Part Nineteen
Fear is a powerful form of thought. It paralyzes the nerve
centers, thus affecting the circulation of the blood.
This, in turn, paralyzes the muscular system, so that fear
affects the entire being, body, brain and nerve, physical, mental,
and muscular.
Of course the way to overcome fear is to become conscious of
power. What is this mysterious vital force which we call power? We
do not know, but then, neither do we know what electricity is.
But we do know that by conforming to the requirements of the law
by which electricity is governed, it will be our obedient servant;
that it will light our homes, our cities, run our machinery, and
serve us in many useful capacities.
And so it is with vital force. Although we do not know what it
is, and possibly may never know, we do know that it is a primary
force which manifests through living bodies, and that by complying
with the laws and principles by which it is governed, we can open
ourselves to a more abundant inflow of this vital energy, and thus
express the highest possible degree of mental, moral, and spiritual
efficiency.
This part tells of a very simple way of developing this vital
force. If you put into practice the information outlined in this
lesson you will soon develop the sense of power which has ever been
the distinguishing mark of genius.
PART NINETEEN
1. The search for truth is no longer a haphazard adventure, but
it is a systematic process, and is logical in its operation. Every
kind of experience is given a voice in shaping its decision.
2. In seeking the truth we are seeking ultimate cause; we know
that every human experience is an effect; then if we may ascertain
the cause, and if we shall find that this cause is one which we can
consciously control, the effect or the experience will be within our
control also.
3. Human experience will then no longer be the football of fate;
a man will not be the child of fortune, but destiny. Fate and
fortune will be controlled as readily as a captain controls his
ship, or an engineer his train.
4. All things are finally resolvable into the same element and as
they are thus translatable, one into the other, they must ever be in
relation and may never be in opposition to one another.
5. In the physical world there are innumerable contrasts, and
these may for convenience sake, be designated by distinctive names.
There are sizes, colors, shades or ends to all things. There is a
North Pole, and a South Pole, an inside and an outside, a seen and
an unseen, but these expressions merely serve to place extremes in
contrast.
6. They are names given to two different parts of one quantity.
The two extremes are relative; they are not separate entities, but
are two parts or aspects of the whole.
7. In the mental world we find the same law; we speak of
knowledge and ignorance, but ignorance is but a lack of knowledge
and is therefore found to be simply a word to express the absence of
knowledge; it has no principle in itself.
8. In the Moral World we again find the same law; we speak of
good and evil, but Good is a reality, something tangible, while Evil
is found to be simply a negative condition, the absence of Good.
Evil is sometimes thought to be a very real condition, but it has no
principle, no vitality, no life; we know this because it can always
be destroyed by Good; just as Truth destroys Error and light
destroys darkness, so Evil vanishes when Good appears; there is
therefore but one principle in the Moral World.
9. We find exactly the same law obtaining in the Spiritual world;
we speak of Mind and Matter as two separate entities, but clearer
insight makes it evident that there is but one operative principle
and that is Mind.
10. Mind is the real and the eternal. Matter is forever changing;
we know that in the eons of time a hundred years is but as a day. If
we stand in any large city and let the eye rest on the innumerable
large and magnificent buildings, the vast array of modern
automobiles, cellular telephones, the electric lights, and all the
other conveniences of modern civilization, we may remember that not
one of them was there just over a century ago, and if we could stand
on the same spot in a hundred years from now, in all probability we
should find that but few of them remained.
11. In the animal kingdom we find the same law of change. The
millions and millions of animals come and go, a few years
constituting their span of life. In the plant world the change is
still more rapid. Many plants and nearly all grasses come and go in
a single year. When we pass to the inorganic, we expect to find
something more substantial, but as we gaze on the apparently solid
continent, we are told that it arose from the ocean; we see the
giant mountain and are told that the place where it now stands was
once a lake; and as we stand in awe before the great cliffs in the
Yosemite Valley we can easily trace the path of the glaciers which
carried all before them.
12. We are in the presence of continual change, and we know that
this change is but the evolution of the Universal Mind, the grand
process whereby all things are continually being created anew, and
we come to know that matter is but a form which Mind takes and is
therefore simply a condition. Matter has no principle; Mind is the
only principle.
13. We have then come to know that Mind is the only principle
which is operative in the physical, mental, moral and spiritual
world.
14. We also know that this mind is static, mind at rest, we also
know that the ability of the individual to think is his ability to
act upon the Universal Mind and convert it into dynamic mind, or
mind in motion.
15. In order to do this fuel must be applied in the form of food,
for man cannot think without eating, and so we find that even a
spiritual activity such as thinking cannot be converted into sources
of pleasure and profit except by making use of material means.
16. It requires energy of some kind to collect electricity and
convert it into a dynamic power, it requires the rays of the sun to
give the necessary energy to sustain plant life, so it also requires
energy in the form of food to enable the individual to think and
thereby act upon the Universal Mind.
17. You may know that thought constantly, eternally is taking
form, is forever seeking expression, or you may not, but the fact
remains that if your thought is powerful, constructive, and
positive, this will be plainly evident in the state of your health,
your business and your environment; if your thought is weak,
critical, destructive and negative generally, it will manifest in
your body as fear, worry and nervousness, in your finance as lack
and limitation, and in discordant conditions in your environment.
18. All wealth is the offspring of power; possessions are of
value only as they confer power. Events are significant only as they
affect power; all things represent certain forms and degrees of
power.
19. A knowledge of cause and effect as shown by the laws
governing steam, electricity, chemical affinity and gravitation
enables men to plan courageously and to execute fearlessly. These
laws are called Natural Laws, because they govern the physical
world, but all power is not physical power; there is also mental
power, and there is moral and spiritual power.
20. What are our schools, our universities, but mental
powerhouses, places where mental power is being developed?
21. As there are many mighty powerhouses for the application of
power to ponderous machinery, whereby raw material is collected and
converted into the necessities and comforts of life, so the mental
powerhouses collect the raw material and cultivate and develop it
into a power which is infinitely superior to all the forces of
nature, marvelous though they may be.
22. What is this raw material which is being collected in these
thousands of mental powerhouses all over the world and developed
into a power which is evidently controlling every other power? In
its static form it is Mind - in its dynamic form, it is Thought.
23. This power is superior because it exists on a higher plane,
because it has enabled man to discover the law by which these
wonderful forces of Nature could be harnessed and made to do the
work of hundreds and thousands of men. It has enabled man to
discover laws whereby time and space have been annihilated, and the
law of gravitation overcome.
24. Thought is the vital force or energy which is being developed
and which has produced such startling results in the last half
century as to bring about a world which would be absolutely
inconceivable to a man existing only 50 or 25 years ago. If such
results have been secured by organizing these mental powerhouses in
50 years, what may not be expected in another 50 years?
25. The substance from which all things are created is infinite
in quantity; we know that light travels at the rate of 186,000 miles
per second, and we know that there are stars so remote that it takes
light 2,000 years to reach us, and we know that such starts exist in
all parts of the heaven; we know, too, that this light comes in
waves, so that if the ether on which these waves travel was not
continuous the light would fail to reach us; we can then only come
to the conclusion that this substance, or ether, or raw material, is
universally present.
26. How, then, does it manifest in form? In electrical science a
battery is formed by connecting the opposite poles of zinc and
copper, which causes a current to flow from one to the other and so
provides energy. This same process is repeated in respect to every
polarity, and as all form simply depends upon the rate of vibration
and consequent relations of atoms to each other, if we wish to
change the form of manifestation we must change the polarity. This
is the principle of causation.
27. For your exercise this week, concentrate, and when I use the
word concentrate, I mean all that the word implies; become so
absorbed in the object of your thought that you are conscious of
nothing else, and do this a few minutes every day. You take the
necessary time to eat in order that the body may be nourished, why
not take the time to assimilate your mental food?
28. Let the thought rest on the fact that appearances are
deceptive. The earth is not flat, neither is it stationary; the sky
is not a dome, the sun does not move, the stars are not small specks
of light, and matter which was once supposed to be fixed has been
found to be in a state of perpetual flux.
29. Try to realize that the day is fast approaching -- its dawn
is now at hand -- when modes of thought and action must be adjusted
to rapidly increasing knowledge of the operation of eternal
principles.
Silent thought, is, after all, the mightiest agent
in human affairs.
Channing |