Chapter 4
When we look at life from the limited, personal view we can only see from the boundary line of the unfathomed self; but as we come into deeper consciousness, we learn that expectation and promise built on personal hope is one thing, and expectation and promise built on universal understanding of universal action is another.
We are a part of everything in the universe and as we come to look through the personal to the universal, we see clearly the inseparable ONENESS of God-consciousness and man-consciousness, and as we understand and master this relationship, we can read the real answer to our question: "Where are the promises?"
Human life has always been, and always will be, only the unfolding of the personal mind into recognition of the Absolute Mind.
The Universe is under the Law Eternal and in the degree that we know this, we stop our limitations; mankind is free in the Absolute Law, and only seemingly bound in the finite one. Not one jot or tittle of the Law ever passes away; all laws exist to be fulfilled, but human life evolves from level to level of consciousness, and through relationship with higher understanding it escapes the primitive expressions of the lower laws and unites itself with the higher.
The very first truth, then, for any life to learn is, that in this universe of law and order, we get just what we relate with--no more, no less! Nothing happens; everything is the natural expression of the action which produces it.
Jesus came into the world under the law of his own life; he was born to pass along and die expressing the forms of his higher knowledge; he came and went under his own laws, but these were too obscure for the minds of that race to comprehend, and they lived, hoped and died, ignorant of his great Cosmic relationship. Jesus was a son of the planet and his mission was to set laws of race consciousness into activity which would act as a spiritual fulcrum throughout the ages.
What was true in these olden days is still true today; we often go on hoping that fulfillment will come, when by the very nature of what we are doing, we cannot get the higher expression. Take the simple things of our everyday life, our hope of health or our hope of love, wealth, place, happiness, success and usefulness; often we really do hope to be well, and plan in a way for that end, while really at the same time every breath we draw builds for the transitory and fleeting. Like the Christians of old we do not understand higher relationships, and at last, worn out with disappointment we cry, "Where are the promises?" and do not see that until we have perfect thought relationships, we cannot hope for perfect results. It takes deep perception to find the immutable law that all physical phenomena is mental arrangement.
We get everything we find expressing in life through the law of conscious or unconscious thinking! We have, and hold and keep only the things we create for ourselves; there is no other law; no one can take our own away; no one can give us anything, for only what we create is our own, and we alone must create it in consciousness before we can possess it. When we create it in consciousness we really set the law in operation for ourselves and this law will pass it into form.
We make our relationships through the thoughts of our mind. Our mind is the universal mind, and it is inseparably connected with everything in the universe; and whatever we have or have not is a signal of just what we have related with in consciousness. This is the unwritten action of the LAW; no one limits us but ourselves; the Universal Life stands ready with its many levels of relationships to give to every one according to the power he has to create for himself and he is really and truly judged "according to the deeds done in the body."
Jesus could not give an ignorant and undeveloped race the gift of a glorified kingdom; nor could they give it to themselves until they had related in consciousness with the laws that would produce it, the thing we want and our point of attraction must be equal.
We come into life under correct laws; one is not born a Jew, an Assyrian, an Englishman or an American by chance; nor is one born well and rich, and another sick and poor by chance, but EACH is the expression of the LAWS with which he has related in his own consciousness.
Thoughts are things and it is a part of the Universal plan that thoughts from the human mind reach out into the Universal, or Cosmic mind, and there generate an ENERGY which must in time embody in FORM and become the world picture of just what has been stimulated into expression. When thinking passes into a _fixed power_ in our life it can be used to destroy or construct the body or the environment and every thought spoken or unspoken is registered in thought forms in our atmospheric environment and must some day pass into material form.
Health is the expression of a law brought about by a certain line of thinking and disease is another expression. Wealth is one law, poverty is another, and any life can choose this day _which_ he wishes to be under, and choose this hour which law he will serve, and Jesus said, "Whomsoever ye yield yourself servants to obey, his servants ye are, whether it be sin unto death or salvation unto righteousness."
Jesus did not return to his disciples as they expected, because there was no Universal Law for such return. Just so with Health, Wealth, Love, Joy and Happiness. They can never come into expression for us so long as there is not established within us the Law of Natural Relationships.
We are learning at last that "Since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the creation," and it takes more than a fond imagination to pass our life from the law of inharmony, desire and pain, into the higher one of peace, power and happiness.
The moment a life desires anything it instantly becomes related with that thing, but it does not become a possession until all the conditions are fulfilled. Some minds think so _lightly_ of everything that nothing ever becomes steadfast and certain. They drift aimlessly between loss and gain, health and disease, crying out, "Where are the promises," never realizing that promises are only fulfilled when the whole selfhood becomes grappled to the rock of understanding.
Human life is only a _growing_ time, and each life will remain just where it is and express the laws of its level of consciousness until it develops out from them into others.
Sickness, poverty, wretchedness, disappointed hopes are common in the journey of Life; despairing human lives are common too, and lives full of rebellion can be found on every hand, but all these are the products of thoughts that produced them and show just where the consciousness has lingered.
Freedom from all these negative human experiences comes as the reward of inner growth; it can only come through unfoldment and transmutation into higher understanding. Human pain and loss, despair and disease, and the heart-breaks of life, are all the fruits of the Tree of Life whose root is _Truth_.
When sickness, sorrow and unhappiness have taken the place of health and joy in our life, we have no one to blame but ourselves; we can know that through a long line of perverted thinking, both inherited and acquired, we have become related with the laws in consciousness, and these laws are thoughts of self, hate, jealousy, strife, condemnation, resistance, etc. We have thought it unconsciously in the past, but until we stop and get up new thought relationships, these old things must go on. When we know the higher truth of New Thought Relationship, and the power of constructive thinking, we can begin then and there to change things and we instantly can clean out all the distorted thought energy, and pass the simple act of thinking into a creative form, quitting forever our response to the negative things around us.
We see the truth of "Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap," and we see, too, that this harvest field where we reap is the human life, and the seeds are thoughts, and we then and there fill our field of consciousness with thought-seeds of Health, Strength, Peace, Love, Joy and all the ten thousand beautiful constructive things, and we soon are living in a perfected thought world, surrounded by the dream pictures of our soul consciousness. We become like mystical seers, we can prophesy then about everything in our life without fear of contradiction, for knowing the Law that on the path "Like produces Like," and knowing the thought-seeds we sow, we can be certain of the future harvest.
Under the Law Eternal we cease to consider ourselves related to anything that we do not want. These things we do not want have ceased to exist for us, in the moment we have forgotten them in consciousness. We must refuse even to connect with them in memory. Sometimes this is a hard lesson: The Law of Memory is a peculiar force, it is the expression of fixed thinking--that which we cannot forget has made deep inroads into consciousness. Memory often keeps us related in strange ways, and hinders our unfoldment. Memory is the connecting link between the yesterday and today; it makes the past always the present and it remains the master of many lives and pours what it will into the field of consciousness until it is conquered.
We cannot go on to peace, power and divine unfoldment while we are wrapped around with olden memories, olden idols, fears and bondage.
It is an unwritten law that we pass on as we become fit, and any life can at any moment come away from the thought law of sin, sickness and death, into the law of peace, power, happiness and joy.
The great God-life wants us to have whatever we want, and will help us to get it and keep it. We have been told for ages to "ask and receive, seek and find, knock and it shall be opened." The Universal waits upon our recognition of its presence and before we ask it is given. The moment we know what we want and ask for it under the higher law of recognition, it is ours, then we only have to wait until we can manifest it. Over the same thought line which we pass out our desires, there passes back to us the answer to our prayers and our human pathway blossoms with the fruits and flowers of our deeper understanding.
The law of bondage will never become the law of liberty, but each one of us may come away into this perfect law of creative thinking as soon as we teach ourselves the simple act of picking out thoughts that relate us with the higher things of life. The kinds of positions, friends, conditions and environment we attract to ourselves under the positive conscious relationship are entirely different from the ones we will attract under the negative destructive thought laws. Good friends, happy environment, peace and love, are not made from the material of mind that recognizes only lack, loss, envy, despair, fear, condemnation and resistance.
When we want health, we must think health thoughts and become _one_ with the laws that make for health and live at health's heights; when we want wealth we must create a wealth thought vibration and link our lives with the levels of wealth. All the grand, good things of earth can only come and gather around us when we have lifted our consciousness to the level at which they can be touched.
In the light of this higher understanding we can see that in just the proportion that our human nature rises towards the Universal Wisdom, our human perception becomes widened, until, at last, we include all the laws of higher living, thinking and being, and we bring from the hidden center within ourselves a profound knowledge. As our life grows more and more in the power of perception, we retire farther and farther from the personal, the pessimistic, the limited belief of selfishness, condemnation, resistance, and we begin a new thought life filled with moral, intellectual and spiritual glory, and even though "since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the creation," we see the true laws of creation, and making pur minds one with these laws we pass with them and through them on to perfected human wisdom, we turn to the daily life then with a higher, holier and more glorified purpose and out from all the gloom of the past we find the promises have all been answered and that God has provided some better things for us, which without us could not be made perfect.
The final word, then, to the sick, discouraged and diseased world is this:
"The righteous are in the hands of their God (the LAW) and their life is full of immortality," and knowing this anyone may recognize their conscious union with whatever they desire; create it in their human thought world and project it into form in the Cosmic Consciousness; then with wide open soul eyes walk calmly on, expecting it and never laying down their demand until it manifests for them.
The Outside and Inside of Life
"_Jesus said unto him, go and wash in the pool of Siloam. He went his way therefore and washed and came seeing_." ST. JOHN IX, 7.
When we read the history of the ages behind us we cannot help but see that through every phase of human evolution there has run that subtle something which men call "the power of the unseen."
Matty of our forefathers lived in self scrutiny and subjective investigation, and many lived in lawless expression of their objective selves with no idea of life in its subjective action and form. As humanity advanced in its reverence it came to where lack of attention to regeneration and self-comprehension was followed by an inner sense of guilt, and those who know the power of the two states of consciousness, the outer and the inner, have grown to where they look upon it as abnormal to higher progress, to only enter these finer courts of being just to rest and renew the physical body.
Men instinctively know that life is too serious and mighty to pass along on the objective side of living without now and then going into the center of being and holding an earnest deep contact with the silent consciousness.
In the old thought world it was not strange for master men in every walk of life to pray. The powerful warrior turned his eyes from the field of battle to the strength of Heaven; the trusting mourner turned his eyes from the loss of earth to the gain of dying; even Milton gave himself to the discords of politics in action, and the symphonies of the seraphims. In the silence great lives everywhere have mingled the meditations of the Absolute with the thoughts of the discordant, differentiated and apparent _now_.
There is not a family anywhere that does not possess at least one person who in himself holds the proof of how real and earnest a thing are the exercises and consciousness of the solitary vigil.
There is something of reverence yet in many lives as they recall the blessing given at meals and the evening hour of prayer. To the wayward and those living in the control of the outside things of life, it was an hour of bondage, but to those who were at all awakened to the call of the inside life, it was an even-tide of peace and power and rest.
It cannot be denied that the years have brought great changes in the methods of human worship. The contempt with which some of the later educators treat worship and religion betray an ignorance on their part both of the true office of revelation and reverence, and this blinds them to the real, innate, fundamental longing of human life.
There are many who come away from the old thought and who believe in the promulgation of a new truth, but they attempt to build up the new through the destruction of the old, and pass along as Iconoclasts seeking what they can destroy. These lives are the lawful product of the undeveloped human comprehension, and the only safety for the race is in the fact that only a few ever take them seriously, and these soon see that they are not inclusive enough to help more than the few, and that after a while, in order to meet the demands of their own increasing individuality, they must themselves pass into wider union, into worship and get away from their own limitations.
Humanity must forever pass between the outside and the inside of life, and only as each soul becomes awake in both conditions can it understand and unite with the laws of perfect being.
New Thought is conscious of the open door between the inside and the outside of life, the earth and Heaven, and it knows that each soul may live from choice in either state of consciousness and pass in and out at will.
Man instinctively knows the difference between the inside and the outside of living; he can easily detect the laws of action, and the laws of silence. The tendency of our New Thought development is to teach lives to pass more and more into the inside power or, in other words, to come into the unseen laws of being and work consciously with the energy that creates and which is unmanifested, while at the same time they manipulate the manifested, external things, and through the understanding of the finite are able to bring into expression the absolute power.
It is slowly dawning upon the present day intelligence that through this inner side of mind we can become more and more capable of controlling and directing the outer states of human consciousness and men are recognizing more and more that all physical objective form is inner spiritual arrangement.
Today humanity is looking at the cant and form and creed of the crowd, and giving them their own rightful place, power and function, but it is also looking at the unseen and daring to affirm that an audience with God is attainable, certain and possible and productive of its own natural expressions in its own realm of higher recognition.
Today more than ever before new strength is being born into what the world calls the devotional element of humanity and it is being born on a sane, healthy plane of understanding which bids fair to revolutionize the world.
It does not take long to see, when we look with a clear vision, that those who display most power today, and who are productive of the greatest good to the developing world are not those who are living in fixed relationship with the outside of life; it is true that those on the outer rim may boast of perfect physical strength and a perfect brain and a physical beauty, but the victory today is not from the without, but it is rather for those who are psychologically practical, mystically enlightened and subtle with a deep scientific relationship with all nature's finer forces and who know life not alone as a science or as a philosophy, or as a religion, but as an art.
The truth must some day beat its way into the developing minds of men that we are now alive in a great age, and are coming to where the inside power must become externalized and that those who today stand masters of life, and those who will continue to become masters of life and leaders in power and helpfulness, must do it by a development that is not so much characterized by their objective knowledge as by their subjective holiness or wholeness.
We must learn what we never seem to have learned before, that the moments we spend in the external world are not wholly our strongest or sanest moments and that all external outside action is the crudest form of energy, and that when we want the _real_, we must turn the clear deep eye of our nature toward the inner, the silent, and then all our power seems to well up and meet us, because it is called in from the apparent to the Absolute of being.
The next great truth is that all the old ways of life are never thrown away until we have something to live by in the new; old truths never die, they are always existent, but their methods of expression must be changed to suit the developing intellectuality and spirituality of man.
In the old thought life prayer was the pathway to the interior world of power, but today we know that recognition must be the guide to the interior world of power. Prayer was the pathway of the old forefathers and prayer in its first inception was a straight road to the center of divine union, but after the minds of men, befogged between the glamour of the external and the power of the internal, evolved a form of prayer that led the race away from its center out into the rim of living, the power ceased; prayer became full of cant and form, words became meaningless and non-mystical; the truth that "God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth" was lost in the increasing bewilderment of the mind.
After a while humanity, seeing the futility of objective kind of prayer, ceased its praying, not because it had worn out prayer, not because it had wandered from its desire of worship and soul communion, but because it had worn out the old useless method, and found the dross of the letter; no one stood developed to where he could push faith into a new interpretation.
Self examination and supplication is natural to every life as soon as it develops to a finer knowledge of what passes within itself. Until the last man of the earth is dead this natural cry for the communion with the inner states of consciousness and the union with the great absolute God-life will rise up and flourish and wax strong in the souls of men.
We have learned now too much of the inside of living to ever be happy with the outside form alone, and we have seen too much of the unseen forces within us to ever yield ourselves servants completely to the external powers. Our spiritual analysis is too fine to permit crude interpretation. Men are leaving the old just as the seed must forever leave the mould and dust of earth, and push its stalk up into heaven's bright sunshine.
Today we stop and in close self questioning and with a desire to know the truth, and nothing but the truth, We ask what is it that has rendered the old thought piety of our fathers unnatural and impossible to us? It does not take long to answer this if we look with eyes that have clearer sight. Men have turned away simply because they were too developed to be fed on the husks of a worn out expression that was no longer large enough to satisfy their developing thirst for Truth.
Our New Thought methods have come because men built them with their desires; they called for methods that would fit the increasing spiritual comprehension of developing humanity.
Today mankind is instinctively recoiling from every sense of separation from God which our fathers felt; human life has become more human; the outside of life is known at its real value, the inside of life is given its place and power; Love has become vitalized; human affection has become sweet and natural; human duties are blessed privileges and life is elevated to a pinnacle of power before unknown; social interests are now beginning in all and ending in all; the whole scheme of man's natural moral and religious existence has a true worth and dignity of its own, and humanity is listening, accepting and delighting to honor and obey. Only the life in the outside ranks of living will ever condemn this new rise of power, and only the cowardly can despise; it is whole, sane, sweet and divinely human and humanly divine in its application and privileges.
We lost, perhaps, a great part of the old time manner of communion with God because we first lost the old time spirit of supplication and the groveling spirit of the outside world, but we have not lost communion or devotion.