Talks on Truth Lesson.pdf

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Talks on Truth Lesson

I Reform Your God Thought THIS IS distinctly the age of reforms. Never before have there been such widespread and persistent efforts by both men and women to right the wrongs of religion, society, and politics. 2. From the hearts and the souls of millions goes up the cry, "Set us free from our burdens!" Every imaginable scheme of release is proposed, and each advocate of a panacea for the people's ills stoutly affirms his to be the only remedy that has virtue. It is observed that the majority of these reformers are clamorous that laws be enacted to force their theories upon the people. In this they are following the same methods to cure the ills of the body politic that they have followed in curing the body physical, and the results will surely be of like impotency. 3. Laws, whether natural or artificial, are but the evidence of an unseen power. They are simply effects, and effects have no power in themselves. When man looks to them for help in any condition of inharmony, he is departing from a universally recognized principle of sequence. God, Spirit or Mind--whatever you choose to name it--is the supreme dictator, and thought is its only mode of manifestation. Mind generates thought perpetually; all the harmonious and permanent affairs of men, and the innumerable systems of the infinite cosmos, are moved in majestic measures by its steady flow. 4. All power has its birth in the silence. There is no exception to this rule in all the evidence of life. Noise is the dying vibration of a spent force. All the clatter of visibility, from the harangue of the ward politician to the thunder's roar, is but evidence of exhausted power. As well try to control the lightning's flash by wrapping the thunder about it, as attempt to regulate mind by statutory enactments. 5. All reforms must begin with their cause. Their cause is mind, and mind does all its work in the realm of silence, which in reality is the only realm where sound and power go hand in hand. The visible outer world, with all its social, religious, and political laws, customs, and ceremonies, is but the flimsy screen upon which mind throws its incongruous opinions. God's thought is love, the inherent potentiality of the God man, which knows neither persons nor things, mine nor thine, but a universal brotherhood in which perfect equity and justice reign in joint supremacy. All philosophers and sages have recognized this silent cause, this perpetual outflow from center to circumference. Emerson says of Plato: "He was born to behold the self-evolving power of Spirit, endless generator of new ends; a power which is the key at once to the centrality and the evanescence of things." Jesus Christ said: "The kingdom of God is within you." "Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Elijah found God, not in the whirlwind, or the earthquake, or the fire, but in the "still small voice." 6. All men who have moved the world to better things have received their inspiration from the Spirit within and have always looked to it for instruction. God is not a person who has set creation in motion and gone away and left it to run down like a clock. God is Spirit, infinite Mind, the immanent force and intelligence everywhere manifest in nature. God is the silent voice that speaks into visibility all the life there is. This power builds with hands deft beyond the comprehension of man and keeps going, with all its intricate machinery, universe upon universe, one within another, yet never conflicting. All its building is from center to circumference. The evidence for this runs from the molecule and the atom of the physicist to the mighty swing of a universe of planets around their central sun. 7. Every act of man has its origin in thought, which is expressed into the phenomenal world from a mental center that is but a point of radiation for an energy that lies back of it. That point of radiation is the conscious I, which in its correct relation is one with Cause, and has at its command all the powers potential in Cause. The conscious I can look in two directions--to the outer world where the thoughts that rise within it give sensation and feeling, which ultimate in a moving panorama of visibility; or to the world within, whence all its life, power, and intelligence are derived. When the I looks wholly within, it loses all sense of the external; it is then as the Hindu yogi sitting under his banyan tree with his eyes riveted on the point of his nose, denying his very existence until his body is paralyzed. When it looks wholly without, upon sensation and feeling, it loses its bearings in the maze of its own thought creations. Then it builds up a belief of separateness from, and independence of, a causing power. Man sees only form, and makes his God a personal being located in a city of dimensions. This belief of separateness leads to ignorance, because all intelligence is derived from the one Divine Mind, and when the soul thinks itself something alone, it cuts itself off in consciousness from the fount of inspiration. Believing himself separate from his source, man loses sight of the divine harmony. He is like a musical note standing alone, looking upon other notes but having no definite place upon the great staff of nature, the grand symphony of life. 8. Life is a problem solvable by a principle whose essence is intelligence, which the wise man always consults. The ignorant and headstrong trusts to his intellect alone to carry him through, and he is always in a labyrinth of errors. 9. A belief prevails that God is somewhat inaccessible; that He can be approached only through certain religious ordinances; that is, a man must profess religion, pray in a formal way, and attend church in order to know God. But these are mere opinions that have been taught and accepted by those who perceive the letter instead of the spirit. For if God is Spirit, the principle of intelligence and life, everywhere present at all times, He must be just as accessible as a principle of mathematics and fully as free from formalism. When a mathematician finds that his answer to a problem is not correct, he consults the principle and works out the correct solution. He knows that all mathematical problems inhere in mathematical principles and that only through them can they be worked correctly. If he persistently ignored principles and blundered around in a jungle of experiments, he would be attempting to get up "some other way," and he would prove himself a "thief and a robber," for there is but one way. Jehovah God, infinite Mind in expression, is the way, and this Mind is always within reach of every man, woman, and child. 10. It is not necessary to go in state to God. If you had a friend at your elbow at all times who could answer your every question and who loved to serve you, you certainly would not feel it necessary to go down on your knees to him or ask a favor with fear and trembling. 11. God is your higher self and is in constant waiting upon you. He loves to serve, and will attend faithfully to the most minute details of your daily life. If you are a man of the world, ask Him to help you to success in any line that you may choose, and He will show you what true success is. Use Him every hour of the day. If you are in doubt about a business move, no matter how trivial, close your eyes for an instant and ask the silent one within yourself what to do, just as you would send a mental message to one whom you know and who could catch your thought. The answer may not come instantly; it may come when you least think of it, and you will find yourself moved to do just the right thing. Never be formal with God. He cares no more for forms and ceremonies than do the principles of mathematics for fine figures or elaborate blackboards. 12. You cannot use God too often. He loves to be used, and the more you use Him the more easily you use Him and the more pleasant His help becomes. If you want a dress, a car, a house, or if you are thinking of driving a sharp bargain with your neighbor, going on a journey, giving a friend a present, running for office, or reforming a nation, ask God for guidance, in a moment of silent soul desire. 13. Nothing is too wicked or unholy to ask God about. In my early experience in the study of Christian metaphysics, I was told that through the power of Divine Mind I could have anything I desired. I had a lot I wanted to sell and I asked God to dispose of it to a certain man who I thought needed it. That night I dreamed that I was a bandit holding up my customer. The dream showed me that I was asking God to do what was not right and I thereby gained a lesson. A saloonkeeper came to me for health treatments and was helped. He said: "I also need treatments for prosperity, but of course you could not prosper a man in my business." I replied: "Certainly. God will help you to prosper. 'If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name' does not exclude saloonkeepers." So we treated the man for prosperity. He afterward reported that he was out of the saloon business, and had found prosperity in other lines of work. 14. If you are doing things that are considered wicked, you will find swift safety in asking God first, then acting or refraining, as you are moved. Some people act as if they thought that they could hide themselves from the one omnipresent intelligence, but this is the conclusion of thoughtlessness. God knows everything you do, and you might just as well have His advice. God does not want you to reverence Him with fear. God certainly never can get your confidence if you constantly stand in quaking fear of Him. He will do you a favor just as quickly if you ask in a jolly, laughing way as He would if you made your request in a long, melancholy prayer. God is natural, and He loves the freedom of the little child. When you find yourself in His kingdom it will be "as a little child." 15. God's kingdom of love and unity is now being set up in the earth. His hand will guide the only ship that will ever sail into the Arcadian port, and the contented, peaceful, and happy people that throng its decks will sing with one voice: "Glory to God in the highest." Lesson 2 Microorganisms And out of the ground Jehovah God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them: and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof.--Gen. 2:19. THE AUTHOR of Genesis was evidently a great metaphysician. He described Being as God, Jehovah God, and Adam. We would express the same truth in the terms Mind, idea, and manifestation. The manifestation is always the self-conscious, hence the limited; this is Adam. But Mind, idea, and manifestation are one. Manifestation rests upon and is sustained by the idea, and the idea is encompassed by the Mind that conceives it; therefore the real Adam is Jehovah God, and the omnipresent fount of Jehovah God is Elohim God. This being true, man has no permanent existence while he is wholly in the consciousness of the personal estate. The Adam condition is not all of his being; it is merely a part. His being is summed up in a consciousness of God, Jehovah God, and Adam. These three are not separated, but are present in everyone. The only walls of separation are those built by consciousness of separation. When wisdom is found and its conditions are complied with, the consciousness of the omnipresence of the three in one is proclaimed: "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works." 2. Adam is perfectly legitimate in his right place, and that place is the consciousness of the omnipresence of the Father; here he is back again in the Garden of Eden. Adam has a very important place in creation, in that he is the factor in the manifestation of Being that names or gives character to its potentialities. Man is more than Adam; Adam is a part of man's consciousness. Adam is your intellect, but you transcend the intellect. You form your intellect--Adam--from the "dust of the ground"; that is, from the omnipresent substance, and through it as a kind of reflecting lens, you give character to your surroundings. 3. Those familiar with the operations of the intellect, tell us that it is constantly making images of the ideas that float into its surroundings. It is when we know this that we are astonished at the metaphysical depth of Genesis. Jehovah God is described as bringing "every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens" to Adam "to see what he would call them." 4. The beasts of the field are the ideas in Being pertaining to organized life, and the birds of the heavens are ideas of spiritual life. It is our intellect or Adam that gives character to both ideal conditions; it is through him that man makes his heaven or his hell. Among the disciples of Jesus, Peter represented one aspect of the I AM. He had been in a measure opened to the light of Spirit, and his power over ideas had been recognized. "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." This is a repetition on a higher plane of the allegory of Jehovah God's bringing to Adam the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heavens to see what he would call them. 5. He who studies Mind may know how to "discern the signs of the times." He becomes familiar with certain underlying principles and he recognizes them in their different masks in "the whirligig of time." Under the veil of historical symbology the Scriptures portray the movements of Mind in its different cycles of progress. These cycles repeat themselves over and over again, but each time on a higher plane. Thus the sphere or circle is a type of the complete Mind, but in manifestation the circles are piled one on top of another in an infinite spiral. 6. We today are repeating the mental circle of two thousand years ago. The descent of Spirit into the earth consciousness, as symbolized by the life and the death of Jesus, is being re-enacted in our age. The idea of a personal Messiah has been raised to include Messiahship for all who will drink of the waters of life that are now being poured out upon mankind; it includes all who will dwell in the fadeless, immanent light, the Christ of God. 7. But principles do not change; man makes his heaven or his hell, just as he did two thousand or two million years ago. In the days of Moses the Egyptians refused to give freedom to the Israelites (their spiritual ideas), and they saw frogs, lice, locusts, and blood in earth, air, and water. Today those who contend for the Egyptian darkness of the intellect see disease germs, death microbes, and destructive animalcules in the same earth, air, and water. 8. It is now almost universally accepted by physicians that the majority of diseases are caused by minute forms of life commonly called microorganisms. Each disease--cancer, consumption, diphtheria, croup, and so forth--has its specific microbe. These microbes may be seen with very strong microscopes, and the form and the character of the different varieties are described by such experts as Pasteur and Koch, whose antidotes for these destructive little germs have been widely advertised. Their remedy consists in destroying the microbe--they do not attempt to explain his origin. They find the little worker busy in the bodies of mankind, and they seek to put him out of action, not asking whence he came nor whither he may go. 9. The reflective mind is not satisfied with this superficial way of dealing with such destructive agents. It asks their cause, but no answer is vouch-safed on the part of those who study microbes. Only the students of mind can answer the question of the origin of disease germs, and only in terms of mind can there be given a rational explanation of these minute life forms. 10. The Adam man, the intellect, is responsible for all the microbes. He gives character to all the ideas that exist--he "names" them. This process is intricate, and it may be explained and understood in its details only by metaphysicians of the deepest mental insight, but it is summed up in what is commonly called thinking. Many factors enter into the process of thinking. The capacity of the thinker to form thoughts, to give them substance and force, is the great factor. The understanding of right and wrong, truth and error, substance and shadow, is also important. Many other significant conditions enter into that mental process loosely termed thinking. 11. But we should not be ignorant of the fact that every mental process is generative, that from thinking is evolved what is called living. Thinking is formative--every thought clothes itself in a life form according to the character given it by the thinker. This being true, it must follow that thoughts of health will produce microbes whose office is to build up healthy organisms, that thoughts of disease will produce microbes of disorder and destruction. Here we have the connecting link between materia medica and metaphysics. The physician observes the ravages of the disease microbe, but is at a loss to account for its source; the metaphysician stands in the factory of Mind and sees thoughts poured into visibility as microbes. This opens up a field of causes unlimited in extent. Every thought that flits through the mind of every man, woman, and child in the universe, produces a living organism, a microbe of a character like its producing thought. There is no escape from this conclusion, no escape from the mighty possibilities of good and ill that rest with the thinker. 12. Take an illustration by observing the various stages of the law in the case of diphtheria. A child is attacked, the doctor is called, and from symptoms he detects the disease. He communicates his fears to the family, and in addition to the diphtheria microbe, another of more deadly character begins its inroads upon the nerve centers of the whole family, including the weakened and therefore doubly susceptible patient; this is the microbe of fear, which paralyzes life throughout the body. When these microbes have done their work up to a certain point, still another is created to complete it--the microbe of death. 13. This may seem an exaggeration, but we have the authority of Dr. Parker, a physician of New York, who states that he has discovered the microbe of death and experimented with it. A newspaper article, describing his discovery, says: Death is caused by a certain specific microbe that can be recognized and bred, just as the microbes of various diseases have been discovered and propagated by Koch, Pasteur, and other bacteriologists. The labors of these great men have made further discovery possible, and it was through the study of their achievements that Dr. Parker conceived the idea that, inasmuch as disease was caused by these infinitesimal derangers of the human system, the culmination of disease must have its own specific microbe to put the finish to the work of dissolution, without which the various organs of the body, distempered and degraded from their pristine purity and vital activity, would remain a purulent mass of living corruption, unable to resolve itself into its primal elements and to form other combinations, a process which we see taking place every day as defunct animal matter sinks into the earth, or vanishes into the air to afford food for new and active organisms. 14. This is not at all improbable, but the discovery might properly have been anticipated by the metaphysician. If thought is creative, it must cover every phase of life; every thought must form its microbe; every life expression must have originated in some thought. These propositions are axiomatic, and when one familiar with mind discovers a microbe he should know just what idea in the Adam consciousness, or intellect, gave it form and name. 15. Anger, jealousy, malice, avarice, lust, ambition, selfishness, and in fact all of the detestable ideas that mankind harbors, produce living organisms after their kind. If we had microscopes strong enough, we should find our body to be composed of living microbes, doing to the best of their ability the tasks which intellect has set before them. 16. If you have said, "I hate you," there have been created in your atmosphere hate germs that will do the work for which you created them. If one's enemies alone were attacked by these microbes of thought, the law would not be so severe, but they have no respect for anyone, and are likely to turn upon the body of their creator and tear it down. Doctors are especially industrious in suggesting microbes in their particular line. They make a new disease, or rename an old one; each is indued with its specific microbe that gives it standing among the people who believe in such things, and its inventor goes down in medical history as a benefactor of the race. 17. So the fears, the doubts, the poverty, the sin, the sickness, the thousand erroneous states of consciousness have their microbes. These organisms whose office it is to make men miserable do their work to the very best of their ability. They are not responsible for their existence; they are the formed vehicles of thought, and are the servants of those who gave them life. So it is not to the microbes that the wise regulator of affairs should look, but to those who are creating them and thereby bringing into existence discord and disease. 18. Remedies beyond number are advertised for microbes, but they are guaranteed to kill the germ only. What is needed is a medicine that will prevent its appearance. To apply the remedy to the poor little microbe is like trying to stop the manufacture of counterfeit money by destroying all that is found in circulation. 19. All counterfeit thought comes from the intellect, which alone originates the disease germ and the destructive microbe. We need go no farther than this disobedient Adam to find the cause of all the ills to which humanity has become slave. Wisdom is not an attribute of the intellect. The assumption that its observations are a source of wisdom is the one thing against which the Lord God especially warned Adam. "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." This very clearly indicates the inability of the intellect, on its own account, to set up a standard of knowledge of good and evil; it also declares the end to which Adam will come if he disregards the prohibition specified. 20. That there is something wrong in the present standard of good is evidence by the variety of opinions in the world as to what is good and what is evil. There should be no question on such vitally important points, and there would not be if the intellect would relinquish its claim to a knowledge of good and evil, and would relegate to Spirit the offices of wisdom and understanding. 21. The intellect is the formative, character-giving mechanism in the man; it draws its substance and intelligence from Spirit. Like the prism through which the ray of white light is passed, it shows the potentialities of Spirit. If it looks within and seeks the guidance of Spirit, it reflects divine ideas upon the screen of visibility. This is the plan that the Lord has for it, and it is building according to that plan only when it admits that there is a higher source of wisdom than itself, when it submits to wisdom, for approval or disapproval, the ideas that it conceives. 22. The manifestation of life is through the Adam consciousness, which is, in a way, attached to and responsible for the forms thus made visible. Hence the reform--the transformation--of existing conditions must be made from the standpoint of Adam as an important factor. To ignore Adam is to slight one of the established creations of Jehovah God. If Adam was not a part of the divine plan, why was he formed from the dust of the earth, the breath of life breathed into him, and a living soul capacity given to him? 23. No, we are not to erase Adam, but we are to transform him. He is not a safe guide in anything; his conclusions are derived from observation of conditions as he sees them in the external world. He judges according to appearance, which is but one side of the whole. Appearances say that microbes are dangerous and destructive, but one who is familiar with their origin is not alarmed, because he knows that there is a power and wisdom stronger and wiser than the ignorant intellect. It is to this power that we are compelled to go before we can right the wrongs that now dominate the minds of men. There is but one fount of wisdom, and that is Wisdom itself. 24. The belief that wisdom is attained through the study of things is an error prevalent in this age. They who wait upon the Lord shall be wise. That the wisdom of health can be evolved from the study of disease microbes is a concept of the intellect in its tendency to look without instead of within. The without, the universe of things formed, is not and never can be a source of wisdom. The things formed are the result of efforts to combine wisdom and love, and their character indicates the success or the failure of the undertaking. When wisdom and love have been invoked, and their harmony has been made manifest in the thing formed, God is manifest. 25. We love to name or give character to the ideas of Jehovah God, because it is our office in the grand plan of creation to do so. The glory of the Father is thus made manifest through the Son. In no other way can the ideas in Being be made manifest, and man should rise to the dignity of his office and formulate them according to the plans of Divine Mind. 26. Disease germs and microbes would quickly disappear from the earth if men would consult God before passing judgment upon His creations. It is not man's province to give form to anything but what will be a pleasure in God's eye. If he makes microbes, it is because he thinks microbe thoughts. When he thinks God thoughts he will form only the beauties of nature and mankind, and there will no longer be anything in all his world that will cause a fear or a moment of pain. God is not the author of this condition of so-called "progress from matter to mind"; God is the one source from which and of which man makes his existence. 27. There is a law of unfoldment in Being, a law as exact as the progressive steps in a mathematical problem in which no error is made, a law as harmonious as that which governs a musical production where discord has found no place. But microbes and disease germs are not a part of this divine law. They are as far removed from it as would be error in the steady, careful steps in the progressive infoldment of numbers, or false notes in symphony or song. 28. It does not require labored arguments or hard thinking to see how easily the problems of life would be made orderly and divine if men would let the Lord into their mind. Jesus said that the yoke was easy and the burden light. He was victor over all the hard conditions to which men and women think themselves yoked, and He made light of sin, disease, and poverty, by annulling them and preaching boldly in the face of an adverse theology that it was the prerogative of the Son of man to blot these errors from the world of mankind. 29. There is a royal road for every man--a road in which he will be conscious of the dominion that is his by divine right. That road, Jesus said, leads out from the I AM. As Moses delivered the Children of Israel from the Egyptian darkness of their ignorance by affirming in their ears the power of the I AM, so Jesus gives us a series of affirmations that will deliver us from the wilderness of ignorance. His command is "Keep my word." Then His words are set before us: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." "I am the resurrection, and the life." "I am the light of the world." "I am meek and lowly in heart." "Before Abraham was born, I am." 30. I AM is the polar star around which all the thoughts of man revolve. Even the little, narrow concept of the personal "I am" may be led out into the consciousness of the great and only I AM by filling its thought sphere with ideas of infinite wisdom, life, and love. 31. "Hitch your wagon to a star," said Emerson. Your wagon is that which carries you along. Your I AM is that which carries you up or down, to heaven or to hell, according to the idea to which you have attached it. Then hitch it to a star and let it carry you to the broad expanse of heaven. There is room aplenty--you will not knock elbows with anyone if you get out of the surging crowd and hitch your I AM to the star of spiritual understanding. 32. Cease making disease microbes, and turn your attention to higher things. Make love alive by thinking love. Make wisdom the light of the world by affirming God's omnipresent intelligence. See in mind the pure substance of God, and it will surely appear. This is the way to destroy microbes--that is the antidote for disease germs. The real, the enduring things of God are to be brought into visibility in just this simple way. This is the way in which the I AM makes itself manifest. The method is so easy that the man of great intellect passes it by; it is so plain that a simpleton may understand it; a college education is not necessary. One does not have to know about anything whatsoever except God. How easy it is, how light the burden! No long, tedious years of study; no delving into depths of intricate theories and speculations about molecules, atoms, and ethers, but just a simple, childlike attention directed to the everywhere present Spirit, and a heart filled with love and goodness for everything. "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes." 33. "The soul of things is sweet, the heart of Being is celestial rest; stronger than woe is will; that which was good doth pass to better, best. 34. "Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels, none other holds you that ye live and die, and whirl upon the wheel, and hug and kiss its spokes of agony, its tire of tears, its nave of nothingness. Behold, I show you truth! Lower than hell, higher than heaven, outside the utmost stars, farther than Brahm doth dwell, before beginning and without an end, as space eternal and as surety sure, is fixed a power divine which moves to good. Only its laws endure." Lesson 3 The I AM in Its Kingdom Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates; The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. --Shakespeare IDEAS ARE hinged; they swing in and they swing out. Not everyone has observed this. But everyone must observe it, and note also the swing of his particular ideas. An idea that swings in has a mission. It is of Spirit, and has power to do far beyond an idea that swings out and dissipates its forces in the whirl of the periphery. On the inner side, ideas behold the great wisdom and attach themselves to it; then they lose their identity as limited things and take on the unlimited. 2. A single idea born of wisdom is irresistible. No one can estimate the power for good that is in an idea generated in the center of the home of ideas, the inner man. When an idea comes from that great galaxy of supreme ideas it goes forth in strength and harmony. It is a perfect sphere with no point liable to friction or collision. 3. A man once conceived the idea of building a ship, water-tight above and below. He put his idea into visibility and sent the ship forth on the waves. At first it rode the sea with comparative safety; but storms came, the waves dashed against it, and it went down. Why? Because he had not ballasted it. It was secure above and below from the elements, but it was not equalized in the rolling waves. 4. You are daily, hourly conceiving ideal ships and sending them out upon the waves of the angry sea of human thoughts. They are apparently water-tight; they carry your highest aspirations and desires. You look longingly for their return, but they do not come. Why is it? They were staunchly built according to human plans. But something was lacking. You failed to put your soul into them. They were shells, without depth or hold or cargo of love. 5. All the mental ships that you send out upon the turbulent seas of human thought must be ballasted with your heart's love or they will eventually founder. They may float safely for a season, but the reefs wait for them in the distance, and you may watch in vain for their return. 6. I AM is expressed through I will; it is the business of I AM to know when the I will activities are ideally true. In its right relation in Being, I AM never possesses or owns anything. All things in the universe are its to use, but it must not claim them as personal property. 7. If the wheel that rests in the water and communicates energy to the machinery of the mill should suddenly become possessed with conscious volition and proceed to dip out a portion of the stream as its individual property, it would well represent the position of the I AM that attempts to separate its powers and capacities from universal Mind. 8. The I AM is pure Spirit, without parts or passions. It is the prism through which the white light of Being is focused and refracted on the screen of visibility in many colors. 9. But the I AM is not inertia--it is ever spurred on by an original impulse to know. Knowing is not complete as long as a single factor of Being is left out by him who seeks to know. 10. The I AM has its being in heaven; its home is in the realm of perfect ideals, the Christ within, but it has its freedom. It loves to be. To be is to enjoy. To enjoy is for the time to be that which we enjoy. When you are absorbed in the recital of an interesting story, you are lost to all else. The I AM is for the moment identified with that which it enjoys. Here is the solution of a great mystery--how the I AM ever came to separate itself from its sphere of wisdom. 11. But it is wonderfully simple when you understand it. You are demonstrating the so-called fall of man every time you lose yourself in the whirl of sense pleasure. The mission of the I AM is happiness. It seeks joy and bliss; they are set before it in unstinted measure, and it revels in their intoxicating draughts, but the mastery of the higher mind should ever be maintained. 12. But sensations of pleasure originate in and depend for their vitality upon the central I AM, and when man follows things and forgets the source, he eventually finds the pleasure waning. The impetus grows less and less until that which in the beginning was pleasure becomes so slow of action that its inertia leaves the impression of pain. 13. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are the inherent birthright of every one of us. We exist to that end, and by our constant effort to attain perpetual joy we recognize it as our natural state. 14. That our efforts are not always crowned with success should cause us to pause and consider. Have we not left out some factor necessary to happiness? If so, what is it? 15. We think of heaven as a place of unending happiness, and we have been taught that it is somewhere in the skies. But in the geography of the universe, heaven has not been authoritatively marked. Jesus Christ, of all those claiming intimate acquaintance with spiritual things, gave heaven definite location. He often referred to the Father dwelling in Him; He also told others that the Spirit of God dwelt in them. As a climax He definitely located heaven "within you." 16. This statement has always been looked upon by the world's people as a figure of speech, and even metaphysicians who have delved into the abstractions of mind have had vague ideas about there being such a place as heaven within them. They have said it was a state, a condition. 17. So it is, but it is also a place. It is not outside your body today, and inside it tomorrow, nor is it possible for heaven to exist anywhere but right at the center of what seems to you to be the physical. This insistence upon the location of heaven is a startling proposition to those who have postulated mind as universal, without bounds. 18. We are seeking to get into the kingdom of heaven where all things shall be added, and it is proper that we should know where that kingdom is. All that we really know about ourselves at present comes to us by comparison with the "things which appear." We have a body, which we clearly perceive is moved by an invisible principle called mind. We have never seen this mind or felt it or sensed it in any way. 19. We know that certain combinations of thought produce effects upon the sense nature. The action takes place from the center of consciousness, the physical body. Then, so far as we are concerned, the mystery of Being is wrapped in and around that which we are wont to call clay. Do not mistake the proposition and assume that the physical man as he now appears to your comprehension is the summum bonum of existence. This is not the claim. The claim is that to your consciousness the corporeal man surrounds and gives definite place to that which you seek--"the kingdom of God . . . within you." 20. The argument is frequently brought forward that the "lesser cannot contain the greater." This is but a play upon words, so far as the relations of mind are concerned. We know that in Being there can be no greater and no lesser. Mind is not a thing; Mind is. It is that which, through orderly process, produces the thing. This orderly process, we have learned by observation, is from an invisible center to a visible circumstance. So if anywhere in the universe you behold a form, you may know that within that form there is a potential center from which spring all its qualities. That the invisible cause is or is not confined to that form is not essential to the proposition. So far as the sentient identity of the form itself is concerned, its source of intelligence and life is always within, and it can never know anything about its cause except from that center. 21. When an astronomer sees a system of planets describing geometric circles, he knows without looking that there is at the center of those circles a power which holds them in place. Every atom in the human body is like a miniature planet revolving about its own invisible center, and all the atoms revolve about a great center within. I have discovered this to be an absolute fact in my own experience. I have, by persistent practice, learned to drop my attention from the head to a point under the heart. This is separating the I AM from the personal, or limited consciousness, and connecting it with the universal, or spiritual consciousness, with which it forms a union at the point mentioned. When my I AM touches this inner center there springs into its consciousness a wonderful vibration, and to every part of the body strong currents of energy are transmitted. At this point I seem to be in touch with all creation; the barriers of form are as nothing; there is only a great sea of throbbing life. 22. I am but a novice in this inner exploration, but I have penetrated far enough to know that it is the undiscovered country for which all are seeking. I have not only found the invisible center of my consciousness, but many subcenters, and so many marvelous things in connection therewith that I could not, for lack of comparisons, describe them, even if I knew a language that would convey to the natural man a conception of their marvels and the joy and the satisfaction that they give to the soul. 23. I have proved to my own satisfaction that when Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you," He meant it literally and not figuratively. There is within every one a place, a conscious sphere of mind, having all the attractions described or imagined as belonging to heaven. My most exalted ideas of the joys of heaven never anticipated the ecstatic thrill that suffuses my whole being while I rest in Spirit at this center within. In the redemption of man from sin, the outer thoughts are made to conform to the inner ideas. This is regeneration, in which man is saved from his evil thoughts--Satan--and permanently united with his good thoughts--Christ. This is my work and your work--to conform to the within. 24. It seems marvelous that we should be so totally unconscious of this undiscovered country right under our heart. When I drop down there and feel its sweetness and light, and the inner voice tells me that this heaven exists in everyone else, as it does in me, I cannot comprehend how we have been so long ignorant of it. Yet I know that before the discovery of the circulation of the blood, men knew nothing about the intricate canal system within their own bodies. Then why should it be improbable that still deeper within exists another realm on a different plane?