Excerpts from
"The Best of Prentice
Mulford"
ESSAYS SELECTED FROM THE WHITE CROSS LIBRARY
Includes the texts of two
complete
books originally published as
"Thoughts are Things and "The God in You".
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in Adobe PDF eBook form for $4.95
Book Description
Contents: Material mind vs. the spiritual mind; Who are our relations?
Thought currents; One way to cultivate courage; Look forward; God in
the trees; Some laws of health and beauty; Museum and menagerie
horrors; The god in yourself; Healing and renewing force of spring;
Immortality in the flesh; Attraction of aspiration; Accession of new
thought.
INTRODUCTION
THERE is a gospel older than
Christianity, older than Buddhism, older than Brahmanism, older than
the classic religions of Greece and Rome, older than the worship of
idols and the worship of ancestors. This gospel has been preached under
varying forms and names, and with stress laid upon different aspects of
its truth and its applicability to differing conditions of civilisation
and to the different characters of the peoples to whom the message has
been addressed. It is probably as old as the earliest traditions of
civilised man, and the preaching of it becomes a periodical necessity
through the very evolution and growth of civilisation itself. It acts
as an alternative medicine, a corrective of the tendency inherent in
civilisation to drift insensibly into channels of artificiality, to
substitute the letter for the spirit, the creed for the life, the
formula for the thing signified, habit for deliberate conscious action,
the cant catchword for the life-giving principle, the spurious
imitation for the genuine product. The Gospel to which I allude Is the
Gospel of the Return to Nature.
In every generation of the
world's
history since man was civilised, the realisation of this state has been
the dream of a few idealists who saw it existing in the far distant
past of the world's history in an allegorical form as the fabled Golden
Age sung of by the poets. If it is older than all the religions, it yet
takes its place as an essential element of all of them in the first
stages of their existence. Jesus Christ struck the keynote in his
preaching when he bade his disciples "suffer the little children to
come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," and again when he
said, "Except ye be born again as a little child ye cannot enter into
the Kingdom of Heaven." And the refrain of very many of his injunctions
to his disciples was the adoption of what we should now call the Simple
Life so much talked about but so little lived in these days of the
twentieth century. Buddha gave expression to the same thought and
practised it in his renunciation of his princely life and his adoption
of the life of the wondering preacher, of the begging friar. The same
truth was inculcated in China by Lao-tsze and again to a later age, in
France, by Jean Jacques Rousseau in his Social Contract and his
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among Men."
Man is born free, and yet
everywhere he
is in chains." Such were the opening words of this inspiring message to
the Peoples of the Earth. Man is born natural and civilisation makes
him artificial. He is born in touch with Nature and life under the open
sky and in the green fields. Civilisation draws him to courts and
towns. Mankind is born to liberty and equality: civilisation makes him
either a tyrant on the one hand or a slave on the other. The thought
underlying this gospel, whether preached by Christ or by Rousseau, or
today by Edward Carpenter in his Civilisation, its Cause and Cure,
contrasted as the characters of the preachers will appear, is
essentially the same.
Why were the Scribes and
Pharisees
hypocrites? Why, except because they had turned from the spirit to the
letter, from Nature to artificiality? What was the crime of the French
Monarchy but that it fostered and perpetuated unnatural conditions and
artificial restrictions which froze the life-blood of the French
people? What were the faults which Prentice Mulford saw in American
civilisation, if they were not the faults which arise directly from the
too rapid growth of the luxuries and so-called advantages which
civilisation and commercial development bring in their train, and from
the neglect of those forces which are inherent in Nature itself and
without which the life-blood of a nation of necessity becomes
contaminated and impoverished?
"You are fortunate (writes
Prentice
Mulford) if you love trees, and especially the wild ones growing where
the great Creative Force placed them and independent of man's care. For
all things that we call wild or natural are nearer the Infinite Mind
than those which have been enslaved, artificialised and hampered by
man. Being nearer the Infinite, they have in them the more perfect
infinite force and thought. That is why, when you are in the midst of
what is wild and natural, where every trace of man's works is left
behind, you feel an indescribable exhilaration and freedom that you do
not realise elsewhere."
This sentence seems to me to
strike a
note of the greatest importance in connection with all these "Return to
Nature" movements in whatever period of the world's history they may
have occurred. It is especially noteworthy how each movement of the
kind has been followed by a
great uprising of the life forces of the nation or nations to whom it
was preached. It acts on the generation which listens to its preaching
like the winds of spring on the sap of winter trees. It is the great
revivals consequent on such preaching that let loose the pent-up
energies of the human race and in doing so make the great epochs of
history. Christianity was the result of one such great movement. The
French Revolution was the result of such another.
The gospel of Rousseau was
preached not
to the French nation only. It was preached in France, it is true, but
it was preached to mankind at large, and the fact that it was listened
to by many nations outside France is more than half the explanation of
the triumphs of Napoleon, the heir of the new French Democracy.
In the early days of his triumph Napoleon came to the peoples of the
other countries of Europe as much in the guise of a deliverer as of a
conqueror. The soldiers that fought in the armies against
him had heard the message of freedom and equality and were in no mood
to contend with its conquering arm. The gospel according to Jean
Jacques Rousseau was this life-giving force. Like a tonic breath from
the sea, like a draught of champagne, it was at the same time
invigorating and intoxicating to its hearers. Prentice Mulford was
right, the Gospel of Nature, wherever preached, "has ever made man feel
an indescribable exhilaration and freedom."
Where Mulford differed from
Rousseau
was in seeing more clearly, more spiritually, what the Return to Nature
really signified. That it signified the getting in touch once more i:
with "the Infinite Force and Mind as expressed by all natural things."
This Spirit of Nature, "this Force of the Infinite Mind," was given
out, he maintained, by every wild tree, bird, or animal. It was a
literal element and force, going to man from tree and from living
creature. If you loved Nature, if you loved the trees, you would find
them, declared Mulford, responsive to such love.
"You are fortunate (he says) when
you
grow to a live, tender, earnest love for the wild trees, animals, and
birds, and recognise them all as coming from and built of the same mind
and spirit as your own, and able also to give you something very
valuable in return for the love which you give them. The wild tree is
not irresponsive or regardless of a love like that. Such love is not a
myth or mere sentiment. It is a literal element and force going from
you to the tree. It is felt by the spirit of the tree. You represent a
part and belonging of the Infinite Mind. The tree represents another
part and belonging of the Infinite Mind. It has its share of life,
thought, and intelligence. You have a far greater share, which is to be
greater still--and then still greater."
And again:--
"As the Great Spirit has made all
things, is not that All-pervading mind and wisdom in all things? If
then we love the trees, the rocks and all things, as the Infinite made
them, shall they not in response to our love give us each of their
peculiar thought and wisdom? Shall we not draw nearer to God through a
love for these expressions of God in the rocks and trees, birds and
animals?"
Poets have told us the same
story. Sir
Walter Scott did so, for instance, in his beautiful lines in "The
Lay of the Last Minstrel":-
"Call it not vain. They do not
err. Who
say that, when the poet dies, Mute Nature mourns her worshipper And
celebrates his obsequies; That say mute crag and cavern lone For the
departed hard make moan, And rivers teach their rushing wave To murmur
dirges o'er his grave."
Wordsworth, too, understood the
communion with Nature, as is shown by many of his verses, and most of
all by his lines on the vision of the daffodils. The sight of the
daffodils dancing by the lake was to him like the midnight dance of
fairies or elves on the greensward, instinct with conscious vitality,
and the impulse of contagious motion. This picture of the 'daffodils'
delight in their own life and beauty recalled itself automatically to
the poet's mind, and bade him join them in their fairy revels. No poet
could have put the mood of communion with Nature in lines of greater
felicity. They are, indeed, well known, but to the lover of Nature they
will bear quoting again and again. The poet exclaims:--
" I gazed and gazed, but little
thought
What joy the show to me had brought. For oft, when on my couch I lie In
vacant or in pensive mood. They flash upon that inward eye Which is the
bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances
with the daffodils."
Other poets have voiced the same
sense
of communion with Nature in varying forms and degrees of intensity. A
lesser known one of the present day has claimed poetry as Nature's
mouthpiece, and condemned its neglect as a refusal to be brought into
touch with Nature's many voices by the most articulate means at its
disposal. Take the following verses as an example :-
"If thou disdain the sacred Muse,
Beware lest Nature, past recall, Indignant at that crime, refuse Thee
entrance to her audience hall. Beware lest sea and sky and all That
bears reflection of her face Be blotted with a hueless pall Of
unillumined commonplace. Ah! desolate hour when that shall be, When dew
and sunlight, rain and wind Shall seem but trivial things to
thee,
Unloved, unheeded, undivined! Nay, rather let that morning find Thy
molten soul exhaled and gone, Than in a living death resigned So darkly
still to labour on."
We see that poets galore have
voiced
this sentiment and have even expressed it like Sir Waiter Scott in the
form of a belief in the conscious Life of Nature. Poets live in a world
of fancy and imagination. We do not take their statements too
literally. It is different when we come to a man who writes essays,
which he would have us take as a guide in life, who, in his wildest
flights, expects to be taken as intending to convey the full force of
what he says, in however spiritual a sense.
You cannot say of the lines of
Scott
what the great Earl of Chatham said in quite a different connection,
that " though poetry they are no fiction." * You feel that Scott was by
way of expressing a poetic mood, the literal truth of which he
would never dream of substantiating over the dinner table, Prentice
Mulford, on the other hand, preached this doctrine as an actual truth
to be accepted and acted upon, to be made a basis upon which to erect a
practical manual on the subject of how to live most intensely, of how,
in short, to be most alive while living. Prentice Mulford, in
preaching his gospel, echoed in other words the message proclaimed by
the Founder of Christianity: "I have come that ye might have life, and
that ye might have it more abundantly."
To Mulford every man is an
unconscious
psychometrist. The infection of good or evil is all-pervasive.
"Everything (he tells us) from a stone to a human being sends out to
you as you look upon it a certain amount of force affecting you
beneficially or injuriously according to the quality of life or
animation which it possesses. Take any article of furniture, a chair or
a bedstead, for instance. It contains not only the thought of those who
first planned and moulded it on its construction, but it is also
permeated with the thought and varying moods of all who have sat on it
or slept in it. So also are the walls and every article of furniture in
any room permeated with the thought of those who have dwelt in it, and
if it has been long lived in by people whose lives were narrow,
whose occupation varied little from year to year, whose moods
were dismal and cheerless, the walls and furniture will be saturated
with this gloomy and sickly order of thought.
"If you are very sensitive, and
stay in
such a room but for a single day, you will feel in some way the
depressing effect of such thought, unless you keep very positive to it,
and to keep sufficiently positive for twenty-four hours at a time
to resist it would be extremely difficult. If you are in any degree
weak or ailing you are then most negative or open to the nearest
thought- element about you, and will be affected by it, in addition to
the wearying mental effect (first mentioned) of any object kept
constantly before the eyes.
"It is injurious, then, to be
sick, or
even wearied, in a room where other people have been sick, or where
they have died, because in thought-element all the misery and
depression, not only of the sick and dying but of such as gathered
there and sympathised with the patient, will be still left in the room,
and this is a powerful unseen agent for acting injuriously on the
living."
The above quotation is from an
essay on
" Spells, or the Law of Change"; but our author develops the same idea
to a fuller extent in another essay, that on "Positive and Negative
Thought," in which he enlarges on the importance of being positive and
not negative when surrounded by those who are emitting poisonous
thought atmosphere, such as envy, jealousy, cynicism, or despondency.
This, he tells us, is as real as an noxious gas and infinitely more
dangerous. If you are then in a negative or receptive state you are to
all intents and purposes a sponge, absorbing evil influences, the full
harm of which may not be realised till days afterwards.
You must know, then, when to be
in a
positive and when in a negative frame of mind. As a rule you must be
positive when you have dealings with the world and negative when you
retire within yourself. These conditions inevitably alternate one with
another, and the exercise of much positive force will bring about a
natural reaction after a certain time. Why, asks Prentice Mulford, did
the Christ so often withdraw from the multitude? It was, he avers,
because after exercising in some way the immense power of concentrated
thought, either by healing or talking, or by giving some proofs of his
command over the physical elements, at which times he was positive and
expending his forces, he, feeling the negative state coming upon him,
left the crowd so that he should not absorb their lower thought.
Prentice Mulford lays great
stress on
the reality, indeed, substantiality of thought. "As a man
thinketh, so is he." "Your spirit," says Mulford, " is a bundle of
thought." What you think most of, that is your spirit. " Thought," he
says again, " is a substance as much as air, or any other unseen
element of which chemistry makes us aware. Strong thought is the same
as strong will. Every thought, spoken or unspoken, is a thing as real,
though invisible, as water or metal. When you think you work. Every
thought represents an outlay of force. If a man thinks murder he
actually puts out an element of murder in the air. He sends from him a
plan of murder as real as if drawn on paper. If the thought is absorbed
by others, it inclines them towards violence, if not murder. If a
person is ever thinking of sickness he sends from him the element of
sickness. If he thinks of health, strength, and cheerfulness, he sends
from him constructions of thought helping others towards health and
strength, as well as himself."
In thought every man should look
forward and cast the past behind him. " Nature buries its dead as
quickly as possible, and gets them out of sight. It is better, however,
to say that Nature changes what it has no further use for into other
forms of life. The tree produces the new leaf with each return of
spring. It will have nothing to do with its dead ones. It treasures up
no withered rose leaves to bring back sad remembrance." . . . " Nothing
in Nature is at a standstill. A gigantic incomprehensible Wisdom moves
all things forward towards greater and higher powers and possibilities.
You are included in and are part of this force."
If then, argues Mulford, you do
not
move forward with the rest of Nature, you will inevitably sink, and
rightly sink, into decrepitude and decay. Why are outworn creeds
outworn? Simply because they have not changed with the changing thought
of man, they have not evolved with the evolution of the race. They have
remained behind on a lower plane while man has moved forward to a
higher. If you cling to them you cling to what will draw you back and
draw you downward. It is the same in business. The business methods of
one generation must be changed and modified in order to adapt the
business to the conditions and demands of the uprising generation. The
"good old times" may have been good in their way, though their goodness
is generally exaggerated; but to attempt to revive their ways of
thought for the use of later generations is like putting new wine into
old bottles.
Prentice Mulford had absorbed
among his
other ideas the eastern doctrine of metempsychosis. The race had
evolved, he held, from the lowest forms. It could, therefore, evolve
indefinitely higher. Man, as at present constituted, was not its
ultimate aim. The possibilities of human evolution were infinite.
"It is a grand mistake (he
writes),
that of supposing that any man or woman is the result of that
one short life which we live here. We have all lived possibly in
various forms as animal, bird, snake, insect, plant. Our starting-point
of matter in existence has been dragged on the sea's bottom, embedded
in icebergs, and vomited out of volcanoes amid fire, smoke and ashes.
It has been tossed about on the ocean and has lain maybe for centuries
and centuries embedded in the heart of some Pleiocene mountain. We have
crept up and up, now in one form, now in another, always gaining
something more in intelligence, something more of force, by each
change, until at last here we are, nor have we got far along yet."
If man's power of developing is
indefinite it follows, thinks Mulford, that his power of prolonging
life is also limitless; i.e. not merely prolonging life under other
conditions outside the physical body, but even of prolonging life
within the physical body itself. Hence his essay dealing with
Immortality in the Flesh--an essay which more than any other has led to
Mulford being dubbed a crank and a mad dreamer. " We believe," he
writes, "that immortality in the flesh is a possibility, or in other
words, that a physical body can be retained so long as the spirit
desires its use, and that this body instead of decreasing in strength
and vigour as the years go on, will increase and its youth will be
perpetual."
There is a Law (says Mulford) of
Silent
Demand, and silent continuous demand made with concentration of will
and thought can obtain whatever it asks for--whatever it claims as its
own, in view of the fact that each human being is part of the Infinite
Life and has inalienable relationship to the Supreme Power. "There will
be built," our author predicts, "in time, an edifice partaking of the
nature of a church where all persons of whatever condition, age,
nationality, or creed may come to lay their needs before the great
Supreme Power and demand of that Power help to supply those needs. It
should be a church without sect or creed. It should be open every day
during the week and every evening until a reasonable hour. It should be
a place of silence for the purpose of silent demand or prayer. It
should be a place of earnest demand for permanent good, yet not a place
of gloom. A church should be held as a sanctuary for the concentration
of the strongest thought power. The strongest thought power is where
the motive is the highest. You can get such power by unceasing silent
demand of the Supreme Power of which you are a part."
This power of silent demand can
be
utilised, then, for all purposes. It can be utilised, for instance, to
keep the body in health, to make good the wearing away of the tissues,
to prevent the ageing and final perishing of the physical body. "The
body is continually changing its elements in accordance with the
condition of the mind. If it is in certain mental conditions, it is
conveying to itself elements of decay, weakness, and physical death. If
in another mental condition, it is adding to itself elements of
strength and life. That which the spirit takes on in either case is
thought or belief. Thoughts and beliefs materialise themselves in flesh
and blood. Belief in inevitable decay and death brings from the spirit
to the body the elements of decay and death. Belief in the possibility
of a constant inflowing to the spirit of life brings life."
These ideas, as I have already
suggested, seem fairly far-fetched. But it is a curious fact that
science does not appear to reject them quite as decisively as one would
have expected. Messrs. Carrington & Meader, in their book on Death,
its Causes and Phenomena, which bears very directly on this interesting
question, quote the observation of a physician, Dr. William A. Hammond:
"There is no physiological reason why man should die," and also Dr.
Monroe in his statement that the "human body as a machine is perfect.
It is apparently intended to go on forever." And again, they cite the
observation of Dr. Thomas J. Allen, who states that "the body is
self-renewing and should not therefore wear out by constant
disintegration."
The point is not so much perhaps
that
natural death, as we call it, is unnatural, as that the reason why
mankind die after a certain age has never been satisfactorily explained
from a medical point of view, and the medical evidence points to the
fact not so much that man might conceivably be immortal as that the
process of decay might be indefinitely retarded. That, in short, man
might live to a far greater age than he does at present.
There is a great deal in Prentice
Mulford which seems commonplace enough today. Men of the twentieth
century are familiar with his doctrines and his teachings. They have
been put forward with a great air of originality by many of his
followers, and they have been repeated in various forms and with
varying degrees of exaggeration. I doubt, however, if they have ever
been put forward so freshly and so forcibly as they were by the pioneer
of what we now call the New Thought Movement--Prentice Mulford. There
is in no other leader of this New Thought Movement such a sense of the
communion with Nature, so fresh and full a recognition of the
possibility of utilising Nature's forces for the benefit of body and
spirit. For, as I have already explained, Prentice Mulford was, not
only the first and greatest of the New Thought teachers, but also par
excellence an apostle of the Return to Nature. RALPH SHIRLEY.
THE MATERIAL MIND V. THE
SPIRITUAL
MIND
THERE belongs to every human being a higher self and a lower self--a
self or mind of the spirit which has been growing for ages, and a self
of the body, which is but a thing of yesterday. The higher self is full
of prompting idea, suggestion and aspiration. This it receives of the
Supreme Power. All this the lower or animal self regards as wild and
visionary. The higher self argues possibilities and power for us
greater than men and women now possess and enjoy. The lower self says
we can only live and exist as men and women have lived and existed
before us. The higher self craves freedom from the cumbrousness, the
limitations, the pains and disabilities of the body. The lower self
says that we are born to them, born to ill, born to suffer, and must
suffer as have so many before us. The higher self wants a standard for
right and wrong of its own. The lower self says we must accept a
standard made for us by others--by general and long-held opinion,
belief and prejudice.
"To thine own self be true" is an oft-uttered adage. But to
which
self? The higher or lower?
You have in a sense two minds--the mind of the body and the
mind of
the spirit.
Spirit is a force and a mystery. All we know or may ever know
of it
is that it exists, and is ever working and producing all results in
physical things seen of physical sense and many more not so seen.
What is seen, of any object, a tree, an animal, a stone, a man
is
only a part of that tree, animal, stone, or man. There is a force which
for a time binds such objects together in the form you see them. That
force is always acting on them to greater or lesser degree. It builds
up the flower to its fullest maturity. Its cessation to act on the
flower or tree causes what we call decay. It is constantly changing the
shape of all forms of what are called organized matter. An animal, a
plant, a human being are not in physical shape this month or this year
what they will be next month or next year.
This ever-acting, ever-varying force, which lies behind and,
in a
sense, creates all forms of matter we call Spirit.
To see, reason and judge of life and things in the knowledge
of this
force makes what is termed the "Spiritual Mind."
We have through knowledge the wonderful power of using or
directing
this force, when we recognize it, and know that it exists so as to
bring us health, happiness and eternal peace of mind. Composed as we
are of this force, we are ever attracting more of it to us and making
it a part of our being.
With more of this force must come more and more knowledge. At
first
in our physical existances we allow it to work blindly. Then we are in
the ignorance of that condition known as the material mind. But as mind
through its growth or increase of this power becomes more and more
awakened, it asks: "Why comes so much of pain, grief and disappointment
in the physical life?" "Why do we seem born to suffer and decay"
That question is the first awakening cry of the spiritual
mind, and
an earnest question or demand for knowledge must in time be answered.
The material mind is a part of yourself, which has been
appropriated
by the body and educated by the body. It is as if you taught a child
that the wheels of a steamboat made the boat move, and said nothing of
the steam, which gives the real power. Bred in such ignorance, the
child, should the wheels stop moving, would look no farther for the
cause of their stoppage than to try to find where to repair them, very
much as now so many depend entirely on repair of the physical body to
ensure its healthy, vigorous movement, never dreaming that the
imperfection lies in the real motive power--the mind.
The mind of the body or material mind sees, thinks and judges
entirely from the material or physical standpoint. It sees in your own
body all there is of you. The spiritual mind sees the body as an
instrument for the mind or real self to use in dealing with material
things. The material mind sees in the death of the body an end of all
there is of you. The spiritual mind sees in the death of the body only
the falling off from the spirit of a worn-out instrument. It knows that
you exist as before only invisible to the physical eye. The material
mind sees your physical strength as coming entirely from your muscles
and sinews, and not from source without your body.
It sees in such persuasive power, as you may have with tongue
or
pen, the only force you possess for dealing with people to accomplish
results The spiritual mind will know in time that your thought
influences people for or against your interests, though their bodies
are thousands of miles distant. The material mind does not regard its
thought as an actual element as real as air or water. The spiritual
mind knows that every one of its thousand daily secret thoughts are
real things acting on the minds of the persons they are sent to. The
spiritual mind knows that matter or the material is only an expression
of spirit or force; that such matter is ever changing in accordance
with the spirit that makes or externalizes itself in the form we call
matter, and therefore, if the thought of health, strength and
recuperation is constantly held to in the mind, such thought of health,
strength and rejuvenation will express itself in the body, making
maturity never ceasing, vigour never ending, and the keenness of every
physical sense ever increasing.
The material mind thinks matter, or that which is known by our
physical senses, to be the largest part of what exists. The spiritual
mind regards matter as the coarser or cruder expression of spirit and
the smallest part of what really exists. The material mind is made sad
at the contemplation of decay. The spiritual mind attaches little
importance to decay, knowing in such decay that spirit or the moving
force in all things is simply taking the dead body or the rotten tree
to pieces, and that it will build them up again as before temporarily
into some other new physical form of life and beauty. The mind of the
body thinks that its physical senses of seeing, hearing and feeling
constitute all the senses you possess. The higher mind or mind of the
spirit knows that it possesses other senses akin to those of physical
sight and hearing, but more powerful and far reaching.
The mind of the body has been variously termed "the material
mind,"
the "mortal mind " and the "carnal mind." All these refer to the same
mind, or, in other words to that part of your real sell which has been
educated in error by the body.
If you had been born and bred entirely among people who
believed
that the earth was a flat surface and did not revolve around the sun,
you would in the earlier years of your physical growth believe as they
did. Exactly in such fashion do you in your earlier years absorb the
thought and belief of those nearest you, who think that the body is all
there is of them, and judge of everything by its physical
interpretation to them. This makes your material mind.
The material mind seeing, what seems to it, depth, dissolution
and
decay in all human organization, and ignorant of the fact that the real
self or intelligence has in such seeming death only cast off a worn-out
envelope, thinks that decay and death is the ultimate of all humanity.
For such reason it cannot avoid a gloom or sadness coming of such
error, which now pervades so much of human life at present. One result
or reaction from such gloom born of hopelessness is a reckless spirit
for getting every possible gratification and pleasure, regardless of
right and justice so long as the present body lasts. This is a great
mistake. All pleasure so gained cannot be lasting. It brings besides a
hundredfold more misery and disappointment.
The spiritual mind teaches that pleasure is the great aim of
existence. But it points out ways and means for gaining lasting
happiness other than those coming of the teaching of the material mind.
The spiritual mind, or mind opened to higher and newer forces of life,
teaches that there is a law regulating the exercise of every physical
sense. When we learn and follow this law, our gratifications and
possessions do not prove sources of greater pain than happiness, as
they do to so many.
By the spiritual mind is meant a clearer mental sight of
things and
forces existing both in us and the Universe, and of which the race for
the most part has been in total ignorance. We have now but a glimpse of
these forces, those of some being relatively a little clearer than
those of others. But enough has been shown to convince a few that the
real and existing causes for humanity's sickness, sorrow and
disappointment have not in the past been seen at all. In other words,
the race has been as children, fancying that the miller inside was
turning the arms of the windmill, because some person had so told them.
So taught their would remain in total ignorance that the wind was the
motive power.
This illustration is not at all an overdrawn picture of the
existing
ignorance which rejects the idea that thought is an element all about
us as plentiful as air, and that as blindly directed by individuals and
masses of individuals in the domain of material mind or ignorance, it
is turning the windmill's arms, sometimes in one direction, sometimes
in another; sometimes with good and sometimes with evil results.
A suit of clothes is not the body that wears such suit. Yet
the
material mind reasons very much in this way. It knows of no such thing
as clothing for the spirit, for it does not know that body and spirit
are two distinct things. It reasons that the suit of clothing (the
body) is all there is of the man or woman. When that man or woman
tumbles to pieces through weakness, it sees only the suit of clothes so
going to pieces, and all its efforts to make that man or woman stronger
are put on the suit instead of making effort to reinforce the power
within which has made the suit.
There are probably no two individuals precisely alike as
regards the
relative condition or action on them of their material and spiritual
minds. With some the spiritual seems not at all awakened. With others
it has begun to stretch and rub its eyes as a person does on physical
awakening, when everything still appears vague and indistinct. Others
are more fully awakened. They feel to greater or lesser extent that
there are forces belonging to them before unthought of. It is with such
that the struggle for mastery between the material and spiritual mind
is likely to be most severe, and such struggle for a time is likely to
be accompanied by physical disturbance, pain or lack of ease.
The material mind is, until won over and convinced of the
truths,
constantly received by the spiritual mind at war and in opposition to
it The ignorant part of yourself dislikes very much to give up its long
accustomed habits of thinking. Its costs a struggle in any case at
first to own that we have been mistaken and give up views long held to.
The material mind wants to more on in a rut of life and idea,
as it
always has done, and as thousands are now doing. It dislikes change
more and more as the crust of the old thought held from year to year
grows more thickly over it. It wants to live on and on in the house it
has inhabited for years; dress in the fashion of the past; go to
business and return year in and year out at precisely the same hour. It
rejects and despises after a certain age the idea of learning any new
accomplishments, such as painting or music, whose greatest use is to
divert the mind, rest it, and enable you to live in other departments
of being, all this being apart from the pleasure also given you as the
mind or spirit teaches the body more and more skill and expertness in
the art you pursue.
The material mind sees as the principal use of any art only a
means
to bring money, and not in such art a means for giving variety to life,
dispelling weariness, resting that portion of the mind devoted to other
business, improving health and increasing vigour of mind and body. It
holds to the idea of being "too old to learn."
This is the condition of so many persons who have arrived at
or are
past " middle age." They want to "settle down." They accept as
inevitable the idea of "growing old." Their material mind tells them
that their bodies must gradually weaken, shrink from the fullness and
proportion of youth, decay and finally die.
Material minds say this always has been, and therefore always
must
be. They accept the idea wholly. They say quite unconsciously, "It must
be."
To say a thing must be, is the very power that makes it. The
material mind then sees the body ever as gradually decaying, even
though it dislikes the picture, and puts it out of sight as much as
possible. But the idea will recur from time to time as suggested by the
death of their contemporaries, and as it does they think " must," and
that state of mind indicated by the word "must" will inevitably bring
material results in decay.
The spiritual or more enlightened mind says: "If you would
help to
drive away sickness, turn your thought as much as you can on health,
strength and vigour, and on strong, healthy, vigorous material things,
such as moving clouds, fresh breezes, the cascade, the ocean surge; on
woodland scenes and growing healthy trees; on birds full of life and
motion; for in so doing you turn on yourself a real current or this
healthy life-giving thought, which is suggested and brought you by the
thought of such vigorous, strong material objects.
And above all, try to rely and trust that Supreme Power which
formed
all these things and far more and which is the endless and
inexhaustible part of your higher self or spiritual mind, and as your
faith increases in this Power, so will your own power ever increase.
Nonsense! " says the ultra material mind. " If my body is
sick, I
must have something done to cure that body with things I can see and
feel, and that is the only thing to be done. As for thinking, it makes
no difference what I think, sick or well."
At present in such a case a mind whose sense of these truths
new to
it, has just commenced to be awakened, will, in many cases, allow
itself to be for a time overpowered and ridiculed out of such an idea
by its own material mind or uneducated part of itself; and in this it
is very likely to be assisted by other material minds, who have not
woke up at all to these truths, and who are temporarily all the
stronger through the positiveness of ignorance. These are as people who
cannot see as far ahead as one may with a telescope, and who may be
perfectly honest in their disbelief regarding what the person with the
telescope does see. Though such people do not speak a word or argue
against the belief of the partly awakened mind, still their thought
acts on such a mind as a bar or blind to these glimpses of the truth.
But when the spiritual mind has once commenced to awaken,
nothing
can stop its further waking, though the material may for a time retard
it.
"Your real self may not at times be where your body is" says
the
spiritual mind. It is where your mind is--in the store, the office, the
workshop, or with some person to whom you are strongly attached, and
all of these may be in towns or cities far from the one your body
resides in. Your real self moves with inconceivable rapidity as your
thought moves. ''Nonsense" says your material mind; "I myself am
wherever my body is, and nowhere else"
Many a thought or idea that you reject as visionary, or as a
whim or
fancy, comes of the prompting of your spiritual mind. It is your
material mind that rejects it.
No such idea comes but that there is a truth in it. But that
truth
we may not be able to carry out to a relative perfection immediately.
Two hundred years ago some mind may have seen the use of steam as a
motive power. But that motive power could not then have been carried
out as it is today. A certain previous growth was necessary--a growth
and improvement in the manufacture of iron, in the construction of
roads, and in the needs of the people.
But the idea was a truth. Held to by various minds, it has
brought
steam as a motive power to its present relative perfection. It has
struggled against and overcome every argument and obstacle placed in
its way by dull, material, plodding minds. When you entertain any idea
and say to yourself in substance: "Well, such a thing may be, though I
cannot now see it" you remove a great barrier to the carrying out and
realization by yourself of the new and strange possibilities in store
for you.
The spiritual mind today sees belonging to itself a power for
accomplishing any and all results in the physical world, greater than
the masses dream of. It sees that as regards life's possibilities we
are still in dense ignorance. It sees however, a few things--namely,
perfect health, freedom from decay, weakness and death of the body,
power of transit, travel and observation independent of the body, and
methods for obtaining all needful and desirable material things through
the action and working of silent mind or thought, either singly or in
co-operation with others.
The condition of mind to be desired is the entire dominancy of
the
spiritual mind. But this does not imply dominancy or control in any
sense of tyrannical mastership of the material mind by the spiritual
mind. It does imply that the material mind will be swept away so far as
its stubborn resistance and opposition to the promptings of the
spiritual are concerned. It implies that the body will become the
willing servant, or rather assistant of the spirit. It implies that the
material mind will not endeavour to act itself up as the superior when
it is only the inferior. It implies that state when the body will
gladly lend its co-operation to all the desires of the spiritual mind.
Then all power can be given your spirit. Then no force need be
expended in resisting the hostility of the material mind. Then all such
force will be used to further our undertakings, to bring us material
goods, to raise us higher and higher into realms of power, peace and
happiness, to accomplish what now would be called miracles.
Neither the material mind nor the material body is to be won
over
and merged into the spiritual by any course of severe self censure or
self denial, nor self punishment in expiation for sins committed, nor
asceticism. That will only make you the more harsh, severe, bigoted and
merciless, both to yourself and others. It is out of this perversion of
the truth that have arisen such terms as " crucifying the body" and "
subjugating the lower or animal mind." It is from this perversion that
have come orders and associations of men and women who, going to
another extreme, seek holiness in self denial and penance.
"Holiness" implies wholeness, or whole action of the spirit on
the
body, or perfect control by your spirit over a body, through knowledge
and faith in our capacity to draw ever more and more from the Supreme
Power.
When you get out of patience with yourself, through the
aggressiveness of the material mind, through your frequent slips and
falls into your besetting sins through periods of petulance or ill
temper, or excess in any direction, you do no good, and only ill in
calling or thinking for yourself hard names. You should not call
yourself "a vile sinner" anymore than you would call any other person a
"vile sinner," If you do, you put out in thought the "vile sinner" and
make it temporarily a reality. If in your mental vision you teach
yourself that you are "utterly depraved" and a "vile sinner," you are
unconsciously making that your ideal, and you will unconsciously grow
up to it until the pain and evil coming of such unhealthy growth either
makes you turn back or destroys your body, For out of this state of
mind, which in the past has been much inculcated, comes harshness,
bigotry, lack of charity for others, hard, stern and gloomy and
unhealthy views of life, and these mental conditions will surely bring
physical disease.
When the material mind is put away, or, in other words, then
we
become convinced of the existence of these spiritual forces, both in
ourselves, and outside of ourselves, and when we learn to use them
rightly (for we are now and always have been using them in some way),
then to use the words of Paul: " Faith is swallowed up in victory," and
the sting and fear of death is removed. Life becomes then one glorious
advance forward from the pleasure of today to the greater pleasure of
tomorrow, and the phrase "to live" means only to enjoy.
"The Best of Prentice
Mulford"
ESSAYS SELECTED FROM THE WHITE CROSS LIBRARY
Includes the texts of two
complete
books originally published as
"Thoughts are Things and "The God in You".
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