The Spirit was all; there was
nothing
else but Itself. All-Inclusive, Everywhere, Infinite. This All-Spirit
could not have had the impulse to move unless It were self-conscious,
therefore the Spirit is the Power that knows Itself; It is accordingly
All-Knowing as well as All-Present. Being one, undivided, whatever It
knows, It knows all over instantly. We find then that the Spirit
operates through self knowing. It moves, and that inner movement must
be One of Infinite Power, moving upon Itself — since It is all — and
with a definite purpose. The Spirit, then, moves upon Itself, and makes
out of Itself all that is made. In other words, what we see comes from
what we do not see, through some inner intelligence at work, which
knows there is no power but Itself. “The things that are seen are not
made of the things that do appear.” The only possible operation of
intelligence is thought, or “The Word.” So all things were made by the
Word, and “Without the Word was not anything made that hath been made.”
How simple the process of creation when we understand it. The Spirit
speaks — and since there is nothing but the Spirit and it is All-Power,
it has only to speak and it is done; “The Word was with God and the
Word was God.”
From the Word, then, comes
forth all
that appears. Each life, human or divine, each manifestation is a
different kind of word coming into expression. The great fact to dwell
upon is that Spirit needs nothing to help It; It is self-conscious and
has all power and all ability to do whatever It wishes to accomplish.
It operates simply by speaking.
It is hard to get a clear concept
of
this great Ceaseless Cause, this something from which all things come;
at times we get into a maze of confusion when we attempt to realize
what the Spirit means. It is then that we should think of It as the
great reason behind everything. Being all-knowledge It must know
Itself, and must know everything It creates; so It knows us and It
knows everyone. Since It is All-Presence we can contact anywhere and
will never have to go to some particular spot to find It. As It is
All-Knowing and operates through the power of the Word, It know
everything we think. Just how It creates we cannot know and need not
attempt to understand, for whatever this process of creation is, we
find it is always an inner thought process. We should keep this in mind
— the Spirit makes all things out of Itself. Everything comes into
being without effort, and when we exert ourselves we are not in accord
with the Creative Spirit in the way in which It works. The impulse of
the Spirit to move must be caused by a desire to express what It feels
Itself to be — Beauty, Form, Color, Life, Love and Power. All things
else we find in the manifest universe are attributes of the Spirit, and
are caused to spring into being through the Word, because the Spirit
wants to enjoy Itself.
We find, then, that the Word, which
is the
inner activity of thought, comes first in the creative series, and all
else comes from the effect of the Word operating upon a universal
substance. If the Word precedes all else, then the Word is what we are
looking for, and when we get it we shall have what the world has sought
from time immemorial. We must, if we wish to prove the power of the
Spirit in our lives, look not to outside things or effects, but to the
Word alone. The human eye sees and the human hand touches only that
which is an effect. Unseen law controls everything; but this Law also
is an effect; Law did not make itself; the Law is not intelligence or
causation. Before there can be a Law there must be something that acts,
and the Law is the way it acts; it is intelligence. “In the beginning
was the Word.” This Word or the activity of the Spirit, is the cause of
the law, and the law in its place is the cause of the thing, and the
thing is always an effect; that is, it did not make itself; it is a
result. The Word always comes first in the creative series; “The Word
was with God and the Word was God” and the Word still is God.
When we realize that man is
like God
(and he could not be otherwise, being made out of God), we will realize
that his word also has power. If there is but One Mind then it follows
that our word, our thought is the activity of that One Mind in
our consciousness; the power that holds the planets in their
place is the same power that flows through man. We must place the Word
where it belongs, whether it is the word of God in the Universe or the
word of man in the individual; it is always first, before all else, in
the beginning. The real sequence is this: Cause, Spirit, Intelligence,
God; the Word, the activity of Intelligence; the effect, or the visible
thing, whether it is a planet or a peanut. All are made out of the same
thing.
What we need to do is to learn how to use the word so that all will
come to see that they are creative centers within themselves.
A
PRINCIPLE THAT CAN BE PROVEN.
KNOWING that Mind is, we have a
principle that is absolute; it is exact; it is going to correspond to
our
thinking about it. The first great necessity is to believe this;
without belief we can do nothing. This is the reason Jesus said “It is
done unto you even as you have believed.” Always it is done unto people
as they believe, and there is Something that does it which never fails.
We must believe that our word is formed upon and around by this
creative Mind; for instance, we wish to create activity in our
business; we believe that our word is law about that thing, and there
is something that takes our thought and executes it for us. If we have
accepted the fact that all is mind and that the thought is the thing,
we shall see at once that our word is the power behind the thing, and
that it depends upon the word or thought that we are sending out. (See Creative Mind and Success by the
author.)
So plastic is mind, so receptive, that the slightest thought makes an
impression upon it. People who think many kinds of thought must expect
to receive a confused manifestation in their lives. If a gardener
plants a thousand kinds of seeds, he will get a thousand kinds of
plants; it is the same in mind.
THE
WORD
GOING FORTH.
SINCE this is true, everything
depends upon our mental concepts. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so
is he”; the Bible reiterates this statement telling us many times of
the creative power of thought; Jesus taught nothing else; He said “the
words which I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life.”
The Centurion coming to Jesus
recognized the power of the word spoken by the latter. He said, “I also
am one in authority”; but his authority was on the physical plane, and
he saw that Jesus had authority on a Spiritual plane, for he said,
“Speak the word only.”
The Bible also tells us that
the
word is not afar off but in our own mouth. It is neither here nor
there; it is within every living soul. We must take the responsibility
for our own lives. All must awake to the facts that they have absolute
control over their lives, and that nothing can happen by chance. Then
they will have a broader concept of God, a greater tolerance for their
neighbor, and a greater realization of their own divine nature. What a
relief from strenuous labor; no more struggle or strife. “Be still and
know that I am God, and beside me there is none other.” The Spirit
being all there is, we cannot conceive of anything that can hinder its
working. When the Spirit has spoken, the Word becomes Law, for before
the Law is the Word; It precedes all else. First is Absolute
Intelligence, All-Power, All-Presence, All-Causation; then the movement
upon itself through the power of the Word; then the Word becoming Law;
the Law producing the thing and holding it in place.
So long as the Word exists the
thing
will exist, for since the Word is All-Power there is nothing beside It.
“I Am that I Am, and beside me there is none other.” This “I Am” is
Spirit, God, All. There is no physical explanation for anything in the
universe; all causation is Spirit and all effect spiritual. We are not
living in a physical world but in a spiritual world peopled with
spiritual ideas. We are now living in Spirit.
God, or Spirit, governs the
universe
through great mental laws that work out the divine will and purpose,
always operating from Intelligence. This Intelligence is so vast, and
the power so great that our human minds cannot even grasp it; all that
we can hope to do is to learn something of the way in which
it works, and by harmonizing ourselves with it, to so align ourselves
with Spirit that our lives may be controlled by the great harmony that
obtains in all the higher laws of nature, but has been very imperfectly
manifested in man. This brings us to the second point of consideration
WHY,
AND
WHAT IS MAN?
We find in the physical
universe
that automatic laws govern everything; for instance, the tree cannot
say “I will not,” because of the law that holds it in place; it grows
without any volition of its own. So it is with all nature; but when we
come to man we find a different manifestation of the Spirit, a being
who can say “I choose.” In all creation, man alone is an individual;
man alone is free; and yet man alone wants, is sick, suffers, and is
unhappy. ‘Man marks the earth with ruin”; why? because he has not found
his true nature. The very thing that should free him, and eventually
will do so, now limits him. God could not make an individual without
making him able to think, and he cannot think without bringing upon
himself the results of his thought, good or bad. This does not mean
using two powers, but using the One from two standpoints. Nothing in
itself is either good or bad; all things exist in mind as a
potentiality; mind is eternally acting upon thought, continually
producing its own images from mind, and casting them out into
manifestation. Man must be the outcome of the desire of the Spirit to
make something which expresses the same life that It feels. Man is made
to be a companion of the Infinite; but to arrive at this exalted plane
of being, he must have his freedom, and be let alone to discover his
own nature; to return love to his Creator only when he chooses to do
so. At the doorway, then, of man’s mind this wonderful God has to wait.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock”; the opening must be on the
part of the individual.
Man lives in a mind that
presses in
upon him from all sides with infinite possibilities, with infinite
creative power. The divine urge of infinite love crowds itself upon
him, and awaits his recognition. Being the image of this Power, his
thought also must be the Word or cause in the life. At the
center
of his being is all the power that he will need on the path of his
unfoldment; all the mind that man has is as much of this Infinite Mind
as he allows to flow through him. We have often thought of God as far
off, and of man as a being separate from the All Good; now we are
coming to see that God and man are one, and that that One is simply
awaiting man’s recognition, that he may spring into being and become to
man all that he could wish or want. “As the father has inherent life in
himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life within himself.” It
could not be otherwise; we are all in Mind and Mind is always creating
for us as we think; and as we are thinking creatures, always thinking,
our happiness depends upon our thought. Let us consider the law of our
life.
THE
LAW OF
OUR LIVES.
SPIRIT creates through law. The
law is
always mind in action. Mind cannot act unless intelligence sets it in
motion. In the great universal mind man is a center of intelligence,
and every time he thinks he sets mind into action. What is the activity
of this mind in relation to man’s thought? It has to be one of mental
correspondence; that is, mind has to reflect whatever thought it casts
into it. Wonderful as Universal Mind is, it has no choice but to create
whatever thought is given it; if it could contradict that thought, it
would not be a unit, since this would be recognizing something outside
itself. This is a point in Truth which should not be overlooked. The
ONE MIND knows only its own ability to make whatever is given It; It
sees no other power and never analyzes or dissects; It simply KNOWS,
and the reason why people do not understand this is that they have not
realized what mind is. The ordinary individual thinks of mind only from
the limitation of his own environment. The concept he has of mind is
the concept of his own thinking, which is very limited.
We are surrounded by an All
Seeing,
All Knowing Mind, which is One and runs through all. The belief in the
dual mind has destroyed practically all philosophies and religions of
the ages, and will continue to do so until the world comes to see that
there is but One. Whatever name is given it there is but One. It is
this One that creates for us, whatever we believe. Our thought
operative through this One produces all our affairs. We are all centers
in this Mind, centers of creative thought activity. There is nothing
which appears in the manifest Universe other than an objectified
thought, whether it be a bump on your head, a growth on your foot or a
planet. It could not be there were it not made out of Mind, for mind is
all there is to make anything out of. Whatever is made is made out of
it. Nothing exists or can exist without a source from which it springs.
We are not dealing with a negative
as
well as a positive Power — not two powers but one; a power that sees
neither good nor evil, as we see it. It knows only that it is all, and
since it is all, it creates whatever is given it. From our limited
standpoint we often think of good, and evil; not realizing that, as
yet, we do not know the one from the other. What we call good to-day,
we may call evil tomorrow, and what we think to be evil to-day, we may
tomorrow proclaim as the greatest good we have known. Not so with the
Great Universal Power of Mind; It sees only Itself, and Its infinite
ability to create.
To the thinking person this
will
mean much; he will see that he is no longer living in a limited
universe, a world of powers, but that he is immersed in an Infinite
Creative Medium which, because of Its Nature, has to create for him
whatever he believes. Jesus understood this, and in a few simple words,
laid down the law of life: “It is done unto all people as they
believe.” This is a great thing to keep in mind. It is done unto us; we do not have
to do it, for it is done unto us of a power that knows itself to be all
there is. Could we even believe that some material mountain would be
moved, the power is there to do it. Without this belief there is no
real impulse for the Creative Mind, and we do not get an affirmative
answer. We must realize more clearly that this Great Power has to
operate through us.
MAN’S
PART.
CREATIVE. MIND cannot force
itself
upon us because we have the power of self-choice. It recognizes us when
we recognize it. When we think that we are limited or have not been
heard, it must take that thought and bring it into manifestation for
us.
When we look about us and see
nature so
beautiful, so lavish and so limitless, when we realize that something,
some power, is behind all, and sees to it that plenty obtains
everywhere, so that in all things manifest there is more than could be
used; and when on the other hand we see man so limited, sick, sad and
needy, we are disposed to ask this question: “Is God good after all?
Does He really care for the people of His creation? Why am I sick? Why
am I poor ?“ Little do we realize that the answer is in our own mouths,
in the creative power of our own thought. The average person when told
the Truth will still seek some other way.
God has already done for us in
a
mechanical way — all that He can do; and having been given the ability,
we will have to do for ourselves the rest. Yet the Great Power is
always near, ready at any time to help, but we must use it according to
its own nature in harmony with its laws. Man should learn that he
himself is the center of this Divine activity. Realizing this, he must
seek more and more to utilize his own Divine nature, and by so doing he
will come more fully under the protection of the great laws that govern
all life, manifest and unmanifest. Whatever man is, he must find that
because he is made out of God, he must be of the same nature. This
Infinite One cannot know anything outside of itself; anything that
would be a contradiction of its Divine nature; man’s ignorance of his
real nature binds him with his own freedom, until he comes to see
things as they really are, and not as they appear to be.
In the Infinity of mind, which
is
the principle of all metaphysics and of all life, there is nothing but
mind, and that which mind does. That is all there is in the Universe.
That is all there ever was or
ever
will be. This mind is acted upon by our thought, and so our thought
becomes the law of our lives. It is just as much a law in our
individual lives as God’s thought is in the larger life of the
Universe.
For the sake of clearness,
think of
yourself as in this Mind, think of yourself as a center in it. That is
your principle. You think, and Mind produces the thing. One of the big
points to remember is that we do not have to create; all that we have
to do is to think. Mind, the only Mind that there is, creates.
Few people seem to understand
the
nature of the law and so think that they have got to do something, even
if it is only holding a thought; thinking or knowing is what does the
thing. It will make it much easier for us when we realize that we do
not have to make anything, just to know; that there is something back
of the knowing which does the work for us.
That person gets the best
results
who realizes that he can use this divine principle; he who can get the
clearest concept of his idea, and who can rely on mind to do for him,
keeping everything out of his thought that would contradict the
supremacy of Spirit or Mind.
By simply holding a thought we
could
not make anything but by knowing in mind what cannot we do?
BONDAGE
AND FREEDOM.
NEVER get away from the fact
that
you are surrounded by such a power; it is the principle of
demonstration.
It knows every thought. As we
send
forth our thought into it, it does unto us. The person who is ignorant
of this law must by that ignorance be bound by his thought, by his
human beliefs. One who understands will begin to break these ties that
bind him; one by one he will destroy every negative thought until at
last he is able to think what he wants to think; and so he frees
himself by the use of the same power that at one time bound him. We
must destroy all thought that we would not see manifest and hold to
that which we would see, until we receive the affirmative answer.
Never struggle, Mind makes
things
out of Itself, there is no effort made. Don’t think that there is so
much to be overcome. Have only a calm sense of perfect peace as you
realize that God is all, and that you are using the perfect law and
that nothing can hinder it from working for you. Many people are
learning to do this, and no one has yet failed to demonstrate who has
been steadfast, using the law in a consistent and persistent trust.
All that we have to do is to
provide
the right mental and spiritual attitude of mind and then believe that
we already have, and the reward will be with us. We shall see it.
The time will come when we
will not
have to demonstrate at all because we will be always living so near to
the law that it will do all for us without much conscious thought on
our part.
So when you say, “I am poor,
sick or
weak; I am not one with the Creative Mind," you are using that creative
power to keep yourself away from the Infinite; and just as soon as you
declare that you are one with God, there is a rushing out to meet you,
as the Father rushed out to meet the prodigal son. “The Spirit
seeketh,” but as long as your mind thinks in the terms of conditions
you cannot overcome. The difficulty comes from our inability to see our
own Divine nature, and its relation to the Universe. Until we awake to
the fact that we are one in nature with God, we will not find the way
of life; until we realize that our own word has the power of life we
will not see the way of life; and this brings us to the consideration
of the use of the Word in our lives.
THE
WORD.
“THE Word was with God and the
Word was
God." “The Word is nigh thee, even in thy own mouth that thou shouldst
know it and do it.” What does this mean? It clearly states that
whatever power there is in the Word (and it says it is All Power) is
also in our own mouths. There is no avoiding the fact that the Bible
claims for man the same power in his own life and his own world that it
claims for God. In the lives of the majority, men do not realize that
the Word is in their own mouths. What Word? Little do we realize that
this Word which they are so earnestly seeking is every word they hear,
think or speak. Do we who are endeavoring to realize the greater truths
of life always govern our words? If any word has power, it follows that
all words have power. It is not in the few moments of spiritual
meditation that we demonstrate, but we bring out the possibilities of
the hidden word when we are allowing our thoughts to run in any
direction; not in the short time spent in silence, but in the long
hours stretching themselves into days, months, and years, are we always
using the word. An hour a day spent in silent meditation will not save
us from the confusion of life; the fifty-one per cent, of a man’s
thinking is what counts. It is easy when we are alone to brave the
storms of life; surrounded by our own exalted atmosphere we feel the
strength of the Infinite; we rise in Spirit, we think we are
experiencing the ultimate of truth, that all things are ours. These
moments in a busy life are well spent, but must unavoidably be brief.
But what of the rest of the day; what of the busy street, of the market
place, and of all the daily contact with life? Do we then obtain? Do we
keep on in the same even way? Or do we fall before the outer confusion
of our surroundings? We are still creating the word and setting it
afloat in the great ethers of life. Are these words creating for us? Yes!
How necessary, then, to “keep
the
independence of the solitude”; how seldom we do this!
“God sent an angel to speak to me —
A word He was faint I hear;
And the angel brought the message
And whispered it in my ear.
“God knew I needed the word He sent —
I had lost the zest of fight;
And the right was all but beaten;
The wrong it was all but right.
“Simple the word that He sent me —
But it soothed a spirit raw
With the pain of too much striving —
‘Twas ‘Love fulfills the law.’”
Few people indeed in the day
in
which we live are well poised. Where do we find the man who can live
above his surroundings, who in his own thought can dominate all
conditions, and in the midst of the crowd keep his own even way, and
his own counsel? When we do meet with such a person we will know him;
for we shall find on his face the image of perfect peace.
We shall detect in his bearing
the
ease and independence that comes only to the man who has found himself
and who is centered not in the outer but in the inner world.
Such a character as this has
the
power to attract to himself all of the best in the world; he is a
center toward which all else must gravitate. The atmosphere which he
creates and with which he surrounds himself is one of absolute calm and
peace. The world at once sees in this man a master, and gladly sits at
his feet. And yet this man who has risen above the thought of the world
cares not that other people should sit at his feet. He knows that what
he has done all may do, and he well knows that all the teaching in
the world will not produce another such as he. He knows that it is not
from the teaching but from the being that true
greatness springs. So this man does not go around teaching or
preaching; he simply IS.
THE MAN WHO HAS
ARRIVED.
THE man who
has
arrived will realize that he has done so in the midst of an outer
confusion; he will be the one who has gone into the silence for
strength, and has come out into the world equipped with power from on
high; but that light which he has received must be kept burning.
Not alone in the silence but
in the
busy throng must all of us find the way of life. Our every thought
creates. For the majority of us these thoughts come in every-day
affairs, some of which are very trivial, but these too will be
demonstrated.
We have missed the whole
point,
unless we have learned so to control our thought that time and place
make no difference.
THE POWER WE HAVE
WITHIN
US.
We have within us a power that
is
greater than anything that we shall ever contact in the outer, a power
that can overcome every obstacle in our life and set us safe, satisfied
and at peace, healed and prosperous, in a new light, and in a new life.
Mind, all Mind is right here.
It is
God’s Mind, God’s creative Power, God’s creative Life. We have as much
of this Power to use in our daily life as we can believe in and embody.
The store house of nature is
filled with
infinite good awaiting the touch of our awakened thought to spring
forth into manifestation in our life; but the awakening must be on our
part and not on the side of life. We stand at the gateway of limitless
opportunity in the eternal and changeless NOW. Now is the day in
which to begin the new life that is to lift us up to the greater
expression of all that is wonderful. The word that we speak is the Law
of our life and nothing hinders but ourselves. We have through
ignorance of our real nature misused the power of our word, and behold
what it has. brought upon us, ‘the very thing that we feared.” But now
it shall produce a new thing, a new heaven and a new earth.
INDIVIDUAL
IDEAS.
We find that in the Universe
every
separate idea has a word, a mental concept behind it, and as long as
that word remains the thing is held in place in the visible world; when
the concept is withdrawn the idea in the visible melts away,
disappears; it ceases to vibrate to the word, which is the law behind
it, for when the word is withdrawn the condensation of the ether that
forms the word melts again into the formless. There was a time when the
world was without form, and from the word alone all things were made
that are made. When our word says that there is no longer life in our
bodies, the life principle withdraws and our bodies return to the
substance from which they came. Here is the great mystery of life, that
we are able to use this creative word for whatever purpose we may
desire, and that word becomes the Law unto the thing for which it was
spoken.
And so in our lives we might say
that
without our word was not anything made that was made. For we are given
the power to sit in the midst of our lives and direct all their
activities. There is no struggle and no strife necessary. All that we
have to do is to know. We must awake and with the glorified
consciousness of an emancipated soul use our God-given power.
THE
REASON
FOR THE UNIVERSE.
THIS Universe is the reason,
first
of an Infinite Intelligence which speaks or thinks, and as this thought
becomes active within itself, it creates from itself, at the power of
its own word, the visible Universe. We are living in a Universal
activity of mental law, we are surrounded by a Mind which receives
every impression of our thought and returns to us just what we think.
Every man, then, is living in a world made for him from the activity of
his thought.
It is a self-evident
proposition
that Mind must create out of itself ; and this Self being Limitless, it
follows that its creative power is without limit.
MIND IN ACTION.
EVERYTHING that we see is the
result of
mind in action. We all have a body and we have what is called a
physical environment; we could have neither if it were not for mind.
The law implanted within us is, that we need nothing except ourselves
and this All-Wise Creative Mind to make anything; and that just so far
as we depend upon any condition, past, present or future, or upon any
individual, we are creating chaos, because we are dealing with
conditions and not with causes. Every living soul is a law unto
himself, but of this great truth few people are conscious. It seems
difficult for the race, which f eels itself to be so limited, to
comprehend the fact that there is a power that makes things directly
out of itself, by simply becoming the thing that it makes, and that it
does this by self knowing. But we will not demonstrate until we see at
least some of this, the greatest truth about life.
We should realize that we are
dealing with the principle that is scientifically correct. It will
never fail us at any time but is eternally present. We can approach the
Infinite Mind with a depth of thought and understanding, knowing that
it will respond, knowing that we are dealing with reality.
Jesus, who saw this very
clearly,
laid down the whole law of life in a few simple words: “It is done unto
you as you believe.” We do not have to do it, it is done unto us, it is
done by a power that is all. Could we believe that a material mountain
would be moved, it would be done unto us. But unless we do believe
there is no impulse for the creative power and we do not receive. Life
externalizes at the level of our thought.
ACTION
AND
REACTION.
THERE is something that casts back
at us
every thought that we think. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith
the Lord,” is a statement of eternal truth and correspondences against
which nothing can stand, and whatever man sets in motion in mind will
be returned to him, even as he has conceived within himself and brought
forth into manifestation. If we wish to transcend old thoughts we must
rise above them and think higher things We are dealing with the law of
cause and effect and it is absolute; it receives the slightest as well
as the greatest thought and at once begins to act upon it. And
sometimes even when we know this we are surprised at the rapidity with
which it works. If we have been misusing this law we need not fail; all
that we have to do is to turn from the old way and begin in the new. We
will soon work up out of the old law into the new which is being
established for us. When we desire only the good the evil slips from us
and returns no more.
ARRIVING
AT A HIGH CONSCIOUSNESS.
THE best way
to
arrive at the highest consciousness is to have a great faith in the
willingness and the ability of Life to do all for us, by working
through us. We must believe in the inherent goodness and
all-powerfulness of the Spirit of Truth. And so every path leads
us back to the one point and we must learn to realize the near
presence, the great reality. There, through the door of our own
thought, we enter into the Universal Consciousness, into a complete
realization of life and truth, of love and beauty; and as we sit in the
silence of our own souls and listen, it will be the greatest thing that
we will ever do. In that completeness we are lost and yet we are found.
This is what is meant that a man must lose his life in order to find
it. We are lost to the human and found in the divine. We realize that
we are One with Cause.
