THE greatest drama ever written into the record of humanity is that drama woven around the person of the Carpenter of Nazareth, whom his parents named Jesus, but who attained to the title of the Christ.

The attainment of this title is exactly like the case of a person named John Jones who is thus named by his parents but who, through his own efforts attains to the title of greatness.

Man has measured the infinitude of space, weighed the atom and probed the structure of the electron; but he is only now beginning to turn his attention to the study of the most important subject of all, the study of the human mind and its originating cause.

That the mind is capable of study, observation, classification and comprehension is an established fact. Its mysteries no longer mystify.

As man commences this study he begins at the outer edge of his understanding, but the further he goes the more he realizes that the supreme Master of mental power and the one demonstrated teacher of mental laws was this same Carpenter of Nazareth who attained the title of the Christ.

Just as a person may attain to the title of master musician through constant study and practice of music, so this lowly carpenter attained to the title of the Christ through the constant study and practice of Mind.

That the teachings of Jesus as found in the Four Gospels of the Christian Bible constitute a scientific treatise on the subject of mind is well known. In this treatise the man Jesus at no time undertook analysis of mind, but seemed to handle the subject from the standpoint of its complete unity.

In the study of the physical sciences man is compelled to take things apart, study the parts, and from the knowledge thus gained seek to understand the whole; hence analysis is the basis of knowledge of material science.

As man undertook to study mind, he followed this same method, but is just beginning to discover that analysis of mind leads only to greater and greater confusion. From this analysis of the mind we have the so-called science of mind as presented in modern psychology. This presentation has mind broken up into so many parts that none save specialists in the matter gain any clear understanding of the subject.

The mind of man has been divided into “conscious,” “subconscious,” “superconscious,” “soul,” “spirit,” et cetera, ad lib.

There is nothing in the teachings of Jesus indicating that he at any time considered the mind of God or the mind of man in any terms save Unity. It was his understanding of this mental unity of God and man which enabled him to attain to the title of the Christ.

It is evident that it was this understanding in the mind of the Carpenter of Nazareth and the use he made of this understanding, which enabled him to attain to the title of the Christ.

Hence in the beginning to study mind after the teachings of this Master of Mind, Jesus of Nazareth, we are to understand that the subject is to be approached in its entirety and in terms of the mental unity of the entire universe with the student.

The sum of all Jesus taught resolved itself into this: “I and the Father are one,” and the effectiveness of this mental attitude resolved itself into this formula: “I of myself do nothing, the Father abiding within, he doeth the works.”

The study of mind intrigues the imagination of every one, not alone because mankind is incurably curious about life and his environment, but also because he is discovering that the ideas which he accepts into his mind group themselves around some central idea and these ideas functioning around that dominant idea like an army functions around its general, determines whether he be healthy or diseased, wealthy or impoverished.

It has been discovered that the sum of a person’s mental equipment follows this dominant idea with the same obedience that an army follows its leader. In short, man’s consciousness is like a comet: The head of the comet is the dominant idea, and this is what determines the orbit of the comet; or, the dominant idea in your consciousness is what determines your condition in life.

The movement of the comet is determined by the influence of other heavenly bodies, but man — supreme master of himself and his environment — determines his own orbit. Shakespeare said: “Man bestrides the world like a colossus, while we puny men peep about beneath his legs looking for dishonorable graves; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Shakespeare, a great mystic, saw that man had been created to have dominion over all things, even as the Bible has stated. But this dominion is of and within himself.

It has already been discovered by serious students of metaphysics (the science of mind), that it is not violent mental effort nor prayer nor affirmation which carries a man along to a desirable goal — but rather is it the general trend of his consciousness, determined by the dominant idea in his mind.

The effort to inject powerful affirmations into the mind of the student sometimes proves as disastrous as if a comet suddenly met a power sufficient to throw it out of its orbit. The possible result would be collision with other heavenly bodies which refused to accommodate themselves to this new orbit of the comet.

Serious students of mind are giving their time to the study of the laws and methods taught by Jesus, because they now realize that each individual is like a comet — and any readjustment must be made with due regard to the rights and the movements of other individuals.

The change of mental movement of the individual is possible only when the student desiring to change the orbit of his life does so according to the universal law of mind which makes such change possible without interference with others who are changing at the same time.

This changing of the mental orbit of the individual is like the changing of direction of a comet — the dominant idea must be changed; and this necessitates a change in the whole composition of the mind — and is possible only through mental training and practice. Thus we see the futility of trying to change universal mental laws by violent efforts of an untrained mind; the impossibility of changing the universal laws of life by or through prayer, or the nullification of universal laws through denial or affirmation.

Jesus taught the psychologically supreme idea and said that this idea, established as the mental center of gravity, would automatically train the mind according to cosmic laws which govern every atom of matter, every point in space and every instant of time.

Jesus, the Master Mind of all time, approached the Universal in terms of its entirety and wholeness. Jesus never analyzed his own or the Cosmic Mind; he approached the business of living in terms of the integrity, completeness, wholeness and indivisibility of the Cosmic Mind and his own relation to it as being an integral part of that divine unity. “I and the Father are one.”

No one can gain a workable understanding of the unity of the one Supreme Mind as long as he is looking for the parts. The fact is, according to the teaching of this Master of Life, there are no parts — there is only the one.

You may spend your lifetime studying the parts of your mental makeup, but you will never learn in that way how to make intelligent use of the whole.

The names applied to these parts mean absolutely nothing. They mean nothing to you who read and study them and they mean nothing to the person who uses them as your teacher; they are just words — but the sum of these parts constitutes you and your mind. And when we talk about your mind, as such, then we know of what we speak and can come together on terms of understanding.

You are conscious of being alive; well, that is an action of your conscious mind. If you have a subconscious mind or a superconscious mind or a soul or a spirit, or any of the rest of the parts so mysteriously named, then it is the sum of them which we are studying and which we wish to train and use in the business of living. So we shall consider mind only as a unit, and man only as an intelligent expression of the whole, which is God.

In the seventeenth chapter of John, Jesus uses these words in his great prayer or communion with that indwelling Presence whom he knew as Mind: “Thou hast given him power over all flesh . . . And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus (the) Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

“I have glorified thee on earth ... I have finished the work thou gavest me to do.” Here this Master Mind of all time, this great genius who came out of the hills a carpenter’s son and who attained to greatness because of his understanding of Mind, is saying that Mind is the only true God — and for one to know this was life eternal. Not, mind you, when you died, but that while yet you lived, if your mind knew that God was Mind, and that you were an expression of that mind, this knowing constituted life eternal then and there.

This Galilean fisherman had glorified or exalted this concept or idea of God on earth; he had finished doing it, he had finished the work that Mind had given him to do.

Then he asks this supreme, Cosmic Mind to glorify him, the son, that the whole world might know that mind had all dominion over all flesh. He continues: “I have manifested thy name (“I am”) unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world . . . for I have given unto them the “words” thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from Thee.”

Here the Master of Life is telling you and me and all men that God is Mind, that each one is an expression of that Mind and that to know this is life eternal.

Jesus taught the science of mind. Nothing else.

He taught you the principles of thought and then left you to apply these principles to the business of your daily life, just as a teacher in mathematics teaches the students the principles of mathematics and then leaves the student alone and free to apply those principles to whatever mathematical problems he may find. Every time you undertake to interpret the teachings of Jesus in terms of social or moral science, you leave His teachings; for what he taught was the Science of Mind. Hence if we are to study his teachings we must stick to our texts and not adulterate them by mixing them with other subjects.

Jesus taught that God is Mind and that every one of us is an expression of that Mind. Hence if one is to gain any understanding whatever of his relationship to God, he must of necessity study the science of mind.

Naturally, any understanding we may attain of the laws of mind, will be applied to the social and moral problems which confront us; but this application will be after we have that understanding. To attempt to interpret the teachings of Jesus as social and moral teachings, is not only futile but misleading. You would not go to school to study botany with the intention of applying what you learned to political science.

So when we undertake to study mind let us stick to the subject at hand, and if, after study and experimentation, we find that we have any useable knowledge of social or moral science gleaned from such study, then apply such knowledge to the social and moral problems as they arise — but apply this knowledge to our own problems, realizing that “the other fellow” is under no mental or cosmic necessity to apply our knowledge to his problems.

We are to understand then that the mighty drama of life as enacted by Jesus of Nazareth is a word picture of the operations of the Cosmic Mind as it relates to the individual, and that all social and moral laws are the operations of the mind of man as it relates to the interacting social and moral relationship he, himself, has established. Moral or social laws are not God’s laws. For God, being Mind, then God’s laws are mental laws.

Before we proceed with our studies it is necessary for us to get this one fact fixed firmly in our mind; that we are not studying social or moral science — we are studying the laws of mind. And we are studying them as they were taught by Jesus of Nazareth, and our text book is the Four Gospels of the Christian Bible.

Also we are to understand that whatever knowledge we may gain through a study of mind, we shall apply to our social and moral problems after we have that knowledge. All our personal problems revolve around the social and moral relationships and what we are seeking is some law which will solve those problems in a satisfactory manner for us and in no wise interfere with the perfect freedom of others involved.

Once I heard a man say that “Christianity has failed.” Christianity has never yet been tried, hence it could not have failed. The teachings of the gentle mild mannered Carpenter of Nazareth have been mixed with the Mosaic law and taught as Christianity — but the teachings of Jesus have never been taught; and those who have any knowledge of them have gained such knowledge by a private and personal study of the story, and private and personal experimentation, each within his own mind, of the laws set forth.

The identifying idea in the Mosaic teaching is “thou shalt not” — and the identifying law is punishment (“an eye for an eye”). The identifying idea in the teachings of Jesus is: “thou shalt love” —and the identifying law is: “there is nothing to fear.”

One need not examine his own mind very long to discover that the Mosaic law has been taught him and that the Mosaic idea is the idea he uses most, and that the Mosaic idea is the idea we see practiced in government, religion and private life.

Moses, as he is represented in the Biblical allegory, is an allegorical character; that is, it is evident that this character was named to represent what man had discovered up to that time regarding the laws of mind and how man could apply them to the business of government.

Whether or not there ever was such a person is of no importance; the name itself means “Lawgiver,” and he was most assuredly that. The three million people whom he escorted across the desert were badly in need of stringent laws and since they had been in bondage for centuries and had therefore been unable to keep in touch with the thought of their prophets, they would respond most readily to such administration of law as had fear as its basis and personal punishment as its basic principle.

According to the story, Moses had been a sheep herder for forty years on the plains of Midian. During this time he thought; he turned his attention to the phenomena of cosmic manifestation and saw that all objective nature gave evidence of being directed by intelligence, hence that which directed it must be mind. So — he thought and thought until he came to the conclusion that anything that had a mind was capable of Identity and that mind had but one way of identifying itself and that was in the statement of itself. So, when he started on this mission of liberating the Children of Israel from the Pharaohs, he said that “I am” had sent him, meaning that mind had sent him.

Moses was the originator of that use of mind which is called today, “mass psychology.” He learned how to control the multitudes by introducing to their minds a psychologically supreme idea and ascribing to the idea a name and a power; hence Jehovah (which means “I am”) was the God of Moses.

The most important work Moses had to do was to keep these savages from killing each other, and to govern them by such laws as would be instruction for them when they arrived at their destination and enable him to begin to establish some form of government.

This was some job. Moses knew enough to realize that as a man he could not control this multitude, so he ascribed a power and a name to that which backed him up in his authority over them. Since the most important matter before him was the establishment of a social and moral order, he stressed the social and moral aspect of what law he instituted, neglecting the more important mental laws which he knew perfectly well.

These three million people were in no mood to take instruction even if Moses had wished to instruct them, and so the social and moral idea was stressed. The prohibitions and the thou shalt nots were multiplied as necessity demanded — and then “tradition” caused those who came after him to act just like the sheep Moses had herded. If you are driving a thousand sheep and hold a stick out and cause the leader to jump over it, the other nine hundred and ninety-nine will jump at exactly the same place, although the stick has been removed.

So even till today we see the churches and the civil state jumping at exactly the same place Moses made the children of Israel jump, although the necessity for the jump may have long been removed.

It is this Mosaic background which has so confused the teachings of Jesus. Jesus said that he came to give us a new law, a new covenant. Instead of “an eye for an eye” (punishment) he substituted the law of “thou shalt love thy neighbor.”

The Christian Church teaches the old Mosaic laws, but teaches them in the name of Jesus Christ as interpreted by a man named Paul, himself a master gangster of the old Mosaic dispensation, one who had butchered and murdered countless thousands because he did not like them and they were followers of the Nazarene.

All the modern mental efforts man is making to find the way of life and liberate himself from the necessity for jumping because the fellow in front of him jumped, are mixed with, and enmeshed in, this Mosaic teaching.

There is no quarrel with this Mosaic law; at the time it was given it was exactly what was needed. But we are not in bondage to a pagan power, we are hot lost in a desert, and we no longer require those prohibitive laws which were designed to bring fear into the heart of all who heard them.

There is absolutely no significance to the laws of Moses as found in the Old Testament other than that a genius somewhat like Henry Ford undertook to solve one phase of the problem which confronted the Children of Israel, and he discovered the mental law which made it possible for him to do it, and he applied that law and did do it; which is no more remarkable than what has been achieved by Henry Ford, and has nothing to do with religion, any more than Henry Ford’s achievement has to do with religion.

II. The Cosmic Idea Which Jesus Dramatized

MOSES stressed “being caught in the act.” Jesus stressed the thought process which produced the act. Moses said: “If we catch you in the act, we will stone you to death,” or words to that effect. Jesus said: “If ye think it in your mind you are already guilty of the act.” Moses taught moral conduct. Jesus taught mental processes. Neither Moses nor Jesus claimed that God would punish. Moses said: “We will stone you to death.” Jesus said: “Neither do I condemn thee.”

A concrete illustration: I was raised in the West, where we had a certain code of ethics; for instance, if you insult me I am in duty bound by that code of ethics to either shoot you dead, thrash you with my fists or ostracize myself for non-observance of this code. Suppose I learn how to think for myself, and, for any reason whatever, I decide to pay no attention to you when you insult me? If I react to the “code” I am reacting to what others thought before I was born and who, for that reason, could have no possible knowledge of what my need should be.

If I know how to think the ostracism will amount to nothing because if I know how to think my thinking processes will show forth in such conduct as to inspire admiration, faith, trust and good will. I am not afraid of what others may say or think.

Because man seeks to use mental laws to enslave his fellow man and he knows that his fellow man will not be enslaved if he knows how to think, the thinking process is not taught. And because there are many who know enough of the mental laws to be suspicious of the ideas given them by their leaders, these leaders are prone to claim that God said; they are eager to get a background of religious authority for their commands. Hence they claim that the orders they give are the “laws of God.”

God is Mind. God’s laws are mental laws. Jesus taught this truth and he said this truth would make you free.

Moral and social laws are laws made by men.

Jesus taught that the only sound basis of moral or social law was “love thy neighbor as thyself.” How many social or moral laws do you know that are based upon this teaching?

Social and moral laws are to be obeyed. There is nothing wrong with the idea of social and moral law — but do not let any one make you believe that God gave them as they now stand.

God did give a social and moral law through his representative, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, but this social and moral law is, “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Whenever man begins to legislate and make social and moral laws based upon this major premise, then and then only will you see the law of God incorporated into the constitution.

Social or moral laws do not cause the force of gravity to function. Social or moral laws do not cause the tides to rise and fall. Social or moral laws do not make the earth bring forth her bountiful crops every season. Think.

Jesus taught that God is Mind.

Jesus demonstrated that the laws of God and the laws of Life were mental laws.

Get the teachings of Jesus divorced from social and moral laws or you will never get the slightest inkling of what he taught.

No institution will ever teach you this truth. If you ever learn it you will have to learn it by the application and the practice and the experimentation with the laws Jesus taught within your own mind.

According to the Mosaic law of an eye for an eye, according to this law of punishment, all authority inheres in the one who has the civil authority to administer punishment.

According to the law of life and love taught by the Master Thinker of all time, Jesus of Nazareth, all authority inheres in him who can love his neighbor. as himself.

The supreme authority is that authority which is a natural result of mental power. Mental power is the natural result of training the mind according to the pattern given by Jesus of Nazareth.

To one who has a trained mind, the observance of social and moral laws (be they whatever they may) in no way restricts his liberty of thought and action.

Such a one may apply the mental laws of God to his own personal problems and solve them masterfully and successfully, and at the same time observe any or all social and moral laws.

But when you are lost in the maze of confusion about what is right and wrong, and seek to solve your personal problem by the application of manmade social and moral laws, you find yourself hopelessly involved in an ever increasing complexity of life.

God is mind. You are a mental creation, hence a thinker.

God’s laws are mental laws.

Mental laws govern the entire universe. You are a part of it.

A poet once wrote (of a brook) “Men may come and men may go but I go on forever.” Jesus said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away.”

Mind is God — hence permanent. An idea is an action in mind and if that idea is an idea which is cosmically true, then by virtue of the permanency per se; that idea can never pass away. Hence if you believe what Jesus taught, you will believe that you, too, are a son of God; and since God is Mind and you are a mental creation, this idea you have that you are the son of God can never pass away. It is an obvious and cosmic fact.

Jesus made no effort to exalt himself. Jesus produced this mighty drama of human life upon the stage of the world for one purpose — to present this cosmic fact about you, that God is mind, that you who read are an expression of that Cosmic Mind, hence its son, that the law of mind which enables you to find full and complete expression for all the genius there is in you, is a law which does not violate the integrity and unity of this one supreme mind with every manifestation of itself. Hence the most natural and most obvious thing to the mind of a thinker is the law Jesus gave: “thou shalt love thy neighbor.” Recognizing the presence of mind (God) as occupying every atom of matter, every point in space and every instant of time, then your neighbor is full of that one supreme Mind. Your neighbor is a manifestation of that one supreme Mind (which is God) — hence it is natural and easy to love thy neighbor. But it is a mental phenomena and has nothing whatever to do with social or moral law.

Jesus made every effort to dramatize this idea — and he succeeded in doing it so vividly that it became necessary to disguise his teachings that the multitude might not learn it.

Mind being omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent (God) then it follows that God is in all people. God has not chosen any race, creed or person as his pet.

Mind seeking expression of itself will flow continuously through any channel which furnishes the conditions which will permit it to flow. Hence those races or persons whose lives seem to indicate that they have received some special favor from the Lord are merely those races or persons who have used their minds most intelligently.

Mind is just like water in a reservoir—it will flow through any channel furnished for it. The water is not favoring the place through which it runs, but it is refreshing that place by virtue of its presence there.

Mind will flow through your mind, (if you will let it) not because you belong to some particular race, creed, or because you are “good”—but because you furnish a channel through which it can flow. There are many kinds of channels. Those channels which preserve the unity and the integrity of the whole universe are in line with the Cosmic Urge; hence they become mighty streams of power. The individual seeking to make of himself a channel for the flow of cosmic energy will find it possible only if he learns and applies the mental laws taught by Jesus. And the basic principle of these laws was and is: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor.” Jesus did not state one single negative law’. Every command he gave was a positive affirmation of life and love.

In this book we are studying mind, and we are studying mind in relation to the individual—in relation to you who read, for you are an individual. Also we are to study the mind of the individual according to the directions left by the Master Individual of all time, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus did one thing supremely well; he proved that by the use of certain universal laws of Mind, the individual could make himself of greater importance than the sum of the mass of humanity.

The sum total of humanity is merely you multiplied; were it not for the individual there could be no sum of humanity. The individual is the unit and the cornerstone and the foundation of humanity.

Up to the time of Jesus, the individual multiplied was considered merely as a multitude to be exploited for the benefit of those who knew the laws of mind and thus assumed charge of the multitude, and by mental power forced them into such conduct and behavior as best suited their purposes.

This Carpenter of Nazareth, who came out of the hills a carpenter’s son, became by virtue of the mental laws he used the savior of the world, the greatest character the world ever knew and the most loved and the most popular hero the world ever produced.

This one individual, shaking off the shackles of impotence and mental hypnosis from which his people suffered, stood out as the King of Kings. The world sat up and took notice of him and even time itself is dated from his birth.

Humanity as a whole, that is, the sum of humanity, had failed throughout the centuries to accomplish what this one individual accomplished.

This book will deal with known and provable factors.

Every book I have ever read upon the subject of mind has made use of terms which were absolutely meaningless to me. I shall avoid the use of terms of unprovable or of doubtful or indefinite meaning.

I shall not use the terms “spirit,” “subconscious,” “superconscious,” “soul,” etc.

I do not deny that there are such things as spirit, subconscious, superconscious, soul; I do not know anything whatever about them and do not believe that anyone else knows anything about them — they are words; they have been loosely used until the mind of the layman is hopelessly confused and any effort to bring order out of chaos must make use only of such terms as are within the comprehension of the multitude.

Hence in this book the only terms used will be “mind” and “body”‘, and the use of the term “body” will mean in every instance the physical body.

You know you have a mind because you think with it.

You know you have a body because you have to feed it and clothe it and house it.

Hence when I speak of mind or body I am speaking about things with which you are familiar.

The use of indefinite or abstruse terms fails to enlighten anyone. What we are seeking is an understandable and usable law of mind, and we shall arrive at that understanding only by the use of terms which have definite meaning to our minds as they are now developed and equipped.

What a further development of our minds may accomplish and what new terms we may encounter will resolve themselves into concrete definitions as we proceed.

When someone wants me to change my line of thought for the purpose of “saving” my “soul” I grow suspicious. When someone wants to sell me a lot in Kamchatka which I have never seen, I grow suspicious.

If a soul is a desirable thing I sincerely hope I have one but I am honest enough with myself (and with you) to acknowledge that at this time I have absolutely no knowledge of it.

What I do know is that I have a mind which contains ideas which confuse me. torment me and make life miserable for me, and make the business of living difficult and ofttimes disastrous.

What I do know is that I have a physical body which gets full of pain and makes the business of making a living hard and ofttimes causes me to lose a very good job.

Hence when I study mind I am looking for something of practical use here and now. And if I have any mind at all, I have enough to understand that I live in a universe governed by orderly laws and have faith enough in these orderly laws to believe that if there is anything more I need to know about myself or the mystery of life within myself and my environment, that a knowledge of these mysteries will be given me in terms of comprehension to my mind when it is necessary for me to know anything about them.

The word now used and called and defined as “sin” is an adaptation of a Hebrew word “Tchn.” This word was used in their military operations. Their military were archers, and as such they held target practice. A man was appointed to watch the targets and report on the marksmanship of the soldiers.

When an archer failed to hit the target the watcher shouted to him, “Tchn!” now interpreted “sin” (that is the way it is pronounced). Hence “sin” is a miss at the target. ’This has been used by those who sought to control the multitudes to make a great mystery. There is no mystery to anything which your mind understands. Hence those who make great mysteries of what they teach, do so with the obvious intention of mystifying you. I am making an effort to enlighten you. For He whom I follow said: “The truth shall make you free.” Free from what? From all the mystery.

When your mind fails to “hit the target” it “sins.”

Your mind fails to hit the target whenever it fails to think for itself.

When your mind uses its cosmic energies to shoot at some other person’s target, it often misses the mark; hence it “sins.”

That is why sin is the foundation of religion. Take the word and the idea of sin away from the church and it would collapse. Cease to teach the philosophy of sin to the children for three generations and the idea of sin would pass out of consciousness. Because sin is not a part of the cosmic creation. God created no sin. Sin is a man-made idea; hence is not a permanent part of the cosmos. And “God is too pure to behold iniquity.”

This is my reason for not using any terms which can by any chance mystify you, and the reason why I restrain myself to the use of only those terms which have a definite and understandable meaning to your mind. I come before you naturally and state what I have discovered as provable fact about the mental -laws taught by Jesus of Nazareth; and I tell this in terms your mind can understand and in such a manner that you can make these truths of practical use to you here and now.

Jesus, the Master Thinker of all time, said: “the truth shall make you free.” Since this great man taught that God was Mind, that you and I are manifestations of that Mind we must therefore be mental creations. Then the idea must be that the truth active in the mind of the individual thinker shall make that individual thinker free from all the hokum and bunk which is handed out to him on every side.

Jesus was the world’s greatest thinker.

He knew how to think so as to produce results now.

Jesus utterly repudiated the philosophy of postponement.

Jesus said: “Now is the day of salvation. The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (In the immediate present.)

In this book I shall give you a background of the teaching of the Bible as it relates to the science of the mind. Also I shall give you a background of the life and works of the Carpenter of Nazareth as it relates to you, here and now. Your own life and what it may mean depends upon what use you make of your mental faculties. That is, depends upon whether or not you are a thinker.

You are not a thinker so long as you let others supply the ideas and then let these ideas run riot in your mind.. You are merely a phonograph record in such a case, reproducing (for their edification) the sounds they have made. Do your own thinking and you will make a new record for your own edification. “Let every man prove his own works.”

III. How The Cosmic Idea Was Planted

IMAGINE, if you will, a nation whose fortunes were dissipated, whose sense of national unity was in rags and tatters, a people whose hearts were embittered by the memory of bondage for hundreds of years, a people smarting under the unforgettable hurts of their masters, and a people whose lives were so bound up in tradition that liberty had become only a word.

A people now under the cruel yoke of an exploiting military power which taxed them to the uttermost farthing, a people whose moral code was composed of mere suffixes to an unending string of “thou shalt nots.”

A people whose priests, in connivance with the civil authorities, had instituted over one hundred and twenty-five prohibitions for which human life was sacrificed.

A people whose life was compelled to revolve endlessly around ecclesiastical sabbath observances. Then imagine the furore it caused when a poor country boy came in from the hills and began to talk about “love thy neighbor.”

This is the mental picture of Jerusalem two thousands years ago when the Carpenter of Nazareth appeared upon the scene and enacted the world’s most stupendous drama. This drama of life was of such cosmic import that even time has been re-measured from the date of his birth, and yet at the time he was here and the events which environed his life were taking place, the people looked upon it about as we look upon a presidential election.

All unaware that God himself had taken a hand in the affairs of men and that the life of mankind should receive a new impetus because of these events.

The Semitic tribes which we know today as the Hebrew people were the only people on earth who had formulated a religious philosophy. For hundreds of years their hearts had yearned with an infinite longing for the manifestation of their Messiah from within their ranks.

Their prophets had prophesied of his coming, and they longed for the advent of this mighty King who should throw off the yoke of the pagan rulers and set up a government of righteousness that would permit them to find an expression of the inherent beauty and power and glory of their God.

He came. He came from the wind swept hills of Nazareth.

Their King came as prophesied. They did not even recognize him. They rejected him. They even compelled their civil masters to allow them to crucify him, their King, their Messiah, the one whom they had secretly loved in their hearts, the one for whom they had looked so long.

And they did this because he refused to enter into their petty personal affairs and join them in their enmity for their masters and because he told them only: “thou shalt love thine enemy.”

These people, suffering for centuries from oppression, whose minds were looking forward to the time when they could crush their enemies, were told by their King: “thou shalt love.”

This, their King, failed to come up to their standard.

He was mild mannered, gentle, kindly, loving, altogether a weakling according to what they desired him to be. He was a great disappointment to them, so they shouted, “Away with him,” “Crucify him.” Is their conduct so strange? Is there not something in this picture amazingly familiar to you? Think.

Their priests knew the truth about Jesus, but they refused to tell them that truth. The truth would have ruined their business and they had a very flourishing business. Have we improved so much in two thousands years? Think.

Jesus, instead of joining them in their business, asked them to join him in his business. His business was the Father’s business.

Now you who read, stop a moment and think. In your approach to God do you ask God to join you in your business. Have you ever listened to a preacher pray before a congregation? Did you ever hear one tell God just how to help him and his congregation out? I have. Did you ever hear one ask God for wisdom that he and his followers might join God in his business? I never did. Think.

You who are students of metaphysics. Why do you seek for affirmation’s? Is it with the idea in mind that you can get God to join you in your business? Think.

How many times have you really, truly, deep within your innermost heart, sought for the light of truth which would show you how to join God in his business?

Your consciousness is just exactly like the consciousness of the Hebrew people. It has felt the cruel yoke of bondage; bondage to inhibitions, thou shalt nots, resentment to cruel injustice to which you have been compelled to yield. Eagerly you have sought for and longed for and cried out for your Messiah, the King who would throw off the yoke of this bondage and make you free. Would you know him if he came? Are you quite sure you would? Is it not possible that he has come many times to you and you have cried: “away with Him?”

Shakespeare wrote: “All the world’s a stage, and we are actors on it.” All life is a drama. Life itself is the greatest actor, and nature is the largest theatre.

Nature enacts a mighty drama each year. She sets the stage, places the scenery in its proper place and brings forth her actors to do their parts.

These mighty stage productions are ceremonials which set forth an idea. Just as any play you ever attended was for the purpose of setting forth an idea. In the dramas written by men you have found romance, beauty, strength, valor, heroism and all those qualities of human nature which are uniformly understood to represent the best that is in man.

Nature is everlastingly producing a pageant; she gathers together her actors and sets them upon the stage of life in seasonal productions. At one time she shows forth her mighty power by exhibiting storm scenes; again she will show forth an air of mystery and a mood of contemplation when all is still and hushed with a calm which presages action.

Again she bedecks herself with bridal garments and comes upon the stage in all her beauty and youth and splendor, smiling with an allure which is irresistible. Flowers are strewn upon her path; blossoms which hold promise of increasing life are on every hand.

Again she shows herself with her children — the love of life and its product shows forth in bountiful harvest and there is rejoicing on every hand. Then sere age stalks upon the stage of life and shows forth hoar hairs, fires are lighted to give warmth and the drama of life draws to a close.

Man makes of his every activity a drama. Man copies nature in his ceremonials; and every ceremonial man has ever invented is, in its deeper significance, a pageant of Nature’s processes.

Man’s first religious ceremonial was dancing in the autumn when Nature had shown forth her abundance. This ceremonial was one of gladness and praise and thanksgiving. Hence the very first religious ceremonial was a service of praise to Nature for her abundant providence.

Then man discovered the periodicity and continuity of nature and found that the first sweet breath of spring and the first sprig of green on trees and the first pink blossoms were promises, ceremonial proclamations of nature that Life had been resurrected from age and death and inactivity.

So man in his more reverent moments instituted the ceremonial pageant of Easter, knowing that at this time the great actress, Nature, was about to stage another of her marvelous pageants.

Man then discovered that all Nature’s processes were secret, and he instituted “Secret Societies” and in the ceremonials he invented as initiations into these societies he followed nature and made of them symbols of the life which showed forth in his natural environment.

Life became the main object of his research and the main idea exploited in all his activities, because life was the dominant idea which Nature exploited in all her ceremonies.

As the idea of the continuity of Life became established man began to include in his ceremonial dramatizations of life, the element of beauty, seeking by this symbolism to inculcate into the mind of the novice the impulse to the best that was in human nature.

In this manner social and moral ideals were made a part of the natural life of man. These ideals became ceremonials of initiation to the multitude; but each was but an idea in the mind of the originator.

In this way man’s mind began to find a law of reason, and philosophy was born. Man discovered the laws of mind and saw that a thinker creating an idea could by holding that idea before the minds of the multitude make of that idea an ideal.

Then philosophy created ideas which concerned the whole of humanity, and the idea of one God was born into human consciousness. The idea of one God, Creator of all that was, perfectly governing all he had created, became a human ideal and humanity makes ceremonial observances which follow the pageants of nature for the purpose of symbolizing and holding before his mind this ideal.

To make an ideal the dominant idea in the mind of man is the purpose of all instruction, all religion, all philosophy and all effort toward government and all hope toward eternity. This ideal of the mystery of life is the basis of every human effort, and it is the urge and impulse natural to the heart of humanity which becomes the sweetest, most beautiful and most powerful impulse in the mind of mankind.

The human mind, like all other phenomena of life, grows from a seed. In mind, the seed is an idea. This idea grows just exactly like a seed grows. Jesus the Master Thinker of all time, and the Master Teacher of all time, used the seed as the basis of one of his most dramatic and instructive parables, to wit: the parable of the Sower. And, again, he said that: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.” In this parable he explained for us that in our minds the idea of heaven (harmony) was like a “seed,” even a mustard seed.

In the parable of the mustard seed he said that the idea of the kingdom of heaven was like this, the smallest of all seeds, but that by a law of life it would grow until it became one of the largest trees and that in it the “birds of heaven” might find a home.

So man, in his search for the fundamental laws of life, must plant within his mind this idea as a seed; then depend upon the laws of life to make it grow into maturity and fulfilment. Nowhere in any literature of instruction extant is the idea of the necessity of training the mind so powerfully set forth.

Jesus stressed the mental process. The mental process is a process of thought. Thought is the movement of an idea through the mind. And, since God is Mind, then it is obvious that the development of a perfect social and moral order and the attainment of eternal life depends upon the action or movement of ideas through the mind of the individual. And the sum total of mankind is just the individual (you) multiplied. Hence the importance of the individual. Not alone to the human scheme of things, but the individual is most important in the cosmic scheme of things.

Life is so complex, so filled with the diversity of phenomena, that it is little wonder that man’s concepts become adulterated and mixed up and confused. One of the principle reasons why the life and teaching of Jesus stand out so vividly in the history of the world is the total lack of any confusion.

He did one thing supremely well.

He did not let his mind commit “adultery” by mixing ideas.

Today you and I and all men and women who are looking for the law of life which will enable us to live more abundantly must, of necessity, get our ideas divorced from this confusion.

When anyone attempts to bring order out of chaos within his mind, he needs a pattern, a blueprint, a workable and an easily demonstrable law of mind. Nowhere (as far as I know) is there such a workable law save in the teaching of Jesus.

Imagine if you will a house in which you have lived all your life. In this house is every article of furniture you have ever seen or owned or’ used: piled high, stuck in odd corners, cluttering up every available inch of space — would not such a house be a house of confusion?

Well, your mind is just like that house.

Every idea you have ever heard, owned or used, is in your mental house. Is it any wonder that your mind is confused?

The principle idea in life is continuity. This is why men and women try so hard to compel their offspring to follow after them. It is the idea (vague of course) of continuity.

Religion, as such, has undertaken to explain this continuity, calling it “life after death,” another name for continuity.

Now, if I desire to help you solve your problem, I must first know how. There is no possible way I can know how unless I have first solved my own problem. This is why the law of life is: “Physician, heal thyself.” — first.

Before you undertake to teach another how to play the piano — first learn how to play the piano yourself.

Before you undertake to teach another how to solve the problems of eternal life and the living of life right here and now, learn something of the subject by using the law on yourself — first.

If I undertake to teach you a method of solving your problems which I have read out of a book, I cannot speak with authority. When Jesus appeared at his home town (Nazareth) he went into the synagogue and “spoke as one having authority’ — not as one reading out of the Scriptures. He knew because He had practiced the idea in his own mind and hence knew whereof he spoke.

In freeing my own mind from the bondage of ignorance I found the first essential was to know what religion was.

So in helping you to free your own mind from bondage I shall tell you what religion is. What it really is — then what you have been taught to believe it is. There is a difference, and the difference and the knowledge of this difference is what will determine whether or not you shall “now the truth which makes you free.”

The word “religion” is from the Latin word “religio”.

Religio means “to bind back.”

As a mental phenomena this means any action of your mind which will enable it to identify itself with its source — God.

You have a Source, that is, your life came from somewhere.

That “Somewhere” is God.

Mind, being God, then identity is the law of life.

That is: Whatever you identify yourself with determines what you shall be. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Hence if your mind can accept and use an idea which will identify you with your source — that action in and of your mind is religion. An action which “binds back” your mind to its originating cause — God, mind.

This action in and of your mind has nothing whatever to do with your social or moral relationships — it is an action of your mind of identification with your source. For this reason religion is that which concerns an individual and his God.

Religion cannot by any conceivable chance, relate to or concern social or moral relationships.

This is why Jesus said: “my kingdom is not of this world”

This world is the world of social and moral relationships.

The church is a mighty power in social and moral life and should be considered as such — but not confused with religion which is a personal and an individual matter and relates to the individual and his God only.

To understand just what the church is and is doing, and to intelligently divorce it from religion is the first mental act of bringing order out of chaos.

Jesus, the Master Thinker, and the one for whom the Christian Church was named, attended church but once. He organized no church. He authorized the organization of no church. Jesus taught the individual how to identify himself with God, his source -- Jesus taught religion, the “binding back,” the reidentification of the individual with his God.

The church belongs to the realm of political science.

Political science is that accumulation of known facts regarding the government of peoples. The social and moral effort of the church has contributed greatly to the establishment of sound political science. The church functions as a sort of ecclesiastical and moral and social “police force,” assisting the civil authorities in preserving order and maintaining a high moral standard.

This -is a great work and should satisfy those who participate in it. It is a worthy work, a necessary work and a most praise-worthy work. But, after having accomplished this work what is the idea of claiming a divine authority?

Forever hereafter, you are to know that the church is a helper to the civil state, that it does a necessary and a good work and you are to support it for that reason. But when it comes to religion, and the identification of yourself with God, that is a mental phenomenon within your own mind — only the mental instruction of Jesus of Nazareth can be of any help to you in that. Forget Paul — there is no claim made for him that he is the savior of the world. Study the teachings of Jesus Christ as found in the Four Gospels of the Christian Bible — and think for yourself.

IV. The 'Way' To Freedom Which Jesus Taught

Mankind has always done the best it knew how to do.

Nations have always done the best they knew how to do.

The church has always done the best it knew how to do.

The individual has always done the best he knew how to do.

Mankind nor nations nor the church nor the individual is guilty of anything save ignorance.

To do and accomplish the best is a cosmic urge.

No nation, church or individual can resist this cosmic urge.

Hence, to do the best one knows how is the cosmic law of life.

It was to bring a light into this mental darkness (ignorance) that Jesus came.

“I am the light of the world” “Ye are the light of the world.”

The Apostle once declared (knowing this law) “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.” This means that anything any nation, church or individual does at any given moment of time is the best that nation, church or individual knew how to do in that moment of time. Hence it is but natural that at a later time that nation, church or individual will know a better way of doing that thing; but the knowledge of this “better way” is not to resolve itself into condemnation of or for the thing as it was done then.

Hence instead of condemning your country, your church or yourself for what has been done — use the better knowledge and forget the past. This is wisdom. “Let the dead bury their dead,” said the Master of Life, Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus taught that the “best way” for any nation or any group or any individual to do anything, was the “way” of the “I am.”

He said: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” This meant that the best way for any nation to do anything was to train the individual in that nation to identify himself with God — first.

Jesus taught that the most important thing any nation, church or aggregation of people could possibly do, was to train the individual — because that nation, or church, or group, was merely the individual multiplied.

Nations have made laws compelling the individual to identify himself with that nation.

Churches have made laws compelling the individual to identify himself with that church.

Jesus taught that the “way” of life for nation, church or individual was for the individual to identify himself with God. This is a matter of identity. Identification is a mental process. Mental processes consist of the activity of ideas in the mind of the thinker. The only thinker on earth is the individual. Jesus was the world’s greatest thinker; that is why he is called the Savior of the world; he taught the individual how to think. A nation, church or group composed of individuals who know how to think, could rule the world. God is Mind. God creates the individual in his own image (a mental creation) — a thinker (like Himself) — hence thinking is the most stupendous and at once the most important subject with which mankind can engage itself.

No nation, church or group can produce thinkers as long as the leaders of that nation, church or group do the thinking for the individuals which compose that nation, church or group.

This is the reason why the individual, per se, who wishes to be free must think for himself. It is this truth that Jesus promised would make you free.

Jesus said, in effect: “Think for yourself and you shall be free — providing you will accept the idea I give you as your major premise — and think from that premise.”

The major premise of all his thinking was: “I and the Father are one” — This was perfect mental identification with his source — God.

Jesus steadfastly refused to identify himself with his family, tradition, state, or church. He said: “I must be about my Father s business.” The “Father’s business” was the business of teaching the individual that he was an expression of the Father.

You who read have been taught to identify yourself with a nation, a church, a lodge, a political party, with disease, death and ignorance, because you have permitted others to think for you. “Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead.” Think and be free. Identify yourself with God. Jesus came out of Nazareth a carpenter’s son — He became the Christ of God because he did his own thinking.

You have “come out” of somewhere — named and tagged and described by others who have done your thinking for you — it is dawn! Awake — and think. Name yourself. “Whom do men say that I am?” That is of absolutely no importance to the thinker — whom sayest thou that thou art? That is important; for it will determine whom you shall become.

When Jesus asked his disciples this question, they answered: “Some sayeth thou art Elias risen from the dead; some sayeth thou art Elijah, and some that John has risen. But, insisted Jesus: “whom say ye that I am?” Then Peter (faith in himself), replied: “thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” — and it was this description which determined the future of Jesus.

So as you listen to what others have named you — some this and some that — ask yourself — yourself: “whom say I that I am?” and then name yourself. Say: “I am an expression of life itself — that is, I am the Son (manifestation) of God, the living God.

Steadfastly refuse to let tradition (dead men) do your thinking for you. They are dead — you are alive — you are the son (expression) of life — Christ of the living God. Do your own thinking — and in this thinking use the ideas Jesus used. Identify yourself with God. It is not your family, nor tradition, nor your church, nor your nation, nor your lodge which is keeping your heart beating. Listen to it a moment and then ask yourself: “Who or what is making this heart of mine beat?” Then identify yourself with that — that is God — and it is alive with life.

Remember that it is not tradition, nor the state nor the church, nor your family that keeps that heart beating, and that beating heart is what makes you alive. Think!

Have due regard for the nation in which you live.

It is this nation which furnishes the security which makes it possible for you to become an individual.

Have due regard for your church. It is this church which has helped to develop that moral integrity which makes life worth while.

Have due regard for your family. It is this family which furnishes the personal equation which makes life beautiful and possible.

But do not get your values confused. It is none of these that gives you life. It is God (Life itself) which sent you forth and it is the life of God in you which makes you alive. Hence, acknowledge him in all that concerns you.

But steadfastly refuse to worship your nation, your church or your family. That is: steadfastly refuse to become a slave to any of them. “Submit yourself therefore to God.”

When you worship, worship God in spirit and in truth, as Jesus did. You need no company, no church, no altar and no priest or preacher to assist you in your worship.

When you attend a political convention you go there for a political reason; do your duty and depart.

When you attend a church you go there to give substance and form and power to your social and moral Ideals. Go and do your duty and depart.

But when you worship God, do so in the privacy and stillness of your own mind, and you shall be instructed of the “Spirit of truth.” This is wisdom. Also it is the teaching of Jesus, the Galilean carpenter who became the Christ by this same mental method.

In teaching the multitude the “way” to freedom from bondage the most urgent need is to clarify the definition of terms used. All instruction is by the use of words, and words are symbols of ideas. No idea can become clear to your mind as long as the word used to symbolize that idea is not clear to your mind.

As long as your mind accepts a term (symbol of an idea) which is not comprehensible to your mind in terms of usability, your mind has placed a distance between your present estate and the understanding of that idea.

If you are in New York and desire to go to Los Angeles, your mind sees the process of going in terms of distance. In this case the “distance” is a geographical fact. When your mind accepts a “term” as a destination or method of transportation, then your mind has placed distance between your present estate and your destination. In this case the “distance” is a mental distance — but distance nevertheless.

I use the word, or term, “life.” Life is not indefinite to you in terms of usability. You know you are alive. Hence my use of the word or term “life” to signify God, is the use of a word or term which you can comprehend in terms of usability.

This is an effort to clarify the idea I present to you.

Jesus made use of terms which were comprehensible to Iris hearers. He made no effort to mystify anyone. His whole effort was to clarify and make plain the “way” of life — for you. “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” More of God and a greater identification with God — life — (mind).

Even in the establishment and maintenance of social and moral excellency within a nation, a church, a group or a family the whole matter resolves itself into a matter of understanding. Understanding is an action of ideas within the mind of the individual of that nation, church, group or family.

Hence we see that those unsocial persons whom we designate as “criminal” are merely those whom we have failed to properly educate in the ideas which form the foundation of our social and moral order.

Then, if we have a “crime problem” we have an educational problem. Our criminal class merely shouts at us that our system of education has failed to meet the requirement of the sum of individuals of which our social and moral group is composed.

If our system of social and moral education has failed, then, obviously, the thing for us to do is not to punish our ignorant members more drastically, but to improve our educational system.

The only way of improving our educational system is to stop trying to educate people en masse and begin to educate them individually. Which is exactly what Jesus sought to teach us to do.

The whole scheme of thought introduced by Jesus was this: That any nation, church or group or family of people would naturally become social and moral if they were individually educated to cooperate with the cosmic laws of their own individual being.

Social and moral observance is nothing any more mysterious or complicated than common, self-protecting co-operation with each other individual of the group for the general welfare.

If I obey the social and moral laws of the community in which I live, the community in which I live leaves me alone and free to pursue my way. Hence, such cooperation is obviously to my advantage. It has a personal appeal to me and this personal appeal is one which appeals to my selfhood—or selfishness. And this personal selfishness is the basis of obedience to any law. Cosmic or otherwise.

The “self” is the “key” of and to life. For the self is the unit of identification. And since life is an expression of mind, per se, then it follows that anything which will appeal to the “self” of any expression of mind is the most powerful appeal that can be made.

Self interest is the motivating impulse back of every human effort.

If I obey the social and moral laws of the community in which I live and these laws are unjust, ignorantly administered, then I have a social and moral impulse to be criminal. I was not born a criminal (regardless of the usual alibi of ignorant law givers), but I was made a criminal by society and the administration of unsocial laws by that society.

Jesus was and is acknowledged to be the Son of God — yet the social and moral order of his day classified him as a criminal and executed him as a common felon. Think.

Who made of the demonstrated son of God a criminal?

Was he, too, born a criminal? Was he a “congenital” criminal? Did he, too, “inherit” his criminal tendencies from his forbears? Bring on your criminologists. Bring on your psychiatrists. Bring on your psychologists. Bring on your alienists. I demand the answer.

Who, then, made of this quiet, gentle, mild mannered man from the hills of Galilee, a criminal — worthy to be hung upon a cross? Well, to me it looks just like the social and moral agencies then in power made a criminal out of the Son of God. What sayest thou? Think!

Have we improved so much since then? Think.

Who makes criminals? — God? Or man? Think.

Is it good sense to alibi your own ignorance by passing the buck to God Almighty? Again I say unto you, Think!

Any idiot can pass the buck. Any imbecile can transfer responsibility. But it takes a man’s stature to assume responsibility. Think!

Are we men? — yet? Can we stand the responsibility of our own ignorance and begin to change our educational system so as to make sons of God rather than sons of perdition? God said (when he had finished the creation): “behold, it is very good.” What sayest thou? Think!

A man named Bentley, of Maine, has taken photographs of snow flakes for forty years; he has never found two alike. Every investigation of science proves that the law of life is the law of infinite and limitless differentiation.

Education en masse tends to produce standardization. Standardization of the human character is as impossible as to produce, by legislative enactment, snow flakes exactly alike. Nature refuses to let man standardize it; because its law is the law of limitless differentiation.

This is why we must educate the individual as such if we ever hope to produce a social or moral citizenship.

This was the point stressed most by Jesus.

An automobile manufacturer can produce standardized products; and it is good that he can — but —a human being is not an automobile and God is not an automobile manufacturer.

Automobiles not being thinking creatures there is no reason why they should not be standardized. But, human beings being thinking creatures, there is no reason why they should be standardized — save the convenience of their’ rulers. And this is the very reason their rulers attempt such standardization. All social and moral codes are efforts to produce a whole citizenship who will think alike, act alike and respond to propaganda alike.

The teaching of Jesus was intended to produce limitless differentiation in character, each character governed by the principles of cosmic life.

Character is the conduct resultant from the dominant ideas in the mind of the thinker who is the cause of that character.

The best ideas extant are the ideas taught by Jesus. Think!

If you develop a character as a result of other people’s thinking you have no character. You are expressing their character. You are in this case a non-entity — nothing. Zero.

Think! Be somebody. Be somebody. Be yourself.

You will probably make mistakes — but the mistakes will be your mistakes. As it is, you are everlastingly suffering for the mistakes of others.

To make mistakes is human. To correct them is divine.

Why not be divine yourself?—correct the mistakes of your own thinking rather than to be correcting (suffering) for the mistakes of others? Think!

When Jesus came upon the scene “tradition” was the thought which ruled the conduct of all people.

When you came upon the scene it was still tradition (the thought of those who had gone before) which ruled your thinking.

Dead people have no right to think for you. They, too, were victims of dead men’s thought. . . . Think!

Jesus said: “Let the dead bury their dead” meaning — let the thoughts of dead men alone — forget it. Think for yourself.

Do you remember the thoughts you had as a child? What would you think if some one told you that you had to continue with those childish thoughts?

Life is progressive. Life is progress. Life is a manifestation of newness. The “Father’s” business is the business of thinking — do it. Submit yourself to nothing save the ideas Jesus taught. He taught that: “Thou art the son of God.”

V. The Process of Thought Which Jesus Taught

UP TO a few years ago a man’s standing in the community in which he lived depended upon his family connections.

All this has changed. Now a man’s standing in the community in which he lives depends upon his educational qualifications; and even these qualifications resolve themselves into performance.

In short, your standing in the community in which you live depends upon whether or not you can produce the goods.

If you come to a firm well recommended as to family and as well recommended as to educational qualifications, and yet are unable to produce results, you will not last long in that position.

A person’s ability to produce results depends upon the training his mind has had. Formerly it was assumed that if you had good family connections you would be able to produce results because people worshipped the family background.

It has been discovered that a man’s family background will not make an automobile run that is out of order — the services are required of some one who knows how to fix the automobile — and the owner and the passengers do not tare what his family connections were or are.

The owner and the passengers do not even care whether or not the mechanic has a degree from a university — what they want and expect and demand is results.

The ability to produce results depends upon the training of the mind. To illustrate: You may belong to the best family in the country, you may have a half dozen degrees from as many colleges — but unless you have trained your mind you cannot produce musical results from a musical instrument. In this case it is the ability to produce the required results, which in turn depends upon the training you have given your mind, which counts, which is acceptable and which is an evidence that proves the point.

When Jesus restored the power to see in the person of blind Bartimaeus, his hecklers demanded to know who this man was, where he had been “educated,” who his folks were, etc., etc. But blind Bartimaeus cared nothing whatever for any of these matters. He said “This I know, whereas I was blind — now I see”

Just what was the reason this carpenter’s boy from the hill country could open the eyes of the blind while the priests who claimed divine authority could not? At no time did Jesus claim any divine authority — he said in every case that it was “something” within — the “Father” abiding within — the Faith of the supplicant, etc., etc., which effected the healing.

There is no one anywhere in this universe any more divine than you who read.

God, the Creator, being Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent, then he is in every atom of matter, every point in space, and every instant of time. Hence God must of necessity be in you — now. If God is in you now, then you are divine, now.

It was this mental attitude which made of the carpenter’s son the Christ of God. This mental attitude, developed until the idea becomes the dominant idea in your consciousness, until this dominant idea becomes your mental center of gravity will produce results. And it is in and of itself all the divine “authority” you or anyone needs or requires. This results from your thinking — thinking the ideas Jesus thought’. “The Father and I are one.”

God is mind. Jesus taught that God was, and is, mind.

Then the laws of God are mental laws. And if you learn the mental laws which govern life — you have the key to success and you can produce the results which bear witness of the fact that God is with you.

As long as you think and believe and attempt to get by in this world on the strength of your family connections you are betting on dead people and your mental attitude will not produce the results the world demands from you.

As long as you think you can fool people with an alleged “divine authority” you are betting on something which is not and you will never be able to produce the results which the world demands of you.

As long as you think and believe that university degrees will produce results, you are betting on inert things which will not in themselves produce results. Results are the effects of the movement of mind upon other minds, and the effects of mind acting upon substance.

Thinkers are those who realize within their own minds (which is a thinking process) that that which caused them to be is “greater than I.” The very secret of power in Jesus was this mental attitude and a consciousness the sum of which revolved around this dominant idea — “The Father is greater than I.” Right within himself was a supreme power equal to any emergency. His conscious mind did not have to know “how” to solve any problem — all he consciously did was to refer the matter to that within which was “greater than IT.”

Thinking is a movement within your mind.

When you think you seem to be conversing with some one or some thing. All thought is, thus, conversational. Hence “you nor I nor anyone else can think while they are listening to some one talk. Nor can we think while we are reading. Thinking then is a secret process.

Thinking is impossible unless there is a movement in your mind of an idea. An idea can move but by two methods — it must be of such vitality that it moves of itself, or else you or the thinker must move the idea within his own mind. The first process mentioned is that process of thought which Jesus taught. The second is the process man teaches.

Jesus told us what ideas to release into our minds, saying that these ideas were cosmic ideas and hence had cosmic vitality and moved in and of themselves.

The most powerful idea in consciousness is: “I and the Father are one.” In short, the most vital and the most powerful idea you can release in your mind is an idea which identifies you with God. God, being mind, creates by and through thought (image). “Let us create man in our image. That mind, per se, has the power to move upon itself if given the motivating idea is proven in the text by the fact that in every case the command is to “let” there be.

The operation of ideas in mind is comparable to the action and reactions in chemistry.

The science of chemistry is an outward manifestation of mental chemistry. Mental chemistry, when it is the result of the action and reaction of cosmic ideas, used to be called the “Divine Alchemy.”

The romance of the effort man has made to transmute base metals into gold is just an allegory of that mental process taught by Jesus.

Life might be said to be a chemical phenomenon as far as both the biological and the mental aspects are concerned. And transmutation is the law of growth no matter where we look. The plant “transmutes” the mineral of the ground into itself. The plant is a higher form of life than the mineral — hence the “transmutation” is progressive and so — divine.

In the case of the plant transmuting the iron in the earth into itself, something “higher” in the scale of livingness results. The animal transmutes the plant into itself — into flesh — and both the mineral element and the vegetable element has now been transmuted into a still higher form of life. Higher, because the animal is a conscious form of life capable of conscious direction and movement.

Man comes along and eats the flesh of the animal, and the flesh of the animal containing both the vegetable and the mineral elements has then been transmuted into a still higher form of life and the transmuted elements become thought in the mind of the thinker.

This is the truth of that divine alchemy: mind utilizes and transmutes every other form of life for its own uses and makes of all other forms of life a vehicle for the transmission of thought.

Thus mind proves that it has power and dominion over all flesh, and all other forms of life. “Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hath given him dominion over the works of thine hands.”

In the case of the plant “transmuting” the mineral element of the earth, it is a case of “The Father abiding within” doing the works — because the plant does not know how to do it.

In the case of the animal transmuting the vegetable into itself, the same is true, because the animal does not know how to do it.

In the case of the man eating the flesh of the animal and transmuting the vegetable, mineral and animal elements into himself, the same holds true — for man does not know how to do it.

In every case, however, there is “something” which does know how to do it, for it is done.

This mighty truth was presented by Jesus in the allegory of his first miracle — the turning of water into wine. All know that this mighty drama of life enacted by the Carpenter’s Son is a word picture — a motion picture played with words — a word picture of how mind acts when set into motion by one who knows the laws of mind.

The most significant expression used in this allegory is that no one knew how the water was turned into wine “Save the servants.” Here was the ruler of the feast, the bride and groom and the Son of God, but none of them knew how to transmute one substance into another substance — but the servants knew. Study the social condition of Jerusalem fifteen minutes and you will laugh at your former belief that any servants of that day knew any chemistry or any alchemistry. Here as in the other cases I have cited above we see that life itself which abides within every form knows how — and this greatest of all is our servant — and the servant knows.

Jesus made some very significant statements — which have been neglected, in fact ignored. One such was: “my kingdom is not of this world.” We are to remember that Jesus was teaching the laws of mind — he was thus a teacher in psychology. So, when he makes such a statement we must interpret it in terms of what it means as regards the laws of mind.

The “kingdom of this world” is that realm of thought activity which has been evolved by humanity throughout the ages. It contains those ideas. But Jesus was teaching how man, that is, the individual, might identify himself with God instead of being a slave to the identification of mankind. Along with this statement of Jesus’ went this other one: “Whom say ye that I am?” Ask yourself that question. Just whom do your friends (and enemies) say you are?

It is very human to run to your friends and ask them what they think of you and your work but it is also futile and useless. Useless because it is of no importance what they say about you or whom they say you are. Whom sayest thou that thou art? Upon your answer to this question depends whether or not you are a thinker. A success or failure. A live wire or a dud.

God, supreme mind, has said once and for all time: “Thou art my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” Your friends and enemies may call you all sorts of things and names, and they will change those names to suit their own convenience and without any thought of your welfare. But God has you named permanently — and well.

That “something” within whom Jesus referred to so often and so lovingly as “The Father abiding within,” that which knows how to meet and master every emergency — that has named you his own son and declared that he is well pleased with you. Why worry?

Every distressing thing which has ever occurred to you has been distressing because you did not know how to think about that thing or event. You have accepted what others have said about it and thus your own mental reaction (alchemy) has been distressing. You are like a cask of grape juice which a wine maker would set out to ferment and become wine by a divine process called chemistry . . . and then he would permit every Tom, Dick and Harry who came along to drop some rotting vegetable into the cask — or induce him to change his formula. The result would certainly not be wine; it would be fit only for the sewer.

I know lots of people whose mental activities are fit for the mental sewer. You can change the waters of negation within your own mind into the wine of life as did Jesus at the wedding feast — if you will arrange for the wedding feast. A wedding is an event symbolizing the union or unity of two opposite forces which will by force of their opposition —produce new life.

Let the idea of God’s whole (holy) presence, as a living cosmic fact about you, be joined to what other ideas you have in your mind, and this wedding or union of these two forces within your mind will turn your negative life into wine. Your first miracle. And your conscious mind does not even have to ask how it is done — because the servants know how to do it. But you have to think — and you will have to be alone when you think — and your thinking will have to be the mental activity resulting from the release of this one supreme idea in your mind, to wit: “I and the Father are one” — now. The Father is that life which transmutes base thoughts into the gold of lovely thoughts.

Your moral standing in the community in which you live depends upon how much you have been able to conceal.

But your standing with yourself depends upon how much you have been able to reveal.

It is of little use fooling others — you cannot fool yourself.

Moses taught: “watch your conduct.” Jesus taught: “watch your thoughts.”

It is of little avail if your hair be curled and well trimmed, your nose powdered, your body beautifully gowned and your friends all admiring you — if you cant stand it to be alone with yourself an hour.

Many persons who stand high in the community, whose life to all appearances is admired and envied, commit suicide because they are not beautiful inside — to themselves.

The rewards of mental attainment are without price and cannot be classified with the rewards of any other effort whatever. No possession but what may be taken from man in the twinkling of an eye —save mental poise and power. These are permanent and no man and no law can deprive the man of these mental attainments, either with or without his will.

There is no degree of material wealth and no degree of material power which compares in living satisfaction with mental equipment and mental attainment and mental poise and power.

The one sure way of attainment to or toward mental poise and power is to exercise your mind by arriving at your own conclusions. In short — do your own thinking.

Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth, was and still remains the most dramatic figure in the world’s history. This is true because of the fact that he dealt with ideas and ideas are permanent parts of the universe.

His mind, like your mind and my mind, consisted of a state of consciousness with a mental center of, gravity, or one, supreme dominant idea around which all other ideas functioned. A person’s mind might be illustrated by thinking of a comet. A comet has a head which determines its orbit. Every person’s mind has one dominant idea which determines his path in life.

This path in life is positively not determined by his “stars” nor by any celestial configuration at the time of his birth. Your path in life is determined by the dominant idea in your mind.

The dominant idea in your mind, or my mind, or any one’s mind, can be changed by changing the dominant idea. It was this mighty truth about consciousness which Jesus taught — and demonstrated in his life and works. This demonstrated fact about mind was what made him stand out as the most dramatic figure in the world — because all other men became mere background for him.

If your life is monotonous and commonplace you will discover by an examination of your mind that it is monotonous and commonplace because the dominant idea in your mind is like every other person’s dominant idea — in short you are a victim of mass teaching and have been led into accepting as your mental center of gravity an idea which is in use by every one else. Hence there is no dramatic power to your mind and hence no escape from the monotony and the commonplace. But you can change all that if you will.

The purpose of all truth is to start the mind of the individual to thinking for itself from some cosmic fact about it. The purpose of this book is to present one, supreme, dominant idea to your mind in so many ways and so attractively and so effectively that you will begin to think for yourself.

Since Jesus was the greatest thinker of all time, and the author has proven in his own life that the mental laws Jesus taught are effective in solving the common, every day affairs of life, therefore the idea which was dominant in the mind of Jesus is the idea herewith presented.

The dominant idea in the mind of Jesus was and is the psychologically supreme idea in consciousness. And that idea is: “I (the thinker) and the Father (he who created me as a thinker) are one.” This is the psychologically supreme idea in consciousness because it is the supreme idea of identity.

All life is identification.

Ideas are just like people in that they congregate together because they are alike. “Birds of a feather flock together”. ... In chemistry we have the law of chemical affinities, and throughout all nature we find this true. Hence if your dominant idea is the psychologically supreme idea of identification with God — then the same thoughts which constituted the consciousness of Jesus will congregate in your mind and you will have “that mind which was also in Christ Jesus” — remembering always that it was the presence of this dominant idea of identification with the Father within which made of the carpenter the Christ of God. And he promised that if we held these ideas in our minds we could do the works that he did and “greater works than these.”

You have never dared to think of God’s actual presence within you, have you? You have felt that such an idea was sacrilegious. Well — that is what Jesus taught, or attempted to teach, the world.

You cannot entertain that idea very long until every one of your complexes fall off you like a soiled garment. The sense of self condemnation, all fears and phobias, your sense of being too old or too young or too anything else to accomplish what you wish — all disappear.

With God right inside of you what is to stop you from doing anything you wish? “Ask whatsoever ye will.”

Of course others will laugh at you if you are silly enough to let them know what you are thinking about, but this same great thinker, Jesus, said: “See that thou tell no man” All new life starts in secret. Give the idea a chance — treat it as sanely as you treat the alfalfa seed you plant, give it as much of a chance as you do the embryo within the womb, give life a chance to change the waters of negation into the wine of newness. Give the “servants” who know how to do the work a chance to change your orbit and transmute the confusion and the foolishness and the dead men’s commands into new life and new success.

You do not have to “deny” anything. Neither do you have to affirm anything. You think — you think about the fact that God is mind and you are a mental creation — a thinker — and that of cosmic necessity you and the Father are one — now — always have been. Why, if you could effect a separation for one second you would be greater than God, and Jesus said: “the Father is greater than I.”

VI. Thought and Emotion

NOT long ago I read a paper on “Thought and Emotion,” written by an M.A. and B.A., graduated from one of the large eastern colleges.

This paper contained but one statement which attracted my attention, and this statement was…“there can be no fine thoughts without fine emotions.”

Our human way of educating ourselves is inverted; we go at everything backwards; we get the cart before the horse in every instance. I proclaim that there can be no emotion of any kind without the ideas and thoughts which are the cause of all emotion.

I have often been accused of being “cold blooded,” “intellectual.” ... I have plenty of emotion all right, but it serves me instead of me serving it. I use it to give warmth and glow to things I do instead of letting “it” throw me off gear at every little thing.

Emotion is nothing any more mysterious than accumulated motion. In mind, motion is thought (the movement or motion of an idea through the mind.)

Emotion (of any kind) follows thought, is the product of thought, and there can be no emotion without there first having been thought.

The writer of this paper to which I refer above, then, should reverse his statement and make it say “there can be no fine emotion until there has first been fine thought.”

Thought and emotion may be compared to voltage and amperage in electrical parlance. The thought is like the voltage, that flow of energy which flows continuously to its destination; while emotion is like the amperage, which is the pressure behind the thought and is that quality which gives power to the idea in motion. Both are necessary, but amperage is impossible without voltage.

Your “thought” about anything which is new to you is at first resistant. This resistance is what is termed “hate.” The human mind “arranges” every new idea to itself, and after this arrangement is made it resists any new idea until there has been another period of adjustment. This arrangement or adjustment is what I term rationalization. It is that process of “thought” about any idea which results in that idea being “cast out into utter darkness” (rejected by the thinker) or else accepted and incorporated into the sum of the thinker’s consciousness.

The prophet admonished us to “acknowledge” God in all our thinking processes. That is, he admonished us to think of and towards God in all our thinking processes.

Jesus said the same thing. He said: “consider the lilies how they grow.” How does your mind “consider” any idea? By thinking about that idea. Hence if you consider how the lilies grow you are induced to think of the invisible life within the lily; and — this invisible life within the lily is God; hence if you consider [think) of how the lily grows you are thinking of God.

If you think (consider) the invisible life within all forms long enough you will accumulate enough thought pressure (amperage) or emotion about that life to have a feeling for it. In short, enough thought about God generates in the human being the emotion of love for God. I can think of nothing which is as “fine” a thought as a thought of or about God; and if my thoughts of and about him are fine, then my emotions are going to be fine.

In the illustration of electricity, “amperage” (which I liken to emotion), is not something of a quality — it is an intensity of the electrical current itself. Hence Emotion is an intensification of thought — and hence must be like the thought.

Again Jesus, the Master Thinker of all time, said: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.” . . . This means nothing save that in considering our problems (thinking our way through our problems) we are to think of God being in them., in us, and in others involved, and in this way we (in our own consciousness) unify our problems with God; we bring them together in consciousness. This unitive process of thought results in the statement of Jesus: “I and the Father are One.” His mind had thought of and toward and about God until he accumulated enough thought pressure (amperage) to have an emotion about God. Hence He said: . . . “that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them.” (Tn their minds about God.) And again earlier in this prayer: “That they may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in thee.”

You cannot have any feeling (emotion) about anyone or any thing of which you never thought. The reason there is so much emotion about motherhood is because of the continuous thought about mothers. You cannot have any emotion about a Chinaman unless you know the Chinaman. And you “know” anyone by thinking of and toward and about them, because to “know” anyone or anything is to have knowledge of them and knowledge is of the mind.

A strange cat and dog resist each other. Raise them together from their babyhood and they will be good friends. Your mind resists and resents the intrusion of any new idea. Take time to get acquainted with it and you will love it. This mental law is the scientific reason back of the segregation of people who believe in a certain code — in this way they protect themselves against pollution. But — they also insulate themselves against all growth.

Jesus stressed the thought process in every instance. He said (answering a question): . .. “If ye look after a woman to lust after her, ye have committed adultery with her in your heart.”

Here he was saying that the thought in the mind of the thinker was the most important thing. Of the woman “caught in the act” he had no condemnation.

He knew (of her) that if her thinking was straightened out her conduct (act) would straighten out. Few will like to hear of it, but the record shows that the only woman memorialized by Jesus, was the Magdalene.

All emotion (feeling) and all conduct follows thought.

Thinking is the most stupendous and at the same time the most important thing any one can do. It is the most interesting study in the world and once started upon it the student will never stop.

We have been so accustomed to accepting our ideas from the propaganda of others that we have never yet begun to exploit our own resources.

The Cosmic Mind, God, active and alive in every atom of matter, in every point in space, and in every instant of time {now) is eternally calling to you to: “Awake! Thou that sleepest and arise from the dead.”

This Cosmic Mind is eternally saying to you: “Look unto me and be ye saved.”

We are impotent with our fears and indecisions caused by our lack of practice in thinking for ourselves.

We, all of us, succumb to events which have no power whatsoever over us; we yield to the slightest opposition, all unaware of the inexhaustible resources at our command (within us — now).

I proclaim, as did Jesus, to you — now, that: “the kingdom of God is at hand.” This means that now all possibility awaits you.

You have thought yourself into a fatalistic fog long enough; awake! You are not conditioned like parts of a machine, you can never be bound by past weaknesses, nor by condemnation either self inflicted or by proxy; nor by vicarious acceptance.

You have, through your own moral imbecilities, permitted men long dead to fetter your immortal being, have permitted your splendid mind and life to be fettered and dwarfed until your cosmic identity lies dead and impotent waiting for the word [idea] of the Son of God to awaken you and tell you to “arise and go into thy own house.”

Your mind is your house; the only permanent house you will ever know. You have never yet been in your own house if you have let your mind be filled with the ideas of other people. You build your house (temple) without sound of hammer by thinking your own thoughts, arriving at your own conclusions.

You have never yet called upon the reserves of cosmic strength within you. Disease, poverty, so-called sin, evil companions, bad habits, nor fear of the future shall ever hurt or abrogate the cosmic power of sonship planted in your being from the beginning.

Awake, Arise, and move fearlessly into the accomplishment your heart desires for the light of truth regarding who and what you are shall light your mind and release you from the prison house of fear and incompetency into which tradition has cast you.

Awake, shake off the hypnotic spell of disease and death.

Look about you — think, stand forth, free, unfettered, unbound, triumphant, glorious, splendid, a brother to Jesus who became the Christ, who, coming from the hills of Galilee a carpenter’s son, became by virtue of his thought process, your savior, way-shower and exemplar.

By constant thought of, toward, and about the indwelling life in all men, he so identified himself with that life that that life served him as a servant. He said, and I repeat: “Nothing shall by any means hurt you.” There is no hurting power save ignorance. Nothing has any power over you unless your own mind gives it a name and then ascribes power to it. Jesus before Pilate was a word picture of the undefeatable quality of that mind which was cosmically identified with the one, supreme, unhurt and un-hurtable life which flows like a mighty river through every living creature — and which flows, unpolluted and pure as a crystal stream, through you now, this minute.

Prayer, denial, affirmation accomplish so little because the stream of life is “greater than I” But your own mind can tune in to it and participate in its purification and illumination.

The individual cannot change the cosmic law, through prayer or otherwise — but — the individual as such can get into the cosmic stream of life. If I sit in a dark cellar and “deny” that it is dark — I am training my mind for the insane asylum. Or if I sit there and “affirm” that it is light the same result will follow. But ... if my mind mentally “sees” that the sun is shining outside, and this seeing results in my getting up and going out into the sunshine — I am in the light. It is something I do, first by thinking about, of and toward, then something I do physically.

Man’s fears are all formed from his lack of understanding of the cosmic phenomena which environs him. To listen less to what men have to say and ponder more the mystery and wonder of the life we see all about us, brings us in thought toward that indwelling life and presence which is God. “Consider the lilies, how they grow.”

It soon dawns upon the mind of the thinker thus engaged, that this indwelling life which causes all this objective phenomenon is “greater than that which it thus forms.” It is but a small step (mentally) then to see that the life which is within the thinker is greater than the thinker. This is all Jesus meant when he said: “I of myself do nothing, the Father, abiding within, he doeth the works.”

It was this indwelling life and intelligence and power to which he ascribed all power.

Hence when he stood before Pilate and Pilate was bullying him with the threat of his power, Jesus said: ’’Thou hast no power over me.” He knew that there was one supreme power within him which no Pilate could abrogate, turn aside, or nullify.

Next time some person event or thing stands before you bullying you into incompetency and helplessness with its threat or assumption of power — think. You yourself have ascribed power to that; or you have let some one else ascribe power to it, and your mind has (without thought) accepted that decree. “Think.” Thou shalt decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee.” Thou shalt decree — not someone else for you. Think, awake, arise and be yourself. Yourself.

The most urgent need of the world today, as it was in Jesus’ day, is for the individual to learn how to identify himself with the indwelling life. Once this identification is established, all social and moral laws are solved as far as that individual is concerned. The State will require no police force, no courts and no charitable organization to care for such a one, any more that it needed them for the Nazarene.

Children may be just as easily taught this cosmic truth of themselves as they can be taught that they are children of Senator so and so, or that they are “sickly,” or that they are “too poor,” or that they are white or too black.

The conscious power of Moses was the result of his constant thinking about this unity of this indwelling cosmic life.

The conscious power of Jesus was the result of his constant thought of this divine, cosmic unity of himself and the Father.

This constant thought of, about and toward this indwelling life and intelligence generates love for it. Hence this thinking process is the only way in which any individual can fulfil the first commandment-. “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart and with all thy strength.” This love of God then is not something to be compelled by an outside force; it is something to be developed within the mind of the individual through thought.

It is not, in and of itself, a social or moral act — it is a mental phenomenon of identification which takes place in the mind of the individual through a thought process.

It becomes both social and moral after it is established.

It is by this unitive process of thought within your own mind that your mind makes a contact with the Cosmic Mind.

Contact of your mind with the Mind of God strengthens your every human weakness. Contact of your mind with the mind of God through this mental process purifies your every human imperfection. It is this mental contact maintained, which makes you whole (holy). This is self-healing.

This contact of your mind with the Mind of God, is like the sun shining upon any polluted thing — the contact alone purifies.

The sun does not deny or affirm — it touches — and lo! the miracle of cosmic power is made manifest.

Man can think. Thought is the way of contact. Jesus said: “I am the way.” Showing us that the power of identification lay within our own minds and that this mental process was the “way?’

Every time you think of this indwelling life and your own physical body in terms of peace and friendliness you have made this cosmic contact. The sun of wholeness has touched the sore spot in you — and healing will result. The healing will be a result of the effort your own mind makes — because all healing is the release of something within yourself. You cannot get health from outside of you — it must be the result of the release (by your own mind) of the cosmic wholeness, which occupies every atom of matter, every point in space and every instant of time, which is now in any man’s language.

God has placed in your hands the power to achieve, the power to be, the power to health and completion and joy and ever increasing abundance of every good thing.

You cannot be forced or browbeaten into believing that God is within you; moral observance will not establish it; it must be made rational to your conscious mind. There is no argument which can accomplish this, no book that can do. it — it is something which will automatically result from the observation of your own sensible mind of the indwelling life which your mind mentally sees must be the cause of what your eye sees.

This is vision. Vision is the ability of the eye to see and the mind to correctly interpret what it sees.

“Consider the lilies how they grow.” They grow and bear witness of the indwelling life which caused them to grow. That is thinking. It is an intelligent process within them because it requires intelligence to do it — hence the indwelling life is mind. If the indwelling life within your own body is mind, then your mind can contact it. Identity with this indwelling life instead of permitting others to identify you with disease, death, incompetency, failure, fear — is the work you are to do with your mind. It is the “Father’s business.”

It is now, time for you to be “about your Father’s business.”

Arise! Shine! “Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead.”

There is no mental opiate in this book; it is not intended as a narcotic to soothe your mind into greater inertness that I might exploit you. This is the call to livingness, a restatement of the words of Jesus the Christ. It is the awakening to a new day and a new life and the creating within you by a cosmic process of a “new creature” in the image and likeness of him who created all things. Himself a thinker — and you his image — a thinker.

There is a peculiar quality in this book.

You will think more of yourself after reading it than you ever did before. But read it over and over again; there are many hidden meanings in it -- each reading will bring out a new meaning to you.

You will feel lighter — many of your burdens will have dropped off along the way. The fears and phobias which have tormented you will seem a little less menacing, there will begin to rise up from deep within you a sense of the cosmic power of that indwelling life, and when an assumed power looms upon your pathway you will think of what it is that is within you and your quiet “Thou hast no power over me” will make it disappear like dark disappears when you touch the button which turns on the light — because that mental attitude is turning on the light. The light of truth.

That mental attitude is what Jesus told us to use in every case. Without fear, condemnation, doubt or curiosity we are to bring our every human problem into this indwelling presence and then let go. Remember the sun shining upon. Remember the contact. We of ourselves can do nothing, it is the fact of this cosmic contact which doeth the works. You do not have to help the sun dispose of a dead body— contact does it. It is a cosmic process and never fails.

Why be frightened any longer by people, by what “they say,” why submit to anything less than your birthright? You now know who and what you are— make use of the life and love and power which is so near to you that it is your life.

Many call upon the name of Jesus but only occasionally does any one “touch” the hem of his thought (garment).

In the beautiful allegory of the woman ill of an issue of blood for twelve years, who had used every physician and was still afflicted, there was a great multitude of people about the Carpenter of Nazareth; he was being “thronged.” But this woman, thinking within her heart that if she could touch (make contact) with even the hem of his garment that she would be healed — she, and she alone of that multitude, actually touched the hem of his garment — and — she was made instantly whole.”

There are a multitude of people talking about Jesus — but mighty few thinking of him.

Those who think will touch his thought, and when they do a miracle occurs to that thinker. But — again I repeat and insist that this touching the garment of Jesus is not a social or moral act, but that it is a matter of identification of the individual mind through thinking of, toward and about the indwelling life within their own body and within the form of every other body.

Jesus taught nothing save how to think by a cosmic law.

Hitherto all men had thought according to a social and moral law.

This was and is good — but it is not the truth which sets the individual free.

This book was written by an individual to individuals.

There is no intention of organizing a multitude of people. There is an intention — and a positive certainty that it will be done — to liberate an individual. One individual out of bondage is a greater work than organizing ten million people.

Thinking is not permitting others ideas to flow through your brain. This is “sorting ideas.” You have been a mental sorter or an “idea” sorter up till now. Stop it at once. Become a thinker.

Thinking is that action within your own mind which relates all the ideas which your mind touches, to the one, supreme, and central idea which you, yourself, have chosen as your mental center of gravity.

There is but one idea available to mankind which has the psychological supremacy and power to attract all other ideas to itself. Jesus stated it thus: “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” These were His words. A commentator added: “. .. . by what manner he should meet death.”

The one, supreme, psychological powerful idea which, if lifted up in your mind, (exalted in your mind as true of you) — this one supreme idea is that you who think are one with He who created you. (“The Father and I are One.”)

To relate all other ideas to this idea, is thinking.

VII. The Master Idea Which Released In the Mind Results In Wholeness and Healing

“THY kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” I am not advocating that you think of, about, and toward this indwelling presence of life and neglect to look out at the physical universe.

Mind is mind. The formed universe is the formed universe.

I cannot, within my own mind, insult the supreme Intelligence by thinking that the formed universe is a place where he is not. My mind follows easily the mental processes of Jesus and I proclaim that every atom of matter, every point in space and every instant of time is filled with this divine presence.

Hence the formed universe (including my own physical body) is just as legitimate a part of Him as any invisible part is or can be.

Jesus did not disclaim the formed universe in any way. He merely told us not to form judgments about ourselves by the formed part of us. Or, as he put it: “Judge not according to appearances.”

He did not say that there was anything wrong with the formed universe. This indwelling mind has no form or shape — it is formless. This was why the prophet told us not to “...make any graven image of the Lord.” The moment we make a graven image (form) of the Deity, we begin to worship that form; whereas we are to worship Mind in our minds as such. Or, again, as Jesus put it: “Thou shalt worship God in spirit and in truth.” It is the truth that the Deity is mind.

The point he made, and which I am making, is that with our minds we are to see that Mind per se is the originating cause of all things formed and that the originating Mind is greater than the mind of the thinker and lives with the thinker as mind. It is the mental process of unitiveness.

Jesus taught us to unify the indwelling life with the form it occupied—it was to bring them together, especially as regards ourselves. “The Father and I are one” must be acknowledged by you and your mental processes must be unitive processes until the idea has become your mental center of gravity —the dominant idea in your consciousness.

Along with this is accomplished the certainty that this indwelling presence is “greater than I.” It is human and hence limited to think in extremes, to think of good and then to think of evil as something which opposes good — but, according to Jesus, the Master Mind, we are to unite the undesirable (evil) with the desirable, (good).₌ He said: “Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”

We are not to be “overcome” with our appearance of limitation in the formed universe, but we are to overcome our limitations with the knowledge that mind is master of form.

Any action which unites any two extremes is an act of mastery in the mind of the thinker. Any act which separates into two opposing extremes is an act of limitation.

Any mental act of your mind which unites the appearance of disease in your body with the idea of the immediate presence of the cosmic wholeness and does this without mental comment — is the mental act of a master thinker — and results in healing.

Any act of your mind which unites the “appearance” of poverty with the idea of the immediate presence of the cosmic substance is an act which releases the cosmic power which will produce abundance. It is an act of unitiveness. It is an act of your mind which produces the “kingdom” on earth as it is in the heaven of your consciousness.

It is written: “He who conquers his own spirit is greater than he who taketh a city.” This is a statement of the cosmic importance to the individual of his ability to think himself free from limitation. He who takes a city is acclaimed by the people (who at any moment may shout “crucify him,”) but he who masters his mental limitations becomes a cosmic character.

The Mind of God is the Intelligence of the universe; when the mind of any thinker acknowledges its presence and realizes that it is greater than the thinker, the thinker becomes aware that there is, with him in every moment of time a cosmic power which is interested in him, loves him and will sustain him.

The non-thinker ascribes supreme power to disease, moral precept, tradition, age, what “they say” — but the thinker ascribes supreme power to this indwelling intelligence which he knows is the life within his own physical body — hence Omnipresent. It is always immediate both in its power and presence. We do not have to go anywhere to get to it, we do not have to see any one to invoke it — it is just where we are, regardless of where we are, or who we are. It is, like the law of gravity, something we could not get away from if we wished.

The thinker acknowledges, as did Jesus, that: “The Father is greater than I.” This mental practice builds up a supreme confidence in the mind of the thinker and results in the thinker being no longer afraid of anything or anyone. He can say to al! limiting appearances: “Thou hast no power over me.” Why? Because your mind has ascribed power to the indwelling presence which your mind knows to be the Universal, One, Supreme Mind of God.

All teachings which tend to lead persons to think that they must cease from every natural practice of the physical body, lead to a greater separation in their minds than existed before they undertook their studies.

All such ideas as that eating vegetables will make you “spiritual,” that sex suppression will make you “spiritual,” that withdrawing from the stream of life will make you “spiritual,” is such action of the mind as to cause the thinker to separate God from all that is natural, obvious, material, physical, and hence the student in his desperate effort to force his way into the kingdom of “another place than here” finds that his every mental act has been putting him further and further away from that which he sought.

If I cannot train my mind to see God right where I am in what I am, then I am convinced that Jesus was wrong, for He taught that that was exactly what he had done and we were to do.

“Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” must mean something. If it does not mean that we are to think of the unity of Mind and the forms Mind creates and think of them in terms of being one here and now — then I cannot understand the words.

Jesus proclaimed this: “The Father and I are one” — and — “who hath seen me hath seen the Father.” If this is not a declaration of the unity of God and man on earth, then we might as well stop studying the man or character or teachings of Jesus.

There are many fine characters in the world, there are many splendid trends of thought, there are many worthy and excellent ideas extant — but no one will dare deny that the most splendid, the finest, the most excellent identification one could possibly make is identification with God.

When one understands the laws of mind, and understands that God is Mind, arid that they, as a thinking being are an expression of that Mind, they see that it is just as easy to identify oneself with God at it is to identify yourself with the Boy Scouts. Just as easy to identify yourself with God as it is with the Masonic Order.

God, as omnipresent mind, is much nearer to you than any of the organizations mentioned. God, as infinite intelligence, occupies every cell of your body as a cosmic fact of your being. It will not come and abide there if you obey some man-made mandate — it is there already, not because of something someone does for you but in spite of anything anyone can do to you.

Jesus did not attain to the title of the Christ because of the help or cooperation of any man or group of men — he did it in spite of all the powers in command at that time could do to prevent it.

You who read can attain, not because some one in power or authority will help you, not because of something this book or the author may do for you — but you can do it in spite of all any one can do to prevent it. And this is made possible by the cosmic fact that infinite intelligence lives in you, you are its child, it says to you this minute: “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.”

In identifying yourself with this universal unity you are identifying yourself with that which is permanent.

This is that form of mental identification which Jesus said was “life eternal.” Eternal because permanent. Forms change, they come and they go, but the mind of the thinker remains forever established, providing that mind has identified itself with that which is permanent.

Back of and behind all the appearances of difference in the world is this divine unity, this one mind in which all live and move and have their being. This one supreme mind, is in and of Itself, whole. It knows no factions, differences or cliques. It knows no reason to fight. It knows no cause for worry. It knows no lack or limitations, it knows no age or disease — all these “names” and “powers” are the names and powers named and given power by men who were guilty of nothing save ignorance of the cosmic fact of the divine unity.

It was to release men, mentally, from this prison house of limitation that Jesus said he came. This aggregation of names and powers named by men is not satanic, and to call it “mortal mind” and not clearly define it is misleading in the extreme.

To call it “sinful” or indicate that it is being punished by the Creator for “falling from grace” or eating an apple, is to insult the infinite intelligence. You do not call a sprouting bean “sinful,” you do not declaim against it because it is not full grown, you do not ascribe powers of darkness to it — you leave it alone to grow, tending it, watering it, keeping the earth loose around it, you even shade it if the sun is too hot, in short you care for it while it grows.

Every effort of any philosophy to promote the welfare of the individual by and through teaching them that any part of them is evil or any part of the universe is evil, or that the Creator ever created anything which overcame Him and fell, every such effort produces at last utmost confusion in the mind of the thinker.

Many non-thinking people will blindly follow such teachings, but inevitably out of these groups the thinkers are born and as soon as they begin to think they begin to withdraw themselves from such schools of thought.

To acknowledge that any part of the universe is without the immediate presence of God with all His attributes is to deny his Omnipresence.

To acknowledge that any part of the universe is evil or sinful is to deny the omnipotence of God.

To acknowledge that any part of the universe lacks in the infinite intelligence is to deny God’s omniscience.

The apparent degrees of life must be seen with the mental eye of the thinker as differentiation of the one, supreme, all powerful mind of God. When we are faced with any degree of life (problem) which is undesirable to us, we are to unify that undesirable condition (in our own consciousness) with the awareness of the presence and power of the infinite intelligence which is God. That is our work, to help Jesus, the Risen and Radiant Christ, to bring to pass the “kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven,” to fulfill this prayer, to join him in performing the Father’s business, which is the establishment on earth of the cosmic wholeness which is natural to the Cosmic Mind.

Moses said much about sin and prescribed many punishments; Jesus said not one word about sin, not a word about punishment, not a single sentence to inspire fear, not a word about postponement of any good thing; only glad tidings, good news, the gospel.

Only the truth which sets men free. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” — now.

His teachings have been almost forgotten.

There is a conscious intelligence in the universe which responds to man’s approach.

The method of approach is through the mind of man.

It has always been taught that the approach was through social and moral excellence — which is a lie and has misled mankind from the beginning.

The prophet declared: “If any man lacketh wisdom let him ask of God who giveth freely and up-braideth not.” It has always been known that this universal mind was approachable by man and that the approach was easy, gentle, peaceful, and that the rewards of this approach were without limit.

Every one of the great truths which have advanced mankind have come from this universal mind into the mind of the thinker when the thinker was alone, as the gravitational formula came to Sir Isaac Newton when he was alone. Social and moral excellence is desirable, but it is positively not the way to God.

The “way” to God is just as Jesus said it was, through the power of the thinker’s mind to identify itself with the one supreme, universal mind which is God.

General principles prevail in the Cosmos as they do in business and detail merely indicates the general principal involved. It is a general principle that Jesus taught.

Man in his strivings after heaven by and through social and moral conduct gets his eyes so glued to detail that he loses sight entirely of the general principle.

Every time I have ever accomplished anything worth while for another, the minds of those who hear of it are not concerned with the phenomenon itself, or with the increase in livingness of the person thus helped, but they immediately begin to want to know the detail of my personal life, just as the hecklers of Jesus at the time blind Bartimaeus was healed cared nothing about the miracle of the phenomenon — they cared absolutely nothing about the good news that blind Bartimaeus could see — they only wanted to know the intimate details of Jesus, of his family, where he was born, where raised, who his teacher was, etc., etc., ad lib and ad nauseum.

The reason for this is that those who inquire are seeking something to accuse him of.

The social and moral teachings have laid such stress on sin and misconduct, have held sin so persistently before the mental eyes of the world, that the first thing they think of is to get something for which they can accuse ‘someone. To catch them in the “act.” That the person has spent a lifetime, alone, in self forgetting effort, in dark and terrible nights of doubt, in days of hunger and despair to attain to the power to help — that does not interest them at all. And yet these who act this way are only victims of the system they uphold. They are guilty of nothing save ignorance of the truth.

To the individual who wishes to be free from the inhibitions and fears and phobias which enclose him on every side like the walls of a prison, I proclaim that nothing is necessary to make one free save to follow the mental processes Jesus taught— and this will release within your own mind that action of the Cosmic mind which he called the “Spirit of Truth” and of which he said would lead you into all truth.

The first mental operation must be to think about the Cosmic Phenomena until your own mind sees in a perfectly natural and rational manner the obviousness of the presence of intelligent life in every form you behold. This is the first thing to do.

Next it is necessary to think about this Cosmic fact of life inherent in every form until your mind sees that it is true of you, the thinker. You must locate this Cosmic life within yourself.

Next you must divorce this mental process from all social or moral law in order that your mind may not be afraid to think free.

Next you must begin to join this indwelling, living and infinitely intelligent presence with what you see in form.

The persistent effort to unify the life which is invisible yet perfectly obvious, with the form it occupies is an action of union which results in the bringing of the “kingdom of heaven” into manifestation on earth.

Your mind must rationalize about this matter until your mind is established in a certainty that this indwelling life is greater than you (the thinker) then to this indwelling life you must ascribe supreme power. Nothing in the formed universe is equal to Its Power—and It is your parent—and loves you.

Longfellow wrote: “An enlightened mind is not hoodwinked; it is not shut up in a gloomy prison till it thinks the walls of its own dungeon the limits of the universe, and the reach of its own chain the outer verge of intelligence.”

Arnold Bennett said: “The manner in which one single ray of light, one single precious hint, will clarify and energize the whole mental life of him who receives it, is among the most wonderful and heavenly of intellectual phenomena.”

Jesus said: “I am the light of the world. Ye are the light of the world” At no time did he claim anything in the way of possession which he did not recognize as being common to all.

Anything which Jesus did or claimed as being true of himself he claimed as being equally possible and equally true of you — you, I mean who are now reading this sentence.

The operations of mind are ridiculously simple once they are understood — and, there is no mystery to these operations.

If you release an idea in your mind that idea will begin to function in the sum of your consciousness just like a yeast cake functions in a pan of bread dough—it begins to stir things up. It acts like a leaven —thus Jesus said: “... The kingdom of heaven is like unto a yeast cake which a woman puts into three measures of meal. ...” So — if you release in your mind the idea that God is mind, and am a mental creation of that mind, and that mind is a conscious intelligence pervading and occupying all space and it is approachable by my mind in terms of understanding and simplicity” — if you release this idea in your mind and then do not let others tear it out — you have the yeast in the dough. Then, if you begin to consciously relate all your ideas to this idea — that is thinking. You have become a thinker.

The eternal truths of life have no reason for being anything different than what they are — they offer no apology, and they waste no time in explaining themselves j they announce themselves by being.

Hence the eternal verity of continuous life merely announces itself by always being alive. It makes no difference to it what you think about it or believe about it — it is.

If you step into its current it refreshes you, it makes you new and fresh and young, it heals and it makes abundant provision for your physical welfare. Even a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without the conscious knowledge of this one, supreme, all infolding and all pervading, intelligence and life.

It is within you to use. Use is the law of its being.

Anything you try to hold you lose. Anything you use you increase. The thinker is not afraid to use what he has — for he knows that its use will increase its substance and as long as you use life, life will flow through you.

As long as you use your mind — ideas will flow through your mind and refresh it. Stop thinking, or relegate it to another, and ideas stop flowing through your mind. Life is motion and movement within mind.

This book is re-stating what was said by the Carpenter of Nazareth, re-stating it in terms of comprehension and usability to you today. The grave clothes have been stripped off the radiant Christ, and the vitality and power of his words are reproduced like the photograph of a loved one for you to see.

“Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

VIII. The Cosmic Process That Saves From Sin, Sickness and Poverty

“LOOK unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth”

Have you ever watched a little boy or girl playing when some “stunt” was to be done? The child positively will not do the stunt until everyone present is looking at him.

How many times have you heard this remark while watching children play: “Lookit, fellers, lookit.” When they all “lookit” then the child does his stuff.

It is the natural law of all life that every separate, different, individual, diverse object is everlastingly shouting at us to “lookit.” Life in the form of persons or things if for the purpose of exhibiting itself.

We have been looking at the outside, we have formed all our judgments from the object as it exhibited itself. We have made all our laws and formed all our conclusions from the judgments thus formed. We have done the very thing Jesus admonished us not to do. We have been judging according to appearances.

Jesus did not say that there was anything wrong with the appearance — he said not to form any judgment according to them.

He told us that there was another side to them.

And — to form our judgment according to this other side was right (righteous) judgment.

The prophet when he wrote: “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” was saying exactly the same thing.

Even a dollar bill has two sides — you cannot spend one side of a dollar bill without the other side of that bill becoming involved.

It is not what you see, but how you see it.

Vision (seeing) is the ability of the eye to see and the mind to correctly interpret what it sees.

Jesus had a vision. The vision of Jesus was the cosmic vision. Jesus saw both sides of everything. Jesus saw that on one side (the right side) everything was whole and perfect.

Jesus saw that from this right side every differentiated object (appearance) was perfect. That confusion and sin and sickness and death and poverty were all the result of a lack of vision.

Jesus also knew that this lack of vision was merely an exhibition of ignorance of the fact that there was another side. Hence he saw nothing to condemn; he saw only an opportunity to educate.

To every man and woman who has been taught to look for faults (in anyone or anything) I say unto you: Stop it this instant. Heed the invitation of the Deity, who, occupying every atom of matter, every point in space and every instant of time as the one supreme intelligence which knows that there is no law save the law of order, is insistently and continuously saying to you: “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.”

When you look at a rose how do you look? What part of your mind is involved in this “looking?” Just that part which records an object? Well, in ten minutes you can train your mind to look at the same rose and mentally see the cosmic beauty and life which is its other side. Having seen the two sides of this one rose for one instant of time proves to your mind that you can do the same thing with an individual. Try it. Don’t argue.

Everyone has the mental capacity to see this other side, and, at times does it; and it is at such times that they are most happy — and successful.

When your six-year-old child does something which shows that he does not understand the social laws, you do not condemn him and start for the city hall for a policeman, nor write a letter to your congressman asking that a law be passed against such conduct.

Your mind for the moment “sees the other side”; for the moment you form a righteous judgment.

You know the child will grow in understanding.

And it Does “Look unto me and be ye saved.” “There is therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus,” merely means that there is nothing to condemn in a mind trained to see both sides. For that is the mind of Christ Jesus; the mind which understands the cosmic process.

This turning of the mind toward the other side is what has been written into our theology as “Repentance,” which means to “turn away from.” It is what has been written into our theology as “religious experience,” and as “salvation.” It is that conscious effort of the thinker to understand himself and his environment.

This “repentance” restricted to moral observances will not enlighten the mind of the thinker. When used in that manner it is helpful both to the individual and to society at large, but — it does not make the individual free; it is not the truth which makes you free.

If your mind can grasp this formula, you have grasped the- most significant truth there is, to wit: the creative principle of life. God creates by contemplation. Contemplation is the mental act which sets in motion cosmic energies which ultimate in the objectification of that which the mind saw when in contemplation.

Here is the sum total of all there is to the “visualization” of metaphysics.

Metaphysics and psychology per se, however, do not seem to understand the mighty truth Jesus set forth as to the difference between primary and secondary causation.

Who do you suppose knows most about what is best for you, God, who created you (for a purpose), or your friends, or your mama, or your papa, or yourself? Answer that one before you read another line.

As long as you use this power of contemplation, this mighty creative law of the cosmos to “visualize” yourself into the possession of an automobile, husband, wife, job or increase in salary, you are using secondary causation -- your mind is acting upon formed objects. Every formed object has a creator and your mind is faced with the stupendous task of making all these elements obey YOUR will. It works for strong willed persons with a one track mind. But the train of causation which follows such ownership more often than not brings with it events which are too big a price to pay for anything in the world.

Jesus said that to train your mind to mentally see this other side in everyone and everything was seeking the “kingdom of heaven”— and he promised that once your mind was thus trained: “All these things (objects) would be ADDED unto you.

I have proven this law.

I am not writing some words I found in a pamphlet somewhere ; I am writing down my own living experiences.

For this cause this book comes forth. In this book I bear witness to the “truth.”

What is truth? It is nothing until your mind experiences it. That is why Jesus did not argue with Pilate. It is useless. There is an “impassable gulf” between the mind of one who understands and the mind of one who does not understand. Even one “rising from the dead” does not convince the mind which is not trained to see in and of itself.

Here again is the stark fact that the individual— you—are. the most important thing in this universe. It is useless to train the multitude in moral and social science and neglect the instruction of the individual in cosmic science.

Enforcing social and moral laws against human conduct and neglecting to instruct the individual in the truth, is cleaning the “outside of the platter” and neglecting the more weighty matters.

You cannot clean the platter from the outside — this can be done only by the individual who owns the platter. And it must be done from within.

Hegel, in his introduction to logic, says that we “secretly perceive toward an object before thinking it.”

Hegel was merely re-stating what Jesus said, but in different terms. If we begin to train the mind of a child in any avocation, when they are grown their minds begin to think toward and about that avocation.

If we begin today to make a conscious effort to mentally “see” the cosmic fact (other side) of things and people and events — it will not be long before this other side becomes the dominant idea in our mental operations; it will become our mental center of gravity and because it is our minds consciously touching the Cosmic Mind, this Cosmic Mind in which inheres all power will begin to draw with an irresistible power and beauty all our other thoughts into itself.

When this once occurs as the result of a conscious effort of our minds, we get such a renewal as to almost dazzle us. Many people have this but it is the result of unconscious causes and they experience it merely as an amazing and beautiful religious experience. They struggle all the rest of their lives to reproduce the experience, but are unable to do so.

It can be reproduced at will by one who has trained his mind according to the mental formula of Jesus, the carpenter’s boy, who became the Christ by the use of the same mental law.

The desire in the heart of every one for beauty and power and living the joyous life, is the outpushing of the Cosmic presence which is their “other side.” “God is nigh unto them that call upon him.”

When I judge according to appearances; when I permit the conduct of others to become the dominant idea in my mind; when I consciously make of other people’s conduct my mental center of gravity — then I “fall into condemnation.” This is the only “fall of man” there ever was.

Have you ever stopped to think when you are condemning someone how unconscious they are of your condemnation? Even after you have spread the scandal and let your mental poison drip its vitriolic content all over the landscape, when those to whom you have carried the tale get home and the events of the day begin to resolve themselves in their minds— they think less of you and none the less of your victim.

They and your victim are all unconscious of the hell you have created for yourself. In such matters we are not dealing in social or moral science—we are dealing with the mind—and—the tragedy of it— with our own minds.

There is absolutely no escape from “hell” save by the use of those mental faculties within your own mind which will, if used as Jesus taught you to use them, enable you to see the other side.

All the “hell” or heaven you will ever find here or hereafter will be that hell or that heaven which you create in your own mind by the use of your mental faculties.

“Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.”

“Seek ye FIRST the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.”

You will never find happiness by trying to make others bring forth your ideal—you will have to bring that forth out of your own being; just as God created his world out of himself.

You might just as well be told now as to flounder any longer in darkness; life is not outside of you. Life is within you. Life is something that is always happening inside of you.

That which is outside of you is just scenery, just stage settings among which you move—but life—that is within yourself.

Get still a minute right now. What do you feel? At first until the motion of your mind is quieted you will “feel” the noise of things outside of you; the baby crying, the automobile horn honking; soon the “feel” will get closer, the chair upon which you sit, the clothes upon your body, then in a little while the beating of your heart. At last. You are inside yourself where you live. That beating heart—what a train of thought it sets into motion.

What makes it beat? The noise outside certainly does not make it beat. The persons you know do not. Here your mind begins to touch the “hem of his garment.” The same power and life which makes your heart beat makes everyone’s heart beat. Think.

You are one with all at this point. Is it not restful? Do you not feel the burden dropping off in here where you live?

This is the “other side.” This is the Kingdom of God which is within you. Here is the place of quietness where you may take any problem life offers and release it into that presence. That this “Presence” is wise you know, else it could not make your heart beat. That it is power is sure else it could not lift eight tons of blood from the soles of your feet to the top of your head every twenty-four hours; and it does that very thing. The same is true of all others on earth. Think—then relax. Thank you. I know you got that idea. Make it firm in your mind.

There are a lot more wonderful things inside of you of which you have never thought. David sang: “Truly I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” He was, and so are you.

From a single cell of protoplasm you have evolved until inside of you now there are five hundred muscles. Thirty-two pounds of blood. (No stream is as full of life as your blood stream.) Your heart is beating approximately seventy-two times every sixty seconds; one hundred thousand eight hundred times per day. Thirty-six million times per year. How old are you? Stop here and get a pencil and see what God hath done for you since you were born.

Your skin covers two thousand square inches, and is under an air pressure of fourteen pounds to the square inch or twenty tons to the whole body. What has kept you from being crushed to death by this pressure? Surely that which lives within you is wise and powerful. That is your other side.

The perspiration tubes in your skin number three thousand five hundred to the square inch, each being about one-fourth of an inch long—or about forty miles. Your body is self regulating as to heat and cold. The temperature in an Esquimo who lives in the arctic and a native of the equator is the same. Do you wonder that David sang his song?

Your body has self acting chemical laboratories. Your eye has its lens, dry plate, dark curtain, is self focusing, self-loading, self developing and takes billions of pictures every day in colors and enlarges them to life size. Yes, you are fearfully and wonderfully made—and there is “something” within which lives there—and that is your other side. You—the “me” of you—is what exhibits itself—the other side is God.

What is true of you inside is true of everyone else; and is true of everything else. On the inside (the other side) is God; no matter at whom you look, no matter at what you look—if you train your mind to mentally see the other side, you are obeying the mandate: “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” If you train your mind to do this it will be the greatest fun you ever experienced in all your life. If you train your mind to do this and do it, you will have sought and found the Kingdom of God and his righteousness within you and as promised: “All these things shall be added unto you.”

This Cosmic truth is what made Jesus say (to Philip) “He who hath seen me hath seen the Father.”

“What,” asked the Nazarene of Philip, “have I been so long a time with you and you know not that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” What, I ask, has this life within you been with you all this time and yet you do not know that it is in you and you in it? Think!

The life that is in you Is God. Think!

God is life. “I am” is the way. I am is the name of all that is conscious of itself.

Hence the only “way” is the way of your I am understanding (through training your mind) to know that that life which is within your own physical body is the God you seek. You must find it within yourself first before you can “see” it in others. This is why Jesus laid such emphasis upon seeking this place first.

There are other wonders in this universe of far more interest than the conduct of your neighbors.

Dr. Heyl, employed by the government in the Bureau of Standards, has weighed this world; according to his figures it weighs six thousand five hundred and ninety-two million million million tons.

It is about the same weight as if made of solid steel.

Yet it sails through space unsupported, in a well ordered course, turning on its axis in periodic intervals (another evidence of being well ordered). Man has a terrible time making a machine that will fly through the air at the risk of his life and at the expenditure of tremendous generated energy.

No accident has ever happened to this world flying machine in all the eons of time it has been in existence.

What makes it so well ordered? Order is an evidence of intelligent control. Intelligence is an evidence of mind. Whose mind? Not your neighbor’s. Not your preacher’s. The mind which harmoniously orders this universe is the mind which formed your body from a single cell—and that mind lives in your body now. Think—for yourself.

This mind is whole (healthy), so healthy that even the edict of a doctor cannot destroy its wholeness.

With which side had you rather identify your mind? Answer that before you read another word.

If you prefer to let others identify your mind with disease and lack—go to it—and more power to you. Hell is just as legitimate a destination as heaven if that is where you want to be.

The invitation is: “Look unto ME and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” This invitation is issued by that mind which created the universe and formed your body from a single cell.

This is the good news (Gospel) of Jesus Christ.

Read the first verse of each of the Four Gospels and then compare them and you get the “key” to the whole story.

At first Jesus is not called the Son of God; his history is accurately traced back to Abraham.

Next comes the “beginning” of the good news (Gospel) of the Carpenter, the Son of God.

This book (the Gospel) is the “messenger” which is sent before your face.

Next comes the report of a scientist who has “traced” all the movements of mind and explains it.

This writer had “perfect understanding” because he had experimented within his own mind.

Next, and last, the secret comes out: “In the beginning was the Word.”

A word is a sound symbolizing an idea.

So you first having your genealogy traced back to your physical ancestors begin to get interested in the good news; and have the method described by one who knows all things from the “beginning” (of his experiment). Then you are told plainly, it starts with an idea in your mind. Surely you are fearfully and wonderfully made. “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” Train your mind to see both the appearance and at the same instant of time see the other side and you are well along upon the path.

IX. The Unitive Idea Which Results In Demonstrations, Faith, Resurrection

“THY Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”

This is a word picture of a mental attitude.

It is a movement of an idea in the mind of the thinker.

If you ask a man his ideal of a woman he will first describe her height, weight, coloring, eyes, hair, etc., then he will give a rather indefinite description of her mental qualities ... . about the size and shape he is very definite and his description is so accurate that your mind is able to grasp and almost see the woman standing before you.

The first description of the ideal woman is the appearance of the woman.

The second (and indefinite) description of her virtues is the other side of her—the inside of her, and—the most important side of her. It is the side with which the man will have to live if she marries him.

A mind which can see, from a word description, an idea, is a trained mind; because most people cannot mentally see an idea regardless of how well it is described.

It does not require any training of the mind to see an object, a form—but it requires both imagination and desire to be able to see (mentally) the power of an idea.

Jesus taught exclusively how to see and use an idea.

He presented but one idea.

That idea was the cosmic fact of the unity of the Creator with all that was created. (“The Father and I are one.”)

This idea was what he said would cause power to become active in the life of the individual thinker. To this unity he ascribed all the power and all the glory, and acknowledged it as the source of all that he accomplished.

In the book of Deuteronomy Moses has put these words in the mouth of God: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life that thou mayest live.”

This passage describes the work that man is to do with his mind—he is to choose. Choice continuously exercised is the most powerful affirmation which can be made; also it is the one and only kind of effective concentration.

In the passage from the prayer of the Master previously quoted we see these two sides brought together. Here is the supreme choice man can make.

This supreme choice which brings two opposing ideas together in consciousness is the unity which Jesus stressed. “The Father and I are one.”

The unawakened man consciousness chooses as between good and evil; and sets himself to fight the one he does not choose. This is a natural quality of mind and is to. be unified before any degree of mental mastery ensues.

In the statement of Moses he is calling upon his people to choose the good and eschew the evil, to choose the blessing and eschew the curse; Moses still saw a lot of things to fight. Moses was a great man but he did not teach the truth which sets men free.

Jesus saw nothing to fight. The mind of Jesus was trained until he understood the mental processes of unification. Hence in speaking of this continuous fight, he said: “Resist not evil but overcome evil with good.” (Bring them together.)

Light and darkness brought together dispels the dark.

To hold to any extreme of thought as against the other extreme is to produce within your own consciousness a double mind. The film of your mind gets a double exposure just as a film in a camera would get a double exposure if two exposures were made on the one film.

The habit of the mind to hold to two extremes in every question is the reason why so few people make their demonstrations. This for the reason that to think FROM disease to health, places a mental distance between the present state (disease) and the condition desired (health)—it is always in the future, and, like tomorrow, it never arrives. It is always just where the mind of the thinker has placed it—in the distance. A place away from where I am.

The power to heal exhibited by Jesus of Nazareth was without doubt due to the ability of his mind to join the two together.

Every healing reported to me as resultant from my efforts has followed my strong realization of the immediate and cosmic oneness of what the person described as his disease—and the cosmic wholeness which my own mind described to myself. In my own consciousness I brought these two opposites together —and let go. The light of truth dispelled the darkness of ignorance.

Here is the real secret of self healing (the only genuine healing there is). For the one who is diseased to acknowledge the disease (without mental comment)—and at the same time acknowledge the cosmic wholeness in every cell of his body—then let go. To deny the disease and call it an “illusion” is to fight it; and it thus becomes in the agitated mind of the individual the most powerful affirmation of the power of the disease that can be made.

This denial of disease when it is apparent and present sets every conscious action of the mind to work to more firmly fix the condition in the mind and body.

It acts exactly like you would if some person were to try and dispossess you of your house.

But to deny the disease while it is apparent and present has another and a more serious aspect, to wit: it tends to disorganize the mind of the patient; for, if those things which are apparent and present are “unreal” or an illusion, the student begins to doubt every other apparent and present experience, and thus is developed a phobia which often becomes so pronounced that the whole mind is disorganized and the usual efforts necessary in making a living are ineffective.

It is more rational and infinitely more effective to frankly acknowledge the disease which is both apparent and present—feu? at the same time let the mind dwell upon the fact that, as a cosmic necessity, there is also present in every cell of the body the full and complete life of the infinite. This is that unitive process of mentation Jesus used; it is that divine unity which acts in and of itself. It is that mental process which actually brings about healing.

The mind trained to see and feel and understand, and commune with the indwelling presence of God, will not get excited at a little ache or pain. It will take it naturally to the indwelling life which is the cosmic wholeness and this bringing the two opposite conditions together without fear, doubt or curiosity without fighting, is ever and always effective.

Modern metaphysics has had a tendency to turn the minds of its students entirely away from the world. This taking of untrained minds and directing them away from the obvious and apparent and present is not making for permanent results, for the student who does this flies back to the visible world with greater tenacity than ever as soon as he discovers that mind is to be used for thinking and that the obvious, the apparent, the present and the physical and material world are just as necessary and useful as ever.

Another erroneous idea with which I have had to deal all through my work is that the student seems to think that there is some mysterious law which the practitioner can invoke which will relieve him of responsibility and which will make him free from the obligations of life and free from problems.

This idea probably is common to all, since, all of us are looking for an escape from the grind, but I have done all in my power to correct this idea in the minds of those who came to me for help.

As far as I know there is no law which will enable any man or woman to escape the responsibilities of life. Jesus, without any question the greatest master of mental law the world has ever known, did not seem to be able to escape any of the problems or responsibilities of life—but—he met them all masterfully and successfully.

Jesus is right here in our midst today, helping us to meet our problems. He did not go anywhere, for there is no place for him or anyone else to go except right here. Right here on this earth is our home, and as far as I know right here we will stay until the problem of humanity is solved to its completion.

What metaphysics calls “realization” is the picture of an idea in the mind. Another reason so many people fail to make their demonstration is a lack of understanding about this point.

Many teachers tell their students to make an “image” (mind picture) of the thing they want. Jesus did not teach this method. Jesus did not teach “visualization.” Jesus said that: “Whatsoever things ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye have them.”

Your desire for money and power and friends is not a desire for a collection of money and friends— it is a desire for the EXPRESSION of that which you are inside. To visualize actual money anti actual friends such as John Jones and Mary Smith is to limit yourself to what your mental eye sees.

Think about the idea of expressing the best that is in you by and through the power of the indwelling Presence of Infinite Intelligence and Infinite Love — and you will not only get the amount of money you formerly visualized—but more; and you will not only get the friendship of John Jones and Mary Smith— but you will get more.

Before you will be a success at getting things, you will have to do exactly what Jesus told you to do— “Seek ye FIRST the kingdom of God”— . . . then . . . “These THINGS will be added.”

You cannot find one successful business man in this country who ever got what he has by the visualization method alone. These men had an idea and they began to work toward its consummation; and the idea they held in their minds was (to them) their Kingdom of Heaven. To them it was a realm of harmonious ideas, and there were no mental images or pictures of things as a goal—things were identified in consciousness but they were mere incidents.

Jesus taught the thinking process from the standpoint of primary creation. He said: “The Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” And again: “Whatsoever things the Son seeth the Father doing, the Son doth also in like manner.

The Cosmic urge within every living thing is for expression of more livingness. Have you’ ever studied the earth? Have you ever walked along a country road and looked at the plants and weeds and trees? Every one of them pushing upward, urged by an irresistible power behind them to grow up—to find more and fuller expression of what they are.

No two alike, no two with the same color flower, no two with the same odor—limitless differentiation—but all rooted in the same soil, getting their life from the same source, and growing in the same direction—up.

Every living thing seems to be crying out—"Give me more of life. Give me room to grow.” There has never been a life that was not reaching out for more life, more beauty, more peace, more room in which to grow.

You may despise the weed, and dislike the fruit of the tree, you may disapprove the conduct of your neighbor, but it is of no use; the cry that is in them is in you, and every action of your life has been this cry for more room, more life, and in this is the common tie that binds us all together—for, all life is one.

This is why Jesus prayed: “Our Father.” He was addressing the life which he knew to be common in all and to all. That is why the Prophet wrote: “The stones of the field shall be in league with thee.” He, too, saw this one life running through all nature and binding all together in one universal, throbbing, vital, life and wholeness’, this wholeness is what is termed “Holy.”

Moses freeing the children of Israel, Jesus pleading with the men he knew, Alexander crying for more worlds to conquer, Columbus sailing uncharted seas, Christians suffering torture and death for the faith. Washington at Valley Forge, Lincoln freeing the slaves, Henry Ford building automobiles by the millions, political aspirants shouting themselves hoarse to be elected, the bank robber robbing a bank, the sneak thief snatching your purse, the drunkard, sodden and blear eyed, all—all, my brother, are crying out for more life.

Jesus had a mind so saturated with the consciousness of the oneness and universality of this life that he could not condemn anyone or anything; for he knew that this life was the Father within. No wonder he cried out from the cross: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

Primary creation is an act of mind which liberates this life into fuller expression. No social or moral standard can exalt this life’s expression in the individual as much as to teach the individual his relationship to it. Once this idea is firmly pictured in the mind of the individual he becomes a different person.

Every social or moral effort to suppress this life will fail.

It can be wisely directed but never defeated.

The greatest wisdom in directing this life, is in letting it out through the individual. This was the Gospel (good news) Jesus brought to mankind in its darkest hour.

It is not safe to let it out through the individual unless that individual is mentally trained to understand what he is letting out.

It is this life which is “holy” (whole). It is mysterious and lovely regardless of where you find it. Planted deep in the human heart is a great reverence for this life, for deep within the heart of everyone is a point of identification with it — and each knows that it is God.

You may not like the manner in which it expresses itself, nor the form in which it expresses itself, but your heart must love and reverence life itself. It was this attitude of reverence and recognition which Jesus called “worshipping God in spirit and in truth.”

A person who has followed the teachings of Jesus until his or her mind is saturated with this concept of the nearness and power and glory of God, has a “something” which is fascinating and intriguing and mysteriously charming—no one can resist them. All things seem to work together for their good. Even the acts of avowed enemies seem to turn themselves in some way to their advantage.

Regardless of what one’s path in life, and regardless of what one’s avocation, the consciousness that it is life (God) pushing outward to find more room for expressing himself, will give to that person a dignity and charm which is absolutely irresistible.

This is that consciousness (called realization), and which is the result of mental discipline of the thinker himself, of which Jesus spoke when he said: “I of myself can do nothing, it is the Father abiding within who doeth the works”; the sense that it is not you, the person, but life within you which is doing the work; you are the channel. This is working as the Father works; this is primary creation. This leads men into new and untried paths of effort and along the path of success.

This concept of God brings him near—this is that mental practice which unifies the thinker with his source. “The Father and I are one.” This is that unitive process of thought which unites the two opposites—and once united the greater is in power.

It is not difficult to have faith in God from this viewpoint.

It is not difficult to understand with your mind such texts as: “Fear not, for I am with thee”; “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee”; “Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace.”

To one whose mind is thus trained there is no need to eat of the poisoned fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. There is no need to fight. The supremacy of mental power is used to unify the undesirable with the desirable. One soon learns to unify every personal matter with this indwelling life, which is God.

It is not difficult to realize that this indwelling life is intelligent, and, if intelligent, capable of understanding your thought. One just knows that “He that is perfect in knowledge is with thee.” Faith in that living presence is seen to be faith in the idea which Jesus taught—and this idea active in your mind is the living presence of Jesus Christ’, for it is that mind which was in Christ Jesus.

Hence we have here a mind picture of an idea. This idea is just as “seeable” as a physical form. Your mind “sees” this idea as clearly as you ever saw a physical form. This is what I mean by training the mind to “see an idea.” This Indwelling Life and Presence is so alluring that one goes there often mentally for rest and comfort and inspiration’, for, “there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.”

Every thought in your mind which unifies any individual, yourself or others, any thing, any event, with this indwelling life which is common to both you as the thinker and the other person, event or thing, is an act of the healing Christ mind.

Every time you think of your disease or poverty or other problem and at the same time see (mentally) that this one, common, universal, indivisible life runs through you and it—that is the actual presence of the risen Lord in your midst. It is no longer you who live and think, but Christ lives and thinks in you (for that moment of time).

Every such act of mentation on your part is praying the prayer of Jesus’. “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.³³

Jesus said in his great prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John ; “Father I have glorified thy name on earth.”

The office of consciousness is to glorify God on earth. This is made possible by relating everything your mind touches in the earth—to the indwelling presence of life (God).

Every time you think of any person, thing or event as being one with that indwelling Presence you are then in that moment of time: “Glorifying God on earth.”

The “Father’s business” is not to take people out of the world either now or hereafter—but to bring heaven into manifestation upon the earth. “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.”

The office and business of your mind is to bring into manifestation the beauty and power and glory of the cosmic life which is in you and all things equally and alike. One life, indivisible, unhurt and unhurtable — and you identified in and with it.

The return of the prodigal son (you) is accomplished when you no longer name any part of this one, supreme, cosmic life, wicked, evil, bad, etc.; in short, the prodigal cannot get home until he is through with fighting.

If one fighter ever got into the kingdom of heaven, then it would be hell; for he would immediately start a fight, then it would no longer be heaven.

Heaven is well protected—only those get in who have trained their minds to be at peace. “My peace I leave with you; not as the world giveth” Wise, wonderful, gentle, peace giving, this boy from the hill country left us a heritage of which we have not yet heard.

Such mental practices will bring actualities of health, peace, power and success.

It is neither denial nor affirmation, it is not visualizing things, it is not sitting still and trying to demonstrate—it is a thought process which goes on while you are doing your usual work—and a thought process which you practice upon and within yourself. It is nothing you ask anyone else to do for you; it is not something you rush madly to the ends of the earth to teach others to do—it is something you do yourself. And, if wise, you will keep your mouth shut about it as you do it.

X. Faith

“ALL THINGS are possible to him that believeth.”

How many times have you envied someone who has achieved success and “wished” that you might do something too?

You can if you will.

You can if you will train your mind to believe in the infinite intelligence within you. If you will persistently and in good faith make the mental effort to realize that there is a cosmic wisdom and a cosmic power resident within your own mind and body which will back your every effort to the undreamed limit—if you will but believe in it.

“He who cometh to God must BELIEVE that he IS” Is where? Where Jesus said he was: “Within you.”

It is a human and mental impossibility to “believe” that God is with you as long as your own mind has him pictured as waiting for you when you die—that is mental distance—it is the false philosophy of postponement.

You must arrive at a definite and permanent conclusion by your own reasoning that God is present within you now, before you can intelligently act in faith in his help.

Many make very good partial demonstrations by starting out with the mental picture of God as now active in their affairs—then lose what they achieve by turning their minds away from the living presence of this indwelling intelligence to look upon the appearance.

They start out with the certainty that God will bring all good to them—then because the wife or husband or friend does not get into the place they had pictured them in—they let go of the trend of thought which they initiated—and the picture falls apart.

The principal reason this active faith in the immediate presence of God in our affairs is so effective, is that we have trained our minds to know that this one, supreme, infinite and ever acting intelligent Mind is “greater than I” That is, we let our minds begin to expect what is unknown to our conscious minds.

This mental attitude of expectancy is opening the mind; and the ideas in God’s Mind flow into and through our minds and inspire us to do those things which bring into fulfillment the desire of our hearts.

We are accustomed to run to a friend for advice. This opens our minds to the best that is in the mind of the friend, but the friend is not “greater than I” hence cannot open our minds to the unexpected.

Further, the friend is perplexed himself, (not having solved his own problem) and so, in opening our mind to his mind we merely add to the confusion.

Jesus now functions as the radiant and risen Christ; that is, his mind is ever present. Just wherever you are—worn—there he is. He stated: “Have no fear, I have overcome the world.” So, when you open your mind to his mind—you have a point of mental contact with a friend who knows how to solve your problem. But you must understand that having the problem thus solved will not necessarily affect other people in the manner in which you would like to have it—the whole process is a matter of perfecting that which concerns you. The same action will perfect that which concerns the others— so—you must learn to loose them, and let them go.

The evidence that you are making your demonstration then lies in the change in your mental attitude about the problem.

If you are at peace about it—that peace IS the demonstration . . . and as long as you recognize that peace AS your demonstration, the demonstration will continue. But the moment you think that the infinite intelligence has failed because John or Mary did not do this or that—that is the end of the demonstration for you. You have broken the picture by turning your mind’s attention away from the indwelling presence which you invoked; for the command is: “Acknowledge him in all thy ways” meaning in all your mental processes.

We are to keep our minds glued to the promise: “All these’ things shall be added”—not necessarily the particular events and persons whom we have ignorantly desired in our lives, but infinitely better events, things and persons.

The mind of man has not yet dreamed of all the good things the Father has prepared for them that love Him. I have explained how this love of God is developed in the human heart by mental processes of thought; of constantly thinking of, toward, and about the indwelling presence of life in all forms.

Hence your mind soon grasps the fact that regardless of what event is drawn to you by this infinite intelligence-love is there, regardless of what person is drawn to you. Love is there, regardless of what thing is drawn to you. Love is there, for this one supreme infinite love and power occupies every atom of matter, every point in space and every instant of time—which is now.

Since the universe is governed by orderly law, then now, this instant of time, is the Kingdom of Heaven at hand—and for this instant of time you are now in your right environment.

This is that unitive process of ‘mind which acknowledges God’s living Presence as immediate, now present, now acting in your behalf, which opens the prison house where you are bound and sets you free.

How is it done? I do not know. Jesus did not know. It is not necessary for you to know—it is only necessary for you to know that it takes place and takes place by the operation of the cosmic law of that Presence which is “greater than I.”

This idea about the indwelling power within you being “greater than I,” is most important—it carries the thinker over stormy seas fearlessly, it soothes the doubting heart into peace during dark nights of doubt, it sustains the thought of the thinker while the waters surge and the flames kindle all about him. It is that action of the mind of the Son which says in the utter climax of helplessness: “Father, Unto Thee I commend my spirit.”

There is no rose strewn path to greatness or achievement—these things are attained through struggle with environment. If you are looking for ease—lie down and die. If you “wish” weakly for success—wish on. But if you really desire to achieve, then set yourself for effort. Obstacles beset the path of Jesus the Master of Life—but nothing could defeat him because he believed in the indwelling presence of omnipotence.

Obstacles beset the path of Hannibal and Napoleon—but they said: “There must be a way”—and they found it by effort. Washington at Valley Forge, Lincoln at Gettysburg, said: “There must be a way”—and they found it by effort.

Obstacles and the unknown faced Columbus, but when his sailors rebelled he said: “There must be a way, sail on, and on, and on,” and he found it— by effort.

The world consciousness is so hypnotized with the philosophy of postponement and the end of the trail is so saturated with the idea of “rest,” that we have become as soft as mush, mentally.

Jesus taught no postponement, and he taught no escape from effort. His words were and are a clarion call to life and livingness—his words are a call to the essential manhood and womanhoods latent and inert within every one of us—it is a call to be about the Father’s business.

His words call for no alibis and no pretexts; they call for the utmost best that is within you—and more —they call for the manifestation and exhibition of the God within you. Christ in you your hope—stand forth; and be.

Alibis are futile, because life is an endless circle and what we ignore on one trip shall stand in front of us as an obstacle on our next trip around. So, the problems are to be met and solved as they come, one by one, just as a bricklayer erects a building, one brick at a time. Do not repine for the dramatic climaxes—they are but inevitable results of one thought at a time. You are building the temple, rather re-building it, for it is to glorify God in your midst. It is to be known as a “house of prayer”— the temple built without the sound of hammer and the temple which will be one of those “many mansions” in the Father’s House.

That condition of person and environment which your mind has pictured as meaning happiness for you is the weirdest of mirages; if attained you will hate yourself for spending so much time on it. There is but one happiness for man and that is effort and the legitimate results of self effort brought into manifestation to the Glory of God. “I have glorified thy name on earth.”

If your life seems to be in disorder now, if everything has gone wrong, you are to mentally see that the “wrong” part is in your mind—the Universe is still intact.

To mentally see and acknowledge that the infinite intelligence is now active in every detail of your life as divine order and harmony and at the same time acknowledge the appearance of disorder in your life, is that unitive process of mind which brings the greater to bear upon the lesser—and that is that mental process which acts to establish order in your life.

It is that act of mind within you which makes immediate and present the help you seek. It does not postpone help—it takes the matter out of the future and brings it into today. Now is the day of salvation. “This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.”

It is the mental act of unifying the element of time with the now which is necessary to demonstration, and then we are to keep the mind’s eye upon that fact of immediacy and not begin to look around for the “sign.” Jesus, the Master Mind, said: “No sign shall be given this evil generation, save the sign of Jonah.”

Here he was explaining a mental law—the only sign you will ever see of the glory of God is the result of this indwelling presence bringing to pass the events, things, and persons which shall perfect that which concerns you from the cosmic side of life. As long as you “seek” signs you will always be disappointed.

Unify the desirable with the undesirable in your mind, and do this with persistency as a natural mental habit and leave all results with God. He knows how.

Science has proven that all so-called space is a solid; less ponderable than granite, but, nevertheless solid. That with which space is filled is electronic activity—everything is in constant motion. Yet science knows no more about the ultimate solution than it did when the atom was the ultimatum of divisibility.

This invisible yet measurable substance, constantly in motion, is, by its nature, unable to accommodate a vacuum; that is, there is no point in the space we know not everlastingly active with this evidence of intelligence and life.

If any natural phenomenon destroys any element of this substance in any given point in space, the rest of it rushes into that place and fills the vacuum, thus re-establishing the solidity and poise and balance of the whole.

It is this law which Jesus was explaining when he said: “Ask whatsoever ye will and it shall be done of my Father.” It was not an action as a personal favor to you such as it would be if you were to ask your earthly father for a gift—it was an unavoidable cosmic action.

If there is any lack in your life, that lack takes form in your mind, and your sense of lack is the effort which creates, in degree, the vacuum. That vacuum, be its degree whatever it may, must be filed by cosmic necessity. There is no question as to your moral or social standing involved—it is as impersonal as sunshine—and as certain.

This “lack” thus becomes the empty cup into which life and substance pours itself until that cup is filled’, filled to overflowing, heaped up and running over.

Thus, if you “deny” this “lack”—you will fill this vacuum with your denial and there is no place for the cosmic substance to flow; there is no cup into which it can flow; there is no form whereby it can be identified in your mind as the answer to that for which you asked.

Hence to “deny” that you are ill, or in need of material things is to fill the cup with your own sense of lack—and this increases the lack and the disease.

Explaining this law Jesus said: “To him that hath shall be given and to him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath”

To him whose mind is trained to have the bountiful eye, because his eye beholds the inexhaustible resources at hand, shall be given because he will frankly acknowledge his need and ask that that need be filled. Whereas to him whose mind sees only the lack and cannot mentally grasp the ever present substance ready to fill his need—shall be multiplied the picture he holds in his mind.

Jesus did not deny that the five thousand people in front of him were empty and hungry—he calmly and frankly acknowledged their emptiness, (saw the vacuum); then he “lifted up his eyes to heaven”; that is, his mind unified their emptiness with the universal and inexhaustible substance everywhere present — and lo I and behold they were filled — and there was “some left over” “Full measure, heaped up and running over, into thy barns will I send my gifts, saith Jehovah of Hosts.”

It has been taught for ages that the mind of man, once established in the consciousness of this one, universal substance can act upon it and shape it by his word.

Again, explaining this law further, if you have no sense of any need, why ask? If you are in pain, and deny the pain — then there is no reason to ask.

Again, if you are in need of material things and you deny any need — why ask? There is no reason to ask. The whole performance then of denial and affirmation becomes mere repetition of words like the lengthy prayers of the ancients. Jesus said not to think that we would be heard of God for our much speaking.

Jesus taught a better way — neither deny or affirm— think.

Be honest with yourself in your thinking.

If you have a need, acknowledge it; then turn your mind to the indwelling presence of infinite intelligence and ever active life and ask that your need be filled) ask that the light of the spirit of truth within your mind be quickened to show you the way out of whatever difficulty you are in. Be honest with your own mind — you will have to be honest with the infinite for you can’t fool it. It demands simplicity and honesty, as Jesus said: “Even as a little child.”

“All things are possible to him that believeth.”

If you actually believe in the indwelling presence of Infinite Life and Love, there is no sense in denying what is a perfectly natural and obvious fact of life concerning you.

If you actually believe in this inexhaustible substance ever active and urged by a cosmic necessity to fill every empty place — then there is no sense in self bolstering affirmation.

Such mental practice is like the small boy who bolsters his courage as he races madly frightened past the grave-yard — it may help him past the grave-yard but it has not by any means established him in courage.

To one who has persistently built up within his mind a conscious identity with the universal life of infinite mind there is neither desire nor inclination for the mind to fall asleep; its quickening vitality inspires one to action.

Even Moses caught this law, and said (Deut. 8:18): “Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth.”

The one sure thing which keeps the student of mind from making the contact which insures results is the habit of postponing, in the mind, the receiving of all good; and it is for this reason that I have placed such stress upon the necessity of the individual to train his mind to realize the present fact of immanence and the presence of that indwelling life, here and now, active in and for him.

The social and moral activities of life have engaged the attention of philosophers from the beginning of time, but it was Jesus who first stressed the individuality of man. Man as a social and moral animal is a personality; and, as a personality, his duties and obligations and his activities revolve around the personal equation.

The personal equation cannot be ignored, and every effort to ignore the personal equation results in a mental distortion in the individual which makes of him a misfit in social and moral activities and a misnomer to himself.

Man cannot live alone as a person, and the very fact of individuality makes it essential that he associates with his fellow creatures in order to exhibit his individuality. For, be it remembered, the very purpose of all differentiated life is to exhibit that difference.

A man isolated on an island would be an individual — but he would not be a person, for he could not exhibit any personality. Personality is what one person exhibits to another person — it requires numbers for the life of the person.

From this necessity of growth from personality to individuality grows all the differences of opinion as regards religion and philosophy. It has never dawned upon the mind of man to study the life of the Carpenter of Nazareth — who was both person and individual.

One is not right and the other wrong. One is not good and the other evil. They are the two sides of the same thing.

Your personality is what you exhibit to other persons — the name and quality of it depends upon what others think and say about you.

Your individuality is what you think of yourself — and its name and quality depend upon whether you have taken human life and objective activity as your pattern, or whether you have used your mental faculties to form an opinion of yourself from the standpoint of the Cosmos.

A man can be both an individual and a personality at one and the same time. It requires wisdom, for what the individual side of you is must be kept secret and locked up in your own heart.

If your belief that you are the son of God makes you an individual (as it will) then let others find it out from their own observation. This requires no telling, no explanations, no apologies and no distress.

Your personality is the objective “appearance” by which all men judge you.

Your individuality is the “other side” of you, the “inside” of you, the “God side” of you — it is the basis of all the Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde stories ever written. It is called “human and divine”; it is called the “man of dust and the man of God”; it is designated by many different terms — but the essential fact remains the same. On your inside you are God. On your outside you are man. It is the physical side and appearance of you which is man, and this physical man “acts” or conducts himself in a certain way. But the invisible side of you is where you live for it is your mind and it is with your mind that you touch God.

A great personality is the best that man can produce with his social and moral laws. History is sprinkled with the names of these great personages. A great person, then, is the product of man.

God creates great individuals. The individual is the flower of the plant of personality. History is punctuated with the names of great individuals.

Abraham, Moses, Jesus, are individual types.

Hammurabi, Caesar, Napoleon, Washington, Lincoln, are personal types.

All great persons are regular because they are the product of regularity; they are the product of convention and tradition.

All great individuals (and all individuals are great) are irregular. They shock the social and moral sense of their times by sheer difference.

You may not like the idea of individuality — but you shall become one by a cosmic law of necessity. The personal consciousness is the “seed” planted in the mind of the world by God — it is the idea which shall blossom as the individual. This is why Jesus was called the “first fruits of them that slept.” Jesus was the first great individual to exploit the idea of God’s immanence.

God created but one man. That man was “his image and likeness” “Jehovah God” “formed” mankind, that is, different kinds of man, and this diversity at first shows forth as difference but must by cosmic necessity become unified and again exhibit the divine unity and stand forth as the man God created in the beginning. As we submit ourselves to the living Christ we become cells in his body, and thereby is perfected that which concerns us.

XI. Resurrection

“FOR I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope in your latter end.”

There are two things which stand in the way of those who have not been instructed in the laws of mind as taught by Jesus.

First is a lack of gratitude. I do not mean that you do not feel grateful to persons who are kind to you — I mean that gratitude which is a natural, automatic attitude of mind; that sense of gratitude to the indwelling life — God, which has given you life and which has sustained you throughout your life.

Second is the constant turning of the eyes to the detail of every transaction and the failure to keep the mind focused upon the essential.

In golf there is a trite saying: “Keep your eye on the ball.”

In life this same saying is applicable: Keep your eye on the sum. On the net results. On the objective. To become involved in a mental quarrel with yourself or others regarding detail, is to lose contact with the indwelling life and power which is God.

Life is a continuous stream from God — you cannot thank him perfunctorily, once, then forget him. The mind must be trained to look toward him mentally as a habit of thought, in gratitude.

Life flows like a mighty river through you, from God, out into the desert of life, and is to be used by you to refresh the path you walk.

The detail amounts to nothing; it is the fact of use and refreshment that constitutes the net results, the sum total, the objective.

You positively cannot hold onto life — it can only be used.

You positively cannot hold onto things — they are to be used.

Have you ever watched an expert cook make a cake?

She has a certain positive assurance in her every move; she has a definite objective in her mind. She may not always arrange the detail in the same way — but she always arrives at her destination; that is, she always gets a net result of a good cake.

She may put in the soda first one time, and leave it till the last the next time; the detail amounts to nothing; she is sure of herself because she has practiced and knows her objective.

No woman (or man) ever baked a good cake who followed the detail of a recipe; Good things come as the result of a trained mind which knows that detail does not make anything good.

Social and moral laws have so stressed detail, the order and manner in which every little thing must be done, that the net result with most people is—hash.

This attention to detail makes of that detail the objective; and since details are mere incidents in life, it is little wonder that so many fail to achieve any degree of happiness.

This is true in metaphysics. Thousands of people think the detail of how they sit when they make an affirmation is the important thing to make a demonstration; they cannot even make the affirmation unless everything is just so. These people think that when the affirmation is made nothing remains to be done; that they have reached their objective. This is sheer foolishness.

Details are always necessary in institutions, but the individual is not an institution. An individual is an individual and has the right and the power to arrange detail as he pleases, just as the cook who bakes the cake has the right and the power to change the sequence of placing the ingredients in the cake.

You may not conform to every tenet of your religion, you may not go to church regularly or at all, you may accomplish the duties of the day differently each day; but — if you do the best you know how to do each day you are moving toward happiness in spite of detail.

If you have done the best you knew how to do by your employer, by your wife and children, if the kiddies in the block like you and smile at you, if strange dogs come up to you unafraid, if the stranger you meet feels better afterward — you are happy although you may not know it.

Do not let anyone take you out of this heaven and induce you to worship the many-sided god of detail. Bake your own cake and put the ingredients in to suit yourself — and keep your eye on the net results.

The net results of life is a life lived — not idled, but lived to the utmost limit of your capacity to be and to do.

Life is the process of growth toward an ideal. Jesus gave humanity the finest ideal it had ever known — the ideal of sonship with Omnipotence. If you make this idea of sonship to God your ideal, your objective, and live toward it — just live toward it — you will be happy and the detail is unimportant. With such an idea you may make as many detours as you please — you know what your destination is and the detour is a mere incident.

No one may have an ideal who does not develop it within his own mind by a process of thought from an idea. The idea is the seed; the ideal is the flower — but it is the net result of a mental process in the mind of the thinker.

Life is like a picture puzzle which you give a child for Christmas — our business is to Put the picture together. We are all children, and. like all children our business is to grow into maturity. Our goal is that maturity of mental comprehension which is the Christ Mind.

“Forgetting the things which are past,” we are to grow forward toward the goal of the high calling of Jesus, who became the Christ by a process of growth, and this process an orderly, cosmic fact, true of everyone of us.

I have known children to work two weeks on a picture puzzle.

When they started out they did not know what the picture was.

And no one would tell them — they had to find that out.

The picture had been “jumbled,” the pieces lay all about, no two pieces the same size or shape, but they were told that if they got each part in its proper place the sum of them would make a beautiful picture.

Life is a picture puzzle; there are many parts; no two of the same size or shape; but when we find the right place for each part, and put them together, we have a beautiful picture — the sum total, the net result — we have baked our cake.

This picture puzzle idea is told in the second chapter of Genesis. Like all good stories it is taken from the Bible, the greatest library in the world. In this account we see Adam, the first child man, standing in the midst of the jumble of parts; and God tells him, as he brings each part to him, “call it whatsoever you will and that is what it will be to you.”

Do you suppose that the thing itself changed character because of what Adam called it? Certainly not; but Adam’s reaction depended upon what he called it — hence this naming of the parts is what I mean by putting the picture of life together.

God made the picture. He said it was very good. It was a beautiful picture — and thus he declared it.

Not until we have all the parts named “very good” do we get our picture puzzle put together so that we may see what it is.

We cannot change the character of any of the parts by our “naming” them. But — we can change our reactions to them until they will be “very good” to us. That is the work we are to do; that is the whole secret of life. Mental adjustment to our environment until we see things as God sees them. This is, then, the cosmic vision.

Jesus saw everything as God saw it — “Very good.” That was why he saw nothing to condemn. You do not condemn that which you name “very good.”

We might just as well calm down. God made the universe and us, and he declared that it was all “very good.” You might just as well start this instant of time to accept the universe as it is, to accept people as they are, and to accept events as they transpire, for you will never be able to change the universe, you will never be able to change people, and you cannot order events.

Hence the only sane thing to do is to adjust yourself to it and them. Your own mind is the only place in the entire universe where you have “all power and authority.”

In this place where you have authority is your workshop; the laboratory of mind; and here there are no ponderable, heavy things on which you need a crane — they are all light, airy, pliable, flexible, easy-to-handle substances of thought.

Each thought bears the same relationship to your “I Am” as you do to God. Each thought looks to your “I Am” for deliverance and each thought worships your “I Am” as God.

There is but one “I Am” in the entire universe.

You are an expression of that “I Am.” On the “I Am” side you are God. “I Am that I Am” is the most stupendous statement ever made. The great and mighty One expressed in you as an individual, is God, the Christ in you which is your hope of glory.

“I Am” is the name of God, the Creator, the Almighty.

What are you making God say every day? Think!

The great and mighty One who inhabits eternity has declared that the whole creation is “very good.” What savest thou?

You are enclosed within a universe of limitless diversity of manifestation, but within that universe you are the only one there is. There are “none other beside me.”

“I am the Lord thy God and beside me there is none else.”

When you say “I love,” “I am,” “I will,” “I decree”— that is God speaking. When you say “I want,” “I wish,” “I hate,” “I believe,” that is the “me”^! side of you speaking; that is the side of you which thinks it is separate from God; that is the side of your mind which is to be “saved”; that is the side of your mind which is to grow toward the other side of your mind, which is God already and always has been and always will be.

When you say “I am sick,” “I am afraid,” “I can’t”— you are taking the name of the Lord in vain. It is “vain” because it is vain to try to limit God to what you have spoken.

Your “me” consciousness is your personality.

Your “I Am” consciousness is your individuality.

Your “me” consciousness is what must die.

Hence the development of “personality” as an ultimate goal is futile effort, for it will die.

It shall die by being absorbed into or growing into your “I Am” individuality.

Its death is just exactly like the death of a child who grows into manhood.

The death and passing away of the human personality is nothing any more terrible, then, than the growth of a child into manhood.

That was why Jesus said: “There is nothing to fear.”

All “personality” is the result of human effort and is accomplished through and by social and moral observance — and it will all die.

That is why man cannot reach heaven by building his towers of Babel, man cannot reach heaven through social and moral excellence, because it is a matter of individual mental adjustment.

Also, each individual must do the work himself. This is a cosmic necessity and that was why Jesus laid such stress upon the importance of the individual.

Whole groups of people cannot be inducted into heaven by any method whatsoever — you came into this world alone — and alone, like the Carpenter of Nazareth, you must get into the kingdom of heaven.

And when you get there you will find yourself surrounded and environed by the objects, things, thoughts that you, yourself, have named — and everyone of them will be “TO YOU” just what you have named them.

Hence you will never get into any heaven until you have made such mental adjustment within yourself as to be able to declare with the great and mighty One, “Behold, it is very good.”

No matter where you go or what your environment is, you may be perfectly sure that no law of nature will ever be abrogated or nullified, and you will have your own mind with you every moment of wakefulness (awareness) and your own thoughts will clamor at your “I Am” to be saved until they are all saved.

Remember, when you are asleep the universe is blotted out.

In your universe there is no one but you. Your world and universe will always be peopled with the things you, yourself, have named. Is it not time you were about your Father’s business?

When you leave this physical house what are you going to take with you in your mind? Whatever it is, that is going to be your environment. Be sure of this.

Now is the time to get to work, and there is so much to be done, that you will find absolutely no time to worry about what your neighbor is doing— but — keep your mouth shut about it if you do not want to be crucified every day by your best friends. Especially keep your mouth shut to those closest to you in your personal life.

“And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household.”

This was spoken by one who knew whereof he spoke.

I warned you at the beginning of this book that I was not teaching any social or moral science, that I was teaching you how to think according to the method used by Jesus, the Carpenter, who became the Christ by this ‘method.

You are, then, both “I” and “Me.”

When you think as “me” you are functioning (mentally) as a person, and exhibiting your “personality.”

When you think as “I” you are functioning (mentally) as God, and are exhibiting your individuality, the Christ in you.

The most important thing in the world for any one is to think. The best method and pattern for thinking is the Jesus Christ method.

This is the only method I know which will enable anyone to make that mental adjustment where he can declare: ’’Behold, it is very good.” Do you begin to get an idea as to why Jesus gave this law: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself!”

Your physical body is not you — it is your mailing address where you get your mail here on earth; it is like your automobile, a vehicle in which you travel up and down the earth, walking and talking with men, as stated in the book of Job.

Your mind IS you.

Your body is “formed” out of the dust of the ground and unto dust it shall return.

Your mind is created out of the mind of God Almighty and although heaven and earth shall pass away, your mind can never pass away.

Herein is the mystery of why it is so essential for the individual to learn to think in terms of his unity with Omnipotence. This pattern of oneness with the Father is the “key” to eternal life as well as the “key” to all completion here on earth. The “key” to all success and happiness, for, happiness is nothing but glorifying God on earth. “Thy kingdom come— ON EARTH — as it is in heaven.”

There was never but one “man” created on this earth. That man was a pattern. The multitudinous and limitless differentiation of manifestation is the act of reproduction.

Henry Ford made but one car — but he reproduced that car millions of times.

God never created but one day — but that day has been reproduced endlessly. “A tireless hand, from an exhaustless urn, pours forth a never ceasing flood of years.”

Every day is an exact duplicate (reproduction) of the first day that ever dawned.

Every kind of a man, mankind, must become a duplicate of the first man created — every person shall grow into the image and likeness of that one man, and that one man was demonstrated by God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; just as an automobile manufacturer will show and demonstrate a new and late model of his product.

The one, supreme, universal mind, which is God, saw that the personal mind of man had become so involved in detail that he had lost sight of Him; he saw that man’s inherent urge to find the Father’s house had degenerated into mere formality, and the observance of detail; so, he caused to appear upon the scene a new model, a pattern of the original man.

Hence Jesus came, and demonstrated that the Sons of God were mental creations, the child of the one supreme mind.

And that thinking was more important than conduct because all conduct flows forth from thought. He taught us how to put the horse back in front of the cart so we might get somewhere.

* * *

Are you one who is worried about age?

Age is something which concerns only the personality — and it must die; it is the “me” side of you.

The oldest person in the world is as old as the number of duplicated or reproduced days he can count since his physical birth.

The oldest individual on earth can never get over one day old — for that is all the “time” there is. There “ain’t no more.”

You will have to learn to live on “twenty-four hours a day” if you intend to get into the kingdom of heaven, for there all is fresh and new.

One who has even approached the consciousness of the “I Am” finds himself resurrected every morning; and the morning is as fresh and wonderful as the first dawn of creation, for, to him, it is the first dawn of creation.

Tonight when you go to sleep you die, that is, you are not conscious, and the universe is blotted out — for you.

When you awake in the morning you could not tell if ten hours or ten million years had passed, because you were unconscious.

Hence each morning you are resurrected from the dead.

Each morning you get a brand new start. Each morning the Lord brings you everything in the universe for you to name — and, whatever you name them, that they will be to you.

There never was a lost opportunity.

All the opportunity there ever was is now.

Life consists of action and use of what you have — now.

If you are waiting for “something” to happen — it never will.

For all things arrange themselves in sequence according to the way your mind names them, and in just that order.

“Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live.”

The physical body requires bread, but bread does not nourish the mind — and the mind is you.

Hence the words you speak are the sound symbols of what your mind is thinking.

This is why nothing a man can take into his stomach can harm the man, for the man is mind — and physical food cannot touch his mind — unless he names it and ascribes power to it to harm him.

Words proceed “out of the mouth of God” when they are words attached to the “I Am,” which are symbols of what he is.

Here are some “words” which will nourish your mind.

Peace, poise, power.

Non-resistance, justice, freedom.

Intelligence, inspiration, infinity.

Order, harmony, confidence.

Youth, mastery, dominion.

Vitality, activity, success.

Persistence, resourcefulness, purpose.

Do not make affirmations joining these words with your “I Am,” but quietly think of them, toward them, and about them. Let your mind eat them — like your body eats food. Dwell upon them in thought. I do not advise the use of the “I Am” affirmations save upon occasions. At night I believe it to be all right to think: “I am unified with the one infinite life and wholeness” — but this is to be reduced to a mental habit of thought rather than to be used as a violent mental affirmation.

At night, when we are about to go to sleep, we are to remember that as far as we are concerned we are about to die; for to us, the universe will be blotted gut, and our own sense of awareness (which is life) will be blotted out. We have no way of telling whether it will be ten hours or ten million years hence when we awake. But we shall awake — and when we do we shall be renewed, and the awakening shall be our resurrection from the dead.

This is the time when Jesus said: “Father, unto Thee I commend my spirit.”

So, at night when you are about to go to sleep it is wise and good to let the mind dwell upon the cosmic unity and upon the cosmic fact that you are one with God, and so — the mental process of thought which is permitting the idea of this unity to flow through your mind is good.

I used the words, “I am unified with the one infinite life and wholeness.” This is not given as an affirmation — that was MY formula. Get the idea into your mind and make your own formula; learn to bake your own cake.

Your own mind is a far better guide to detail than my mind or anyone else’s mind, as far as you are concerned.

No one ever lived as capable of formulating a detail of thought, as capable of doing it for you, as you, yourself.

My words are merely ideas for your own mind to resolve into useful mental actions within your own mind.

This mental practice is casting the burden upon the indwelling “I Am,” which is God; and while you are thus “dead” the sum of all you are as “me” and “I Am” will order themselves according to the pattern of the Christ.

XII. How To Train Your Mind To Know Truth

IT HAS been said that “What is one man’s food is another man’s poison.” This same idea holds true in mental processes, and for that reason, in this book, I have ignored specific detail of metaphysical practice and stuck to the illucidation of a general principle of mind.

This general principle is the one Jesus taught and demonstrated, to wit: “That the Father is greater than and: “The Father and I are one.” This general principle, practiced as a mental habit, ultimates in the individual thinker building up within himself a sublime faith in the cosmic presence and the immediacy of the cosmic qualities of being. Life, love, order, harmony, beauty, strength, power, poise, wholeness, health, abundance.

I have laid much stress upon the idea of looking toward the indwelling presence of life within your own body and forming the conclusion, within your own mind, that this life indwelling within your own body is “the Father”— God.

I wish you to remember that I do not advocate that you think of, about and toward this indwelling Presence to the utter exclusion of the objective world. You are not to forget that the persons and lives of others touch your life at every point. You are not to ignore the social and moral laws of your community; you are not to forget the traffic laws, the taxes, the rent which falls due the first — but these things are not to be seen as limitations to your freedom of thought and action. You are to form your judgments of yourself and your destiny from the standpoint of your being the child of Omnipotence, and you are to form your judgments of your ability to do what you wish to do from the standpoint of the limitless power within you which knows no limitation and has no opposition.

To think of either extreme is to unbalance your mind; but to stand (mentally) in the midst and see both extremes, each in its right relation, is mental mastery and keeps the mind balanced and poised in its every action.

Conclusions are not so important to the individual as the processes of thought by which conclusions are reached. Any school boy can memorize the answers to a set of problems — but the important thing is to teach the school boy how to reason from a premise to a conclusion himself. Hence I am giving in this book the major premise for all your thinking — and am teaching you how to arrive at your own conclusions

The purpose of truth is to start the mind of the thinker to work from some cosmic truth about himself. This Jesus did superlatively well. Your mind is a mental dynamo and it begins to produce mental energy (power) as soon as cosmic ideas begin to flow through it. An electrical dynamo sends forth no energy when it is standing still. It must be in motion to give forth any energy — and — your mind must be in motion to give forth energy.

The supreme energy in consciousness is that energy caused by the passage of cosmic ideas through the mind of the individual thinker. If you send that mental energy out toward the objective world and neglect the inner side of life, it is like an electric current sent out from a dynamo on a wire which has no ground — it is powerless — it is nil, it accomplishes nothing, for there must be a return path for it to flow through.

This is why it is essential to build into your mind a consciousness of this indwelling presence of life and power — for, it is from this place that your mind gets its energy. Jesus stood in the middle of life, visibility on one side, invisibility on the other.

Jesus the Christ was both man and God. So are you.

He was not either human or divine without the other.

Jesus was not human without being at the same time divine.

Jesus was not divine without at the same time being human.

He nor anyone else ever has or ever will become “spiritual” by becoming less human. So-called spirituality is the process of improving your humanity. The more “spiritual” you become, of necessity then, the more human you will become.

Those who try to impress you with their “spirituality” by acting as though they had departed from human needs merely exhibit their unbalance of mind.

Jesus was hungry for food for his body even after he was resurrected from the tomb — the last picture drawn of him was at breakfast, eating fish for which he asked.

In your efforts to approach God, then, for the sake of sanity and your own welfare — make no effort to act any way save perfectly natural. Do not try to assume a sanctimonious look. Do not try to assume a sanctimonious attitude — be yourself — that is the way God created you and evidently that is the way He wanted you to look and act. Say: “I am what I am by the grace of God Almighty.”

If it suits others, well and good. If it does not suit others, well and good. You cannot please everybody — even Jesus could not do that — so — be yourself.

If your approach to God does not make you a better human then you are not approaching God — you are on some detour and you had better get back on the road.

This is written especially for teachers, lecturers and all self-appointed adjusters of human destiny.

Your mind attains to such familiarity with your environment that you feel one with it. Your mind attains such at-one-ment with those you love that when they pass on you feel as if part of you had gone. This is a phenomenon of the mind.

Your mind can become so at-oned, so attuned, so merged with the mind of God in the midst of you, can attain to such loving and intimate companionship, that the communion will be constant and continuous.

You will be able to feel God’s presence all the time.

Not because you are “good,” nor because you observe social or moral laws -- but because it is also a phenomenon of your mind.

This sense of intimacy with the indwelling presence will make you both social and moral and do that without effort or restraint.

This sense of intimacy and companionship with God results from the same causes which produce the same kind of phenomena with your loved ones — because you think of, toward, and about them in all your mental processes.

This is positively not accomplished by or through denials or affirmations — it is the product of thought. Thought is the process of exercising your divine right of choice. You choose.

You choose your ideas which are to make the sum total of your mind with the same meticulous care that you exercise when you choose a gown, a necktie, an automobile, a house, furniture or food. Do not let anyone mystify you. Mystery sometimes entertains, but it never solves a human problem or pays any rent or mortgages.

Every time you choose to use your mind to merge any human problem with the Divine Intelligence in the midst of you — in short, every time you turn your problem over to God — you make, by this exercise of choice, the most powerful affirmation known.

Every time you choose to exercise the quality of mind called faith, by turning this problem over to God in simple honesty and simple faith, you have effected a closer union with the indwelling presence of God.

You have made firm the sense of nearness and companionship.

Every time you think within your own mind, “Father, I thank Thee for this ever increasing consciousness of thy indwelling presence, you have helped to establish God as your partner in life, you have moved consciously, purposefully, and definitely toward the same mental attitude Jesus knew and demonstrated.

This sense of companionship can and does become infinitely more beautiful, infinitely sweeter and more satisfying, than any human relationship you have ever known. In this inner companionship is the cosmic poise and power which knows “no shadow of turning”; it is the same all the time. One friend that never fails you.

It acts like an experienced mariner who puts his steadying hand upon the helm and intelligently directs the course of his ship into the safe harbor in quietness and in calm seas.

This is “letting that mind which was in Christ Jesus” be in you. That IS the Christ Mind, for that is the way Jesus thought.

It is positively not the man, Jesus, who lived in his body two thousand years ago who is your Saviour; it is this idea of oneness with God which He demonstrated, that is your Saviour.

Jesus means Immanuel (God with us.) Think.

Every mental process Jesus used was a process of unifying that which was obvious, manifest and exhibiting itself with this indwelling life and power. Hence when Jesus was called to see the man sick of the palsy, his mind unified what the sick man exhibited, with his own consciousness of the indwelling life of God in the Body of the sick man — then He gave the command: “Arise, and go into thy house.” Jesus knew that the man’s own house was the consciousness of the unhurt and unhurtable life and power of this indwelling presence — God. Jesus knew that God’s wholeness was in the sick man — and his certainty of it caused the sick man’s mind to see the light of truth — and he arose, and went into his own house — healed.

Jesus did not deny that the man was sick — it was obvious, manifest and exhibiting itself; he was not “afraid”; he had no curiosity about how or when — He joined the cosmic wholeness with the appearance and let go. This is the healing method used by Jesus.

Jesus did not “affirm” that God was in the midst of the sick man — he did not have to — he knew it because he had established it in his own mind.

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace because his mind is stayed on thee.”

Denial and affirmation may both become forms of mental violence.

Violence can never be overcome save by gentleness. Every act of mental or physical hostility or violence will have to be met some time with forgiveness and gentleness. This is the cosmic mode of mentation and cannot be abrogated or nullified — it must be obeyed. This is why Jesus taught us that we must “love our neighbor as ourself.”

The Christine story tells of the “resurrection” of Jesus’ body from the tomb — his body was a mental body, because he was a mental creation, just as you are. You cannot bury your thought in a hole in the ground. The resurrection about which there has been so much controversy was not something peculiar to Jesus of Nazareth — it was put in the picture to point the truth to our minds that we are mental creations and the resurrection is a cosmic fact true of all of us.

God is mind. You are the child of that Mind — hence a mental creation. The resurrection is no mystery once you understand your nature as a thinking being.

God’s laws are mental laws, hence thinking is the most Godlike thing you can do.

The reason the resurrection was dramatized in the case of Jesus was because his mind was filled with ideas which are eternally true. If you leave your body and the only ideas you have in your mind revolve around the personality of those of your family -- there is not enough vitality in such ideas to last beyond the memory of those who knew you personally. But, if your mind is filled with ideas of cosmic fact, then those ideas will continually resurrect themselves and find expression in many people over great periods of time.

Life, love, faith, hope, youth, these ideas are as young today as they were ten millions of years ago. Fill your mind with these ideas and your mind will be resurrected into eternal life, because these ideas are eternally true.

So-called death will not cause you to lose your identity any more than you lost your identity when you Ceased to be a child and grew to be a man or woman.

Listen less to what men say, or what “they say,” and ponder more the miracle of your own life and the life which exhibits itself all about you.

Exact science has done more real religious research work, incidentally, in the past twenty-five years than the church has ever done.

It has given man an insight into the vastness and nearness of the glory of God. It has generated in the hearts and minds of exact scientists such reverence that one can hardly hear a lecture on their subject without a feeling of awe.

Scientists are the most reverent men I have ever known.

I have never seen or heard a religious service as solemn and as inspiring as that which I see when I look through a telescope at the stars or through a microscope at a drop of water or a piece of cheese.

I have never heard or seen a religious ceremony which gave me such unkillable faith in the eternal goodness of God as that which I see when ‘I look into the eyes of a little baby, so here is obvious, manifest, exhibiting evidence of law and order and of the continuity of life and of the constant renewal and the utter indestructibility of my own life; of the unhurt-able quality of the cosmic mind which energizes every atom of matter, every point in space, and acts every instant of time — which is now.

At such times every cell of my wonderful and marvelous body seems thrilled with a cosmic energy. The vitality of the universe is flowing through the blood in my body, the wisdom of the Infinite guides me; the love of the Infinite protects me and the light of the spirit of truth enlightens my mind with its own qualities of understanding.

For—

There’s part of the sun in an apple
There’s part of the moon in the rose
There’s part of the flaming Pleiades
In every leaf that grows.
Out of the vast comes nearness
For the God whose love we sing
Lends a little of his heaven
To every living thing.

(Selected, author unknown.)

After one has mentally chosen his thoughts until the sense of companionship is established, the matter of prayer resolves itself into a mental exercise of such pleasure and enjoyment that it becomes “prayer without ceasing,” it occurs about like you drive your automobile while your conscious mind is otherwise engaged.

Your slightest wish brings forth as if by miracle the very thing you desired; you are almost unconscious of having asked for it.

Many will say: “Oh,. I’ve prayed and prayed and asked but I never get any results”— yes? To whom have you prayed? To God? Yes? Do you believe that God ever punished anyone or ever will punish anyone? You do? Well, that is the reason your prayers have not been answered. You have never prayed to God, you have prayed to yourself. God never punished anyone, nor will He ever punish anyone. That idea is just yourself magnified. Get acquainted with God before you start praying to him.

The idea that God will punish people is just what you would do if you were God — hence that concept of God is a concept of yourself magnified to what you would like to do if you had the power to do it. God is love. Jesus, who demonstrated Him on earth, said: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Does that sound like punishment? Think — for yourself.

Prayer is a perfectly natural part of man’s mental process.

It is conveying to the one, supreme, formless substance which is the Mind of God Almighty, the picture of the thing you desire.

God, being mind, is Intelligent. Even more intelligent than you are — although some will take exception to that.

But He is more intelligent than you are, for Jesus said: “The Father is greater than I.”

Hence in conveying your desires to Him the process is an act of intelligence. It is an intelligent approach to an Infinite Intelligence. Do you pray to that?

This Infinite Mind is pushing outward upon every living form, seeking avenues for greater livingness for itself. The Psalmist sang: “He restoreth my soul for his name’s sake.” God is infinitely more desirous of finding a greater channel of expression through you, than you can possibly be to get it.

All the Infinite Mind of God wants is a mold into which to pour itself. All He wants is a picture in your mind which will benefit all and harm none. How then can He flow out into your picture when two thirds of all the pictures in your mind are pictures and names of punishment for this and that? Every mental act of yours which condemns, criticizes or hurts, is a mental picture of punishment. Think! Get wise to yourself.

The only legitimate place in the entire universe where you may use your will power is to use it in exercising choice in your own thinking processes. Use your will to choose, to think in terms of peace and love and “all things are added unto you.”

Thought, I have explained to you, is a mental process of relating all the ideas your mind touches to one central, dominant idea.

This is exactly like the cooperative effort of a group of people. If you start a manufacturing plant you do so to manufacture a certain kind of an article. You have a very clear, definite idea in your mind of what you wish to produce.

Every employee you hire is taught how to relate his own mental actions to that idea so that he may cooperate with you in the manufacture of that article. In short, they are all taught the business, or that part of it which concerns their particular work.

In any event, their minds are related to the business through the mental process of learning how to relate themselves to the manufacture of your product.

If you take the one, psychologically supreme idea which Jesus taught as the dominant idea in your consciousness — then, obviously, the process of mind called thinking will be that process which relates every idea your mind touches to that one, supreme, dominant idea in your mind.

The reason your mind chooses this idea for your mental center of gravity is, that you wish to manufacture a character like that of Jesus. A character which will stand out as life, love, power, health, wholeness, beauty, abundance. When your character shows forth these attributes you are exhibiting the God in you; you are glorifying God on earth. “I have glorified thy name on earth,” said Jesus. This mental practice persistently attempted is the most powerful affirmation of unity with God that can be made. It is that form of “denial” called “non-recognition”: “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Live your own life and grant to others the same privilege.

Do not be awed by tradition or by the imposing size of a calendar, or the fussy clatter of a clock.

Keep your mouth shut about your mental operations; they will bear fruit in time which will be obvious, manifest and exhibit themselves — then, they will need neither explanation nor apology — what you are will speak so loud that no one will ever question what you say.

Euclid declared, centuries ago, that there could be no rule formulated for the extraction of the cube root. Mathematicians have accepted this dictum — and made no effort to formulate such a rule. I know a nine-year-old girl (taught by her father) who can extract the cube root of any number up to trillions in five minutes without use of pencil or paper, and you can give her the number backwards and orally. Nothing is impossible. Let no tradition place any limitation upon your thinking processes.

The greatest power in the entire universe is that power exerted by the movement of an idea through the mind. If the idea be cosmically true — that idea can never pass away.

Life is cosmically true. Identify yourself with life and you can never pass away. This is the only way to overcome the last “enemy,” death. No thinker was ever put into a grave. You cannot bury thought (ideas’) in a hole in the ground. Any more than you can catch and confine in a prison the songs you hear coming through space over the radio.

Think and you become a permanent identity of the cosmos; and this is life eternal.

Vincit, qui se vincit.

THE END

Arise and Walk

Daniel Boone Herring

Table of Contents

Dedication

Dawn

I. The Practice of Mind