FREEDOM TALKS

No. II

JULIA SETON, M.D.

AUTHOR OF "CONCENTRATION," "FREEDOM TALKS NO. I," "MARRIAGE," ETC., ETC.



Contents



I The Secret of Healing II The Risen Self III Transcendentalism IV Psychology of Insanity V The Law Eternal VI The Outside and the Inside of Life VII The Measure of Ourself VIII Perfect Liberty IX Cosmic Therapeutics X Absent Treatments



FREEDOM TALKS

NUMBER II



The Secret of Healing



"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God."

"And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory full of grace and truth."

Ever since the birth of the human race there have been health and disease. Everywhere we find those who live at levels of comprehension that cannot express in flesh the perfect power of the word and these must by natural law take on the form of whatever they have power to comprehend.

Health is man's immortal birthright; it is eternal in the universal plan, and it can be made to become eternal in the life of men in just the hour they understand the laws of their own being.

There are two expressions of energy in the universe; one is called the constructive, the other the destructive; the one builds up, the other tears down. This must forever be so, for only as matter is destroyed and passed back into energy can the energy pass out again into finer forms.

Living in these great universal currents of construction and destruction, man relates himself constantly with one or both through the simple law of his own consciousness, and only as he learns the laws of his own being and consciously places himself in a position of power can he ever hope to escape the results which the negative, destructive currents produce in his body and his environment.

Today we know that the world in which we live is nothing but a great sea of energy which, in the undifferentiated, is called God, and in the differentiated is called matter or form, or, to make it more simple, we can call one the energy that creates, and the other the things created from and by this energy.

Man and his environment are created by this energy: He is a localized center of force and he becomes the expression in form of just whatever he relates with under the law of cosmic correspondence.

We have found that this great energy is also intelligence and is nothing but mind with its various manifestations. We know today that the atoms of the atmosphere are intelligence, and as they touch one another throughout space, it is through this atomic mind that messages are carried, and currents are generated which can heal patients at a distance.

Everything in the universe is in a state of intelligent association, and when the atoms become expressed in human form, they pass into that expression of the universal mind known as human consciousness.

All human life is simply different tastes of consciousness brought about by the different vibratory rates to which our atoms respond.

The physical body is composed of a group of atoms attuned to move at a certain vibratory rate, and within this physical body is another body of finer atoms attuned to a still higher vibration and in relationship with the higher electrical currents of the universe. There has not been much told about this finer body, but it is time the sick world knows this law of being, for then it will be in a position to control its own life. This finer body is the "thought body" or psychic body and it is upon this that the physical body depends for its power, just as the very best instrument in the world depends upon the player for its expressed melody.

All sight, all hearing, all function is in this psychic body, not in the physical one. What many of the psychologists call the subconscious mind is only the registered intelligence of the psychic self. This psychic self is in direct communication with the cosmic self and with the physical self, and it is through this we become cosmic in our human consciousness.

The psychic body manifests through idea centers of the human brain and it is directly related with the cosmic currents through the solar plexus of the physical body. The higher concept centers of the mind are the switchboard where connections are made, and it is in this way that the psychic body registers its vibrations in the physical, and the physical registers in the psychic—there is a circle of consciousness established by the two minds.

This wrould be of no particular value to us, if it did not prove to us the source of disease, for when we look scientifically and psychologically at disease, we must see that it is simply disassociation between the psychic and the physical selves, and comes as the natural loss of poise, either physically, mentally or psychically.

Watching the play of human disease around us we can soon see that there are two distinct ways by which disassociation of these selves begins; first, through the mind by negative thinking, and second through the emotions by negative feeling.

Our thoughts and our will are the great avenues by which we admit anything into our psychic self, and are also the means by which we exclude all things.

The whole poise of an individual can be destroyed by thoughts of fear, hate, grief and anger; fright has killed and all these states of emotion are simply grades of vibration, setting up inharmonious, psychical activity, and leaving their corresponding effects upon the physical cells.

It is known only too well today by those who seek to know, that back of all such physical conditions as nervousness, prostration, temporary insanity, nervous disorders, pains resembling rheumatism, hay fever, heart troubles, mental symptoms, nervous chills, morbid forebodings and mild mania, there lurks the abnormal activity of the psychic or "thought body" caused by thoughts and feelings acting abnormally upon the vital centers of the nervous system and mind.

New Thought declares that all diseases, except accidental wounds and fractures begin in the psychic or "thought body" as energy and then are registered in the physical cells as organic or functional disease.

We might follow this farther in order to satisfy science, but suffice it to go this far, and then seek the value of knowing this: We can see that the only thing that naturally follows is, the healer and patient must be taught how to restore the lost equilibrium of the centers and again poise the life in a creative thought vibration. This is done simply and surely by teaching everyone the correct use of the idea centers of the human brain and through this he is taught to form such thoughts and produce such ideas as will allow a normal amount of energy to register on both planes, and not permit the psychical mind to drive the human engine on to destruction in a wild waste and explosion of physical, mental or psychical energy.

This is not a long or wearisome task for in the cortex of every brain there are distinct idea centers whose business it is to take up ideas built from thoughts, and will must follow the idea, and by constantly selecting the thoughts which will produce harmonious vibrations within the psychic and physical selves, we join with the great creative energy of the universe and it flows through us, healing and harmonizing every atom of our body.

The very first step toward healing is to teach the patient to build for himself a health consciousness, and this is done by giving him the positive ideas of health instead of the negative ones of disease. We build for him the idea of health, hold it firmly in our minds, and project it into his idea centers until it registers in his psychic mind; then this is followed by his own increased power of willing, and finally this passes into action and is registered in form.

Ideation, willing and doing is the great health trinity, and when this is produced, healing must follow. This is the law and there is no appeal from it.

When we first meet a diseased person we find his field of consciousness full of all kinds of negative thoughts of disease, worry, fear and anxiety—these have been persisted in so long that they have weakened both the idea centers and the power of willing. We at once create for him the positive idea motor-form, and if his conscious mind is too weak to receive the impulse, we project it into his psychic mind, helping him hold on to the new idea until his own mind is able to grasp it, and it becomes registered for him.

After he has learned the truth of the abundance of health energy within and without to be aroused into action by the simple law of his own thoughts and feelings, he sets to work to regenerate himself, and he finds that he can really breathe the breath of life into his own nostrils.

After we have seen the scientific side of the real power of healing, then if we want to get health and keep it, we set about studying how to live our life so as to be able to generate thoughts and feelings, at all times, which shall always move us at a creative health vibration. The very next thing for anyone seeking health is to get easy in his everyday life; no one can ever be well and live with every nerve on a tension. We need to know the higher law of life that teaches us that no one put us anywhere but ourselves; that no one is to blame but ourselves for what we have or have not; we get and have in this world just what we have the power to relate with and will get free from the thing we do not like in just the hour that we build something better for ourselves. All we need to do is to cease resisting conditions and agree with our adversary quickly. Freedom, liberty and happiness are not things of the external world; they come from within and we are sad or happy, bound or free, sick or well, not by our external but by our internal conditions.

The sick, nervous, peevish, worrying mind sees everything as positive to itself and must be taught that there is nothing in all the world that has any power over us except that with which we endow it, and it must begin to live under this idea rather than the old foolish one of being controlled by every external condition.

"God hath not given us a spirit of fear but of love and of power and of a sound mind," and with persistent thought culture we can soon form a habit of thought and feeling that will build us away from our old consciousness of disease and pain into a higher law of health and strength.

Good, positive, strong health thoughts are a certain preventive and cure for every kind of disease. Disease and health have absolutely no relation with each other; disease is the expression of a faltering, undeveloped soul life, while health is the expression of a consciousness that has not broken its law of universal recognition.

There are very good people who are sick and very many so-called bad folks who are well; health is not bestowed as a reward of merit, it simply is by the natural universal law, and it exists for those who know how to fulfill the law within their own being. There are many so-called wicked people who live in greater harmony with their wickedness than some so-called Christians can ever do with their religion and goodness. Wholeness or holiness means simply harmony, and harmony inside and outside gives health. Anyone who has health has earned it by obeying the laws that produce it.

Another great factor active in producing inharmonious vibrations and registering destructive energy, is the old thought habit of living under the laws of opposites, thinking thought of health today and of disease tomorrow; to be passing daily between hope and despair. This is sowing mixed thought seeds and cannot help bringing mixed vibrations.

The path to a health consciousness is to get the strong, positive idea of UNITY and live under the law of similars. To begin at once to affirm UNION with all the health and strength of the universe and stick to it in the face of all the opposing negative thought vibrations generated within ourselves, or thrown into our minds by others. This can be done by resolutely substituting a health thought for a diseased one; no matter how fast negative thoughts crowd in upon the mind, they can be antidoted by the strong positive affirmation of HEALTH.

In order to register health vibrations we must think, feel and be health in mind. The words of health, peace, power and strength do not unfold into radiant flesh and dwell among us through a faltering idea of fear, or vague "perhaps," or "I do hope I shall be well," or "I want to get well," but it demands the eternal I AM HEALTH NOW.

Courage, zeal and consecration to the laws of health and freedom from the law of death are not kindled by the halting consciousness full of the law of opposites, but they are the results of knowing and abiding. When we can in very truth and full of believing say to health, "Thy kingdom come," it will come.

Our daily thoughts then become the wires over which there passes into form a finer substance, and our body is rebuilt and fashioned from the indestructible substance of the Universe.

The mortal body as we know it in the old thought world, is a thing of earth and lives and suffers earth's calamities, but through the understanding of this New Thought union it can be made to become a portion of the cause as indestructible as life itself, and live and glory in omnipotence.

We are then in the resurrection of the life, and the word that was with God and was God, is made flesh to dwell among us in glory and full of grace and truth; then we know what Jesus meant when he said, "I tell you of a truth, there be those standing among you who shall not taste of death till they see the Kingdom of God."



The Risen Self



"And entering into the sepulchre they saw a young man sitting on the right side clothed in a long white garment, and he saith unto them, be not affrighted, ye seek Jesus of Nazareth—He is risen! He is not here!"

When we read the Bible with its story of human lives and their great, wonderful mysteries, we find among them, the greatest of all—the marvellous one of the Christ birth and death, and as we read we are amazed at the many confusing ideas of Jesus and His teachings. His disciples themselves did not understand Him, though He sought always to clearly interpret Himself; often when He spoke metaphysically they interpreted Him physically.

There was throughout all the Christ history something so great, so holy, so inclusive that it was too large for them to comprehend, and for all eternal ages, the developing minds of men will be the same. They will keep busy with their attempts at explanation of His life and His words.

Jesus quitted the world in benediction, and He left to those who followed Him and His precepts, a great inextinguishable hope.

It matters little to those who really understand Truth, whether Jesus the Christ lived, or whether He was only a symbol worked out by the imagination of men and priests; be the origin what it may, Christianity still stands; and Religion still holds sway after centuries of ridicule and generations of secular and scientific analysis. Something unknown and uninterpreted beats and surges in the hearts of men, and brings into expression in every age the clinging to a great mysterious, wonderful, unseen agency that somehow works its way along the silent avenues of the human soul.

The man Jesus may or may not have lived. Humanity may keep its birthright of contradiction forever on this point, but higher than the limited understanding of the few there lives the Truth of the great Christ spirit which the name Jesus embodied, and which for centuries gone, and centuries to be, will wax strong and flourish in the consciousness of men, as they pass one by one into recognition of it.

Great and sacred was the day of Jesus' birth, and great and sacred was the day of his death, for both revealed the stages of our human selfhood, and both point our minds to deeper meanings of existence.

Jesus' life as we follow it from the manger to the cross was the unmistakable story of the pathway of every human life and each little action was a part of the great mosaic which each life is setting for itself, and from which it shall one day read its own great AT-ONE-MENT.

The birth of the Christ consciousness comes to each soul as the dawn of self-awakening. It is the first faint glimmer of a new world, and the first hint the soul of man has of union with its source.

This first dawn of consciousness is purely a possession of the inner self, and those who feel it only follow first by faith. This faith is buffeted and attacked by the things of life until it is tried and becomes steadfast.

In this first dawn of consciousness of the Christ self we are always strangers to ourselves and asleep in the manger of natural things and natural senses. We go on for years, and as consciousness grows stronger we search and search for we know not what; craving pursues us, we go hither and thither seeking, seeking—finding and losing.

The world and the things tangible are never wholly satisfactory in themselves; we know instinctively that they are not all there is, there is a deep, vital something in us that speaks its hidden messages into our being, and we are driven on from sensation to sensation, crying for that open sesame of union which will bring peace to our soul.

Then passing into deeper unfoldment we come into the real work of life, we meet with responsibilities and its experiences; we are baffled again, buffeted, besieged by the perplexities of doubt and fear and human discontent and we feel that, strive as we will, we are not yet at home.

The ten thousand things of the human life entangle us,—the touch of sickness, the expressions of so-called sin,—the baffling consequences of our seeming mistakes,—all these draw us from the cradle of unconsciousness out into the vital power of a self-conscious life, and push us onward to our union with Cosmic Consciousness, or the risen Christ.

On the self-conscious plane life goes on, driven on every side by human experiences and at last turns back upon itself, and then in the Gethsemane of its own making, it stands where earth and its perplexing joys are lost and heaven and its hidden joys are yet unknown, and then facing the expressions of its now half-revealed consciousness it cries out from the depth of its soul's despair, "If it is possible, let this cup pass," and it does not see the purpose in Gethsemane.

Human life at this stage of unfoldment has fixed laws, and the soul meets in them the inexorable command to pass on to its own crucifixion, the worked out sentence of its own judgments, and it goes onward bearing its own cross which is built from the consequences of the laws with which it has related.

The laws of human self-consciousness are hard to work out; each life faces sometime, somewhere the proof of itself. There comes a day to all when anything that is less than the truth slips off, and the soul stands bare at the bar of the universal justice ready to be judged by the laws which it has made for itself.

There are hours of human crucifixion that it were well to die on, for the soul that wanders back from these fierce Mounts of Transfiguration has paid the price of human transgression of law by human pain, and is purged and cleaned by the fierce fire of its own igniting.

The path of human living out leads every life up the steps of Calvary carrying its own Cross and it plaits the thorns and pierces the side of "Him who in our life again is spit upon and crucified" until, at last, the great human God-self within us is released through transmutation, and the grave clothes of our dead self no longer entomb us; then the resurrection day is at hand, and the Consciousness of God bursts into the self-conscious mind, and the stone is rolled away from the sepulchre.

The human mind bursts forth in illumination and it passes with the Christ birth on to the table-land of human comprehension and revelation of its infinite union.

In this moment of glorified illumination we feel and know that every moment behind us has been that this hour may be; we feel then that every moment is a special moment; every life a special life, protected by the ALL LIFE, and that everything on our human pathway, high or low, has led us on to this supreme moment of conscious union with our God.

When the Christ Consciousness is risen within us, we feel the universality of life written everywhere on everything; there is but one starting point for all thought—God. There is but one ending place for all human faith— God.

We are filled with a keener sense of the ONENESS of life, and we are thrilled again and again by the nearness and greatness of God in the world which He projected from Himself.

The Father which we sought in self-consciousness has become real and tangible, and the sense of everlasting UNITY is in our hearts.

With this great God-self alive within us, we never fear that God will ever pass away from any part of his Creation. We know too well, then, the truth that "as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end," earth is destined to become a heaven in the lives of men as fast as they develop to the place of understanding, and find the real holy ground within the center of their own being.

God, or the Universal Cosmic Consciousness, has always been revealed to men through the risen Christ consciousness within the self. The men of old who walked with Him were those who had lifted their personal mind to the level of the Universal Mind, so that from the shores of the Infinite Wisdom great thought waves of Love, Truth and Peace beat in on them and filled them, and their lives became a center of illumination for all.

There never was and there never can be any conflict between the power of human consciousness and God consciousness. Truth is always Truth, and Truth in the hearts of men build them back into the Great Harmony.

The Absolute never contradicts itself; as fast as lives are unfolded to the Christ Consciousness, they leave the old thought life like an empty tomb and push themselves into a glorious human expression, just as the Easter lily rising above the dust and mould of earth, pushes itself upward into the clear sunlight of a world where flowers are revealed, just so the soul pushes on through consciousness and self-consciousness, into the glory of the risen Godhood.

We can hear the voice of the Universal calling us through our Christ Consciousness today, just as it called to men throughout the ages, and we know that everything that throbs with natural life or comes into objective expression in our human world, is really only the voice of the Universal Cosmic mind speaking in the holy language of the human heart.

Every experience, every heartache, every joy, every despair, every pulse-beat is only the text by which the great child mind of the world is spelling out God.

The Risen Self comes into realization of the great white light of the soul, and it enables us to see all life in its completeness. Human effort and human endeavor glow with an unexpected radiance when seen from the table-land of the risen truth.

The human soul then rejoices in its Divine possibilities. Jesus said: "I do always the things that pleaseth the Father," and the voice from heaven said: "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased."

When we turn to those who ask for proof of the risen Christ-self within us, we have only to point to them the empty tomb of the old lives which men everywhere leave behind them. If we desire we can go farther and point them to the production of those in whom this great consciousness is waking; all human life that is alive with thought and faith and deed, is vibrant with a great vital spiritual force.

The signs of God Consciousness and the conscious union of God and men is rampant everywhere in the natural world. Every factory, every steamship, every invention, every composition, everything in form sets its seal upon the genuineness of the existence of the spiritual exaltation of the minds of men, and higher than the things of the natural world, there stands the achievements of the mental and inspirational souls; the libraries with their tens of thousands of written pages, the art museums and galleries of precious dreams; all over the world there are hung on walls and chiselled into glistening marble the story of the glory-gazing of some Christ-illumined soul. And again sounded forth from thousands of churches each Sabbath morning, there is swelling out majestic songs sung by myriads of voices now, but sung first in the silence of some dim, deep soul-dream, in the Christ consciousness of some risen mind. That grand harmony was born on the table-lands of human illumination, registered on the human brain, and worked out into tangible form here on earth to bear witness to the home-land of the God-man.

Christ consciousness is the final destiny of every soul; it is what we really live by and today we know, as never before, that in order to advance and grow, we must consecrate and bring it here and now, into its fullest expression in our life.

There are bound to be born, at first, many things on this table-land of new understanding that will be worked out indifferently by our limited brain, and when challenged by the strain and stress of life they will depart because they will be unable in their present form to answer to the great world's need. But increasing consciousness makes everything more powerful, and as we go on we learn to build sublime and lasting things, to stand the test of time because they have their root, not in the old thought self, but in the unfolded risen self, and they are grappled to the heart of the very Rock of Ages.

Standing, then, risen from the dust world of our old defeats, our human minds receive new illuminations and rejoice in them. Law becomes the essence of our daily living and the mind of man the direct inspiration of the Almighty. We dare to trust our risen mind to the uttermost for in it is GOD himself enshrined.

In this new spiritual perception we rely more and more on our intuitions, illumination and revelation, for it is human Godness, backed by the strength of unnumbered hosts of higher consciousness.

We know at last that all our daily living is not a matter of outward signs but of inward sight; all external things may contradict us, yet in sublime confidence we shape our way while the Christ voice within us speaks forth its messages, telling us all the holy and uplifting stories of our daily life. Over the trials and wreckage of our common years we follow it; out from a silence that is known only to ourselves we bring the lessons that have burnt their truth into our souls.

In the power of this risen self we stand with our faces upturned, with our whole life opened to God, and human effort, human growth, human hope, love, joy,—all are joined in the sense of Divine resurrection.

This is the consciousness of God in the human soul; this is the Resurrection morning and it makes us NOW the Sons of God, and from the darkness of our Old Thought growth we lift our hearts away into a new Life Divine. We open our eyes in the radiance of a light that never grows dim, then standing with an all-seeing soul vision, we can point to the long years behind us through which we have worked out our soul's salvation and closing the door on the empty tomb of our dead self we say with all the serenity of our new-found God-consciousness:

"I know whom you seek. He is not here. He is Risen!"



Transcendentalism



Transcendentalism is today the one subject which is demanding the greatest attention. The race mind is beginning to think in words of transcendental language rather than in the old law of science and philosophy, and all the light of modern investigation centres round the one who declares himself a transcendentalist.

We may say that a man is a scientist, a philosopher or a materialist, and the world will know at once what we mean, but if we say that he is a transcendentalist we leave an open doorway for investigation; there is something yet to be learned about him, something that no one knows about but himself.

Anyone can easily define a scientist, a philosopher and a psychologist, but they halt in more or less indecision when they are asked to define a transcendentalist, and it is only when we understand that a transcendentalist is one who has extended his normal consciousness into relationship with the deeper laws of the universe, so that he uses naturally these laws and is perfectly familiar and at home in states of consciousness which the rest of the world call supernatural, and with which they are entirely unfamiliar, that we can come to a true definition of the transcendentalist.

Transcendentalism has been a part of race unfolding since time began, and will continue to be throughout all race evolution.

In the old civilization we studied the transcendentalist and transcendentalism from an entirely different view-point than we do today.

Transcendentalism is a state of consciousness and man evolves into it out of the natural states of his own mind. No one is to blame that he is, or is not, a transcendentalist. He becomes one not alone because he wills to become, but also because he is one with the divine law of creation and the God-consciousness within him pushes him on through one state of unfoldment to another.

There are two expressions of universal and finite mind, one is the objective, the revealed, the apparent, and one is the subjective, the concealed, the absolute.

The objective side of mind belongs to the surface consciousness of man, and is in itself a distinct state of existence, it is bounded on every side by its own laws, and commands its own obedience. The subjective side of life belongs to the inner side of mind and is also a distinct state of existence bounded by itself and the laws of its own kingdom, and without a deep knowledge of universal law, man has little power of connecting these two strong zones of consciousness.

Studying life in the light of our modern understanding, we find that man passes by natural law through the objective, the surface zone, then on to the subjective or inner zone, and then to a centralized position between both zones where he lives, moves and has being in both zones, uniting the laws of the two kingdoms into a new zone of consciousness, then using the laws of both, he passes at will to the very edge of matter, and back to the very center of the cosmic mind; standing here in life's master position, he is lord of both zones. This middle zone of power and mastery is the path of the modern transcendentalist, and the one who walks it and lives in unification with its laws is the modern transcendentalist of the new civilization. It has been written—

"For wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be who go in thereat" because

"Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto Life."

We know today that this is true, for on the broad path of the objective life man must pass through the law of change which destroys, that it may create again and through which he is crowded on to seek the narrow path of subjective senses which are built on the law of verities.

Man's first lessons are in the objective zone of mind, and he remains positive in this zone until he masters its laws and the lessons which they bring.

In this objective zone of mind we find the mass man of the old civilization, he is in the broad way of the surface consciousness, and in his midst there dwells the specialized individuals who are approaching the central zones of mind; they are called the scientist, the physicist, the materialist, the agnostic, the mentalist, the reasoner, and the atheist, all true and perfect for their type but all more or less unconscious of the latent states of mind within themselves and the universe to which they must some day respond.

As human consciousness intensifies through use, man finds himself passing on through his surface zones to the concealed states of mind within himself, "the narrow way," and slowly, almost unconsciously at first, he begins manifesting the law of these zones. In these states of mind we find the philosopher, the idealist, the emotionalist, the psychist, the sensitive, the intuitionist, the revelator, the transcendentalist and the seer.

Watching race evolution we see that the day of surface consciousness and its power is waning only as it is controlled and manipulated through the subjective states of man's mind. The hour for subjective research and subjective introspection is at hand,—men have mastered the external world and its laws, and are now following the cosmic urge which is pushing them toward the center and away from the apparent to the absolute laws of life.

The external evolution of form is complete for this hour; men go down into the bowels of the earth, they sail the seas, they mount the air on wings, and the external world has seen "the son of man coming in clouds of glory" and now the eternal man must have his hour, and come in "trailing robes of power and brightness," to pour new revelation through the external world and its laws.

Books, paintings, pictures, science, music have all had their day in external exaltation, and now the attention of man is mounting higher and turning inward; the study of the surface and sub-consciousness has been transferred, and while part of the world's eyes are yet peering through the microscope at the sub-life and plenty are looking at the laws of life around them, the transcendentalist with these truths locked fast in his mind, is turning to the undiscovered states within himself, and is everywhere launching out into the unfathomed states of the supra-mind of man.

Man has evolved like a planet through the stone age of mind and today with the planet in the vibratory zone of water and air he has risen with it into the transcendent states of his own being.

Many transcendentalists are living so naturally in the beginning manifestations of the supra-mind that they hardly recognize them as uncommon and the world is becoming peopled with a race of supra-men and supra-women who are using the subtle laws of the transcendentalists of the past, but not using them alone, or in hidden cloisters, or through separate states of living, but using them as simple human attributes of their own mind, and using them in the common marts of the surface life with more real understanding than did the olden transcendentalist in his specialized separated environment, assisted by secluded study and special opportunities.

The modern transcendentalist is a post graduate of the surface consciousness, and uses it as simply a wireless machine with which he registers his deeper perceptions, and with it links himself and his revelation naturally to the natural world. He stands in natural communion with both zones, and in this communion with deeper laws he attains a supra-power, he walks his human pathway in human form, but he manipulates his surface life with the power born of his supra-wisdom.

The modern transcendentalists form the corner-stones of the new civilization. "For the new age will come quickly to its birth when this His world, will know itself divine" and in this new civilization the mass man will have for his surface consciousness, the deep subtle union of both zones, and the specialized teacher, leader and messenger of this new age, will forge ahead on the great white way of prophecy and seership which is born from the union of the finite and infinite mind.

To the mind of the old civilization this will not seem true, for it is still in the swaddling clothes of its old inheritance; in the thoughts of the past, man and God, matter and spirit, finite and infinite have been so long divorced and separated that it will be found difficult to accept the union of incense and worship and reverence in the same breath with the real, the apparent and the formed, but this is the hour for higher prophecy, and that hour when the "lion and the lamb shall lie down together."

To those who are really able to read the signs of the times, human consciousness everywhere offers the greatest proof of this truth, for looking with eyes that can see, we find that every individual is in possession of eight distinct states of consciousness with which he can operate in the subjective and objective zones.

There may be still greater stretches of the human mind into union with the universal which the oncoming races will discover, but that there are eight distinct levels of mind activity many know because they have touched them and know them within themselves.

Some minds are active in one, some in two, some in three, and some in four, and some are more or less distinct in all.

The mass man of the new civilization is awake in the third and fourth dimensions of his mind, and those in higher reaches are awake in the fifth and sixth, a few are in the seventh and eighth, but the rank and file are familiar to some degree with all these states.

The first or surface mind of man is in itself only cell consciousness, touched by man's own intellect, and it is known as instinct, his second expression of mind is known as reason, the third is emotion or feeling, and the fourth is instinct, reason and emotion blended into one, and called intuition. The fifth and sixth are above the plane of thought and feeling and includes them in a still higher intensification; here thinking ceases and registration is the law, and here is where revelation is born. The seventh and eighth are still supra reaches of man's mind, and include the union or surface consciousness with the higher states, in which the brain becomes the wireless machine, through which flashes of divine wisdom comes; this is called Prophecy and Seership and this is the product of the "mirror-mind."

There are bodies and atmospheres to fit each transcendent state of mind, and the transcendentalist can suspend any, or all of his states of mind, one after another, and pass into direct atonement with any level with which he wishes to function; he can at will live in a new world, and speak with a new tongue, and fill his surface mind with a glory not its own, "but which it had with Him before the world was."

These new states of mind in action extends man's world into the wider reaches of the universal and adds to him new levels of wisdom and power.

There are reaches of intelligence far below and beyond the common intelligence as the microscope and the telescope have shown, and at the fourth and fifth dimension of consciousness man dispenses with all material aids and uses the adjustments of his own being. He has found the eyes, the cars, and the understanding of the supra-self, and by suspending his surface mind through concentration and meditation he can enter any sphere of thought at will and be in the land of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and in the astral and atmospherian, or pass farther out and register in his surface brain the wonders and laws of etherian, and celestial worlds. He is at one with the world of the sensitive, the impressionist and the medium, and in the deeper states of vision he can see and read the memory tablets of the universe. In the higher registrations he becomes cosmo-voyant and cosmo-audient, he can see and hear through space and through ethers as the common eye looks through air. These are not special gifts from God, but simply the gifts man gives himself through the conscious use of what is already in his possession.

The power to extend sight and hearing far above and below the so-called senses is latent within every individual and when the point of transcendental development is reached he uses it naturally.

There are some people who can see birds in the air, ships at sea, stars in the sky, while others standing beside them see only empty space. Just so there are many everywhere on life's pathway who can extend their normal vision and hearing to such an intensified vibratory rate that it not only includes all the things of the physical plane but the things of the finer ethers.

The transcendentalist standing on the streets of New York can extend his vision and look at a street or building in Chicago or Cairo or London, while the surface man alongside of him can scarcely read the signs on the other side of the street.

The modern transcendentalist does only what the surface man does—he looks to see and brings one hundred percent of his vision to bear upon his desire, while the surface man has less than ten percent of himself in action and that only on one plane.

There are enough people on the planet today who can use these deep states of mind, and induce the extended vision and hearing at will to make it more than a mere hypothetical conclusion; there are X-ray beings among us who have come into contact with a great fundamental principle both within and without themselves.

The time will come in the near future, when the operator with the Roentgen ray will stand beside his machine and look with wide open eyes and find the X-ray in his own vision, and will work unlimited by the bondage of his material machine.

Comparing the modern transcendentalist and his pathway with that of the olden transcendentalist with his ascent of travail and pain, we find a profound satisfaction in the picture of power, peace and love of the modern supra-man.

The pathway of the elder supra-man was one of crucifixion, self-denial, renunciation, affliction, poverty, disease and self-mortification. He found the steps to the higher consciousness and its power only through slow self-conquest and comradeship with pain, and this was the inheritance he handed down through the centuries. To think in terms of mystical wisdom meant human denial of all sentient life. Unification was bought through total consecration to the subjective and the absolute, in which the diverse could have no part.

Today "we are free where our sires were serfs, we can see where He left them blind," and we know that God-consciousness is man's immortal birthright and that the son of man must somewhere on his pathway become the son of God, and as he passes on in his unfoldment he will contact every atom of God-mind in all lines of expression, and from the world of matter he will turn in time naturally to those levels of mind which lead him into reverence, illumination and worship, and through this he finds the whole of life.

Man in his immersion into cosmic consciousness puts forth profound tests of his oneness and faces life in larger and larger proportions, and as he ascends he carries all with him, so that he can give back to all a profound and heroic response.

Every man is transcendent when the hour dawns for his transcendent self to tremble into action.

With these wider reaches of consciousness the modern transcendentalist finds the larger LIFE and the true way of living, and in this brings the new message of the "One life in all and through all" into the mass mind, and the new song of joy and thanksgiving into their hearts. He is never sad, never agonizing, never renouncing; he has made contact with all life and through this with the universal joy; there is no denial, no separateness,—there is "no more crying," he conquers and ascends not through separateness but through increasing degrees of union. He lives in glad comradeship with God, in joy and perfected self-expression, both in the objective and in the subjective world.

The ancient transcendentalist was always sad, always separate, always worshipping in beatific loneliness, in seclusion and renunciation of the world; the modern supra-man passes from end to end of the pole of being and stops at any point and functions normally. "He stands and works, then kneels and prays." He is lord of the outside external world and partaker of all its divine joys and pleasures, and he is lord of all the deeper reaches of subjective consciousness within himself and the absolute in which he lives, and he brings out from these deeper levels all the intensified power of illumination and revelation, and pours it over his daily pathway illumining it with a glory not its own.

Many olden transcendentalists lived on in entranced states of divine wisdom with diseased flesh and bodies that shrieked with pain, while they mortified and rejected that divine wisdom. The modern transcendentalist brings all his God-consciousness to bear upon his flesh and raises it to the transcendent heights of his own mind and heals it until bone and muscle and tissues gleam and scintillate with a new found beauty and youth.

The olden transcendentalist dragged on in barren cells and dreary poverty in order not to divert his glorified vision of the formless by the beauty of the ever present form; the modern transcendentalist brings his higher laws into play, conquers his poverty and commands around himself the beauty and luxury and freedom of the world of form, and it speaks to him in matchless raiment, luxuriant flowers, gems, material comforts and soft ease. He lives in rapturous companionship with the glory and beauty and majesty of God in the world He has projected from Himself, and with this beneath him, he can rise to the very pinnacle of infinite selfhood.

The olden transcendentalist, ascending into the transcendental heights of his own mind, ascended alone, and from these obscure heights he shed his wisdom back upon the evolving race; he was pioneer in the lands of cosmic consciousness and the first revelator of the path; he showed the race that the path was there to tread, and his messages have fallen as a benediction on the race mind even while he himself bought his wisdom with pain, renunciation and suffering built from the limited recognition of his own mind.

The path winds onward and upward still, but the feet of those climbing it today are led by still waters and in the paths of righteousness. They are no longer in the part but are in the middle of the Divine Channel of God-consciousness. To know one part was the mission of the past; to know all parts and join them in a divine unity is the mission of the present.

The modern transcendentalist does not love life less, he loves it more! The world is alive with a new majesty; the passing multitude, the passing face, every human attribute of life calls forth from him a deeper interpretation; he walks out into the race mind, and with the power of a new word, and a new touch heals it from its infirmity. He does in truth give "absent treatments," and his word is accomplished; the old diseased flesh transmutes in answer to his command. He speaks to the barren walls of poverty and they stretch away into stately halls, for he knows that wherever man posits his consciousness, substance must gather round it; his new words of power and majesty fall like a benediction on the heart of the listening multitudes, and they turn round to face a new tomorrow with a new hope born of a larger understanding.

The transcendentalist walks often in our midst; sometimes he assumes the simplicity of a child to disguise the larger stretches of power within him, but he is out upon the pathway strong and beautiful, wholly replete with promises of perfection, doing the work of the human.

There is a royal road from appearance to reality, from objective to subjective, from the limited to the absolute.

Difference is merging into one great white way through which the new civilization is thronging, led by the intensified vision of the supra-minds.

Unity has carried man above all things of human law, and he has found that Mighty Force of which all is a part, and he is out into the land of "naked visions" and knows.

He dwells securely upon the height and has ceased the long fight with the objective half of himself; he is one with matter because he has transcended and absorbed it; he is centralized in the formless and spiritualized in the formed, and can say from the level of his own Christ consciousness:

"_I and my Father are one."

"All that my Father hath is mine_."



The Psychology of Insanity



With the ever present increase of insanity, it is not only interesting but important that the subject of insanity should be studied from all view-points, and anything which can be contributed that will help in controlling or curing it, should be accepted as good material.

It is an apparent fact that the multitude knows very little about the cause of insanity and less about the cure. Investigation has in the past been directed to the physical side of the disease, and many of the insane hospitals are examples of physical comfort and perfect physical attention, but they are also living examples of the fact that to house, feed and clothe the demented does not necessarily mean a cure, and a call for deeper understanding is imperative.

Civilization needs each individual as a unit in the great working force of life, and those who need to be taken care of by a State take away a legitimate support and add just that much more to the burden of the State.

A civilization which can increase the independence of the individual and lessen the responsibility of the State is one to be directly desired.

Insanity calls for a closer study than has ever been given and only through a deeper realization of its cause, can a cure be brought about and individuals rendered of value to themselves and the country.

Insanity is nothing more or less than disassociated states of mind and need not in reality be any more serious than errors of refraction of vision, faulty locomotion or lack of coordination. It comes because individuals know nothing of the psychology of themselves or their own minds and is the result of over-intensified mental and physical activity and loss of poise, physically, mentally and psychically. The insane are not capable of understanding themselves, and up to the present day there are very few who are able to understand them.

The nurses, matrons and physicians of a great asylum are powerless to assist them because of their own ignorance of the true laws of psychology. The cases which simple, natural, physical methods will assist, are cured, but thousands of others are allowed to drag along with the dreadful stigmata of "hopelessly insane."

Insanity is increasing because civilization is changing, and conditions are changing. As conditions change the minds of men change and today subjective states of mind in the individual are becoming intensified. Instinct, reason, emotion, intuition, revelation and prophecy are all struggling for expression; unrelated and misunderstood they become disease; related and understood they can be made to bring forth a new race with new extensive reaches of intelligence.

There are few people so stupid but that they can testify to the conflicting states of emotions within themselves and there are many people who are perfectly familiar with states of consciousness with which many other people are entirely unfamiliar.

Wherever we go we are continually confronted with what the world calls "freaky" or "eccentric" people, and these people are found in all degrees from the slightly odd folks to those filling the asylums, and strange as it may seem, no matter how queer they may appear to other people, they never seem so to themselves.

There are many families with members whom the rest call irrational, irresponsible or "black sheep." Again, there are many families who have one child who, from the time of its birth, has called for methods of management entirely different from those used for the other children. There are many little sensitive creatures who are afraid of the dark and who have queer ideas and odd ways, and there are delicate little people who have bodies so finely organized that they are nearly broke into pieces with the natural things which the other members never notice. They are born sensitives and remain sensitives to the end of their lives, and only as they can be taught the truth about themselves can they be rescued from some form of mental disturbances.

These people as they grow older, become what is termed "psychics"; they are over-intensified in some of their deeper states of mind. They are not alone the product of civilization, but the product of race evolution. Many of them pass on in semi-normal states of self-support, but they are a well known class, and they are more or less unsuccessful in supporting themselves along natural lines of labor, and if they inherit wealth they run into vagaries and often degenerate lines of living; they squander their all and die in charity.

The common business world is full of psychics and it is correspondingly full of failures for this is not a faculty that makes for success or power with material things.

Psychics who are only slightly disassociated are always a source of annoyance to their friends, and often looked upon as irresponsible, and have to be looked after by some one who has patience enough to be with them, and often they are passed along as having an artistic temperament.

As long as their peculiar development does not interfere with normal action they are unmolested by the public. It is only when deeper states of mind become so over-intensified that they lose their normal relationship to normal things of the world that they are put under control. They are called paranoics, melancholics, demented and insane. A correct mental training would teach them to re-associate their mind and to live a moderately normal life, at least. All drunkards and drug fiends are psychics; degenerates are also psychics. These conditions are simply the result of loss of polarity of normal mind centers, resulting in the conflict of states of consciousness within themselves.

There are also many psychics in the ignorant and undeveloped classes. The witch women and seers, and many of the colored races are psychic. In the past, these people were looked upon as witches and their words and works were known as "witchcraft."

There are many psychics who are also great geniuses. Lord Byron and the "Mad Painter" of Belgium were psychics. History is rife and galleries of art and temples of literature stand as testimonials to some of the constructive productions of their minds, but beside them run dark stories born of their psychic uncertainty.

Criminals of certain types are psychics with no power of physical control and they pass into subjective control and live and do the things that are given them to do from the psychical mind and are often ignorant of their own condition.

Those whom the medical profession call paranoics are simply psychics, over-developed in the subjective faculties—a prey to all the disembodied forces of the subjective plane, and also to every floating thought on the physical plane; they are obsessed by ideas from within and without and their actions bear witness to this statement. Some very meddlesome women, and those who are the terror of a quiet community, are nearly always those who are in the control of the slower psychic forces and unable to conciously direct their own normal states of mind.

In science the psychics are called diseased. Science gives all actions a physical basis, but it is time to know that abnormal states of consciousness, that are only changes in the functional side of the mind and which have no apparent physical basis, are found in thousands.

Neurasthenics and psychasthenics present the mildest picture of disordered states of mind. All neurasthenics and psychasthenics are psychics and their diseases can only be fully understood by the psychologist. The scientist has long ago exhausted his knowledge of the cause and cure of these diseases and this is why all branches of metaphysical healing are overcrowded.

To understand this abnormal thing called "insanity," one must fully understand the normal, called "sanity." There are four distinct states of consciousness in every individual; these must be kept co-related and all of them manifest through the common everyday mind. These four states of consciousness are instinct, reason, emotion and intuition. These four states of consciousness are functions of the normal mind. When a patient becomes over-intensified in either one of these parts of the mind, mental disease results. The psychic is over-intensified in the emotional and intuitional functions of his mind, thus rendering his common sense states uncommon, and according to the degree of over-activity, he is either a "freak," a creature of "temperament," a "genius" or a "dementia."

The ordinarily insane individual has lost all relationship with his natural, instinctive and reasoning mind. He is disassociated. Reason, instinct, emotion and intuition are all in conflict within him. The emotional and intuitional faculties overfunctioning distort his common understanding. His idea centers are not able to distinguish between the real and the unreal in thoughts. He becomes possessed and obsessed by ideas born of emotion and intuition that have no foundation in fact, and as time goes on, he loses complete control of his idea centers.

Every individual has definite idea centers within his own brain, and it is through these centers that ideas are coordinated, received or rejected. As over-intensification of feeling and emotion goes on, the normal action of the idea centers is interfered with and the individual has superinduced emotional and intuitional states which are no longer guarded by reason and thought. The emotion senses a purely imaginary condition and the idea centers have no power to reduce it to truth. As time goes on, all power of association is lost and the individual passes along, the plaything of his subjective states of mind. As he becomes more and more intensified subjectively, he opens the deep psychic currents both within and without himself, and loses his connection with his common mind and his physical body, and becomes a prey to all the psychic currents.

There are lives everywhere open to subjective thought currents, and all unknown to themselves they are allowing themselves to become disintegrated by the daily and hourly response they are giving to the stimulus of a plane they should master instead of allowing it to master them.

The psychic plane may become a pathway to power, or it may become the open doorway to a body and mind full of disease, insanity and absolute loss of power and poise.

There are many patients confined in the asylums today, who would never have been there, and who would be released and cured, if those in charge fully understood the truth of this unnaturally natural development and directed their attention to its control.

The first truth is, people are born into what is to them natural relationship with this psychic plane and go on for years misunderstood, pained and repressed, unable to rescue themselves from what they do not understand, and in the end the physical body does become diseased by the continual inroads of strain and repression; functional disorder and anatomical changes result. The farmer's wife loses her mental balance through repression of the fine emotional, intuitional side of her mind which finds no expression in the dull environment of the farm. The over-worked mother loses her mental poise; disassociation follows over-stimulation of the practical and repression of the artistic; and in emotional patients exaggerated states of feeling go on into greater disassociation for lack of strong sensible thought control.

And the second truth is, that many are born so close in relationship to the unseen plane and in such psychical correspondence, that some slight thing which weakens the will-power—sorrow, a disease that devitalizes the physical, some shock, or some prolonged or strained mental condition, breaks down the remaining law of separation, and the life is astray in the psychical world, manifesting abnormal, physical laws.

There is one great connecting link between the physical and the psychical through which all abnormal conditions can be corrected, and this is will power. When this power of will is broken, the life must become a manifestation of error, according to the generally accepted idea of normal relationship.

The will-power of an individual is dependent upon his ideation. Weaken his power to carry an idea, and his will grows correspondingly weak; the will must follow the idea; it is not a separate entity— will only exists in partnership with the idea.

Ideation, willing and motion are the great human trinity from which everything else originates. When we inspect our minds, we find that a voluntary motion is always preceded by the idea of that motion. The idea is first and the will follows the idea. Ideas have definite sensory centers in the cortex of the brain and conscious ideation may be induced to produce a particular form of willing. All voluntary action depends, first, upon the ideas of action, then the willing to do, then the doing. The will-power, in its accelerating and restraining impulses, is modified by the degree of the intensity of the idea. Grief, fear, worry, anger, despondency, anxiety, hate, resistance are all negative ideas that weaken the idea centers and produce weakness of willing. These ideas persisted in at first produce indecision and after a while absolute inaction because the patient has lost the perfect co-relation of his idea centers, which associate instinct, reason, emotion and intuition.

In order to get complete control of the will we must get complete control of the idea centers and induce strong, positive ideas which the will cannot refuse to follow.

When we associate all states of consciousness—instinct, reason, emotion, and intuition, in one strong, centralized idea, it is impossible for physical expression to do anything else than follow this idea.

When one has come into certain conditions of negativeness in any part of his mind, and continues in it for any length of time, it takes more than his own power to modify these intensified conditions and bring about an inhibiting power of mind which will crowd them out, and allow the idea centers to receive a new thought-form and intensify it so that the will can pass it into action.

The abnormal individual is always weak in obeying his ideas and carrying out his impulse because there is a dissociation of idea centers and his mind becomes mixed in its responses and he cannot make for a true, harmonious expression on all of the planes of mind within himself—this is the condition of the neurasthenic and psychasthenic, and he needs some mind stronger than his own to hold his ideas true to what he knows to be true.

The first lesson for the diseased mental patient to learn is that if he wants to keep his mental balance or restore it, he must first inhibit all negative ideation and refuse to allow himself to be driven into wild bursts of psychical or mental energy along any one line. He must force himself to interest his mind in other things and to inhibit the over-active states of thinking. This is best done by a complete change of environment, and often a change of friends. Friends and environment, more than any other things, have the greatest power of keeping the mind intensified in its old thought ruts.

There is little hope of receiving a new ideation and acting upon it, when one allows himself day after day to drag through the same central sensations and receive the same nerve impulses, and register the same responses. By removing to a new environment, and substituting new mental and psychical vibrations the old states of consciousness are allowed to rest while a new unworked state of mind begins.

Psychical development is not a disease; it is an attribute of individual growth; no one is to blame if he has it or has it not; all that anyone needs to know is the truth about it and just how to control it and direct it. Subjective hearing and vision come just as naturally to us as life and death—they are a part of the great plan of unfoldment.

In teaching man to co-relate his many states of developing consciousness into one powerful state of mind, we use our everyday common sense. We give him a place of mental power and after such training he opens or shuts his mind to suit himself; he can live in either extension of consciousness at will and extending his understanding into the transcendent side of his own mind, he can become the modern mystic or seer. He can function in the purely material side of himself or he can become an intensified psychic or mystic by simply suspending and intensifying different centers within himself.

Concentration, centralization in ideas, conscious mental substitution, creation of strong mental ideas, and psychic displacement of the negative with the positive, both by the patient within himself and from the attendant or physician without, will bring insanity under control.

When men fully understand their own mind's scope, they will find that what the world calls un-natural states of consciousness, are only cerebral and psychic disassociation.

The greater freedom of the race, and the cure and control of insanity will be found in the deeper study of all levels of mind rather than the one or the few. Only as physical science unites with metaphysical, and these both unite with scientific psychical investigation, will humanity pass toward a solution of its insanity problems. Insanity, delusions, hallucinations, the so-called mental diseases will pass just because they have been naturally displaced by our higher scientific preventive psycho-therapy.

The asylum doors will only open as a place of refuge where men and women will be taught the psychology of the self; there will be schools not cells. Outside the asylum doors there will be an ever increasing crowd of intelligent men and women psychologists, who will be awake to the first hint of psychic disassociation in an individual. With keen insight and scientific direction, they will teach the beginning paranoic, melancholic, neurasthenic, clairvoyant and psychasthenic the truth about themselves and the first hint of disassociation will be replaced by association, and rest homes, asylums and sanitarium doors will close forever!



The Law Eternal



"For since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the Creation."

Whenever we read the stories in the Bible, our minds are held with a deep interest, for through all its pages and in all its words, there breathes out the history of the hopes, dreams and aspirations of human hearts, and above every other story or hope or dream, there stands first in absorbing interest the history of the man Jesus, with his wonderfully inspired life. This wonderful Christ life as given in history is a benediction to the world, and his teachings have given us a great inextinguishable hope. In all his history there is one profound principle that never becomes obscured, and that is his eternal adherence to the Law of Life. He never forgot to speak the word that should show the true laws of Cause and Effect.

Nearly all the people of his day followed the letter of his word and not the spirit. When he spoke in parables they interpreted in fact, and even when he said: "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place, I will come again and receive ye unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also," they believed and interpreted it to mean really material facts, and began to build up their finite hope for a future kingdom, totally blind to the deep subjective law of his spoken word.

They really believed that if they waited a few years, at most, Jesus would return unto them, and in triumph and power gather them together and raise up a community of peace and love in this earth plane. They believed that through this they would become monarchs of a new world. Nothing in their minds revealed the impossibility of material form without fundamental facts beneath them.

The sick and suffering and discouraged of every class, knowing nothing of the higher laws, laid this hope to their hearts, and filled with a courage built on this belief, they taught themselves to stand silent beneath scorn and persecution, feeling inwardly, that when the hour of Christ's return came, their life would suddenly become powerful through some new dispensation.

The years came and went, one after another the apostles died with their hope still in their hearts; at last, only the lengthened life of John was left on which to hang expectancy, then he, too, died and the Jesus of their hope had not returned. Even then the church was reluctant to give up its teaching of the letter and it still held, that even while a few followers remained whose term reached back to Christ's time, it was not too late for his return, and the son of man might yet be sustained in his earthly kingdom.

Time went on until even the oldest memories of the promises passed; change after change came, and man could no longer find a finite place for his faith and trust, and then, as human life was pushed on by the great resistless ebb-tide of the Infinite, those who were still clinging to this false hope, broke forth in a wail of despair, and they cried, "Where is the promise of His coming?" "For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the creation."

We who read their history today and know the truth of Life's finer relationships, cannot but feel a pity for their failure, and the lingering death of their expectancy, even while we see that it was built on superficial human understanding.

In the great unrelated, ignorant hope of these people, we can read in letters of fire, the proof of the certainty of disappointment of every human hope that has not its conscious union with the great universal Laws of Life.

We can see now with the calm vision of those who have no part in their superstition that their hope was never built on the understanding and wisdom of creation, but upon weak, human desires and narrow personal expectation.

It can easily be seen that under the great Law Eternal it was not possible, that after training only a small part of the human race-thought there could be a return, a king of any sort, or that there could follow the perfecting of the race in any such a narrow, limited, personal way.

When Truth has become revealed to the minds of men, they at once see that laws remain, and that the human race is bound to fit itself to these, and looking back over the centuries, and on into the future, we find that Jesus taught us when he said, "I come not to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it."

Today we see how everything waits upon its own cause, and how change is only brought about by the processes of regular unfoldment. We know now that the Whole can only come into expression through the Part, and that the fulfillment of an individual, a nation, or a race must come under the silent operation of those spiritual laws of human understanding which neither the race nor the individual can outstrip.

GOD is LAW, and LAW began when LIFE began and only a deep union with the finer relationships of Life can ever bring us into DOMINION of power.

There has ever been and ever will be many expressions of LAW, and between the Absolute expression and the finite results there must ever be the grinding to dust and ashes of things which oppose either the lesser or the larger unfoldment.

When we look at life from the limited, personal view we can only see from the boundary line of the unfathomed self; but as we come into deeper consciousness, we learn that expectation and promise built on personal hope is one thing, and expectation and promise built on universal understanding of universal action is another.

We are a part of everything in the universe and as we come to look through the personal to the universal, we see clearly the inseparable ONENESS of God-consciousness and man-consciousness, and as we understand and master this relationship, we can read the real answer to our question: "Where are the promises?"

Human life has always been, and always will be, only the unfolding of the personal mind into recognition of the Absolute Mind.

The Universe is under the Law Eternal and in the degree that we know this, we stop our limitations; mankind is free in the Absolute Law, and only seemingly bound in the finite one. Not one jot or tittle of the Law ever passes away; all laws exist to be fulfilled, but human life evolves from level to level of consciousness, and through relationship with higher understanding it escapes the primitive expressions of the lower laws and unites itself with the higher.

The very first truth, then, for any life to learn is, that in this universe of law and order, we get just what we relate with—no more, no less! Nothing happens; everything is the natural expression of the action which produces it.

Jesus came into the world under the law of his own life; he was born to pass along and die expressing the forms of his higher knowledge; he came and went under his own laws, but these were too obscure for the minds of that race to comprehend, and they lived, hoped and died, ignorant of his great Cosmic relationship. Jesus was a son of the planet and his mission was to set laws of race consciousness into activity which would act as a spiritual fulcrum throughout the ages.

What was true in these olden days is still true today; we often go on hoping that fulfillment will come, when by the very nature of what we are doing, we cannot get the higher expression. Take the simple things of our everyday life, our hope of health or our hope of love, wealth, place, happiness, success and usefulness; often we really do hope to be well, and plan in a way for that end, while really at the same time every breath we draw builds for the transitory and fleeting. Like the Christians of old we do not understand higher relationships, and at last, worn out with disappointment we cry, "Where are the promises?" and do not see that until we have perfect thought relationships, we cannot hope for perfect results. It takes deep perception to find the immutable law that all physical phenomena is mental arrangement.

We get everything we find expressing in life through the law of conscious or unconscious thinking! We have, and hold and keep only the things we create for ourselves; there is no other law; no one can take our own away; no one can give us anything, for only what we create is our own, and we alone must create it in consciousness before we can possess it. When we create it in consciousness we really set the law in operation for ourselves and this law will pass it into form.

We make our relationships through the thoughts of our mind. Our mind is the universal mind, and it is inseparably connected with everything in the universe; and whatever we have or have not is a signal of just what we have related with in consciousness. This is the unwritten action of the LAW; no one limits us but ourselves; the Universal Life stands ready with its many levels of relationships to give to every one according to the power he has to create for himself and he is really and truly judged "according to the deeds done in the body."

Jesus could not give an ignorant and undeveloped race the gift of a glorified kingdom; nor could they give it to themselves until they had related in consciousness with the laws that would produce it, the thing we want and our point of attraction must be equal.

We come into life under correct laws; one is not born a Jew, an Assyrian, an Englishman or an American by chance; nor is one born well and rich, and another sick and poor by chance, but EACH is the expression of the LAWS with which he has related in his own consciousness.

Thoughts are things and it is a part of the Universal plan that thoughts from the human mind reach out into the Universal, or Cosmic mind, and there generate an ENERGY which must in time embody in FORM and become the world picture of just what has been stimulated into expression. When thinking passes into a fixed power in our life it can be used to destroy or construct the body or the environment and every thought spoken or unspoken is registered in thought forms in our atmospheric environment and must some day pass into material form.

Health is the expression of a law brought about by a certain line of thinking and disease is another expression. Wealth is one law, poverty is another, and any life can choose this day which he wishes to be under, and choose this hour which law he will serve, and Jesus said, "Whomsoever ye yield yourself servants to obey, his servants ye are, whether it be sin unto death or salvation unto righteousness."

Jesus did not return to his disciples as they expected, because there was no Universal Law for such return. Just so with Health, Wealth, Love, Joy and Happiness. They can never come into expression for us so long as there is not established within us the Law of Natural Relationships.

We are learning at last that "Since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the creation," and it takes more than a fond imagination to pass our life from the law of inharmony, desire and pain, into the higher one of peace, power and happiness.

The moment a life desires anything it instantly becomes related with that thing, but it does not become a possession until all the conditions are fulfilled. Some minds think so lightly of everything that nothing ever becomes steadfast and certain. They drift aimlessly between loss and gain, health and disease, crying out, "Where are the promises," never realizing that promises are only fulfilled when the whole selfhood becomes grappled to the rock of understanding.

Human life is only a growing time, and each life will remain just where it is and express the laws of its level of consciousness until it develops out from them into others.

Sickness, poverty, wretchedness, disappointed hopes are common in the journey of Life; despairing human lives are common too, and lives full of rebellion can be found on every hand, but all these are the products of thoughts that produced them and show just where the consciousness has lingered.

Freedom from all these negative human experiences comes as the reward of inner growth; it can only come through unfoldment and transmutation into higher understanding. Human pain and loss, despair and disease, and the heart-breaks of life, are all the fruits of the Tree of Life whose root is Truth.

When sickness, sorrow and unhappiness have taken the place of health and joy in our life, we have no one to blame but ourselves; we can know that through a long line of perverted thinking, both inherited and acquired, we have become related with the laws in consciousness, and these laws are thoughts of self, hate, jealousy, strife, condemnation, resistance, etc. We have thought it unconsciously in the past, but until we stop and get up new thought relationships, these old things must go on. When we know the higher truth of New Thought Relationship, and the power of constructive thinking, we can begin then and there to change things and we instantly can clean out all the distorted thought energy, and pass the simple act of thinking into a creative form, quitting forever our response to the negative things around us.

We see the truth of "Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap," and we see, too, that this harvest field where we reap is the human life, and the seeds are thoughts, and we then and there fill our field of consciousness with thought-seeds of Health, Strength, Peace, Love, Joy and all the ten thousand beautiful constructive things, and we soon are living in a perfected thought world, surrounded by the dream pictures of our soul consciousness. We become like mystical seers, we can prophesy then about everything in our life without fear of contradiction, for knowing the Law that on the path "Like produces Like," and knowing the thought-seeds we sow, we can be certain of the future harvest.

Under the Law Eternal we cease to consider ourselves related to anything that we do not want. These things we do not want have ceased to exist for us, in the moment we have forgotten them in consciousness. We must refuse even to connect with them in memory. Sometimes this is a hard lesson: The Law of Memory is a peculiar force, it is the expression of fixed thinking —that which we cannot forget has made deep inroads into consciousness. Memory often keeps us related in strange ways, and hinders our unfoldment. Memory is the connecting link between the yesterday and today; it makes the past always the present and it remains the master of many lives and pours what it will into the field of consciousness until it is conquered.

We cannot go on to peace, power and divine unfoldment while we are wrapped around with olden memories, olden idols, fears and bondage.

It is an unwritten law that we pass on as we become fit, and any life can at any moment come away from the thought law of sin, sickness and death, into the law of peace, power, happiness and joy.

The great God-life wants us to have whatever we want, and will help us to get it and keep it. We have been told for ages to "ask and receive, seek and find, knock and it shall be opened." The Universal waits upon our recognition of its presence and before we ask it is given. The moment we know what we want and ask for it under the higher law of recognition, it is ours, then we only have to wait until we can manifest it. Over the same thought line which we pass out our desires, there passes back to us the answer to our prayers and our human pathway blossoms with the fruits and flowers of our deeper understanding.

The law of bondage will never become the law of liberty, but each one of us may come away into this perfect law of creative thinking as soon as we teach ourselves the simple act of picking out thoughts that relate us with the higher things of life. The kinds of positions, friends, conditions and environment we attract to ourselves under the positive conscious relationship are entirely different from the ones we will attract under the negative destructive thought laws. Good friends, happy environment, peace and love, are not made from the material of mind that recognizes only lack, loss, envy, despair, fear, condemnation and resistance.

When we want health, we must think health thoughts and become one with the laws that make for health and live at health's heights; when we want wealth we must create a wealth thought vibration and link our lives with the levels of wealth. All the grand, good things of earth can only come and gather around us when we have lifted our consciousness to the level at which they can be touched.

In the light of this higher understanding we can see that in just the proportion that our human nature rises towards the Universal Wisdom, our human perception becomes widened, until, at last, we include all the laws of higher living, thinking and being, and we bring from the hidden center within ourselves a profound knowledge. As our life grows more and more in the power of perception, we retire farther and farther from the personal, the pessimistic, the limited belief of selfishness, condemnation, resistance, and we begin a new thought life filled with moral, intellectual and spiritual glory, and even though "since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the creation," we see the true laws of creation, and making pur minds one with these laws we pass with them and through them on to perfected human wisdom, we turn to the daily life then with a higher, holier and more glorified purpose and out from all the gloom of the past we find the promises have all been answered and that God has provided some better things for us, which without us could not be made perfect.

The final word, then, to the sick, discouraged and diseased world is this:

"The righteous are in the hands of their God (the LAW) and their life is full of immortality," and knowing this anyone may recognize their conscious union with whatever they desire; create it in their human thought world and project it into form in the Cosmic Consciousness; then with wide open soul eyes walk calmly on, expecting it and never laying down their demand until it manifests for them.



The Outside and Inside of Life



"Jesus said unto him, go and wash in the pool of Siloam. He went his way therefore and washed and came seeing." ST. JOHN IX, 7.

When we read the history of the ages behind us we cannot help but see that through every phase of human evolution there has run that subtle something which men call "the power of the unseen."

Matty of our forefathers lived in self scrutiny and subjective investigation, and many lived in lawless expression of their objective selves with no idea of life in its subjective action and form. As humanity advanced in its reverence it came to where lack of attention to regeneration and self-comprehension was followed by an inner sense of guilt, and those who know the power of the two states of consciousness, the outer and the inner, have grown to where they look upon it as abnormal to higher progress, to only enter these finer courts of being just to rest and renew the physical body.