Latest / Classic Non-Fiction Book Collection / The Science of Being Great - Wallace Wattles
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Any person may become great. There is a principle of
- 0:04Speaker 1: power in every person. By the intelligent use and direction
- 0:07Speaker 1: of this principle, man can develop his own mental faculties.
- 0:12Speaker 1: Man has an inherent power by which he may grow
- 0:14Speaker 1: in whatsoever direction he pleades, and there does not appear
- 0:18Speaker 1: to be any limit to the possibilities of his growth.
- 0:21Speaker 1: No man has yet become so great in any faculty,
- 0:24Speaker 1: but that it is possible for someone else to become greater.
- 0:28Speaker 1: The possibility is in the original substance from which man
- 0:31Speaker 1: is made. Genius is omniscient flowing into man. Genius is
- 0:36Speaker 1: more than talent. Talent may merely be one faculty developed
- 0:40Speaker 1: out of proportion to other faculties. But genius is the
- 0:44Speaker 1: union of man and God in the acts of the soul.
- 0:47Speaker 1: Great men are always greater than their deeds. They are
- 0:50Speaker 1: in connection with the reserve of the power that is
- 0:53Speaker 1: without limit. We do not know where the boundary of
- 0:56Speaker 1: the mental powers of man is. We do not even
- 0:59Speaker 1: know that there is a bad The power of conscious
- 1:02Speaker 1: growth is not given to the lower animals. It is
- 1:05Speaker 1: man's alone, and may be developed and increased by him.
- 1:09Speaker 1: The lower animals can to a great extent be trained
- 1:12Speaker 1: and developed by man. But man can train and develop himself.
- 1:17Speaker 1: He alone has this power, and he has it to
- 1:20Speaker 1: an apparently unlimited extent. The purpose of life for man
- 1:25Speaker 1: is growth, just as the purpose of life for trees
- 1:28Speaker 1: and plants is growth. Trees and plants grow automatically and
- 1:32Speaker 1: the long fixed lines. Man can grow as he will.
- 1:36Speaker 1: Trees and plants can only develop certain possibilities and characteristics.
- 1:41Speaker 1: Man can develop any power which is or has been
- 1:44Speaker 1: shown by any person anywhere. Nothing that is possible in
- 1:48Speaker 1: spirit is impossible in flesh and blood. Nothing that man
- 1:51Speaker 1: can think is impossible in action. Nothing that man can
- 1:55Speaker 1: imagine is impossible of realization. Man is formed for growth,
- 2:00Speaker 1: and he is under the necessity of growing. It is
- 2:03Speaker 1: essential to his happiness that he should continuously advance. Life
- 2:08Speaker 1: without progress becomes unendurable, and the person who seeses from
- 2:12Speaker 1: growth must either become imbecile or insane. The greater and
- 2:16Speaker 1: more harmonious and well rounded his growth, the happier man
- 2:20Speaker 1: will be. There is no possibility in any man that
- 2:23Speaker 1: is not in every man. But if they proceed naturally,
- 2:27Speaker 1: not two men will grow into the same thing, or
- 2:29Speaker 1: be alike. Every man comes into the world with a
- 2:32Speaker 1: predisposition to grow along certain lines, and growth is easier
- 2:36Speaker 1: for him along those lines than in any other way.
- 2:40Speaker 1: This is a wise provision, for it gives endless variety.
- 2:43Speaker 1: It is as if a gardener should throw all his
- 2:46Speaker 1: bulbs into one basket. To the superficial observer, they would
- 2:50Speaker 1: look alike, but growth reveals the tremendous difference. So if
- 2:54Speaker 1: men and women they are like a basket of bulbs.
- 2:58Speaker 1: One may be a rose and add brightness and color
- 3:00Speaker 1: to some dark corner of the world. One may be
- 3:03Speaker 1: a lily and teach a lesson of love and purity
- 3:06Speaker 1: to every eye that seeds. One may be a climbing
- 3:09Speaker 1: vine and hide the rugged outlines of some dark rock.
- 3:13Speaker 1: One may be a great oak. Among those boughs the
- 3:15Speaker 1: birds shall nest and sing, and beneath whose shade the
- 3:18Speaker 1: flocks shall rest at noon. But every one will be
- 3:21Speaker 1: something worth while, something rare, something perfect. There are undreamed
- 3:26Speaker 1: of possibilities in the common lives all around us. In
- 3:29Speaker 1: a large sense, there are no common people in times
- 3:33Speaker 1: of national stress and peril. The cracker box loafer of
- 3:36Speaker 1: the corner store, and the village drunkard become heroes and
- 3:39Speaker 1: statesmen through the quickening of principle of power within them.
- 3:43Speaker 1: There is a genius in every man and woman waiting
- 3:46Speaker 1: to be brought forth. Every village has its great man
- 3:50Speaker 1: or woman, someone to whom all go for advice in
- 3:53Speaker 1: time of trouble, someone who is instinctively recognized as being
- 3:57Speaker 1: great in wisdom and insight. To so such a one
- 4:00Speaker 1: the minds of the whole community turn in times of
- 4:03Speaker 1: local crisis. He is tacitly recognized as being great. He
- 4:08Speaker 1: does small things in a great way. He could do
- 4:11Speaker 1: great things as well if he did, But undertake them.
- 4:14Speaker 1: So can any man, so can you. The principle of
- 4:18Speaker 1: power gives us just what we ask of it. If
- 4:21Speaker 1: we only undertake little things, it only gives us power
- 4:24Speaker 1: for little things. But if we try to do great
- 4:27Speaker 1: things in a great way, it gives us all the
- 4:29Speaker 1: power there is. But beware of undertaking great things in
- 4:33Speaker 1: a small way. Of that we shall speak further on.
- 4:38Speaker 1: There are two mental attitudes a man may take. One
- 4:41Speaker 1: makes him like a football. It has resilience and reacts
- 4:45Speaker 1: strongly when forces apply to it, but it originates nothing.
- 4:49Speaker 1: It never acts of itself. There is no power within it.
- 4:53Speaker 1: Men of this type are controlled by circumstances and environment.
- 4:57Speaker 1: Their destinies are decided by things external to themselves. The
- 5:02Speaker 1: principle of power within them is never really active at all.
- 5:05Speaker 1: They never speak or act from within. The other attitude
- 5:09Speaker 1: makes man like a flowing spring. Power comes out from
- 5:13Speaker 1: the center of him. He has within him a well
- 5:16Speaker 1: of water springing up into everlasting life. He radiates force
- 5:21Speaker 1: heighest felt by his environment. The principle of power in
- 5:25Speaker 1: him is in constant action. He is self active. He
- 5:29Speaker 1: hath life in himself. No greater good can come to
- 5:33Speaker 1: any man or woman than to become self active. All
- 5:37Speaker 1: the experiences of life are designed by providence to force
- 5:40Speaker 1: men and women into self activity, to compel them to
- 5:43Speaker 1: cease being creatures of circumstances and master their environment. In
- 5:49Speaker 1: his lowest stage, man is the child of chance and
- 5:51Speaker 1: circumstance and the slave of fear. His acts are all
- 5:55Speaker 1: reactions resulting from the impingement upon him of forces in
- 5:58Speaker 1: his environment. He acts only as he has acted upon.
- 6:02Speaker 1: He originates. Nothing but the lowest savage has within him
- 6:06Speaker 1: a principle of power sufficient to master all that he fears,
- 6:10Speaker 1: and if he learns this and becomes self active. He
- 6:13Speaker 1: becomes as one of the gods. The awakening of the
- 6:16Speaker 1: principle of power in man is the real conversion, the
- 6:20Speaker 1: passing from death to life. It is when the dead
- 6:23Speaker 1: he heard the voice of the Son of Man and
- 6:25Speaker 1: come forth and live. It is the resurrection and the life.
- 6:30Speaker 1: When it is awakened, man becomes the son of the
- 6:33Speaker 1: Highest and all powers given to him in heaven and
- 6:36Speaker 1: on earth. Nothing was ever in any man that is
- 6:38Speaker 1: not in you. No man ever made more spiritual or
- 6:42Speaker 1: mental power than you can attain, or did greater things
- 6:46Speaker 1: than you can accomplish. You can become what you want
- 6:49Speaker 1: to be. Heredity and opportunity. You are not barred from
- 6:55Speaker 1: attaining greatness by heredity. No matter who were, what your
- 6:59Speaker 1: ancestors may have been, or how unlearned or lowly their station,
- 7:03Speaker 1: the upward way is open for you. There is no
- 7:07Speaker 1: such thing as inheriting a fixed mental position. No matter
- 7:11Speaker 1: how small the mental capital we receive from our parents,
- 7:14Speaker 1: it may be increased. No man is born incapable of growth.
- 7:20Speaker 1: Heredity accounts for something. We are born with subconscious mental tendencies,
- 7:25Speaker 1: as for instance, a tendency to melancholy, or cowardice, or
- 7:29Speaker 1: to ill temper. But all these subconscious tendencies may be
- 7:33Speaker 1: overcome when the real man awakens and comes forth. He
- 7:38Speaker 1: can throw them off very easily. Nothing of this kind
- 7:42Speaker 1: need keep you down. If you have inherited undesirable mental tendencies,
- 7:46Speaker 1: you can eliminate them and put desirable tendencies in their places.
- 7:51Speaker 1: An inherited mental trait is a habit of thought of
- 7:54Speaker 1: your father or mother impressed upon your subconscious mind. You
- 7:58Speaker 1: can substitute the posite impression by forming the opposite habit
- 8:02Speaker 1: of thought. You can substitute a habit of cheerfulness for
- 8:06Speaker 1: a tendency to despondency. You can overcome cowardice or ill temper.
- 8:12Speaker 1: Heredity may count for something too in an inherited conformation
- 8:16Speaker 1: of the skull. There is something in phrenology, if not
- 8:20Speaker 1: as much as its exponents claim. It is true that
- 8:23Speaker 1: the different faculties are localized in the brain, and that
- 8:27Speaker 1: the power of a faculty depends upon the number of
- 8:30Speaker 1: active brain cells in its area. A faculty whose brain
- 8:33Speaker 1: area is large is likely to act with more power
- 8:37Speaker 1: than one whose cranial section is small. Hence, persons with
- 8:41Speaker 1: certain confirmations of the skull show talent as musicians, orators, mechanics,
- 8:46Speaker 1: and so on. It has been argued from this that
- 8:49Speaker 1: a man's cranial formation must, to a great extent decide
- 8:54Speaker 1: his station in life, But this is an error. It
- 8:57Speaker 1: has been found that a small brain section which many
- 9:00Speaker 1: fine and active cells, gives as powerful expression to faculty
- 9:05Speaker 1: as a larger brain which quarter cells. And it has
- 9:08Speaker 1: been found that by turning the principle of power into
- 9:11Speaker 1: any section of the brain with the will and purpose
- 9:14Speaker 1: to develop a particular talent, the brain cells may be
- 9:17Speaker 1: multiplied indefinitely. Any faculty, power or talent you possess, no
- 9:23Speaker 1: matter how small or rudimentary, may be increased. You can
- 9:27Speaker 1: multiply the brain cells in this particular area until it
- 9:30Speaker 1: acts as powerfully as you wish. It is true that
- 9:34Speaker 1: you can act most easily through those faculties that are
- 9:37Speaker 1: now most largely developed. You can do with the least
- 9:41Speaker 1: effort the things which come naturally. But it is also
- 9:45Speaker 1: true that if you make the necessary effort, you can
- 9:47Speaker 1: develop any talent. You can do what you desire to
- 9:51Speaker 1: do and become what you want to be. When you
- 9:54Speaker 1: fix upon some ideal and proceed as hereinafter directed, all
- 9:58Speaker 1: the power of your being is turned into the faculties
- 10:01Speaker 1: required in the realization of that ideal. More blood and
- 10:05Speaker 1: nerve force go to the corresponding sections of the brain,
- 10:08Speaker 1: and the cells are quickened, increased, and multiplied in number.
- 10:13Speaker 1: The proper use of the mind of man will build
- 10:16Speaker 1: a brain capable of doing what the mind wants to do.
- 10:19Speaker 1: The brain does not make the man. The man makes
- 10:22Speaker 1: the brain. Your place in life is not fixed by heredity,
- 10:27Speaker 1: nor are you condemned to the lower levels by circumstances
- 10:31Speaker 1: or lack of opportunity. The principle of power in man
- 10:35Speaker 1: is sufficient for all the requirements of his soul. No
- 10:38Speaker 1: possible combination of circumstances can keep him down if he
- 10:42Speaker 1: makes his personal attitude right and determines to rise. The
- 10:47Speaker 1: power which formed man and purposed him for growth, also
- 10:51Speaker 1: controls the circumstances of society, industry, and government, and this
- 10:56Speaker 1: power is never divided against itself. The power which is
- 10:59Speaker 1: in you is in the things around you, and when
- 11:02Speaker 1: you begin to move forward, the things will arrange themselves
- 11:05Speaker 1: for your advantage. As described in later chapters of this book,
- 11:10Speaker 1: man was formed for growth and all things external were
- 11:13Speaker 1: designed to promote his growth. No sooner does a man
- 11:17Speaker 1: awaken his soul and enter on the advancing way than
- 11:20Speaker 1: he finds that not only is God for him, but Nature, society,
- 11:25Speaker 1: and his fellow men are for him also, and all
- 11:28Speaker 1: things work together for his good if he obeys the law.
- 11:32Speaker 1: Poverty is no bar to greatness, for poverty can always
- 11:36Speaker 1: be removed. Martin Luther, as a child, sang in the
- 11:40Speaker 1: streets for bread. Linnaeus the naturalist, had only forty dollars
- 11:44Speaker 1: with which to educate himself. He mended his own shoes
- 11:48Speaker 1: and often had to beg meals from his friends. Hugh
- 11:52Speaker 1: Miller apprenticed to a Stonemaidson began to study geology in
- 11:56Speaker 1: a quarry. George Stevenson invented of the locomotive engine, and
- 12:01Speaker 1: one of the greatest of civil engineers, was a coal
- 12:04Speaker 1: miner working in a mine when he awakened and began
- 12:08Speaker 1: to think. James Watt was a sickly child and was
- 12:12Speaker 1: not strong enough to be sent to school. Abraham Lincoln
- 12:16Speaker 1: was a poor boy. In each of these cases, we
- 12:19Speaker 1: see a principle of power in the man that lifts
- 12:22Speaker 1: him above all opposition and adversity. There is a principle
- 12:26Speaker 1: of power in you. If you use it and apply
- 12:29Speaker 1: it in a certain way, you can overcome all heredity
- 12:33Speaker 1: and master all circumstances and conditions, and become a great
- 12:37Speaker 1: and powerful personality. The source of power man's brain, body, mind, faculties,
- 12:45Speaker 1: and talents are the mere instruments he uses in demonstrating
- 12:49Speaker 1: greatness in themselves. They do not make him great. A
- 12:53Speaker 1: man may have a large brain and a good mind,
- 12:56Speaker 1: strong faculties, and brilliant talents. Yet he is not a
- 12:59Speaker 1: great man unless he uses all these in a great way.
- 13:03Speaker 1: That quality which enables man to use his abilities in
- 13:06Speaker 1: a great way makes him great. And to that quality
- 13:10Speaker 1: we give the name of wisdom. Wisdom is the essential
- 13:13Speaker 1: basis of greatness. Wisdom is the power to perceive the
- 13:18Speaker 1: best ends to aim at and the best means for
- 13:21Speaker 1: reaching those ends. It is the power to perceive the
- 13:24Speaker 1: right thing to do. The man who is wise enough
- 13:27Speaker 1: to know the right thing to do, who is good
- 13:30Speaker 1: enough to wish to do only the right thing, and
- 13:32Speaker 1: who is able and strong enough to do the right thing,
- 13:35Speaker 1: is a truly great man. He will instantly become marked
- 13:39Speaker 1: as a personality of power in any community, and man
- 13:42Speaker 1: will delight to do him honor. Wisdom is depended upon knowledge.
- 13:48Speaker 1: Where there is complete ignorance, there can be no wisdom,
- 13:51Speaker 1: no knowledge of the right thing to do. Man's knowledge
- 13:55Speaker 1: is comparatively limited, and so his wisdom must be small
- 13:59Speaker 1: unless he can connect his mind with knowledge greater than
- 14:02Speaker 1: his own and draw from it by inspiration the wisdom
- 14:06Speaker 1: that his own limitations deny him. This he can do.
- 14:10Speaker 1: This is what the really great man and women have done.
- 14:13Speaker 1: Man's knowledge is limited and uncertain. Therefore he cannot have
- 14:17Speaker 1: wisdom in himself. Only God knows all truth. Therefore, only
- 14:23Speaker 1: God can have real wisdom, or the right thing to
- 14:25Speaker 1: do at all times, and man can receive wisdom from God.
- 14:30Speaker 1: I proceed to give an illustration. Abraham Lincoln had limited education,
- 14:35Speaker 1: but he had the power to perceive truth. In Lincoln
- 14:39Speaker 1: we see pre eminently apparent the fact that real wisdom
- 14:43Speaker 1: consists in knowing the right thing to do at all
- 14:45Speaker 1: times and under all circumstances, in having the will to
- 14:49Speaker 1: do the right thing, and in having talent and ability
- 14:53Speaker 1: enough to be competent and able to do the right thing.
- 14:57Speaker 1: Back in the days of the abolition agitation and she
- 15:00Speaker 1: During the compromise period, when all other men were more
- 15:03Speaker 1: or less confused as to what was right and as
- 15:05Speaker 1: to what ought to be done, Lincoln was never uncertain.
- 15:10Speaker 1: He so through the superficial arguments of the pro slavery man.
- 15:13Speaker 1: He saw also the impracticability and fanatism of the abolitionists.
- 15:19Speaker 1: He sawed the right ends to aim at, and he
- 15:21Speaker 1: saw the best means to attain those ends. It was
- 15:24Speaker 1: because men recognized that he perceived truth and knew the
- 15:27Speaker 1: right thing to do, that they made him president. Any
- 15:31Speaker 1: man who develops the power to perceive truth, and who
- 15:34Speaker 1: can show that he always knows the right thing to do,
- 15:37Speaker 1: and that he can be trusted to do the right thing,
- 15:39Speaker 1: will be honored and advanced. The whole world is looking
- 15:43Speaker 1: eagerly for such men. When Lincoln became president, he was
- 15:48Speaker 1: surrounded by a multitude of so called able advisers, hardly
- 15:52Speaker 1: any two of whom were agreed. At times, they were
- 15:55Speaker 1: all opposed to his policies. At times, almost the whole
- 15:58Speaker 1: North was opposed to what he proposed to do. But
- 16:02Speaker 1: he saw the truth when others were misled by appearances.
- 16:05Speaker 1: His judgment was seldom or never wrong. He was at
- 16:09Speaker 1: once the ablest statesman and the best soldier of the period.
- 16:13Speaker 1: Where did he, a comparatively unlured man, get this wisdom.
- 16:18Speaker 1: It was not due to some peculiar formation of his skull,
- 16:21Speaker 1: or to some fineness of texture of his brain. It
- 16:24Speaker 1: was not due to some physical characteristics. It was not
- 16:28Speaker 1: even a quality of mind due to superior reasoning power.
- 16:32Speaker 1: Processes of reason do not often reach knowledge of truth.
- 16:36Speaker 1: It was due to spiritual insight. He perceived truth. But
- 16:41Speaker 1: where did he perceive it? And whence did the perception come.
- 16:45Speaker 1: We see something similar in Washington, whose faith and courage,
- 16:49Speaker 1: due to his perception of truth, held the colonies together
- 16:52Speaker 1: during the long and often apparently hopeless struggle of the Revolution.
- 16:57Speaker 1: We see something of the same thing in the phenomenal
- 17:00Speaker 1: genius of Napoleon, who always knew in military matters the
- 17:04Speaker 1: best means to adopt. We see that the greatness of
- 17:07Speaker 1: Napoleon was in nature, rather than in Napoleon, and we
- 17:11Speaker 1: discover back of Washington and Lincoln something greater than either
- 17:14Speaker 1: Washington or Lincoln. We see the same thing in all
- 17:18Speaker 1: great men and women. They perceive truth. But truth cannot
- 17:22Speaker 1: be perceived until it exists, and there can be no
- 17:25Speaker 1: truth until there is a mind to perceive it. Truth
- 17:29Speaker 1: does not exist apart from mind. Washington and Lincoln were
- 17:33Speaker 1: in touch and communication with a mind that knew all
- 17:36Speaker 1: knowledge and contained all truth. The same is true for
- 17:39Speaker 1: all who manifest wisdom. Wisdom is obtained by reading the
- 17:44Speaker 1: mind of God. The mind of God, there is a
- 17:49Speaker 1: cosmic intelligence that is in all things and through all things.
- 17:54Speaker 1: This is the one real substance. From it all things proceed.
- 17:58Speaker 1: It is intelligent substance or mind stuff. It is God.
- 18:03Speaker 1: Where there is no substance, there can be no intelligence.
- 18:06Speaker 1: For where there is no substance, there is nothing. Where
- 18:10Speaker 1: there is thought, there must be a substance which thinks.
- 18:14Speaker 1: Thought cannot be a function, for function is motion, and
- 18:17Speaker 1: it is unconceivable that mere motion should think. Thought cannot
- 18:23Speaker 1: be vibration, for vibration is motion, and that motion should
- 18:27Speaker 1: be intelligent is not thinkable. Motion is nothing but the
- 18:30Speaker 1: moving of substance. If there be intelligence shown, it must
- 18:34Speaker 1: be in the substance and not in the motion. Thought
- 18:38Speaker 1: cannot be the result of motions in the brain. If
- 18:41Speaker 1: thought is in the brain, it must be in the
- 18:43Speaker 1: brain substance, and not in the motions which brain substance makes.
- 18:49Speaker 1: But thought is not in the brain substance, For brain
- 18:52Speaker 1: substance without life is quite unintelligent and dead. Thought is
- 18:57Speaker 1: in the life principle that animates the brain. In the
- 19:00Speaker 1: spirit substance, which is the real man. The brain does
- 19:04Speaker 1: not think. The man thinks and expresses his thought through
- 19:08Speaker 1: the brain. There is a spirit substance that thinks. Just
- 19:12Speaker 1: as the spirit substance of man permits his body and
- 19:16Speaker 1: thinks and knows in the body, so the original spirit substance,
- 19:20Speaker 1: God permits all nature and things and knows in nature.
- 19:24Speaker 1: Nature is as intelligent as man, and knows more than man.
- 19:29Speaker 1: Nature knows all things. The whole mind has been in
- 19:32Speaker 1: touch with all things from the beginning, and it contains
- 19:36Speaker 1: all knowledge. Man's experience covers a few things, and these
- 19:40Speaker 1: things man knows, But God's experience covers all the things
- 19:45Speaker 1: that have happened since the creation, from the wreck of
- 19:47Speaker 1: a planet or the passing of a comet to the
- 19:50Speaker 1: fall of a sparrow. All that is and all that
- 19:52Speaker 1: has been are present in the intelligence that is wrapped
- 19:56Speaker 1: about us and infolds us and presses upon us from
- 19:59Speaker 1: every side. All the Encyclopedia's men have written are but
- 20:03Speaker 1: trivial affairs compared to the vast knowledge held by the
- 20:06Speaker 1: mind in which men live, move and have their being.
- 20:10Speaker 1: The truth. Men perceived by inspiration are thoughts held in
- 20:14Speaker 1: this mind. If they were not thoughts, man could not
- 20:18Speaker 1: perceive them, for they would have no existence, and they
- 20:21Speaker 1: could not exist as thoughts unless there is a mind
- 20:24Speaker 1: for them to exist in. And the mind can be
- 20:27Speaker 1: nothing else than a substance which thinks. Man is a
- 20:31Speaker 1: thinking substance, a portion of the cosmic substance. But man
- 20:35Speaker 1: is limited, while the cosmic intelligence from which he sprang,
- 20:39Speaker 1: which Jesus calls the Father, is unlimited. All intelligence, power,
- 20:44Speaker 1: and force comes from the Father. Jesus recognized this and
- 20:49Speaker 1: stated it very plainly, over and over again. He ascribed
- 20:53Speaker 1: all his wisdom and power to his unity with the
- 20:55Speaker 1: Father and to his perceiving the thoughts of God. My
- 20:59Speaker 1: Father and I are one. This was the foundation of
- 21:03Speaker 1: his knowledge and power. He showed the people the necessity
- 21:06Speaker 1: of becoming spiritually awakened, of hearing his voice and becoming
- 21:11Speaker 1: like him. He compared the unthinking man, who is the
- 21:14Speaker 1: prey and sport of circumstances to the dead man in
- 21:17Speaker 1: a tomb, and besought him to hear and come forth.
- 21:21Speaker 1: God is spirit, he said, be born again. Become spiritually awake,
- 21:27Speaker 1: and you may see His kingdom. Hear my voice, see
- 21:30Speaker 1: what I am and what I do, and come forth
- 21:33Speaker 1: and live. The words I speak are spirit and life.
- 21:38Speaker 1: Accept them and they will cause a well of water
- 21:40Speaker 1: to spring up within you. Then you will have life
- 21:43Speaker 1: within yourself. I do what I see the Father do,
- 21:47Speaker 1: he said, meaning that he read the thoughts of God.
- 21:51Speaker 1: The Father shows all things to the son. If any
- 21:54Speaker 1: man has the will to do the will of God,
- 21:57Speaker 1: he shall know truth. My teaching is not my own,
- 22:00Speaker 1: but His that sent me. You shall know the truth,
- 22:04Speaker 1: and the truth shall make you free. The spirit shall
- 22:07Speaker 1: guide you into all truth. We are immersed in mind,
- 22:11Speaker 1: and that mind contains all knowledge and old truth. It
- 22:15Speaker 1: is seeking to give us this knowledge, for our Father
- 22:18Speaker 1: delights to give good gifts to his children. The prophets
- 22:22Speaker 1: and seers and great men and women past and present
- 22:26Speaker 1: were made great by what they received from God, not
- 22:29Speaker 1: by what they were taught by man. This limitless reservoir
- 22:33Speaker 1: wisdom and power is open to you. You can draw
- 22:36Speaker 1: upon it as you will. According to your needs. You
- 22:39Speaker 1: can make yourself what you desire to be. You can
- 22:42Speaker 1: do what you wish to do, You can have what
- 22:45Speaker 1: you want. To accomplish this, you must learn to become
- 22:48Speaker 1: one with the Father, so that you may perceive truth,
- 22:52Speaker 1: so that you may have wisdom and know the right
- 22:54Speaker 1: ends to seek and the right means to use to
- 22:57Speaker 1: attain those ends, and so that you may secure power
- 23:00Speaker 1: and ability to use the means. In closing this chapter,
- 23:03Speaker 1: resolve that you will now lay aside all else and
- 23:06Speaker 1: concentrate upon the attainment of conscious unity with God. Oh,
- 23:11Speaker 1: when I am safe in my stillborn home, I tread
- 23:14Speaker 1: on the pride of Greece and Rome. And when I
- 23:17Speaker 1: am stretched beneath the pines, where the evening star so
- 23:21Speaker 1: holy shines, I laugh at the lore and pride of man,
- 23:25Speaker 1: at the Sophist schools and the learned clan. For what
- 23:28Speaker 1: are they, in all their high conceit. When man in
- 23:30Speaker 1: the bush with God may meet preparation, draw nigh to God,
- 23:38Speaker 1: and he will draw nigh to you. If you become
- 23:41Speaker 1: like God, you can reach his thoughts. And if you
- 23:44Speaker 1: do not, you will find the inspirational perception of truth impossible.
- 23:50Speaker 1: You can never become a great man or woman until
- 23:52Speaker 1: you have overcome anxiety, worry, and fear. It is impossible
- 23:56Speaker 1: for an anxious man, a worried one, or a fearful
- 23:59Speaker 1: one to put receive truth. All things are distorted and
- 24:03Speaker 1: thrown out of their proper relations by such mental states,
- 24:06Speaker 1: and those who are in them cannot read the thoughts
- 24:09Speaker 1: of God. If you are poor, or if you are
- 24:12Speaker 1: anxious about business or financial matters, you are recommended to
- 24:16Speaker 1: study carefully the first volume of this series, The Science
- 24:19Speaker 1: of Getting Rich, that will present to you a solution
- 24:23Speaker 1: for your problems of this nature, no matter how large
- 24:26Speaker 1: or how complicated they may seem to be, there is
- 24:29Speaker 1: not the least cause for worry about financial affairs. Every
- 24:33Speaker 1: person who wills to do so may rise above want,
- 24:36Speaker 1: have all he needs, and become rich. The same source
- 24:40Speaker 1: upon which you proposed to draw for mental unfolding and
- 24:43Speaker 1: spiritual power is at your service for the supply of
- 24:46Speaker 1: all your material wants. Study this truth until it is
- 24:50Speaker 1: fixed in your thoughts, and until anxiety is banished from
- 24:53Speaker 1: your mind, enter a certain way which leads to material riches. Again.
- 24:59Speaker 1: If you you are anxious or worried about your health.
- 25:02Speaker 1: Realize it is possible for you to attain perfect health,
- 25:05Speaker 1: so that you may have strength sufficient for all that
- 25:08Speaker 1: you wish to do. And more, that intelligence that stands
- 25:12Speaker 1: ready to give you wealth and mental and spiritual power
- 25:15Speaker 1: will rejoice to give you health. Also. Perfect health is
- 25:19Speaker 1: yours for the asking, if you will only obey the
- 25:22Speaker 1: simple laws of life and live aright, conquer ill health,
- 25:26Speaker 1: and cast out fear. But it is not enough to
- 25:29Speaker 1: rise above financial and physical anxiety and worry. You must
- 25:33Speaker 1: rise above moral evil, doing as well sound your inner consciousness.
- 25:37Speaker 1: Now for the motives that actuate you, and make sure
- 25:40Speaker 1: they are right. You must cast out lust and cease
- 25:44Speaker 1: to be ruled by appetite, and you must begin to
- 25:46Speaker 1: govern appetite. You must eat only to satisfy hunger, never
- 25:51Speaker 1: forglottenous pleasure. And in all things you must make the
- 25:55Speaker 1: flesh obey the spirit. You must lay aside greed. Have
- 25:59Speaker 1: no unworthy motive in your desire to become rich and powerful.
- 26:03Speaker 1: It is legitimate and right to desire riches if you
- 26:06Speaker 1: want them for the sake of the soul, but not
- 26:09Speaker 1: if you desire them for the lusts of the flesh.
- 26:12Speaker 1: Cast out pride and vanity, have no thought of trying
- 26:16Speaker 1: to rule over others or without doing them. This is
- 26:19Speaker 1: a vital point. There is no temptation so insidious as
- 26:23Speaker 1: the selfish desire to rule over others. Nothing so appeals
- 26:28Speaker 1: to the average man or woman as to sit in
- 26:30Speaker 1: the uppermost places at feasts, to be respectfully saluted in
- 26:34Speaker 1: the marketplace, and to be called rabbi master. To exercise
- 26:39Speaker 1: some sort of control over others is the secret motive
- 26:42Speaker 1: of every selfish person. The struggle for power over others
- 26:46Speaker 1: is the battle of the competitive world. And you must
- 26:49Speaker 1: rise about that world and its motives and aspirations, and
- 26:53Speaker 1: seek only for life. Cast out envy. You can have
- 26:57Speaker 1: all that you want, and you need not envy any
- 26:59Speaker 1: man what he has above all things. See to it
- 27:03Speaker 1: that you do not hold malice or enmity toward any one.
- 27:06Speaker 1: To do so cuts you off from the mind whose
- 27:08Speaker 1: treasures you seek to make your own. He that loves
- 27:12Speaker 1: not his brother loves not God. Lay aside all narrow
- 27:17Speaker 1: personal ambition, and determine to seek the highest good, and
- 27:20Speaker 1: to be swayed by no unworthy selfishness. Go where all
- 27:24Speaker 1: the foregoing, and set these moral temptations out of your heart,
- 27:28Speaker 1: one by one, determined to keep them out. Then resolve
- 27:33Speaker 1: that you will not only abandon all evil thought, but
- 27:36Speaker 1: that you will forsake all deeds, habits, and courses of
- 27:39Speaker 1: action which do not recommend themselves to your noblest ideals.
- 27:44Speaker 1: This is supremely important. Make this resolution with all the
- 27:47Speaker 1: power of your soul, and you are ready for the
- 27:50Speaker 1: next step towards greatness, which is explained in the following chapter.
- 27:55Speaker 1: The social point of view. Without faith, it is impossible
- 28:01Speaker 1: to please God, and without faith, it is impossible for
- 28:04Speaker 1: you to become great. The distinguishing characteristics of all really
- 28:09Speaker 1: great men and women is an unwavering faith. We see
- 28:13Speaker 1: this in Lincoln during the dark days of the war.
- 28:16Speaker 1: We see it in Washington at Valley Forge. We see
- 28:19Speaker 1: it in Livingstone, the crippled missionary threading the mazes of
- 28:23Speaker 1: the dark continent. His soul aflame with the determination to
- 28:28Speaker 1: let in delight upon the accursed slave trade which his
- 28:31Speaker 1: soul abhorred. We see it in Luther and in Francis Willard,
- 28:36Speaker 1: in every man and woman who has attained a place
- 28:39Speaker 1: on the master roll of the great ones of the world.
- 28:42Speaker 1: Faith not a faith in one's self or in one's
- 28:45Speaker 1: own powers, but faith in principle, in the something great
- 28:49Speaker 1: which upholds right, and which may be relied upon to
- 28:53Speaker 1: give us the victory in due time. Without this faith,
- 28:57Speaker 1: it is not possible for any one to rise to
- 28:59Speaker 1: real greatness. The man who has no faith in principle
- 29:03Speaker 1: will always be a small man. Whether you have this
- 29:07Speaker 1: faith or not depends upon your point of view. You
- 29:11Speaker 1: must learn to see the world as being produced by evolution,
- 29:14Speaker 1: as something that is evolving and becoming, not as a
- 29:17Speaker 1: finished work. Millions of years ago, God worked with very
- 29:22Speaker 1: low and crude forms of life, low and crude, yet
- 29:25Speaker 1: each perfect after its kind. Higher and more complex organisms,
- 29:30Speaker 1: animal and vegetable appeared. Through the successive ages. The Earth
- 29:35Speaker 1: passed through stage after stage in its unfolding, each stage
- 29:39Speaker 1: perfect in itself and to be succeeded by a higher one.
- 29:44Speaker 1: What I wish you to note is that the so
- 29:46Speaker 1: called lower organisms are as perfect after their kind as
- 29:50Speaker 1: the higher ones. That the world in the Eocene period
- 29:54Speaker 1: was perfect for that period. It was perfect, but God's
- 29:58Speaker 1: work was not finished. This is true of the world
- 30:01Speaker 1: to day, physically, socially, and industrially. It is all good,
- 30:06Speaker 1: and it is all perfect. It is not complete anywhere
- 30:10Speaker 1: or in any part, but so far as the handwork
- 30:13Speaker 1: of God has gone, it is perfect. This must be
- 30:17Speaker 1: your point of view, that the world and all it
- 30:20Speaker 1: contains is perfect, though not completed. All's right with the world.
- 30:25Speaker 1: That is the great fact. There is nothing wrong with anything.
- 30:29Speaker 1: There is nothing wrong with anybody. All the facts of
- 30:33Speaker 1: life you must contemplate from this standpoint. There is nothing
- 30:37Speaker 1: wrong with nature. Nature is a great advancing present, working
- 30:41Speaker 1: beneficently for the happiness of all. All things in Nature
- 30:46Speaker 1: are good. She has no evil. She is not completed,
- 30:51Speaker 1: for creation is still unfinished. But she is going on
- 30:54Speaker 1: to give to man even more bountifully than she has
- 30:57Speaker 1: given to him in the past. Nature is a partial
- 31:00Speaker 1: expression of God, and God is love. She is perfect,
- 31:04Speaker 1: but not complete. So it is of human society and government.
- 31:09Speaker 1: But though there are trust and combinations of capital, and
- 31:13Speaker 1: strikes and lockouts and so on, all these things are
- 31:16Speaker 1: part of the forward movement. They are incidential to the
- 31:20Speaker 1: evolutionary process of completing society. When it is complete, there
- 31:25Speaker 1: will be harmony, but it cannot be completed without them. J. P.
- 31:30Speaker 1: Morgan is as necessary to the coming social order as
- 31:34Speaker 1: the strange animals of the age of reptiles were to
- 31:36Speaker 1: the life of the succeeding period. And just as these
- 31:39Speaker 1: animals were perfect after their kind, so Morgan is perfect
- 31:43Speaker 1: after his kind. Behold, it is all very good. See
- 31:48Speaker 1: government and industry as being perfect now, and as advancing
- 31:52Speaker 1: rapidly toward being complete. Then you will understand that there
- 31:56Speaker 1: is nothing to fear, no cause for anxiety, nothing to
- 32:00Speaker 1: worry about. Never complain of any of these things. They
- 32:04Speaker 1: are perfect. This is the very best possible word for
- 32:08Speaker 1: the stage of development man has reached. This will sound
- 32:12Speaker 1: like rank folly to many, perhaps to most people. What
- 32:16Speaker 1: they will say are not child labor and the exploitation
- 32:20Speaker 1: of men and women in filthy and unsanitary factories. Evil
- 32:24Speaker 1: things are in saloons evil. Do you mean to say
- 32:27Speaker 1: that we shall accept all these and call them good?
- 32:31Speaker 1: Child labor and similar things are no more evil than
- 32:34Speaker 1: the way of living, and the habits and practices of
- 32:37Speaker 1: the cave dweller were evil. His ways were those of
- 32:40Speaker 1: the savage stage of man's growth, and for that stage
- 32:44Speaker 1: they were perfect. Our industrial practices are those of the
- 32:48Speaker 1: savage stage of industrial development, and they are also perfect.
- 32:53Speaker 1: Nothing better is possible until we cease to be mental
- 32:56Speaker 1: savages in industry and business and become man and will.
- 33:01Speaker 1: This can only come about by the rise of the
- 33:03Speaker 1: whole race to a higher viewpoint. And this can only
- 33:07Speaker 1: come about by the rise of such individuals here and
- 33:10Speaker 1: there as are ready for the higher viewpoint. The cure
- 33:14Speaker 1: for all this inharmoniousness lies not with the masters or employers,
- 33:18Speaker 1: but with the workers themselves. Whenever they reach a higher viewpoint,
- 33:23Speaker 1: whenever they shall desire to do so, they can establish
- 33:26Speaker 1: complete brotherhood and harmony in industry. They have the numbers
- 33:30Speaker 1: and the power. They are getting now what they desire.
- 33:35Speaker 1: Whenever they desire more in the way of a higher, purer,
- 33:38Speaker 1: more harmonious life, they will receive more. True, they want
- 33:43Speaker 1: more now, but they only want more of the things
- 33:46Speaker 1: that make for animal enjoyment. And so industry remains in
- 33:50Speaker 1: the savage, brutal animal stage. When the workers begin to
- 33:54Speaker 1: rise to the mental plane of living and ask for
- 33:57Speaker 1: more of the things that make for the life of
- 33:59Speaker 1: the mind, and so industry will at once be raised
- 34:02Speaker 1: above the plane of savagery and brutality. But it is
- 34:06Speaker 1: perfect now upon its plane behold. In fact, it is
- 34:10Speaker 1: all very good. So it is true of saloons and
- 34:13Speaker 1: dens of vice. If the majority of the people desire
- 34:17Speaker 1: these things, it is right and necessary that they should
- 34:20Speaker 1: have them. When the majority desires a world without such discords,
- 34:24Speaker 1: they will create such a world. So long as men
- 34:27Speaker 1: and women are on the plane of bestial thought, so
- 34:30Speaker 1: long the social order will be in part disorder and
- 34:33Speaker 1: will show bestial manifestations. The people make society what it is,
- 34:39Speaker 1: and as the people rise above the bestial thought, society
- 34:42Speaker 1: will rise above the beastly and its manifestations. But a
- 34:46Speaker 1: society which thinks in a bestial way must have saloons
- 34:50Speaker 1: and dives. It is perfect after its kind, as the
- 34:53Speaker 1: world was in the Ucene period, and very good. All
- 34:57Speaker 1: this does not prevent you from working for better things.
- 35:01Speaker 1: You can work to complete an unfinished society instead of
- 35:04Speaker 1: to renovate a decaying one, and you can work with
- 35:08Speaker 1: a better heart and a more hopeful spirit. It will
- 35:11Speaker 1: make an immense difference with your faith and spirit whether
- 35:15Speaker 1: you look upon civilization as a good thing that is
- 35:17Speaker 1: becoming better or as a bad and evil thing that
- 35:20Speaker 1: is decaying. One viewpoint gives you an advancing and expanding mind,
- 35:26Speaker 1: and the other gives you a descending and decreasing mind.
- 35:30Speaker 1: One viewpoint will make you grow greater, and the other
- 35:33Speaker 1: will inevitably cause you to grow smaller. One will enable
- 35:37Speaker 1: you to work for the eternal things, to do large
- 35:40Speaker 1: works in a great way, toward the completing of all
- 35:43Speaker 1: that is incomplete and inharmonious, and the other will make
- 35:47Speaker 1: you a mere petwork reformer, working almost without hope, to
- 35:50Speaker 1: save a few lost souls from what you will grow
- 35:53Speaker 1: to consider a lost and doomed world. So you see,
- 35:56Speaker 1: it makes the vast difference to you this matter of
- 35:59Speaker 1: the social viewpoint. All's right with the world. Nothing can
- 36:03Speaker 1: possibly be wrong but my personal attitude, and I will
- 36:07Speaker 1: make that right. I will see the facts of nature
- 36:10Speaker 1: and all the events, circumstances, and conditions of society, politics, government,
- 36:15Speaker 1: and industry from the highest viewpoint. It is all perfect,
- 36:19Speaker 1: though incomplete. It is all the handiwork of God. Behold,
- 36:24Speaker 1: it is all very good. The individual point of view
- 36:30Speaker 1: important as the matter of your point of view for
- 36:32Speaker 1: the facts of social life is. It is of less
- 36:35Speaker 1: moment than your viewpoint for your fellow men, for your acquaintances, friends, relatives,
- 36:40Speaker 1: your immediate family, and most of all yourself. You must
- 36:45Speaker 1: learn not to look upon the world as a lost
- 36:47Speaker 1: and decaying thing, but as a something perfect and glorious
- 36:51Speaker 1: which is going on to a most beautiful completeness. And
- 36:55Speaker 1: you must learn to see men and women not as
- 36:57Speaker 1: lost and accursive things, but as perfect being advancing to
- 37:01Speaker 1: become complete. There are no bad or evil people. An
- 37:05Speaker 1: engine which is on the rails pulling a heavy train
- 37:08Speaker 1: is perfect after its kind, and it is good. The
- 37:12Speaker 1: power of steam which drives it is good. Let a
- 37:15Speaker 1: broken rail throw the engine into the ditch, and it
- 37:19Speaker 1: does not become bad or evil by being so displaced.
- 37:22Speaker 1: It is a perfectly good engine. But of the track,
- 37:26Speaker 1: the power of steam that drives it into the ditch
- 37:28Speaker 1: and racks it is not evil, but a perfectly good power.
- 37:32Speaker 1: So that which is misplaced or applied in an incomplete
- 37:35Speaker 1: or partial way is not evil. There are no evil people.
- 37:40Speaker 1: There are perfectly good people who are of the track,
- 37:43Speaker 1: but they do not need condemnation or punishment. They only
- 37:47Speaker 1: need to get upon the rails. Again, that which is
- 37:50Speaker 1: undeveloped or incomplete often appears to us as evil because
- 37:54Speaker 1: of the way we have trained ourselves to think. The
- 37:57Speaker 1: root of a bulb that shall produce a white lily
- 38:00Speaker 1: is an unsightly thing. One might look upon it with disgust.
- 38:04Speaker 1: But how foolish we should be to condemn the bulb
- 38:07Speaker 1: for its appearance, when we know the lily is within it.
- 38:11Speaker 1: The root is perfect after its kind. It is a
- 38:13Speaker 1: perfect but incomplete lily. And so we must learn to
- 38:17Speaker 1: look upon every man and woman, no matter how unlovely
- 38:20Speaker 1: an outward manifestation, They are perfect in their stage of being,
- 38:24Speaker 1: and they are becoming complete. Behold, it is all very good.
- 38:29Speaker 1: Once we come into a comprehension of this fact and
- 38:32Speaker 1: arrive at this point of view, we lose all desire
- 38:35Speaker 1: to find fault with people, to judge them, criticize them,
- 38:39Speaker 1: or condemn them. We no longer work as those who
- 38:43Speaker 1: are saving lost souls, but as those who are among
- 38:46Speaker 1: the angels working out the completion of a glorious heaven.
- 38:50Speaker 1: We are born of the spirit, and we see the
- 38:52Speaker 1: Kingdom of God. We no longer see man as trees walking,
- 38:57Speaker 1: but our vision is complete. We have nothing but good
- 39:00Speaker 1: words to say. It is all good, a great and
- 39:04Speaker 1: glorious humanity coming to completeness, and in our association with
- 39:08Speaker 1: man This puts us into an expensive and enlarging gratitude
- 39:12Speaker 1: of mind. We see them as great beings, and we
- 39:15Speaker 1: begin to deal with them and their affairs in a
- 39:17Speaker 1: great way. But if we fall to the other point
- 39:20Speaker 1: of view and see a lost and degenerate race, we
- 39:24Speaker 1: shrink into the contracting mind, and our dealings with men
- 39:27Speaker 1: and their affairs will be in a small and contracted way.
- 39:32Speaker 1: Remember to hold steadily to this point of view. If
- 39:35Speaker 1: you do, you cannot fail to begin at once to
- 39:37Speaker 1: deal with your acquaintances and neighbors, and with your own
- 39:40Speaker 1: family as a great personality deals with men. This same
- 39:44Speaker 1: viewpoint must be the one from which you regard yourself.
- 39:47Speaker 1: You must always see yourself as a great advancing soul.
- 39:51Speaker 1: Learn to say, there is that in me of which
- 39:54Speaker 1: I am made, which knows no imperfection, weakness, or sickness.
- 40:00Speaker 1: World is incomplete, but God, in my own consciousness, is
- 40:03Speaker 1: both perfect and complete. Nothing can be wrong but my
- 40:06Speaker 1: own personal attitude, and my own personal attitude can be
- 40:10Speaker 1: wrong only when I disobey that which is within. I
- 40:13Speaker 1: am a perfect manifestation of God so far as I
- 40:16Speaker 1: have gone, and I will press on to be complete,
- 40:20Speaker 1: I will trust and not be afraid. When you are
- 40:23Speaker 1: able to say this understandingly, you will have lost all fear,
- 40:27Speaker 1: and you will be far advanced upon the road to
- 40:29Speaker 1: the development of a great and powerful personality. Consecration. Having
- 40:37Speaker 1: attained to the viewpoint that puts you into the right
- 40:40Speaker 1: relations with the world and with your fellow men, the
- 40:43Speaker 1: next step is consecration. And consecration in its true sense,
- 40:47Speaker 1: simply means obedience to the soul you have, that within you,
- 40:52Speaker 1: that which is always impelling you toward the upward and
- 40:54Speaker 1: advancing way. And that impelling something is the divine principle
- 40:59Speaker 1: of power. You must obey it without question. No one
- 41:03Speaker 1: will deny the statement that if you are to be great,
- 41:06Speaker 1: the greatness must be a manifestation of something within. Nor
- 41:10Speaker 1: can you question that this something must be the very
- 41:13Speaker 1: greatest and highest that is within. It is not the mind,
- 41:17Speaker 1: or the intellect, or the reason. You cannot be great
- 41:21Speaker 1: if you go no farther back for principle than to
- 41:24Speaker 1: your reasoning power. Reason knows neither principle nor morality. Your
- 41:29Speaker 1: reason is like a lawyer in that it will argue
- 41:32Speaker 1: for either side. The intellect of a thief will plan
- 41:36Speaker 1: robbery and murder as readily as the intellect of a
- 41:38Speaker 1: saint will plan a great philanthropy. Intellect helps us to
- 41:43Speaker 1: see the best means and manner of doing the right thing,
- 41:46Speaker 1: but intellect never shows us the right thing. Intellect and
- 41:50Speaker 1: reason serve the selfish man for his selfish ends as
- 41:53Speaker 1: readily as they serve the unselfish man for his unselfish ends.
- 41:57Speaker 1: Use intellect and reason without regard principle, and you may
- 42:01Speaker 1: become known as a very able person. But you will
- 42:04Speaker 1: never become known as a person whose life shows the
- 42:07Speaker 1: power of real greatness. There is too much training of
- 42:11Speaker 1: the intellect and reasoning powers, and too little training in
- 42:14Speaker 1: obedience to the soul. This is the only thing that
- 42:17Speaker 1: can be wrong with your personal attitude when it fails
- 42:21Speaker 1: to be one of obedience to the principle of power.
- 42:24Speaker 1: By going back to your own center, you can always
- 42:27Speaker 1: find the pure idea of right For every relationship to
- 42:31Speaker 1: be great and to have power, It is only necessary
- 42:33Speaker 1: to confirm your life to the pure idea as you
- 42:36Speaker 1: find it in the great within. Every compromise on this
- 42:40Speaker 1: point is made at the expense of a loss of power.
- 42:44Speaker 1: This you must remember. There are many ideas in your
- 42:47Speaker 1: mind that you have outgrown, and which from force of
- 42:51Speaker 1: habit you still permit to dictate the actions of your life.
- 42:55Speaker 1: Seize all this, Abandon everything you have outgrown. There are
- 42:59Speaker 1: many egos, noble, customs, social, and other which you still follow,
- 43:03Speaker 1: although you know they tend to dwarf and belitter you,
- 43:06Speaker 1: and keep you acting in a small way. Rise above
- 43:10Speaker 1: all this. I do not say that you should absolutely
- 43:13Speaker 1: disregard conventionalities or the commonly accepted standards of right and wrong.
- 43:18Speaker 1: You cannot do this, but you can deliver your soul
- 43:21Speaker 1: from most of the narrow restrictions that bind the majority
- 43:25Speaker 1: of your fellow men. Do not give your time and
- 43:27Speaker 1: strength to the support of the obsolete institutions, religious or otherwise.
- 43:33Speaker 1: Do not be bound by creeds in which you do
- 43:35Speaker 1: not believe. Be free. You have perhaps formed some sensual
- 43:39Speaker 1: habits of mind or body. Abandon them. You still indulge
- 43:44Speaker 1: in distrustful fears that things will go wrong, or that
- 43:47Speaker 1: people will betray you or mistreat you. Get above all
- 43:51Speaker 1: of them. You still act selfishly in many ways, and
- 43:55Speaker 1: on many occasions. Cease to do so. Abandon all these,
- 43:59Speaker 1: and in place of them, put the best actions you
- 44:02Speaker 1: can form a conception of in your mind. If you
- 44:05Speaker 1: desire to advance and you are not doing so, remember
- 44:09Speaker 1: that it can be only because your thought is better
- 44:11Speaker 1: than your practice. You must do as well as you think.
- 44:15Speaker 1: Let your thoughts be ruled by principle, and then live
- 44:18Speaker 1: up to your thoughts. Let your attitude in business, in politics,
- 44:23Speaker 1: in neighborhood affairs, and in your own home be the
- 44:26Speaker 1: expression of the best thoughts you can think. Let your
- 44:30Speaker 1: manner toward all men and women, great and small, and
- 44:33Speaker 1: especially to your own family circle, always be the most kindly, gracious,
- 44:38Speaker 1: and courteous you can picture in your imagination. Remember your viewpoint.
- 44:43Speaker 1: You are a god in the company of gods, and
- 44:45Speaker 1: must conduct yourself accordingly. The steps to complete consecration are
- 44:50Speaker 1: few and simple. You cannot be ruled from below. If
- 44:54Speaker 1: you are to be great, you must rule from above. Therefore,
- 44:58Speaker 1: you cannot be governed by physical impulses. You must bring
- 45:01Speaker 1: your body into subjection to the mind. But your mind
- 45:05Speaker 1: without principle may lead you into selfishness and immoral ways.
- 45:10Speaker 1: You must put the mind into subjection to the soul,
- 45:13Speaker 1: and your soul is limited by the boundaries of your knowledge.
- 45:16Speaker 1: You must put it into subjection to that our soul,
- 45:19Speaker 1: which needs no searching of the understanding, but before whose
- 45:22Speaker 1: eye all things are spread. That constitutes consecration. Say I
- 45:29Speaker 1: surrender my body to be ruled by my mind. I
- 45:32Speaker 1: surrender my mind to be governed by my soul, and
- 45:35Speaker 1: I surrender my soul to the guidance of God. Make
- 45:39Speaker 1: this consecration complete and thorough. And you have taken the
- 45:43Speaker 1: second great step in the way of greatness and power identification.
- 45:51Speaker 1: Having recognized God as the advancing presence in nature, society,
- 45:55Speaker 1: and your fellow man, and harmonize yourself with all these,
- 45:59Speaker 1: and having consecrated yourself to death within you, which impels
- 46:03Speaker 1: you toward the greatest and the highest. The next step
- 46:06Speaker 1: is to become aware of and recognize fully the fact
- 46:09Speaker 1: that the principle of power within you is God himself.
- 46:13Speaker 1: You must consciously identify yourself with the Highest. This is
- 46:17Speaker 1: not some fault or untrue position to be assumed. It
- 46:21Speaker 1: is a fact to be recognized. You are already one
- 46:24Speaker 1: with God. You want to become consciously aware of it.
- 46:28Speaker 1: There is one substance, the source of all things, and
- 46:32Speaker 1: this substance has within itself the power that creates all things,
- 46:36Speaker 1: all power is inherent in it. This substance is conscious
- 46:40Speaker 1: and thinks it works with perfect understanding and intelligence. You
- 46:45Speaker 1: know that it is so because you know that substance exists,
- 46:49Speaker 1: and that consciousness exists, and that it must be substance
- 46:52Speaker 1: that is conscious. Man is conscious and thinks man is substance.
- 46:58Speaker 1: He must be substance, as he is nothing and does
- 47:01Speaker 1: not exist at all. If man is substance and things
- 47:05Speaker 1: and is conscious, then he is conscious substance. It is
- 47:09Speaker 1: not conceivable that there should be more than one conscious substance.
- 47:13Speaker 1: So Man is the original substance, the source of all
- 47:17Speaker 1: life and power, embodied in a physical form. Man cannot
- 47:21Speaker 1: be something different from God. Intelligence is one and the
- 47:25Speaker 1: same everywhere, and must be everywhere and attribute of the
- 47:29Speaker 1: same substance. There cannot be one kind of intelligence in
- 47:32Speaker 1: God and another kind of intelligence in Man. Intelligence can
- 47:36Speaker 1: only be an intelligent substance, and intelligent substance is God.
- 47:41Speaker 1: Man is of one and the same, stuck with God,
- 47:44Speaker 1: and so all the talents, powers and possibilities that are
- 47:47Speaker 1: in God are in Man, not just in a few
- 47:50Speaker 1: exceptional men, but in every one. All power is given
- 47:54Speaker 1: to man in heaven and on earth. Is it not
- 47:57Speaker 1: written ye are gods. The principle of power in man
- 48:01Speaker 1: is man himself, and man himself is God. But while
- 48:05Speaker 1: man is original substance and has within him all power
- 48:09Speaker 1: and possibilities, his consciousness is limited. He does not know
- 48:13Speaker 1: all there is to know, and so he is liable
- 48:16Speaker 1: to error and mistake. To save himself from these, he
- 48:20Speaker 1: must unite his mind to that outside him, which does
- 48:23Speaker 1: know all. He must become consciously one with God. There
- 48:27Speaker 1: is a mind surrounding him on every side, closer than breathing,
- 48:31Speaker 1: nearer than hands and feet. And in this mind is
- 48:34Speaker 1: the memory of all that has ever happened, from the
- 48:37Speaker 1: greatest convulsions of nature in prehistoric days to the fall
- 48:41Speaker 1: of a sparrow in this present time, and all that
- 48:44Speaker 1: is in existence now as well. How in this mind
- 48:48Speaker 1: is the great purpose that is behind all nature, so
- 48:51Speaker 1: it knows what is going to be. Man is surrounded
- 48:54Speaker 1: by a mind that knows all there is to know, past,
- 48:57Speaker 1: present and to come. Everything that men have said, or
- 49:01Speaker 1: down or written is present. There. Man is of the
- 49:05Speaker 1: same one, identical stuff with this mind. He proceeded from it,
- 49:10Speaker 1: and he can so identify himself with it. That he
- 49:12Speaker 1: may know what it knows. My Father is greater than
- 49:16Speaker 1: I said Jesus, I come from him. I and my
- 49:21Speaker 1: Father are one. He shows the Son all things. The
- 49:25Speaker 1: spiritual guide you into all truth. Your identification of yourself
- 49:30Speaker 1: with the infinite must be accomplished by conscious recognition on
- 49:33Speaker 1: your part. Recognizing it is a fact that there is
- 49:37Speaker 1: only God and that all intelligence is in the one's substance.
- 49:41Speaker 1: You must affirm some what after this wise, there is
- 49:45Speaker 1: only one, and that one is everywhere. I surrender myself
- 49:49Speaker 1: to conscious unity with the Highest, not I but the Father.
- 49:54Speaker 1: I will to be one with the Supreme and to
- 49:56Speaker 1: lead the divine life. I am one with infant that consciousness.
- 50:01Speaker 1: There is but one mind, and I am that mind.
- 50:05Speaker 1: I that speak unto you am he. If you have
- 50:08Speaker 1: been thorough in the work as outlined in the preceding chapters,
- 50:12Speaker 1: if you have attained to the true viewpoint, and if
- 50:15Speaker 1: your consecration is complete, you will not find conscious identification
- 50:19Speaker 1: and heart to attain. And once it is attained, the
- 50:23Speaker 1: power you seek is yours, for you have made yourself
- 50:26Speaker 1: one with all the power there is idealization. You are
- 50:32Speaker 1: a thinking center in original substance and the thoughts of
- 50:35Speaker 1: original substance have creative power. Whatever is formed in its
- 50:40Speaker 1: thought and held as a thought form must come into
- 50:43Speaker 1: existence as a visible and so called material form. And
- 50:46Speaker 1: a thought form held in thinking substance is a reality.
- 50:50Speaker 1: It is a real thing, whether it has yet become
- 50:53Speaker 1: visible to mortal lie or not. This is a fact
- 50:56Speaker 1: that you should impress upon your understanding, that as thought
- 51:00Speaker 1: held in thinking substance is a real thing, a form,
- 51:04Speaker 1: and has actual existence, although it is not visible to you.
- 51:09Speaker 1: You internally take the form in which you think of yourself,
- 51:12Speaker 1: and you surround yourself with the invisible forms of those
- 51:15Speaker 1: things with which you associate in your thoughts. If you
- 51:19Speaker 1: desire a thing, picture it clearly, and hold the picture
- 51:22Speaker 1: steadily in mind until it becomes a definite thought form.
- 51:26Speaker 1: And if your practices are not such as to separate
- 51:29Speaker 1: you from God, the thing you want will come to
- 51:31Speaker 1: you in material form. It must do so in obedience
- 51:35Speaker 1: to the law by which the universe was created. Make
- 51:39Speaker 1: no thought form of yourself in connection with disease or sickness,
- 51:43Speaker 1: but form a conception of health. Make a thought form
- 51:46Speaker 1: of yourself as strong and hearty and perfectly well impress
- 51:50Speaker 1: this thought form on creative intelligence, and if your practices
- 51:54Speaker 1: are not in violation of the laws by which the
- 51:56Speaker 1: physical body is built, your thought form will become manifest
- 52:00Speaker 1: in your flesh. This also is certain. It comes by
- 52:04Speaker 1: obedience to law. Make a thought form of yourself as
- 52:08Speaker 1: you desire to be, and set your ideal as near
- 52:11Speaker 1: to perfection as your imagination is capable of forming. The conception.
- 52:15Speaker 1: Let me illustrate. If a young law student wishes to
- 52:19Speaker 1: become great. Let him picture himself, while attending to the
- 52:22Speaker 1: viewpoint consecration and identification, as previously directed, as a great lawyer,
- 52:28Speaker 1: pleading his case with much less eloquence and power before
- 52:31Speaker 1: the judge and jury, as having an unlimited command of truth,
- 52:35Speaker 1: of knowledge, and of wisdom. Let him picture himself as
- 52:39Speaker 1: the great lawyer in every possible situation and contingency, while
- 52:43Speaker 1: he is still only the student in all circumstances. Let
- 52:46Speaker 1: him never forget or fail to be the great lawyer
- 52:49Speaker 1: in his thought form of himself. As the thought form
- 52:52Speaker 1: grows more definite and habitual in his mind, the creative energies,
- 52:56Speaker 1: both within and without are set at work. He begins
- 53:00Speaker 1: to manifest the form from within and all the essentials
- 53:03Speaker 1: without which go into the picture begin to be impelled
- 53:06Speaker 1: toward him. He makes himself into the image, and God
- 53:10Speaker 1: works with him. Nothing can prevent him from becoming what
- 53:13Speaker 1: he wishes to be. In the same general way, the
- 53:17Speaker 1: musical student pictures himself as performing perfect harmonies and as
- 53:21Speaker 1: delighting vast audiences. The actor forms the highest conception he
- 53:26Speaker 1: is capable of in regard to his art, and applies
- 53:29Speaker 1: this conception to himself. The farmer and the mechanic do
- 53:32Speaker 1: exactly the same thing. Fix upon your ideal of what
- 53:36Speaker 1: you wish to make of yourself, Consider well, and be
- 53:40Speaker 1: sure that you make the right choice, that is the
- 53:43Speaker 1: one that will be the most satisfactory to you. In
- 53:45Speaker 1: a general way, do not pay too much attention to
- 53:48Speaker 1: the advice and suggestions of those around you. Do not
- 53:52Speaker 1: believe that any one can know better than yourself what
- 53:55Speaker 1: is right for you. Listen to what others have to say,
- 53:58Speaker 1: but always form your own codes conclusions. Do not let
- 54:02Speaker 1: other people decide what you are to be. Be what
- 54:05Speaker 1: you feel that you want to be. Do not be
- 54:08Speaker 1: misled by a false notion of obligation or duty. You
- 54:11Speaker 1: can owe no possible obligation or duty to others that
- 54:14Speaker 1: should prevent you from making the most of yourself. Be
- 54:18Speaker 1: true to yourself, and you cannot then be false to
- 54:21Speaker 1: any man. When you have fully decided what thing you
- 54:24Speaker 1: want to be, form the highest conception of that thing
- 54:27Speaker 1: that you are capable of imagining, and make that conception
- 54:30Speaker 1: a thought form. Hold that thought form as a fact,
- 54:34Speaker 1: as the real truth about yourself, and believe in it.
- 54:38Speaker 1: Close your ears to all adverse suggestions. Never mind if
- 54:42Speaker 1: people call you a fool or a dreamer. Dream on.
- 54:46Speaker 1: Remember that Bonaparte, the half starred lieutenant, always saw himself
- 54:50Speaker 1: as the general of armies and the master of France,
- 54:54Speaker 1: and he became in out or realization what he held
- 54:57Speaker 1: himself to be in mind. So likewise, will you attend
- 55:01Speaker 1: carefully to all that has been said in the preceding chapters,
- 55:04Speaker 1: and act as directed in the following ones, and you
- 55:07Speaker 1: will become what you want to be realization. If you
- 55:13Speaker 1: were to stop in the close of the last chapter, however,
- 55:16Speaker 1: you would never become great. You would be indeed a
- 55:19Speaker 1: mere dreamer of dreams, a costop builder. Too many do
- 55:23Speaker 1: stop there. They do not understand the necessity for present action.
- 55:27Speaker 1: In realizing the vision and bringing the thought form into manifestation,
- 55:32Speaker 1: two things are necessary, firstly the making of the thought form,
- 55:37Speaker 1: and secondly the actual appropriation to yourself of all that
- 55:41Speaker 1: goes into and around the thought form. We have discussed
- 55:45Speaker 1: the first. Now we will proceed to give directions for
- 55:48Speaker 1: the second. When you have made your thought form, you
- 55:51Speaker 1: are already in your interior what you want to be. Next,
- 55:56Speaker 1: you must become externally what you want to be. You
- 55:59Speaker 1: are already great within, but you are not yet doing
- 56:01Speaker 1: the great things. Without you cannot begin on the instant
- 56:05Speaker 1: to do the great things. You cannot be before the
- 56:08Speaker 1: world the great actor or lawyer, or musician or personality
- 56:12Speaker 1: you know yourself to be. No one will entrust great
- 56:15Speaker 1: things to you as yet, for you have not made
- 56:18Speaker 1: yourself known. But you can always begin to do small
- 56:21Speaker 1: things in a great way. Here lies the whole secret.
- 56:26Speaker 1: You can begin to be great to day in your
- 56:28Speaker 1: own home, in your store or office, on the street, everywhere.
- 56:33Speaker 1: You can begin to make yourself known as great. And
- 56:36Speaker 1: you can do this by doing everything you do in
- 56:38Speaker 1: a great way. You must put the whole power of
- 56:41Speaker 1: your great soul into every act, however small or commonplace,
- 56:46Speaker 1: and so reveal to your family, your friends, and neighbors
- 56:48Speaker 1: what you really are. Do not brag or boast of yourself.
- 56:53Speaker 1: Do not go about telling people what a great personage
- 56:55Speaker 1: you are. Simply live in a great way. No one
- 56:59Speaker 1: will believe you if you tell him you are a
- 57:01Speaker 1: great man, but no one can doubt your greatness if
- 57:04Speaker 1: you show it in your actions in your domestic circle.
- 57:08Speaker 1: Be so just, so generous, so courteous, and kindly, that
- 57:12Speaker 1: your family, your wife, husband, children, brothers, and sisters shall
- 57:16Speaker 1: know that you are a great and noble soul. In
- 57:20Speaker 1: all your relations with man, be great, just, generous, courteous,
- 57:24Speaker 1: and kindly. The great are never otherwise. This is your attitude. Next,
- 57:30Speaker 1: and most important, you must have absolute faith in your
- 57:33Speaker 1: own perceptions of truth. Never act in haste or hurry.
- 57:38Speaker 1: Be deliberate in everything. Wait until you feel that you
- 57:42Speaker 1: know the true way. And when you do feel that
- 57:45Speaker 1: you know the true way, be guided by your own faith,
- 57:48Speaker 1: though the entire world shall disagree with you. If you
- 57:52Speaker 1: do not believe what God tells you in little things,
- 57:55Speaker 1: you will never draw upon His wisdom and knowledge in
- 57:57Speaker 1: larger things. When you feel deeply that a certain act
- 58:01Speaker 1: is the right act, Do it, and have perfect faith
- 58:05Speaker 1: that the consequences will be good. When you are deeply
- 58:08Speaker 1: impressed that a certain thing is true, no matter what
- 58:11Speaker 1: the appearances to the contrary may be, except that things
- 58:15Speaker 1: true and act accordingly, the one way to develop a
- 58:18Speaker 1: perception of truth in large things is to trust absolutely
- 58:22Speaker 1: to your present perception of truth in small things. Remember
- 58:26Speaker 1: that you are seeking to develop this very power or faculty,
- 58:30Speaker 1: the perception of truth. You are learning to read the
- 58:33Speaker 1: thoughts of God. Nothing is great and nothing is small.
- 58:37Speaker 1: In the sight of omnipotence. He holds the sun in
- 58:40Speaker 1: its place, but he also notes as perrow's fall, and
- 58:44Speaker 1: numbers the hairs of your head. God is as much
- 58:48Speaker 1: interested in the little matters of every day life as
- 58:51Speaker 1: he is in the affairs of nations. You can perceive
- 58:54Speaker 1: truth about family and neighborhood affairs, as well as about
- 58:58Speaker 1: matters of state craft, and the way to begin is
- 59:01Speaker 1: to have perfect faith in the truth in these small matters,
- 59:05Speaker 1: as it is revealed to you from day to day.
- 59:07Speaker 1: When you feel deeply impelled to take a course that
- 59:10Speaker 1: seems contrary to all reason and worthy judgment, take that course.
- 59:14Speaker 1: Listen to the suggestions and advice of others, But always
- 59:18Speaker 1: do what you feel deeply in the within to be
- 59:20Speaker 1: the true thing to do. Rely with absolute faith at
- 59:24Speaker 1: all times on your own perception of truth. But be
- 59:28Speaker 1: sure that you listen to God, that you do not
- 59:30Speaker 1: act in haste, fear, or anxiety. Rely upon your perception
- 59:35Speaker 1: of truth in all the facts and circumstances of life.
- 59:39Speaker 1: If you feel deeply that a certain man will be
- 59:41Speaker 1: in a certain place on a certain day, go there
- 59:44Speaker 1: with perfect faith to meet him. He will be there,
- 59:47Speaker 1: no matter how unlikely it may seem. If you feel
- 59:50Speaker 1: sure that certain people are making certain combinations or doing
- 59:54Speaker 1: certain things, act in the faith that they are doing
- 59:57Speaker 1: those things. If you fear sure of the truth of
- 1:00:01Speaker 1: any circumstance or happening near or distant, past present, or
- 1:00:05Speaker 1: to come, trust in your perception. You may make occasional
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: mistakes at first because of your imperfect understanding of the within,
- 1:00:13Speaker 1: but you will soon be guided almost invariably right. Soon
- 1:00:17Speaker 1: your family and friends will begin to differ more and
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: more to your judgment and to be guided by you. Soon,
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: your neighbors and townsmen will be coming to you for
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: counsel and advice. Soon, you will be recognized as one
- 1:00:29Speaker 1: who is great in small things, and you will be
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: called upon more and more to take charge of larger things.
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: All that is necessary is to be guided absolutely in
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: all things by your inner light, your perception of truth,
- 1:00:43Speaker 1: Obey your soul. Have perfect faith in yourself. Never think
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: of yourself with doubt or distrust, or as one who
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: makes mistakes. If I judge, my judgment is just, for
- 1:00:55Speaker 1: I seek not honor from men, but from the Father. Only.
- 1:00:59Speaker 1: Hurry and habit no doubt. You have many problems domestic, social, physical,
- 1:01:05Speaker 1: and financial, which seem to you to be pressing for
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: instant solution. You have debts that must be paid or
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: other obligations that must be met. You are unhappily or
- 1:01:17Speaker 1: inharmoniously placed, and feel that something must be done at once.
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: Do not get into a hurry and act from superficial impulses.
- 1:01:25Speaker 1: You can trust God for the solution of all your
- 1:01:28Speaker 1: personal riddles. There is no hurry. There is only God
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: and always well with the world. There is an invincible
- 1:01:36Speaker 1: power in you, and the same power as in the
- 1:01:38Speaker 1: things you want. It is bringing them to you and
- 1:01:42Speaker 1: bringing you to them. This is a thought that you
- 1:01:45Speaker 1: must grasp and hold continuously that the same intelligence that
- 1:01:49Speaker 1: is in you is in the things you desire. They
- 1:01:52Speaker 1: are impelled toward you as strongly and decidedly as your
- 1:01:55Speaker 1: desire impels you toward them. The tendency therefore, of as
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: steadily held thought must be to bring the things you
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: desire to you, and to group them around you. So
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: long as you hold your thought and your faith right,
- 1:02:09Speaker 1: all must go well. Nothing can be wrong but your
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: own personal attitude, and that will not be wrong if
- 1:02:15Speaker 1: you trust and are not afraid. Hurry is a manifestation
- 1:02:19Speaker 1: of fear. He who fears not has plenty of time.
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: If you acted perfect faith in your own perceptions of truth,
- 1:02:27Speaker 1: you will never be too late or too early, and
- 1:02:29Speaker 1: nothing will go wrong. If things appear to be going wrong,
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: do not get disturbed. In mind, it is only an appearance.
- 1:02:38Speaker 1: Nothing can go wrong in this world but yourself, and
- 1:02:41Speaker 1: you can go wrong only by getting into the wrong
- 1:02:43Speaker 1: mental attitude. Whenever you find yourself getting excited, worried, or
- 1:02:48Speaker 1: into the mental attitude of hurry, sit down and think
- 1:02:52Speaker 1: it owhere, play a game of some kind, or take
- 1:02:54Speaker 1: a vacation, go on a trip, and all will be right.
- 1:02:58Speaker 1: When you return. So surely as you find yourself in
- 1:03:02Speaker 1: the mental attitude of haste, just so surely may you
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: know that you are out of the mental attitude of greatness.
- 1:03:08Speaker 1: Hurry and fear will instantly cut your connection with the
- 1:03:11Speaker 1: universal mind. You will get no power, no wisdom, and
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: no information until you are calm, and to fall into
- 1:03:19Speaker 1: the attitude of hurry will check the action of the
- 1:03:21Speaker 1: principle of power within you. Fear turns strength to weakness.
- 1:03:27Speaker 1: Remember that poise and power are inseparably associated. The calm
- 1:03:32Speaker 1: and balanced mind is the strong and great mind. The
- 1:03:35Speaker 1: hurried and the agitated mind is the weak one. Whenever
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: you fall into the mental state of hurry, you may
- 1:03:41Speaker 1: know that you have lost the right to view point.
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: You are beginning to look upon the world or some
- 1:03:46Speaker 1: part of it, as going wrong. At such times, read
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: chapter six of this book. Consider the fact that this
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: work is perfect now with all that it contains. Nothing
- 1:03:58Speaker 1: is going wrong, nothing can be wrong. Be poised, be calm,
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: be cheerful, have faith in God. Next, as to habit,
- 1:04:08Speaker 1: it is probable that your greatest difficulty will be to
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: overcome your old habitual ways of thought and to form
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: new habits. The world is ruled by habit Kings, tyrants, masters,
- 1:04:19Speaker 1: and plutocrats hold their positions solely because the people have
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: come to habitually accept them. Things are as they are
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: only because people have formed the habit of accepting them
- 1:04:29Speaker 1: as they are. When the people change their habitual thought
- 1:04:33Speaker 1: about governmental, social, and industrial institutions, they will change the
- 1:04:37Speaker 1: institutions habit rules us. All. You have formed, perhaps the
- 1:04:43Speaker 1: habit of thinking of yourself as a common person, as
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: one of a limited ability, or as being more or
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: less of a failure. Whatever you habitually think yourself to
- 1:04:53Speaker 1: be that you are, you must form now a greater
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: and better habit. You must form a conception of yourself
- 1:05:00Speaker 1: as a being of limitless power, and habitually think that
- 1:05:03Speaker 1: you are dead being. It is the habitual, not the
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: periodical thought, that decides your destiny. It will avail you
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: nothing to sit apart for a few moments several times
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: a day to affirm that you are great. If during
- 1:05:17Speaker 1: all the balance of the day, while you are about
- 1:05:19Speaker 1: your regular vocation you think of yourself as not great,
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: no amount of praying or affirmation will make you great.
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: If you still habitually regard yourself as being small. The
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: use of prayer and affirmation is to change your habit
- 1:05:34Speaker 1: of thought. Any act, mental or physical, often repeated, becomes
- 1:05:39Speaker 1: a habit. The purpose of mental exercises is to repeat
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: certain thoughts over and over until the thinking of those
- 1:05:45Speaker 1: thoughts becomes constant and habitual. The thoughts we continually repeat
- 1:05:51Speaker 1: become convictions. What you must do is to repeat the
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: new thought of yourself until it is the only way
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: in which you think of yourself. Habituar ill thought, and
- 1:06:01Speaker 1: not environment or circumstance, has made you what you are.
- 1:06:05Speaker 1: Every person has some central idea or thought form of himself,
- 1:06:09Speaker 1: and by this idea he classifies and arranges all his
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: facts and external relationships. You are classifying your facts either
- 1:06:16Speaker 1: according to the idea that you are a great and
- 1:06:18Speaker 1: strong personality, or according to the idea that you are limited, common,
- 1:06:23Speaker 1: or weak. If the latter is the case, you must
- 1:06:26Speaker 1: change your central idea get a new mental picture of yourself.
- 1:06:31Speaker 1: Do not try to become great by repeating mere strings
- 1:06:34Speaker 1: of words or superficial formulas, but repeat over and over
- 1:06:38Speaker 1: the thought of your own power and ability until you
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: classify external facts and decide you are placed everywhere by
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: this idea in another chapter will be found in illustrative
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: mental exercise, and further directions on this point. Thought greatness
- 1:06:56Speaker 1: is only attained by the constant thinking of great thoughts.
- 1:07:00Speaker 1: No man can become great in outward personality until he
- 1:07:03Speaker 1: is great internally, and no man can be great internally
- 1:07:07Speaker 1: until he thinks. No amount of education, reading, or study
- 1:07:12Speaker 1: can make you great without thought, but thought can make
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: you great with every little study. There are altogether too
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: many people who are trying to make something of themselves
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: by reading books without thinking. All such will fail. You
- 1:07:26Speaker 1: are not mentally developed by what you read, but by
- 1:07:29Speaker 1: what you think about what you read. Thinking is the
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: hardest and most exhausting of all labor, and hence many
- 1:07:37Speaker 1: people shrink from it. God has so formed us that
- 1:07:41Speaker 1: we are continuously impelled to thought. We must either think
- 1:07:44Speaker 1: or engage in some activity to escape thought. The headlong,
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: continuous chase for pleasure in which most people spend all
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: their leisure time, is only an effort to escape thought.
- 1:07:55Speaker 1: If they are alone, or if they have nothing amusing
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: to take their attention, as novel to read or a
- 1:08:01Speaker 1: show to see, they must think, and to escape from thinking,
- 1:08:05Speaker 1: they resort to novels, shows and all the endless devices
- 1:08:08Speaker 1: of the purveyors of amusement. Most people spend the greater
- 1:08:13Speaker 1: part of their leisure time running away from thought. Hence
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: they are what they are. We never move forward until
- 1:08:19Speaker 1: we began to think, read less and think more, read
- 1:08:24Speaker 1: about great things, and think about great questions and issues.
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: We have at the present time few really great figures
- 1:08:30Speaker 1: in the political life of our country. Our politicians are
- 1:08:34Speaker 1: a petty lot. There is no Lincoln, no Webster, no Clay,
- 1:08:39Speaker 1: no Calhoun, no Jackson. Why because our present statesmen deal
- 1:08:44Speaker 1: only with sordid and petty issues, questions of dollars and cents,
- 1:08:48Speaker 1: of expediency and party success, of material prosperity without regard
- 1:08:53Speaker 1: to ethical right. Thinking along these lines does not call
- 1:08:57Speaker 1: forth great souls. The state smell of Lincoln time and
- 1:09:00Speaker 1: previous times dealt with questions of eternal truth, of human
- 1:09:04Speaker 1: rights and justice. Men thought upon great themes, They thought
- 1:09:09Speaker 1: great thoughts, and they became great men. Thinking, not mere
- 1:09:13Speaker 1: knowledge or information, makes personality. Thinking is growth. You cannot
- 1:09:18Speaker 1: think without growing. Every thought engenders another thought. Write one
- 1:09:24Speaker 1: idea and others will follow. Until you have written a page.
- 1:09:27Speaker 1: You cannot fathom your own mind. It has neither bottom
- 1:09:31Speaker 1: nor boundaries. Your first thoughts may be crude, but as
- 1:09:35Speaker 1: you go on thinking, you will use more and more
- 1:09:37Speaker 1: of yourself. You will quicken new brain cells into activity,
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: and you will develop new faculties, heredity, environment, circumstances. All
- 1:09:46Speaker 1: things must give way before you if you practice sustained
- 1:09:49Speaker 1: and continuous thought. But on the other hand, if you
- 1:09:53Speaker 1: neglect to think for yourself and only use other people's thoughts,
- 1:09:57Speaker 1: you will never know what you are capable of, and
- 1:10:00Speaker 1: you will end by being incapable of anything. There can
- 1:10:04Speaker 1: be no real greatness without original thought. All that Amand
- 1:10:07Speaker 1: does outwardly is the expression and completion of his inward thinking.
- 1:10:12Speaker 1: No action is possible without thought, and no great action
- 1:10:15Speaker 1: is possible until a great thought has preceded it. Action
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: is the second form of thought, and personality is the
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: materialization of thought. Environment is the result of thought. Things
- 1:10:28Speaker 1: group themselves or arrange themselves around you according to your thought.
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: There is, as Emerson says, some central idea or conception
- 1:10:36Speaker 1: of yourself by which all the facts of your life
- 1:10:38Speaker 1: are arranged and classified. Change this central idea, and you
- 1:10:42Speaker 1: change the arrangement or classification of all the facts and
- 1:10:46Speaker 1: circumstances of your life. You are what you are because
- 1:10:49Speaker 1: you think as you do. You are where you are
- 1:10:52Speaker 1: because you think as you do. You see, then the
- 1:10:55Speaker 1: immense importance of thinking about the great essentials set forth
- 1:10:58Speaker 1: in the preceding chapters. You must not accept them in
- 1:11:01Speaker 1: any superficial way. You must think about them until they
- 1:11:05Speaker 1: are a part of your central idea. Go back to
- 1:11:08Speaker 1: the matter of the point of view and consider, in
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: all its bearings the tremendous thought that you live in
- 1:11:14Speaker 1: a perfect word among perfect people, and that nothing can
- 1:11:17Speaker 1: possibly be wrong with you but your own personal attitude.
- 1:11:21Speaker 1: Think about all this until you fully realize all that
- 1:11:24Speaker 1: it means to you. Consider that this is God's world,
- 1:11:28Speaker 1: and that it is the best of all possible worlds,
- 1:11:31Speaker 1: that He has brought it thus far toward completion by
- 1:11:34Speaker 1: the processes of organic, social, and industrial evolution, and that
- 1:11:38Speaker 1: it is going on to greater completeness and harmony. Consider
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: that there is one great, perfect, intelligent principle of life
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: and power causing all the changing phenomena of the cosmos.
- 1:11:50Speaker 1: Think about all this until you see that it is true,
- 1:11:53Speaker 1: and until you comprehend how you should live and act
- 1:11:56Speaker 1: as a citizen of such a perfect whole. Next, think
- 1:11:59Speaker 1: of the wonder full truth that this great intelligence is
- 1:12:02Speaker 1: in you. It is your own intelligence. It is an
- 1:12:05Speaker 1: inner light impelling you toward the right thing and the
- 1:12:08Speaker 1: best thing, the greatest act, and the highest happiness. It
- 1:12:12Speaker 1: is a principle of power in you, giving you all
- 1:12:15Speaker 1: the ability and genius there is. It will infallibly guide
- 1:12:18Speaker 1: you to the best if you will submit to it
- 1:12:21Speaker 1: and walk in the light. Consider what is meant by
- 1:12:24Speaker 1: your consecration of yourself when you say I will obey
- 1:12:27Speaker 1: my soul. This is a sentence of tremendous meaning. It
- 1:12:32Speaker 1: must revolutionize the attitude and behavior of the average person.
- 1:12:36Speaker 1: Then think of your identification with this great supreme that
- 1:12:39Speaker 1: all its knowledge is yours, and all its wisdom is
- 1:12:42Speaker 1: yours for the asking. You are a god if you
- 1:12:45Speaker 1: think like a god. If you think like a god,
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: you cannot fail to act like a god. Divine thoughts
- 1:12:52Speaker 1: will surely externalize themselves in a divine life. Thoughts of
- 1:12:56Speaker 1: power will end in a life of power. Great thoughts
- 1:12:59Speaker 1: will manifest as in a great personality. Think well of
- 1:13:03Speaker 1: all this, and then you are ready to act action
- 1:13:08Speaker 1: at home. Do not merely think that you are going
- 1:13:11Speaker 1: to become great. Think that you are great now. Do
- 1:13:15Speaker 1: not think that you will begin to act in a
- 1:13:17Speaker 1: great way at some future time. Begin now. Do not
- 1:13:21Speaker 1: think that you will act in a great way when
- 1:13:23Speaker 1: you reach a different environment. Act in a great way
- 1:13:26Speaker 1: where you are now. Do not think that you will
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: begin to act in a great way when you begin
- 1:13:32Speaker 1: to deal with great things. Begin to deal in a
- 1:13:34Speaker 1: great way with small things. Do not think that you
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: will begin to be great when you get among more
- 1:13:40Speaker 1: intelligent people, or among people who understand you better. Begin
- 1:13:45Speaker 1: now to deal in a great way with the people
- 1:13:47Speaker 1: around you. If you are not in an environment where
- 1:13:51Speaker 1: there is scope for your best powers and talents, you
- 1:13:53Speaker 1: can move in due time. But meanwhile you can be
- 1:13:57Speaker 1: great where you are. Lincoln was as great when he
- 1:14:00Speaker 1: was a backwoods lawyer as when he was president. As
- 1:14:03Speaker 1: a backwood's lawyer, he did come and thinks in a
- 1:14:05Speaker 1: great way, and that made him president. Had he waited
- 1:14:09Speaker 1: until he reached Washington to begin to be great, he
- 1:14:12Speaker 1: would have remained unknown. You are not made great by
- 1:14:16Speaker 1: the location in which you happened to be, nor by
- 1:14:19Speaker 1: the things with which you may surround yourself. You are
- 1:14:22Speaker 1: not made great by what you receive from others, and
- 1:14:25Speaker 1: you can never manifest greatness so long as you depend
- 1:14:27Speaker 1: on others. You will manifest greatness only when you begin
- 1:14:31Speaker 1: to stand alone. Dismiss all thought of reliance on externals,
- 1:14:35Speaker 1: whether things, books, or people. As Emerson said, Shakespeare will
- 1:14:41Speaker 1: never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Shakespeare will
- 1:14:45Speaker 1: be made by the thinking of Shakespearean thoughts. Never mind
- 1:14:49Speaker 1: how the people around you, including those of your own household,
- 1:14:52Speaker 1: may treat you. That has nothing at all to do
- 1:14:55Speaker 1: with your being great. That is, it cannot hinder you
- 1:14:58Speaker 1: from being great. People may neglect you and be unthankful
- 1:15:02Speaker 1: and unkind in their attitude toward you, Does that prevent
- 1:15:06Speaker 1: you from being great in your manner and attitude to
- 1:15:08Speaker 1: wardom your father said, Jesus is kind to the unthankful
- 1:15:13Speaker 1: and the evil. Would God be great if he should
- 1:15:17Speaker 1: go away and sulk because people were unthankful and did
- 1:15:20Speaker 1: not appreciate him. Treat the unthankful and the evil in
- 1:15:24Speaker 1: a great and perfectly kind way, just as God does.
- 1:15:27Speaker 1: Do not talk about your greatness. You are really, in
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: essential nature, no greater than those around you. You may
- 1:15:34Speaker 1: have entered upon a way of living and thinking which
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: they have not yet found. But they are perfect on
- 1:15:39Speaker 1: their own plane of thought and action. You are entitled
- 1:15:42Speaker 1: to no special honor or consideration for your greatness. You
- 1:15:46Speaker 1: are a god, but you are among gods. You will
- 1:15:49Speaker 1: fall into the boastful attitude if you see other people's
- 1:15:52Speaker 1: shortcomings and failures and compare them with your own virtues
- 1:15:56Speaker 1: and successes. And if you fall into the boastful alatitude
- 1:15:59Speaker 1: of mind, you will cease to be great and become small.
- 1:16:03Speaker 1: Think of yourself as a perfect being among perfect beings,
- 1:16:07Speaker 1: and meet every person as an equal, not as either
- 1:16:09Speaker 1: superior or an inferior. Give yourself no heirs. Great people
- 1:16:14Speaker 1: never do ask no honors and seek no recognition. Honors
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: and recognition will come fast enough if you are entitled
- 1:16:22Speaker 1: to them. Begin at home. It is a great person
- 1:16:26Speaker 1: who can always be poised, assured, calm, and perfectly kind
- 1:16:30Speaker 1: and considerate at home. If your manner and attitude in
- 1:16:33Speaker 1: your own family are always the best you can think of,
- 1:16:36Speaker 1: you will soon become the one on whom all the
- 1:16:38Speaker 1: others will rely. You will be a tower of strength
- 1:16:41Speaker 1: and a support in time of trouble. You will be
- 1:16:44Speaker 1: loved and appreciated at the same time. Do not make
- 1:16:47Speaker 1: the mistake of throwing yourself away in the service of others.
- 1:16:51Speaker 1: The great person respects himself. He serves and helps, but
- 1:16:55Speaker 1: he is never slavishly servile. You cannot help your family
- 1:16:59Speaker 1: by being a slave to them, or by doing for
- 1:17:01Speaker 1: them those things that, by right they should do for themselves.
- 1:17:05Speaker 1: You do a personal injury when you wait on him
- 1:17:07Speaker 1: too much. The selfish and exacting are a great deal
- 1:17:11Speaker 1: better off if their exactions are denied. The ideal word
- 1:17:15Speaker 1: is not one where there are a lot of people
- 1:17:17Speaker 1: being waited on by other people. It is a world
- 1:17:20Speaker 1: where everybody waits on himself. Meet all demands, selfish and otherwise,
- 1:17:25Speaker 1: with perfect kindness and consideration. But do not allow yourself
- 1:17:29Speaker 1: to be made a slave to the whims, caprices, exactions,
- 1:17:33Speaker 1: or slavish desires of any member of your family. To
- 1:17:37Speaker 1: do so is not great, and it works an injury
- 1:17:39Speaker 1: to the other party. Do not become uneasy over the
- 1:17:43Speaker 1: failures or mistakes of any member of your family and
- 1:17:46Speaker 1: feel that you must interfere. Do not be disturbed if
- 1:17:49Speaker 1: others seem to be going wrong, and feel that you
- 1:17:52Speaker 1: must step in and set them right. Remember that every
- 1:17:55Speaker 1: person is perfect on his own plane. You cannot improve
- 1:17:59Speaker 1: on the work of God. Do not meddle with the
- 1:18:01Speaker 1: personal habits and practices of others, though they are your
- 1:18:04Speaker 1: nearest and dearest. These things are none of your business.
- 1:18:08Speaker 1: Nothing can be wrong but your own personal attitude. Make
- 1:18:12Speaker 1: that right, and you will know that all else is right.
- 1:18:16Speaker 1: You are a truly great soul when you can live
- 1:18:18Speaker 1: with those who do things that you do not do,
- 1:18:21Speaker 1: and yet refrain from either criticism or interference. Do the
- 1:18:25Speaker 1: things that are right for you to do, and believe
- 1:18:28Speaker 1: that every member of your family is doing the things
- 1:18:30Speaker 1: that are right for him. Nothing is wrong with anybody
- 1:18:34Speaker 1: or anything. Behold it is all very good. Do not
- 1:18:38Speaker 1: be enslaved by any one else, But be just as
- 1:18:40Speaker 1: careful that you do not enslave any one else to
- 1:18:43Speaker 1: your own notions of what is right. Think and think
- 1:18:46Speaker 1: deeply and continuously. Be perfect in your kindness and consideration.
- 1:18:51Speaker 1: Let your attitude be that of a God among gods,
- 1:18:54Speaker 1: and not that of a god among inferior beings. This
- 1:18:58Speaker 1: is the way to be great in your own home
- 1:19:02Speaker 1: action abroad. The rules that apply to your action at
- 1:19:06Speaker 1: home must apply to your action everywhere. Never forget for
- 1:19:10Speaker 1: an instant that this is a perfect world, and that
- 1:19:13Speaker 1: you are a god among gods. You are as great
- 1:19:17Speaker 1: as the greatest, but all are your equals. Rely absolutely
- 1:19:21Speaker 1: on your perception of truth. Trust to the inner light
- 1:19:25Speaker 1: rather than to reason. But be sure that your perception
- 1:19:28Speaker 1: comes from the inner light. Act in poise and calmness.
- 1:19:32Speaker 1: Be still and attend on God. Your identification of yourself
- 1:19:36Speaker 1: with the ol mind will give you all the knowledge
- 1:19:39Speaker 1: you need for guidance in any contingency that may arise
- 1:19:42Speaker 1: in your own life or in the lives of the others.
- 1:19:45Speaker 1: It is only necessary that you should be supremely calm
- 1:19:48Speaker 1: and rely upon the eternal wisdom that is within you.
- 1:19:52Speaker 1: If you act in poison faith, your judgment will always
- 1:19:55Speaker 1: be right, and you will always know exactly what to do.
- 1:20:00Speaker 1: Do not hurry or worry. Remember Lincoln in the dark
- 1:20:03Speaker 1: days of the war. James Freeman Clark relates that after
- 1:20:07Speaker 1: the Battle of Fredericksburg, Lincoln alone furnished a supply of
- 1:20:11Speaker 1: faith and hope for the nation. Hundreds of leading men
- 1:20:15Speaker 1: from all parts of the country went sadly into his
- 1:20:18Speaker 1: room and came out cheerful and hopeful they had stood
- 1:20:22Speaker 1: face to face with the Highest and had seen God
- 1:20:25Speaker 1: in this slank, ungainly patient man, although they knew it not.
- 1:20:30Speaker 1: Have perfect faith in yourself and in your own ability
- 1:20:33Speaker 1: to cope with any combination of circumstances that may arise.
- 1:20:38Speaker 1: Do not be disturbed if you are alone. If you
- 1:20:40Speaker 1: need friends, they will be brought to you at the
- 1:20:42Speaker 1: right time. Do not be disturbed if you feel that
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: you are ignorant. The information that you need will be
- 1:20:48Speaker 1: furnished you when it is time for you to have it.
- 1:20:52Speaker 1: That which is in you, impelling you forward, is in
- 1:20:54Speaker 1: the things and people you need, impelling them toward you.
- 1:20:59Speaker 1: If there is a particular men you need to know,
- 1:21:01Speaker 1: he will be introduced to you. If there is a
- 1:21:04Speaker 1: particular book you need to read, it will be placed
- 1:21:06Speaker 1: in your hands at the right time. All the knowledge
- 1:21:10Speaker 1: you need is coming to you from both external and
- 1:21:12Speaker 1: internal sources. Your information and your talents will always be
- 1:21:17Speaker 1: equal to the requirements of the occasion. Remember that Jesus
- 1:21:21Speaker 1: taught his disciples not to worry as to what they
- 1:21:23Speaker 1: should say when brought before the judges. He knew that
- 1:21:27Speaker 1: the power in them would be sufficient for the needs
- 1:21:29Speaker 1: of the hour. As soon as you awaken and begin
- 1:21:32Speaker 1: to use your faculties in a great way, you will
- 1:21:35Speaker 1: apply power to the development of your brain. New cells
- 1:21:39Speaker 1: will be created and dormant cells quickened into activity, and
- 1:21:43Speaker 1: your brain will be qualified as a perfect instrument for
- 1:21:46Speaker 1: your mind. Do not try to do great things until
- 1:21:49Speaker 1: you are ready to go about them in a great way.
- 1:21:52Speaker 1: If you undertake to deal with great matters in a
- 1:21:54Speaker 1: small way, that is from a low viewpoint, or with
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: incomplete consecration and wavering faith and courage, you will fail.
- 1:22:03Speaker 1: Do not be in a hurry to get to the
- 1:22:04Speaker 1: great things. Doing great things will not make you great,
- 1:22:08Speaker 1: but becoming great will certainly lead you to the doing
- 1:22:11Speaker 1: of great things. Begin to be great where you are
- 1:22:15Speaker 1: and in the things you do every day. Do not
- 1:22:18Speaker 1: be in haste to be found out or recognized a
- 1:22:20Speaker 1: great personality. Do not be disappointed if men do not
- 1:22:24Speaker 1: nominate you for office within a month after you begin
- 1:22:27Speaker 1: to practice what you read in this book. Great people
- 1:22:30Speaker 1: never seek for recognition or applause. They are not great
- 1:22:34Speaker 1: because they want to be paid for being so greatness
- 1:22:37Speaker 1: is reward enough for itself. The joy of being something,
- 1:22:40Speaker 1: and of knowing that you are advancing is the greatest
- 1:22:43Speaker 1: of all joys possible to man. If you begin in
- 1:22:46Speaker 1: your own family as described in the preceding chapter, and
- 1:22:50Speaker 1: then assume the same mental attitude with your neighbors, friends,
- 1:22:54Speaker 1: and those you meet in business, you will soon find
- 1:22:56Speaker 1: that people are beginning to depend on you. Your advice
- 1:23:00Speaker 1: will be sought, and a constantly increasing number of people
- 1:23:03Speaker 1: will look to you for strength and inspiration and rely
- 1:23:06Speaker 1: upon your judgment. Here, as in the home, you must
- 1:23:10Speaker 1: avoid meddling with other people's affairs. Help all who come
- 1:23:14Speaker 1: to you, but do not go about officiously endeavoring to
- 1:23:16Speaker 1: set other people right. Mind your own business. It is
- 1:23:20Speaker 1: no part of your mission in life to correct people's morals, habits,
- 1:23:24Speaker 1: or practices. Lead a great life, doing all things with
- 1:23:28Speaker 1: a great spirit, and in a great way. Give to
- 1:23:30Speaker 1: him that asks of you as freely as you have received.
- 1:23:34Speaker 1: But do not force your help or your opinions upon
- 1:23:36Speaker 1: any man. If your neighbor wishes to smoke or drink,
- 1:23:40Speaker 1: it is his business, it is none of yours until
- 1:23:43Speaker 1: he consults you about it. If you lead a great
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: life and do no preaching, you will save a thousand
- 1:23:49Speaker 1: times as many souls as one who leads a small
- 1:23:51Speaker 1: life and preaches continuously. If you hold the right viewpoint
- 1:23:56Speaker 1: of the world, others will find it out and be
- 1:23:59Speaker 1: impressed by it through your daily conversation and practice. Do
- 1:24:03Speaker 1: not try to convert others to your point of view,
- 1:24:06Speaker 1: except by holding it and living accordingly. If your consecration
- 1:24:10Speaker 1: is perfect, you do not need to tell any one.
- 1:24:13Speaker 1: It will speedily become a parent to all that you
- 1:24:15Speaker 1: are guided by a higher principle than the average man
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: or woman. If your identification with God is complete, you
- 1:24:22Speaker 1: do not need to explain the fact to others. It
- 1:24:25Speaker 1: will become self evident. To become known as a great personality,
- 1:24:29Speaker 1: you have nothing to do but to live. Do not
- 1:24:32Speaker 1: imagine that you must go charging about the world like
- 1:24:34Speaker 1: don Quixote, tilting at windmills and overturning things in general,
- 1:24:39Speaker 1: in order to demonstrate that you are somebody. Do not
- 1:24:43Speaker 1: go hunting for big things to do. Live a great
- 1:24:46Speaker 1: life where you are and in the daily work you
- 1:24:48Speaker 1: have to do, and greater works will surely find you out.
- 1:24:52Speaker 1: Big things will come to you asking to be done.
- 1:24:56Speaker 1: Be so impressed with the value of a man that
- 1:24:58Speaker 1: you treat even a bag or the tramp with the
- 1:25:01Speaker 1: most distinguished consideration. All is God, every man and woman
- 1:25:06Speaker 1: is perfect. Let your manner be that of a God
- 1:25:09Speaker 1: addressing other gods. Do not save all your consideration for
- 1:25:12Speaker 1: the poor. The millionaire is as good as the tramp.
- 1:25:17Speaker 1: This is a perfectly good world, and there is not
- 1:25:19Speaker 1: a person or thing in it but is exactly right.
- 1:25:22Speaker 1: Be sure that you keep this in mind in dealing
- 1:25:24Speaker 1: with things and men. Form your mental vision of yourself
- 1:25:28Speaker 1: with care, make the thought form of yourself as you
- 1:25:31Speaker 1: wish to be, and hold this with the faith that
- 1:25:33Speaker 1: it is being realized, and with the purpose to realize
- 1:25:36Speaker 1: it completely. Do every common act as a God should
- 1:25:40Speaker 1: do it. Speak every word as a God should speak it.
- 1:25:43Speaker 1: Meet men and women of both low and high estate,
- 1:25:46Speaker 1: as a God meets other divine beings. Begin thus and
- 1:25:50Speaker 1: continue thus, and your unfolding in ability and power will
- 1:25:54Speaker 1: be great and rapid. Some further explanations. We go back
- 1:26:00Speaker 1: here to the matter of the point of view, for
- 1:26:03Speaker 1: besides being vitally important, it is the one that is
- 1:26:06Speaker 1: likely to give the student the most trouble. We have
- 1:26:09Speaker 1: been trained, partly by mistaken religious teachers, to look upon
- 1:26:13Speaker 1: the world as being like a wrecked ship storm driven
- 1:26:16Speaker 1: upon a rocky coast. Utter destruction is inevitable at the end,
- 1:26:21Speaker 1: and the most that can be done is to rescue
- 1:26:23Speaker 1: perhaps a few of the crew. This view teaches us
- 1:26:27Speaker 1: to consider the world as essentially bad and growing worse,
- 1:26:31Speaker 1: and to believe that existing discord and inharmoniousness must continue
- 1:26:35Speaker 1: and intensify until the end. It robs us of hope
- 1:26:38Speaker 1: for society, government, and humanity, and gives us a decreasing
- 1:26:43Speaker 1: outlook and contracting mind. This is all wrong. The world
- 1:26:47Speaker 1: is not wrecked. It is like a magnificent steamer, with
- 1:26:50Speaker 1: the engines in place and the machinery in perfect order.
- 1:26:54Speaker 1: The bunkers are full of coal, and the ship is
- 1:26:57Speaker 1: amply provisioned for the crews. There is no lack of
- 1:27:00Speaker 1: any good thing. Every provision omniscience could device has been
- 1:27:04Speaker 1: made for the safety, comfort, and happiness of the crew.
- 1:27:07Speaker 1: The steamer is out on the high seas, checking hither
- 1:27:10Speaker 1: and thither because no one has yet learned the right
- 1:27:13Speaker 1: course to steer. We are learning to steer, and in
- 1:27:17Speaker 1: due time will come grandly into the harbor of perfect harmony.
- 1:27:21Speaker 1: The world is good and growing better. Existing discords and inharmoniousness,
- 1:27:27Speaker 1: are but the pitching of the ship incidental to our
- 1:27:29Speaker 1: own imperfect steering. They will all be removed in due time.
- 1:27:34Speaker 1: This view gives us an increasing outlook and an expanding mind.
- 1:27:38Speaker 1: It enables us to think largely of society and of ourselves,
- 1:27:42Speaker 1: and to do things in a great way. Furthermore, we
- 1:27:46Speaker 1: see that nothing can be wrong with such a world,
- 1:27:49Speaker 1: or with any part of it, including our own affairs.
- 1:27:52Speaker 1: If it is all moving on toward completion, then it
- 1:27:55Speaker 1: is not going wrong. And as our own personal affairs
- 1:27:58Speaker 1: are a part of the whole, they are not going wrong.
- 1:28:02Speaker 1: You and all that you are concerned with are moving
- 1:28:04Speaker 1: on toward completeness. Nothing can check this forward movement but yourself,
- 1:28:09Speaker 1: and you can only check it by assuming a mental
- 1:28:12Speaker 1: attitude that is at cross purposes with the mind of God.
- 1:28:16Speaker 1: You have nothing to keep right but yourself. If you
- 1:28:19Speaker 1: keep yourself right, nothing can possibly go wrong with you,
- 1:28:22Speaker 1: and you can have nothing to fear. No business or
- 1:28:26Speaker 1: other disaster can come upon you if your personal attitude
- 1:28:29Speaker 1: is right, For you are a part of that which
- 1:28:31Speaker 1: is increasing and advancing, and you must increase and advance
- 1:28:35Speaker 1: with it. Moreover, your thought form will be mostly shaped
- 1:28:39Speaker 1: according to your viewpoint of the cosmos. If you see
- 1:28:42Speaker 1: the world as a lost and ruined thing, you will
- 1:28:44Speaker 1: see yourself as a part of it, and as partaking
- 1:28:47Speaker 1: in its sins and weaknesses. If your outlook for the
- 1:28:50Speaker 1: world as a whole is hopeless, your outlook for yourself
- 1:28:53Speaker 1: cannot be hopeful. If you see the world as inclining
- 1:28:57Speaker 1: toward its end, you cannot see yourself as advancing. Unless
- 1:29:01Speaker 1: you think well of all the works of God, you
- 1:29:04Speaker 1: cannot really think well of yourself. And unless you think
- 1:29:07Speaker 1: well of yourself, you can never become great. I repeat
- 1:29:11Speaker 1: that your place in life, including your material environment, is
- 1:29:14Speaker 1: determined by the thought form you habitually hold of yourself.
- 1:29:18Speaker 1: When you make a thought form of yourself, you can
- 1:29:20Speaker 1: hardly fail to form in your mind a corresponding environment.
- 1:29:24Speaker 1: If you think of yourself as an incapable, inefficient person,
- 1:29:28Speaker 1: you will think of yourself with poor or cheap surroundings.
- 1:29:32Speaker 1: Unless you think well of yourself, you will be sure
- 1:29:35Speaker 1: to picture yourself in a more or less poverty stricken environment.
- 1:29:39Speaker 1: These thoughts habitually held become invisible forms in the surrounding
- 1:29:44Speaker 1: mind stuff, and are with you continually in due time,
- 1:29:48Speaker 1: by the regular action of the eternal creative energy, the
- 1:29:51Speaker 1: invisible thought forms are produced in material stuff, and you
- 1:29:55Speaker 1: are surrounded by your own thoughts made into material things.
- 1:29:59Speaker 1: See nature a great, living and advancing presence, and see
- 1:30:02Speaker 1: human society in exactly the same way. It is all one,
- 1:30:06Speaker 1: coming from one source, and it is all good. You yourself,
- 1:30:10Speaker 1: are made of the same stuff as God. All the
- 1:30:13Speaker 1: constituents of God are parts of you. Every power that
- 1:30:17Speaker 1: God has is a constituent of man. You can move
- 1:30:20Speaker 1: forward as you see God doing. You have within yourself
- 1:30:24Speaker 1: the source of every power. More about thought, give place
- 1:30:30Speaker 1: here to some further consideration of thought. You will never
- 1:30:34Speaker 1: become great until your own thoughts make you great, And
- 1:30:37Speaker 1: therefore it is of the first importance that you should think.
- 1:30:42Speaker 1: You will never do great things in the external world
- 1:30:45Speaker 1: until you think great things in the internal world. And
- 1:30:48Speaker 1: you will never think great things until you think about
- 1:30:51Speaker 1: truth about the verities. To think great things, you must
- 1:30:55Speaker 1: be absolutely sincere, And to be sincere, you must know
- 1:31:00Speaker 1: that your intentions are right, insincere or false. Thinking is
- 1:31:04Speaker 1: never great, however logical and brilliant it may be. The
- 1:31:09Speaker 1: first and most important step is to seek the truth
- 1:31:11Speaker 1: about human relations, to know what you ought to be
- 1:31:14Speaker 1: to other men and what they ought to be to you.
- 1:31:18Speaker 1: This brings you back to the search of a right viewpoint.
- 1:31:21Speaker 1: You should study organic and social evolution. Read Darwin and
- 1:31:26Speaker 1: Walter Thomas Mills, and when you read think, think the
- 1:31:30Speaker 1: whole matter over until you see the world of things
- 1:31:33Speaker 1: and men in the right way. Think about what God
- 1:31:36Speaker 1: is doing until you see what He is doing. Your
- 1:31:39Speaker 1: next step is to think yourself into the right personal attitude.
- 1:31:43Speaker 1: Your viewpoint tells you what the right attitude is, and
- 1:31:46Speaker 1: obedience to the soul puts you into it. It is
- 1:31:50Speaker 1: only by making a complete consecration of yourself to the
- 1:31:53Speaker 1: highest that is within you that you can attain to
- 1:31:56Speaker 1: sincere thinking. So long as you know you are selfish
- 1:31:59Speaker 1: in your or dishonest or crooked in any way in
- 1:32:02Speaker 1: your intentions or practices, your thinking will be false and
- 1:32:06Speaker 1: your thoughts will have no power. Think about the way
- 1:32:10Speaker 1: you are doing things, about all your intentions, purposes, and
- 1:32:14Speaker 1: practices until you know that they are right. The fact
- 1:32:18Speaker 1: of his own complete unity with God is one that
- 1:32:21Speaker 1: no person can grasp without deep and sustained thinking. Anyone
- 1:32:25Speaker 1: can accept the proposition in a superficial way, but to
- 1:32:28Speaker 1: feel and realize a vital comprehension of it is another matter.
- 1:32:33Speaker 1: It is easy to think of going outside of yourself
- 1:32:35Speaker 1: to meet God, but it is not easy to think
- 1:32:38Speaker 1: of going inside yourself to meet God. But God is there,
- 1:32:42Speaker 1: and in the holy of holies of your own soul
- 1:32:44Speaker 1: you may meet Him face to face. It is a
- 1:32:47Speaker 1: tremendous thing, this fact that all you need is already
- 1:32:50Speaker 1: within you, that you do not have to consider how
- 1:32:53Speaker 1: to get the power to do what you want to do,
- 1:32:55Speaker 1: or to make yourself what you want to be. You
- 1:32:58Speaker 1: only have to consider how to use the power you
- 1:33:00Speaker 1: have in the right way. And there is nothing to
- 1:33:03Speaker 1: do but to begin use your perception of truth. You
- 1:33:07Speaker 1: can see some truth to day, live fully up to that,
- 1:33:11Speaker 1: and you will see more truth tomorrow. To rid yourself
- 1:33:14Speaker 1: of the old false ideas, you will have to think
- 1:33:16Speaker 1: a great deal about the value of man, the greatness
- 1:33:19Speaker 1: and worth of a human soul. You must cease from
- 1:33:23Speaker 1: looking at human mistakes and look at successes. Cease from
- 1:33:26Speaker 1: seeing faults and see virtues. You can no longer look
- 1:33:30Speaker 1: upon men and women as lost and ruined beings that
- 1:33:33Speaker 1: are descending into hell. You must come to regard them
- 1:33:37Speaker 1: as shining souls who are ascending toward heaven. It will
- 1:33:41Speaker 1: require some exercise of will power to do this, but
- 1:33:44Speaker 1: this is the legitimate use of the will. To decide
- 1:33:47Speaker 1: what you will think about and how you will think.
- 1:33:50Speaker 1: The function of the will is to direct thought. Think
- 1:33:54Speaker 1: about the good side of man, the lovely, attractive part,
- 1:33:57Speaker 1: and exert your will in refusing to think of anything
- 1:34:00Speaker 1: else in connection with them. I know of no one
- 1:34:03Speaker 1: who has attained to so much on this one point.
- 1:34:06Speaker 1: As Eugene we Debs twice, the socialist candidate for President
- 1:34:10Speaker 1: of the United States, mister Deb's reverence is humanity. No
- 1:34:15Speaker 1: appeal for help is ever made to him in vain
- 1:34:18Speaker 1: No one receives from him an unkind or censorious word.
- 1:34:22Speaker 1: You cannot come into his presence without being made sensible
- 1:34:25Speaker 1: of his deep and kindly personal interest in you. Every person,
- 1:34:29Speaker 1: be he millionaire, grimy working man, or toil worn woman,
- 1:34:34Speaker 1: receives the radiant warmth of a broaderly affection that is
- 1:34:38Speaker 1: sincere and true. No rugged child speaks to him on
- 1:34:41Speaker 1: the street without receiving instant and tender recognition. Deb's loves man.
- 1:34:47Speaker 1: This has made him the leading figure in a great movement,
- 1:34:50Speaker 1: the beloved hero of a million hearts, and will give
- 1:34:53Speaker 1: him a deathless name. It is a great thing to
- 1:34:56Speaker 1: love man so, and is only achieved by thought. No
- 1:35:00Speaker 1: think can make you great but thought. Quote. You may
- 1:35:05Speaker 1: divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those
- 1:35:08Speaker 1: who think through others. The latter are the rule, and
- 1:35:11Speaker 1: the former the exception. The first original thinkers in a
- 1:35:15Speaker 1: double sense, and egoists in the noblest meaning of the word.
- 1:35:19Speaker 1: Schopenhauer quote. The key to every man is his thought,
- 1:35:26Speaker 1: sturdy and defiant though he look, he has a ham
- 1:35:29Speaker 1: which he obeys, which is the idea after which all
- 1:35:31Speaker 1: his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by
- 1:35:35Speaker 1: showing him a new idea, which commands his own Emerson quote.
- 1:35:41Speaker 1: All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times.
- 1:35:45Speaker 1: But to make them really ours, we must think them
- 1:35:48Speaker 1: over again, honestly, till they take root in our personal expression.
- 1:35:53Speaker 1: Gothe quote. All that a man is outwardly is but
- 1:35:58Speaker 1: the expression and completion of his inverse thoughts. To work effectively,
- 1:36:02Speaker 1: he must think clearly. To act nobly, he must think nobly.
- 1:36:07Speaker 1: Channing quote. Great men are they who see that spirituality
- 1:36:14Speaker 1: is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.
- 1:36:18Speaker 1: Emerson quote. Some people study all their lives, and that
- 1:36:25Speaker 1: their death they have learned everything except to think. Domerg quote.
- 1:36:32Speaker 1: It is the habitual thought that frames itself into our life.
- 1:36:36Speaker 1: It affects us even more than our intimate social relations do.
- 1:36:40Speaker 1: Our confidential friends have not so much to do in
- 1:36:43Speaker 1: shaping our lives as the thoughts have which we harbor. J. W.
- 1:36:47Speaker 1: Tl quote. When God lets lose a great thinker on
- 1:36:52Speaker 1: this planet, then all things are at risk. There is
- 1:36:56Speaker 1: not a piece of science but its flank may be
- 1:36:58Speaker 1: turned tomorrow, or any literary reputation, or the so called
- 1:37:02Speaker 1: eternal names of fame that may not be refused and
- 1:37:05Speaker 1: condemned Emerson, Think, Think, Think. Jesus' idea of greatness in
- 1:37:15Speaker 1: the twenty third chapter of Matthew, Jesus makes a very
- 1:37:18Speaker 1: plain distinction between true and false greatness, and also points
- 1:37:23Speaker 1: out the one great danger to all who wish to
- 1:37:25Speaker 1: become great, the most insidious of temptations, which all must
- 1:37:29Speaker 1: avoid and fight unceasingly. Who desire to really climb in
- 1:37:33Speaker 1: the world. Speaking to the multitude and to his disciples,
- 1:37:38Speaker 1: he bids them beware of adopting the principle of the Pharisees.
- 1:37:42Speaker 1: He points out that while the Pharisees are just and
- 1:37:45Speaker 1: righteous men, honorable judges, true lawgivers, and upright in their
- 1:37:49Speaker 1: dealings with men, they love the uppermost seats at feasts
- 1:37:53Speaker 1: and greetings in the marketplace, and to be called master master.
- 1:37:58Speaker 1: And in comparison with this prince, he says, he that
- 1:38:02Speaker 1: will be great among you, let him serve. The average
- 1:38:06Speaker 1: person's idea of a great man, rather than of one
- 1:38:09Speaker 1: who serves, is of one who succeeds in getting himself served.
- 1:38:14Speaker 1: He gets himself in a position to command man, to
- 1:38:17Speaker 1: exercise power over them, making them obey his will. The
- 1:38:21Speaker 1: exercise of dominion over other people, to most persons is
- 1:38:24Speaker 1: a great thing. Nothing seems to be sweeter to the
- 1:38:27Speaker 1: selfish soul than this. You will always find every selfish
- 1:38:31Speaker 1: and undeveloped person trying to domineer over others, to exercise
- 1:38:36Speaker 1: control over other men. Savage men were no sooner placed
- 1:38:40Speaker 1: upon the earth than they begin to enslave one another
- 1:38:43Speaker 1: for ages. The struggle in war, diplomacy, in politics, and
- 1:38:47Speaker 1: government has been aimed at the securing of control over
- 1:38:50Speaker 1: other men. Kings and princes have drenched the soil of
- 1:38:54Speaker 1: the earth in blood and tears in the effort to
- 1:38:56Speaker 1: extend their dominions and their power to rule more people.
- 1:39:00Speaker 1: The struggle of the business were to day is the
- 1:39:02Speaker 1: same as the one on the battlefields of Europe a
- 1:39:04Speaker 1: century ago, so far as the ruling principle is concerned.
- 1:39:09Speaker 1: Robberts oh Ingersoll could not understand why men like Rockefeller
- 1:39:13Speaker 1: and Carnegie seek for more money and make themselves slaves
- 1:39:17Speaker 1: to the business struggle when they already have more than
- 1:39:20Speaker 1: they can possibly use. He thought it a kind of madness,
- 1:39:23Speaker 1: and illustrated it as follows. Suppose a man had fifty
- 1:39:27Speaker 1: thousand pairs of pants, seventy five thousand vests, one hundred
- 1:39:31Speaker 1: thousand coats, and one hundred and fifty thousand neckties. What
- 1:39:35Speaker 1: would you think of him if he arose in the
- 1:39:37Speaker 1: morning before light and worked until it was dark every day,
- 1:39:41Speaker 1: rain or shine, in all kinds of weather, merely to
- 1:39:44Speaker 1: get another necktie. But it is not a good simile.
- 1:39:49Speaker 1: The possession of neckties gives a man no power over
- 1:39:52Speaker 1: other men, but the possession of dollars does Rockefeller, Carnegie
- 1:39:57Speaker 1: and other kind are not after dollars but power. It
- 1:40:01Speaker 1: is the principle of the Pharisee. It is the struggle
- 1:40:04Speaker 1: for the high place. It develops able man, cunning man,
- 1:40:08Speaker 1: resourceful man, but not great man. I want you to
- 1:40:12Speaker 1: contrast these two ideas of greatness. Sharply in your mind.
- 1:40:16Speaker 1: He that will be great among you, let him serve.
- 1:40:20Speaker 1: Let me stand before the average American audience and ask
- 1:40:23Speaker 1: the name of the greatest American, and the majority will
- 1:40:25Speaker 1: think of Abraham Lincoln. And is this not because in Lincoln,
- 1:40:29Speaker 1: above all the other men who has served us in
- 1:40:31Speaker 1: public life, we recognize the spirit of service, Not servility,
- 1:40:36Speaker 1: but service. Lincoln was a great man because he knew
- 1:40:40Speaker 1: how to be a great servant. Napoleon, able, cold, selfish
- 1:40:44Speaker 1: seeking the high places, was a brilliant man. Lincoln was great,
- 1:40:49Speaker 1: Napoleon was not. The very moment you begin to advance
- 1:40:53Speaker 1: and are recognized as one who is doing things in
- 1:40:55Speaker 1: a great way, you will find yourself in danger. The
- 1:40:59Speaker 1: temptation to pitchronize advice, or take upon yourself the direction
- 1:41:03Speaker 1: of other people's affairs is sometimes almost irresistible avoid. However,
- 1:41:08Speaker 1: the opposite danger of falling into servility, or of completely
- 1:41:12Speaker 1: throwing yourself away in the service of others. To do
- 1:41:16Speaker 1: this has been the ideal of a great many people.
- 1:41:19Speaker 1: The completely self sacrificing life has been thought to be
- 1:41:22Speaker 1: the christ Like life. Because as I think of a
- 1:41:25Speaker 1: complete misconception of the character and teachings of Jesus, I
- 1:41:29Speaker 1: have explained this misconception in a little book that I
- 1:41:32Speaker 1: hope you may all sometimes read, a New Christ. Thousands
- 1:41:36Speaker 1: of people imitating Jesus as they suppose, have belittled themselves
- 1:41:40Speaker 1: and given up all else to go about doing good,
- 1:41:44Speaker 1: practicing an altruism that is really as morbid and as
- 1:41:47Speaker 1: far from great as the rankest selfishness. The finer instincts
- 1:41:51Speaker 1: which respond to the cry of trouble or distress are not,
- 1:41:55Speaker 1: by any means all of you. They are not necessarily
- 1:41:58Speaker 1: the best part of you. There are other things you
- 1:42:01Speaker 1: must do besides helping the unfortunate, Although it is true
- 1:42:05Speaker 1: that a large part of the life and activities of
- 1:42:07Speaker 1: every great person must be given to helping other people.
- 1:42:11Speaker 1: As you begin to advance, they will come to you.
- 1:42:14Speaker 1: Do not turn them away, But do not make the
- 1:42:16Speaker 1: fatal error of supposing that the life of complete self
- 1:42:20Speaker 1: abnegation is the way of greatness. To make another point here,
- 1:42:24Speaker 1: let me refer to the fact that Swedenborg's classification of
- 1:42:28Speaker 1: fundamental motives is exactly the same as that of Jesus.
- 1:42:32Speaker 1: He divides all men into two groups, those who live
- 1:42:35Speaker 1: in pure love and those who live in what he
- 1:42:38Speaker 1: calls the love of ruling for the love of self.
- 1:42:41Speaker 1: It will be seen that this is exactly the same
- 1:42:43Speaker 1: as the loss for place and power of the Pharisees.
- 1:42:47Speaker 1: Swedenborg saw this selfish love of power as the cause
- 1:42:50Speaker 1: of all sin. It was the only evil desire of
- 1:42:53Speaker 1: the human heart, from which all other evil desires sprang. Over.
- 1:42:58Speaker 1: Against this he places love. He does not say love
- 1:43:02Speaker 1: of God or love of man, but merely love. Nearly
- 1:43:05Speaker 1: all religionists make more of love and service to God
- 1:43:09Speaker 1: than they do of love and service to man. But
- 1:43:12Speaker 1: it is a fact that love to God is not
- 1:43:14Speaker 1: sufficient to save a man from the lust for power.
- 1:43:17Speaker 1: For some of the most ardent lovers of the deity
- 1:43:19Speaker 1: have been the worst of tyrants. Lovers of God are
- 1:43:22Speaker 1: often tyrants, and lovers of man are often meddlesome and officious.
- 1:43:28Speaker 1: A view of evolution, but how shall we avoid throwing
- 1:43:32Speaker 1: ourselves into altruistic work if we are surrounded by poverty, ignorance, suffering,
- 1:43:38Speaker 1: and every appearance of misery as very many people are.
- 1:43:42Speaker 1: Those who live where the withered hand of want is
- 1:43:45Speaker 1: thrust upon them from every side, appealingly for aid, must
- 1:43:48Speaker 1: find it hard to refrain from continuous giving. Again, there
- 1:43:52Speaker 1: are social and other irregularities in justices done to the weak,
- 1:43:56Speaker 1: which fire generous souls with an almost irresistible death desire
- 1:44:00Speaker 1: to set things right. We want to start a crusade.
- 1:44:03Speaker 1: We feel that the wrongs will never be righted until
- 1:44:06Speaker 1: we give ourselves wholly to the task. In all this,
- 1:44:10Speaker 1: we must fall back upon the point of view. We
- 1:44:13Speaker 1: must remember that this is not a bad world, but
- 1:44:16Speaker 1: a good world in the process of becoming beyond all doubt.
- 1:44:20Speaker 1: There was a time when there was no life upon
- 1:44:22Speaker 1: this earth. The testimony of geology to the fact that
- 1:44:25Speaker 1: the globe was once a bowl of burning gas and
- 1:44:28Speaker 1: molten rock clothed about with boiling vapors is indisputable, and
- 1:44:33Speaker 1: we do not know how life could have existed under
- 1:44:35Speaker 1: such conditions that seems impossible. Geology tells us that later
- 1:44:40Speaker 1: on a crust formed, the globe cooled and hardened, The
- 1:44:44Speaker 1: vapors condensed and became missed or fell in rain. The
- 1:44:49Speaker 1: cooled surface crumbled into soil, moisture accumulated, ponds and seas
- 1:44:54Speaker 1: were gathered together, and at last, somewhere in the water
- 1:44:57Speaker 1: or on the land, appeared something that was alive. It
- 1:45:01Speaker 1: is reasonable to suppose that this first life was in
- 1:45:04Speaker 1: single celled organisms. But behind these cells was the insistent
- 1:45:08Speaker 1: urge of spirit, the great one, life seeking expression. And
- 1:45:13Speaker 1: soon organisms, having too much life to express themselves with
- 1:45:16Speaker 1: one cell, had two cells, and then many, and still
- 1:45:19Speaker 1: more life was poured into them. Multiple cell organisms were formed, plants, trees, vertebrates,
- 1:45:27Speaker 1: and mammals, many of them with strange shapes. Was all
- 1:45:31Speaker 1: were perfect after their kind, as everything is that God
- 1:45:34Speaker 1: makes no doubt. There were crude and almost monstrous forms
- 1:45:38Speaker 1: of both animal and plant life, but everything filled its
- 1:45:41Speaker 1: purpose on its day, and it was all very good.
- 1:45:45Speaker 1: Then another day came, the great day of the evolutionary process,
- 1:45:49Speaker 1: a day when the morning stars sang together and the
- 1:45:52Speaker 1: sounds of God shouted for joy. To behold the beginning
- 1:45:55Speaker 1: of the end. For men, the object aimed at from
- 1:45:58Speaker 1: the beginning had appeared upon the scene, an ape like being,
- 1:46:03Speaker 1: little different from the beasts around him in appearance, but
- 1:46:06Speaker 1: infinitely different, capacity for growth and thought, art and beauty,
- 1:46:11Speaker 1: architecture and song, poetry and music. All these were unrealized
- 1:46:16Speaker 1: possibilities in that ape man's soul, and for his time
- 1:46:19Speaker 1: and kind he was very good. It is God that
- 1:46:22Speaker 1: works in you to will and to do of his
- 1:46:25Speaker 1: good pleasure, says Saint Paul. From the day the first
- 1:46:29Speaker 1: man appeared, God began to work in man, putting more
- 1:46:32Speaker 1: and more of himself into each succeeding generation, urging them
- 1:46:36Speaker 1: on to larger achievements and to better conditions social, governmental,
- 1:46:40Speaker 1: and domestic. Those who looking back into ancient history see
- 1:46:45Speaker 1: the awful conditions which existed, the barbarities, idolatries, and sufferings,
- 1:46:50Speaker 1: and reading about God in connection with these things, are
- 1:46:54Speaker 1: disposed to feel that He was cruel and unjust to
- 1:46:56Speaker 1: man should pause and think. From the ape man to
- 1:46:59Speaker 1: the becoming christ Men. The race has had to rise,
- 1:47:03Speaker 1: and it could only be accomplished by the successive unfolding
- 1:47:06Speaker 1: of the various powers and possibilities latent in the human brain.
- 1:47:11Speaker 1: God desired to express himself, to live in form, and
- 1:47:14Speaker 1: not only that, but to live in a form through
- 1:47:16Speaker 1: which he could express himself on the highest moral and
- 1:47:19Speaker 1: spiritual plane. God wanted to evolve a form in which
- 1:47:23Speaker 1: he could live as a God and manifest himself as
- 1:47:26Speaker 1: a God. This was the aim of the evolutionary force.
- 1:47:30Speaker 1: The ages of warfare, bloodshed, suffering injustice, and cruelty were
- 1:47:35Speaker 1: tempered in many ways with love and justice as time advanced,
- 1:47:39Speaker 1: and this was developing the brain of man to a
- 1:47:42Speaker 1: point where it should be capable of giving full expression
- 1:47:44Speaker 1: to the love and justice of God. The end is
- 1:47:47Speaker 1: not yet. God aims not at the perfection of a
- 1:47:50Speaker 1: few choice specimens for exhibition, like the large berries at
- 1:47:54Speaker 1: the top of the box, but at the glorification of
- 1:47:56Speaker 1: the race. The time will come when the Kingdom of
- 1:47:59Speaker 1: God God shall be established on earth, the time foreseen
- 1:48:03Speaker 1: by the dreamer of the Isle of Patmos, when there
- 1:48:06Speaker 1: shall be no crying, neither shall there be any more pain,
- 1:48:09Speaker 1: for the former things are all passed away, and there
- 1:48:12Speaker 1: shall be no night there. Serving God. I have brought
- 1:48:19Speaker 1: you thus far through the two preceding chapters with a
- 1:48:22Speaker 1: view to finally settling the question of duty. This is
- 1:48:26Speaker 1: one that puzzles and perplexes very many people who are
- 1:48:29Speaker 1: earnest and sincere, and gives them a great deal of
- 1:48:32Speaker 1: difficulty in its solution. When they start out to make
- 1:48:36Speaker 1: something of themselves and to practice the science of being great,
- 1:48:39Speaker 1: they find themselves necessarily compelled to re arrange many of
- 1:48:43Speaker 1: their relationships. There are friends who perhaps must be alienated.
- 1:48:47Speaker 1: There are relatives who misunderstand and who feel that they
- 1:48:50Speaker 1: are in some way being slighted. The really great man
- 1:48:54Speaker 1: is often considered selfish by a large circle of people
- 1:48:56Speaker 1: who are connected with him, and who feel that he
- 1:48:59Speaker 1: might bestow upon the more benefits than he does. The
- 1:49:02Speaker 1: question at the outset is is it my duty to
- 1:49:06Speaker 1: make the most of myself, regardless of everything else? Or
- 1:49:09Speaker 1: shall I wait until I can do so without any
- 1:49:11Speaker 1: friction or without causing loss to anyone. This is the
- 1:49:15Speaker 1: question of duty to self versus duty to others. One's
- 1:49:19Speaker 1: duty to the world has been thoroughly discussed in the
- 1:49:22Speaker 1: preceding pages, and I give some consideration now to the
- 1:49:25Speaker 1: idea of duty to God. An immense number of people
- 1:49:29Speaker 1: have a great deal of uncertainty, not to say anxiety,
- 1:49:32Speaker 1: as to what they ought to do for God. The
- 1:49:36Speaker 1: amount of work and service that is done for Him
- 1:49:38Speaker 1: in these United States, in the way of church work
- 1:49:41Speaker 1: and so on, is enormous. An immense amount of human
- 1:49:44Speaker 1: energy is expanded in what is called serving God. I
- 1:49:48Speaker 1: propose to consider briefly what serving God is and how
- 1:49:51Speaker 1: a man may serve God best, and I think I
- 1:49:54Speaker 1: shall be able to make plain that the conventional idea
- 1:49:57Speaker 1: as to what constitutes service to God is all wrong.
- 1:50:01Speaker 1: When Moses went down into Egypt to bring out the
- 1:50:04Speaker 1: Hebrews from bondage, his demand upon Pharaoh, in the name
- 1:50:08Speaker 1: of the Deity, was let the people go, that they
- 1:50:11Speaker 1: may serve me. He led them out into the wilderness,
- 1:50:15Speaker 1: and there instituted a new form of worship, which has
- 1:50:18Speaker 1: had many people to suppose that worship constitutes the service
- 1:50:21Speaker 1: of God, although later God himself distinctly declared that he
- 1:50:25Speaker 1: cared nothing for ceremonies, burnt offerings, or oblation, and the
- 1:50:29Speaker 1: teaching of Jesus, if rightly understood, would do away with
- 1:50:33Speaker 1: organized temple worship altogether. God does not lack anything that
- 1:50:37Speaker 1: man may do for him with their hands or bodies
- 1:50:40Speaker 1: or voices. Saint Paul points out that man can do
- 1:50:44Speaker 1: nothing for God, for God does not need anything. The
- 1:50:48Speaker 1: view of evolution that we have taken shows God seeking
- 1:50:51Speaker 1: expression through man. Through all the successive ages in which
- 1:50:55Speaker 1: his spirit has urged man up to the height, God
- 1:50:58Speaker 1: has gone on seeking expression. Every generation of man is
- 1:51:01Speaker 1: more Godlike than the preceding generation. Every generation of man
- 1:51:06Speaker 1: demands more in the way of fine homes, pleasant surroundings,
- 1:51:09Speaker 1: congenial work, rest, travel, and opportunity for study than the
- 1:51:14Speaker 1: preceding generation. I have heard some short sighted economists argue
- 1:51:19Speaker 1: that the working people of to day ought surely to
- 1:51:21Speaker 1: be fully contented, because their condition is so much better
- 1:51:25Speaker 1: than that of the working man two hundred years ago,
- 1:51:27Speaker 1: who slept in a window less hot on a floor
- 1:51:30Speaker 1: covered with rushes, in company with his pigs. If that
- 1:51:34Speaker 1: man had all that he was able to use for
- 1:51:36Speaker 1: the living of all the life he knew how to live,
- 1:51:38Speaker 1: he was perfectly content, And if he had lack, he
- 1:51:41Speaker 1: was not contented. The man of to day has a
- 1:51:44Speaker 1: comfortable home and very many things indeed that were unknown
- 1:51:47Speaker 1: a short period back in the past. And if he
- 1:51:50Speaker 1: has all that he can use for the living of
- 1:51:52Speaker 1: all the life he can imagine, he will be content.
- 1:51:56Speaker 1: But he is not content. God has lifted the race
- 1:51:59Speaker 1: so far that any common man can picture a better
- 1:52:01Speaker 1: and more desirable life than he is able to live
- 1:52:04Speaker 1: under existing conditions. And so long as this is true,
- 1:52:08Speaker 1: so long as a man can think and clearly picture
- 1:52:10Speaker 1: to himself a more desirable life, he will be discontented
- 1:52:14Speaker 1: with the life he has to live. And rightly so
- 1:52:17Speaker 1: that discontent is the spirit of God urging man to
- 1:52:20Speaker 1: do more desirable conditions. It is God who seeks expression
- 1:52:24Speaker 1: in the race. He works in us to will and
- 1:52:26Speaker 1: to do. The only service you can render God is
- 1:52:30Speaker 1: to give expression to what He is trying to give
- 1:52:33Speaker 1: the world through you. The only service you can render
- 1:52:36Speaker 1: God is to make the very most of yourself in
- 1:52:39Speaker 1: order that God may live in you to the utmost
- 1:52:41Speaker 1: of your possibilities. In a former work of this series,
- 1:52:45Speaker 1: The Science of Getting Rich, I refer to the little
- 1:52:48Speaker 1: boy at the piano the music in whose soul could
- 1:52:50Speaker 1: not find expression through his untrained hands. This is a
- 1:52:54Speaker 1: good illustration of the way the spirit of God is
- 1:52:56Speaker 1: over about, around and in all of us, seking to
- 1:53:00Speaker 1: do great things with us. So soon as we will
- 1:53:02Speaker 1: train our hands and feet, our minds, brains, and bodies
- 1:53:06Speaker 1: to do his service. Your first duty to God, to yourself,
- 1:53:10Speaker 1: and to the world is to make yourself as great
- 1:53:13Speaker 1: a personality in every way as you possibly can. And that,
- 1:53:17Speaker 1: it seems to me, disposes of the question of duty.
- 1:53:21Speaker 1: There are one or two other things that might be
- 1:53:23Speaker 1: disposed of. In closing this chapter, I have written of opportunity.
- 1:53:27Speaker 1: In a preceding chapter, I have said in a general
- 1:53:30Speaker 1: way that it is within the power of every man
- 1:53:33Speaker 1: to become great, just as in the Science of Getting Rich,
- 1:53:37Speaker 1: I declare that it is within the power of every
- 1:53:39Speaker 1: man to become rich. But these sweeping generalizations need qualifying.
- 1:53:44Speaker 1: There are men who have such materialistic minds that they
- 1:53:47Speaker 1: are absolutely incapable of comprehending the philosophy set forth in
- 1:53:51Speaker 1: these books. There is a great mass of men and
- 1:53:54Speaker 1: women who have lived and worked until they are practically
- 1:53:57Speaker 1: incapable of thought along these lines, and they cannot receive
- 1:54:00Speaker 1: the message. Something may be done for them by demonstration,
- 1:54:04Speaker 1: that is, by living the life before them, but that
- 1:54:07Speaker 1: is the only way they can be aroused. The world
- 1:54:10Speaker 1: needs demonstration more than it needs teaching. For this mass
- 1:54:14Speaker 1: of people, our duty is to become as great in
- 1:54:17Speaker 1: personality as possible, in order that they may see and
- 1:54:20Speaker 1: desire to do. Likewise, it is our duty to make
- 1:54:23Speaker 1: ourselves great for their sakes, so that we may help
- 1:54:26Speaker 1: prepare the world that the next generation shall have better conditions.
- 1:54:30Speaker 1: For thought, one other point, I am frequently written to
- 1:54:34Speaker 1: by people who wish to make something of themselves and
- 1:54:37Speaker 1: to move out into the world, but who are hampered
- 1:54:39Speaker 1: by home ties, having others more or less dependent upon them,
- 1:54:43Speaker 1: whom they fear would suffer if left alone. In general,
- 1:54:47Speaker 1: I advise such people to move out fearlessly and to
- 1:54:50Speaker 1: make the most of themselves. If there is a loss
- 1:54:52Speaker 1: at home, it will be only temporary, and the parent
- 1:54:55Speaker 1: for in a little while. If you follow the leading
- 1:54:58Speaker 1: of spirit, you will be able to take better care
- 1:55:00Speaker 1: of your dependence than you have ever done before. A
- 1:55:05Speaker 1: mental exercise. The purpose of mental exercises must not be misunderstood.
- 1:55:11Speaker 1: There is no virtue in charms or formulated strings of words.
- 1:55:15Speaker 1: There is no shortcut to development by repeating prayers or incantations.
- 1:55:20Speaker 1: A mental exercise is an exercise not in repeating words,
- 1:55:24Speaker 1: but in the thinking of certain thoughts. The phrases that
- 1:55:27Speaker 1: we repeatedly here become convictions, as good, they says, and
- 1:55:32Speaker 1: the thoughts that we repeatedly think become habitual and make
- 1:55:35Speaker 1: us what we are. The purpose in taking a mental
- 1:55:38Speaker 1: exercise is that you may think certain thoughts repeatedly until
- 1:55:42Speaker 1: you form a habit of thinking them. Then they will
- 1:55:45Speaker 1: be your thoughts all the time. Taken in the right
- 1:55:49Speaker 1: way and with an understanding of their purpose, mental exercises
- 1:55:53Speaker 1: are of great value, but taken as most people take them,
- 1:55:56Speaker 1: they are worse than useless. The thoughts embodied in the
- 1:55:59Speaker 1: following exercise are the ones you want to think. You
- 1:56:03Speaker 1: should take the exercise once or twice daily, but you
- 1:56:05Speaker 1: should think the thoughts continuously. That is, do not think
- 1:56:09Speaker 1: them twice a day for a stated time and then
- 1:56:11Speaker 1: forget them until it is time to take the exercise again.
- 1:56:15Speaker 1: The exercise is to impress you with the material for
- 1:56:18Speaker 1: continuous thought. Take a time when you can have from
- 1:56:21Speaker 1: twenty minutes to half an hour, secure from interruption, and proceed.
- 1:56:25Speaker 1: First to make yourself physically comfortable, lie at ease in
- 1:56:29Speaker 1: a Morris chair or on a couch or in bed.
- 1:56:32Speaker 1: It is best to lie flat on your back. If
- 1:56:35Speaker 1: you have no other time, take the exercise, and going
- 1:56:38Speaker 1: to bed at night and before rising in the morning. First,
- 1:56:42Speaker 1: let your attention travel over your body from the crown
- 1:56:44Speaker 1: of your head to the soles of your feet, relaxing
- 1:56:47Speaker 1: every muscle as you go. Relax completely. And next get
- 1:56:52Speaker 1: physical and other ills off your mind. Let the attention
- 1:56:56Speaker 1: pass down the spinal cord and out over the nerves
- 1:56:58Speaker 1: to the extremities. And as you do so, think, my
- 1:57:02Speaker 1: nerves are in perfect order all over my body. They
- 1:57:05Speaker 1: obey my will, and I have great nerve force. Next,
- 1:57:09Speaker 1: bring your attention to the lungs and think, I am
- 1:57:12Speaker 1: breathing deeply and quietly, and the air goes into every
- 1:57:15Speaker 1: cell of my lungs, which are in perfect condition. My
- 1:57:19Speaker 1: blood is purified and made clean. Next to the heart,
- 1:57:24Speaker 1: my heart is beating strongly and steadily, and my circulation
- 1:57:27Speaker 1: is perfect, even to the extremities. Next to the digestive system,
- 1:57:33Speaker 1: my stomach and bowels perform their work perfectly. My food
- 1:57:37Speaker 1: is digested and assimilated, and my body rebuilt andnourished. My liver, kidneys,
- 1:57:42Speaker 1: and bladder each perform their several functions without pain or strain.
- 1:57:46Speaker 1: I am perfectly well. My body is resting, my mind
- 1:57:50Speaker 1: is quiet, and my soul is at peace. I have
- 1:57:53Speaker 1: no anxiety about financial or other matters. God, who is
- 1:57:57Speaker 1: within me, is also in all things I want, impelling
- 1:58:00Speaker 1: them toward me. All that I want is already given
- 1:58:03Speaker 1: to me. I have no anxiety about my health, for
- 1:58:06Speaker 1: I am perfectly well. I have no worry or fear whatever.
- 1:58:11Speaker 1: I rise above all temptation to moral evil. I cast
- 1:58:14Speaker 1: out all greed, selfishness, and narrow personal ambition. I do
- 1:58:19Speaker 1: not hold envy, malice, or enmity toward any living soul.
- 1:58:23Speaker 1: I will follow no course of action which is not
- 1:58:25Speaker 1: in accord with my highest ideals. I am right, and
- 1:58:28Speaker 1: I will do right. Viewpoint. All is right with the world.
- 1:58:34Speaker 1: It is perfect in advancing to completion. I will contemplate
- 1:58:38Speaker 1: the facts of social, political, and industrial life only from
- 1:58:41Speaker 1: this high viewpoint. Behold, it is all very good. I
- 1:58:45Speaker 1: will see all human beings, all my acquaintances, friends, neighbors,
- 1:58:50Speaker 1: and the members of my own household in the same way.
- 1:58:53Speaker 1: They are all good. Nothing get wrong with the universe.
- 1:58:56Speaker 1: Nothing can be wrong but my own personal attitude, and
- 1:59:00Speaker 1: henceforth I keep that right. My whole trust is in
- 1:59:03Speaker 1: God consecration. I will obey my soul and be truth
- 1:59:09Speaker 1: that within me that is highest. I will search within
- 1:59:12Speaker 1: for the pure idea of right in all things, and
- 1:59:15Speaker 1: when I find it, I will express it in my
- 1:59:17Speaker 1: outward life. I will abandon everything I have outgrown for
- 1:59:21Speaker 1: the best I can think. I will have the highest
- 1:59:24Speaker 1: thoughts concerning all my relationships, and my manner and action
- 1:59:28Speaker 1: shall express these thoughts. I surrender my body to be
- 1:59:31Speaker 1: ruled by my mind. I yield my mind to the
- 1:59:34Speaker 1: dominion of my soul, and I give my soul to
- 1:59:37Speaker 1: the guidance of God identification. There is but one substance
- 1:59:42Speaker 1: and source, and of that I am made, and with
- 1:59:45Speaker 1: it I am one. It is my Father. I proceeded
- 1:59:48Speaker 1: forth and came from it. My father and I are one,
- 1:59:52Speaker 1: and my Father is greater than I, and I do
- 1:59:54Speaker 1: his will. I surrender myself to conscious unity with pure spirit.
- 1:59:59Speaker 1: There is but one, and that one is everywhere. I
- 2:00:03Speaker 1: am one with the eternal consciousness. Idealization. Form a mental
- 2:00:09Speaker 1: picture of yourself as you want to be, and at
- 2:00:11Speaker 1: the greatest height your imagination can picture. Dwell upon this
- 2:00:15Speaker 1: for some little time, holding the thought this is what
- 2:00:18Speaker 1: I really am. This is a picture of my own
- 2:00:21Speaker 1: perfect in advancing to completion, I will contemplate the facts
- 2:00:25Speaker 1: of social, political, and industrial life only from this high viewpoint. Behold,
- 2:00:30Speaker 1: it is all very good. I will see all human beings,
- 2:00:33Speaker 1: all my acquaintances, friends, neighbors, and the members of my
- 2:00:37Speaker 1: own household in the same way. They are all good.
- 2:00:40Speaker 1: Nothing is wrong with the universe. Nothing can be wrong
- 2:00:43Speaker 1: but my own personal attitude, and henceforth I keep that right.
- 2:00:47Speaker 1: My whole trust is in God realization. I appropriate to
- 2:00:53Speaker 1: myself the power to become what I want to be,
- 2:00:55Speaker 1: and to do what I want to do. I exercise
- 2:00:58Speaker 1: creative energy. All the power there is is mine. I
- 2:01:02Speaker 1: will arise and go forth with power and perfect confidence.
- 2:01:06Speaker 1: I will do mighty works in the strength of the Lord,
- 2:01:08Speaker 1: my God. I will trust and not fear, for God
- 2:01:12Speaker 1: is with me. A summary of the science of being great.
- 2:01:17Speaker 1: All men are made of the one intelligent substance, and
- 2:01:20Speaker 1: therefore all contain the same essential powers and possibilities. Greatness
- 2:01:25Speaker 1: is equally inherent in all and may be manifested by all.
- 2:01:29Speaker 1: Every person may become great. Every constituent of God is
- 2:01:34Speaker 1: a constituent of man. Man may overcome both heredity and
- 2:01:38Speaker 1: circumstances by exercising the inherent creative power of the soul.
- 2:01:43Speaker 1: If he is to become great, the soul must act
- 2:01:46Speaker 1: and must rule the mind and the body. Man's knowledge
- 2:01:50Speaker 1: is limited, and he falls into error through ignorance. To
- 2:01:54Speaker 1: avoid this, he must connect his soul with the universal Spirit.
- 2:01:58Speaker 1: Universal Spirit is the intelligent substance from which all things come.
- 2:02:03Speaker 1: It is in and through all things. All things are
- 2:02:06Speaker 1: known to this universal mind, and man can so unite
- 2:02:09Speaker 1: himself with it as to enter into all knowledge. To
- 2:02:13Speaker 1: do this, man must cast out of himself everything that
- 2:02:16Speaker 1: separates him from God. He must will to live the
- 2:02:19Speaker 1: divine life, and he must rise above all moral temptations.
- 2:02:23Speaker 1: He must forsake every course of action that is not
- 2:02:26Speaker 1: in accord with his highest ideals. He must reach the
- 2:02:30Speaker 1: right viewpoint, recognizing that God is all in all, and
- 2:02:34Speaker 1: that there is nothing wrong. He must see that nature, society, government,
- 2:02:38Speaker 1: and industry are perfect in their present stage and advancing
- 2:02:42Speaker 1: toward completion, and that all man and women everywhere are
- 2:02:46Speaker 1: good and perfect. He must know that all is right
- 2:02:49Speaker 1: with the world, and unite with God for the completion
- 2:02:52Speaker 1: of the perfect work. It is only as man sees
- 2:02:55Speaker 1: God as the great advancing presence in all and good
- 2:02:58Speaker 1: in all that he can rise to real greatness. He
- 2:03:01Speaker 1: must consecrate himself to the service of the highest that
- 2:03:04Speaker 1: is within himself, obeying the voice of the soul. There
- 2:03:08Speaker 1: is an inner light in every man that continuously impels
- 2:03:11Speaker 1: him toward the highest, and he must be guided by
- 2:03:14Speaker 1: this light if he would become great. He must recognize
- 2:03:17Speaker 1: the fact that he is one with the Father and
- 2:03:20Speaker 1: continuously affirm this unity for himself and for all others.
- 2:03:24Speaker 1: He must know himself to be a god among gods
- 2:03:26Speaker 1: and act accordingly. He must have absolute faith in his
- 2:03:30Speaker 1: own perceptions of truth, and begin at home to act
- 2:03:33Speaker 1: upon these perceptions. As he sees the true and right
- 2:03:37Speaker 1: course in small things, he must take that course. He
- 2:03:40Speaker 1: must cease to act unthinkingly and begin to think, and
- 2:03:44Speaker 1: he must be sincere in his thought. He must form
- 2:03:47Speaker 1: a mental conception of himself at the highest and hold
- 2:03:51Speaker 1: this conception until it is his habitual thought form of himself.
- 2:03:55Speaker 1: This thought form he must keep continuously in view. He
- 2:03:59Speaker 1: must outwardly real and express that thought form in his actions.
- 2:04:03Speaker 1: He must do everything that he does in a great way.
- 2:04:06Speaker 1: In dealing with his family, his neighbors, acquaintances, and friends,
- 2:04:10Speaker 1: he must make every act an expression of his ideal.
- 2:04:13Speaker 1: The man who reaches the right viewpoint and makes full consecration,
- 2:04:18Speaker 1: and who fully idealizes himself as great, and who makes
- 2:04:21Speaker 1: every act, however trivial, an expression of the ideal, has
- 2:04:25Speaker 1: already attained to greatness. Everything he does will be done
- 2:04:29Speaker 1: in a great way. He will make himself known and
- 2:04:32Speaker 1: will be recognized as a personality of power. He will
- 2:04:35Speaker 1: receive knowledge by inspiration and will know all that he
- 2:04:39Speaker 1: need to know. He will receive all the material wealth
- 2:04:42Speaker 1: he forms in his thoughts, and will not lack for
- 2:04:45Speaker 1: any good thing. He will be given ability to deal
- 2:04:48Speaker 1: with any combination of circumstances that may arise, and his
- 2:04:51Speaker 1: growth and progress will be continuous and rapid. Great works
- 2:04:56Speaker 1: will seek him out, and all men will delight to
- 2:04:59Speaker 1: do him honor. Because of its particular value to the
- 2:05:02Speaker 1: students of the science of being great, I close this
- 2:05:05Speaker 1: book by giving a portion of Emberson's essay on the
- 2:05:08Speaker 1: over Soul. This great essay is fundamental, showing the foundation
- 2:05:12Speaker 1: principles of monism and the science of greatness. I recommend
- 2:05:16Speaker 1: the student to study it most carefully. In connection with
- 2:05:19Speaker 1: this book, What is the universal sense of wanted ignorance,
- 2:05:24Speaker 1: but the fine innuendo by which the great Soul makes
- 2:05:26Speaker 1: its enormous claim. Why do men feel that the natural
- 2:05:30Speaker 1: history of man has never been written? But always he
- 2:05:33Speaker 1: is leaving behind what you have said of him, and
- 2:05:36Speaker 1: it becomes old and books of metaphysics worthless. The philosophy
- 2:05:41Speaker 1: of six thousand years has not surged the chambers and
- 2:05:44Speaker 1: magazines of the soul in its experiments, there has always remained,
- 2:05:49Speaker 1: in the last analysis, a residuum. It could not resolve.
- 2:05:53Speaker 1: Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always our
- 2:05:56Speaker 1: being is descending into us from we know not. Whence
- 2:06:00Speaker 1: the most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable
- 2:06:05Speaker 1: may not bulk the very next moment. I am constrained
- 2:06:08Speaker 1: at every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events
- 2:06:12Speaker 1: than the will I call mine. As with events, it
- 2:06:16Speaker 1: is so with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river,
- 2:06:19Speaker 1: which out of regions I see not pours for a season,
- 2:06:22Speaker 1: it streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner,
- 2:06:26Speaker 1: not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal
- 2:06:29Speaker 1: water that I desire and look up and put myself
- 2:06:32Speaker 1: in the attitude of reception. But from some alien energy
- 2:06:36Speaker 1: divisions come the supreme critic on all the errors of
- 2:06:39Speaker 1: the past and present. And the only profit of that
- 2:06:42Speaker 1: which must be is that great nature in which we
- 2:06:45Speaker 1: rest as the earth lines in the soft arms of
- 2:06:48Speaker 1: the atmosphere. That unity, that oversaul with which every man's
- 2:06:53Speaker 1: particular being is contained and made one with all the other,
- 2:06:57Speaker 1: That common heart of which all sincere conversation is the
- 2:07:00Speaker 1: worship to which all right action is submission, That overpowering reality,
- 2:07:05Speaker 1: which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one
- 2:07:09Speaker 1: to pass for what he is, and to speak from
- 2:07:11Speaker 1: his character and not from his tongue, and which ever
- 2:07:15Speaker 1: more tends and aims to pass into our thoughts and
- 2:07:17Speaker 1: hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and beauty.
- 2:07:22Speaker 1: We live in succession, in division, imparts, in particles. Meantime
- 2:07:27Speaker 1: within man is the soul of the whole, the wise silence,
- 2:07:31Speaker 1: the universal beauty to which every part and particle is
- 2:07:34Speaker 1: equally related, the eternal one. And this deep power in
- 2:07:38Speaker 1: which we exist and whose beetitude is all accessible to us,
- 2:07:43Speaker 1: is not only self sufficing and perfect in every hour,
- 2:07:46Speaker 1: but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the
- 2:07:49Speaker 1: seer and the spectacle. The subject and the object are one.
- 2:07:53Speaker 1: We see the world peace by peace, as the sun,
- 2:07:56Speaker 1: the moon, the animal, the tree. But the whole of
- 2:07:59Speaker 1: which these these are the shining parts, is the soul.
- 2:08:02Speaker 1: It is only by the vision of that wisdom that
- 2:08:05Speaker 1: the horoscope of the ages can be read. And it
- 2:08:08Speaker 1: is only by falling back on our better thoughts, by
- 2:08:10Speaker 1: yielding to the spirit of prophecy, which is innate in
- 2:08:13Speaker 1: every man, that we know what it saith. Every man's words,
- 2:08:17Speaker 1: who speaks from that life must sound. Wey into those
- 2:08:21Speaker 1: who do not dwell in the same thought. On their
- 2:08:23Speaker 1: own part. I dare not speak for it. My words
- 2:08:27Speaker 1: do not carry its august sense. They fall short and cold.
- 2:08:32Speaker 1: Only itself can aspire whom it will, and behold, their
- 2:08:36Speaker 1: speech shall be lyrical and sweet and universal as the
- 2:08:40Speaker 1: rising of the wind. Yet I desire even by profane words,
- 2:08:45Speaker 1: if sacred I may not use to indicate the heaven
- 2:08:48Speaker 1: of this deity, and to report what hints I have
- 2:08:51Speaker 1: collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law.
- 2:08:55Speaker 1: If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse,
- 2:09:00Speaker 1: in times of passion, in surprises, in the instruction of dreams,
- 2:09:04Speaker 1: wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade. The drawl disguises
- 2:09:08Speaker 1: only magnifying and enhancing a real element and forcing it
- 2:09:11Speaker 1: on our distinct notice. We shall catch many hints that
- 2:09:15Speaker 1: will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature.
- 2:09:19Speaker 1: All goes to show that the soul in man is
- 2:09:21Speaker 1: not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs,
- 2:09:25Speaker 1: is not a function like the power of memory, of
- 2:09:28Speaker 1: calculation of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet.
- 2:09:33Speaker 1: Is not a faculty, but a light. Is not the
- 2:09:36Speaker 1: intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect
- 2:09:39Speaker 1: and the will. Is the vast background of our being,
- 2:09:41Speaker 1: in which they lie, an immensity not possessed, and that
- 2:09:45Speaker 1: cannot be possessed from within or from behind. A light
- 2:09:49Speaker 1: shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that
- 2:09:53Speaker 1: we are nothing, but the light is all. A man
- 2:09:56Speaker 1: is the facade of a temple, wherein all wisdom and
- 2:09:58Speaker 1: all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting,
- 2:10:04Speaker 1: counting man does not, as we know him, represent himself,
- 2:10:08Speaker 1: but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul,
- 2:10:13Speaker 1: whose organ he is, Would he let it appear through
- 2:10:15Speaker 1: his action, would make our knees bend when it breathes
- 2:10:19Speaker 1: through his intellect. It is genius when it flows through
- 2:10:23Speaker 1: his affection. It is love after its own law, and
- 2:10:27Speaker 1: not by arithmetic. Is the rate of its progress to
- 2:10:30Speaker 1: be computed. The soul's advances are not made by gradation,
- 2:10:34Speaker 1: such as can be represented by motion in a straight line,
- 2:10:37Speaker 1: but rather by a sansion of state, such as can
- 2:10:40Speaker 1: be represented by metamorphosis, from the act to the worm,
- 2:10:44Speaker 1: from the warm to the fly. The growths of genius
- 2:10:47Speaker 1: are of a certain total character that does not advance
- 2:10:51Speaker 1: the elect individual. First over John, then Adams and Richard,
- 2:10:54Speaker 1: and give to each the pain of discovered inferiority. But
- 2:10:58Speaker 1: by every throw of gron the man expands there where
- 2:11:01Speaker 1: he works, passing at each pulsation classes populations of man.
- 2:11:07Speaker 1: With each divine impulse. The mind runs the thin rinds
- 2:11:10Speaker 1: of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity
- 2:11:14Speaker 1: and inspires and expires its air. This is the law
- 2:11:18Speaker 1: of moral and of mental gain. The simple rise as
- 2:11:22Speaker 1: by specific levity, not into a particular virtue, but into
- 2:11:26Speaker 1: the region of all the virtues. There in the spirit.
- 2:11:29Speaker 1: This contains them all. The sole is superior to all
- 2:11:33Speaker 1: the particulars of merit. The soul requires purity, but purity
- 2:11:37Speaker 1: is not It requires justice. But justice is not that
- 2:11:42Speaker 1: requires beneficence, but is somewhat better, so that there is
- 2:11:46Speaker 1: a kind of dissent and accommodation felt. When we leave
- 2:11:49Speaker 1: speaking of moral nature to urge a virtue which it enjoins.
- 2:11:53Speaker 1: For to the soul, in her pure action, all the
- 2:11:56Speaker 1: virtues are natural and not painfully acquired. Speak to his heart,
- 2:12:01Speaker 1: and the man becomes suddenly virtuous. Within the same sentiment
- 2:12:06Speaker 1: is the germ of intellectual growth, which obeys the same law.
- 2:12:10Speaker 1: Those who are capable of humility, of justice, of love,
- 2:12:14Speaker 1: of aspiration are already on a platform that commands the
- 2:12:18Speaker 1: sciences and arts, speech and poetry, action and grace. For
- 2:12:23Speaker 1: whoso dwells in this moral beatitude does already anticipate those
- 2:12:27Speaker 1: special powers which men prides so highly. Justice love does
- 2:12:31Speaker 1: justice to all the gifts of the object beloved. The
- 2:12:35Speaker 1: lover has no talent, no skill which passes for quiet.
- 2:12:38Speaker 1: Nothing with his enamored maiden, however little she may possess
- 2:12:42Speaker 1: of related faculty, and the heart that abandons itself to
- 2:12:46Speaker 1: the Supreme Mind, finds itself related to all its works,
- 2:12:50Speaker 1: and will travel a royal road to particular knowledge and powers.
- 2:12:54Speaker 1: For in ascending to this primary and aboriginal sentiment, we
- 2:12:58Speaker 1: have come from our remote state under circumference instantaneously to
- 2:13:02Speaker 1: the center of the world. Where As in the closet
- 2:13:05Speaker 1: of God we see causes and anticipate the universe, which
- 2:13:09Speaker 1: is but a slow effect.