” or correcting an inharmony.
Let us take as an example the case of a business man surrounded by associates who are working at cross-purposes to himself and to each other. Perhaps he is a member of an organization where “office politics” are particularly virulent. Several courses are open to him. He may decide to meet the trouble on its own level, to fight fire with fire. In this case he is choosing to pit his wits and his ill-will against the wits and ill-will of the other fellow. Temporarily he may win or he may lose, but eventually he will suffer from the reaction which this sort of activity inevitably arouses within the individual who resorts to it.
A second choice is that of using suggestion. He may find or create an affirmation or suggestion of harmony and success, one which embodies all of the external results he is striving to attain, and may by iteration and reiteration impress this ideal upon part of his subconsciousness. The difficulty here is that he is all the time recognizing the condition of turmoil as a reality, and is simply trying to pit a stronger reality against it. Association is going to add its bit to the compound by suggesting that, after all, the united force of others bent on mischief is stronger than the solitary efforts of one man bent on peace. This method will help, by keying the man who uses it to higher level of effort and confidence. But it will not effect the organization as a whole except as it works through this one man.
Here is the master way of handling such a situation: Consciousness is cause. That is an absolute and final law. Therefore, as soon as the individual can attain a consciousness of absolute harmony, his environment, his circumstances, including the men and women with whom he comes into contact, will reflect this harmony. He cannot achieve this absolute consciousness by taking evil or imperfection into his consciousness, however, even though he takes it in only to cast it out by denials. He must find some way other than the comparative way of reaching this inner center. He can do this only by turning away, for the moment, from all consideration of the things he is trying to change, and by beholding absolute harmony with such singleness of vision that for a time — a second is long enough — he will be literally filled with it, changed into its likeness.
The master affirmation given in a previous lesson will help him achieve this momentary awakening from the dream of imperfection to the reality of harmony; or he can use this shorter statement:
THOU ART ALL.
That’s all there is to it — God, the ultimate reality, the absolute truth of being — God, who is infinite and eternal harmony — is all there is in reality. All the rest is part of that creation which is creating itself through the process of unfoldment or evolution. It is creating itself, and is doing so by the tedious process of trial and error. Just why this should be it is unnecessary to discuss for the present—there is an all-sufficient reason which the student will comprehend when he is ready for the knowledge. The thing to grasp now is that God, the Good, is all there is in reality. It is possible to focalize this truth upon consciousness by the use of this three-word key thought, although eventually even that can be dispensed with.
So, no matter what the imperfection you wish to correct may be, don’t attack it directly. Rather, turn within; relax as fully as possible; and concentrate every ray of your consciousness upon this one ideal of absolute harmony. At the same time, begin to dissolve the tyrannical clutch of things by seeing them as things of mist, of vapor, creations which are none the less unreal in their ultimate nature because they have been given a certain impetus which enables them to follow the spiral path of evolutionary unfoldment.
How will this affect the external things, which you do not even take into your thoughts? By raising you, if only for an instant — a flash — to the level of full wakefulness, which is Spiritual Consciousness. To become conscious for even this brief span of that eternal and infinite perfection which is symbolized in the ideal of God, is to become a radiating center from which absolute harmony is reflected into the world of things.
Try this out for a month. Your experiences at first may be somewhat vague and incomplete, but you have within you the mechanism of consciousness which can and will work out the individual way for using this method which best suits your individuality.
Chapter 4 – EXTENSION
IN the previous lesson we began the study of what may be called “intention” of consciousness, or involution; the centering of desire upon that inner truth of being which is the well-spring from which all appearance, all creation, springs. Later we will return to this phase of the evolutionary process, but for the present we must consider a concurrent phase of our problem: we have begun to broaden and deepen the inlet through which spiritual energy reaches us; now we must learn to increase the capacity of the channel through which we are to convey this energy to the “world.”
The law which binds us here has its parallel on the lower level of the physical universe. Energy is somewhat similar to water in a closed pipe: in order to change the contents of the pipe from a static to a dynamic condition, from passivity to motion, we must provide an inlet for water to enter and an outlet for it to leave the pipe. Providing either without the other will avail nothing.
Spirit is always the source of energy, although this energy may reach us in a specialized form — as electrical energy, or vital energy, for instance. Building up a consciousness of the spiritual source of all power enables the student to receive more of this energy; but before this inflow really can become effective, an outlet must be provided. The old ideal was to “conserve vitality” — just as if we were to try to turn more water into our pipe, already full, without providing an outlet for it. Thus this age-old problem of increasing the energy available for work, or for body-building and health, or for any other conceivable purpose, is a twofold problem: we must learn to open the entrance gates for the reception of spiritual energy; and we must provide an expression for this energy, so that it may reach the outer world or the cosmos through us. These two requirements are fundamentals.
At the risk of confusing those students who do not like “theories” and philosophical doctrines, I am going at this time to call attention to what may be called the “philosophy of creation.” This metaphysical fragment will be as brief as I can make it, but something of the kind is necessary if the usual errors in dealing with the application of energy are to be avoided.
Most of this theory of the nature and purpose of creation is summed up in the first five words of the Old Testament:
“IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED!”
We have in this brief statement two elements of the greatest importance: First, God — that which was before the “beginning”; and, second, creation. We have also, by inference, a third element: God created — therefore creation in itself must be good.
In the beginning God created: out of nothing He created something — something, or some things. Obviously this act of creation did not change the basic characteristic of these things — they came out of nothing and eventually will return to their source. Things, therefore, are creations, and are real only to the consciousness which beholds them. In the consciousness of this primal creative wisdom, or God, creation was good. He looked upon His creation and called it “good” many times. But with the creation of man and his birth into self consciousness, typified in the experience in the Garden of Eden, a fourth element was added: a subdivision of divine consciousness, working within the creation, and for the time conscious of both good and of evil. And this specialized consciousness, or divine consciousness after the “fall,” had another characteristic: it had come to see things as realities in themselves, instead of as creations of the beholding consciousness.
Up to this point we have located the beginning of things and of creation in God; and we have seen that in its ultimate nature this entire creative process is good, although its products are not self-conditioning realities, but are products of the consciousness which beholds them.
In order that the creation might have both diversity and unity, this part of the creative consciousness which was working within the creation subdivided itself into a big, unifying creative energy and into personal centers — the conscious personalities of men. Cosmic consciousness, or the World Spirit, is that mind of things which has for its physical body or instrument of expression the entire universe, or cosmos. Personal consciousness is the spark of spirit bounded by the recognition of one human being. Often these two specializations of Spirit work more or less independently of one another; sometimes they work in opposition to each other; there comes a time when they work together, in the development of the individual seeker. This is when he acquires “cosmic consciousness,” or conscious unity with the World Spirit — not Spirit, God, but with that specialization of God’s wisdom and energy which expresses itself in the vast creation or cosmos.
Just as the consciousness of each individual is undergoing a transformation, through the spiral path of personal evolution, so this World Mind or cosmic consciousness is swinging forward through the ages, combining, dissolving, and recombining its elements into newer and more harmonious forms. It is creating, and in so doing is carrying out the basic purpose which was contained in the impetus with which it started at the “beginning.” In other words, God’s method of creating a universe is to create within it the power to create itself. And this creation of His is good — is good in all its mutations and transmutations. The evolutionary process, crude and devious as it seems when viewed from the standpoint of one instant out of all eternity, is GOOD. That is where the divine standard of judgment and the human standard differ: man calls much of this experience in creating himself, and still more of the experience of the World Mind in creating its part, evil. That is because he does not get the right perspective: he measures everything with the little inch-measure of human desire.
It is a futile effort, this struggle of the finite to measure and limit the infinite. In the end, man goes down to defeat: his violent opposition to the divine and to the cosmic order initiates with him forces of transition and disintegration; he is dissolved, in order that he may make a tiny stride forward when he reincarnates. That is the hard way which the race has had to tread until it lifted itself by sheer suffering and self-building above the animal level.
Today, many of those individuals who compose the human race have reached a level which makes it possible for them to substitute an easier and more effective way for this way of trial and error. By getting back in understanding and in sympathy to the nature and purpose of creation, and by co-operating with its mechanism as expressed both on the personal and on the cosmic planes, much of the sheer brutality of blind creation can be eliminated.
I think that we have enough of the theory of creation for our present needs, so that now we can consider the application of this theory to the life of discipleship. Two principal facts stand out: Energy must have a channel of expression, as well as one of entry, if it is to flow through the individual; and the cosmic order is good, not evil. Let us see how we can develop the potential horse-power of these principles.
With the development of that mesh of racial customs and habits which we call “civilization,” arbitrary criterions of good have been established. We are taught to enjoy those things which the majority of the race, in their long journey through the cosmic wilderness, have found good. Money and the ability to influence others are commonly recognized forms of good. And they are good, viewed from every standpoint. The only trouble is that in the acceptance of these racial standards, other and broader forms of good have been lost sight of. The acquirement of money and influence is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough to produce a well-balanced and harmonious life.
Expression draws energy by using it. Repression and negation shut off the flow. This simple fact accounts for the long line of decrepit good people and hale and hearty sinners which has puzzled the curious for ages. Negative goodness is worse than positive “badness.” An energetic and ambitious seeker after good in all its forms will find much good, even though he pierce his fingers occasionally on the nettles beside the path. And the big, encouraging thing about him is that when he does turn into the path of harmonious expression, he will carry with him a habit of “doing things up brown.” I have seen some of these hardened old sinners about-face and start after righteousness with the same zeal and the same effectiveness which they formerly displayed in speeding down the primrose paths of dissipation.
All of which may be interpreted into the simple precept, Learn to be good for something, not just good. Learn to express yourself, and don’t let the fear that you may make a mistake, may do something which the world will frown upon, inhibit your efforts. Better do something radically wrong, get the bumping old man Experience will give you for it, and start at once to do something else, right this time, perhaps, than repress yourself into a state of chronic pink-tea saintliness.
Learn to enjoy life. The trouble with the man who makes a million or a hundred million and enjoys every moment of the tussle, is not what he does, but what he doesn’t do. His acquirement of money and power are fine; not because money is good in itself; before the “beginning,” remember, it was nothing; eventually it will again become—nothing. But the getting of it, the joyous scramble for expression, is good. The money king did part of his duty, but he probably failed to enjoy the rest of the vast cosmic harmony: lost his power to enjoy good music and good poetry, the cool, sweet air of early morning, or a red sunset, with purple mountains standing out against the sky line. He gave expression to God’s energy, but his expression was not sufficiently broad.
Live! That is the way to get life. Use your mind and your body and those artistic faculties which enable you to enjoy beauty, wherever found. And begin at once to get way from the racial standards of what is good and harmonious. To the World Mind there is nothing ugly or sinister in reptile or bacterium: the scientist who studies these forms of life learns to see their beauty. So must you do.
The assignment for this lesson can be stated briefly, but it may take you years to master;. You are to begin now to see only beauty and good. War is evil, you say? But it isn’t. Get back into that Mind of Things which lies at the heart of the ever-shifting picture, and you will see in war and in all disintegrative processes simply the somber lower tones of the world-picture. You cannot make it all high lights and vivid colors.
Begin now to re-educate yourself away from these racial standards. All is good, for all is part of that tremendous creation which is creating itself. The very process is joy.
During your time in the Silence, this evening, just lie still and let your mind, or your imagination, if you prefer that word, float it over the cosmos. Take in the steely-blue stars, the blazing suns of other systems. See this little speck of matter upon which you dwell as it really is — a grain of sand on the shore of God’s infinite sea. But see yourself as you really are, too: part of that Consciousness which was before the beginning. These things are but things, and will come to an end. You are a priest after the order of Melchizedek, without beginning of days or end of time.
Your experience in awakening to this new and greater consciousness will at first be vague and unsatisfactory. You cannot break the chains which bind you to your own and the racial past as you would snap a tie of yesterday. But a time will surely come, if you persist, when you no longer will be bound to the “wheel of things.” You will be in the world, will enjoy it as you never did before, but will not be of it.
And how will this affect the problems which are now confronting you? How will it heal your body or your pocketbook ? By opening the inlet and the outlet of infinite streams of energy. When you become one with the Mind of Things, with the Cosmic Spirit, you will be able to express yourself and that Life within you which is God, in a vaster and more glorious way than you ever glimpsed before. You will be conscious constantly of perfect harmony — and consciousness is cause. When this awareness of present beauty and perfection is fully established within you, you will find that your limitations have disappeared into the nothingness from which they sprang. If things are created within the consciousness which beholds them and are real there only, and if you have at last worked back to that Vast Cosmic Spirit which unifies the formed universe, you have done away with the possibilities of imperfection in your creation.
Don’t bother too much about the metaphysics of this lesson, if it confuses you. Just go to work at the assignment, and occasionally reread the lesson. In time it will be as plain to you as the alphabet is now.
Chapter 5 – ANCHORS AND RETROVERSIONS AND WHAT TO DO WITH THEM
IT is the fashion among writers upon metaphysical and spiritual subjects to strive to break entirely from the phraseology which the race has built up for describing certain common experiences and conditions. The old, simple, Anglo-Saxon word “death” is circumlocuted into “passing out.” Specific troubles are ignored or camouflaged.
I am so convinced that this verbal evasion gets no one anywhere that I have never been a party to it. For this reason, in the present series of practical lessons in masterful living, I shall call a spade a spade. When that transition which we call “death” is done away with, as assuredly it will be during the early years of the era we are now entering, the word itself will gradually fall into disuse. When such commonplace ills as influenza and colds and stomach trouble are done away with, the words which stand for these conditions will drop away of themselves just as the dead leaves of one season fall to make room for the new growth of another year.
A point which is often made against New Thought and its allied philosophies by “hard headed” people is that we who follow these teachings often seem to think that by ignoring a condition or by changing its name, we have vanquished it. Let us have the wisdom and the courage to face any uninviting conditions which may confront us today without flinching or evasion, and to conquer them by changing them, rather than by changing our names for them.
In the light of this ideal, let us consider a distinction recognized by most material systems of healing, which divide sickness into acute and chronic maladies. The distinction is a useful one. An acute sickness is a sudden and more or less violent physiological storm, sweeping down upon the organism with much of the unexpectedness which characterizes a storm at sea. Influenza, pneumonia, and tonsillitis are characteristic diseases of this acute type. According to medical science, they are the result of an infection, or an invasion into the system of disease germs.
Wiser physicians, however, have recognized the fact that the real “cause” of acute sickness is a lowering of the general resistance, of the “vitality” or life of the organism attacked. It is often possible to look backward from such an attack and to see that danger signals were sprinkled liberally along the way which led up to the final crisis: unusual weariness, inability to concentrate or to work effectively, a coated tongue or perhaps a headache — these and other warnings nature offered, but they were overlooked. They showed that the life stream was being dammed back, that the physiological mechanism was not working with its accustomed freedom and energy.
Then came the onset, often sudden and violent. Returning to the phraseology of medical science, we may say that the period of incubation has passed, and that the forces of disease have massed themselves for battle. The invaded “host” has lost the first encounter, for it has not succeeded in checking the invasion at the frontier.
Obviously, the logical way to heal attacks of this kind is to prevent them. If you are subject to colds or to tonsillitis or to any other of these maladies, learn to detect the first symptoms of lowered vitality. If you do not feel up to your usual level of strength and efficiency, turn in more life power at once. Use the methods described in the previous lessons: lie down and untie the physical or mental knots which are shutting down on your life line. If you have contracted the habit of “having” any one of these acute troubles, you will find some difficulty in using the method of directly increasing the inflow of energy at this time of principal need. The experience of most students is that sooner or later a time is reached when, the acute trouble having begun as usual, the method of direct increase of the cosmic inflow at first fails to produce results; but after several hours of quiet inward work, the power wire is re-connected and within the space of a few minutes the acute attack is broken. The point to remember here is that just when the student most needs to use this method, he may feel great disinclination to try. It is easier to drift through the usual routine. He should be honest with himself: this is his big opportunity, and eventually he will have to master the situation by vanquishing his enemy when it is at its strongest. If he will do this just once, he will find the tendency to this particular trouble wonderfully weakened, possibly broken permanently.
“Chronic diseases” must be dealt with in a different manner. They have become largely subconscious in their working, and the causes which are keeping them alive have been lost to view. It is necessary for the student who is working to root out one of these parasites to reconstruct the life history through which he has passed in acquiring the trouble. The working mechanism of chronic sickness usually centers around a dominant idea which has sunk below the threshold of consciousness. Every definite idea which finds lodgment in the mind tends to gather around itself other ideas and feelings. It becomes an organizing nucleus. “Putting an idea into a man’s head” often changes the entire course of his life. If it is a constructive idea, such as that of a career in music or mechanics, it may direct him into the channels of success. If it is a destructive idea, such as that of getting something for nothing or of hereditary disease, it may sow seeds of disintegration which eventually shall ravel his present incarnation to its last stitch. Ideas are dynamic, and may build for good or for evil.
Chronic disease begins with such a dynamic idea implanted in the conscious levels of the mind. Perhaps a great sorrow comes, and the individual, instead of facing the situation firmly and throwing off the tentacles of morbid introversion, allows himself to grow fast to the dead past. For a time his mental and physical being may show no signs of the change which is taking place, but sooner or later the law that consciousness is cause begins to bring forth its harvest: if consciousness above or below the threshold of awareness is filled with thoughts of death or of sorrow and remorse, circumstances of a corresponding character must inevitably be reflected into the environment of that consciousness. The physical body is part of the environment. It is not the real self, but is the instrument or vehicle which the ego constructs to function through. A morbid and introverted ego will construct a morbid and sickly body.
Gradually this disintegrative process goes forward. Around the central dynamic idea is gathered nutritive material: other ideas, emotions, data and beliefs are metabolized and added to the tissue of sickness which is being built up. The fact that this progressive growth is largely unconscious detracts nothing from its force. In those integrations which show this same process at work building up instead of tearing down, the young musician is unaware of the mental magnet which is drawing to itself every fact, idea and feeling which relates to his work. As he reads his morning paper, this inner center is censoring the news. It assimilates every item which relates to music. If he reads something about Paderewski, the fact is sifted out and added to the musical complex. That is one of the reasons why real education is a way of living, an eternal journey rather than a fixed and finite goal. And that is why chronic disease is usually not healed as quickly as are those acute attacks which have sprung up quickly; the latter have not the nutritive material in the subconsciousness of the patient which enables the former to hold its own against half-hearted or short-lived attempts at cure.
And so the first stop toward healing chronic troubles of any kind is a merciless searching into the very matrix of consciousness. Somewhere within that inner kingdom which eventually will be organized into a kingdom of harmony and power, the patient is harboring a disintegrate idea, a basic thought, desire or belief which is constantly drawing to itself reinforcements. This basic idea may be an attachment to the past; a regret or sorrow, fed until it has become malignant; or it may be a mistaken belief, such as that in hereditary disease or incurable illness. Extrinsic healing for such a patient is sometimes possible but it is always a violent and questionable process; the type of mind in which outside healing takes place most readily is that child-like consciousness which readily breaks the thread of traditional authority. The typical child is able to believe that the doctor can heal him of any trouble, because he is not bound by precedent; he does not know that certain diseases are supposed to be ”incurable,” It is the false beliefs of those about them which hold children and adults of this child-like type in bondage to disease.
Self-healing is the surest healing. The ego which has built up the warp and the woof of disease can most surely ravel its own fabric and weave another in its place. Morbid introversion has had much to do with weaving the false fabric. Now constructive introversion must be put in its place. Somewhere within and below everyday consciousness exists the organizing center of your trouble. It is your work now to get inside and find this traitor. What do you think of most frequently — what are your habitual subjects of thought? In this connection, here is a fact of the first importance for you to consider:
Cosmic energy, which is the source of physical vitality, does not flow into a cul-de-sac, or closed receptacle; it will flow into you and quicken your mind and body only on the condition that it can flow through you and pass on to the world in the form of work accomplished. From the standpoint of cosmic consciousness, you are one of two things: either you are part of itself, one of its organs of expression; or you are an obstruction, a blind alley. In the latter case, cosmic energy itself is working to eliminate you.
It is only as you become a channel for worthwhile expression that you can hope to receive life and power.
For this reason, when you fire working to find the obstruction in consciousness which is causing your trouble look for a dominant interest which is not constructive: which consumes energy without producing useful results in the outer world. The logical application of this principle will not turn you into a cosmic adding machine, or into any other sort of joyless mechanism for transforming energy into work accomplished.
Indeed, one of the worthwhile expressions which cosmic consciousness puts the seal of its approval upon is pure and wholesome enjoyment. Good music, good pictures, good books, travel, even the pleasures of the table — these things are constructive if they are properly balanced with the other activities.
You not only can, but you must enjoy the good things of life, if you are to be strong and efficient.
A joyless existence is penalized more severely than one which is given over to too much indulgence in pleasure.
The happy mean is attainable.
Whether or not you are interested in this subject of self-healing, the assignment for this lesson offers a chance for the constructive use of your powers of mind and body.
CONSCIOUSNESS is CAUSE, not result: therefore, a consciousness which radiates joy and serenity must be attained before you can express these qualities fully and continuously in your environment. The extreme negative in this respect is pretty apt to express itself as sickness and disintegration; the half-tones, however — moderate discontent, retroversion of consciousness to an extent which is undesirable without being actually morbid — may manifest themselves as simple lack of energy or joy. The half-tone people are never as efficient as they should be — it is the men and women who live intensely who get most out of life.
Serenity and joy may be increased by three methods:
First, by reasoning out the desirability of having them, and the various things which will help establish them;
Second, by using suggestions and affirmations;
Third, by the method of becoming directly conscious of joy, as a present condition of consciousness.
Get back to that basic principle which I have stated so many times: Consciousness is cause, not result. You can awaken to the consciousness of joy before you have any of the things around you which you think should cause joy.
Logically, things are results. Get the consciousness of joy first, and inevitably you will have the things. They will be added, when you have found the kingdom.
Later in this series we will take up the use of thinking and affirming to produce changes in consciousness. Now we are going straight to the heart of the problem by beginning the use of the most effective of all methods of changing consciousness — the direct method. When you want to move your hand you do not think about it or suggest or affirm the movement; you just move. So you can learn to be conscious of that which you desire without affirming or thinking about it.
During your time of meditation tonight, after you have relaxed your tensions and begun the process of quickening the inflow of energy, lie quietly with your consciousness centered within. Your eyes are closed. Now, without using words or suggestions of any kind, try to feel joy, serenity, happiness raised to its highest dimension.
If you make the mistake of simply reading this assignment and thinking about it, this direction will seem puzzling and impossible of execution. If you stick to our compact of trying the thing out, however, you will find that you can readily learn to “feel,” to become conscious of a fuller and more thrilling joy and poise than the opposite process — trying to get things first, and consciousness afterward — could ever produce.
Don’t worry for a moment about the result of this method; if you stick to it you will eventually gain an habitual and abiding consciousness of joy and serenity; and this is the first step toward attaining abiding health and mastery of your environment.
In the following lesson we will take up other factors in this matter of attaining an abiding sense of peace and mastery, and will consider the effect of this change of consciousness not only on health, but on prosperity and on all of those details of life which together constitute true success.
Chapter 6 – THOUGHT AND SUGGESTION
IN achieving any of the ends which students of New Thought have in view, a very common difficulty is that sometimes designated as “wandering mind.”
“I don’t seem to be able to concentrate,” is the comment. ” When I try to be still and to think of one thing, a dozen or a hundred others come. It seems as if the more I try, the more my attention skips around.”
The trouble is that the student has ceased to follow the beaten trail of race habit, and is beginning to break new ground. That rapid shifting of attention which is so puzzling and discouraging now has had a definite biological value, for it enabled our forefathers to keep track of the multitude of conflicting claims upon attention which the crude environment of earlier ages was continually making. The cave man had to be able to shift his attention swiftly, as serious danger might threaten him from any one of a score of sources.
The need and the value of concentration as a mental habit are increasing rapidly in these days of transition. There is no danger of our losing the ability to shift attention from one thing to another, for this ability has been organized through countless ages. What we now need and must have is the ability to bring all the powers of the mind down to a fine focus of attention upon one subject, and to hold this focus steadily for long periods.
So difficult is this art of concentration that psychologists have agreed it is practically impossible for the normal human consciousness to regard with unwavering attention for even a fraction of a minute any simple idea. A “simple idea” is one which cannot be broken up into parts. Most thinking, remember, is a matter of making comparisons. In contemplating a simple idea, this comparative process is impossible. You cannot compare a simple thought element with itself, and if you succeed in breaking it up into comparable parts, it is not really simple.
There are two remedies for this apparent difficulty. The first consists in utilizing the comparative form of mental action for its legitimate function in connection with the work in hand. There is a thinking-out stage, during which comparative thinking should be fully utilized. If this is done intelligently and fully, there will be less trouble with subsequent intrusions of comparative thought processes into what should be a different mode of consciousness.
The second factor bearing on this difficulty is that the statement that consciousness cannot confine itself for any considerable length of time to a simple idea is a mistake. Because of the fact that concentrated thinking upon a comparatively simple subject is a late development in human evolution, it is to be expected that this sort of activity would be somewhat difficult of attainment. Fixation of attention upon an absolutely simple thought element, however, is even more difficult. But it is attainable, and it has its place in the training of the initiate. We will consider this in its proper place.
In the present lesson we are going to consider a number of methods which supplement the big cosmic and spiritual methods outlined in the previous lessons of this series. Logically, we might have considered some of these things at an earlier period. Psychologically we are following the correct order — the various methods and principles are presented in the order in which they will be most available for use.
Comparative thinking, thinking in its usual significance, has a definite and necessary place in the integration of consciousness which we are studying. Dogmatic faith is possible with people of a certain type, but the faith which is based on at least a partial understanding of the philosophy involved is more dependable. The first step in building up this type of faith is to think the matter out as fully as possible. What we have in mind in our present studies is the deepening and broadening of the stream of consciousness, so that we shall be bigger, stronger, saner, more effective men and women. Possibly many of the experiences and ideas at present functioning in our minds seem to indicate that any decided increase in this stream of life is impossible. As long as this belief is allowed to go unchallenged, as long as the nutritive material upon which it feeds is allowed to supply it with strength, we shall not be very successful in getting the better of it. At best we shall merely be able to suppress it, to press it below that threshold of awareness which conceals so many elements of discord. This is not a final solution.
The thing to do is to bring the whole family of doubts which we are tempted to ignore and deny up into the light of day and to have a heart- to-heart talk with them. The fact is that the entire trend of even material science and philosophy of today is toward an expanding consciousness of power and possibility. All that is necessary is to supplement these practical views of the laboratories and the schools with an understanding of the general nature and purpose of the creative process, as outlined in some of our previous lessons. Take time to assimilate the principle of Cosmic Consciousness and Cosmic Energy. Begin to fit yourself into this bigger and more impersonal view of the meaning of things, and you will find that the old doubts and fears are beginning to dissolve into mist. In all the tremendous arc of being there is nothing to fear, really, because all consciousness is in its final analysis ONE. And consciousness is the ultimate reality. Simply because you have for a time lost yourself in the mesh of things is no reason for your accepting at face value all the claims to reality and power which these things make.
You are reality, while they are creation.
Begin to reason out this sense of your own transcendental importance, when compared with the world of things. This will help you break the tyranny of race thought, which makes you the creature and subject of the objective world in which you dwell.
This reasoning-out process is something you will have largely to do for yourself, for thinking is a weaving together of bits of knowledge and experience which are strictly personal. I do not know just what fragments you possess to build your mosaic with, but certainly you yourself will be able to work out a harmonious pattern — if only you will keep in mind the few master principles we have already considered. Take time to think along these lines every day. Read a little, but think much.
The thinking-out process is the first supplementary method to use in creating the sort of consciousness you desire. The next is suggestion, or affirmation. Much has been written about this important method of modifying mind and body, but all that we need to know for present purposes can be quickly written. Suggestion is not to be used to take the place of reason, or to suppress the findings of the latter. On the contrary, it is always best to carry the reasoning or thinking-out process to a point where the idea or desire to be impressed by suggestions seems reasonable.
When this point is reached, however, reasoning and suggestion part company. The former is entirely a matter of making comparisons, of weighing one set of facts or theories against another set.
Suggestion, on the contrary, consists in simplifying one idea or desire until it is as clear and definite as it can be made, and then holding this ideal resolutely in consciousness, with the full voltage of desire and expectant attention turned upon it.
The first important fact to consider in connection with suggestions and affirmations is that, usually, they are limited in their effects to those which can be produced within the mind and body of the person using them. Perhaps some suggestions produce more or less effect on others through brain-wave or telepathic action, but the results primarily aimed at and most surely secured are those which show in modifications of organic, mental or emotional function within the ego initiating the suggestive process. Verbal or other objectively expressed suggestions conveyed to others follow the same law — they act only by being set to work within, and do not ordinarily transcend the boundaries of personality. They are not cosmic.
The second factor to keep in mind is that a subconscious resistance is set up to counteract the effect of many suggestions. This comes from ignoring the thinking-out process previously described, which is necessary if the various dynamic ideas below the threshold are to be educated to accept the new dynamic idea or suggestion. Ignorance of this tendency toward subconscious resistance leads to unsatisfactory results, or to temporary success followed by failure. The logic of consciousness is not easily set aside, and if there exist within the reaches of experience elements of thought or feeling which logically run counter to a suggestion, the latter either will not be accepted at all, or it will be tolerated just as long as the pressure of personal will is exerted to distort the ultimate findings of consciousness as a whole.
The logical preparation for a successful use of suggestion, then, is a deliberate and extensive re-education, conducted by the student within his own mind. He must learn to see the reasonableness of the suggestion he is striving to impress, must make it mesh with the other elements functioning within his mental machine.
A third peculiarity of the suggestive process is that usually it derives much of its effectiveness from repetition. Sometimes a suggestion can be made so intense and powerful that its first effect is final. This is exceptional, however, and provision should always be made for systematic repetition of a suggestion whose results it is desired to make permanent.
The fourth and final dynamic element in using suggestion is the need for concentration, raised to its highest power. Here we return to that common difficulty before alluded to. The normal human consciousness of today, that which follows the “norm” or average, is constructed for diffusiveness of attention rather than for focused attention. Acquiring the ability to think of one comparatively simple idea for a considerable time can result only from intensive training, long continued. The power once attained, however, will be found to be of inestimable value in many practical directions.
A few suggestions can be offered under this head of concentration. In the first place, the way to learn is just to begin and to stick to it. Have a regular time for this mental exercise, and take it every day. Usually evening will be found the best time, as the attractions of the external world are apt at this period to be least insistent. Experiment until you find the time which works best with you, and then stick to this time with as few interruptions as possible.
Construct your suggestions so that they shall be neither too complex, thus causing mental confusion, nor too near the line of absolute simplicity. A typical suggestion for self-healing which observes both of these requisites might be phrased as follows:
I AM STRONG, CLEAN AND VIGOROUS.
In using this suggestion, the thinking-out process should first be completed. Remember that the real “I” is a creative principle, without beginning or end of self-expressing existence. This central, creative principle, however, surrounds itself at different times with various sorts of instruments or vehicles, which may be looked upon as ejects of consciousness. They are the shapes which the present degree of awareness of truth within the ego naturally and logically reflects into the world of creation. From this standpoint, the statement above formulated is absolutely true, no matter what the appearance of the body may be.
After you have thought it out till the suggestion no longer seems to advance a ridiculous assumption of perfection where in reality there is imperfection, eliminate as far as possible the comparative phase of thinking and concentrate upon the idea itself. Don’t let comparative thoughts, visualizations of the body as it now appears, or memories of symptoms, come into the margin of attention. Don’t even try to work out the suggestion you are using by visualizing a perfect body. Visualizing has its place, but not here. Now you are to learn to think of one thing at a time, and to think intensely. Repeat the suggestion again and again. Try to attain the impersonal attitude of regarding it as an abstract truth, disconnected from any immediate external application.
This matter of learning to use the positive mode of mental action rather than the comparative is not one which you will acquire in a day or in a week. It may take you months to master it. If you persevere, however, you will find that both comparative thinking and positive thinking or “contemplation” have their parts to play in the effective and masterful functioning of consciousness. When you have completed this assignment, you will have made a big step in lifting yourself out of the rut grooved through the ages by race habit and thought.
Chapter 7 – HOW TO UTILIZE COSMIC ENERGY
THE interplay and correlation of the three orders of energy — personal, cosmic and spiritual — is pretty apt to cause some confusion to the student during his early months of work and experiment. The remedy for this confusion is simply to keep on working and studying, and not to worry too much about trying to construct a broad and all-comprehensive philosophy. In time such a philosophy will begin to form itself out of the apparent chaos, provided only the seeker utilizes all the fragments of his new knowledge which are clear enough in his mind for him to use.
In the previous lesson attention was centered on the use of strictly personal forces, in the modification of personality and environment. The important characteristic of personal force is that it does its work largely or entirely within the arc of the personality generating it. It may change his environment, but it can do so only indirectly, by its primary effect in changing him. Through the use of suggestion, for instance, a man may modify his abilities in such a way as to enable him to earn more money. The primary effect is on his own faculties, while the effect upon his environment, including his income, is secondary and indirect.
Cosmic energy, on the other hand, is an impersonal force which pervades the universe. Man’s part in utilizing this cosmic energy is confined to directing or concentrating these ultra-personal rays upon a given problem or task. The individual does not increase the energy, or intensify it in any way. He merely focuses it, as the lens of a burning glass focuses the sun’s rays upon a given point. In this present case, attention is the lens. Directing personal attention upon anything, in a certain way, brings to bear upon it the dissolving and reforming power of this vast, basic wisdom and energy.
The first thing to consider in this connection is the use of cosmic energy to dissolve those negative conditions which come under the head of “worry,” “fear,” “the blues,” etc. The need of a direct and positive remedy for all these negative emotions is very real. The man or the woman who worries is creating an environmental atmosphere which renders the effective use of the higher forces impossible.
The usual remedy, once the need for eliminating the trouble is recognized, is suppression. This is not a real remedy. It may temporarily hide the trouble but no use of personal will power to drive down below the threshold of consciousness one of these unwholesome emotions will accomplish any final and lasting good. The trouble with such a solution is that the suppressed and partially dissociated worry complex goes right on functioning down in the depths of the subconscious, and although its effects are not immediately recognized, they are being produced all the time. One of the first serious tasks the student along spiritual lines must set himself is to bring these suppressed fears to the surface, to eliminate them.
How can this be done? First, as I have just said, by hauling the half hidden ugly things back into the full light of consciousness. Perhaps you have been worrying about your financial affairs, or your health. No matter what it is, the first step in doing away with the worry is to face it, fully and frankly. The old race habit in this respect is a survival from the time when all men and women were mental children. At that time the best they were capable of was self deception. They dared not face the apparent evil, so they drove it down below the plane of conscious recognition. We have come of age mentally in these latter centuries, or at any rate we begin to think we have. Let us assert our right to face “reality,” no matter in what hideous shape it may elect to appear.
Formulate your trouble, either in words or images; make it definite. In doing this, however, do not assert that it is true — merely look at it as it appears, not evading one sinister detail. The attitude you are to try to develop is that of an interested observer. Regard the thing intellectually.
The result of this attitude is pretty certain to be an attack of fear or worry in its worst form. Never mind — that is just what you want. Don’t make the mistake of thrusting your “trouble” hastily out of sight at this manifestation, but keep right on regarding it in the full light of consciousness. Fear and worry are fires which must have a constant supply of fuel, or they will soon burn themselves out. The reason they do not do this with the chronic worrier is because he spends much of his time covering them up. This acts just as covering any other fires does — it keeps the thing alive. Our grandfathers used to cover the coals with ashes at night to keep them alive till morning.
So bring your worry fuel out and fan it into a brisk blaze. Then let it burn. That is the quickest way to get rid of it. And all the time hold yourself in the impersonal attitude of neither denying nor affirming the reality of what you are beholding. It is one thing to give an appearance attention. It is quite a different thing to ascribe to it reality. You are not to accept the present appearance of evil as a reality in itself, for that it is not. Upon your success in attaining and holding this impersonal attitude will depend your success in directing upon the tangle, whatever it may be, that cosmic energy which will most readily correct the condition. See it, focus your attention upon it, then continue to regard both it and the emotions within yourself which are automatically stimulated by this process with the impersonal interest of a scientist, observing a chemical phenomenon.
The truth is that human consciousness very readily becomes a focal point for the expression of cosmic consciousness. All that is necessary is for the seeker to relax the pressure of his personal desire and will. It is either desire or its inverted prototype, fear, that inhibits the constant inflow of cosmic force. Personality, personal effort raised to too high and too emotional a level, shuts down on the life line and limits the individual to his own little arc of ability.
So bring your troubles up into the spot light and let the emotions connected with them burn themselves out, while at the same time your impersonal regard centers upon them a great beam of cosmic energy. No trouble or combination of troubles can withstand this dissolving force, and the best part of it is that you do not have to force yourself to deny or affirm anything. This method can be used during those times when you feel that you have exerted your last ounce of strength and have nothing more to pit against your enemy. Just sit back and look at him, and look at your own surging fear. This is a simple remedy and an effective one, but most people either never discover it, or only do so in the deepest extremity.
Intense personal desire, like intense personal fear, tends to inhibit the inflow of cosmic energy. Desire, nevertheless, is an attractive power, and can be used effectively in getting the things or conditions you want. The solution of this paradox lies in the fact that it is the intense personal emotions connected with desire which act as inhibitors, while the desire itself, purified of these by-products, is a magnetic force. In demonstrating the truth of this statement all that you have to do is to take time every morning and every evening to think over your ideal, the things or conditions you desire to bring to pass. Go into them in detail. Make them as definite in your consciousness as you can. But here, also, avoid either affirming or denying them as realities in themselves. See them simply as things which, from the big standpoint of cosmic harmony, you believe should come into your life. You don’t have to affirm or suggest anything, in using this method. Just think about the conditions you want, and do it systematically, day after day.
At this point I imagine some of my readers will be objecting, “All our lives we have desired things which we never got. If desire is an attractive power, why is not every desire fulfilled?”
The reason is simple enough. Most of our desires hold within themselves a counter force — that of incredulity, or of fear in one of its many forms. We wish, that we had a certain thing or a condition, but more or less consciously we believe that we would be silly to entertain any real hope of attaining our ideal. Remember our basic axiom: Consciousness is Cause, In the light of this law you can see that desire which does not create within the desirer a consciousness of attainment will not bring the desired end.
In the process of turning desire into the consciousness of success it is first of all necessary to see the force which is to do the work. In the method we are at present considering, this force is Cosmic, rather than personal. Sometimes you bring your desires to pass by purely personal effort. Usually something of this personal element is advisable, because action helps create the condition of consciousness we need and also because action has its place in the scheme of things: we are to work and pray. The big fact to consider here, however, is that in addition to our purely personal effort to change conditions, there exist vast ultrapersonal forces which we may learn to work with. Desire, purified of fear and all negative emotions, is one of the most potent means of bringing these forces to bear upon a given end.
So you must learn to reckon with this cosmic energy and wisdom, and you must learn to utilize its power by becoming one of its channels of expression. In a previous lesson we have studied some of the methods and principles which have to do with awakening within the individual cosmic consciousness, or conscious oneness with Cosmic Mind. When this condition of fuller wakefulness is reached, the attractive power of desire will become very evident. Your own will come to you far more easily than it now does. The reason for this fact is that as you awaken to your oneness with the Cosmic forces, they are enabled to find conscious expression through you, and hence you are adjusted to your environment on a cosmic scale rather than on a purely personal scale, as at present.
Here, then, is the first step in utilizing the magnetic power of desire; learn to purify your desires of all the fear and all the personal tension which usually attaches to them, and learn the all-important truth that your serene expectation is one of the mightiest forces in the universe. It may eventually work out by directing you into totally unexpected courses of action, so that to an outsider the whole change in your affairs will appear to have come about in the old-fashioned way, by your thinking the thing out and then working it out. No matter what others think, however, by the time this change takes place you will have become so conscious of your own practical identity for creative purposes with tides of power vastly transcending the personal that you will not even bother to try to convince others of this reality.
Visualizing the thing or conditions you desire to create may help, or it may hinder. If you are a natural visualizer, it may be very easy for you to “see” just what you want to bring about. In that case, exercise your visualizing power, provided you can do so without fixing in your consciousness limits to the means of attainment and to the final form of appearance which your “demonstration” is to take. Don’t let yourself fall into the error of trying to specify in detail just what you want to create. Hold to the general ideal, and make it big. But don’t imagine that events must shape themselves according to a course which you can predetermine. It is ends you are after, not means — and even these ends will probably come in a bigger and more satisfying form if you do not try to cast the mould of your desire into too rigid a form. If you find that visualizing tends to produce this fixation of consciousness, you may be able to correct the trouble by visualizing different sets of conditions, each of which will in a different way satisfy your inner urge. If you are trying to “demonstrate” a home, for instance, visualize many ideal homes, any one of which would satisfy you. In this way you will generalize your desire, and free it from the limitations of personality.
One final factor should be kept in mind, in using this cosmic side of desire: Cosmic energy is the link which connects the purely personal with the purely spiritual. In some respects it resembles the former, in others the latter. It is a phase of consciousness, and has laws of its own which are neither spiritual nor personal. In one important detail, however, it is unlike the dynamics of pure Spirit: time is always an element in its working, although the time it requires to perform a given transaction is often much shorter than the time force exerted from the personal plane would require.
This time element, however, means in terms of application that you must continue to use the force of your desire, regularly and always with the same impersonal serenity, until you get results. This does not mean that no results are produced by the first attempts to utilize Cosmic energy, but rather that these first results have not yet gathered sufficient momentum to manifest themselves to your physical senses. By sticking to your part of the work, you will enable the cosmic forces to gather momentum. If you desist or fail in your part, they are left without a mechanism to function through and are apt to be inhibited. Worthwhile things are not done overnight. Learn to do your share in providing Cosmic Mind with a lens to focalize through, and you will be able to accomplish any worthwhile thing, no matter how great.
Chapter 8 – HOW TO ANALYZE YOURSELF
IT HAS often seemed to me that with no other mechanism in the world does man display the same criminal carelessness and ignorance which he manifests in his use and control of his own personal forces. It would be considered nothing less than suicidal for a man who knew nothing about automobiles to take a high-powered car out and undertake to make a long trip with it. He would endanger his own life, the lives of other people, and would be practically certain to ruin the mechanism he was attempting to control. Something very similar to this, nevertheless, is attempted by ninety-nine people out of a hundred in dealing with that mechanism with which they find themselves equipped when they come into this world. Obviously the place to start any journey which is to carry us far into that mysterious country called the “Self ” is by making as complete an analysis as possible of that self, its faculties and powers, its limitations and crotchets.
In facing this old problem of “Man Know Thyself,” we find that we are confronted in the very beginning by two handicaps. The first of these is the instinctive or subconscious character of many of the actions which we perform in our daily lives. Most of the things which we accomplish are, in fact, initiated and maintained by forces which we seldom even glimpse. We may compare the tide of consciousness to one of those ocean currents whose surface catches the reflection of the clouds and is rippled by every passing breeze, but whose vast under-currents really dominate every movement and tendency of the current as a whole. The mind of man has been well compared to an iceberg, nine-tenths of whose mass and bulk float below the surface. So it is that this subconscious element in thinking, feeling, and acting masks man from himself.
The second limiting factor to which I have referred is that which biologists call “Personal Variation.” No two thumb-prints, no two faces, and no two minds in all the universe are exactly alike. This factor of personal variation makes it impossible for one human being to respond to a given stimulus just as any other human being would respond. It may be said, indeed, that he will not respond exactly alike a second time to the stimulus himself. This means that in learning to understand ourselves we must keep in mind two sets of factors: first those general subconscious impulses and drives which are common to all men and even in some cases to the lower animals, and second, those factors which are distinctly individual.
In making this exploration into the depths of our own conscious and subconscious minds, we have three tools at our disposal: the first of these is introversion or introspection, the turning of the attention within the self. Up to within comparatively recent times introspection was practically the only exploratory method used by philosophers and psychologists. Recently it has fallen somewhat into disrepute, because of the fact that in those former times it was forced to do work for which it was not adapted. It is pointed out, for instance, that some of the mistakes made by such men as Immanual Kant were due to the use of the introspective method. Looking within his own mind, Kant seemed to find evidence that such things as the perception of time and space relations were intuitive or “a priori.” Modern scientific method, shows that this was a mistake and introspection, by which Kant arrived at his conclusions, has had to shoulder the blame. Used wisely, however, introspection is one of the most valuable tools available to students of psychology and metaphysics.
The first principle to fix in mind in utilizing introspection is that it must be used in a perfectly impersonal and unbiased way. You must learn not to ” kid yourself,” as the youngsters sometimes say. This is by no means an easy condition to secure, as the tendency of our lives is to lie to ourselves and fool ourselves in every possible way. We must make a new covenant, however. “We must say, “I won’t fool myself, no matter how much I may allow the world to fool itself about me.” This means in effect that we must avoid both self-condemnation and self-praise. We want the facts about our actions and our methods, uncolored by any emotional bias. The way to develop this impersonal attitude toward the self is first of all to fix the ideal of it in mind. Better still, get it down in black and white in your assignment book. Review this assignment at regular intervals, and if you find that you have jumped the track, call yourself back to it.
The second principle to keep in mind in connection with the use of introspection is that this method must be applied at the time. This is not the easiest thing in the world to do, because at those critical times when we most need to observe the workings of our own thoughts and emotions we are apt to feel a strong disinclination for any such coldblooded procedure. It is absolutely essential, however, that we learn to observe such forces as anger, fear, worry, etc., at the very time they are most active. The way to succeed here is, as before, to make the ideal very definite and then to force ourselves back to it as often as we find that we are failing to carry it out.
The second tool we have to work with in learning to know ourselves, is objective observation and measurement of our own progress and achievements. This method can well be used in connection with the personal assignment book: make your plans for future action very definite and then at regular intervals audit your progress. At these times of examination decide first of all just how far you have actually succeeded in carrying out your plans. Next, determine as impersonally as possible why you have failed where you find that you have failed. Perhaps you will find at these times that the plan was an absolutely impossible one; on the other hand you may find that the plan would have worked with certain modifications. Provide for these changes in the future and recast your assignment.
The third tool to be used in exploring that darkest Africa which each of us calls “I, myself,” is the observation of other people. The world we live in is the most wonderful psychological laboratory conceivable. In it we can work out every sort of problem which can possibly have interest for us. Our own motives and dominant impulses are often reflected in the actions of those about us in a way which brings a somewhat rueful smile to our faces, if we are blessed with a sense of humor. It is not necessary to take any unfair advantage of other people in order to get the utmost value out of this possibility. All that is essential is that we learn to keep our eyes and ears open, and that we apply to our observation such categories and principles as we have acquired from our reading and experience.
The use of the three tools which we have considered will soon bring us face to face with certain of the big drives or impulses which dominate and motivate men. There are many classifications of these racial impulses, some of which are exceedingly intricate and complex. For our present purposes no such minute classification is required; neither is it requisite that our tabulation shall conform to those scientific requirements binding upon professional psychologists and philosophers. All we want is a tool like the Yankee’s jack-knife, which can be used for cutting those knots which we find it unnecessary to untie. The following classification is offered with all of the foregoing in mind. Those of my readers who have delved very deeply into the principles and methods of modern social psychology may be tempted to consider my list too abbreviated and too lacking in fine distinctions to be of service. I think even these people will find, however, that if they will use the old test for judging the qualities of a pudding they will find that this psychological pudding of mine is worthwhile.
Here, then, are the six basic drives which, you will want to look for in studying yourself and others: Helpfulness, expression, obedience, the dramatic instinct, acquisitiveness and fear.
Keep in mind the qualifications in the preceding paragraph. This list is not intended to be either complete or “scientific” in the usual sense. It is strictly practical and pragmatic.
It may be well for us to consider these six drives in detail. The first, helpfulness, is the impulse underlying civilization and all associative effort. Keep in mind the fact that in social evolution the community rather than the individual is the unit. Group effort has been an essential in securing the welfare of the race. For this reason this instinct of helpfulness is one of the oldest and most completely organized of all the human drives. It is fashionable among certain people to adopt a cynical attitude when speaking of mankind. This attitude is very unscientific, for it ignores this big basic impulse toward helpfulness—which can be found even in the most hard-headed, hard-hearted of people. If you doubt that this tendency exists, put it to the test; begin asking all sorts of people to cooperate with you in various ways which do not directly benefit them. Tell them frankly that you have nothing to offer them for their assistance except the consciousness of having benefited a fellow human being. If you can learn to eliminate from your manner every suggestion of suspicion, you will find that your responses to this appeal will rank altogether too high to be accounted for except on the basis of this impulse which I have called helpfulness.
In examining the makeup of your own ego with respect to this impulse of helpfulness, keep in mind the command of the master-teacher, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Remember to use this as it stands. You are not to love your neighbor more than yourself or yourself more than your neighbor. There must be an exact balance between this impulse toward helpfulness and the counterbalancing motive which we will next consider.
Expression, the second motive, is the drive which lies back of selfassertion, self-advancement, etc. It is the impulse which shows itself in the desire for good workmanship. It induces the writer to sacrifice himself for the sake of producing master stories. It lies back of the spirit of craftsmanship, and has built all of the railroads and cathedrals, all of the office buildings and scenic drives, in the world. It is a personal rather than a community impulse, and tends to make him by whom it is possessed hard and intolerant toward opposition. The world’s creators have earned the name of being drivers and fighters. This instinct for expression is the creator’s instinct.
Obedience, the third impulse on our list, also has been an essential in securing the perpetuation of the race. For every leader whom we acknowledge we must have a thousand followers; and these followers must be controlled largely through this instinct of obedience. In studying its action within ourselves we must keep in mind the fact that while in the long run obedience works out for the welfare of the herd, it is for each one of us as individuals distinctly a limiting factor. Obedience makes us followers. The other fellow sets the pace, reaches the goal first, and reaps most of the reward. The law is that large bodies move slowly and that obedience makes us a unit in one of these slowly moving large bodies. We must learn to defy the Mores, and to break those silly laws which strive to fetter us without offering adequate compensation.
The dramatic instinct is the fourth big impulse which we shall want to consider. At first glance it may seem that a drive of this character would have interest and value for only a very narrow range of people. The fact is, however, that this instinct is one of the most powerful we shall have to consider. Perhaps it is the best illustrated in the actions of children for there we see the dramatic instinct at work without any attempt at disguise or concealment. Not enough advantage is taken by parents and educators of the play and counterplay of this tendency among youngsters. The boy who joins a gang and gets himself and his parents into trouble by holding up the public at the point of a revolver is playing a part; and he will sacrifice more to carry out this part consistently than he would for almost any other object. The remedy for such a misuse of the dramatic instinct is not suppression, but replacement. “To replace is to conquer.” The youngster must be inoculated with other ideals, and this inoculation must be done skilfully.
In looking within ourselves for traces of the action of this dramatic instinct we are handicapped by a tendency to evade the truth. It requires cold-blooded determination to strip off the mask which we have become accustomed to wearing. At this time of self-appraisal, however, it is essential to get down to the bedrock of our motives. The part we are playing on the big stage of life must be sought out and discovered once and for all. This does not mean that we must try and suppress the functioning of this dramatic instinct within ourselves; it does mean, however, that we must resolutely determine just what ideals and ideas we are striving to work out or to impersonate. In studying other people, also, it is essential to keep this instinct in mind. Often their most contradictory acts result from the drive of a subconscious ideal which they are striving to express objectively. Sometimes a discovery on our part of this ideal enables us to secure co-operation and good-will where otherwise it would be entirely lacking.
Acquisitiveness, the fifth of the big drives, is one with which we all feel ourselves well acquainted. The appeal to financial gain is the one oftenest made in modern society. The money motive forms a sort of one- stringed fiddle upon which business men, professional men, artists, and humanitarians strive to play the symphony of life. Usually when we have taken time to become acquainted with our own minds we realize that for ourselves this is not the dominant motive which it is supposed to be. We still go on assuming, however, that other people are only to be influenced by an appeal to the acquisitive instinct. Biology points to an entirely different conclusion. This acquisitive instinct is one of the youngest among all the big drives; indeed, it is not, properly speaking, an instinct at all, but is rather a habit, the formation of which comes more readily to some people than to others. Up to comparatively recent times in racial evolution it had no survival value and, therefore, was not transmitted by selection. All of this means that this tendency, having been recently organized, is among the weakest and most easily replaced of all the drives. In fact there are not wanting indications that the displacement of this impulse by society as a whole has already begun. An attorney said to me recently, “People won’t litigate for their property as they used to be willing to do when I was a young man. They come into my office and tell me of their problems, but when I advise them that they will have to resort to the courts to secure their property rights, they say, ‘Oh, well, let it go — it isn’t worth fighting for.’ They didn’t use to do that even one generation ago.”
The entire condition of the world today indicates that we are passing out of one era and into another. A different social attitude toward money, property, and, in fact, toward the entire acquisitive tendency will be one of the characteristics of the new age. For this reason it is important for those of us who hope to enter this promised land to free ourselves from any taint of money-madness.
Fear is the last of our list of basic impulses. We have just noticed the fact that acquisitiveness is the youngest of this family of six; fear, on the other hand, is the oldest and huskiest of the entire brood. Its organization within the subconsciousness greatly antedates the arrival of the race at the human level. For this reason, fear is the most difficult of all the emotions to control. It produces its results through the sympathetic nervous system and through the latter’s control of the glands and organs. Any system for controlling this emotion of fear must take this physiological basis into consideration. The point we want to keep in mind at the present time is that fear is of great importance in the lives of some people, while the native disposition of others relegates it to a minor position. In your analysis of yourself take time to determine just how far your thoughts, actions, ambitions, etc., are influenced by fear.
In the following lessons we shall consider a few further details connected with self-analysis.
Chapter 9 – SELF-ANALYSIS EXORCISES FEAR
WE can sum up the teachings of the previous lesson by stating that it is necessary for the student who would get very far into the science of selfdevelopment to realize the old command, “Know Thyself.” Three tools will have to be used in self-appraisal: first, introspection; second, objective observation of the self; and third, observation of others. The use of these three tools will eventually bring to light the existence of six master motives, functioning largely below the threshold of awareness. These master motives are: helpfulness, expression, obedience, the dramatic instinct, acquisitiveness, and fear.
In spite of the fact of personal variation it may be definitely stated that each of these master-motives affects every human being at one time or another. Because of the fact that their functioning in largely subconscious, however, their influence is usually overlooked. It is essential in this matter of self-analysis that the student honestly study himself until he is able to chart his dominant motives and to assign to each its relative value. Absolute self-honesty is the fundamental virtue here.
After the drives come what may be called the ”modes of expression.” These are: feeling, acting, and thinking. A fact which must be kept in mind in appraising the relative value of each of these modes of expression is that human nature tends towards specialization. This means that each one of us, by a sort of gravitation, is drawn into becoming an actor, a feeler, or a thinker — not all three, but just one. In spite of the fact that it requires a coordinated activity of all three modes to produce harmonious living, the urge of nature inclines us to become fractional; and in the ordinary course of events the channel of expression which first begins to grave itself in the character, will keep on deepening and widening until it becomes a veritable gulley. This sort of mental and moral erosion can be prevented only by keeping the ideal very definitely in mind. Here again recourse will have to be had to the assignment book.
Put down the three words “feeling,” “acting,” and. “thinking,” and then go into an executive session with yourself and decide just where you stand with reference to each one of them.
In connection with the subject of fear in the previous lesson, we considered some of the facts related to the emotions. In appraising the influence of the emotions upon yourself you can take this emotion of fear as the type. Remember that the ideal emotional condition is one of absolute poise and serenity. Modern psychological investigations have demonstrated that even enthusiasm, except in the very mildest form, is a handicap to effective work. Poise is the mode you want to establish as your ideal.
Action as a mode of expression brings us face to face with two different types of workers. These may be designated as the “sprinters” and the “plodders,” and the important fact here is that you belong either to one class or the other. According to the old ideal hammered into us by copybook precepts, the plodders are the only people who are really entitled to inhabit tho earth. They are the men and women who are able to do a standard day’s work six or seven days a week. Undoubtedly this is the most effective way of working if you can adapt yourself to it; it enables you most easily to fit yourself into the work of the world and into other people’s plans. It enables you to make your own plans some time in advance and to carry them out with considerable precision. If you can learn to work in this way, by all means do so, but —
If you can’t, learn to become an effective sprinter. Much of the best work in the world has been done and is being done by men and women who have on-days and off-days. On the on-days they are able to accomplish a tremendous amount of good work; on the off-days, everything they attempt to do goes wrong. The solution for people of this type is to have two assignment lists, one containing those things which must be done when creative pressure is at its maximum, the other to contain those odd- jobs which can be done almost without thinking. High-pressure days must be reserved solely for the first class of work; and every such day must be utilized. If you are to take it easy on those days when you really are not capable of doing good work, you must pay the price by exerting yourself one hundred percent on your effective days. Remember Professor James’ doctrine of the reserve energies of men; if you allow these reserves to slumber on the days when they are the most difficult to awaken, you must shake them into full activity on your working days. This method of working is one which is very easily abused. The disrepute into which so-called “artistic temperament ” has fallen resulted largely from the abuse of the principle here involved. Be square with yourself. If you are a sprinter and find that you must remain one, learn to play the game effectively on your own basis.
The mode of expression which we call “thinking” is one of the least used and least appreciated of this trio. Up to within comparatively recent times, thinking as a science was impossible. Civilization had not yet accumulated the data and worked out the principles upon which creative thinking is founded. Our intellectual heritage of today, however, makes it possible for us really to think, and to learn to think, if we have not yet formed habits of doing so. In examining your own thinking habits and capacities you will secure the most illumination by noticing how you arrive at your conclusions. The average human being decides most questions by a sort of a toss-the-nickel process. Observe yourself impersonally for a few days, or, better still, for a few weeks, and learn how you arrive at your decisions.
At the risk of arousing some controversy I am going to suggest that in your self-appraisal you endeavor to place yourself in one of the two big psychological types, judged from the standpoint of diet. These two types differ first of all in their anatomical structure. One type, composed of the broad-backed people, is characterized by a relatively long digestive canal. Because of the greater area for absorption these people are able to thrive on diet which would hardly keep one of the narrow-backed people from starvation. Edison and Fletcher may be cited as illustrious examples of this type. The second characteristic of the broad-backed people is their ability to assimilate all the nourishment they need from a bulky diet, relatively low in food value; and conversely a high protein diet, such as one made np largely of meat, eggs and milk is apt to produce disastrous results with this type.
The narrow-backed people are essentially carnivorous. They need concentrated food and plenty of it, although their high tension mentally and emotionally often predisposes them to eat very little. Men and women of this type need plenty of lean beef and milk, with enough salad vegetables and acid fruits to neutralize the nitrogenous by-products. As a rule these narrow-backed people do not readily digest or assimilate more of the energy-producing foods than they need for current expenses. This means that they must use sugars, starches and fats in moderation.
In addition to the foregoing mental emotions and physical factors it will be well for you to learn to judge your relative fitness at various times. A little observation will show you that every serious physical and mental depression is preceded by definite indications. These are the straws which show the direction in which your current of vitality is flowing. Muscular twitchings, headaches, rashes and diminution in speed and precision in work indicate a lowering of vital pressure which should at once be dealt with. This does not mean that you are to become a crank or a hypochondriac, but it does mean that it is possible and profitable to keep track of the smoothness with which your mental and physical machinery is operating and to foresee and prevent breakdowns of various sorts.
We have now considered some of the most readily discoverable elements in that big complex which we call “I, myself.” We must now consider another set of factors which is not so easily observed or analyzed — the big stabilizing element which exists down in the executive department of mind, often without even being suspected. It may be called the “subjective prototype,” and its action is not unlike that of a gyroscope. The latter, you will remember, resists change in position. It tends to stabilize the equilibrium of any mechanism within which it is situated. Just so this subjective prototype down in the depths of the subconsciousness gives stability and resistance to the thing which we call personality or character. In many instances its action is a distinct handicap to progress. In the main, however, it is an absolute requisite. Without it, personality would be in a constant ebb and flow, a flux, in which no characteristic would be lasting or stable. We should be mental and emotional chameleons, taking tone and color from our surroundings. The thing we must learn to do is to utilize this gyroscope, mastering it when it interferes with our growth.
Let us consider a typical instance of its action in hampering personal evolution. It is possible for a man to prepare very completely for his life work and to spend years in gathering various sorts of abilities and information he will need to make himself a complete success. Within himself all the time, however, there may exist a subconscious feeling of inability and incredulity in regard to this life-work. This is the voice of the subjective prototype, and as long as it speaks in this vein he will never achieve success. A man may have every sort of learning he needs to do his work “right up to the handle,” and this learning may be left like a waif on the doorstep of consciousness simply because this deeper self refuses to allow it to be taken in. The condition of the worker who endeavors to succeed in spite of this handicap is similar to that of a man who tries to row a boat without lifting the anchor. He may succeed in making some headway, but it is improbable that he will complete his journey.
Evidently, then, it in necessary in making a complete appraisal of the self to get at the real nature of the subjective prototype. This can be done by using the tool which we have called “introspection.” The tendency is to refuse to listen to the voice of this subliminal self. This must be reversed. You must not only be willing to listen to the doubts and protests of this self below the threshold, but you must go out of your way to invite this criticism. Whenever you feel the slightest doubt or misgiving as to your ability to do anything which you have set yourself to do, stop at once and institute an inquiry. At the time when this doubt is most active you will be able to trace it to its source. Simply relax the tensions of your surface mind and let the force which psychologists call “association” bring before the court of your understanding all of the evidence in the case. You will find that this attitude of mental nonresistance will cause an upsurging of ideas, facts, etc., which your former tension has succeeded in suppressing. Many of these facts have an actual bearing on your affairs and indicate difficulties and handicaps which you should consider. Call up all of this evidence and then go into an executive session with yourself, frankly admitting the difficulties, and deciding definitely how to deal with them. This force of self-honesty in dealing with suppressed ideas and fears is one of the most effective methods which modern corrective psychology has at its disposal.
This method of dealing with the force of the deeper self or subjective prototype is the best preparation in the world for psychical or spiritual healing. Very often suppressed and inhibited doubts and fears are the limiting factor in securing healing. When these are brought up into the court of primary consciousness, results come speedily.
Chapter 10 – THE THREE PLANES OF READJUSTMENT
IN a series of lessons written as these have been, from the psychological rather than the logical standpoint, certain vagaries and inconsistencies of treatment are almost certain to have developed. For this reason it will be advisable for us at this time to gather together some of the strands we have been spinning. This can best be done, I believe, by considering the matter of healing, taking the latter word in its broad sense of readjustment and tracing its development through the various turns of the spiral of evolution. This treatment will also enable us to bring to light and to correct another error to which the human mind is liable: this error is that of specialization, or the tendency to get into a rut.
As an illustration of just how this latter tendency works I am going to describe a minor happening in my own life. At one time it was necessary for me to interview a gentleman whose address I had, but whose residence I had no other way of knowing how to find. While I was thinking about the matter a trolley car stopped within a few feet of the curb where I was standing. The conductor was a red-faced, happy- looking individual who seemed to have no troubles of his own, and whom I at once decided was the proper person to intrust with my cares. I showed him the card on which the address was written and asked if he could tell me how to reach the place.
“Well, I should say I could,” he commented. “Just get on this car and go out to the end of the line, then walk a block and you are at your destination.”
This seemed almost too good to be true but I took him at his word, rode to the end of the line, and walked a block in the direction he indicated. Thereafter I spent a busy half-hour trying to find my address. At the end of that time I saw a policeman leaning against a telephone pole, and contemplating the world with a look of cynical weariness. I approached him with some hesitation and showed him my card.
“Can you tell me,” I asked, “where I will find this address?
Instead of replying to my question he stared hard at my card, then took from his pocket a large folded map of the city, spread it out on the sidewalk, and spent the next five minutes in silent pondering. Eventually he spoke after this fashion:
“You are ten miles from your destination, and you have to transfer twice to get there. Give me that card, and I’ll write down directions for you.”
In the attitude of these two men, the street car conductor and the policeman, we have an illustration of two types of teachers, both of whom, like the poor, we have always with us. One type maintains a one- track railroad, and no matter where you want to go teachers of this sort are confident that all you have to do is to get on their car, go to the end of the line — and there you are. Teachers of the other type are less reassuring, because they keep in mind the many factors which go to the making of that mysterious compound which we call “success.”
Healing or readjustment on the personal plane must begin with an understanding of certain physical details. Among these are exercise and diet. The muscles must be used enough and not too much: that is the entire law of exercise, reduced to tabloid form. The diet question is also very simple: the three classes of foods, fuel foods, muscle building foods, and the chemicals needed by the endocrinous glands, must be supplied in a balanced form. The tendency among modern peoples, Americans particularly, is to eat far too much of the fuel foods, usually about the right quantity of muscle-building food, and to try to exist in a condition of partial starvation as far as the chemicals are concerned. To correct this lack of balance cut down on the use of sugars and starches and use more lettuce, celery, tomatoes and other salad vegetables. After you have made these readjustments and have reduced them to habits, simply forget all about the diet question.
As a part of the preparatory work to be done on the personal plane, keep in mind the necessity of thinking, or learning to think. An equilibrium must be maintained between the emotions and the reason. A detailed description of the process of learning to think does not properly come within the bounds of a course of lessons of this character. A word of advice may be given, however: choose a book of substantial and enduring interest, such, for instance, as Professor James’ “Briefer Course in Psychology,” and devote an hour every day first to reading the text and, second, to thinking out your personal associations with the facts and principles brought forth by the author. These two points of systematic daily work and of forming logical associations will eventually integrate your mind as nothing else can.
We have now cleared the way for a consideration of the direct application of the healing force on the personal plane. This begins with the use of what is called “suggestion.” Suggestion is one of the ways of using the forces of the subjective mind. It has some defects. It endeavors to impress upon this subjective mind by a sort of brute force various ideas which it desires to have carried out. A true suggestion must be introduced into the sub-consciousness as far as possible without the intervention of primary personality. In other words, it must not be reasoned out or thought out, but must be pounded down below the threshold of awareness by forcible statements, frequently repeated. The limitations of this method are apparent.
A long stride in advance of this method comes the use of affirmations. The difference between suggestion and affirmation is vital: in connection with the use of the former, the reason must be suppressed; in using affirmation, on the contrary, reasoning, or the thinking-out process, is the first thing to be considered. The use of affirmations in healing for this very reason has the findings of modern psychology to support it. One principle alone would settle the matter: the subconsciousness of the subjective mind is a sort of logical mechanism, in which various sets of factors are worked out to their logical conclusions.
Consider what must happen where the average “suggestion ” is introduced into the subjective mind. The suggestive therapeutist says in effect to his patient: “You are living in a world where sickness and disease, accidents, germs and infections are the rule, and very real. You have every appearance of being a sick man; from the standpoint of science we must admit that you are very sick, but nevertheless I am going to impress upon you the idea that you are not sick at all. You feel strong and vigorous, and you will soon show forth symptoms of health rather than of disease.”
Please observe that the therapeutist does not put all of this into spoken words, but he does leave within the subconsciousness of the patient a mass of inductively derived principles which will fill in some such background as I have described. In other words, he does not take his suggestion down deep enough to attach it to the bedrock of any other system than that of disease.
Now let us consider a typical healing affirmation, which I am borrowing from Dr. John Hamlin Dewey: THE LIFE I HAVE, IS THE LIFE OF GOD IN ME, AND THE REALIZATION OF THIS MAKES ME EVERY WHIT WHOLE. This statement is an affirmation rather than a suggestion, because it appeals to the reason rather than to what may be called dogmatic faith.
In using affirmations, therefore, our first step is to think them out. We must take them back to where they tie up with the one master-principle in healing, ”God is all, and God is good.” By so doing we avoid introducing discordant elements into the subconsciousness, and therefore avoid those conflicts and inhibitions which follow the use of suggestions which appear to be contrary to facts.
The second step in the use of affirmations is to learn the art of concentration. The secret here is interest, developed through a form of analytical attention. In using the above affirmation, for instance, consider first the thought unit, ”The life I have —.” In studying this group of words we take time to realize that, no matter how sick or handicapped we are, we still have that mysterious something called “life” which differentiates us from the world about us. Even science does not attempt to tell us what it does or what it cannot do. “The life I have,” therefore, is the mark of spiritual kingship.
In the same way we consider the second group of words, “is the life of God in me.” This is the logical foundation upon which this entire affirmation, as a healing force, rests. It is a statement of fact which all of our study and experience prepares us to accept at face value.
In utilizing this analytical method the end sought, which is concentration, is very apt to be lost sight of; this is a matter of indifference, however, as the interest engendered insures genuine concentration.
The third principle to be considered in the use of affirmation is repetition. We find that this phase of healing is closely related to that mental activity called “memorizing.” In each case a new brain path must be established, and the same law which conditions the formation of all brain paths will limit us here. If the new pattern is to have permanent effectiveness it must be impressed again and again, must be repeated until it is thoroughly established. In memorizing, this process is called “over-learning.”
If a verse of poetry is being memorized, for instance, and is repeated just often enough so that one complete recitation can be made without referring to the book, it will not be long retained. After it has apparently been learned it should be repeated at gradually lengthening intervals, until the new pattern becomes a part of the brain tissue. In this way permanent results are secured. Apparent healings brought about through the use of affirmations sometimes are subject to relapses because of failure to utilize this principle called “repetition.” Remember that it is best not to discontinue treatments at the first cessation of “symptoms.”
The fourth principle to be considered in connection with readjustments through affirmations on the personal plane, is that a balance must be maintained between the two poles called “activity” and “passivity.” The Western nations naturally excel in activity; the Easterners and Orientals belong usually to the passive type. The perfect poise is somewhat difficult to attain. Following the use of affirmations, a period of passivity, physical and mental, should come before other work is attempted. Here again we find a parallel in intellectual work: following the vigorous study of any subject, a period of more or less passive consideration should ensue before another subject is taken up. This is one reason for the superior results obtained by night study. The sleep which follows gives the nervous tissues an opportunity to register the impressions which have been made upon them. Details which were somewhat vague and confused the night before will be found to have organized themselves by morning. Similarly, the best results in the use of affirmations will be secured if a period of rest and passivity is allowed to follow active work.
There is a farther important application of this principle: affirmations which have been firmly and systematically impressed upon the subconsciousness at the regular time for going into the Silence should be allowed to rest there until the executive program calls for their repetition. There is a tendency among students who are not familiar with this principle to try to secure results more speedily by a sort of nagging process. They are afraid to stop affirming for fear that the healing power will not work except when they are directing it with their conscious minds. The truth really lies in an opposite direction: healing takes place down in the darkness of the subconscious, and it is during the periods when we have forgotten all about our troubles and our affirmations that readjustment goes forward most effectively.
We have now completed our review of healing on the personal plane and are ready for a consideration of the factors involved in what may be called “Cosmic Healing” or readjustment. This we will take up in our next lesson.
Chapter 11 – THE THREE PLANES OF RE-ADJUSTMENT (Continued)
ALTHOUGH we have considered the dynamic element called “Passivity” in connection with readjustments on the personal plane, it is not until we reach the next turn of the spiral of evolution and come out into the cosmic or universal that we are able to realize the full importance of this factor. On the personal plane the initiative and the execution of our plans rest largely with us; on the cosmic plane, on the contrary, our part is largely a passive one.
Before taking up this matter in detail it may be well for us to pause a moment to consider one other point of interest. In connection with most of the principles and methods described in the previous lesson, we find ourselves practically in accordance with the findings of modern materialistic science. The most hard-headed of scientists will agree with most of our conclusions bearing upon physical and mental readjustment. He will probably agree with us also concerning the technique we have evolved for using affirmation. Of course he will not be able to accept our basic principle upon which we have decided that all healing by the use of affirmations rest — he will deny that anything so metaphysical as “God” or the “Infinite” can enter into our affairs; but he will probably agree that our method of using what we call “affirmations” is a highly effective method of using what he calls “suggestion.”
In approaching the concept of the cosmic, however, we shall have to resign ourselves to part company with the more narrow-minded of the physical scientists. In effect we must say to them, “We are now going to study forces which transcend the limitations of the self; are going to study methods of extending our influence beyond the arc of personality, and of reaching out into the vast cosmic universe. We are going to learn to tap an infinite energy, which is available to man at all times.” We may be very certain that physical science will look with skeptical eyes upon claims of this character.
Nevertheless, it is to materialistic science we must go for the first evidence in this case which we are striving to establish. The work of Dr. Sidis in tapping what he called “reservoirs of subliminal energy,” gives us one of the clues. Dr. Sidis, you will remember, christened his method “hypnoidization,” an unfortunate name inasmuch as the method is not associated with hypnotism. In the phraseology of New Thought and of similar modern philosophies, Dr. Sidis simply taught his patients to go into the Silence and to tap the vast tide of Cosmic Energy. The cures and readjustments which he effected by this means are little short of miraculous, especially when we consider the incredulity of the good doctor himself. Professor William James has also written concerning the philosophy of cosmic energy; in his wonderful little essay on “The Reserve Energies of Men,” he defines and describes the force we are considering; and he does so in a very beautiful way.
As we have already seen, passivity is the gateway to the Cosmic Silence; but this passivity must go far beyond that which we have considered in dealing with readjustments on the physical plane. To begin with, the student must attain that absolute emotional poise which is best summed up in the word “serenity”; and to do this he must understand what may be called the “mechanism of the emotions.” Let us consider a typical emotion, for instance that old racial enemy called “fear.” Just what is fear and how does it obtain its power over us?
Modern psychology enables us to answer this question with considerable definiteness. It tells us that the disagreeable sensations which collectively constitute an emotion of this type are really organic — that they have their origin in the deeper tissues, in the glands, blood vessels, and organs of the body; and that this feeling of fear is in reality only the last link of a chain. The various steps in the process which leads up to our feeling, fear, may be described roughly as follows: First comes the stimulus, either directly from the external world or indirectly through an idea which was initiated from the outside. Usually we hear something or see something which presses a button established by nature within our native equipment. This may be a glimpse of something white as we are walking through the mysterious darkness of the night. Instantly two things take place, and they follow so closely upon the stimulus that in our subsequent introspection we are apt to overlook them entirely. The first of these is a general tension of the voluntary muscles. This reaction was established in those prehistoric times when fear was usually associated with either flight or conflict. It enabled the cave man to react instantly to any sinister change in his environment. Today this muscular reaction is a detriment rather than an advantage. We can neither fight nor run from dangers which threaten us, and the stage of muscular preparation is worse than wasted.
Simultaneously with this muscular reaction occurs a reaction within the mind. We interpret the stimulus, or give it a name; we say about the white thing which “we have glimpsed,” that must have been a ghost.” Or we say concerning a disagreeable sensation within our own bodies, “There is a renewal of my symptoms, my disease is returning.”
Taken together these two factors of muscular and of mental reaction are of immense importance: both of them are, potentially at any rate, voluntary; they take place because we allow them to take place. If we give our tacit consent to their occurrence, however, the next links in the chain are forged automatically, subconsciously, and beyond the reach of our wills. The first of these subconscious reactions is organic. It consists in a change of the balance of circulation, by which blood is forced out of the digestive tract and into the muscles and brain. The ductless glands at the same time pour into the blood products which increase the force and rapidity of the heart beat, and which tend to inhibit fatigue. We are tremendously stimulated and the whole physical and mental equipment is tuned up to the racing pitch. To support this increased activity glycogen is released by the liver to furnish quickly available fuel.
The net result of these various activities may be summed up under two heads: First, I have the feeling which we call ”fear”; that is simply our perception of the changes which have occurred within our bodies; and, second, we have a considerable change in the bodily chemistry. The blood is filled with fuel and with glandular products of tremendous power. The stage is all set for physical action, but no action takes place. The result of this sort of a damming up of natural trends cannot be otherwise than disastrous. Colds, sore throats and fevers result from acute attacks of fear and anger; while hardened arteries, rheumatism and heart trouble often result from habitual outbreaks of this kind.
It is evident that before we can get very far toward attaining genuine calm or serenity we must learn to break this chain forged for us by racial evolution. Emotional self-mastery is possible for anyone who will take time to study the foregoing description of emotional mechanism. The place to break the chain is directly after the first link, the stimulus: muscular tension and that mental reaction which we have called interpretation can be absolutely controlled. Begin with the muscles. Learn to relax just as you would learn to read French or to play the piano. Go at it in a systematic manner, taking your relaxation exercises every day just as regularly and as unfailingly as you eat or breathe. You can take these exercises sitting in a chair or lying down. Raise your arms and drop them in your lap or by your sides as a dead weight. Take a few deep breaths, then let a breath drift out without any other expulsive force than the chest walls; and as this breath drifts out, mentally examine your throat, abdomen, arms, trunk and legs, for muscular tensions. Relax all of these, and then for a few minutes simply try to hold yourself passive and “limp as a dish-rag.” It makes no difference whether you succeed in releasing your muscular tensions the first day or not. If you keep the ideal in your mind and persist with your practice, a time will assuredly come when you will be able to relax all of your muscles just as easily as you now open or close your hand. When this time comes you will have taken the first big step in securing self-mastery of your emotional nature.
The second step is equally simple and scientific. You are to learn to empty your mind of the conflicting thoughts which so easily swirl into it. Remember that to replace is to conquer; and, therefore, to conquer these anarchistic thought elements you must know how to replace them. For this purpose I am going to give you one of the most wonderful formulas in the world. Its only disadvantage is that it is so simple and so lacking in dramatic appeal that its value is easily overlooked. Remember, however, that there is a vast difference in power and effectiveness between different words which apparently mean the same thing. This two-word formula I am giving you has proved its dynamism in the lives of many students. It will do for you what it has done for them if you will use it in the same way.
Here is the formula:
INFINITE CALM.
In using this key-thought you must keep in mind the following psychological principle: In order to bring out the full effectiveness of any ideal which we can express in words we must not only repeat the words to ourselves but we must endeavor to express them in our muscles, faces and actions. As we repeat this two-word affirmation, therefore, we must try to feel it by expressing it in the absolute poise and freedom from tensions of our bodies, and particularly in the expression of our faces. Force your face, mechanically, if need be, to assume an expression of “Infinite Calm,” and you will find this facial expression reacting inevitably upon your feelings.
We have now considered the need of attaining passivity, as we approach the plane of Cosmic Consciousness, and have studied part of the mental and physical readjustments which must be established in attaining this condition of passivity. A farther readjustment of great magnitude must be made in the lives of many students; but as this constitutes a study subject in itself, we are going to hold it over for the next lesson, and will devote the remainder of our time on the present occasion to considering the use of what may be called “Cosmic Suggestion.”
The first phase of this subject is closely related to physical passivity. When you have learned to relax your body perfectly and at will you will find that you have opened a gateway directly connecting you with a tide of Cosmic energy. A man whose work is of a strenuous nature told me recently that he had blundered upon this fact quite by accident. He found that complete physical relaxation after the close of a hard day’s work initiated within him a sensation as of an electrical current passing through his body. The experience at first alarmed him, but when he discovered that following it he was refreshed and invigorated in mind and body, he wisely decided that whatever its origin or nature, this high tension current was good. No amount of description will enable the student to establish a contact with Cosmic power wire without personal experiment. Between seven and ten o’clock at night seems to be the most favorable time for work of this character.
When this high voltage of the Cosmic plane is definitely introduced into the life, it is possible to use it with great success in healing others. The first step is to quicken the Cosmic vibration; next, visualize the patient or bring him into the focus of your attention in any other way which comes natural to you. Finally, use any healing affirmation just as you would if you were speaking with him, face to face. For the sake of definiteness it is best to agree upon a time for treatment when the patient can be quiet and receptive. Strange as it may seem, however, time and space have little to do with securing effective results on the Cosmic plane. Distance is no handicap whatever, and if it is impossible for you to treat the patient at the time when he can be receptive, give your treatment either earlier or later without hesitation. In connection with the use of this method it will be well for you to keep a record of all cases treated, and of the results secured. If you will do this you will find that the average of successes is far too high to be accounted for on the ground of suggestion.
Do not overlook the fact, however, that before you can use Cosmic suggestion you must have completed a considerable amount of the discipline which we have considered in the first part of this chapter. It is a failure to perceive this fact, which accounts for the negative results reported by many investigators. They are in the position of a man requested to play a piano on his first introduction to that instrument. If he had never heard one played successfully, and knew nothing of the long apprenticeship requisite before harmonious results could be secured, he might be tempted to say that nothing but discord could issue from such an instrument. A similar lack of understanding induces many otherwise intelligent people to declare that all absent treatments depend for their success solely upon the faith or credulity of the patient. As a matter of fact, this is very far from the truth.
In our next lesson we shall take up the supremely important subject known to mystics as ” The Dark Light of the Soul.”
Chapter 12 – THE PROCESS OF INTUITIONAL KNOWING
“Transcendental matters are, for the most of us, always beyond the margin; because most of us have given up our whole consciousness to the occupation of the senses, and permitted them to construct there a universe in which we are contented to remain. Only in certain occult and mystic states: in orison, contemplation, ecstasy and their allied conditions; does the self contrive to turn out the usual tenants, shut the ‘gateways of the flesh,’ and let those submerged powers which are capable of picking up messages from another plane of being have their turn. Then it is the sensual world which retreats beyond the margin, and another landscape that rushes in.
“Now in persons of mystical genius, the qualities which the stress of normal life tends to keep below the threshold of consciousness are of enormous strength. In these natural explorers of Eternity the ‘transcendental faculty,’ the ‘eye of the soul,’ is not merely present in embryo, but is highly developed; and is combined with great emotional and volitional power. The result of the segregation of such qualities below the threshold of consciousness is to remove from them the friction of those counterbalancing traits in the surface mind with which they might collide. They are ‘in the hiddenness,’ as Jacob Boehme would say. There they develop unchecked, until a point is reached in which their strength is such that they break their bounds and emerge into the conscious field: either temporarily dominating the subject as in ecstasy, or permanently transmuting the old self, as in the ‘unitive life.’ ”
THE above quotation from Evelyn Underhill’s “Mysticism” will repay the most serious consideration on the part of the student. The word “mysticism” has fallen somewhat into disrepute during modern years, probably because of a confusion in the popular mind between “mystic” and “misty.” To the average person, mysticism is merely a confused or misty way of viewing theological or religious subjects. The real meaning of the word is a direct knowledge of God or of spiritual principles. In the present lesson on Spiritual Knowing, however, I shall bow to this prejudice and shall use the word ” Illumination ” to express the ideal and the methods we are striving to understand.
It may be well for us at this point to link our subject with knowledge and experiences common to everyday life. Illumination is that condition of consciousness which brings its possessor a direct knowledge of spiritual truth. He does not have to reach his conclusions by the use of induction, deduction, or analogy. He simply knows directly and immediately that which he desires to know. It may seem for a moment that this type of knowing is something with which we have no experience on the lower planes; most of us have to think hard to reach our conclusions, and we are apt to hold the more or less fixed belief that this perspirational method is the only one available to the average man. That this is not the entire truth, a study of what we call “hunches,” “intuition,” etc., will demonstrate. Intuition and Illumination are closely related. They are subject to the same law, so that by studying one we shall be in a better position to understand the other. With this practical object in mind, let us study for a moment one of the most famous examples of so-called “intuition” recorded in the history of philosophy.
In his “Critique of Pure Reason,” Immanual Kant made this statement: “If, therefore, space and time were not mere forms of your intuition which contains conditions a priori, . . . you could not construct any synthetical proposition whatsoever regarding any external objects.” By this the old German professor meant that an inner faculty which he called “intuition” gives us a direct knowledge of time and space, independent of any experience which we may have had with either of these concepts. This is the old notion with respect to intuition; but modern psychology, which has punctured so many metaphysical bubbles, now performs a like service for this concept of a priori knowledge. In other words it demonstrates that instead of being independent of experience, intuition is in reality the final fruit and justification of experience. Kant, looking into the inner consciousness of a mature human being, decided that those conclusions which came so readily to him were independent of all previous experience and observation. The fact is that his intuitions were the sublimated product of every waking act and thought, from the time when he first reached out his chubby fist and attempted to grasp the moon. His mistake arose from the fact that the data of experience had dropped below the threshold of awareness, whence they gave rise to those conclusions which he took to be a priori and unconditioned.
In all of this process of intuitional knowing, the subconsciousness plays a dominant part. It is this mind below the threshold, this executive department, which retains, digests, summarizes, and extends the facts and principles grasped by objective consciousness. The subconscious is the creative stratum of mind; but it cannot make bricks, or at any rate cannot make good bricks, without straw. This does not mean that without the material of facts the subconscious mind will be unable to spin theories or even complete systems of theory.
If it were possible to place a young man twenty-five years of age in solitary confinement, and keep him there for a period of ten years without books, newspapers, or other forms of written communication with the great world of objective fact, at the end of this time this young man, if he were originally possessed of the right type of imagination, would be able to construct a system of political economy or statecraft of great extent, and logical within itself.
Some of the most wonderful social systems the world has ever known have been produced under circumstances very similar to those I have outlined; and they have been models of simplicity and logical structure. They were like those geometries of other forms of space than our own, which possess absolute internal harmony but which fit the conditions of no universe we have knowledge of.
These facts with reference to the creations of the subconsciousness bring us face to face with a psychological principle of tremendous importance. It may be stated in this way:
IN WHATEVER DEPARTMENT OF KNOWLEDGE THE HUMAN MIND IS SET TO WORK, IT MUST BE FURNISHED WITH THE FACTS AND PRINCIPLES PERTAINING TO THAT SORT OF KNOWLEDGE IF IT IS TO EVOLVE FARTHER FACTS AND PRINCIPLES WORTHY OF CREDENCE.
This means that the master thinker in any line will begin by accumulating and assimilating everything he can discover related to his subject. If he is to be a writer of novels, for instance, he will go out into the world and will live as complete and dynamic a life as possible. He will observe, classify and retain facts bearing upon every angle of human existence. He will study the behavior of all sorts and conditions of men and women, living in every imaginable environment. He will know by direct observation how people react to joy, grief, worry and uncertainty. And only after he has lived this sort of a life for years will he try to give out to the world a sublimation of his experience in the form of a novel. When the creative period does come, however, he will work swiftly and surely, unhampered by the necessity to cram for each story he writes.
In invention, our Edisons and Teslas are men who know in minute detail all that their predecessors have done and have attempted to do. They know the physical properties of a wide range of substances. Scientific principles and the technique of mechanisms have been so long and so thoroughly studied that they have been assimilated by the subconscious mind. When a man of this type undertakes to solve a new problem, he finds a well-spring of ideas issuing freely from the mind below the threshold. This intuitional knowledge is not a priori, but is the result of the most intimate acquaintance with the facts of the objective world. Intuition, which, on the lower planes, corresponds to spiritual illumination, is the ripened fruit of the tree of experience.
In turning to the application of this principle to the development of illumination or spiritual knowing, let us pause to note that we are not leaving the world of the practical and the concrete behind, but are extending our understanding so as to include that which exists beyond the physical. The truly spiritual man is not less practical than the materialist. He possesses all that the latter has at his command of knowledge and practical ability, but in addition to this he is able to utilize reaches of fact which the materialist has never glimpsed. True spirituality makes men sane, practical and masterful. The pink-tea saints of fiction are pathological. They need a little of the bitter tonic of experience, and because they need it they usually get it in large doses. That which we are seeking is not anaemic saintliness, but rather a broad and substantial grip upon Law in both its lower and its higher correspondences. With this ideal in mind let us consider in its application to the acquirement of illumination what we have learned with regard to intuition.
First of all, we need facts and principles; and because our subject is spiritual, we need to acquire those spiritual facts and principles which racial evolution has made available. Many of these we shall find in a book, which, centuries after its publication, is still one of the world’s best sellers. The Hebrew Bible is a source-book of supreme value to students of spiritual dynamics. In using this source-book, however, the student must keep in mind the principle of variation. No two thumb prints and no two faces in all the universe are exactly alike; and no two minds will desire and assimilate exactly the same class of material from so vast a storehouse as the Bible. For this reason when you use this book or any other book of a similar nature, resolve to be guided solely by your own needs and desires in choosing what you shall read.
The conventions of theology and of formal religious instruction must be relegated to the scrap-heap, if any vital use is to be made of any form of spiritual writing. Read the Bible as you would read any other book of similar extent, only a part of whose contents is apt to prove valuable to you. Learn the art of judicious skipping. Entire chapters of genealogies and more or less authentic historical data can be skipped entirely; in other words chapters only a verse or two will be of value, or perhaps a group of verses such as those in which is told the story of Dives and Lazarus. The important point is that you will assimilate only that which you understand and enjoy. Months or years hence you may be able to come back to some of those portions which mean nothing to you today and to find that you have grown up to their stature. Don’t try to force your appetite. Apply this same principle to the study of every other text book related to spiritual things.
Reading and the study of the ideas of others may be compared to the ingestion of food. The next step in the process is digestion and assimilation. Meditation is the key word here. You must learn to give up the crutch of your book and of your teacher, and to step out boldly for yourself into the world of thought. Your reading will have supplied you with certain facts and the germs, perhaps, of many ideas. These must be expanded, developed and systematized. No one can teach you how to do this except yourself; and, as a matter of fact, your greatest handicap will be a tendency to rely upon the guidance of others. Don’t be discouraged if at first your thinking seems sterile and unproductive. If you could know the history of many of the world’s greatest ideas and mental creations, you would see that this period of sterility and of unproductiveness is typical of the first movements of even the greatest creative thinkers, when they strike off into the unknown. Their advantage over you lies in their knowledge of this very fact — they have experienced mental, emotional and spiritual inertia too often to be discouraged by it. They know that persistent waiting and expectant attention are the prerequisites of every great discovery. So, if you have taken the first step of securing all of the data available, and if you have formed the habit of daily systematic reading along these lines, you can with supreme indifference ignore the lack of tangible results necessarily characteristic of your first hours, days and perhaps months of spiritual study. The law is that persistent attention, which is another name for faith, will eventually bring that which you desire. Write that word “eventually” in your blackest ink and nail it over your desk; it has carried many a man whom the world for years called a “failure” to the goal which he had established for himself. Eventually, if you do not weaken, the mists of ignorance will lift.
Here are a few points for you to keep in mind during this struggle toward the light:
First, in tuning up your consciousness to receive the spiritual vibrations, you will find the use of the little three-word affirmation previously given a great help. THOU ART ALL; there we have a restatement of all the dynamic philosophies evolved by all the thinkers of the ancient and modern world. Use this key-thought analytically, as you have already learned to do, and gradually you will find it drawing to itself nutritive material of various sorts. Remember that every statement of truth is vital and has that power of growth inherent in all vitality. Plant this phrase and others of similar intent down in the darkness of the subconscious; water it with expectation, or with that “Faith” so frequently emphasized in the religious philosophies of all nations; and you will find that without any other effort on your part it will finally develop and become organic.
The second point to keep in mind is that disintegration usually precedes integration: before you can rebuild you must tear down. For a time the building up of the new and the tearing down of the old progress side by side. Sooner or later a plane is reached where the two sets of forces, the spiritual on the one side and the carnal on the other, are practically equal. This is the time of equipoise, when the old is so far destroyed aa to offer strength or assurance, while the new is not yet sufficiently developed to offer any comfort. This time of deepest discouragement may be shortened by a mastery of the method to be described in the next and final lesson of this series.
A third fact to keep in mind is that illumination, when it does come, will not be an outside voice telling you what to do, but will be an awakening, a quickening, an energizing of your own knowing faculty. It will be based on facts and principles which you have acquired consciously, although they may long ago have been so completely absorbed by your subliminal mind that you have no conscious memory of them. In other words, you are not to look for a miracle or for one of those startling hallucinations which betoken a fractured personality. Don’t listen for voices and don’t look for visions. Real knowing is subjective, and takes place distinctly within your own consciousness. This is just as true of spiritual knowing as it is of any other form of knowledge.
Chapter 13 – SURRENDER AND THE NEW DAY
IN this lesson which is the last of the present series, we come face to face with one of the most momentous problems that can possibly confront human intelligence. The methods we have hitherto considered enabled the student to master many of the difficulties commonly encountered; sooner or later, however, he will have to face a major crisis: one of those tremendous experiences which shake life to its very center. Every principle and method resorted to at such times falls short. The world apparently is going to pieces and nothing is able to check this disintegrative process. Friends, money, and health take unto themselves wings, until it seems that all the misfortunes of Job are to be re-enacted.
“Why,” the student is apt to ask, “do conditions grow worse when my understanding of spiritual principles is increasing each day? If consciousness is cause, why does not my developing spiritual consciousness reflect into my environment better conditions?”
Before taking up the master principle which will furnish the solution of this problem, it will be well for us to review some of our previous findings.
The first thing to consider is the organization of human consciousness around various “master centers.” A typical master center, one which has produced tremendous changes in the lives of many people, is the abstract ideal called “Justice.” The consciousness in which this ideal holds an important place will be organized much as the planets are arranged in their orbits around the sun. Every other mental element is bound and conditioned by the forces sent out by this Justice center. Not a single individual act can be performed until it has been passed upon and consented to by this censor. Individual interests, family interests, and the interests of state or nation may be sacrificed to the big ideal of the greatest good of the greatest number.
Let us now suppose that this center which we have called “Justice” begins to develop, as it usually does begin, during the middle portion of the third decade — at the age approximately of twenty-five years; evidently we are dealing here with a delayed instinct, and because of its awakening at so advanced a period in the development of the individual it will find itself confronted and opposed by many other impulses and instincts individually and racially much older than itself. This means that if it is to establish itself as a dominant force in personality, it must do go by subduing these opposed tendencies and at least partially disintegrating their mechanisms. The only process through which this reformation can be brought to pass is one of conflict; and a conflict within personality always causes stress, anxiety, and pain. In other words we find that the acceptance and development of a new and higher principle in living brings at first, not peace and harmony, but discord and chaos.
This is exactly what takes place after the principles and methods which collectively constitute New Thought have been discerned and accepted. Their functioning is at once and vigorously challenged by centers of mental force established within the consciousness. Selfishness, ignorance, and indolence train their big guns upon the intruder. They see that their reign is threatened, and that either the newcomer must go or they must prepare to abdicate. The immediate result in the life of the individual is what our Christian Science friends call “chemicalization.” The two sets of antagonistic forces begin to effervesce, to boil and bubble, and to cause much discomfort to the student. Months and perhaps years pass and the trouble instead of diminishing seems to be growing worse. It is no wonder that the confused seeker after the truth begins to ask himself if he has not missed the way altogether and strayed into the swamps and quagmires of some nether world. Many times, undoubtedly, he will have attempted to turn around and return to his starting point; this he cannot do, however, for the path, like that by which Childe Roland entered the magic plane, has vanished behind him. The only way out is through.
The first ray of comfort results from the ultimate discovery of what may be called ” The law of phase and metamorphosis.” The mechanism of this law can best be understood by studying its influence far down in the scale of evolution. Consider the life history of the common cabbage butterfly. He emerges from the egg as a tiny green worm, almost too small to be discerned by the naked eye. At once he begins to eat voraciously, and within a short time has reached the limit of growth imposed by his outer covering. Evidently he is very uncomfortable. He crawls about on his leaf, seeking peace and finding none. Eventually the difficulty is solved for him when his little green hide is split up the back and he emerges in a new and roomier covering. Several times this process is repeated, and we can imagine the little fellow saying to himself, “At last I’ve got this thing figured out. All I have to do is to eat until my skin is too tight, then split it and appear in a new one. Now that I have solved my problem, I shall undoubtedly go on forever without any more trouble.”
Into the solution thus inductively arrived at, however, a new element eventually is thrust: a time comes when the now familiar process of readjustment no longer suffices, and the full grown cabbage worm wanders about, apparently very miserable. The fact is that he is facing one of the major crises of his existence — he cannot get out of his difficulty this time in the old familiar way. When he finally hangs himself up by the heels and splits his skin for the last time, he emerges, not as a worm but as chrysalis; and within the outer covering of this chrysalis a remarkable thing at once begins to take place: the body of the worm is completely disintegrated, destroyed; not a trace of its former structure is allowed to remain. Out of the crude, protoplasmic material thus provided, the integrative force which we call “nature” creates a new and higher type of body, that of the butterfly. When all is prepared, the chrysalis splits, and a creature radically different from the worm emerges.
In this life history, therefore, we find three distinct phases: first, that of the worm; second, that of the chrysalis; and, third, that of the butterfly.
Each of these consists of an orderly step-by-step progression, but one phase is separated from another by a revolutionary period which we call a “metamorphosis.”
Now let us see how this biological principle of phase and metamorphosis serves to illuminate the problem of the student who faces the Red Sea of apparent disaster. His problem is a new problem, and none of the old methods seems fitted to deal with it. He finds himself in the predicament of the cabbage worm which is no longer able to conquer its limitations by simply splitting its skin. He has completed a phase, and faces a major crisis or a metamorphosis. What is he to do next?
The teaching of biology is that the initiative in the next move is not up to the student. If he has done his work faithfully up to this point, he can safely resign himself to the vast and unseen forces which have him in their keeping. Inasmuch as the crisis which he is about to pass through involves elements of readjustment with which he is utterly unacquainted, it is impossible for him to do anything except to become absolutely passive and receptive. If he can grasp this point, however, he will find that part of his problem has solved itself: having dropped his burden of self-responsibility, he will automatically have freed himself from part of the fear which, gripped him.
This step of partial comprehension of the experience through which he is passing will enable him to take the next step with considerable confidence. He is to learn to work with the force which apparently is destroying much of value in his life, and to do this in a positive rather than in a negative way. This means that, after he has comprehended something of the plan through which his personal evolution is being worked out, he must step out boldly to meet the dual destructive- constructive force. He must learn the true meaning of the law of nonresistance, or of passivity, or of renunciation. He has come to a time when he must make a complete break with his own past and with that of the race. The more boldly, completely and irrevocably he makes this readjustment, the more quickly will he be able to re-establish his life on a basis of mastery and serenity. That instinctive clinging to the past which drives men to fight and to resist every form of change that seems to threaten their personal rights — the various ownerships, friendships and other possessions which have been built up — cannot possibly turn back the hands of the clock of destiny. Again, the only way out is through.
This brings us to a definite assignment for the present lesson, but before we consider it in detail it may be well to notice that the work involved will not confront every student. The times and the seasons in this matter of making a final surrender of self are decided upon, not by the wisdom of the individual, but by that of the unseen force which directs human destiny. Personality must first be built up by the methods hitherto considered before this supreme lesson can be mastered. Sufficient unto the day are the tasks and lessons thereof; do not rashly thrust yourself into the darkness of the place of trial. Be very content if your daily tasks are humdrum and apparently commonplace. You will need all the strength which these years of commonplace living can give you, when finally you leave the beaten trails behind and strike out into the wilderness.
If the time of metamorphosis has come, however — if the old methods have utterly failed to meet the problems of today — then you will be wise if you accept the master solution called variously, “Renunciation,” “Surrender,” and “The Dark Night of the Soul” The process which seems so vague and chaotic has back of it in reality a very definite and scientific method. It is simple, and, because of this simplicity, is often passed over for more dramatic apparent remedies. In learning to take this step called “Renunciation,” remember that the goal is worth all the suffering it will cost you to reach it: this lesson of renunciation, fully mastered, will bring you an impersonal poise and serenity which nothing in all the universe can shake. It will do this for you when affirmations, prayers and petitions of every sort have utterly failed to better your condition a particle. It is somewhat difficult to present the method in such a way as to make it readily understandable, but the following description will enable the student who is prepared for this assignment to bring the experience into his own life. Thereafter he will know at first hand more about both method and principle than any teacher in the universe can possibly tell him.
To begin with, the seeker is to make up his mind to face conditions exactly as they appear to be, no matter how disagreeable or threatening a front they may thrust forward. He is to remember the ghost the boy ran away from — it was only a newspaper blown by the wind; but, because he ran away from it, all the days of his life he believed it to have been a ghost. Now the seeker after the truth is to call up the things he has feared and the symbols and images which he has tried to drive out of his mind. He is to give these ghosts their day in court and is not only to permit but is to help them to present all the evidence at their command. He is to face them resolutely in every detail, refusing to turn from them or to shut his eyes to one of their terrible claims; and he is to say:
“IF ALL OF THESE THINGS WERE TRUE———– IF EVERY ONE OF THEM PROVES TO BE TRUE —— I SHALL STILL CONTINUE, UNMOVED AND UNMASTERED, TO LIVE MY LIFE. NONE OF THESE THINGS MOVES ME. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS TO THE THING WHICH I CALL MY BODY OR TO THOSE THINGS, CONDITIONS, OR PEOPLE WHICH CONSTITUTE MY ENVIRONMENT, I AM PASSIVE, INDIFFERENT AND IMPER-SONALLY SERENE. I AM POISED IN ETERNITY AND CANNOT BE MOVED OR SHAKEN BY ANYTHING ON EARTH, OR IN THE HEIGHTS ABOVE, OR IN THE DEPTHS BELOW.”
In all probability the student will find two difficulties in using this statement. First, his surface mind will protest that it is selfish. It is nothing of the sort. Until he is free from the wheel, free from the mire of illusion, he certainly cannot hope to help others free themselves. Selfishness and unselfishness are two names for the same thing.
The second difficulty he will meet is that this master statement will tend to stir up all the fears latent within him. The remedy here is passivity and non-resistance. He must encourage his fears to blaze up, for in this way eventually they will destroy themselves.
Undoubtedly, all of this will sound ominous and most disquieting to the student. At the conclusion of this lesson, therefore, I am glad to be able to point out two rays of sunshine. First, although the ordeal described as “The Dark Night of the Soul” is one from which the novice may well shrink, it is supremely effective. Unlike anodynes and narcotics, the results which it produces are lasting and unshakable. The soul which has been purified by this fire of the heart is no longer subject to the trials and vicissitudes of the world.
And, second, remember that it is always darkest before dawn. A traveler who has been lost in the forest is usually within a few feet of deliverance before be sees daylight appear through the tangle of trees and underbrush. The metamorphosis which terminates this phase of renunciation and self-surrender is abrupt and decisive. It comes usually when all hope of deliverance has passed from consciousness, and when even the desire for it has flickered out. And when it comes, it comes as the breaking of a new day, the dawning of a new era. It is, indeed, Spiritual Awakening.
The End