Transcript for:
Unlocking the Power of Your Mind

Secret of the Ages By Robert Collier Read by Samuel Suk Originally published in 1925  under the title “The Book of Life”  This 7 volume edition was first published in 1926. This recording is a production of Master  Key Society for the purpose of research,   study, and discussion. “A fire-mist and a planet, A crystal and a cell,  A jelly-fish and a saurian, A cave where the cave-men dwell;  Then a sense of law and order, A face upturned from the clod;  Some call it Evolution,  And others call it God.”

• Reprinted from The New England Journal. Foreword If you had more money than time, more   millions than you knew how to spend, what would  be your pet philanthropy? Libraries? Hospitals?   Churches? Homes for the Blind, Crippled or Aged? Mine would be “Homes”—but not for the aged   or infirm. For young married couples! I have often thought that, if ever I got into   the “Philanthropic Billionaire” class, I’d like to  start an Endowment Fund for helping young married   couples over the rough spots in those first and  second years of married life—especially the second   year, when the real troubles come. Take a boy  and a girl and a cozy little nest— add a cunning,   healthy baby—and there’s nothing happier on God’s  green footstool. But instead of a healthy babe,   fill in a fretful, sickly baby—a wan,  tired, worn-out little mother—a worried,   dejected, heartsick father—and,  there’s nothing more pitiful.  A nurse for a month, a few weeks at the shore  or mountains, a “lift” on that heavy doctor’s   bill—-any one of these things would spell  H-E-A-V-E-N to that tiny family. But do they   get it? Not often! And the reason? Because  they are not poor enough for charity. They   are not rich enough to afford it themselves.  They belong to that great “Middle Class” which   has to bear the burdens of both the poor and  the rich— and take what is left for itself.  It is to them that I should like to  dedicate this book. If I cannot endow   libraries or colleges for them, perhaps I can  point the way to get all good gifts for them.  For men and women like them do not need  “charity” — or even sympathy. What they   do need is inspiration—and opportunity—the  kind of inspiration that makes a man go out   and create his own opportunity. And that, after  all, is the greatest good one can do anyone.   Few people appreciate free gifts. They are like  the man whom admiring townsfolk presented with   a watch. He looked it over critically for a  minute. Then—”Where’s the chain?” he asked.  But a way to win for themselves the full  measure of success they’ve dreamed of but   almost stopped hoping for—that is  something every young couple would   welcome with open arms. And it is something  that, if I can do it justice, will make the   “Eternal Triangle” as rare as it is today  common, for it will enable husband and   wife to work together—not merely for domestic  happiness, but for business success as well. Chapter 1: The World’s Greatest Discovery “You can do as much as you think you can,  But you’ll never accomplish more; If you’re afraid of yourself, young man,  There’s little for you in store. For failure comes from the inside first,  It’s there if we only knew it,  And you can win, though you face the worst, If you feel that you’re going to do it.”  —EDGAR A. GUEST ( From “A Heap o’  Livin’.” The Reilly & Lee Co. ) What, in your opinion, is the most  significant discovery of this modern age?  The finding of dinosaur eggs  on the plains of Mongolia,   laid—so scientists assert—  some 10,000,000 years ago?  The unearthing of the Tomb of Tutankh-Amen, with  its matchless specimens of a bygone civilization?  The radioactive time clock by which  Professor Lane of Tufts College estimates   the age of the earth at 1,250,000,000 years? Wireless? The Aeroplane? Man-made thunderbolts?  No—not any of these. The really significant thing  about them is that from all this vast research,   from the study of all these bygone ages, men  are for the first time beginning to get an   understanding of that “Life Principle”  which—somehow, some way—was brought to   this earth thousands or millions of years  ago. They are beginning to get an inkling   of the infinite power it puts in their hands—to  glimpse the untold possibilities it opens up.  This is the greatest discovery of modern  times—that every man can call upon this   “Life Principle” at will, that it is as  much the servant of his mind as was ever   Aladdin’s fabled “genie-of-the-lamp” of old;  that he has but to understand it and work in   harmony with it to get from it anything he may  need— health or happiness, riches or success.  To realize the truth of this, you have but to  go back for a moment to the beginning of things. In the Beginning It matters not   whether you believe that mankind dates back to the  primitive ape- man of 500,000 years ago, or sprang   full-grown from the mind of the creator. In either  event, there had to be a first cause—a creator.   Some power had to bring to this earth the  first germ of life, and the creation is no less   wonderful if it started with the lowliest form of  plant life and worked up through countless ages   into the highest product of today’s civilization,  than if the whole were created in six days.  In the beginning, this earth was  just a fire mist—six thousand   or a billion years ago—what does it matter which? The one thing that does matter is that some time,   some way, there came to this planet the germ  of life—the life principle that animates all   nature—plant, animal, and man. If we accept the  scientists’ version of it, the first form in   which life appeared upon earth was the humble  algae—a jelly-like mass that floated upon the   waters. This, according to the scientists, was  the beginning, the dawn of life upon the earth.  Next came the first bit of animal life—  the lowly amoeba, a sort of jelly fish,   consisting of a single cell, without vertebrae,  and with very little else to distinguish it from   the water round about. But it had life—the  first bit of animal life—and from that life,   according to the scientists, we could  trace everything we have and are today.  All the millions of forms and shapes and varieties  of plants and animals that have since appeared are   but different manifestations of life——formed  to meet differing conditions. For millions of   years this “Life Germ” was threatened by every  kind of danger—from floods, from earthquakes,   from droughts, from desert heat, from glacial  cold, from volcanic eruptions—but to it each new   danger was merely an incentive to finding a new  resource, to putting forth Life in some new shape.  To meet one set of needs, it formed the  dinosaur—to meet another, the butterfly. Long   before it worked up to man, we see its unlimited  resourcefulness shown in a thousand ways.   To escape danger in the water, it sought  land. Pursued on land, it took to the air.   To breathe in the sea, it developed gills.  Stranded on land, it perfected lungs. To meet   one kind of danger it grew a shell. For another,  a sting. To protect itself from glacial cold,   it grew fur, in temperate climates,  hair. Subject to alternate heat and cold,   it produced feathers. But ever, from the  beginning, it showed its power to meet every   changing condition, to answer every creature need. Had it been possible to kill this “Life Idea,” it   would have perished ages ago, when fire and  flood, drought and famine followed each other   in quick succession. But obstacles, misfortunes,  cataclysms, were to it merely new opportunities to   assert its power. In fact, it required obstacles  to awaken it, to show its energy and resource.  The great reptiles, the monster beasts of  antiquity passed on. But the “Life Principle”   stayed, changing as each age changed,  always developing, and always improving.  Whatever power it was that brought this “Life  Idea” to the earth, it came endowed with unlimited   resource, unlimited energy, unlimited LIFE! No  other force can defeat it. No obstacle can hold it   back. All through the history of life and mankind  you can see its directing intelligence—call   it nature, call it providence, call it what  you will—rising to meet every need of life. The Purpose of Existence No one can follow it down through the   ages without realizing that the whole purpose of  existence is GROWTH. Life is dynamic—not static.   It is ever moving forward—not standing still. The  one unpardonable sin of nature is to stand still,   to stagnate. The Giganotosaurus, that was over  a hundred feet long and as big as a house;   the Tyrannosaurus, that had the strength of a  locomotive and was the last word in frightfulness;   the Pterodactyl or Flying Dragon—all the giant  monsters of Prehistoric Ages—are gone. They   ceased to serve a useful purpose. They did not  know how to meet the changing conditions. They   stood still—stagnated—while the  life around them passed them by.  Egypt and Persia, Greece and Rome, all the  great Empires of antiquity, perished when   they ceased to grow. China built a wall about  her and stood still for a thousand years. In   all nature, to cease to grow is to perish. It is for men and women who are not ready to   stand still, who refuse to cease to grow, that  this book is written. It will give you a clearer   understanding of your own potentialities,  show you how to work with and take advantage   of the infinite energy all about you. The terror of the man at the crossways,   not knowing which road to take, will be no  terror to you. Your future is of your own   making. For the only law of infinite energy  is the law of supply. The “Life Principle” is   your principle. To survive, to win through, and to  triumphantly surmount all obstacles has been its   everyday practice since the beginning of time. It  is no less resourceful now than ever it was. You   have but to supply the urge, to work in harmony  with it, to get from it anything you may need.  For if this “Life Principle” is so strong in the  lowest forms of animal life that it can develop a   shell or a poison to meet a need; if it can teach  the bird to circle and dart, to balance and fly;   if it can grow a new limb on a spider to replace  a lost one, how much more can it do for you— a   reasoning, rational being, with a mind able  to work with this “Life Principle,” with an   energy and an initiative to urge it on! The evidence of this is all about you.   Take up some violent form of exercise— rowing,  tennis, and swimming, riding. In the beginning   your muscles are weak, easily tired. But keep  on for a few days. The “Life Principle” promptly   strengthens them, toughens them, to meet their new  need. Do rough manual labor—and what happens? The   skin of your hands becomes tender, blisters, and  hurts. Keep it up, and does the skin all wear off?   On the contrary, the “Life Principle” provides  extra thicknesses, extra toughness— calluses,   we call them—to meet your need. All through your daily life you   will find this “Life Principle” steadily at work.  Embrace it, work with it, take it to yourself, and   there is nothing you cannot do. The mere fact that  you have obstacles to overcome is in your favor,   for when there is nothing to be done,  when things run along too smoothly;   this “Life Principle” seems to sleep. It  is when you need it, when you call upon it   ur-gently, that it is most on the job. It differs from “Luck” in this, that fortune is   a fickle jade that smiles most often on those who  need her least. Stake your last penny on the turn   of a card— have nothing between you and ruin but  the spin of a wheel or the speed of a horse—and   its a thousand to one “Luck” will desert you! But  it is just the opposite with the Life Principle.”   As long as things run smoothly, as long as life  flows along like a song, this “Life Principle”   seems to slumber, secure in the knowledge  that your affairs can take care of themselves.  But let things start going wrong, let  ruin and disgrace stare you in the face—   then is the time this “Life Principle” will  assert itself if you but give it a chance. The “Open, Sesame!” of Life There is a Napoleonic feeling of   power that insures success in the knowledge that  this invincible “Life Principle” is behind your   every act. Knowing that you have working with you  a force, which never yet has failed in anything it   has undertaken, you can go ahead in the confident  knowledge that it will not fail in your case,   either. The ingenuity, which overcame every  obstacle in making you what you are, is not   likely to fall short when you have immediate need  for it. It is the reserve strength of the athlete,   the “second wind” of the runner, the power  that, in moments of great stress or excite-ment,   you unconsciously call upon to do the deeds  which you ever after look upon as superhuman.  But they are in no wise superhuman. They are  merely beyond the capacity of your conscious   self. Ally your conscious self with that sleeping  giant within you, rouse him daily to the task,   and those “superhuman” deeds will become  your ordinary, everyday accomplishments.  W. L. Cain, of Oakland, Oregon, writes:  “I know that there is such a power,   for I once saw two boys, 16 and 18 years of  age, lift a great log off their brother, who   had been caught under it. The next day, the same  two boys, with another man and me, tried to lift   the end of the log, but could not even budge it.” How was it that the two boys could do at need what   the four were unable to do later on, when the need  had passed? Because they never stopped to question  whether or not it could be done. They saw only the  urgent need. They concentrated all their thought,   all their energy on that one thing—never  doubting, never fearing—and the genie which   is in all of us waiting only for such  a call, answered their summons and gave   them the strength—not of two men, but of ten! It matters not whether you are banker or lawyer,   businessman or clerk. Whether you are the  custodian of millions, or have to struggle   for your daily bread. This “Life Principle”  makes no distinction between rich and poor,   high and low. The greater your need, the more  readily will it respond to your call. Wherever   there is an unusual task, wherever there is  poverty or hardship or sickness or despair, there   is this servant of your mind, ready and willing  to help, asking only that you call upon him.  And not only is it ready and willing, but it is  always ABLE to help. Its ingenuity and resource   are without limit. It is Mind. It is thought. It  is the Telepathy that carries messages without   the spoken or written word. It is the Sixth  Sense that warns you of unseen dangers. No   matter how stupendous and complicated, nor how  simple your problem may be—the solution of it   is somewhere in Mind, in Thought. And since the  solution does exist, this Mental Giant can find it   for you. It can KNOW, and it can DO, every right  thing. Whatever it is necessary for you to know,   whatever it is necessary for you to do, you  can know and you can do if you will but seek   the help of this genie-of-your-mind  and work with it in the right way. Chapter 2: The Genie-of-Your-Mind “It matters not how strait the gate,  How charged with punishment the scroll, I am the Master of my Fate;  I am the Captain of my Soul.” —HENLEY.  First came the Stone Age, when life was for the  strong of arm or the fleet of foot. Then there   was the Iron Age—and while life was more precious,  still the strong lorded it over the weak. Later   came the Golden Age, and riches took the place  of strength—but the poor found little choice   between the slave drivers’ whips of olden days  and the grim weapons of poverty and starvation.  Now we are entering a new age—the Mental  Age—when every man can be his own master,   when poverty and circumstance no longer hold  power and the lowliest creature in the land   can win a place side by side with the highest. To those who do not know the resources of mind   these will sound like rash statements; but science  proves beyond question that in the wellsprings of   every man’s mind are unplumbed depths—undiscovered  deposits of energy, wisdom and ability.   Sound these depths—bring these  treasures to the surface—and   you gain an astounding wealth of new power. From the rude catamaran of the savages to the   giant liners of today, carrying their thousands  from continent to continent is but a step in the   development of Mind. From the lowly cave man,  cow-ering in his burrow in fear of lightning or   fire or water, to the engineer of today, making  servants of all the forces of Nature, is but a   measure of difference in mental development. Man, without reasoning mind, would be as the   monkeys are—prey of any creature fast enough and  strong enough to pull him to pieces. At the mercy   of wind and weather. A poor timid creature, living  for the moment only, fearful of every shadow.  Through his superior mind, he learned to make fire  to keep himself warm; weapons with which to defend   himself from the savage creatures round about;  habitations to protect himself from the elements.   Through mind he conquered the forces of Nature. Through mind he has made machinery do the work   of millions of horses and billions of hands.  What he will do next, no man knows, for man   is just beginning to awaken to his own powers.  He is just getting an inkling of the unfathomed   riches buried deep in his own mind. Like the gold  seekers of ‘49, he has panned the surface gravel   for the gold swept down by the streams. Now he is  starting to dig deeper to the pure vein beneath.  We bemoan the loss of our forests. We worry over  our dwindling resources of coal and oil. We decry   the waste in our factories. But the greatest  waste of all, we pay no attention to—the waste   of our own potential mind power. Professor Wm.  James, the world-famous Harvard psychologist,   estimated that the average man uses only 10% of  his mental power. He has unlimited power—yet he   uses but a tithe of it. Unlimited wealth all about  him—and he doesn’t know how to take hold of it.   With God-like powers slumbering within him, he is  content to continue in his daily grind — eating,   sleeping, working—plodding through an existence  little more eventful than the animals,   while all of Nature, all of life, calls  upon him to awaken, to bestir himself.  The power to be what you want to be, to get  what you desire, to accomplish whatever you are   striving for, abides within you. It rests with  you only to bring it forth and put it to work.   Of course you must know how to do that, but  before you can learn how to use it, you must   realize that you possess this power. So our first  objective is to get acquainted with this power.  For Psychologists and Metaphysicians the world  over, are agreed in this—that Mind is all that   counts. You can be whatever you make up your  mind to be. You need not be sick. You need not   be unhappy. You need not be poor. You need not be  unsuccessful. You are not a mere clod. You are not   a beast of burden, doomed to spend your days in  unremitting labor in return for food and housing.   You are one of the Lords of the Earth, with  unlimited potentialities. Within you is a power,   which, properly grasped and directed, can lift you  out of the rut of mediocrity and place you among   the Elect of the earth—the lawyers, the writers,  the statesmen, the big business men—the DOERS   and the THINKERS. It rests with you  only to learn to use this power,   which is yours—this Mind that can do all things. Your body is for all practical purposes merely a   machine, which the mind uses. This mind is usually  thought of as con-sciousness; but the conscious   part of your mind is in fact the very smallest  part of it. Ninety per cent of your mental life is   subconscious, so when you make active use of only  the conscious part of your mind you are using but   a fraction of your real ability; you are running  on low gear. And the reason why more people do not   achieve success in life is because so many of them  are content to run on low gear all their lives   — on SURFACE ENERGY. If these same people would  only throw into the fight the resistless force of   their subconscious minds they would be amazed at  their undreamed of capacity for winning success.  Conscious and subconscious are, of  course, integral parts of the one   mind. But for convenience sake let us  divide your mind into three parts—the   conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and  the Infinite, Subliminal or Universal Mind. The Conscious Mind When you say,   “I see—I hear—I smell—I touch,” it is  your conscious mind that is saying this,   for it is the force governing the five physical  senses. It is the phase of mind with which you   feel and reason—the phase of mind with which  everyone is familiar. It is the mind with which   you do business. It controls, to a great extent,  all your voluntary muscles. It discriminates   between right and wrong, wise and foolish. It is  the generalissimo, in charge of all your mental   forces. It can plan ahead—and get things done  as it plans. Or it can drift along haphazardly,   a creature of impulse, at the mercy of events—a  mere bit of flotsam in the current of life.  For it is only through your conscious mind that  you can reach the subconscious and the Universal   Mind. Your conscious mind is the porter at  the door, the watchman at the gate. It is to   the conscious mind that the subconscious looks  for all its impressions. It is on it that the   subconscious mind must depend for the teamwork  necessary to get successful results. You wouldn’t   expect much from an army, no matter how fine  its soldiers, whose general never planned ahead,   who distrusted his own ability and that  of his men, and who spent all his time   worrying about the enemy instead of planning  how he might conquer them. You wouldn’t look   for good scores from a ball team whose pitcher  was at odds with the catcher. In the same way,   you can’t expect results from the subconscious  when your conscious mind is full of fear or worry,   or when it does not know what it wants. The one most important province of your   conscious mind is to center your thoughts on the  thing you want, and to shut the door on every   suggestion of fear or worry or disease. If you once gain the ability to do that,   nothing else is impossible to you. For the subconscious mind does not reason   inductively. It takes the thoughts you send in to  it and works them out to their logical conclusion.   Send to it thoughts of health and strength,  and it will work out health and strength in   your body. Let suggestions of disease, fear of  sickness or accident, penetrate to it, either   through your own thoughts or the talk of those  around you, and you are very likely to see the   manifestation of disease working out in yourself. Your mind is master of your body. It directs   and controls every function of your body. Your  body is in effect a little universe in itself,   and mind is its radiating center—the sun  that gives light and life to all your system,   and around which the whole revolves. And your  conscious thought is master of this sun center.   As Emile Coué puts it—”The conscious can  put the subconscious mind over the hurdles.” The Subconscious Mind Can you tell me how much water, how much salt,   how much of each different element there should  be in your blood to maintain its proper specific   gravity if you are leading an ordinary sedentary  life? How much and how quickly these proportions   must be changed if you play a fast game of  tennis, or run for your car, or chop wood,   or indulge in any other violent exercise? Do you know how much water you should drink   to neutralize the excess salt in salt fish?  How much you lose through perspiration? Do   you know how much water, how much salt, how  much of each different element in your food   should be absorbed into your blood  each day to maintain perfect health?  No? Well, it need not worry you. Neither does  any one else. Not even the greatest physicists   and chemists and math-ematicians.  But your subconscious mind knows.  And it doesn’t have to stop to figure it out. It  does it almost automatically. It is one of those   “Lightning Calculators.” And this is but one of  thousands of such jobs it performs every hour   of the day. The greatest mathematicians in the  land, the most renowned chemists, could never do   in a year’s time the abstruse problems, which  your subconscious mind, solves every minute.  And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve ever  studied mathematics or chemistry or any other   of the sciences. From the moment of your birth  your subconscious mind solves all these problems   for you. While you are struggling along with  the three R’s, it is doing problems that would   leave your teachers aghast. It supervises all the  intricate processes of digestion, of assimilation,   of elimination, and all the glandular secretions  that would tax the knowledge of all the chemists   and all the laboratories in the land. It planned  and built your body from infancy on up. It repairs   it. It operates it. It has almost unlimited  power, not merely for putting you and keeping   you in perfect health but for acquiring all  the good things of life. Ignorance of this   power is the sole reason for all the failures  in this world. If you would intelligently turn   over to this wonderful power all your business  and personal affairs in the same way that you   turn over to it the mechanism of your body, no  goal would be too great for you to strive for.  Dr. Geo. C. Pitzer sums up the power of the  subconscious mind very well in the following:  “The subconscious mind is a distinct entity.  It occupies the whole human body, and,   when not opposed in any way, it has absolute  control over all the functions, conditions,   and sensations of the body. While the objective  (conscious) mind has control over all of our   voluntary functions and motions, the subconscious  mind controls all of the silent, in-voluntary,   and vegetative functions. Nutrition, waste, all  secretions and excretions, the action of the   heart in the circulation of the blood, the lungs  in respiration or breathing, and all cell life,   cell changes and development, are positively under  the complete control of the subconscious mind.  This was the only mind animal had before the  evolution of the brain; and it could not,   nor can it yet, reason inductively, but its power  of deductive reasoning is perfect. And more,   it can see without the use of physical eyes.  It perceives by intuition. It has the power   to communicate with others without the aid of  ordinary physical means. It can read the thoughts   of others. It receives intelligence and transmits  it to people at a distance. Distance offers no   resistance against the successful missions of  the subconscious mind. It never dies. We call   this the ‘soul mind.’ It is the living soul.” In “Practical Psychology and Sex Life,” by   David Bush, Dr. Winbigler is quoted  as going even further. To quote him:  “It is this mind that carries on the work of  assimilation and upbuilding whilst we sleep . . .  It reveals to us things that the  conscious mind has no conception   of until the consummations have occurred. It can communicate with other minds without   the ordinary physical means. It gets glimpses  of things that ordinary sight does not behold.  It makes God’s presence an actual,  realizable fact, and keeps the   personality in peace and quietness. It warns of approaching danger.  It approves or disapproves of a  course of conduct and conversation.  It carries out all the best  things, which are given to it,   providing the conscious mind does not intercept  and change the course of its manifestation.  It heals the body and keeps it in  health, if it is at all encouraged.”  It is, in short, the most powerful force  in life, and when properly directed,   the most beneficent. But, like a live electric  wire, its destructive force is equally great.   It can be either your servant or your  master. It can bring to you evil or good.  The Rev. William T. Walsh, in a new book just  published, explains the idea very clearly:  “The subconscious part in us is called the  subjective mind, because it does not decide   and command. It is a subject rather than a  ruler. Its nature is to do what it is told,   or what really in your heart of hearts you desire. “The subconscious mind directs all the vital   processes of your body. You do not think  consciously about breathing. Every time you take a   breath you do not have to reason, decide, command.  The subconscious mind sees to that. You have not   been at all conscious that you have been breathing  while you have been reading this page. So it is   with the mind and the circulation of blood. The  heart is a muscle like the muscle of your arm.   It has no power to move itself or to direct its  action. Only mind, only something that can think,   can direct our muscles, including the heart. You  are not conscious that you are commanding your   heart to beat. The subconscious mind attends to  that. And so it is with the assimilation of food,   the building and repairing of the body.  In fact, all the vital processes are   looked after by the subconscious mind.” “Man lives and moves and has his being” in   this great subconscious mind. It supplies  the “intuition” that so often carries a   woman straight to a point that may require  hours of cumbersome reasoning for a man to   reach. Even in ordinary, every-day affairs,  you often draw upon its wonderful wisdom.  But you do it in an accidental sort of  way without realizing what you are doing.  Consider the case of “Blind Tom.” Probably you’ve  heard or read of him. You know that he could   listen to a piece of music for the first time and  go immediately to a piano and reproduce it. People   call that abnormal. But as a matter of fact he  was in this respect more normal than any of us.   We are abnormal because we cannot do it. Or consider the case of these “lightning   calculators” of whom one reads now and then.  It may be a boy seven or eight years old;   but you can ask him to divide 7,649.437 by  326.2568 and he’ll give you the result in   less time than it would take you to put the  numbers down on a piece of paper. You call   him phenomenal. Yet you ought to be able to do  the same yourself. Your subconscious mind can.  Dr. Hudson, in his book “The Law of Psychic  Phenomena,” tells of numerous such prodigies.   Here are just a few instances: “Of mathematical prodigies there   has been upwards of a score whose calculations  have surpassed, in rapidity and accuracy, those   of the greatest educated mathematicians. These  prodigies have done their greatest feats while but   children from three to ten years old. In no case  had these boys any idea how they performed their   calculations, and some of them would converse upon  other subjects while doing the sum. Two of these   boys became men of eminence, while some of them  showed but a low degree of objective intelligence.  Whateley spoke of his own  gift in the following terms:  “There was certainly something peculiar in  my calculating faculty. It began to show   itself at between five and six, and lasted  about three years. I soon got to do the most   difficult sums, always in my head, for I  knew nothing of figures beyond numeration.   I did these sums much quicker than anyone  could upon paper, and I never remember   committing the smallest error. When I went to  school, at which time the passion wore off,   I was a perfect dunce at ciphering,  and have continued so ever since.”  “Professor Safford became an astronomer. At the  age of ten he worked correctly a multiplication   sum whose answer consisted of thirty-six figures.  Later in life he could perform no such feats.”  “Benjamin Hall Blyth, at the age of six, asked  his father at what hour he was born. He was told   that he was born at four o’clock. Looking at the  clock to see the present time, he informed his   father of the number of seconds he had lived. His  father made the calculation and said to Benjamin,   ‘You are wrong 172,000 seconds.’ The boy answered,  ‘Oh, papa, you have left out two days for the leap   years 1820 and 1824,’ which was the case.” “Then there is the celebrated case of Zerah   Colburn, of whom Dr. Schofield writes: “‘Zerah Colburn could instantaneously   tell the square root of 106,929 as 327,  and the cube root of 268,336,125 as 645.   Before the question of the number of minutes  in forty-eight years could be written he said   25,228,810. He immediately gave the factors of  247,483 as 941 and 263, which are the only two;   and being asked then for those of 36,083, answered  none; it is a prime number. He could not tell how   the answer came into his mind. He could not, on  paper, do simple multiplication or division.’”  The time will come when, as H. G. Wells envisioned  in his “Men Like Gods,” schools and teachers will   no longer be necessary except to show us how  to get in touch with the infinite knowledge   our subconscious minds possess from infancy. “The smartest man in the world,” says Dr.   Frank Crane in a recent article in Liberty “is  the Man Inside. By the Man Inside I mean that   Other Man within each one of us that does  most of the things we give ourselves credit   for doing. You may refer to him as Nature or  the Subconscious Self or think of him merely   as a Force or a Natural Law, or, if you are  religiously inclined, you may use the term God.  “I say he is the smartest man in the world. I know  he is infinitely more clever and resourceful than   I am or than any other man is that I ever heard  of. When I cut my finger it is he that calls up   the little phagocytes to come and kill the septic  germs that might get into the wound and cause   blood poisoning. It is he that coagulates the  blood, stops the gash, and weaves the new skin.  “I could not do that. I do not even  know how he does it. He even does   it for babies that know nothing at all; in  fact, does it better for them than for me.  “No living man knows enough to make toenails grow,  but the Man Inside thinks nothing of growing nails   and teeth and thousands of hairs all over my  body; long hairs on my head and little fuzzy   ones over the rest of the surface of the skin. “When I practice on the piano I am simply getting   the business of piano playing over from  my conscious mind to my subconscious mind:   in other words, I am handing the  business over to the Man Inside.  “Most of our happiness, as well as our  struggles and misery, come from this Man   Inside. If we train him in ways of contentment,  adjustment, and decision he will go ahead of us   like a well trained servant and do for us easily  most of the difficult tasks we have to perform.”  Dr. Jung, celebrated Viennese specialist, claims  that the subconscious mind contains not only all   the knowledge that it has gathered during the  life of the individual, but that in addition   it contains all the wisdom of past ages. That by  drawing upon its wisdom and power the individual   may possess any good thing of life, from health  and happiness to riches and success.You see,   the subconscious mind is the connecting link  between the Creator and us, between Universal   Mind and our conscious mind. It is the means by  which we can appropriate to ourselves all the   good gifts, all the riches and abundance that  Universal Mind has created in such profusion.  Berthelot, the great French founder of modern  synthetic chemistry, once stated in a letter   to a close friend that the final experiments  which led to his most wonderful discoveries   had never been the result of carefully  followed and reasoned trains of thought,   but that, on the contrary, “they came of  themselves, so to speak, from the clear sky.”  Charles M. Barrows, in “Suggestion  Instead of Medicine,” tells us that:  “If man requires another than his ordinary  consciousness to take care of him while asleep,   not less useful is this same psychical provision  when he is awake. Many persons are able to obtain   knowledge, which does not come to them  through their senses, in the usual way,   but arrives in the mind by direct communication  from another conscious intelligence,   which apparently knows more of what concerns their  welfare than their ordinary reason does. I have   known a number of persons who, like myself,  could tell the contents of letters in their   mail before opening them. Several years ago a  friend of mine came to Boston for the first time,   arriving at what was then the Providence railroad  station in Park Square. He wished to walk to the   Lowell station on the opposite side of the city.  Being utterly ignorant of the streets as well as   the general direction to take, he confidently  set forth without asking the way, and reached   his destination by the most direct path. In  doing this he trusted solely to ‘instinctive   guidance,’ as he called it, and not to any  hints or clews obtained through the senses.”  The geniuses of literature, of art, commerce,  government, politics and invention are,   according to the scientists, but ordinary  men like you and me who have learned somehow,   some way, to draw upon their subconscious minds. Sir Isaac Newton is reported to have acquired   his marvelous knowledge of mathematics  and physics with no conscious effort.   Mozart said of his beautiful symphonies “they  just came to him.” Descartes had no ordinary   regular education. To quote Dr. Hudson: “This is a power which transcends reason,   and is independent of induction. Instances of  its development might be multiplied indefinitely.   Enough is known to warrant the conclusion that  when the soul is released from its objective   environment it will be enabled to perceive all the  laws of its being, to ‘see God as He is,’ by the   perception of the laws which He has instituted. It  is the knowledge of this power which demonstrates   our true relationship to God, which confers the  warranty of our right to the title of ‘sons of   God,’ and confirms our inheritance of our rightful  share of his attributes and powers—our heir ship   of God, our joint heir ship with Jesus Christ.” Our subconscious minds are vast magnets, with   the power to draw from Universal Mind unlimited  knowledge, unlimited power, unlimited riches.  “Considered from the standpoint of  its activities,” says Warren Hilton   in “Applied Psychology,” “the subconscious is  that department of mind, which on the one hand   directs the vital operations of the body, and  on the other conserves, subject to the call of   interest and attention, all ideas and complexes  not at the moment active in consciousness.  “Observe, then, the possibility that lies before  you. On the one hand, if you can control your   mind in its subconscious activities, you can  regulate the operation of your bodily functions,   and can thus assure yourself of bodily efficiency  and free yourself of functional disease.   On the other hand, if you can determine just  what ideas shall be brought forth from sub   consciousness into consciousness, you can  thus select the materials out of which will   be woven your conscious judgments, your  decisions and your emotional attitudes.  “To achieve control of your mind  is, then, to attain (a) health,   (b) success, and (c) happiness.” Few understand or appreciate, however,   that the vast storehouse of knowledge and power of  the subconscious mind can be drawn upon at will.   Now and then through intense concentration or very  active desire we do accidentally penetrate to the   realm of the subconscious and register our thought  upon it. Such thoughts are almost invariably   realized. The trouble is that as often as not it  is our negative thoughts—our fears—that penetrate.   And these are realized just as surely as the  positive thoughts. What you must manage to do   is learn to communicate only such thoughts as you  wish to see realized to your subconscious mind,   for it is exceedingly amenable to suggestion. You  have heard of the man who was always bragging of   his fine health and upon whom some of his friends  decided to play a trick. The first one he met one   morning commented upon how badly he looked and  asked if he weren’t feeling well. Then all the   others as they saw him made similar remarks.  By noontime the man had come to believe them,   and before the end of the day he was really ill. That was a rather glaring example. But similar   things are going on every day with all of us. We  eat something that someone else tells us isn’t   good for us and in a little while we think we feel  a pain. Before we know it we have indigestion,   when the chances are that if we knew nothing  about the supposed indigestible properties   of the food we could eat it the rest of  our days and never feel any ill effects.  Let some new disease be discovered and the  symptoms described in the daily paper. Hundreds   will come down with it at once. They are like  the man who read a medical encyclopedia and   ended up by concluding he had everything  but “housemaid’s knee.” Patent medicine   advertisers realize this power of suggestion  and cash in upon it. Read one of their ads.   If you don’t think you have everything the matter  with you that their nostrums are supposed to cure,   you are the exception and not the rule. That is the negative side of it. Emile Coué based   his system on the positive side— which you suggest  to your subconscious mind that whatever ills it   thinks you have are getting better. And it is  good psychology at that. Properly carried out   it will work wonders. But there arc better  methods. And I hope to be able to show them   to you before we reach the end of this book. Suffice it now to say that your subconscious   mind is exceedingly wise and powerful. That  it knows many things that is not in books.   When properly used it has infallible judgment,  un-failing power. It never sleeps never tires.  Your conscious mind may slumber. It may  be rendered impotent by anesthetics or a   sudden blow. But your subconscious mind  works on, keeping your heart and lungs,   your arteries and glands ever on the job. Under ordinary conditions, it attends faithfully   to its duties, and leaves your conscious mind  to direct the outer life of the body. But let   the conscious mind meet some situation with  which it is unable to cope, and, if it will   only call upon the subconscious, that powerful  Genie will respond immediately to its need.  You have heard of people who had been through  great danger tell how, when death stared them   in the face and there seemed nothing they  could do, things went black before them and,   when they came to, the danger was past. In the  moment of need, their subconscious mind pushed   the conscious out of the way, the while it met and  overcame the danger. Impelled by the subconscious   mind, their bodies could do things absolutely  impossible to their ordinary conscious selves.  For the power of the subconscious mind is  unlimited. Whatever it is necessary for   you to do in any right cause, it can give  you the strength and the ability to do.  Whatever of good you may desire, it can bring  to you. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” The Universal Mind Have you ever dug up a   potato vine and seen the potatoes clustering  underneath? How much of intelligence do you   suppose one of these potatoes has? Do you think  it knows anything about chemistry or geology?   Can it figure out how to gather carbon gas from  the atmosphere, water and all the necessary   kinds of nutriment from the earth round about to  manufacture into sugar and starch and alcohol?   No chemist can do it. How do you suppose the  potato knows? Of course it doesn’t. It has no   sense. Yet it does all these things. It builds  the starch into cells, the cells into roots   and vines and leaves—and into more potatoes. “Just old Mother Nature,” you’ll say. But old   Mother Nature must have a remarkable intelligence  if she can figure out all these things that no   human scientist has ever been able to figure.  There must be an all-pervading Intelligence   behind Mother Nature—the Intelligence that first  brought life to this planet—the Intelligence that   evolved every form of plant and animal—that  holds the winds in its grasp—that is all-wise,   all-powerful. The potato is but one small  manifestation of this Intelligence. The various   forms of plant life, of animals, of man—all  are mere cogs in the great scheme of things.  But with this difference—that man is  an active part of this Universal Mind.   That he partakes of its creative  wisdom and power and that by working   in harmony with Universal Mind he can  do anything have anything, be anything.  There is within you—within everyone— this  mighty resistless force with which you can   perform undertakings that will dazzle  your reason, stagger your imagination.   There constantly resides within you a Mind that  is all-wise, all-powerful, a Mind that is entirely   apart from the mind which you consciously use in  your everyday affairs yet which is one with it.  Your subconscious mind partakes of this wisdom and  power, and it is through your subconscious mind   that you can draw upon it in the attainment  of anything you may desire. When you can   intelligently reach your subconscious mind, you  can be in communication with the Universal Mind.  Remember this: the Universal Mind is  omnipotent. And since the subconscious   mind is part of the Universal Mind, there  is no limit to the things, which it can do   when it is given the power to act. Given any  desire that is in harmony with the Universal   Mind and you have but to hold that desire in  your thought to attract from the invisible   domain the things you need to satisfy it. For mind does its building solely by the power of   thought. Its creations take form according to its  thought. Its first requisite is a mental image,   and your desire held with unswerving  purpose will form that mental image.  An understanding of this principle explains the  power of prayer. The results of prayer are not   brought about by some special dispensation  of Providence. God is not a finite being   to be cajoled or flattered into doing, as you  desire. But when you pray earnestly you form a   mental image of the thing that you desire  and you hold it strongly in your thought.   Then the Universal Intelligence, which  is your intelligence—Omnipotent Mind—,   begins to work with and for you, and this is what  brings about the manifestation that you desire.  The Universal Mind is all around you. It is as all  pervading as the air you breathe. It encompasses   you with as little trouble as the water in  the sea encompasses the fish. Yet it is just   as thoroughly conscious of you as the water would  be, were it intelligent, of every creature within   it. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?  And one of them shall not fall on the ground   with-out your Father. But the very hairs of your  head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore,   ye are of more value than many sparrows.” It seems hard to believe that a Mind busied   with the immensities of the universe can consider  such trivial affairs as our own when we are but   one of the billions of forms of life which come  into existence. Yet consider again the fish in   the sea. It is no trouble for the sea to encompass  them. It is no more trouble for the Universal Mind   to encompass us. Its power, its thought, is as  much at our disposal as the sunshine and the wind   and the rain. Few of us take advantage to the full  of these great forces. Fewer still take advantage   of the power of the Universal Mind. If you have  any lack, if you are prey to poverty or disease,   it is because you do not believe or do not  understand the power that is yours. It is not a   question of the Universal giving to you. It offers  everything to everyone— there is no partiality.   “Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the  waters.” You have only to take. “Whosoever   will let him take of the water of life freely.” “With all thy getting, get understanding,” said   Solomon. And if you will but get understanding,  everything else will be added unto you.  To bring you to a realization of your  indwelling and unused power, to teach   you simple, direct methods of drawing upon it,  is the beginning and the end of this course. VOLUME 2 “And the earth was Without form and void;  And darkness was upon The face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved Upon the face   of the waters.”

• GENESIS 1:2.  Chapter 3: The Primal Cause This city, with all its houses, palaces,   steam engines, cathedrals and huge, immeasurable  traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought,   but millions of Thoughts made into one—a  huge immeasurable Spirit of a Thought,   embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, Palaces,  Parliaments, coaches, docks and the rest of   it! Not a brick was made but some man had to  think of the making of that brick. - CARLYLE  For thousands of years the riddle of the universe  has been the question of causation. Did the egg   come first, or the chicken? “The globe,” says  an Eastern proverb, “rests upon the howdah of an   elephant. The elephant stands upon a tortoise,  swimming in a sea of milk.” But then what?  And what is life? As the Persian poet puts it- “What without asking, hither hurried whence,   And without asking whither hurried hence?” It has been said that every man,   consciously or unconsciously, is  either a materialist or an idealist.   Certainly throughout the ages the schools of  philosophy as well as individuals have argued and   quarreled, but always human thought through one or  the other of these channels “has rolled down the   hill of speculation into the ocean of doubt.” The materialist, roughly speaking, declares   that nothing exists but matter  and the forces inherent therein.  The idealist declares that all is mind or  energy, and that matter is necessarily unreal.  The time has come when people have become  dissatisfied with these unceasing theories,   which get them nowhere. And today, as the  appreciation of a Primal Cause becomes   more clearly defined, the spiritual  instinct asserts itself determinedly.  “Give me a base of support,” said Archimedes,  “and with a lever I will move the world.”  And the base of support is that all started with  mind. In the beginning was nothing—a fire mist.   Before anything could come of it there had to  be an idea, a model on which to build. Universal   Mind supplied that idea, that model. Therefore  the primal cause is mind. Everything must start   with an idea. Every event, every condition, every  thing is first an idea in the mind of someone.  Before you start to build a house, you  draw up a plan of it. You make an exact   blueprint of that plan, and your house takes  shape in accordance with your blueprint.   Every material object takes form in the same way.  Mind draws the plan. Thought forms the blueprint,   well drawn or badly done, as your thoughts are  clear or vague. It all goes back to the one   cause. The creative principle of the universe  is mind, and thought is the eternal energy.  But just as the effect you get from electricity  depends upon the mechanism to which the power   is attached, so the effects you get from mind  depend upon the way you use it. We are all of   us dynamos. The power is there—unlimited power.  But we’ve got to connect it up to something—set   it some task— give it work to do— else  are we no better off than the animals.  The “Seven Wonders of the World” was built by men  with few of the opportunities or facilities that   are available to you. They conceived these  gigantic projects first in their own minds,   pictured them so vividly that their subconscious  minds came to their aid and enabled them to   overcome obstacles that most of us would  regard as insurmountable. Imagine building   the Pyramids of Gizeh, enormous stone upon  enormous stone, with nothing but bare hands.   Imagine the labor, the sweat, the heartbreaking  toil of erecting the Colossus of Rhodes,   between whose legs a ship could pass! Yet men  built these wonders, in a day when tools were   of the crudest and machinery was undreamed  of, by using the unlimited power of Mind.  Mind is creative, but it must have  a model on which to work. It must   have thoughts to supply the power. There are in Universal Mind ideas for   millions of wonders far greater than the “Seven  Wonders of the World.” And those ideas are just   as available to you as they were to the artisans  of old, as they were to Michael Angelo when he   built St. Peter’s in Rome, as they were to the  architect who conceived the Woolworth Building,   or the engineer who planned the Hell Gate Bridge. Every condition, every experience of life is the   result of our mental attitude. We can do only  what we think we can do. We can be only what we   think we can be. We can have only what we think we  can have. What we do, what we are, what we have,   all depend upon what we think. We can never  express anything that we do not first have in   mind. The secret of all power, all success, all  riches, is in first thinking powerful thoughts,   successful thoughts, and thoughts of wealth, of  supply. We must build them in our own mind first.  William James, the famous psychologist, said that  the greatest discovery in a hundred years was the   discovery of the power of the sub-conscious mind.  It is the greatest discovery of all time. It is   the discovery that man has within himself the  power to control his surroundings that he is not   at the mercy of chance or luck that he is the  arbiter of his own fortunes that he can carve   out his own destiny. He is the master of all the  forces round about him. As James Allen puts it:  “Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall  you become. Your vision is the promise of what   you shall one day be; your Ideal is the  prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.”  For matter is in the ultimate but  a product of thought. Even the most   material scientists admit that matter is not  what it appears to be. According to physics,   matter (be it the human body or a log of  wood—it makes no difference which) is made   up of an aggregation of distinct minute particles  called atoms. Considered individually, these atoms   are so small that they can be seen only with  the aid of a powerful microscope, if at all. MATTER - Dream or Reality?  Until recently these atoms were supposed  to be the ultimate theory regarding matter.   We ourselves —and all the material world  around us—were supposed to consist of   these infinitesimal particles of matter,  so small that they could not be seen or   weighed or smelled or touched individually—but  still particles of matter and indestructible.  Now, however, these atoms have been further  analyzed, and physics tells us that they   are not indestructible at all— that they are  mere positive and negative buttons of force or   energy called protons and electrons, without  hardness, without density, without solidity,   without even positive actuality. In short,  they are vortices in the ether—whirling bits   of energy—dynamic, never static, pulsating  with life, but the life is spiritual! As one   eminent British scientist put it— “Science  now explains matter by explaining it away!”  And that, mind you, is what the solid  table in front of you is made of,   is what your house, your body, the whole  world is made of—whirling bits of energy!  To quote the New York Herald-Tribune of March 11,  1926: “We used to believe that the universe was   composed of an unknown number of different kinds  of matter, one kind for each chemical element.   The discovery of a new element had  all the interest of the unexpected.   It might turn out to be anything, to  have any imaginable set of properties.  “That romantic prospect no longer exists. We know  now that instead of many ultimate kinds of matter   there are only two kinds. Both of these are really  kinds of electricity. One is negative electricity,   being, in fact, the tiny particle called  the electron, familiar to radio fans as   one of the particles vast swarms of which  operate radio vacuum tubes. The other kind   of electricity is positive electricity.  Its ultimate particles are called protons.   From these protons and electrons all of the  chemical elements are built up. Iron and lead   and oxygen and gold and all the others differ from  one another merely in the number and arrangement   of the electrons and protons, which they contain.  That is the modern idea of the nature of matter.   Matter is really nothing but electricity.” Can you wonder then that scientists believe   the time will come when mankind through mind can  control all this energy, can be absolute master   of the winds and the waves, can literally follow  the Master’s precept—”If ye have faith as a grain   of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain,  Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove;   and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” For Modern Science is coming more and more   to the belief that what we call matter is a  force subject wholly to the control of mind.  How tenuous matter really is, is perhaps best  illustrated by the fact that a single violin   string, tuned to the proper pitch, could start  a vibration that would shake down the Brooklyn   Bridge! Oceans and mountains, rocks and iron,  all can be reduced to a point little short of   the purely spiritual. Your body is 85 per  cent water, 15 per cent ash and phosphorus!   And they in turn can be dissipated into  gas and vapor. Where do we go from there?  Is not the answer that, to a great degree at  least, and perhaps altogether, this world round   about us is one of our mind’s own creating?  And that we can put into it, and get from it,   pretty much what we wish? You see this illustrated  every day. A panorama is spread before you. To you   it is a beautiful picture; to another it appears  a mere collection of rocks and trees. A girl comes   out to meet you. To you she is the embodiment  of loveliness; to another all that grace and   beauty may look drab and homely. A moonlit garden,  with its fragrant odors and dew-drenched grass,   may mean all that is charming to you, while to  another it brings only thoughts of asthma or   fever or rheumatism. A color may be green to you  that to another is red. A prospect may be inviting   for you that to another is rugged and hard. To quote “Applied Psychology,” by Warren Hilton:  “The same stimulus acting on different organs of  sense will produce different sensations. A blow   upon the eye will cause you to ‘see stars’;  a similar blow upon the ear will cause you   to hear an explosive sound. In other words, the  vibratory effect of a touch on eye or ear is the   same as that of light or sound vibrations. “The notion you may form of any object in   the outer world depends solely upon  what part of your brain happens to   be connected with that particular nerve-end  that receives an impression from the object.  “You see the sun without being able to hear it  because the only nerve-ends tuned to vibrate in   harmony with the ether-waves set in action by  the sun are nerve-ends that are connected with   the brain center devoted to sight. ‘If,’ says  Professor James, ‘we could splice the outer   extremities of our optic nerves to our ears,  and those of our auditory nerves to our eyes, we   should hear the lightning and see the thunder, see  the symphony and hear the conductor’s movements.’  “In other words, the kind of impressions  we receive from the world about us,   the sort of mental pictures we form concerning  it, in fact, the character of the outer world,   the nature of the en-vironment in which our  lives are cast— all these things depend for   each one of us simply upon how he happens to be  put together, upon his individual mental make-up.”  In short, it all comes back to the old fable  of the three blind men and the elephant.   To the one who caught hold of his leg, the  elephant was like a tree. To the one who   felt of his side, the elephant was like  a wall. To the one who seized his tail,   the elephant was like a rope. The world is to each  one of us the world of his individual perceptions.  You are like a radio receiving station. Every  moment thousands of impressions are reaching   you. You can tune in on whatever ones you  like—on joy or sorrow, on success or failure,   on optimism or fear. You can select the  particular impressions that will best serve you,   you can hear only what you want to hear, you  can shut out all disagreeable thoughts and   sounds and experiences, or you can tune in  on discouragement and failure and despair.  Yours is the choice. You have within you  a force against which the whole world is   powerless. By using it, you can make what  you will of life and of your surroundings.  “But,” you will say, “objects themselves do not  change. It is merely the difference in the way   you look at them.” Perhaps. But to a great  extent, at least, we find what we look for,   just as, when we turn the dial on the radio,  we tune in on whatever kind of entertainment   or instruction we may wish to hear. And who can  say that it is not our thoughts that put it there?   Who, for the matter of that, can prove that our  surroundings in waking hours are not as much the   creature of our minds as are our dreams? You’ve  had dreams many a time where every object seemed   just as real as when you were awake. You’ve  felt of the objects, you’ve pinched yourself,   yet still you were convinced that you were  actually living those dreams. May not your   waking existence be largely the creation of  your own mind, just as your dream pictures are?  Many scientists believe that it is, and  that in proportion as you try to put   into your surroundings the good things you  desire, rather than the evil ones you fear,   you will find those good things. Certain it is  that you can do this with your own body. Just as   certain that many people are doing it with the  good things of life. They have risen above the   conception of life in which matter is the master. Just as the most powerful forces in nature are the   invisible ones—heat, light, air, electricity—so  the most powerful forces of man are his invisible   forces, his thought forces. And just as  elec-tricity can fuse stone and iron,   so can your thought forces control your  body, so can they make or mar your destiny. The Philosopher’s Charm There was once a shrewd   necromancer who told a king that he had discovered  a way to make gold out of sand. Naturally the king   was interested and offered him great rewards  for his secret. The necromancer explained his   process. It seemed quite easy, except for one  thing. Not once during the operation must the   king think of the word Abracadabra. If he did,  the charm was broken and the gold would not come.   The king tried and tried to follow the directions,  but he could not keep that word Abracadabra   out of his mind. And he never made the gold. Dr. Winbigler puts the same idea in another way:   “Inspiration, genius, power, are often interfered  with by the conscious mind’s interposing,   by man’s failing to recognize his power, afraid  to assist himself, lacking the faith in himself   necessary to stimulate the subconscious so  as to arouse the genius asleep in each.”  From childhood on we are assured on every  hand—by scientists, by philosophers, by our   religious teachers, that “ours is the earth and  the fullness thereof.” Beginning with the first   chapter of Genesis, we are told that “God said,  Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;   and let them have dominion over the fish of  the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and   over the cattle, and over all the earth—and over  every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”   All through the Old and the New Testament, we are  repeatedly adjured to use these God-given powers.   “He that be-lieveth on me,” said Jesus, “the works  that I do shall he do also; and greater works than   these shall he do.” “If ye abide in me, and my  words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will,   and it shall be done unto you.” “For verily  I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto   this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast  into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart,   but shall believe that those things which he saith  shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he   saith.” “The kingdom of God is within you.” We hear all this; perhaps we even think   we believe, but always, when the time  comes to use these God-given talents,   there is the “doubt in our heart.” Baudouin expressed it clearly: “To be   ambitious for wealth and yet always expecting to  be poor; to be always doubting your ability to get   what you long for, is like trying to reach east  by traveling west. There is no philosophy, which   will help a man to succeed when he always doubts  his ability to do so, and thus attracting failure.  “You will go in the direction  in which you face . . .  “There is a saying that every time the sheep  bleats, it loses a mouthful of hay. Every time   you allow yourself to complain of your lot, to  say, ‘I am poor; I can never do what others do;   I shall never be rich; I have not the ability that  others have; I am a failure; luck is against me;’   you are laying up so much trouble for yourself. “No matter how hard you may work for success,   if your thought is saturated with the fear of  failure, it will kill your efforts, neutralize   your endeavors, and make success impossible.” And that is responsible for all our failures.   We are like the old lady who decided she wanted  the hill behind her house removed. So she got   down on her knees and prayed the good Lord  to remove it. The next morning she got up   and hurried to the window. The hill was still in  its same old place. “I knew it!” she snapped. “I   gave Him his chance. But I knew all the time  there was nothing to this prayer business.”  Neither is there, as it is ordinarily done. Prayer  is not a mere asking of favors. Prayer is not a   paean of praise. Rather prayer is a realization  of the God-power within you—of your right of   dominion over your own body, your environment,  your business, your health, your prosperity. It   is an understanding that you are “heir of God  and co-heir with Christ.” And that as such,   no evil has power over you, whereas you have  all power for good. And “good” means not merely   holiness. Good means happiness—the happiness of  everyday people. Good means everything that is   good in this world of ours—comforts and pleasures  and prosperity for us, health and happiness for   those dependent upon us. There are no limits to  “Good” except those we put upon it ourselves.  What was it made Napoleon the greatest conqueror  of his day? Primarily his magnificent faith in   Napoleon. He had a sublime belief in his destiny,  an absolute confidence that the obstacle was   not made which Napoleon could not find a way  through, or over, or around. It was only when   he lost that confidence, when he hesitated and  vacillated for weeks between retreat and advance,   that winter caught him in Moscow and ended his  dreams of world empire. Fate gave him every chance   first. The winter snows were a full month late  in coming. But Napoleon hesitated—and was lost.   It was not the snows that defeated him. It was not  the Russians. It was his loss of faith in himself. The Kingdom of Heaven “The Kingdom of Heaven is within   you.” Heaven is not some far-away state—the reward  of years of tribulation here. Heaven is right   here—here and now! When Christ said that Heaven  was within us, He meant just what He said—that the   power for happiness, for good, for everything  we need of life, is within each one of us.  That most of us fail to realize this  Heaven—that many are sickly and suffering,   that more are ground down by poverty and worry—is  no fault of His. He gave us the power to overcome   these evils; He stands ready and waiting to  help us use it. If we fail to find the way,   the fault is ours. To enjoy the Heaven  that is within us, to begin here and now   to live the life eternal, takes only a fuller  understanding of the Power-that- is-within-us.  Even now, with the limited knowledge at our  command, we can control circumstances to the   point of making the world without an expression  of our own world within, where the real thoughts,   the real power, resides. Through this world  within you can find the solution of every problem,   the cause for every effect. Discover it—and all  power, all possession is within your control.  For the world without is but a reflection of that  world within. Your thought creates the conditions   your mind images. Keep before your mind’s eye the  image of all you want to be and you will see it   reflected in the world without. Think abundance,  feel abundance, BELIEVE abundance, and you will   find that as you think and feel and believe,  abundance will manifest itself in your daily life.   But let fear and worry be your mental companions,  thoughts of poverty and limitation dwell in your   mind, and worry and fear, limitation and poverty  will be your constant companions day and night.  Your mental concept is all that matters. Its  relation to matter is that of idea and form.   There has got to be an idea before it  can take form. As Dr. Terry Walter says:  “The impressions that enter the subconscious form  indelible pictures, which are never forgotten, and   whose power can change the body, mind, manner, and  morals; can, in fact, revolutionize a personality.  “All during our waking hours the conscious mind,  through the five senses, acts as constant feeder   to the subconscious; the senses are the temporal  source of supply for the content of the soul mind;   therefore it is most important that we know and  realize definitely and explicitly that every   time we think a thought or feel an emotion, we are  adding to the content of this powerful mind, good   or bad, as the case may be. Life will be richer  or poorer for the thoughts and deeds of today.”  Your thoughts supply you with limitless energy,  which will take whatever form your mind demands.   The thoughts are the mold, which crystallizes  this energy into good, or ill according to   the form you impress upon it. You are free  to choose which. But whichever you choose,   the result is sure. Thoughts of wealth, of power,  of success, can bring only results commensurate   with your idea of them. Thoughts of poverty  and lack can bring only limitation and trouble.  “A radical doctrine,” you’ll say, and think me  wildly optimistic. Because the world has been   taught for so long to think that some must be rich  and some poor, that trials and tribulations are   our lot. That this is at best a vale of tears. The history of the race shows that what is   considered to be the learning of one  age is ignorance to the next age.  Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, Editor of Science Service,  speaking of the popular tendency to fight against   new ideas merely because they were new,  said: “All through the history of science,   we find that new ideas have to force their way  into the common mind in disguise, as though they   were burglars instead of benefactors of the race.” And Emerson wrote: “The virtue in most request is   conformity. Self-reliance is its  aversion. It loves not realities   and creators, but names and customs.” In the ages to come man will look back upon   the poverty and wretchedness of so many millions  today, and think how foolish we were not to take   advantage of the abundance all about us. Look at  Nature; how profuse she is in everything. Do you   suppose the Mind that imaged that profuseness ever  intended you to be limited, to have to scrimp and   save in order to eke out a bare existence? There are hundreds of millions of stars in   the heavens. Do you suppose the Mind, which  could bring into being worlds without number   in such prodigality intended to stint you of  the few things necessary to your happiness?  What is money but a mere idea of mind, a token of  exchange? The paper money you have in your pockets   is supposed to represent so much gold or silver  currency. There are billions upon billions of this   paper money in circulation, yet all the gold in  the world amounts to only about $8,000,000,000.   Wealth is in ideas, not in money or property.  You can control those ideas through mind.  Reduced to the ultimate—to the atom or to the  electron—everything in this world is an idea   of mind. All of it has been brought together  through mind. If we can change the things we   want back into mental images, we can multiply them  as often as we like, possessing all that we like. “To Him That Hath”— Take as an example the   science of numbers. Suppose all numbers were  of metal— that it was against the law to write   figures for ourselves. Every time you wanted to do  a sum in arithmetic you’d have to provide yourself   with a supply of numbers, arrange them in their  proper order, work out your problems with them.   If your problems were too abstruse you might  run out of numbers, have to borrow some from   your neighbor or from the bank. “How ridiculous,” you say.   “Figures are not things; they are mere ideas,  and we can add them or divide them or multiply   them or subtract them as often as we like.  Anybody can have all the figures he wants.”  To be sure he can. And when you get  to look upon money in the same way,   you will have all the money you want. “To him that hath shall be given,   and from him that hath not shall be  taken away even that which he hath.”   To him that hath the right idea everything shall  be given, and from him who hath not that right   idea shall be taken away everything he hath. Thought externalizes itself. What we are depends   entirely upon the images we hold before our  mind’s eye. Every time we think, we start a   chain of causes, which will create conditions  similar to the thoughts, which originated it.   Every thought we hold in our consciousness for  any length of time becomes impressed upon our   subconscious mind and creates a pattern, which  the mind weaves into our life or environment.  All power is from within and is therefore  under our own control. When you can   direct your thought processes, you can  consciously apply them to any condition,   for all that comes to us from the world without  is what we’ve already imaged in the world within.  Do you want more money? Sit you down now  quietly and realize that money is merely an   idea. That your mind is possessed of unlimited  ideas. That being part of Universal Mind,   there is no such thing as limitation or lack. That  somewhere, somehow, the deas that shall bring you   all the money you need for any right purpose are  available for you. That you have but to put it   up to your subconscious mind to find these ideas. Realize that—believe it—and your need will be met.   “What things so ever ye desire, when ye pray,  believe that ye receive it and ye shall have   it.” Don’t forget that “believe that ye receive  it.” This it is that images the thing you want   on your subconscious mind. And this it is that  brings it to you. Once you can image the belief   clearly on your subconscious mind, “whatsoever  it is that ye ask for . . . ye shall have it.”  For the source of all good, of everything  you wish for, is the Universal Mind, and you   can reach it only through the subconscious. And Universal Mind will be to you whatever   you believe it to be—the kind and loving Father  whom Jesus pictured, always looking out for the   well-being of his children—or the dread Judge  that so many dogmatists would have us think.  When a man realizes that his mind is part of  Universal Mind, when he realizes that he has only   to take any right aspiration to this Universal  Mind to see it realized, he loses all sense of   worry and fear. He learns to dominate instead  of to cringe. He rises to meet every situation,   secure in the knowledge that everything necessary  to the solution of any problem is in Mind,   and that he has but to take his problem to  Universal Mind to have it correctly answered.  For if you take a drop of water from the ocean,  you know that it has the same properties as   all the rest of the water in the ocean,  the same percentage of sodium chloride.   The only difference between it and the ocean is  in volume. If you take a spark of electricity,   you know that it has the same properties as the  thunderbolt, the same power that moves trains   or runs giant machines in factories. Again  the only difference is in volume. It is the   same with your mind and Universal Mind. The only  difference between them is in volume. Your mind   has the same properties as the Universal Mind,  the same creative genius, the same power over   all the earth, the same access to all knowledge.  Know this, believe it, use it, and “yours is the   earth and the fullness thereof.” In the exact  proportion that you believe yourself to be part   of Universal Mind, sharing in its all-power, in  that proportion can you demonstrate the mastery   over your own body and over the world about you? All growth, all supply is from the world-within.   If you would have power, if you would  have wealth, you have but to image it   on this world within, on your subconscious  mind, through belief and understanding.  If you would remove discord, you have but to  remove the wrong images—images of ill health,   of worry and trouble from within. The trouble  with most of us is that we live entirely in the   world without. We have no knowledge of that inner  world which is responsible for all the conditions   we meet and all the experiences we have. We have  no conception of “the Father that is within us.”  The inner world promises us life and health,  prosperity and happiness—dominion over all the   earth. It promises peace and perfection for its  entire offspring. It gives you the right way and   the adequate way to accomplish any normal purpose.  Business, labor, professions, exist primarily in   thought. And the outcome of your labors in them  is regulated by thought. Consider the difference,   then, in this outcome if you have at your command  only the limited capacity of your conscious mind,   compared with the boundless energy of  the subconscious and the Universal Mind.   “Thought, not money, is the real business  capital,” says Harvey S. Firestone, “and if you   know absolutely that what you are doing is right,  then you are bound to accomplish it in due season.  Thought is a dynamic energy with the power to  bring its object out from the invisible substance   all about us. Matter is inert, unintelligent.  Thought can shape and control. Every form in   which matter is today is but the expression  of some thought, some desire, and some idea.  You have a mind. You can originate thought. And  thoughts are creative. Therefore you can create   for yourself that which you desire. Once you  realize this you are taking a long step toward   success in whatever undertaking you have in mind. More than half the prophecies in the Scriptures   refer to the time when man shall possess the  earth, when tears and sorrow shall be unknown, and   peace and plenty shall be everywhere. That time  will come. It is nearer than most people think   possible. You are helping it along. Every man who  is honestly trying to use the power of mind in the   right way is doing his part in the great cause.  For it is only through Mind that peace and plenty   can be gained. The earth is laden with treasures  as yet undiscovered. But they are every one of   them known to Universal Mind, for it was Universal  Mind that first imaged them there. And as part of   Universal Mind, they can be known to you. How else did the Prophets of old foretell,   thousands of years ago, the aeroplane, the  cannon, the radio? What was the genius that   enabled Ezekiel to argue from his potter’s  wheel, his water wheel and the stroke of the   lightning to an airplane, with its wheels within  wheels, driven by electricity and guided by man?   How are we to explain the descriptions of  artillery in the Apocalypse and the astonishing   declaration in the Gospels that the utterances of  the chamber would be broadcast from the housetops? “To the Manner Born” Few of us have any idea of our   mental powers. The old idea was that man must take  this world as he found it. He’d been born into a   certain position in life, and to try to rise above  his fellows was not only the height of bad taste,   but sacrilegious as well. An all-wise Providence  had decreed by birth the position a child should   occupy in the web of organized society. For  him to be discontented with his lot, for him   to attempt to raise himself to a higher level,  was tantamount to tempting Providence. The gates   of Hell yawned wide for such scatterbrains, who  were lucky if in this life they incurred nothing   worse than the ribald scorn of their associates. That is the system that produced aristocracy and   feudalism. That is the system that feudalism  and aristocracy strove to perpetuate.  The new idea—the basis of all democracies—is that  man is not bound by any system, that he need not   accept the world as he finds it. He can remake  the world to his own ideas. It is merely the   raw material. He can make what he wills of it. It is this new idea that is responsible for all   our inventions, all our progress. Man is satisfied  with nothing. He is constantly remaking his world.   And now more than ever will this be true, for  psychology teaches us that each one has within   himself the power to become what he wills. Learn to control your thought. Learn to   image upon your mind only the things  you want to see reflected there.  You will never improve yourself by dwelling upon  the drawbacks of your neighbors. You will never   attain perfect health and strength by thinking of  weak-ness or disease. No man ever made a perfect   score by watching his rival’s target. You have  got to think strength, think health, think riches.   To paraphrase Pascal— “Our achievements today  are but the sum of our thoughts of yesterday.”  For thought is energy. Mental images are  concentrated energy. And energy concentrated on   any definite purpose becomes power. To those who  perceive the nature and transcendency of force,   all physical power sinks into insignificance. What is imagination but a form of thought? Yet   it is the instrument by which all the inventors  and discoverers have opened the way to new worlds.   Those who grasp this force, be their state ever so  humble, their natural gifts ever so insignificant,   becomes our leading men. They are our governors  and supreme lawgivers, the guides of the drifting   host, which follows them as by an irrevocable  decree. To quote Glenn Clark in the Atlantic   Monthly, “Whatever we have of civilization is  their work, theirs alone. If progress was made   they made it. If spiritual facts were discerned,  they discerned them. If justice and order were put   in place of insolence and chaos, they wrought the  change. Never is progress achieved by the masses.   Creation ever remains the task of the individual.” Our railroads, our telephones, our automobiles,   our libraries, our newspapers, our  thousands of other conveniences,   comforts and necessities are due to the creative  genius of but two per cent of our population.  And the same two per cent own a great percentage  of the wealth of the country. The question arises,   who are they? What are they? The sons of the  rich? College men? No—few of them had any   early advantages. Many of them have never  seen the inside of a college. It was grim   necessity that drove them, and somehow,  some way, they found a method of drawing   upon their Genie-of -the-Mind, and through  that inner force they have reached success. You don’t need to stumble and grope.  You can call upon your inner forces   at will. There are three steps necessary: First, to realize that you have the power;  Second, to know what you want. Third, to center your thought   upon it with singleness of purpose. To accomplish these steps takes only a fuller   understanding of the Power- that-is- within-you. But what is this power? Where should you go to   locate it? Is it a thing, a place, an object?  Has it bounds, form or material shape? No!   Then how shall you go about finding it? If you have begun to realize that there   is a power within you, if you have begun to arouse  in your conscious mind the ambition and desire to   use this power— you have started in the pathway  of wisdom. If you are willing to go forward,   to endure the mental discipline of mastering  this method, nothing in the world can hinder   you or keep you from overcoming every obstacle. Begin at once, today, to use what you have   learned. All growth comes from practice. All  the forces of life are active—peace—joy—power.   The unused talent decays. Open the door— “Behold I stand at the door and knock; if ANY   MAN hear my voice and open the door, I will come  in to him, and will sup with him and he with me.”  So let us make use of this dynamo, which is you.  What is going to start it working? Your Faith,   the faith that is begotten of understanding. Faith  is the impulsion, the propulsion of this power   within. Faith is the confidence, the assurance,  the enforcing truth, the knowing that the right   idea of life will bring you into the reality of  existence and the manifestation of the All power.  All cause is in Mind—and Mind is everywhere. All  the knowledge there is, all the wisdom there is,   all the power there is, is all about you—no matter  where you may be. Your Mind is part of it. You   have access to it. If you fail to avail yourself  of it, you have no one to blame but yourself.   For, as the drop of water in the ocean shares in  all the properties of the rest of the ocean water   so you share in that all- power, all-wisdom  of Mind. If you have been sick and ailing,   if poverty and hardship have been your lot,  don’t blame it on “fate.” Blame yourself.   “Yours is the earth and everything that’s in  it.” But you’ve got to take it. The power is   there—but you must use it. It is round about  you like the air you breathe. You don’t expect   others to do your breathing for you. Neither  can you expect them to use your Mind for you.   Universal Intelligence is not only the mind of the  Creator of the universe, but it is also the mind   of MAN, your intelligence, your mind. “Let this  mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus!”  So start today by KNOWING that you  can do anything you wish to do,   have anything you wish to have, be anything  you wish to be. The rest will follow.  “Ye shall ask what ye will and  it shall be done unto you.” Chapter 4: Desire - The First Law of Gain “Ah, Love! Could Thou and I with Fate conspire  To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits—and then  Re-mold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!” —The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.  If YOU had a fairy-wishing ring, what one thing  would you wish for? Wealth? Honor? Fame? Love?   What one thing do you desire above everything  else in life? Whatever it is, you can have it.  Whatever you desire wholeheartedly, with  singleness of purpose—you can have. But   the first and all-important essential is to know  what this one thing is. Before you can win your   heart’s desire, you’ve got to get clearly fixed  in your mind’s eye what it is that you want.  It may sound paradoxical, but few people do know  what they want. Most of them struggle along in a   vague sort of way, hoping—like Micawber—for  something to turn up. They are so taken up   with the struggle that they have forgotten—if  they ever knew— what it is they are struggling   for. They are like a drowning man—they use up  many times the energy it would take to get them   somewhere, but they fritter it away in aimless  struggles — without thought, without direction,   exhausting themselves, while getting nowhere. You’ve got to know what you want before you stand   much chance of getting it. You have an unfailing  “Messenger to Garcia” in that Genie-of-your   Mind—but YOU have got to formulate the message.  Aladdin would have stood a poor chance of getting   anything from his Genie if he had not had clearly  in mind the things he wanted the Genie to get.  In the realm of mind, the realm in which is all  practical power, you can possess what you want at   once. You have but to claim it, to visualize it,  to bring it into actuality—and it is yours for   the taking. For the Genie-of-your-Mind  can give you power over circumstances.   Health, happiness and prosperity. And all you need  to put it to work is an earnest, intense desire.  Sounds too good to be true? Well, let us go back  for a moment to the start. You are infected with   that “divine dissatisfaction with things as they  are” which has been responsible for all the great   accomplishments of this world— else you would not  have gotten thus far in this book. Your heart is   hungering for something better. “Blessed  are they which do hunger and thirst after   righteousness (right- wise ness) for they shall  be filled.” You are tired of the worry and grind,   tired of the deadly dull routine and daily  tasks that lead nowhere. Tired of all the   petty little ills and ailments that have  come to seem the lot of man here on earth.  Always there is something within you urging  you on to bigger things, giving you no peace,   no rest, no chance to be lazy. It is the same  “something” that drove Columbus across the ocean;   that drove Hannibal across the Alps; that drove  Edison onward and upward from a train boy to the   inventive wizard of the century; that drove  Henry Ford from a poor mechanic at forty to   probably the richest man in the world at sixty. This “something” within you keeps telling you   that you can do anything you want  to do, be anything you want to be,   have anything you want to have—and you have  a sneaking suspicion that it may be right.  That “something” within you is your  subconscious self, your part of Universal Mind,   your Genie-of-the-brain. Men call it ambition,  and “Lucky is the man,” says Arthur Brisbane,   “whom the Demon of Ambition  harnesses and drives through life.   This wonderful little coachman is the champion  driver of the entire world and of all history.  “Lucky you, if he is your driver. “He  will keep you going until you do something   worthwhile—working, running and moving ahead. “And that is how a real man ought to be driven.  “This is the little Demon that works in men’s  brains, that makes the blood tingle at the   thought of achievement and that makes the face  flush and grow white at the thought of failure.  “Every one of us has this Demon  for a driver, IN YOUTH AT LEAST.  “Unfortunately the majority of us he  gives up as very poor, hopeless things,   not worth driving, by the time  we reach twenty-five or thirty.  “How many men look back to their teens, when  they were harnessed to the wagon of life with   Ambition for a driver? When they could not wait  for the years to pass and for opportunity to come?  “It is the duty of ambition to drive, and it is  your duty to keep Ambition alive and driving.  “If you are doing nothing, if there is no  driving, no hurrying, no working, you may   count upon it that there will be no results.  Nothing much worthwhile in the years to come.  “Those that are destined to be  the big men twenty years from now,   when the majority of us will be nobodies are  those whom this demon is driving relentlessly,   remorselessly, through the hot weather and the  cold weather, through early hours and late hours.  “Lucky YOU if you are in harness and  driven by the Demon of Ambition.”  Suppose you have had disappointments,  disillusionments along the way.   Suppose the fine point of your ambition  has become blunted. Remember, there is no   obstacle that there is not some way around,  or over, or through—and if you will depend   less upon the 10 per cent of your abilities  that reside in your conscious mind, and leave   more to the 90 per cent that constitutes your  subcon-scious, you can overcome all obstacles.   Remember this—there is no condition so hopeless,  no life so far gone, that mind cannot redeem it.  Every untoward condition is  merely a lack of something.   Darkness, you know, is not real. It is  merely a lack of light. Turn on the light   and the darkness will be seen to be nothing. It  van-ishes instantly. In the same way poverty is   simply a lack of necessary supply. Find the  avenue of supply and your poverty vanishes.   Sickness is merely the absence of health. If you  are in perfect health, sickness cannot hurt you.   Doctors and nurses go about at will among the sick  without fear—and suffer as a rule far less from   sickness than does the average man or woman. So there is nothing you have to overcome. You   merely have to acquire something. And always  Mind can show you the way. You can obtain from   Mind anything you want, if you will learn how  to do it. “I think we can rest assured that one   can do and be prac-tically what he desires to  be,” says Farnsworth in “Practical Psychology.”   And psychologists all over the world have put  the same thought in a thousand different ways.  “It is not will, but desire,” says Charles W.  Mears, “that rules the world.” “But,” you will   say, “I have had plenty of desires all my life.  I’ve always wanted to be rich. How do you account   for the difference between my wealth and position  and power and that of the rich men all around me?” The Magic Secret The answer is simply that you have never   focused your desires into one great dominating  desire. You have a host of mild desires.   You mildly wish you were rich, you wish you  had a position of responsibility and influence;   you wish you could travel at will. The wishes are  so many and varied that they conflict with each   other and you get nowhere in particular. You lack  one intense desire, to the accomplishment of which   you are willing to subordinate everything else. Do you know how Napoleon so frequently won   battles in the face of a numerically superior  foe? By concentrating his men at the actual   point of contact! His artillery was often greatly  outnumbered, but it accomplished far more than the   enemy’s because instead of scattering his fire,  he concentrated it all on the point of attack!  The time you put in aimlessly dreaming and  wishing would accomplish marvels if it were   concentrated on one definite object. If you have  ever taken a magnifying glass and let the sun’s   rays play through it on some object, you know  that as long as the rays were scattered they   accomplished nothing. But focus them on one tiny  spot and see how quickly they start something.  It is the same way with your mind. You’ve  got to concentrate on one idea at a time.  “But how can I learn to concentrate?” many  people write me. Concentration is not a thing   to be learned. It is merely a thing to do. You  concentrate whenever you become sufficiently   interested in anything. Get so interested in a  ball game that you jump up and down on your hat,   slap a man you have never seen before on  the back, embrace your nearest neighbor—that   is concentration. Become so absorbed in2  hrilling play or movie that you no longer   realize the orchestra is playing or there  are people around you—that is concentration.  And that is all concentration ever is—  getting so interested in some one thing   that you pay no attention to anything  else that is going on around you.  If you want a thing badly enough, you  need have no worry about your ability to   concentrate on it. Your thoughts will just  naturally center on it like bees on honey.  Hold in your mind the thing you most  desire. Affirm it. Believe it to be an   existing fact. Let me quote again the words  of the Master, because there’s nothing more   important to remember in this whole book.  “Therefore I say unto you, what things so   ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that  ye receive them and ye shall have them.”  And again I say, the most important part is the  “believe that ye receive them.” Your subconscious   mind is exceedingly amenable to suggestion. If  you can truly believe that you have received   something, can impress that belief upon  your subconscious mind, depend upon it,   it will see that you have it. For being a part of  Universal Mind, it shares that Universal Mind’s   all power. “The Father that is within me, He  doeth the works.” Your mind will respond to   your desire in the exact proportion in which you  believe. “As thy faith is, so be it unto thee.”  The people who live in beautiful homes, who  have plenty to spend, who travel about in yachts   and fine cars, are for the most part people who  started out to accomplish some one definite thing.   They had one clear goal in mind, and  everything they did centered on that goal.  Most men just jog along in a rut, going  through the same old routine day after day,   eking out a bare livelihood, with no  definite desire other than the vague   hope that fortune will some day drop in their  lap. Fortune doesn’t often play such pranks.  And a rut, you know, differs from a grave only in  depth. A life such as that is no better than the   animals live. Work all day for money to buy bread,  to give you strength to work all the next day to   buy more bread. There is nothing to it but the  daily search for food and sustenance. No time for   aught but worry and struggle. No hope of  anything but the surcease of sorrow in death.  You can have anything you want—if you want it  badly enough. You can be anything you want to be,   have anything you desire, accomplish anything  you set out to accomplish—if you will hold to   that desire with singleness of  purpose; if you will understand   and BELIEVE in your own powers to accomplish. What is it that you wish in life? Is it health?   In the chapter on health I will show you  that you can be radiantly well—without drugs,   without tedious exercises. It matters not if  you are crippled or bedridden or infirm. Your   body rebuilds itself entirely every eleven months.  You can start now rebuilding along perfect lines.  Is it wealth you wish? In the chapter on success  I will show you how you can increase your income,   how you can forge rapidly ahead in  your chosen business or profession.  Is it happiness you ask for? Follow  the rules herein laid down and you   will change your whole outlook on life.  Doubts and uncertainty will vanish,   to be followed by calm assurance and abiding  peace. You will possess the things your heart   desires. You will have love and companionship.  You will win to contentment and happiness.  But desire must be impressed upon the subconscious  before it can be accomplished. Merely conscious   desire seldom gets you anything. It is like  the daydreams that pass through your mind.   Your desire must be visualized, must be  persisted in, must be concentrated upon,   and must be impressed upon your subconscious mind.  Don’t bother about the means for accomplishing   your desire—you can safely leave that to your  subconscious mind. It knows how to do a great   many things besides building and repairing your  body. If you can visualize the thing you want,   if you can impress upon your subconscious mind  the belief that you have it, you can safely   leave to it the finding of the means of getting  it. Trust the Universal Mind to show the way.  The mind that provided everything in  such profusion must joy in seeing us   take advantage of that profusion. “For herein is  the Father glorified—that ye bear much fruit.”  You do not have to wait until tomorrow, or  next year, or the next world, for happiness.   You do not have to die to be saved. “The Kingdom  of Heaven is within you.” That does not mean that   it is up in the heavens or on some star or in  the next world. It means here and now! All the   possibilities of happiness are always here and  always available. At the open door of every man’s   life there lies this pearl of great price—the  understanding of man’s dominion over the earth.   With that understanding and conviction you can  do everything, which lies before you to do,   and you can do it to the satisfaction of  everyone and the well being of yourself.   God and good are synonymous. And God-good-is  absent only to those who believe He is absent.  Find your desire, impress it upon your thought,  and you have opened the door for opportunity.   And remember, in this new heaven and new  earth, which I am trying to show you, the door   of opportunity is never closed. As a matter of  fact, you constantly have all that you will take.   So keep yourself in a state of receptivity.  It is your business to receive abundantly and   perpetually. The law of opportunity enforces  its continuance and availability. “Every good   gift and every perfect gift is from above and  cometh down from the Father of light, with whom   is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Infinite Mind saith to every man, “Come ye to   the open fountain.” The understanding of the law  of life will remedy every discord, giving “Beauty   for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the  garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.  Believe that you share in that goodness and  bounty. Act the part you wish to play in this   life. Act healthy, act prosperous, and act happy.  Make such a showing with what you have that you   will carry the conviction to your subconscious  mind that all good and perfect gifts ARE yours.   Register health, prosperity and happiness on your  inner mind and some fine morning soon you will   wake to find that you are healthy, prosperous and  happy, that you have your dearest wish in life. The Soul’s Sincere Desire” Do you know what prayer is? Just an earnest   desire that we take to God— to Universal Mind—for  fulfillment. As Montgomery puts it—”Prayer is the   soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unex-pressed.”  It is our Heart’s Desire. At least, the only   prayer that is worth anything is the prayer that  asks for our real desires. That kind of prayer   is heard. That kind of prayer is answered. Mere lip prayers get you nowhere. It doesn’t   matter what your lips may say. The thing that  counts is what your heart desires, what your mind   images on your subconscious thought, and through  it on Universal Mind. “Thou, when thou prayest,   be not as the hypocrites are; for they love to  pray standing in the synagogue and at the corners   of the streets, that they may be seen of men.  Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.”  What was it these hypocrites that Jesus speaks  of really wanted? “To be seen of men.” And their   prayers were answered. Their sincere desire was  granted. They were seen of men. “They have their   reward.” But as for what their lips were saying,  neither God nor they paid any attention to it.  “Thou, when thou prayest enter into thy closet,  and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy   Father which is in secret, and thy Father which  seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”   Go where you can be alone, where you  can concentrate your thoughts on your   one innermost sincere desire, where you can  impress that desire upon your subconscious   mind without distraction, and so reach the  Universal Mind (the Father of all things).  But even sincere desire is not enough by itself.  There must be BELIEF, too. “What things so ever   ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive  them and ye shall have them.” You must realize   God’s ability to give you every good thing. You  must believe in his readiness to do it. Model your   thoughts after the Psalmists of old. They first  asked for that which they wanted, then killed   all doubts and fears by affirming God’s power and  His willingness to grant their prayers. Read any   of the Psalms and you will see what I mean. So  when you pray, ask for the things that you want.   Then affirm God’s readiness and His Power to  grant your prayer. Glenn Clark, in “The Soul’s   Sincere Desire,” gives some wonderfully help-ful  suggestions along these lines. To quote him:  “For money troubles, realize: There  is no want in Heaven, and affirm:  “Our Heavenly Father, we know that thy  Love is as infinite as the sky is infinite,   and Thy Ways of manifesting that love are as  unaccountable as the stars of the heavens.  “Thy Power is greater than man’s horizon,  and Thy Ways of manifesting that Power   are more numerous than the sands of the sea. “As Thou keepest the stars in their courses,   so shalt Thou guide our steps in perfect harmony,  without clash or discord of any kind, if we keep   our trust in Thee. For we know Thou wilt keep him  in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee,   because he trusteth in Thee. We know that, if we  acknowledge Thee in all our ways, Thou wilt direct   our paths. For Thou art the God of Love, Giver  of every good and perfect gift, and there is none   beside Thee. Thou art omnipotent, omniscient, and  omnipresent, in all, through all, and over all,   the only God. And Thine is the Kingdom, and  the Power, and the Glory, forever, Amen.  “For aid in thinking or writing, realize:  There is no lack of ideas, and affirm:  “Thy wisdom is greater than all hidden treasures,  and yet as instantly available for our needs as   the very ground beneath our feet.” “For happiness: There is no   unhappiness in Heaven, so affirm: “Thy joy is brighter than the sun at noonday   and Thy Ways of expressing that Joy as countless  as the sunbeams that shine upon our path.”  This is the kind of prayer the Psalmists  of old had recourse to in their hours   of trouble—this is the kind of prayer that  will bring you every good and perfect gift.  Make no mistake about this—prayer is effective.  It can do anything. It doesn’t matter how trivial   your desires may be—if it is RIGHT for you to  have them, it is RIGHT for you to pray for them.  According to a United Press  dispatch of May 3, 1926:  “Prayer belongs to the football field as  much as to the pulpit, and a praying team   stands a good chance of getting there,” Tim  Lowry, Northwestern University football star,   told a large church audience here. “Just before the Indiana-Northwestern   game last year,” Tim said. ‘We worried a great  deal about the outcome. Then we saw that bunch   of big husky Indiana players coming toward us  and we knew something had to be done quickly.  “‘Fellows,’ I said, ‘I believe in prayer and we  better pray.’ We did and won a great victory.  “When the next game came,  every fellow prayed again.  “You don’t need to think that  churches have a copyright on prayer.”  In “Prayer as a Force,” A. Maude Royden  compares the man who trusts his desires   to prayer with the swimmer who  trusts himself to the water:  “Let me give you a very simple figure which I  think may perhaps convey my meaning. If you are   trying to swim you must believe that the sea is  going to keep you afloat. You must give yourself   to the sea. There is the ocean and there are you  in it, and I say to you, ‘According to your faith   you will be able to swim!’ I know perfectly well  that it is literally according to your faith.   A person who has just enough confidence in the  sea and in himself to give one little hop from   the ground will certainly find that the water  will lift him but not very much; he will come   down again. Persons who have enough confidence  really to start swimming but no more, will not   swim very far, because their confidence is so  very small and they swim with such rapid strokes,   and they hold their breath to such an extent, that  by and by they collapse; they swim five or six,   or twelve or fourteen strokes, but they do  not get very far, through lack of confidence.  “Persons who know with assurance that the sea will  carry them if they do certain things, will swim   quite calmly, serenely, happily, and will not mind  if the water goes right over them. ‘Oh,’ you say,   ‘that person is doing the whole thing!’ He can’t  do it without the sea! You might hypnotize people   into faith; you might say, ‘You are now in the  ocean; swim off the edge of this precipice’ (which   is really a cliff). You might make them do it,  they might have implicit faith in you, you might   hypnotize them into thinking they were swimming;  but if they swam off the edge of the cliff they   would fall. You can’t swim without the sea! I  might say to you, ‘It lies with you whether you   swim or not, according to your faith be it unto  you’; but if the sea is not there you can’t swim.   That is exactly what I feel about God. ‘According  to your faith be it unto you.’ Yes, certainly, if   you try to swim in that ocean which is the love of  God your faith will be rewarded, and according to   your faith it will be to you. In exact proportion  to your faith you will find the answer, like a   scientific law. There is not one atom of faith  you put in God that will not receive its answer.”  But remember: you would not plant a valuable seed  in your garden, and then, a day or a week later,   go out and dig it up to see if it were sprouting.  On the contrary, you would nourish it each morning   with water. It is the same with your prayers.  Don’t plant the seed of your desire in your   subconscious mind and then go out the next  morning and tear it up with doubts and fears.   Nourish it by holding in thought the thing you  desire, by believing in it, visualizing it,   SEEING it as an accomplished fact. If you ask for my own formula for   successful prayer, I would say— 1st. Center your thoughts on the   thing that you want. Visualize it. Make a mental  image of it. You are planting the seed of Desire.   But don’t be content with that. Planting  alone will not make a seed of corn grow.   It has to be warmed by sunshine, nurtured by rain.  So with the seed of your Desire. It must be warmed   by Faith, nurtured by constant Belief. So— 2nd. Read the 91st and the 23rd Psalms,   just as a reminder of God’s power and His  readiness to help you in all your needs.  3rd. Don’t forget to be thankful, not merely for  past favors, but for the granting of this favor   you are now asking! To be able to thank God for  it sincerely, in advance of its actual material   mani-festation, is the finest evidence of belief. 4th. BELIEVE! Picture the thing that you want so   clearly, see it in your imagination so  vividly, that for the moment, at least,   you will actually BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE IT! It is this sincere conviction, registered upon   your subconscious mind, and through it upon  Universal Mind that brings the answer to your   prayers. Once convince your subconscious mind  that you HAVE the thing you want, and you can   forget it and go on to your next problem. Mind  will attend to the bringing of it into being. VOLUME 3 Chapter 5: Aladdin & Company  “But the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness,  Touch God’s right hand in that darkness, And are lifted up and strengthened.”  —LONGFELLOW. It is not always the man who struggles hardest who   gets on in the world. It is the direction as well  as the energy of struggle that counts in making   progress. To get ahead—you must swim with the  tide. Men prosper and succeed who work in accord   with natural forces. A given amount of effort with  these forces carries a man faster and farther than   much more effort used against the current. Those  who work blindly, regardless of these forces, make   life difficult for themselves and rarely prosper. It has been estimated by wise observers that on   the average something like 90 per cent of  the factors producing success or failure   lie outside a man’s conscious efforts—separate  from his daily round of details. To the extent   that he cooperates with the wisdom and power of  Universal Mind he is successful, well and happy.   To the extent that he fails to cooperate,  he is unsuccessful, sick and miserable.  All down the ages some have been enabled to “taste  and see that the Lord is good.” Prophets and Seers   being blessed with the loving kindness of God,  have proclaimed a God of universal goodness   saying: “The earth is full of the goodness of  the Lord”; “Thou wilt show me the path of life;   in Thy presence is fullness of joy.” Now we know that this Infinite Good is   not more available to one than it is to  all. We know that the only limit to it   is in our capacity to receive. If you had a  problem in mathematics to work out, you would   hardly gather together the necessary figures and  leave them to arrange themselves in their proper   sequence. You would know that while the method  for solving every problem has been figured out,   you have got to work it. The principles  are there, but you have got to apply them.  The first essential is to understand the  principle—to learn how it works—how to use it.   The second—and even more important part—is to  APPLY that understanding to the problem in hand.  In the same way, the Principle of Infinite  Energy, Infinite Supply, is ever available. But   that Energy, that Supply, is static. You’ve got to  make it dynamic. You’ve got to understand the law.   You’ve got to apply your understanding  in order to solve your problems of   poverty, discord, and disease. Science shows that it is possible   to accomplish any good thing. But distrust of your  ability to reach the goal desired often ~holds you   back and failure is the inevitable result. Only by understanding that there is but   one power—and that this power is Mind,  not circumstances or environment—is it   possible to bring your real abilities  to the surface and put them to work.  Few deny that intelligence governs the universe.  It matters not whether you call this intelligence   Universal Mind or Providence or God or merely  Nature. All admit Its directing power. All   admit that It is a force for good, for progress.  But few realize that our own minds are a part   of this Universal Mind in just the same way  that the rays of the sun are part of the sun.  If we will work in harmony with It, we can  draw upon Universal Mind for all power,   all intelligence, in the same way that  the sun’s rays draw upon their source   for the heat and light they bring the earth. It is not enough to know that you have this power.   You must put it into practice— not once,  or twice, but every hour and every day.   Don’t be discouraged if at first it doesn’t always  work. When you first studied arithmetic, your   problems did not always work out correctly, did  they? Yet you did not on that account doubt the   principle of mathematics. You knew that the fault  was with your methods, not with the principle.   It is the same in this. The power is  there. Correctly used, it can do anything.  All will agree that the Mind, which first  brought the Life Principle to this earth—   which imaged the earth, itself and the trees  and the plants and the animals—is all- powerful.   All will agree that to solve any problem,  to meet any need, Mind has but to realize   the need and it will be met. What most of us do  not understand or realize is that we ourselves,   being part of Universal Mind, have this  same power. Just as the drop of water   from the ocean has all the properties of  the great bulk of the water in the ocean.   Just as the spark of electricity has all the  properties of the thunderbolt. And having the   power, we have only to realize it and use  it to get from life any good we may desire.  In the beginning all was void—space—nothingness.  How did Universal Mind construct the planets,   the firmaments, the earth and all things  on and in it from this formless void? By   first making a mental image on which to build. That is what you, too, must do. You control your   destiny, your fortune, your happiness to the exact  extent to which you can think them out, VIZUALIZE   them, SEE them, and allow no vagrant thought of  fear or worry to mar their completion and beauty.   The quality of your thought is the measure of your  power. Clear, forceful thought has the power of   attracting to itself everything it may need for  the fruition of those thoughts. As W. D. Wattles   puts it in his “Science of Getting Rich”: “There is a thinking stuff from which   all things are made and which, in its  original state, permeates, penetrates,   and fills the interspaces of the universe. A  thought in this substance produces the thing   that is imagined by the thought. Man can form  things in his thought, and, by impressing his   thought upon formless substance, can cause  the thing he thinks about to be created.”  The connecting link between your conscious mind  and the Universal is thought, and every thought   that is in harmony with progress and good, every  thought that is freighted with the right idea,   can penetrate to Universal Mind. And penetrating  to it, it comes back with the power of Universal   Mind to accomplish it. You don’t need to originate  the ways and means. The Universal Mind knows how   to bring about any necessary results. There is  but one right way to solve any given problem.   When your human judgment is unable to decide what  that one right way is, turn to Universal Mind for   guidance. You need never fear the outcome, for  if you heed its advice you cannot go wrong.  Always remember—your mind is but a  conductor—good or poor as you make it—   for the power of Universal Mind. And thought  is the connecting energy. Use that conductor,   and you will improve its conductivity. Demand  much, and you will receive the more. “Ask and   ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find,  knock and it shall be opened unto you.”  That is the law of life. And the destiny of man  lies not in poverty and hardship, but in living   up to his high estate in unity with Universal  Mind, with the power that governs the universe.  To look upon poverty and sickness as sent by  God and therefore inevitable, is the way of   the weakling. God never sent us anything but good.  What is more, He has never yet failed to give to   those who would use them the means to overcome any  condition not of His making. Sickness and poverty   are not of His making. They are not evidences of  virtue, but of weakness. God gave us everything   in abundance, and he expects us to manifest that  abundance. If you had a son you loved very much,   and you surrounded him with good things which  he had only to exert himself in order to reach,   you wouldn’t like it if he showed himself to the  world half-starved, ill-kempt and clothed in rags,   merely because he was unwilling to exert himself  enough to reach for the good things you had   provided. No more, in my humble opinion, does God. Man’s principal business in life, as I see it,   is to establish a contact with Universal  Mind. It is to acquire an understanding   of this power that is in him. “With all thy  getting, get understanding,” said Solomon.  “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, And the man that getteth understanding.  For the gaining of it is better  than the gaining of silver.  And the profit thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies:  And none of the things thou canst  desire are to be compared unto her.   Length of days is in her right hand: In her left hand are riches and honor.  Her ways are ways of pleasantness, And all her paths are peace.  She is a tree of life to  them that lay hold upon her.  And happy is every one that retaineth her.” —Proverbs.  When you become conscious, even to a limited  degree, of your oneness with Universal Mind, your   ability to call upon It at will for anything you  may need, it makes a different man of you. Gone   are the fears gone are the worries. You know that  your success, your health, your happiness will   be measured only by the degree to which you can  impress the fruition of your desires upon mind.  The toil and worry, the wearisome grind and the  backbreaking work, will go in the future as in the   past to those who will not use their minds. The  less they use them, the more they will sweat. And   the more they work only from the neck down, the  less they will be paid and the more hopeless their   lot will become. It is Mind that rules the world. But to use your mind to the best advantage doesn’t   mean to toil along with the mere conscious part  of it. It means hitching up your conscious mind   with the Man Inside You, with the little “Mental  Brownies,” as Robert Louis Stevenson called them,   and then working together for a definite end. (  editors note: Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish   writer born in 1850, is referring to a type of  small, mythical creature from Scottish Folklore   when referring to Brownies. They are known to be  household spirits that perform tasks in the night   and is the origin of the term ‘brownie points’ ) “My Brownies! God bless them!” said Stevenson,   “Who do one-half of my work for me when I am fast  asleep, and in all human likelihood do the rest   for me as well when I am wide awake and foolishly  suppose that I do it myself. I had long been   wanting to write a book on man’s double being. For  two days I went about racking my brains for a plot   of any sort, and on the second night I dreamt the  scene in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the window;   and a scene, afterward split in two, in which  Hyde, pursued, took the powder and underwent   the change in the presence of his pursuer.” Many another famous writers have spoken in   similar strain, and every man who has problems  to solve has had like experiences. You know how,   after you have studied a problem from all  angles, it sometimes seems worse jumbled   than when you started on it. Leave it then for  a while—forget it—and when you go back to it,   you find your thoughts clarified, the line of  reasoning worked out, your problem solved for you.   It is your little “Mental Brownies”  who have done the work for you!  The flash of genius does not originate in your  own brain. Through intense concentration you’ve   established a circuit through your subconscious  mind with the Universal, and it is from It that   the inspiration comes. All genius, all progress,  is from the same source. It lies with you merely   to learn how to establish this circuit at will so  that you can call upon It at need. It can be done.  “In the Inner Consciousness of each of us,”  quotes Dumont in “The Master Mind,” “there are   forces which act much the same as would countless  tiny mental brownies or helpers who are anxious   and willing to assist us in our mental work, if  we will but have confidence and trust in them.   This is a psychological truth expressed in the  terms of the old fairy tales. The process of   calling into service these Inner Consciousness  helpers is similar to that which we constantly   employ to recall some forgotten fact or name. We  find that we cannot recollect some desired fact,   date, or name, and instead of racking our  brains with an increased effort, we (if we   have learned the secret) pass on the matter to  the Inner Consciousness with a silent command,   ‘Recollect this name for me,’ and then go on  with our ordinary work. After a few minutes—or   it may be hours—all of a sudden, pop! will come  the missing name or fact before us—flashed from   the planes of the Inner Consciousness, by the  help of the kindly workers or ‘brownies’ of those   planes. The experience is so common that we have  ceased to wonder at it, and yet it is a wonderful   manifestation of the Inner Consciousness’ workings  of the mind. Stop and think a moment, and you will   see that the missing word does not present itself  accidentally, or ‘just because.’ There are mental   processes at work for your benefit, and when they  have worked out the problem for you they gleefully   push it up from their plane on to the plane of  the outer consciousness where you may use it.  “We know of no better way of illustrating  the matter than by this fanciful figure of   the ‘mental brownies,’ in connection with the  illustration of the ‘subconscious storehouse.’   If you would learn to take advantage of  the work of these Subconscious Brownies,   we advise you to form a mental picture of the  Subconscious Storehouse in which is stored   all sorts of knowledge that you have placed there  during your lifetime. The information stored away   has often been placed in the storage rooms without  any regard for systematic storing, or arrangement,   and when you wish to find something that has been  stored away there a long time ago, the exact place   being forgotten, you are compelled to call to  your assistance the little brownies of the mind,   which perform faithfully your mental command,  ‘Recollect this for me!’ These brownies are the   same little chaps that you charge with the task of  waking you at four o’clock tomorrow morning when   you wish to catch an early train—and they obey  you well in this work of the mental alarm- clock.   These same little chaps will also flash  into your consciousness the report,   ‘I have an engagement at two o’clock with  Jones’— when looking at your watch you will   see that it is just a quarter before the  hour of two, the time of your engagement.  “Well then, if you will examine carefully  into a subject which you wish to master,   and will pass along the results of your  observations to these Subconscious Brownies,   you will find that they will work the raw  materials of thought into shape for you in   a comparatively short time. They will analyze,  systematize, collate, and arrange in consecutive   order the various details of information which  you have passed on to them, and will add thereto   the articles of similar information that they  will find stored away in the recesses of your   memory. In this way they will group together  various scattered bits of knowledge that you   have forgotten. And, right here, let us say to you  that you never absolutely forget anything that you   have placed in your mind. You may be unable to  recollect certain things, but they are not lost—   sometime later some associative connection will  be made with some other fact, and lo! the missing   idea will be found fitted nicely into its place in  the larger idea—the work of our little brownies.   Remember Thompson’s statement: ‘In view of having  to wait for the results of these unconscious   processes, I ‘have proved the habit of getting  together material in advance, and then leaving   the mass to digest itself until I am ready to  write about it.’ This subconscious ‘digestion’   is really the work of our little mental brownies. “There are many ways of setting the brownies to   work. Nearly everyone has had some experience,  more or less, in the matter, although often it   is produced almost unconsciously, and without  purpose and intent. Perhaps the best way for   the average person—or rather the majority of  persons—to get the desired results is for one   to get as clear an idea of what one really wants  to know—as clear an idea or mental image of the   question you wish answered. Then after rolling  it around in your mind—mentally chewing it,   as it were—giving it a high degree of voluntary  attention, you can pass it on to your Subconscious   Mentality with the mental command: ‘Attend  to this for me—work out the answer!’ or   some similar order. This command may be given  silently, or else spoken aloud— either will do.   Speak to the Subconscious Mentality—or its  little workers—just as you would speak to   persons in your employ, kindly but firmly. Talk  to the little workers, and firmly command them   to do your work. And then forget all about  the matter—throw it off your conscious mind,   and attend to your other tasks. Then in due  time will come your answer—flashed into your   consciousness—perhaps not until the very minute  that you must decide upon the matter, or need the   information. You may give your brownies orders to  report at such and such a time—just as you do when   you tell them to awaken you at a certain time  in the morning so as to catch the early train,   or just as they remind you of the hour of your  appointment, if you have them all well trained.”  Have you ever read the story by Richard Harding  Davis of “The Man Who Could Not Lose?” In it the   hero is intensely interested in racing. He has  studied records and “dope” sheets until he knows   the history of every horse backward and forward. The day before the big race he is reclining in an   easy chair, thinking of the morrow’s race, and  he drops off to sleep with that thought on his   mind. Naturally, his subconscious  mind takes it up, with the result   that he dreams the exact outcome of the race. That was mere fiction, of course, but if races   were run solely on the speed and stamina of the  horses, it would be entirely possible to work out   the results in just that way. Unfortunately, other  factors frequently enter into every betting game.  But the idea behind Davis’ story is entirely  right. The way to contact with your subconscious   mind, the way to get the help of the “Man  Inside You” in working out any problem is:  First, fill your mind with every  bit of information regarding that   problem that you can lay your hands on. Second, pick out a chair or lounge or bed   where you can recline in perfect comfort,  where you can forget your body entirely.  Third, let your mind dwell upon the problem  for a moment, not worrying, not fretting,   but placidly, and then turn it over to the  “Man Inside You.” Say to him— ”This is your   problem. You can do anything. You know the  answer to everything. Work this out for me!”   And utterly relax. Drop off to sleep, if you can.  At least, drop into one of those half-sleepy,   half-wakeful reveries that keep other thoughts  from obtruding upon your consciousness,   Do as Aladdin did—summon your Genii, give  him your orders, then forget the matter,   secure in the knowledge that he will attend to it  for you. When you waken, you will have the answer!  For whatever thought, whatever problem you can get  across to your subconscious mind at the moment of   dropping off to sleep, that “Man Inside You,”  that Genie-of- your-Mind will work out for you.  Of course, not everyone can succeed in getting  the right thought across to the subconscious at   the first or the second attempt. It requires  understanding and faith, just as the working   out of problems in mathematics requires an  understanding of and faith in the principles   of mathematics. But keep on trying, and you WILL  do it. And when you do, the results are sure.  If it is something that you want, VISUALIZE  it first in your mind’s eye, see it in every   possible detail, see yourself going through  every move it will be necessary for you to   go through when your wish comes into being.  Build up a complete story, step by step, just   as though you were acting it all out. Get from  it every ounce of pleasure and satisfaction that   you can. Be thankful for this gift that has come  to you. Then relax; go on to sleep if you can;   give the “Man Inside You” a chance to work out the  consummation of your wish without interference.  When you waken, hold it all pleasurably in  thought again for a few moments. Don’t let   doubts and fears creep in, but go ahead,  confidently, knowing that your wish is   working itself out. Know this, believe it—and if  there is nothing harmful in it, IT WILL WORK OUT!  For somewhere in Universal Mind there exists the  correct solution of every problem. It matters not   how stupendous and complicated, nor how simple a  problem may appear to be. There always exists the   right solution in Universal Mind. And because this  solution does exist, there also exists the ability   to ascertain and to prove what that solution is.  You can know, and you can do, every right thing.   Whatever it is necessary for you to know,  whatever it is necessary for you to do,   you can know and you can do, if you will  but seek the help of Universal Mind and   be governed by its suggestions. Try this method every night for a   little while, and the problem does  not exist that you cannot solve. Chapter 6: See Yourself Doing It You say big corporations scheme  To keep a fellow down; They drive him, shame him,   starve him, too, If he so much as frown. God knows I hold no brief for them;   Still, come with me to-day And watch those fat directors meet,  For this is what they say:  “In all our force not one to take The new work that we plan!  In all the thousand men we’ve  hired Where shall we find a man?”  —ST. CLAIR ADAMS. ( From “It Can Be  Done.” Copyright 1921, George Sully ) You’ve often heard it said that a man  is worth $2 a day from the neck down.   How much he’s worth from the neck up  depends upon how much he is able to SEE.  “Without vision the people perish” did not refer  to good eyesight. It was the eyes of the mind that   counted in days of old just as they do today.  Without them you are just so much power “on the   hoof,” to be driven as a horse or an ox is driven.  And you are worth only a little more than they.  But given vision—imagination—the ability to  visualize conditions and things a month or a   year ahead; given the eyes of the mind—there’s  no limit to your value or to your capabilities.  The locomotive, the steamboat, the automobile, the  aeroplane—all existed complete in the imagination   of some man before ever they became facts. The  wealthy men, the big men, the successful men,   envisioned their successes in their minds’ eyes  before ever they won them from the world. From   the beginning of time, nothing has ever taken on  material shape without first being visualized in   mind. The only difference between the sculptor  and the mason is in the mental image behind their   work. Rodin employed masons to hew his blocks  of marble into the general shape of the figure   he was about to form. That was mere Thinker &  mechanical labor. Then Rodin took it in hand   and from that rough-hewn piece of stone there  sprang the wondrous figure of “The Company.  That was art! The difference was all in the imagination   behind the hands that wielded mallet and  chisel. After Rodin had formed his masterpiece,   ordinary workmen copied it by the thousands.  Rodin’s work brought fabulous sums. The copies   brought day wages. Conceiving ideas—creating  something—is what pays, in sculpture as in all   else. Mere handwork is worth only hand wages. “The imagination,” says Glenn Clark in “The   Soul’s Sincere Desire,” “is of all qualities in  man the most God-like— that which associates him   most closely with God. The first mention  we read of man in the Bible is where he   is spoken of as an ‘image.’ ‘Let us make man in  our image, after our likeness.’ The only place   where an image can be conceived is in the  imagination. Thus man, the highest creation   of God, was a creation of God’s imagination. “The source and center of all man’s creative   power—the power that above all others lifts him  above the level of brute creation, and that gives   him dominion, is his power of making images, or  the power of the imagination. There are some who   have always thought that the imagination was  something, which makes-believe that which is   not. This is fancy—not imagination. Fancy would  convert that which is real into pretense and sham;   imagination enables one to see through the  appearance of a thing to what it really is.”  There is a very real law of cause and effect,  which makes the dream of the dreamer come true.   It is the law of visualization—the law that  calls into being in this outer material world   everything that is real in the inner world.  Imagination pictures the thing you desire.   VISION idealizes it. It reaches beyond the thing  that is, into the conception of what can be.   Imagination gives you the picture. Vision gives  you the impulse to make the picture your own.  Make your mental image clear enough,  picture it vividly in every detail,   and the Genie-of-your-Mind will speedily  bring it into being as an everyday reality.  That law holds true of everything in life. There  is nothing you can rightfully desire that cannot   be brought into being through visualization. Suppose there’s a position you want— the   general manager-ship of your company. See  yourself—just as you are now—sitting in   the general manager’s chair. See your name on  his door. See yourself handling his affairs as   you would handle them. Get that picture  impressed upon your subconscious mind.   See it! Believe it! The Genie-of-your-Mind  will find the way to make it come true.  The keynote of successful visualization is  this: See things, as you would have them be   instead of as they are. Close your eyes and  make clear mental pictures. Make them look   and act just as they would in real life. In  short, daydream— but day dream with a purpose.   Concentrate on the one idea to the exclusion  of all others, and continue to concentrate on   that one idea until it has been accomplished. Do you want an automobile? A home? A factory?   They can all be won in the same way. They are  in their essence all of them ideas of mind,   and if you will but build them up in your own mind  first, stone by stone, complete in every detail,   you will find that the Genie-of-your- Mind can  build them up similarly in the material world.  “The building of a trans-continental railroad from  a mental picture,” says C. W. Chamberlain in “The   Uncommon Sense of Applied Psychology,” “gives the  average individual an idea that it is a big job.   The fact of the matter is, the achievement, as  well as the perfect mental picture, is made up   of millions of little jobs, each fitting in its  proper place and helping to make up the whole.  “A skyscraper is built from individual bricks, the  laying of each brick being a single job which must   be completed before the next brick can be laid.” It is the same with any work, any study.   To quote Professor James: “As we become permanent drunkards   by so many separate drinks, so we become saints  in the moral, and authorities and experts in the   practical and scientific spheres, by so many  separate acts and hours of working. Let no   youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his  education whatever the line of it may be. If he   keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working day  he may safely leave the final result to itself.   He can with perfect certainty count on waking some  fine morning, to find himself one of the competent   ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he  may have singled out. . . . Young people should   know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it  has probably engendered more discouragement and   faintheartedness in youths embarking on arduous  careers than all other causes taken together.”  Remember that the only limit to your capabilities  is the one you place upon them. There is no law   of limitation. The only law is of supply.  Through your subconscious mind you can draw   upon universal supply for anything you wish.  The ideas of Universal Mind are as countless   as the sands on the seashore. Use them. And  use them lavishly, just as they are given.   There is a little poem by Jessie B. Rittenhouse (  From “The Door of Dreams,” Houghton, Muffin & C0.,   Boston. “It is not the guns or armament ) that so  well describes the limitations that most of us put   upon ourselves that I quote it here: “I bargained with Life for a penny,   And Life would pay no more, however I begged  at evening when I counted my scanty store.  “For Life is a just employer; He gives you  what you ask, but once you have set the wages,   why, you must bear the task. “I worked for a menial’s hire,   Only to learn, dismayed, That any wage I  had asked of Life, Life would have paid.”  Aim high! If you miss the moon, you may hit a  star. Everyone admits that this world and all   the vast firmament must have been thought  into shape from the formless void by some   Universal Mind. That same Universal Mind  rules today, and it has given to each form   of life power to attract to itself whatever  it needs for its perfect growth. The tree,   the plant, and the animal—each one finds its need. You are an intelligent, reasoning creature. Your   mind is part of Universal Mind. And you have power  to say what you require for perfect growth. Don’t   sell yourself for a penny. Whatever price you  set upon yourself, life will give. So aim high.   Demand much! Make a clear, distinct mental image  of what it is you want. Hold it in your thought.   Visualize it, see it, and believe it! The ways  and means of satisfying that desire will follow.   For supply always comes on the heels of demand. It is by doing this that you take your fate out   of the hands of chance. It is in this way that you  control the experiences you are to have in life.   But be sure to visualize only what you want. The  law works both ways. If you visualize your worries   and your fears, you will make them real. Control  your thought and you will control circumstances.   Conditions will be what you make them. Most of us are like factories where two-   thirds of the machines are idle, where the workmen  move around in a listless, dispirited sort of way,   doing only the tenth part of what they could do if  the head of the plant were watching and directing   them. Instead of that, he is off idly dreaming  or waiting for something to turn up. What he   needs is someone to point out to him his listless  workmen and idle machines, and show him how to   put each one to working full time and overtime. And that is what YOU need, too. You are working   at only a tenth of your capacity. You are doing  only a tenth of what you are capable of. The time   you spend idly wishing or worrying can be used in  so directing your subconscious mind that it will   bring you anything of good you may desire. Philip of Macedon, Alexander’s father,   perfected the “phalanx”—a triangular formation  which enabled him to center the whole weight   of his attack on one point in the opposing  line. It drove through everything opposed to   it. In that day and age it was invincible.  And the idea is just as invincible today.  Keep the one thought in mind, SEE it being carried  out step by step, and you can knit any group of   workers into one homogeneous whole, all centered  on the one idea. You can accomplish any one thing.   You can put across any definite idea. Keep that mental picture ever in mind   and you will make it as invincible  as was Alexander’s phalanx of old.  Or the money they can pay, It’s the close cooperation  That makes them win the day. It is not the individual  Or the army as a whole But the everlasting team work   of every bloomin’ soul.”
• J. MASON KNOX.  The error of the ages is the tendency mankind  has always shown to limit the power of Mind,   or its willingness to help in time of need. “Know ye not,” said Paul,   “that ye are the temples of the Living God?” No—most of us do not know it. Or at least,   if we do, we are like the Indian family out  on the Cherokee reservation. Oil had been   found on their land and money poured in upon  them. More money than they had ever known was   in the world. Someone persuaded them to build a  great house, to have it beautifully furnished,   richly decorated. The house when finished  was one of the show places of that locality.   But the Indians, while very proud of their showy  house, continued to live in their old sod shack!  So it is with many of us. We may know that we  are “temples of the Living God.” We may even be   proud of that fact. But we never take advantage  of it to dwell in that temple, to proclaim our   dominion over things and conditions. We never  avail ourselves of the power that is ours.  The great Prophets of old had the forward look.  Theirs was the era of hope and expectation. They   looked for the time when the revelation  should come that was to make men “Sons of   God.” “They shall obtain joy and gladness,  and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”  Jesus came to fulfill that revelation. “Ask and  ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”  The world has turned in vain to matter and  materialistic philosophy for deliverance   from its woes. In the future the only march of  actual progress will be in the mental realm,   and this progress will not be in the way of human  speculation and theorizing, but in the actual   demonstration of the Universal, Infinite Mind. The world stands today within the vestibule of   the vast realm of divine intelligence,  wherein is found the transcendent,   practical power of Mind over all things. “What eye never saw, nor ear ever heard,   What never entered the mind of man— Even all  that God has prepared for those who love Him.” Chapter 7: “As A Man Thinketh” “Our remedies in ourselves do lie  Which we ascribe to heaven.” —SHAKESPEARE.  In our great-grandfather’s day, when witches  flew around by night and cast their spell upon   all unlucky enough to cross them, men thought that  the power of sickness or health, of good fortune   or ill, resided outside himself or herself. We laugh today at such benighted superstition.   But even in this day and age there are few  who realize that the things they see are   but effects. Fewer still who have any idea of the  causes by which those effects are brought about.  Every human experience is an effect. You  laugh, you weep, you joy, you sorrow,   you suffer or you are happy. Each of these is an  effect, the cause of which can be easily traced.  But all the experiences of life are not so easily  traceable to their primary causes. We save money   for our old age. We put it into a bank or into  safe bonds—and the bank breaks or the railroad   or corporation goes into a receivership. We stay  at home on a holiday to avoid risk of accident,   and fall off a stepladder or down the stairs and  break a limb. We drive slowly for fear of danger,   and a speeding car comes from behind and knocks  us into a ditch. A man goes over Niagara Falls   in a barrel without harm, and then slips on a  banana peel, breaks his leg, and dies of it.  What is the cause back of it all? If we can find  it and control it, we can control the effect. We   shall no longer then be the football of fate.  We shall be able to rise above the conception   of life in which matter is our master. There  is but one answer. The world without is a   reflection of the world within. We image thoughts  of disaster upon our subconscious minds and the   Genie-of-our Mind finds ways of bringing them into  effect—even though we stay at home, even though   we take every possible precaution. The mental  image is what counts, be it for good or ill.   It is a devastating or a beneficent force, just as  we choose to make it. To paraphrase Thackeray—”The   world is a looking-glass, and gives back to  every man the reflection of his own thought.”  For matter is not real substance. Material  science today shows that matter has no natural   eternal existence. Dr. Willis R. Whitney, in  an address before the American Chemical Society   on August 8th, 1925, discussing “Matter—Is There  Anything In It?” stated, “the most we know about   matter is that it is almost entirely space. It  is as empty as the sky. It is almost as empty   as a perfect vacuum, although it usually contains  a lot of energy.” Thought is the only force. Just   as polarity controls the electron, gravitation the  planets, tropism the plants and lower animals—just   so thought controls the action and the environment  of man. And thought is subject wholly to the   control of mind. Its direction rests with us. Walt Whitman had the right of it when he   said—”Nothing external to  me has any power over me.”  The happenings that occur in the material world  are in themselves neither cheerful nor sorrowful,   just as outside of the eye that observes them  colors are neither green nor red. It is our   thoughts that make them so. And we can color  those thoughts according to our own fancy.   We can make the world without but  a reflection of the world within.   We can make matter a force subject entirely to  the control of our mind. For matter is merely our   wrong view of what Universal Mind sees rightly. We cannot change the past experience,   but we can determine what the new ones shall  be like. We can make the coming day just what   we want it to be. We can be tomorrow  what we think today. For the thoughts   are causes and the conditions are the effects. What is the reason for most failures in life?   The fact that they first thought failure; they  allowed competition, hard times, fear and worry   to undermine their confidence. Instead of working  aggressively ahead, spending money to make more   money, they stopped every possible outlay, tried  to “play safe,” but expected others to continue   spending with them. War is not the only place  where “The best defensive is a strong offensive.”  The law of compensation is always at work. Man is  not at the caprice of fate. He is his own fate.   “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” We  are our own past thoughts, with the things that   these thoughts have attracted to us added on. The successful man has no time to think of   failure. He is too busy thinking  up new ways to succeed. You can’t   pour water into a vessel already full. All about you is energy—electronic energy,   exactly like that which makes up the solid objects  you possess. The only difference is that the loose   energy round about is unappropriated. It is still  virgin gold—undiscovered, unclaimed. You can think   it into anything you wish—into gold or dross, into  health or sickness, into strength or weakness,   into success or failure. Which sha1l it be? “There  is nothing either good or bad,” said Shakespeare,   “but thinking makes it so.” The understanding  of that law will enable you to control every   other law that exists. In it is to  be found the panacea for all ills,   the satisfaction of all want, all desire. It is  Creative Mind’s own provision for man’s freedom.  Have you ever read Basil King’s “Conquest of  Fear”? If you haven’t, do so by all means.   Here is the way he visions the future: “Taking Him (Jesus) as our standard we   shall work out, I venture to think,  to the following points of progress:  “a. The control of matter in furnishing ourselves  with food and drink by means more direct than at   present employed, as He turned water into wine  and fed the multitudes with the loaves and fishes.  “b. The control of matter by putting  away from ourselves, by methods more   sure and less roundabout than those of today,  sickness, blindness, infirmity, and deformity.  “c. The control of matter by regulating our  atmospheric conditions as He stilled the tempest.  “d. The control of matter by restoring to this  phase of existence those who have passed out of it   before their time, or who can ill be spared from  it, as He ‘raised’ three young people from ‘the   dead’ and Peter and Paul followed His example. “e. The control of matter in putting it off and   on at will, as He in His death and resurrection. “f. The control of matter in passing altogether   out of it, as He in what we  call His Ascension into Heaven.”  Mortals are healthy or unhealthy, happy  or unhappy, strong or weak, alive or dead,   in the proportion that they think thoughts of  health or illness, strength or weakness. Your   body, like all other material things, manifests  only what your mind entertains in belief. In a   general way you have often noticed this yourself.  A man with an ugly disposition (which is a mental   state) will have harsh, unlovely features. One  with a gentle disposition will have a smiling   and serene countenance. All the other organs of  the human body are equally responsive to thought.   Who has not seen the face become red with rage  or white with fear? Who has not known of people   who became desperately ill following an outburst  of temper? Physicians declare that just as fear,   irritability and hate distort the features; they  likewise distort the heart, stomach and liver.  Experiments conducted on a cat shortly after a  meal showed that when it was purring contentedly,   its digestive organs functioned perfectly.  But when a dog was brought into the room   and the cat drew back in fear and anger, the  X-ray showed that its digestive organs were   so contorted as to be almost tied up in a knot! Each of us makes his own world—and he makes it   through mind. It is a commonplace fact  that no two people see the same thing   alike. “A primrose by a river’s brim, a yellow  primrose was to him, and it was nothing more.”  Thoughts are the causes. Conditions are  merely effects. We can mould our surroundings   and ourselves by resolutely directing our  thoughts towards the goal we have in mind.  Ordinary animal life is very definitely  controlled by temperature, by climate,   by seasonal conditions. Man alone can adjust  himself to any reasonable temperature or   condition. Man alone has been able to free himself  to a great extent from the control of natural   forces through his understanding of the relation  of cause and effect. And now man is beginning to   get a glimpse of the final freedom that shall  be his from all material causes when he shall   acquire the complete understanding that mind is  the only cause and that effects are what he sees.  “We moderns are unaccustomed,” says one  talented writer, “to the mastery over our   own inner thoughts and feelings. That a man  should be a prey to any thought that chances   to take possession of his mind, is commonly among  us assumed as unavoidable. It may be a matter of   regret that he should be kept awake all night  from anxiety as to the issue of a lawsuit on   the morrow, but that he should have the power  of determining whether he be kept awake or not   seems an extravagant demand. The image of an  impending calamity is no doubt odious, but its   very odiousness (we say) makes it haunt the mind  all the more pertinaciously, and it is useless   to expel it. Yet this is an absurd position  for man, the heir of all the ages, to be in:   Hag-ridden by the flimsy creatures of his own  brain. If a pebble in our boot torments us,   we expel it. We take off the boot and shake it  out. And once the matter is fairly understood,   it is just as easy to expel an intruding and  obnoxious thought from the mind. About this there   ought to be no mistake, no two opinions. The  thing is obvious, clear and unmistakable.   It should be as easy to expel an obnoxious  thought from the mind as to shake a stone out of   your shoe; and until a man can do that, it is just  nonsense to talk about his ascendancy over nature,   and all the rest of it. He is a mere slave, and a  prey to the bat-winged phantoms that flit through   the corridors of his own brain. Yet the weary  and careworn faces that we meet by thousands,   even among the affluent classes of civilization,  testify only too clearly how seldom this mastery   is obtained. How rare indeed to find a man!  How common rather to discover a creature   hounded on by tyrant thoughts (or cares, or  desires), cowering, wincing under the lash.  “It is one of the prominent doctrines of some of  the oriental schools of practical psychology that   the power of expelling thoughts, or if need be,  killing them dead on the spot, must be attained.   Naturally the art requires practice, but like  other arts, when once acquired there is no mystery   or difficulty about it. It is worth practice.  It may be fairly said that life only begins when   this art has been acquired. For obviously when,  instead of being ruled by individual thoughts,   the whole flock of them in their immense multitude  and variety and capacity is ours to direct and   dispatch and employ where we list, life becomes a  thing so vast and grand, compared to what it was   before, that its former condition may well appear  almost ante-natal. If you can kill a thought dead,   for the time being, you can do anything else  with it that you please. And therefore it is   that this power is so valuable. And it not  only frees a man from mental torment (which   is nine-tenths at least of the torment of  life), but it gives him a concentrated power   of handling mental work absolutely unknown to him  before. The two are co-relative to each other.”  There is no intelligence in matter— whether that  matter be electronic energy made up in the form   of stone, or iron, or wood, or flesh. It all  consists of Energy, the universal substance   from which Mind forms all material things.  Mind is the only intelligence. It alone is   eternal. It alone is supreme in the universe. When we reach that understanding, we will   no longer have cause for fear, because we will  realize that Universal Mind is the creator of life   only; that death is not an actuality—it is merely  the absence of life—and life will be ever-present.   Remember the old fairy story of how the Sun  was listening to a lot of earthly creatures   talking of a very dark place they had  found? A place of Stygian blackness.   Each told how terrifically dark it had seemed. The  Sun went and looked for it. He went to the exact   spot they had described. He searched everywhere.  But he could find not even a tiny dark spot. And   he came back and told the earth- creatures  he did not believe there was any dark place.  When the sun of understanding shines  on all the dark spots in our lives,   we will realize that there is no cause, no  creator, no power, except good; evil is not   an entity—it is merely the absence of good. And  there can be no ill effects without an evil cause.   Since there is no evil cause, only good can have  reality or power. There is no beginning or end to   good. From it there can be nothing but blessing  for the whole race. In it is found no trouble.   If God (or Good—the two are synonymous) is  the only cause, then the only effect must be   like the cause. “All things were made by Him; and  without Him was not anything made that was made.”  Don’t be content with passively reading this. Use  it! Practice it! Exercise is far more necessary   to mental development that it is to physical.  Practice the “daily dozen” of right thinking.   Stretch your mind to realize how infinitely  far it can reach out, what boundless vision   it can have. Breathe out all the old thoughts  of sickness, discouragement, failure, worry and   fear. Breathe in deep, long breaths (thoughts) of  unlimited health and strength, unlimited happiness   and success. Practice looking forward— always  looking forward to something better—better health,   finer physique, greater happiness, bigger success.  Take these mental breathing exercises every day.   See how easily you will control your thoughts.  How quickly you will see the good effects. You’ve   got to think all the time. Your mind will do  that anyway. And the thoughts are constantly   building—for good or ill. So be sure to exhale  all the thoughts of fear and worry and disease   and lack that have been troubling you, and  inhale only those you want to see realized. Chapter 8: The Law of Supply  “They do me wrong who say I come no more When once I knock and fail to find you in;  For every day I stand outside your door, And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win. “Wail not for precious chances passed away, Weep not for golden ages on the wane!  Each night I burn the records of the day— At sunrise every soul is born again!”  —WALTER MALONE. ( Courtesy  of Mrs. Ella Malone Watson. )  Have you ever run a race, or worked at  utmost capacity for a protracted period,   or swum a great distance? Remember how, soon after  starting, you began to feel tired? Remember how,   before you had gone any great distance, you  thought you had reached your limit? But remember,   too, how, when you kept on going, you got  your second wind, your tiredness vanished,   your muscles throbbed with energy, you felt  literally charged with speed and endurance?  Stored in every human being are great reserves  of energy of which the average individual knows   nothing. Most people are like a man who  drives a car in low gear, not knowing that   by the simple shift of a lever he can set  it in high and not merely speed up the car,   but do it with far less expenditure of power. The law of the universe is the law of supply.   You see it on every hand. Nature  is lavish in everything she does.  Look at the heavens at night. There  are millions of stars there—millions   of worlds—millions of suns among them. Surely  there is no lack of wealth or profusion in the   Mind that could image all of these; no place  for limitation there! Look at the vegetation   in the country round about you. Nature supplies  all that the shrubs or trees may need for their   growth and sustenance! Look at the lower forms  of animal life—the birds and the wild animals,   the reptiles and the insects, the fish in the sea. Nature supplies them bountifully with everything   they need. They have but to help themselves to  what she holds out to them with such lavish hand.   Look at all the natural resources of the world  — coal and iron and oil and all metals. There is   plenty for everyone. We hear a lot about the  exhaustion of our resources of coal and oil,   but there is available coal enough to last mankind  for thousands of years. There are vast oil fields   practically untouched, probably others bigger  still yet to be discovered, and when all these are   exhausted, the extraction of oi1 from shale will  keep the world supplied for countless more years.  There is abundance for everyone. But just as you  must strain and labor to reach the resources of   your “second wind,” just so you must strive before  you can make manifest the law of supply in nature. The World Belongs to You It is your estate. It owes you not   merely a living, but everything of good you may  desire. You’ve got to demand these things of it,   though. You’ve got to fear naught, dread naught,  and stop at naught. You’ve got to have the faith   of a Columbus, crossing an unknown sea,  holding a mutinous crew to the task long   after they had ceased to believe in themselves or  in him—and giving to the world a new hemisphere.   You’ve got to have the faith of a Washington —  defeated, discredited, almost wholly deserted by   his followers, yet holding steadfast in spite of  all—and giving to America a new liberty. You’ve   got to dominate— not to cringe. You’ve got  to make the application of the law of supply.  “Consider the lilies how they grow.”  The flowers, the birds, all of creation,   are incessantly active. The trees and flowers  in their growth, the birds and wild creatures   in building their nests and finding sustenance,  are always working—but never worrying. “Your   Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.”  “And all these things shall be added unto you.”  If all would agree to give up worrying—to  be industrious, but never anxious about the   outcome it would mean the beginning of a new era  in human progress, an age of liberty, of freedom   from bondage. Jesus set forth the universal law  of supply when he said—”Therefore I say unto you,   be not anxious for the morrow, what ye shall  eat, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed—but   seek first the kingdom of God, and all  those things shall be added unto you.”  What is this “Kingdom of God?” Jesus tells us—”The Kingdom of God   is within you.” It is the “Father within you” to  which He so frequently referred. It is Mind—your   part of Universal Mind. “Seek first the Kingdom  of God.” Seek first an understanding of this   Power within you— learn to contact with it—to use  it—“and all those things shall be added unto you.”  All riches have their origin in Mind. Wealth  is in ideas—not money. Money is merely the   material medium of exchange for ideas. The  paper money in your pockets is in itself   worth no more than so many Russian rubles.  It is the idea behind it that gives it value.   Factory buildings, machinery, materials, are  in themselves worthless without a manufacturing   or a selling idea behind them. How often you see a  factory fall to pieces, the machinery rusts away,   after the idea behind them gave out. Factories,  machines, are simply the tools of trade. It is   the idea behind them that makes them go. So don’t go out a-seeking of wealth.   Look within you for ideas! “The Kingdom of  God is within you.” Use it— purposefully! Use   it to THINK constructively. Don’t say you are  thinking when all you are doing is exercising   your faculty of memory. As Dumont says in “The  Master Mind”—“They are simply allowing the   stream of memory to flow through their field of  consciousness, while the Ego stands on the banks   and idly watches the passing waters of memory  flow by. They call this ‘thinking’, while in   reality there is no process of thought under way.” They are like the old mountaineer sitting in the   shade alongside his cabin. Asked what he did to  pass the long hours away, he said—”Waal, sometimes   I set and think; and sometimes I just set.” Dumont goes on to say, in quoting another writer:   “When I use the word ‘thinking,’ I mean thinking  with a purpose, with an end in view, thinking to   solve a problem. I mean the kind of thinking that  is forced on us when we are deciding on a course   to pursue, on a life work to take up perhaps;  the kind of thinking that was forced upon us in   our younger days when we had to find a solution  to a problem in mathematics; or when we tackled   psychology in college. I do not mean ‘thinking’  in snatches, or holding petty opinions on this   subject and on that. I mean thought on significant  questions, which lie outside the bounds of your   narrow personal welfare. This is the kind of  thinking which is now so rare—so sadly needed!“  The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of  Thought, of Achievement, of Health,   of Happiness and Prosperity. “I came that ye  might have life and have it more abundantly.”  But you have got to seek it. You  have got to do more than ponder.   You have got to think—to think constructively—to  seek how you may discover new worlds, new methods,   new needs. The greatest discoveries, you know,  have arisen out of things, which everybody had   seen, but only one man had NOTICED. The biggest  fortunes have been made out of the opportunities,   which many men had, but only one man GRASPED. Why is it that so many millions of men and   women go through life in poverty and misery, in  sickness and despair? Why? Primarily because they   make a reality of poverty through their fear of  it. They visualize poverty, misery and disease,   and thus bring them into being. And secondly,  they cannot demonstrate the law of supply   for the same reason that so many millions  cannot solve the first problem in algebra.   The solution is simple-_ but they have never been  shown the method. They do not understand the law.  The essence of this law is that you must think  abundance; see abundance feel abundance, believe   abundance. Let no thought of limitation enter  your mind. There is no lawful desire of yours for   which, as far as mind is concerned, there is not  abundant satisfaction. And if you can visualize it   in mind, you can realize it in your daily world. “Blessed is the man whose delight is in. the law   of the Lord: And he shall be like a tree planted  by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his   fruit in his season: his leaf also shall not  wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”  Don’t worry. Don’t doubt. Don’t dig up the seeds  of prosperity and success to see whether they have   sprouted. Have faith! Nourish your seeds with  renewed desire. Keep before your mind’s eye   the picture of the thing you want. BELIEVE IN  IT! No matter if you seem to be in the clutch   of misfortune, no matter if the future looks  black and dreary—FORGET YOUR FEARS! Realize   that the future is of your own making. There is  no power that can keep you down but yourself. Set   your goal. Forget the obstacles between. Forget  the difficulties in the way. Keep only the goal   before your mind’s eye—and you’ll win it! Judge Troward, in his Edinburgh   Lectures on Mental Science, shows the way: The initial step, then, consists in determining   to picture the Universal Mind as the ideal of  all we could wish it to be, both to ourselves   and to b others, together with the endeavor  to reproduce this ideal, however imperfectly,   in our own life; and this step having been  taken, we can then cheerfully look upon it as our   ever-present Friend, providing all good, guarding  from all danger, and guiding us with all counsel.   Similarly if we think of it as a great  power devoted to supplying all our needs,   we shall impress this character also upon  it, and by the law of subjective mind,   it will proceed to enact the part of that special  providence which we have credited it with being;   and if, beyond general care of our concerns, we  would draw to ourselves some particular benefit,   the same rule holds good of impressing our  desire upon the universal subjective mind.   And thus the deepest problems of philosophy  bring us back to the old statement of the law:   ‘Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall  find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.’   This is the summing-up of the natural law of the  relation between the Divine Mind and us. It is   thus no vain boast that mental science can  enable us to makes our lives what we will.   And to this law there is no limit. What  it can do for us today it can do tomorrow,   and through all that procession of tomorrows  that loses itself in the dim vistas of eternity.   Belief in limitation is the one and only thing  that causes limitation, because we thus impress   limitation upon the creative principle; and  in proportion as we lay that belief aside,   our boundaries will expand, and increasing  life and more abundant blessing will be ours.”  You are not working for some firm merely for the  pittance they pay you. You are part of the great   scheme of things. And what you do has its bearing  on the ultimate result. That being the case,   you are working for Universal Mind, and Universal  Mind is the most generous paymaster there is.   Just remember that you can look to it for all good  things. Supply is where you are and what you need.  Do you want a situation? Close your eyes and  realize that somewhere is the position for   which you of all people are best fitted,  and which is best fitted to your ability.   The position where you can do the utmost of good,  and where life, in turn, offers the most to you.   Realize that Universal Mind knows exactly  where this position is, and that through your   subconscious mind you, too, can know it. Realize  that this is YOUR position, that it NEEDS you,   that it belongs to you, that it is right for  you to have it, that you are entitled to it.   Hold this thought in mind every night for just  a moment, then go to sleep knowing that your   subconscious mind HAS the necessary information  as to where this position is and how to get in   touch with it. Mind you—not WILL have, but  HAS. The earnest realization of this will   bring that position to you, and you to it,  as surely as the morrow will bring the sun.   Make the law of supply operative and you find  that the things you seek are seeking you.  Get firmly fixed in your own mind the definite  conviction that you can do anything you greatly   want to do. There is no such thing as lack of  opportunity. There is no such thing as only one   opportunity. You are subject to a law of boundless  and perpetual opportunity, and you can enforce   that law in your behalf just as widely as you  need. Opportunity is infinite and ever present.  Berton Braley has it well expressed  in his poem on “Opportunity”:  ( From “A Banjo at Armageddon.”  Copyright 1917, George H. Doran Company )  “For the best verse hasn’t been rhymed yet, The best house hasn’t been planned,  The highest peak hasn’t been climbed yet, The mightiest rivers aren’t spanned;  Don’t worry and fret, faint hearted, The chances have just begun,  For the Best jobs haven’t been started, The Best work hasn’t been done.”  Nothing stands in the way of a  will, which wants—an intelligence,   which knows. The great thing is to start.  “Begin your work,” says Ausonius. “To begin   is to complete the first half. The second half  remains. Begin again and the work is done.”   It matters not how small or unimportant your task  may seem to be. It may loom bigger in Universal   Mind than that of your neighbor, whose position  is so much greater in the eyes of the world.   Do it well—and Universal Mind will work with you. But don’t feel limited to any one job or any one   line of work. Man was given dominion over  all the earth. “And God said, Let us make   man in our image, after our likeness: and let  them have dominion over the fish of the sea,   and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle,  and over all the earth, and over every creeping   thing that creepeth upon the earth.” All of energy, all of power,   all that can exercise any influence over your  life, is in your hands through the power of   thought. God—good—is the only power there  is. Your mind is part of His mind. He is “the   Father that is within you that doeth the works.” So don’t put any limit upon His power by trying to   limit your capabilities. You are not in bondage to  anything. All your hopes and dreams can come true.   Were you not given dominion over all the earth?  And can anyone else take this dominion from you?  All the mysterious psychic powers about which  you hear so much today are perfectly natural. I   have them. You have them. They only await the time  when they shall be allowed to assert their vigor   and prove themselves your faithful servitors. “Be not afraid!” Claim your inheritance. The   Universal Mind that supplies all wisdom and power  is your mind. And to the extent that you are   governed by your understanding of its infinite  law of supply you will be able to demonstrate   plenty. “According to your faith, be it unto you.” “Analyze most of the great American fortunes of   the past generation,” says Advertising and Selling  Fortnightly, “and you will find that they were   founded on great faiths. One man’s faith was in  oil, another’s in land, and another’s in minerals.  “The fortunes that are being built today are  just as surely being built on great faiths,   but there is this difference: the emphasis of the  faith has been shifted. Today it takes faith in   a product or an opportunity, as it always did,  but it takes faith in the public, in addition.   Those who have the greatest faith in the  public— the kind of faith possessed by Henry   Ford and H. J. Heinz—and make that faith  articulate — build the biggest fortunes.” “Wanted” There is one question that bothers many a man.   Should he stick to the job he has, or cast about  at once for a better one. The answer depends   entirely upon what you are striving for. The first  thing is to set your goal. What is it you want? A   profession? A political appointment? An important  executive position? A business of your own?  Every position should yield you three things:

1. Reasonable pay for the present.  2. Knowledge, training, or experience that  will be worth money to you in the future.  3. Prestige or acquaintances that will be  of assistance to you in attaining your goal.  Judge every opening by those three standards.  But don’t overlook chances for valuable training,   merely because the pay is small. Though it  is a pretty safe rule that the concern with   up-to-the-minute methods that it would profit you  to learn, also pays up-to-the-minute salaries.  Hold each job long enough to get from it every  speck of information there is in it. Hold it long   enough to learn the job ahead. Then if there seems  no likelihood of a vacancy soon in that job ahead,   find one that corresponds to it somewhere else. Progress! Keep going ahead! Don’t be satisfied   merely because your salary is being boosted  occasionally. Learn something every day. When   you reach the point in your work that you are  no longer adding to your store of knowledge or   abilities, you are going backward, and it’s  time for you to move. Move upward in the   organization you are with if you can—but MOVE! Your actual salary is of slight importance   compared with the knowledge and ability you add  to your mind. Given a full storehouse there,   the salary or the riches will speedily  follow. But the biggest salary won’t do   you much good for long unless you’ve got  the knowledge inside you to back it up.  It’s like a girl picking her husband. She can  pick one with a lot of money and no brains,   or she can pick one with no money but  a lot of ability. In the former case,   she’ll have a high time for a little while, ending  in a divorce court or in her having a worthless   young “rounder” on her hands and no money to pay  the bills. In the other, the start will be hard,   but she is likely to end up with a happy home  she has helped to build, an earnest, hard   working husband who has “arrived”— and happiness. Money ought to be a consideration in marriage—but   never the consideration. Of course it’s an  easy matter to pick a man with neither money   nor brains. But when it’s a choice of money or  brains—take the brains every time. Possessions   are of slight importance compared to mind. Given the inquiring, alert type of mind— you can   get any amount of possessions. But the possessions  without the mind are nothing. Nine times out of   ten the best thing that can happen to any young  couple is to have to start out with little or   nothing and work out their salvation together. What is it you want most from life? Is it riches?  Picture yourself with all the riches you  could use, with all the abundance that  Nature holds out with such lavish hand  everywhere. What would you do with it?  Daydream for a while. Believe that you have that  abundance now. Practice being rich in your own   mind. See yourself driving that expensive car  you have always longed for, living in the sort   of house you have often pictured, well-dressed,  surrounded by everything to make life worth while.   Picture yourself spending this money that  is yours, lavishly, without a worry as to   where more is coming from, knowing that  there is no limit to the riches of Mind.   Picture yourself doing all those things you  would like to do, living the life you would   like to live, providing for your loved ones  as you would like to see them provided for.   See all this in your mind’s eye. Believe it  to be true for the moment. Know that it will   all be true in the not-very-distant future. Get  from it all the pleasure and enjoyment you can.  It is the first step in making your  dreams come true. You are creating   the model in mind. And if you don’t allow fear  or worry to tear it down, Mind will re-create   that model for you in your every-day life. “All that the Father hath is yours,” said Jesus.   And a single glance at the heavens and the earth  will show you that He has all riches in abundance.   Reach out mentally and appropriate  to yourself some of these good gifts.   You’ve got to do it mentally before you can  enjoy it physically. “‘Tis mind that makes   the body rich,” as Shakespeare tells us. See the things that you want as already   yours. Know that they will come to you at  need. Then LET them come. Don’t fret and   worry about them. Don’t think about your  LACK of them. Think of them as YOURS, as   belonging to you, as already in your possession. Look upon money as water that runs the mill of   your mind. You are constantly grinding out ideas  that the world needs. Your thoughts, your plans,   are necessary to the great scheme of things.  Money provides the power. But it needs YOU;   it needs your ideas, before it can be of any  use to the world. The Falls of Niagara would   be of no use without the power plants that line  the banks. The Falls need these plants to turn   their power to account. In the same way, money  needs your ideas to become of use to the world.  So instead of thinking that you need  money, realize that money needs YOU.   Money is just so much wasted energy without work  to do. Your ideas provide the outlet for it,   the means by which money can do things. Develop  your ideas; secure in the knowledge that money   is always looking for such an outlet. When the  ideas are perfected, money will gravitate your way   without conscious effort on your part, if only you  don’t dam up the channels with doubts and fears.  “First have something good—then  advertise!” said Horace Greeley.   First have something that the world  needs, even if it be only faithful,   interested service— then open up your channels  of desire, and dollars will flow to you.  And remember that the more you have to  offer—the more of riches will flow to you.   Dollars are of no value except as they are used. You have seen the rich attacked time and again in   newspapers and magazines. You have read numberless  articles and editorials against them. You have   heard agitators declaim against them by the hour.  But have you ever heard one of them say a single   word against the richest man of them all—Henry  Ford? I haven’t. And why? Because Henry Ford’s   idea of money is that it is something to  be used— something to provide more jobs,   something to bring more comfort, more enjoyment,  into an increasingly greater number of lives.  That is why money flows to him so freely. That is  why he gets so much out of life. And that is how   you, too, can get in touch with Infinite Supply.  Realize that it is not money you have to seek, but   a way to use money for the world’s advantage. Find  the need! Look at everything with the question—How   could that be improved? To what new uses could  this be put? Then set about supplying that need,   in the absolute confidence that when you have  found the way, money will flow freely to and   through you. Do your part—and you can confidently  look to Universal Mind to provide the means.  Get firmly in mind the definite conviction that  YOU CAN DO ANYTHING RIGHT THAT YOU MAY WISH TO DO.   Then set your goal and let everything  you do, all your work, all your study,   and all your associations, be a step towards  that goal. To quote Berton Braley again —  ( From “Things As They Are.” Copyright  1916, George H. Doran Company, New York. )  “If you want a thing bad enough To go out and fight for it,  Work day and night for it, Give up your time and your peace and   your sleep for it, If only desire of it Makes you quite mad enough  Never to tire of it, Makes you hold all other   things tawdry and cheap for it, If life  seems all empty and useless without it  And all that you scheme and you dream is about it, If gladly you’ll sweat for it,  Fret for it, plan for it, Lose all your terror of God or man for it,  If you’ll simply go after  that thing that you want,  With all your capacity, strength and sagacity,  Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,   If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,  Nor sickness nor pain of body or brain  Can turn you away from the thing that you want, If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,  You’ll get it!”

VOLUME 4  Chapter 9: The Formula of Success  “One ship drives east, and another drives west, With the self-same winds that blow.  ‘Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales Which tells us the way they go. “Like the waves of the sea are the ways of fate As we voyage along thru life.  ‘Tis the set of the soul which decides its goal And not the calm or the strife.”  —ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. What is the eternal question,   which stands up and looks you and every  sincere man squarely in the eye every morning?  “How can I better my condition?” That is  the real life question, which confronts you,   and I will haunt you every day till you solve it. Read this chapter carefully and I think you will   find the answer to this important life question  which you and every man must solve if he expects   ever to have more each Monday morning,  after pay day, than he had the week before.  To begin with, all wealth depends upon  a clear understanding of the fact that   mind—thought—is the only creator. The great  business of life is thinking. Control your   thoughts and you control circumstance. Just as the first law of gain is desire,   so the formula of success is BELIEF. Believe  that you have it—see it as an existent fact—and   anything you can rightly wish for is yours.  Belief is “the substance of things hoped for,   the evidence of things not seen.” You have seen men, inwardly no more   capable than yourself accomplish the seemingly  impossible. You have seen others, after years   of hopeless struggle; suddenly win their most  cherished dreams. And you’ve often wondered,   “What is the power that gives new life to  their dying ambitions, that supplies new   impetus to their jaded desires, that gives  them a new start on the road to success?”  That power is belief—faith. Someone, something,  gave them a new belief in themselves and a new   faith in their power to win—and they leaped ahead  and wrested success from seemingly certain defeat.  Do you remember the picture Harold Lloyd  was in two or three years ago, showing a   country boy who was afraid of his shadow?  Every boy in the countryside bedeviled him.   Until one day his grandmother gave him a  talisman that she assured him his grandfather   had carried through the Civil War and which,  so she said, had the property of making its   owner invincible. Nothing could hurt him,  she told him, while he wore this talisman.   Nothing could stand up against him. He believed  her. And the next time the bully of the town   started to cuff him around, he wiped up the earth  with him. And that was only the start. Before   the year was out he had made a reputation  as the most daring soul in the community.  Then, when his grandmother felt  that he was thoroughly cured,   she told him the truth — that the “talisman” was  merely a piece of old junk she’d picked up by the   roadside—that she knew all he needed was faith  in himself, belief that he could do these things. The Talisman of Napoleon Stories like that are common. It   is such a well-established truth that you can do  only what you think you can, that the theme is a   favorite one with authors. I remember reading a  story years ago of an artist—a mediocre sort of   artist— who was visiting the field of Waterloo and  happened upon a curious lump of metal half buried   in the dirt, which so attracted him that he picked  it up and put it in his pocket. Soon thereafter   he noticed a sudden increase in confidence, an  absolute faith in himself, not only as to his   own chosen line of work, but in his ability to  handle any situation that might present itself.   He painted a great picture—just to show  that he could do it. Not content with that,   he envisioned an empire with Mexico as its  basis, actually led a revolt that carried   all before it— until one day he lost his  talisman. And immediately his bubble burst.  I instance this just to illustrate the point  that it is your own belief in yourself that   counts. It is the consciousness of dominant power  within you that makes all things attainable.   You can do anything you think you can. This  knowledge is literally the gift of the gods,   for through it you can solve every human problem.  It should make of you an incurable optimist. It   is the open door to welfare. Keep it open—by  expecting to gain everything that is right.  You are entitled to every good thing. Therefore  expect nothing but good. Defeat does not need   to follow victory. You don’t have to “knock  wood” every time you congratulate yourself that   things have been going well with you. Victory  should follow victory—and it will if you “let   this mind be in you which was also in Christ  Jesus.” it is the mind that means health and   life and boundless opportunity and recompense. No  limitation rests upon you. So don’t let any enter   your life. Remember that Mind will do every good  thing for you. It will remove mountains for you.  “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, and  prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts,   if I will not open you the windows of heaven,  and pour you out a blessing, that there shall   not be room enough to receive it.” Bring all your thoughts, your desires,   your aims, your talents, into the Storehouse—the  Consciousness of Good, the Law of Infinite   supply—and prove these blessings. There is  every reason to know that you are entitled to   adequate provision. Everything that is involved  in supply is a thing of thought. Now reach out,   stretch your mind, and try to comprehend  unlimited thought, unlimited supply.  Do not think that supply must come through one  or two channels. It is not for you to dictate   to Universal Mind the means through which It  shall send Its gifts to you. There are millions   of channels through which It can reach you.  Your part is to impress upon Mind your need,   your earnest desire, your boundless belief  in the resources and the willingness of   Universal Mind to help you. Plant the seed of  desire. Nourish it with a clear visualization   of the ripened fruit. Water it with sincere  faith. But leave the means to Universal Mind.  Open up your mind. Clear out the channels  of thought. Keep yourself in a state of   receptivity. Gain a mental attitude in which  you are constantly expecting good. You have   the fundamental right to all good, you know.  “According to your faith, be it unto you.”  The trouble with most of us is that we are  mentally lazy. It is much easier to go along   with the crowd than to break trail for ourselves.  But the great discoverers, the great inventors,   the great geniuses in all lines have been  men who dared to break with tradition,   who defied precedent, who believed that there  is no limit to what Mind can do—and who stuck   to that belief until their goal was won,  in spite of all the sneers and ridicule   of the wiseacres and the “It-can’t-be-done’rs.” Not only that, but they were never satisfied with   achieving just one success. They knew that the  first success is like the first olive out of the   bottle. All the others come out the more easily  for it. They realized that they were a part of   the Creative Intelligence of the Universe, and  that the part shares all the properties of the   whole. And that realization gave them the faith  to strive for any right thing, the knowledge   that the only limit upon their capabilities  was the limit of their desires. Knowing that,   they couldn’t be satisfied with any ordinary  success. They had to keep on and on and on.  Edison didn’t sit down and fold his hands  when he gave us the talking machine or the   electric light. These great achievements merely  opened the way to new fields of accomplishment.  Open up the channels between  your mind and Universal Mind,   and there is no limit to the riches that will  come pouring in. Concentrate your thoughts on   the particular thing you are most interested in,  and ideas in abundance will come flooding down,   opening up a dozen ways of winning  the goal you are striving for.  But don’t let one success—no matter how  great—satisfy you. The Law of Creation,   you know, is the Law of Growth. You can’t stand  still. You must go forward—or be passed by.   Complacency — self-satisfaction — is the greatest  enemy of achievement. You must keep looking   forward. Like Alexander, you must be constantly  seeking new worlds to conquer. Depend upon it,   the power will come to meet the need. There is  no such thing as failing powers, if we look to   Mind for our source of supply. The only failure  of mind comes from worry and fear—or from disuse.  William James, the famous psychologist, taught  that “The more mind does, the more it can do.”   For ideas release energy. You can do more and  better work than you have ever done. You can know   more than you know now. You know from your own  experience that under proper mental conditions of   joy or enthusiasm, you can do three or four times  the work without fatigue that you can ordinarily.   Tiredness is more boredom than actual  physical fatigue. You can work almost   indefinitely when the work is a pleasure. You’ve seen sickly persons, frail persons,   who couldn’t do an hour’s light work without  exhaustion, suddenly buckle down when heavy   responsibilities were thrown upon them, and  grow strong and rugged under the load. Crises   not only draw upon the reserve power you  have, but they help to create new power. “It Couldn’t Be Done” It may be that you have   been deluded by the thought of incompetence.  It may be that you have been told so often that   you cannot do certain things that you’ve  come to believe you can’t. Remember that   success or failure is merely a state of  mind. Believe you cannot do a thing—and   you can’t. Know that you can do it— and  you will. You must see yourself doing it.  “If you think you are beaten, you are; If you think you dare not, you don’t;  If you’d like to win, but you think you can’t, It’s almost a cinch you won’t;  If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost, For out in the world you’ll find  Success begins with a fellow’s will— It’s all in the state of mind.  “Full many a race is lost Ere even a race is run,  And many a coward fails Ere even his work’s begun.  Think big, and your deeds will grow, Think small and you fall behind,  Think that you can, and you will; It’s all in the state of mind.  “If you think you are outclassed, you are; You’ve got to think high to rise;  You’ve got to be sure of yourself before You can ever win a prize.  Life’s battle doesn’t always go To the stronger or faster man;  But sooner or later, the man who wins Is the fellow who thinks he can.”  There’s a vast difference between a proper  understanding of one’s own ability and   a determination to make the best of it—and  offensive egotism. It is absolutely necessary   for every man to believe in himself, before  he can make the most of himself. All of us   have something to sell. It may be our goods, it  may be our abilities, it may be our services.   You’ve got to believe in yourself to make your  buyer take stock in you at par and accrued   interest. You’ve got to feel the same personal  solicitude over a customer lost, as a revivalist   over a backslider, and hold special services to  bring him back into the fold. You’ve got to get   up every morning with determination, if you’re  going to go to bed that night with satisfaction.  There’s mighty sound sense in the saying  that the entire world loves a booster.   The one and only thing you have to win  success with is MIND. For your mind to   function at its highest capacity, you’ve got  to be charged with good cheer and optimism.   No one ever did a good piece of work while in a  negative frame of mind. Your best work is always   done when you are feeling, happy and optimistic. And a happy disposition is the result—not the   cause—of happy, cheery thinking. Health and  prosperity are the results primarily of optimistic   thoughts. You make the pattern. If the impress  you have left on the world about you seems faint   and weak, don’t blame fate—blame your pattern! You  will never cultivate a brave, courageous demeanor   by thinking cowardly thoughts. You cannot gather  figs from thistles. You will never make your   dreams come true by choking them with doubts  and fears. You’ve got to put foundations under   your air castles, foundations of UNDERSTANDING and  BELIEF. Your chances of success in any undertaking   can always be measured by your BELIEF in yourself. Are your surroundings discouraging?   Do you feel that if you were in another’s place  success would be easier? Just bear in mind that   your real environment is within you. All  the factors of success or failure are in   your inner world. You make that own inner  world—and through it your outer world. You   can choose the material from which to build  it. If you’ve not chosen wisely in the past,   you can choose again now the material you want to  rebuild it. The richness of life is within you.   No one has failed so long as he can begin again. Start right in and do all those things you feel   you have it in you to do. Ask permission of no  man. Concentrating your thought upon any proper   undertaking will make its achievement possible.  Your belief that you can do the thing gives your   thought forces their power. Fortune waits upon  you. Seize her boldly, hold her—and she is yours.   She belongs rightfully to you. But if you cringe  to her, if you go up to her doubtfully, timidly,   she will pass you by in scorn. For she  is a fickle jade who must be mastered,   who loves boldness, who admires confidence. A Roman boasted that it was sufficient for   him to strike the ground with his foot  and legions would spring up. And his very   boldness cowed his opponents. It is the  same with your mind. Take the first step,   and your mind will mobilize all its forces to your  aid. But the first essential is that you begin.   Once the battle is started, all that is within  and without you will come to your assistance,   if you attack in earnest and meet each obstacle  with resolution. But you have got to start things.  “The Lord helps them that help  themselves” is a truth as old as man.  It is, in fact, plain common sense.   Your subconscious mind has all power, but your  conscious mind is the watchman at the gate. It   has got to open the door. It has got to press  the spring that releases the infinite energy.   No failure is possible in the accomplishment  of any right object you may have in life,   if you but understand your power and will  perseveringly try to use it in the proper way.  The men who have made their mark in this world  all had one trait in common-they believed in   themselves! “But,” you may say, “how can I believe  in myself when I have never yet done anything   worth while, when everything I put my hand to  seems to fail?” You can’t, of course. That is, you   couldn’t if you had to depend upon your conscious  mind alone. But just remember what one far greater   than you said—”I can of mine own self do nothing.  The Father that is within me—He doeth the works.”  That same “Father” is within you. And  it is by knowing that He is in you,   and that through Him you can do anything that  is right, that you can acquire that belief   in yourself which is so necessary. Certainly the  Mind that imaged the heavens and the earth and all   that they contain has all wisdom, all power, and  all abundance. With this Mind to call upon, you   know there is no problem too difficult for you to  undertake. The knowing of this is the first step.   Faith. But St. James tells us— ”Faith without  works is dead.” So go on to the next step.   Decide on the one thing you want most from life.  No matter what it may be. There is no limit,   you know, to Mind. Visualize this thing that  you want. See it, feel it, BELIEVE in it. Make   your mental blueprint, and begin to build! Suppose some people DO laugh at your idea.   Suppose Reason does say— “It can’t be done!”  People laughed at Galileo. They laughed at   Henry Ford. Reason contended for countless ages  that the earth was flat. Reason said — or so   numerous automotive engineers argued—that the Ford  motor wouldn’t run. But the earth is round—and the   twelfth or fifteenth million Ford is on the road. Let us start right now putting into practice some   of these truths that you have learned.  What do you want most of life right now?   Take that one desire, concentrate on it,  and impress it upon your subconscious mind.  Psychologists have discovered that the best  time to make suggestions to your subconscious   mind is just before going to sleep, when the  senses are quiet and the attention is lax.   So let us take your desire and suggest it to your  subconscious mind tonight. The two prerequisites   are the earnest DESIRE, and an intelligent,  understanding BELIEF. Someone has said,   you know, that education is three- fourths  encouragement, and the encouragement is   the suggestion that the thing can be done. You know that you can have what you want;   if you want it badly enough and can believe in it  earnestly enough. So tonight, just before you drop   off to sleep, concentrate your thought on this  thing that you most desire from life. BELIEVE   that you have it. SEE YOURSELF possessing it. FEEL  yourself using it.Do that every night until you   ACTUALLY DO BELIEVE that you have the thing you  want. When you reach that point, YOU WILL HAVE IT!  “Ye shall know the   truth

                     Chapter 10: “This Freedom”

And the Truth shall make you free.”  I have heard that quotation ever since I was a  little child. Most of us have. But to me it was   never anything much but a quotation—until a few  years ago. It is only in the past several years   that I have begun to get an inkling of the real  meaning of it—an understanding of the comfort   back of it. Perhaps to you, too, it has been no  more than a sonorous phrase. If so, you will be   interested in what I have since gotten from it. To begin with, what is the “truth” that   is so often referred to in all our  religious teaching? The truth about   what? And what is it going to free us from? The truth as I see it now is the underlying   reality in everything we meet in life. There  is, for instance, one right way to solve any   given problem in mathematics. That one right way  is the truth as far as that problem is concerned.   To know it is to free yourself from  all doubt and vain imagining and error.   It is to free yourself from any trouble that might  arise through solving the problem incorrectly.  In the same way, there is but one BEST way of  solving every situation that confronts you.   That BEST way is the truth. To know it is  to make you free from all worry or trouble   in connection with that situation. For if it is  met in the RIGHT way, only good can come of it.  Then there is your body. There is only one  RIGHT idea of every organism in your body.   One CORRECT method of functioning for each of  them. And Universal Mind holds that RIGHT idea,   that CORRECT method. The functioning of your  body, the rebuilding of each cell and tissue,   is the work of your subconscious mind. If you  will constantly hold before it the thought that   its model is perfection, that weakness or  sickness or deformity is merely ABSENCE of   perfection—not a reality in itself—in short, if  you will realize the Truth concerning your body,   your subconscious mind will speedily make  you free and keep you free from every ill.  It matters not what is troubling you today. If  you will KNOW that whatever it may seem to be   is merely the absence of the true idea, if you  will realize that the only thing that counts   is the truth that Universal Mind knows about  your body, you can make that truth manifest.  Affirm the good, the true—and the evil will  vanish. It is like turning on the light— the   darkness immediately disappears. For there  is no actual substance in darkness—it is   merely absence of light. Nor is there  any substance in sickness or evil—it   is merely the absence of health or good. That is the truth that was the mentality   of Jesus—what Paul describes as “the  mind, which was also in Christ Jesus.”  Jesus declared that “we should know the  truth, and the truth would make us free.”   That truth was the power, which He exercised.  He had so perfect an understanding of truth   that it gave Him absolute dominion over evil,  enabled Him to heal diseases of every nature,   even to raise the dead. The power that He  exercised then was not confined to His time,   nor limited to His own immediate followers. “Lo,  I am with you always,” He said, “even unto the end   of the world.” And He is just as available to us  now as He was to His own disciples 1900 years ago.  “I have given you power to tread serpents  and scorpions under foot and to trample   on all the power of the enemy; and in  no case shall anything do you harm.”  That gift was never meant to be confined to His  own disciples or to any other one group. God has   never dealt in special or temporary gifts.  He gives to all—to all who will accept—to   all who have an understanding heart. All sickness, all poverty, all sorrow,   is the result of the incorrect use of some gift  of God, which in itself is inherently good. It   is just as though we took the numbers that were  given us to work out a problem, and put them in   the wrong places. The result would be incorrect,  inharmonious. We would not be expressing the   truth. The moment we rearrange those numbers  properly, we get the correct answer— harmony—the   truth! There was nothing wrong with the principle  of mathematics before— the fault was all with us,   with our incorrect arrangement of the figures. What is true of the principle of mathematics is   true of every principle. The principle  is changeless, undying. It is only our   expression of the principle that changes as  our understanding of it becomes more thorough.   Lightning held only terror for man until he made  of electricity his servant. Steam was only so much   waste until man learned to harness it. Fire and  water are the most destructive forces known—until   properly used, and then they are man’s greatest  helpers. There is nothing wrong with any gift of   God—once we find the way to use it. The truth is  always there if we can find the principle behind   it. The figures in mathematics are never bad.  It is merely our incorrect arrangement of them.  The great need is an open mind and the desire  for understanding. How far in the science of   mathematics would you get if you approached the  study of it with the preconceived notion that two   plus two makes five, and nothing you heard to  the contrary was going to change that belief?   “Except ye turn, and become as little children,  ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  You must drop all your preconceived ideas,  all your prejudices. You must never say—”Oh,   that sounds like so-and-so. I don’t want any  of it.” Just remember that any great movement   must have at least a grain of truth back of  it, else it could never grow to any size.   Seek that grain of truth. Be open- minded. Keep  your eyes and ears open for the truth. If you   can do this, you will find that new wordings,  different interpretations, are but the outer   shell. You can still see the Truth beneath,  the Christ that “before Abraham was, I am.” The Only Power He who is looking for wisdom, power, or permanent   success, will find it only within. Mind is the  only cause. Your body is healthy or sick according   to the images of thought you impress upon your  subconscious mind. If you will hold thoughts of   health instead of sickness, if you will banish all  thoughts of disease and decay, you can build up   a perfect body. Dr. William S. Patten of New York  says, “To know and to understand the organization   of mind and to recognize the action of mind is  the first and the only requisite of a sound body.”   For all disease starts in the mind.  It may be in your own conscious mind,   from reading of an epidemic or from meeting with  circumstances which education has taught you will   bring about disease. It may be suggested to your  subconscious mind, as so frequently happens with   young children, by the fears and worries and  thoughts of contagion of those around you.  But whichever it is, it is FEAR that starts it.  You visualize, consciously or unconsciously,   the disease that you fear, and because  that is the image held before your thought,   your body proceeds to build in accordance with  that model. You believe that disease is necessary,   that you have got to expect a certain amount of  it. You hear of it every day, and subconsciously   at least you are constantly in fear of it. And  through that very fear you create it, when if you   would spend that same amount of time thinking  and believing in the necessity of HEALTH,   you would never need to know disease. God does not send disease. It is not   a visitation of Providence. If it were,  what would be the use of doctoring it?   You couldn’t fight against the power of God! God never sent us anything but good. He never   gave us disease. When we allow disease to take  hold of us, it is because we have lost touch with   God— lost the perfect model of us that He holds in  mind. And what we have got to strive for is to get   back the belief in that perfect model—to forget  the diseased image we are holding in our thought.  Remember the story of Alexander  and his famous horse, Bucephalus?   No one could ride the horse because it was afraid  of its shadow. But Alexander faced it towards the   sun—and rode it without trouble. Face towards the  sun and the shadows will fall behind you, too.   Face towards the perfect image of every organ,  and the shadows of disease will never touch you.  There is no germ in a draft capable of giving you  a cold. There are no bacteria in exposure to the   weather that can give you a fever or pneumonia.  It is you that gives them to yourself. The draft   doesn’t reason this out. Neither does your body. They are both of them merely phases of matter.   They are not intelligent. It is your  conscious mind that has been educated   to think that a cold must follow exposure to  a draft. This it is that suggests it to your   subconscious mind and brings the cold into being. Before you decide again that you have a cold,   ask yourself, who is it that is taking this cold?  It cannot be my nose, for it has no intelligence.   It does only what my subconscious mind directs.  And anyway, how could my nose know that a draft   of air has been playing on the back of my neck?  If it wasn’t my nose that decided it, what was it?   The only thing it can have been is my mind. Well,  if mind can tell me to have a cold, surely it can   stop that cold, too. So let’s reverse the process,  and instead of holding before the subconscious   mind images of colds and fevers, think only of  health and life and strength. Instead of trying   to think back to discover how we “caught” cold,  and thus strengthening the conviction that we have   one, let us deny its existence and so knock the  props out from under the creative faculties that   are originating the cold. Let us hold before our  subconscious mind only the perfect idea of nose   and head and throat that is in Universal Mind.  Let us make it use the Truth for its pattern,   instead of the illusory ideas of conscious mind. Every form of disease or sickness is solely the   result of wrong thinking. The primary law  of being is the law of health and life.   When you recognize this, when you hold  before your mind’s eye only a perfect body,   perfect organisms functioning perfectly, you  will “realize the truth that makes you free.”  Farnsworth in his “Practical Psychology” tells  of a physician who has lived on a very restricted   diet for years while at home. But about once a  year he comes to New York for a week. While here,   he eats anything and everything that his  fancy dictates, and never suffers the least   inconvenience. As soon as he gets home he has to  return to his diet. Unless he sticks to his diet,   he expects to be ill—and he is ill. “As a man  thinketh, so is he.” What one expects to get he   is apt to get, especially where health is  concerned. For matter has no sensation of   its own. The conscious mind is what produces  pain, is what feels, acts or impedes action.  Functional disorders are caused by certain  suggestions getting into the sub consciousness and   remaining there. They are not due to physical, but  to mental causes—due to wrong thinking. The basis   of all functional disorders is in the mind, though  the manifestation is dyspepsia, melancholia,   palpitation of the heart, or any one of a hundred  others. There is nothing organically wrong with   the body. It is your mental image that is out of  adjustment. Change the one and you cure the other.  In this day of the gymnasium and the daily dozen,  it may sound impractical to suggest that it is the   mind, not the body, which needs the care. But  I am far from being the first to suggest it.  There is a very successful physician in London  whose teaching is that gymnastic exercise does   more harm than good. He contends that the  only exercise necessary for the perfect   development of the body is yawning and stretching. I would go farther than that. I would say that no   physical exercise is essential to the perfect  development of the body. That since the only   cause is mind, the principal good of exercise is  that when we go through the motions we impress   upon our subconscious mind the picture of the  perfect figure that we would have. And that   mental visualization is what brings the results. You can get the same results without the physical   exercise by visualizing in your mind’s eye the  figure of the man you want to be, by intensely   desiring it, by BELIEVING that you have it. You can win to perfect health by knowing that   there is but one right idea in Universal  Mind for every organism in your body—that   this right idea is perfect and undying—that you  have only to hold it before your subconscious   mind to see it realized in your body.  This is the truth that makes you free.   Chapter 11: The Law of Attraction For life is the mirror of king and slave.  ‘Tis just what you are and do; Then give to the world the best you have,  And the best will come back to you. —MADELINE BRIDGES.  The old adage that “He profits most  who serves best” is no mere altruism.  Look around you. What businesses are going ahead?  What men are making the big successes? Are they   the ones who grab the passing dollar, careless  of what they offer in return? Or are they those   who are striving always to give a little greater  value, a little more work than they are paid for?  When scales are balanced evenly, a trifle  of extra weight thrown into either side   overbalances the other as effectively as a ton. In the same way, a little better value, a little   extra effort, makes the man or the business stand  out from the great mass of mediocrity like a tall   man among pigmies, and brings results out of all  proportion to the additional effort involved.  It pays—not merely altruistically, but  in good, hard, round dollars—to give a   little more value than seems necessary,  to work a bit harder than you are paid   for. It’s that extra ounce of value that counts. For the law of attraction is service. We receive   in proportion as we give out. In fact, we  usually receive in far greater proportion.   “Cast thy bread upon the waters and it  will return to you an hundred-fold.”  Back of everything is the immutable law of the  Universe—that what you are but the effect. Your   thoughts are the causes. The only way you can  change the effect is by first changing the cause.  People live in poverty and want  because they are so wrapped up in   their sufferings that they give out  thoughts only of lack and sorrow.   They expect want. They open the door of  their mind only to hardship and sickness   and poverty. True—they hope for something  better—but their hopes are so drowned by   their fears that they never have a chance. You cannot receive good while expecting evil.   You cannot demonstrate plenty while looking for  poverty. “Blessed is he that expecteth much,   for verily his soul shall be filled.”  Solomon outlined the law when he said:  “There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet  more; And there is that withholdeth more than   is meet, but it tendeth only to want. The liberal soul shall be made fat;  And he that watereth shall  be watered also himself.”  The Universal Mind expresses itself  largely through the individual.   It is continually seeking an outlet. It is like  a vast reservoir of water, constantly replenished   by mountain springs. Cut a channel to it and  the water will flow in ever-increasing volume.   In the same way, if you once open up a  channel of service by which the Universal   Mind can express itself through you,  its gifts will flow in ever increasing   volume and YOU will be enriched in the process. This is the idea through which great bankers are   made. A foreign country needs millions for  development. Its people are hard working,   but lack the necessary implements to make their  work productive. How are they to find the money?  They go to a banker—put their problem up to him.  He has not the money himself, but he knows how   and where to raise it. He sells the promise  to pay of the foreign country (their bonds,   in other words) to people who have money  to invest. His is merely a service. But   it is such an invaluable service that both  sides are glad to pay him liberally for it.  In the same way, by opening up a channel between  universal supply and human needs—by doing your   neighbors or your friends or your customer’s  service—you are bound to profit yourself. And the   wider you open your channel— the greater service  you give or the better values you offer—the more   things are bound to flow through your channel,  the more you are going to profit thereby.  But you’ve got to use your talent if you want  to profit from it. It matters not how small   your service—using it will make it greater.  You don’t have to retire to a cell and pray.   That is a selfish method—selfish concern  for your own soul to the exclusion of all   others. Mere self-denial or asceticism as such  does no one good. You’ve got to DO something,   to USE the talents God has given you to make  the world better for your having been in it.  Remember the parable of the talents. You know  what happened to the man who went off and hid   his talent, whereas those who made use of  theirs were given charge over many things.  That parable, it has always seemed to  me, expresses the whole law of life.   The only right is to use all the forces of good.  The only wrong is to neglect or to abuse them.  “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. This is the  first and the greatest Commandment.” Thou shalt   show thy love by using to the best possible  advantage the good things (the “talents” of   the parable) that He has placed in your hands.  “And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love   thy neighbor as thyself.” Thou shalt not abuse  the good things that have been provided you in   such prodigality, by using them against your  neighbor. Instead, thou shalt treat him (love   him) as he would treat you. Thou shalt use  the good about you for the advantage of all.  If you are a banker, you’ve got to use the money  you have in order to make more money. If you are   a merchant, you’ve got to sell the goods you have  in order to buy more goods. If you are a doctor,   you must help the patient you have in order to  get more practice. If you are a clerk, you must   do your work a little better than those around  you if you want to earn more money than they.   And if you want more of the universal  supply, you must use that which you   have in such a way as to make yourself  of greater service to those around you.  “Whosoever shall be great among you,”  said Jesus, “shall be your minister,   and whosoever of you will be the chiefest,  shall be servant of all.” In other words,   if you would be great, you must serve. And  he who serves most shall be greatest of all.  If you want to make more money, instead of  seeking it for yourself, see how you can   make more for others. In the process you  will inevitably make more for yourself,   too. We get as we give— but we must give first. It matters not where you start— you may be a day   laborer. But still you can give— give a bit  more of energy, of work, of thought, than you   are paid for. “Whosoever shall compel thee to  go a mile,” said Jesus, “go with him twain.”   Try to put a little extra skill into your work.  Use your mind to find some better way of doing   whatever task may be set for you. It won’t be  long before you are out of the common labor class.  There is no kind of work than cannot be bettered  by thought. There is no method that cannot be   improved by thought. So give generously of  your thought to your work. Think every minute   you are at it—”Isn’t there some way in which  this could be done easier, quicker, better?”   Read in your spare time everything that relates  to your own work or to the job ahead of you.   In these days of magazines and books and  libraries, few are the occupations that   are not thoroughly covered in some good work. Remember in Lorimer’s “Letters of a Self-Made   Merchant to His Son,” the young fellow that old  Gorgan Graham hired against his better judgment   and put in the “barrel gang” just to get rid of  him quickly? Before the month was out the young   fellow had thought himself out of that job  by persuading the boss to get a machine that   did the work at half the cost and with a third  of the gang. Graham just had to raise his pay   and put him higher up. But he wouldn’t stay  put. No matter what the job, he always found   some way it could be done better and with fewer  people, until he reached the top of the ladder.  There are plenty of men like that in actual life.  They won’t stay down. They are as full of bounce   as a cat with a small boy and a dog after it.  Thrown to the dog from an upper window, it is   using the time of falling to get set for the next  jump. By the time the dog leaps for where it hit,   the cat is up the tree across the street. The true spirit of business is the spirit   of that plucky old Danish sea captain, Peter  Tordenskjold. Attacked by a Swedish frigate,   after all his crew but one had been killed and  his supply of cannon balls was exhausted, Peter   boldly kept up the fight, firing pewter dinner-  plates and mugs from his one remaining gun.  One of the pewter mugs hit the Swedish captain  and killed him, and Peter sailed off triumphant!  Look around YOU now. How can YOU give greater  value for what you get? How can you SERVE better?   How can you make more money for your  employers or save more for your customers?   Keep that thought ever in  the forefront of your mind   and you’ll never need to worry  about making more for yourself! A Blank Check There was an article by Gardner   Hunting in a recent issue of “Christian Business,”  that was so good that I reprint it here entire:  “All my life I have known in a vague way that  getting money is the result of earning it;   but I have never had a perfect  vision of that truth till recently.   Summed up now, the result of all my experience,  pleasant and unpleasant, is that a man gets back   exactly what he gives out, only multiplied. “If I give to anybody service of a kind that   he wants I shall get back the benefit myself.  If I give more service I shall get more benefit.   If I give a great deal more, I shall get a great  deal more. But I shall get back more than I give.   Exactly as when I plant a bushel of potatoes,  I get back thirty or forty bushels, and more in   proportion to the attention I give the growing  crop. If I give more to my employer than he   expects of me, he will give me a raise— and on  no other condition. What is more, his giving me   a raise does not depend on his fair-mindedness 

• he has to give it to me or lose me, because   if he does not appreciate me somebody else will. “But this is only part of it. If I give help to   the man whose desk is next to mine, it will come  back to me multiplied, even if he apparently is   a rival. What I give to him, I give to the firm,  and the firm will value it, because it is teamwork   in the organization that the firm primarily wants,  not brilliant individual performance. If I have an   enemy in the organization, the same rule holds;  if I give him, with the purpose of helping him,   something that will genuinely help him,  I am giving service to the organization.   Great corporations appreciate the peacemaker,  for a prime requisite in their success is harmony   among employees. If my boss is unappreciative,  the same rule holds; if I give him more,   in advance of appreciation, he cannot withhold  his appreciation and keep his own job.  “The more you think about this law, the deeper  you will see it goes. It literally hands you a   blank check, signed by the Maker of Universal  Law, and leaves you to fill in the amount—and   the kind—of payment you want! Mediocre  successes are those that obey this law   a little way—that fill in the check with a small  amount— but that stop short of big vision in it.   If every employee would only get the idea of  this law firmly fixed in him as a principle, not   subject to wavering with fluctuating moods, the  success of the organization would be miraculous.   One of my fears is apt to be that, by promoting  the other fellow’s success, I am sidetracking   my own; but the exact opposite is the truth. “Suppose every employee would look at his own   case as an exact parallel to that of his firm.  What does his firm give for the money it gets   from the public? Service! Service in advance! The  better the service that is given out, the more   money comes back. What does the firm do to bring  public attention to its service? It advertises;   that is part of the service. Now, suppose that  I, as an employee, begin giving my service to the   firm in advance of all hoped for payment. Suppose  I advertise my service. How do I do either? I   cannot do anything constructive in that firm’s  office or store or plant or premises that is not   service, from filing a letter correctly to mending  the fence or pleasing a customer; from looking up   a word for the stenographer, to encouraging her  to look it up herself; demonstrating a machine   to a customer or encouraging him to demonstrate  it himself; from helping my immediate apparent   rival to get a raise, to selling the whole  season’s output. As for advertising myself,   I begin advertising myself the moment I walk  into the office or the store or the shop in   the morning; I cannot help it. Everybody who  looks at me sees my advertisement. Everybody   around me has my advertisement before his eyes all  day long. So has the boss—my immediate chief and   the head of the firm, no matter where they are.  And if I live up to my advertising, nobody can   stop me from selling my goods— my services! The  more a man knocks me, the more he advertises me;   because he calls attention to me; and ill am  delivering something better than he says I am, the   interested parties—my employers—will see it, and  will not be otherwise influenced by what he says.  “More than that, I must give to every human  being I come in contact with, from my wife   to the bootblack who shines my shoes; from my  brother to my sworn foe. Sometimes people will   tell you to smile; but the smile I give has got to  be a real smile that lives up to its advertising.   If I go around grinning like a Cheshire cat,  the Cheshire-cat grin will be what I get back—   multiplied! If I give the real thing, I’ll get  back the real thing—multiplied! If anybody objects   that this is a selfish view to take, I answer him  that any law of salvation from anything by anybody   that has ever been offered for any purpose, is  a selfish view to take. The only unselfishness   that has ever been truly taught is that of giving  a lesser thing in hope of receiving a greater.  “Now, why am I so sure of this law? How can you be  sure? I have watched it work; it works everywhere.   You have only to try it, and keep on trying it and  it will prove true for you. It is not true because   I say so, nor because anybody else says so; it is  just true. Theosophists call it the law of Karma;   humanitarians call it the law of Service;  businessmen call it the law of common sense;   Jesus Christ called it the law of Love.  It rules whether I know it or not,   whether I believe it or not, whether I defy it  or not. I can’t break it! Jesus of Nazareth,   without reference to any religious idea you  may have about Him, without consideration as to   whether He was or was not divine, was the greatest  business Man that ever lived, and he said: ‘Give   and ye shall receive—good measure, pressed down,  shaken together, running over!’ And this happens   to be so—not because He said it—but because it  is the Truth, which we all, whether we admit it   or not, worship as God. No man can honestly  say that he does not put the truth supreme.  “It is the truth—the principle of  giving and receiving—only there are   few men who go the limit on it. But going  the limit is the way to unlimited returns!  “What shall I give? What I have, of  course. Suppose you believe in this   idea—and suppose you should start giving  it out, the idea itself, tactfully, wisely,   and living it yourself in your organization. How long do you think it will be before you are   a power in that organization, recognized as such  and getting pay as such? It is more valuable than   all the cleverness and special information you  can possibly possess without it. What you have,   give—to everybody. If you have an idea, do not  save it for your own use only; give it. It is   the best thing you have to give and therefore  the thing best to give— and therefore the thing   that will bring the best back to you. I believe  that if a man would follow this principle, even   to his trade secrets, he would profit steadily  more and more; and more certainly than he will   by holding on to anything for himself. He would  never have to worry about his own affairs because   he would be working on fundamental law. Law never  fails—and it will be easy for you to discover   what is or is not law. And if law is worth using  part of the time, it is worth using all the time.  “Look around you first, with an eye to seeing  the truth, and then put the thing to the test.   Through both methods of investigation you  will find a blank check waiting for you   to fill in with ‘whatsoever you desire,’ and a  new way to pray and to get what you pray for.” Chapter 12: The Three Requisites “Waste no tears  Upon the blotted record of lost years,  But turn the leaf, and smile, oh smile, to see The fair white pages that remain for thee. “Prate not of thy repentance. But believe The spark divine dwells in thee: let it grow.  That which the up-reaching spirit can achieve The grand and all creative forces know;  They will assist and strengthen as the light Lifts up the acorn to the oak-tree’s height.  Thou hast but to resolve, and lo! God’s whole Great universe shall   fortify thy soul.” —ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. Sometime today or tomorrow or next month,  in practically every commercial office and   manufacturing plant in the United States,  an important executive will sit back in   his chair and study a list of names  on a sheet of white paper before him.  Your name may be on it. A position of responsibility is   open and he is face to face with the old,  old problem—”Where can I find the man?”  The faces, the words, the work, the  impressions of various men will pass   through his mind in quick review. What is the  first question he will ask concerning each?  “Which man is strongest on initiative,  which one can best assume responsibility?”  Other things being equal, THAT is the man who  will get the job. For the first requisite in   business as in social life is confidence in  yourself—knowledge of your power. Given that,   the second is easy—initiative or the courage  to start things. Lots of men have ideas,   but few have the confidence in themselves  or the courage to start anything.  With belief and initiative, the third  requisite follows almost as a matter of   course— the faith to go ahead and do  things in the face of all obstacles.  “Oh, God,” said Leonardo da Vinci, “you sell  us everything for the price of an effort.”  Certainly no one had a better chance to know than  he. An illegitimate son, brought up in the family   of his father, the misfortune of his birth made  him the source of constant derision. He had to do   something to lift himself far above the crowd. And  he did. “For the price of an effort” he became the   greatest artist in Italy—probably the greatest  in the world—in a day when Italy was famous for   her artists. Kings and princes felt honored at  being associated with this illegitimate boy.   He made the name he had no right  to famous for his work alone.  “Work out your own salvation1” said Paul. And the  first requisite in working it out is knowledge of   your power. “Every man of us has all the centuries  in him.”— Morley. All the ages behind you have   bequeathed you stores of abilities, which you  are allowing to lie latent. Those abilities are   stored up in your subconscious mind. Call  upon them. Use them. As Whittier put it—  “All the good the past has had Remains to make our own time glad.”  Are you an artist? The cunning of a da Vinci, the  skill of a Rembrandt, the vision of a Reynolds,   is behind those fingers of yours. Use  the Genie-of-your-mind to call upon them.  Are you a surgeon, a lawyer, a minister,  and an engineer, a businessman?   Keep before your mind’s eye the biggest men who  have ever done the things you now are doing.   Use them as your model and not as your model  simply, but as your inspiration. Start in where   they left off. Call upon the innermost recesses  of your subconscious mind, for their skill,   their judgment, their initiative. Realize that  you have it in you to be as great as they. Realize   that all that they did, all that they learned,  all the skill they acquired is stored safely   away in Universal Mind and that through your  subconscious mind you have ready access to it.  The mind in you is the same mind that  animated all the great conquerors of the past,   all the great inventors, all the great  artists, statesmen, leaders, business men.   What they have done is but a tithe of what still  remains to do—of what men in your day and your   children’s day will do. You can have a part in it.  Stored away within you is every power that any man   or woman ever possessed. It awaits only your call. In “Thoughts on Business,” we read: “It is a   great day in a man’s life when he truly begins to  discover himself. The latent capacities of every   man are greater than he realizes, and he may find  them if he diligently seeks for them. A man may   own a tract of land for many years without knowing  its value. He may think of it as merely a pasture.   But one day he discovers evidences of coal and  finds a rich vein beneath his land. While mining   and prospecting for coal he discovers deposits  of granite. In boring for water he strikes oil.   Later he discovers a vein of copper ore, and  after that silver and gold. These things were   there all the time—even when he thought of his  land merely as a pasture. But they have a value   only when they are discovered and utilized. “Not every pasture contains deposits of silver and   gold, neither oil nor granite, nor even coal. But  beneath the surface of every man there must be,   in the nature of things, a latent capacity  greater than has yet been discovered. And   one discovery must lead to another until  the man finds the deep wealth of his own   possibilities. History is full of the acts of men  who discovered somewhat of their own capacity;   but history has yet to record the man who  fully discovered all that be might have been.”  Everything that has been done, thought, gained,  or been is in Universal Mind. And you are a part   of Universal Mind. You have access to it. You  can call upon it for all you need in the same   way you can go to your files or to a library  for information. If you can realize this fact,   you will find in it the key to the control of  every circumstance, the solution of every problem,   the satisfaction of every right desire. But to use that key, you’ve got to bear in   mind the three requisites of faith in your powers,  initiative, and courage to start. “Who would stand   before a blackboard,” says “Science and Health,”  “and pray the principle of mathematics to solve   the problem? The rule is already established,  and it is our task to work out the solution.”   In the same way, all knowledge you can  need is in Universal Mind, but it is up   to you to tap that mind. And without the three   requisites you will never do it. Never let discouragement hold you back.   Discouragement is the most dangerous feeling there  is, because it is the most insidious. Generally it   is looked upon as harmless, and for that very  reason it is the more sinister. For failure   and success are oftentimes separated by only  the distance of that one word— Discouragement.  There is an old-time fable that the devil  once held a sale and offered all the tools   of his trade to anyone who would pay their  price. They were spread out on the table,   each one labeled—hatred, and malice, and envy,  and despair, and sickness, and sensuality - all   the weapons that everyone knows so well. But off on one side, apart from the rest,   lay a harmless looking, wedge-shaped instrument  marked “Discouragement.” It was old and worn   looking, but it was priced far above all the rest.  When asked the reason why, the devil replied:  “Because I can use this one so much more easily  than the others. No one knows that it belongs to   me, so with it I can open doors that are tight  bolted against the others. Once I get inside   I can use any tool that suits me best.” No one ever knows how small is the margin   between failure and success. Frequently  the two are separated only by the width   of that one word— discouragement. Ask Ford,  ask Edison, ask any successful man and he   will tell you how narrow is the chasm that  separates failure from success, how surely   it can be bridged by perseverance and faith. Cultivate confidence in yourself. Cultivate   the feeling that you ARE succeeding. Know  that you have unlimited power to do every   right thing. Know that with Universal Mind  to draw upon, no position is too difficult,   and no problem too hard. “He that believeth  on me, the works that I do shall he do also;   and greater works than these shall he do.” When you put limitations upon yourself, when   you doubt your ability to meet any situation, you  are placing a limit upon Universal Mind, for “The   Father that is within me, He doeth the works.” With that knowledge of your power, with that   confidence in the unlimited resources of Universal  Mind, it is easy enough to show initiative, it is   easy enough to find the courage to start things. You have a right to dominion over all things—over   your body, your environment, your business,  your health. Develop these three requisites   and you will gain that dominion. Remember  that you are a part of Universal Mind,   and that the part shares every property of the  whole. Remember that, as the spark of electricity   to the thunderbolt, so is your mind to Universal  Mind. Whatever of good you may desire of life,   whatever qualification, whatever position,  you have only to work for it whole heartedly,   confidently, with singleness of purpose—and you  can get it.

  Chapter 13 - That Old Witch—Bad Luck “How do you tackle your work each day?  Are you scared of the job you find? Do you grapple the task that comes your way  With a confident, easy mind? Do you stand right up to the work ahead  Or fearfully pause to view it? Do you start to toil with a sense of dread  Or feel that you’re going to do it? “What is the thought that is in your mind?  Is fear ever running through it? If so, just tackle the next you find  By thinking you’re going to do it.” —EDGAR A. GUEST. ( From “A heap o’   Livin’.” The Reilly & Lee Co. ) Has that old witch—bad luck— ever camped   on your doorstep? Have ill health, misfortune  and worry ever seemed to dog your footsteps?  If so, you will be interested in knowing that YOU  were the procuring cause of all that trouble. For   fear is merely creative thought in negative form. Remember back in 1920 how fine the business   outlook seemed, how everything looked rosy  and life flowed along like a song? We had   crops worth ten billions of dollars. We had  splendid utilities, great railways, almost   unlimited factory capacity. Everyone was busy.  The government had a billion dollars in actual   money. The banks were sound. The people were well  employed. Wages were good. Prosperity was general.   Then something happened. A wave of fear swept  over the country. The prosperity could not last.   People wouldn’t pay such high prices. There  was too much inflation. What was the result?  As Job put it in the long ago, “The thing  that I greatly feared has come upon me.”  The prosperity vanished almost over night.  Failures became general. Hundreds of thousands   were thrown out of work. And all because of panic,  fear. ‘Tis true that readjustments were necessary.   ‘Tis true that prices were too  high, that inventories were too big,   that values generally were inflated. But it wasn’t necessary to burst the balloon   to let out the gas. There are orderly natural  processes of readjustment that bring things to   their proper level with the least harm to anyone. But fear—panic—knows no reason.   It brings into being overnight the things that it  fears. It is the greatest torment of humanity. It   is about all there is to Hell. Fear is, in short,  the devil. It causes most of the sin, disaster,   disease and misery of the world. It is the only  thing you can put into business, which won’t draw   dividends in either fun or dollars. If you guess  right, you don’t get any satisfaction out of it.  The real cause of all sickness is fear. You  image some disease in your thought, and your   body proceeds to build upon this model that you  hold before it. You have seen how fear makes   the face pallid, how it first stops the beating of  the heart, then sets it going at trip-hammer pace.   Fear changes the secretions. Fear halts  the digestion. Fear puts lines and   wrinkles into the face. Fear turns the hair gray. Mind controls every function of the human body.   If the thought you hold before your subconscious  mind is the fear of disease, of colds or catarrh,   of fever or indigestion, those are the images  your subconscious mind will work out in your   body. For your body itself is merely so much  matter—an aggregation of protons and electrons,   just as the table in front of you is an  aggregation of these same buttons of force,   but with a different density. Take away your  mind, and your body is just as inert, just as   lifeless, and just as senseless, as the table.  Every function of your body, from the beating   of your heart to the secretions in your glands, is  controlled by mind. The digestion of your food is   just as much a function of your mind as the moving  of your finger. So the all-important thing is not   what food you put into your stomach, but what your  mind decides shall be done with it. If your mind   feels that certain food should make you sick, it  will make you sick. If, on the other hand, your   mind decides that though the food has no nutritive  value, there is no reason why unintelligent matter   should make you sick, mind will eliminate  that food without harm or discomfort to you.  Your body is just like clay in the hands of a  potter. Your mind can make of it what it will.   The clay has nothing to say about what form it  shall take. Neither have your head, your heart,   your lungs, your digestive organs anything to  say about how conditions shall affect them.   They do not decide whether they shall be dizzy  or diseased or lame. It is mind that makes this   decision. They merely conform to it AFTER mind  has decided it. Matter has undergone any and every   condition without harm, when properly sustained by  mind. And what it has done once, it can do again.  When you understand that your muscles, your  nerves, your bones have no feeling or intelligence   of their own, when you learn that they react to  conditions only as mind directs that they shall   react, you will never again think or speak of any  organ as imperfect, as weak or ailing. You will   never again complain of tired bodies, aching  muscles, or frayed nerves. On the contrary,   you will hold steadfast to thoughts of exhaustless  strength, of super-abundant vitality, knowing   that, as Shakespeare said— “There is nothing,  either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”  Never fear disaster, for the fear of it is an  invitation to disaster to come upon you. Fear   being vivid, easily impresses itself upon the  sub-conscious mind. And by so impressing itself,   it brings into being the thing that is feared. It  is the Frankenstein monster that we all create at   times, and which, created, and turns to rend  its creator. Fear that something you greatly   prize will be lost and the fear you feel with  creates the very means whereby you will lose it.  Fear is the Devil. It is the ravening  lion roaming the earth seeking whom   it may devour. The only safety from  it is to deny it. The only refuge is   in the knowledge that it has no power  other than the power you give to it. He Whom a Dream Hath Possessed You fear debt. So your mind concentrates upon   it and brings about greater debts. You fear loss.  And by visualizing that loss you bring it about.  The only remedy for fear is to know that evil  has no power—that it is a non- entity—merely a   lack of something. You fear ill health,  when if you would concentrate that same   amount of thought upon good health you would  insure the very condition you fear to lose.   Functional disturbances are caused solely by  the mind through wrong thinking. The remedy   for them is a not drug, but right thinking, for  the trouble is not in the organs but in the mind.   Farnsworth in his “Practical Psychology” tells  of a man who had conceived the idea when a boy   that the eating of cherries and milk together  had made him sick. He was very fond of both,   but always had to be careful not to eat them  together, for whenever he did he had been ill.   Mr. Farnsworth explained to him that there  was no reason for such illness, because all   milk sours anyway just as soon as it reaches  the stomach. As a matter of fact it cannot be   digested until it does sour. He then treated the  man mentally for this wrong association of ideas,   and after the one treatment the man was never  troubled in this way again, though he had been   suffering from it for forty-five years. If you had delirium tremens,   and thought you saw pink elephants and green  alligators and yellow snakes all about you,   it would be a foolish physician that would try  to cure you of snakes. Or that would prescribe   glasses to improve your eyesight, when he  knew that the animals round about you were   merely distorted visions of your mind. The indigestion that you suffer from,   the colds that bother you—in short, each  and every One of your ailments-is just   as much a distorted idea of your mind as  would be the snakes of delirium tremens.   Banish the idea and you banish the manifestation. The Bible contains one continuous entreaty to cast   out fear. From beginning to end, the admonition  “Fear not” is insistent. Fear is the primary   cause of all bodily impairment. Jesus understood  this and He knew that it could be abolished. Hence   His frequent entreaty, “Fear not, be not afraid.” Struggle there is. And struggle there will always   be. But struggle is merely wrestling with  trial. We need difficulties to overcome.   But there is nothing to be afraid of. Everything  is an effect of mind. Your thought forces,   concentrated upon anything, will bring that thing  into manifestation. Therefore concentrate them   only upon good things, only upon those conditions  you wish to see manifested. Think health, power,   abundance, and happiness. Drive all thoughts of  poverty and disease, of fear and worry, as far   from your mind as you drive filth from your homes.  For fear and worry is the filth of the mind that   causes all trouble, that brings about all disease.  Banish it! Banish from among your associates any   man with a negative outlook on life. Shun  him as you would the plague. Can you imagine   a knocker winning anything? He is doomed before  he starts. Don’t let him pull you down with him.   “Fret not thyself,” says the Psalmist,  “else shalt thou be moved to do evil.”  That wise old Psalmist might have been writing  for us today. For there is no surer way of   doing the wrong thing in business or in social  life than to fret yourself, to worry, to fume,   to want action of some kind, regardless of what  it may be. Remember the Lord’s admonition to the   Israelites, “Be still—and know that I am God.” Have you ever stood on the shore of a calm,   peaceful lake and watched the reflections in it?  The trees, the mountains, the clouds, the sky,   all were mirrored there—just as perfectly, as  beautifully, as the objects themselves. But try   to get such a reflection from the ocean! It cannot  be done, because the ocean is always restless,   always stirred up by winds or waves or tides. So it is with your mind. You cannot reflect   the richness and plenty of Universal Mind, you  cannot mirror peace and health and happiness,   if you are constantly worried, continually  stirred by waves of fear, winds of anger, tides   of toil and striving. You must relax at times. You  must give mind a chance. You must realize that,   when you have done your best, you can confidently  lean back and leave the outcome to Universal Mind.  Just as wrong thinking produces discord in the  body, so it also brings on a diseased condition   in the realm of commerce. Experience teaches  that we need to be protected more from our   fears and wrong thoughts, than from so-called  evil influences external to ourselves. We need   not suffer for another man’s wrong, for another’s  greed, dishonesty, avarice or selfish ambition.   But if we hug to ourselves the fear that we do  have to so suffer, take it into our thought, allow   it to disturb us, then we sentence ourselves. ‘We  are free to reject every suggestion of discord,   and to be governed harmoniously, in spite of  what anything or anybody may try to do to us.  Do you know why old army men would rather have  soldiers of 18 or 20 than mature men of 30 or   40? Not because they can march farther. They  can’t! Not because they can carry more. They   can’t! But because when they go to sleep  at night, they really sleep. They wipe the   slate clean! When they awaken in the morning,  they are ready for a new day and a new world.  But an older man carries the nervous strain of one  day over to the next. He worries! With the result   that at the end of a couple of month’s’ hard  campaigning, the older man is a nervous wreck.  And that is the trouble with most men in  business. They never wipe the slate clean!   They worry! And they carry each  day’s worries over to the next,   with the result that some day the  burden becomes more than they can carry. The Bars of Fate Fear results from a   belief that there are really two powers in this  world - Good and Evil. Like light and darkness.   When the fact is that Evil is no more real than  darkness. True, we lose contact with Good at   times. We let the clouds of fear and worry come  between us and the sunlight of Good and then all   seems dark. But the sun is still shining on  the other side of those clouds, and when we   drive them away, we again see its light. Realizing this, realizing that Good is   ever available if we will but turn to it  confidently in our need, what is there to fear?   “Fear not, little flock,” said Jesus, “for it  is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the   kingdom.” And again— “Son, thou art ever  with me, and all that I have is thine.”  If this means anything, it means that the Father  is ever available to all of us that we have but to   call upon Him in the right way and our needs will  be met. It doesn’t matter what those needs may be.  If Universal Mind is the Creator of all, and if  everything in the Universe belongs to It, then   your business, your work, isn’t really yours—but  the “Father’s.” And He is just as much interested   in its success, as long as you are working  in accordance with His plan, as you can be.  Everyone will admit that Universal Mind can do  anything good. Everyone will admit that It can   bring to a successful conclusion any undertaking  It may be interested in. If Mind created your   business, if It inspired your work, then It  is interested in its successful conclusion.  Why not, then, call upon Mind when you have  done all you know how to do and yet success   seems beyond your efforts. Why not put your  problem up to Mind, secure in the belief that   It CAN and WILL give you any right thing you  may desire? I know that many people hesitate   to pray for material things, but if Universal  Mind made them, they must have been made for   some good purpose, and as long as you intend to  use them for good, by all means ask for them.  If you can feel that your business, your work,  is a good work, if you can be sure that it is   advancing the great Scheme of Things by ever so  little, you will never again fear debt or lack   or limitation. For “The earth is the Lord’s  and the fullness thereof.” Universal Mind is   never going to lack for means to carry on Its  work. When Jesus needed fish and bread, fish   and bread were provided in such abundance that  a whole multitude was fed. When He needed gold,   the gold coin appeared in the fish’s mouth. Where  you are, Mind is, and where Mind is, there is all   the power, all the supply of the universe. You are like the owner of a powerhouse that   supplies electricity for light and heat and power  to the homes and the factories around you. There   is unlimited electricity everywhere about you,  but you have got to set your dynamo going to draw   the electricity out of the air and into your power  lines, before it can be put to practical account.  Just so, there are unlimited riches all about  you, but you have got to set the dynamo of   your mind to work to bring them into such form as  will make them of use to yourself and the world.  So don’t worry about any present lack of  money or other material things. Don’t try   to win from others what they have. Go where  the money is! The material wealth that is in   evidence is so small compared with the possible  wealth available through the right use of mind,   that it is negligible by comparison. The great  rewards are for the pioneers. Look at Carnegie; at   Woolworth; at Ford! Every year some new field of  development is opened, some new world discovered.   Steam, gas, electricity, telegraphy, wireless,  the automobile, and the aeroplane — each opens   up possibilities of new worlds yet to come. A hundred years ago, people probably felt   that everything had been discovered that could  be discovered. That everything was already known   that was likely ever to be known. Just as you may  feel about things now, yet look at the tremendous   strides mankind has taken in the past hundred  years. And they are as nothing to what the future   holds for us, once man has learned to harness the  truly unlimited powers of his subconscious mind.  There are billions of dollars worth of treasure  under every square mile of the earth’s surface.   There are millions of ways in which this old  world of ours can be made a better place to live.   Set your mind to work locating some of  this treasure, finding some of those ways.   Don’t wait for someone else to blaze the trail. No one remembers who else was on the Santa Maria,   but Columbus’ name will be known forever! Carnegie  is said to have made a hundred millionaires,   but he alone became almost a billionaire! Have you ever read Kipling’s “Explorer?”  “‘There’s no sense in going  further—it’s the edge of cultivation,   So they said, and I believed it —  broke my land and sowed my crop—   Built my barns and strung my fences in the little  border station Tucked away below the foothills   where the trails run out and stop. “Till a voice,  as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes   on one everlasting Whisper day and night  repeated—so: ‘something hidden. Go and find   it. Go and look behind the Ranges—Something lost  behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!’”  Your mind is part and parcel of Universal Mind.  You have the wisdom of all the ages to draw upon.   Use it! Use it to do your work in a way it was  never done before. Use it to find new outlets   for your business, new methods of reaching  people, new and better ways of serving them.   Use it to uncover new riches, to learn ways  to make the world a better place to live in.  Concentrate your thought upon these things,  knowing that back of you is the vast reservoir   of Universal Mind, that all these things are  already known to It, and that you have but to   make your contact for them to be known to you. Optimism based on such a realization is never   overconfidence. It is the joyous assurance of  absolute faith. It is the assurance that made   Wilson for a time the outstanding leader of the  world. It is the assurance that heartened Lincoln   during the black days of the Civil War. It is the  assurance that carried Hannibal and Napoleon over   the Alps, that left Alexander sighing for  more worlds to conquer, that enabled Cortez   and his little band to conquer a nation. Grasp this idea of the availability of   Universal Mind for your daily needs,  and your vision will become enlarged,   your capacity increased. You will realize that  the only limits upon you are those you put upon   yourself. There will be no such thing then as  difficulties and opposition barring your way. Exercise You feed and nourish the body daily.   But few people give any thought to nourishing  that far more important part—the Mind.   So let us try, each day, to set apart a  few minutes time to give the Mind a repast.  To begin with, relax! Stretch out  comfortably on a lounge or in an easy   chair and let go of every muscle, loosen  every bit of tension, forget every thought   of fear or worry. Relax mentally and physically. Few people know how to relax entirely. Most of us   are on a continual strain, and it is this strain  that brings on physical disturbances—not any real   work we may do. Here is a little exercise  that will help you to thoroughly relax:  Recline comfortably on a lounge or bed. Stretch  luxuriously first, then when you are settled at   your ease again, lift the right leg a foot or  two. Let it drop limply. Repeat slowly twice.   Do the same with the left leg. With the right  arm. With the left arm. You will find then that   all your muscles are relaxed. You can forget  them and turn your thoughts to other things.  Try to realize the unlimited power that is yours.  Think back to the dawn of time, when Mind first   imaged from nothingness the heavens and the  earth and all that in them is. Remember that,   although your mind is to Universal Mind only as  a drop of water to the ocean, this drop has all   the properties of the great ocean; one in quality  although not in quantity; your mind has all the   creative power of Universal Mind. “And God made man in His image,   after His likeness.” Certainly God never  manifested anything but infinite abundance,   infinite supply. If you are made in His image,  there is no reason why you should ever lack for   anything of good. You can manifest abundance, too. Round about you are the same electronic energy   from which Universal Mind formed the heavens  and the earth. What do you wish to form from   it? What do you want most from life? Hold  it in your thought, visualize it, and SEE   it! Make your model clear-cut and distinct.

1. Remember, the first thing necessary is a   sincere desire, concentrating your thought  on one thing with singleness of purpose.  2. The second is visualization—SEE ING YOURSELF  DOING IT—imaging the object in the same way   that Universal Mind imaged all of creation.
2. Next is faith; BELIEVING that you HAVE this   thing that you want. Not that you are GOING  to have it, mind you—but that you HAVE it.  4. And the last is gratitude—gratitude for this  thing that you have received, gratitude for the   power that enabled you to create it, gratitude  for all the gifts that Mind has laid at your feet.  “Trust in the Lord . . . and  verily thou shalt be fed.”  “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He  shall give thee the desires of thy heart.”  “Commit thy way unto the Lord,  and He Shall bring it to pass.” VOLUME 5  Chapter 14: Your Needs Are Met “Arise, 0 Soul, and gird thee up anew,  Though the black camel Death kneel at this gate; No beggar thou that thou for alms shouldst sue;  Be the proud captain still of thine own fate.” —KENYON. You’ve heard the story of the old  man who called his children to his   bedside to give them a few parting words  of advice. And this was the burden of it.  “My children,” he said, “I have had a great  deal of trouble in my life—a great deal of   trouble—but most of it never happened.” We are all of us like that old man.   Our troubles weigh us down—in prospect— ~but we  usually find that when the actual need arrives,   Providence has devised some way of meeting it. Dr. Jacques Loeb, a member of the Rockefeller   Institute, conducted a series of tests with  parasites found on plants, which show that   even the lowest order of creatures have  the power to call upon Universal Supply   for the resources to meet any unusual need. “In order to obtain the material,” reads the   report of the tests, “potted rose bushes are  brought into a room and placed in front of a   closed window. If the plants are allowed to  dry out, the aphides (parasites), previously   wingless, change to winged insects. After the  metamorphosis, the animals leave the plants, fly   to the window and then creep upward on the glass. “It is evident that these tiny insects found that   the plants on which they had been thriving  were dead, and that they could therefore   secure nothing more to eat and drink from this  source. The only method by which they could   save themselves from starvation was to grow  temporary wings and fly, which they did.”  In short, when their source of sustenance  was shut off and they had to find the   means of migrating or perish, Universal  Supply furnished the means for migration.  If Universal Mind can thus provide  for the meanest of its creatures,   is it not logical to suppose that It will do even  more for us—the highest product of creation—if we   will but call upon It, if we will but have a  little faith? Viewed in the light of Mind’s  response to the need of those tiny parasites,  does it seem so unbelievable that a sea should   roll back while a people marched across it dry-  shod? That a pillar of fire should lead them   through the wilderness by night? That manna should  fall from heaven, or water gush forth from a rock?  In moments of great peril, in times of  extremity, when the brave soul has staked   its all—those are the times when miracles  are wrought, if we will but have faith.  That doesn’t mean that you should rest supinely  at your ease and let the Lord provide. When you   have done all that is in you to do—when you have  given of your best—don’t worry or fret as to the   outcome. Know that if more is needed, your need  will be met. You can sit back with the confident   assurance that having done your part; you can  depend upon the Genie-of-your-Mind to do the rest.  When the little state of Palestine was in danger  of being overrun by Egypt on the one hand,   or gobbled up by Assyria on the other, its  people were frantically trying to decide which   horn of the dilemma to embrace, with which  enemy they should ally themselves to stave   off the other. “With neither,” the Prophet Isaiah  told them, “in calmly resting your safety lieth;   in quiet trust shall be your strength.” So it is with most of the great calamities   that afflict us. If we would only “calmly rest,  quietly trust,” how much better off we should be.   But no—we must fret and worry, and nine times out  of ten do the wrong thing. And the more we worry   and fret, the more likely we are to go wrong. All of Universal Mind that is necessary to solve   any given problem, to meet any need, is wherever  that need may be. Supply is always where you are   and what you need. It matters not whether it  be sickness or trouble, poverty or danger, the   remedy is there, waiting for your call. Go at your  difficulty boldly, knowing that you have infinite   resources behind you, and you will find these  forces closing around you and coming to your aid.  It’s like an author writing a book. For a long  time he works in a kind of mental fog, but let him   persevere, and there flashes suddenly a light that  clarifies his ideas and shows him the way to shape   them logically. At the moment of despair, you feel  a source of unknown energy arising in your soul.  That doesn’t mean that you will never have  difficulties. Difficulties are good for   you. They are the exercise of your mind. You  are the stronger for having overcome them.   But look upon them as mere exercise. As “stunts”  that are given you in order that you may the   better learn how to use your mind, how to draw  upon Universal Supply. Like Jacob wrestling with   the Angel, don’t let them go until they have  blessed you—until, in other words, you have   learned something from having encountered them. Remember this: No matter how great a catastrophe   may befall mankind, no matter how general the  loss, you and yours can be free from it. There   is always a way of safety. There is always an  “ark” by which the understanding few can be saved  from the flood. The name of that ark is  understanding—understanding of your inner   powers. When the children of Israel were being  led into the Promised Land, and Joshua had given   them their directions, they answered him:  “All that thou commandest us we will do,   and whithersoever thou sendest us, we will go. . . Only the Lord thy God be with thee,   as He was with Moses.” They came to the river Jordan, and it seemed an   insurmountable barrier in their path, but Joshua  commanded them to take the Ark of the Covenant,   representing God’s understanding with them, before  them into the Jordan. They did it, and “the waters   which came down from above stood and rose up  upon an heap. . . . And the priests that bare   the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord stood firm  on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all   the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until  all the people were passed clean over Jordan.” The Ark of the Covenant All through the Old Testament,   when war and pestilence, fire and  flood, were the common lot of mankind,   there is constant assurance of safety for those  who have this understanding, this “Covenant” with   the Lord. “Because thou hast made the Lord which  is my refuge—even the Most High—thy habitation,   there shall no evil befall thee, neither  shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.   For He shall give His angels charge  over thee to keep thee in all thy ways.”  That is His agreement with us—an agreement  that gives us the superiority to circumstances,   which men have sought from time immemorial. All  that is necessary on our side of the agreement   is for us to remember the infinite powers that  reside within us, to remember that our mind is   part of Universal Mind and as such it can  foresee, it can guard against and it can   protect us from harm of any kind. We need not run  away from trials or try to become stoical towards   them. All we need is to bring our understanding to  bear upon them— to know that no situation has ever   yet arisen with which Universal Mind— and through  it our own mind—was not fully competent to deal.   To know that the right solution of every problem  is in Universal Mind. We have but to seek that   solution and our trial is overcome. “But where shall Wisdom be found?   And where is the place of understanding?  Acquaint now thyself with God, and be at peace.”  If evil threatens us, if failure, sickness or  accident seems imminent, we have only to decide   that these evils do not come from Universal Mind,  therefore they are unreal and have no power over   us. They are simply the absence of the right  condition, which Universal Mind knows. Refuse,   therefore, to see them, to acknowledge  them—and seek through Mind for the right   condition, which shall nullify them. If you will do this, you will find that   you can appropriate from Mind whatever you  require for your needs, when you require it.   The greater your need, the more surely it will be  met, if you can but realize this truth. “Fear not,   little flock,” said Jesus, “for it is your  Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”  Remember that your thought is  all-powerful. That it is creative.   That there is no limitation upon it of time  or space. And that it is ever available.  Forget your worries. Forget your fears. In  place of them, visualize the conditions you   would like to see. Realize their availability.  Declare to yourself that you already have all   these things that you desire, that your  needs have been met. Say to yourself:   “How thankful I am that Mind has made all these  good things available to me. I have everything   that heart could desire to be grateful for.” Every time you do this, you impress the thought   upon your subconscious mind. And the moment you  can convince your subconscious mind of the truth   of it—that moment your mind will proceed  to make it true. This is the way to put   into practice the Master’s advice — “Believe  that ye RECEIVE it, and ye SHALL HAVE it.”  There is no condition so hopeless, no cause  so far gone, that this truth will not save it.   Time and again patients given over by their  doctors as doomed have made miraculous   recoveries through the faith of some loved one. “I hope that everyone who reads this Book may   gain as much from their first reading as I did,”  writes a happy subscriber from New York City. “I   got such a clear understanding from that one  reading that I was able to break the mental   chain holding a friend to a hospital bed, and she  left the hospital in three days, to the very great   astonishment of the doctors handling the case.” In the same way, there are innumerable instances   where threatened calamity has been warded off  and good come instead. The great trouble with   most of us is, we do not believe. We insist  upon looking for trouble. We feel that the   “rainy day” is bound to come, and we do our utmost  to make it a surety by keeping it in our thoughts,   preparing for it, fearing it. “Cowards die many  times before their deaths; the valiant never taste   of death but once.” We cross our bridges a dozen  times before we come to them. We doubt ourselves,   we doubt our ability, we doubt everyone and  everything around us, and our doubts sap our   energy; kill our enthusiasm; rob us of success.  We arc like the old lady who “enjoys poor health.”   We always place that little word “but” after  our wishes and desires, feeling deep down that   there are some things too good to be true.  We think there is a power apart from Good,   which can withhold blessings that should be  ours. We doubt because we cannot see the way   by which our desires can be fulfilled. We put  a limit upon the good that can come to us.  “Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts,”  cried the Prophet Malachi, “if I will not open   you the windows of heaven and pour you out a  blessing that there shall not be room enough to   receive it. . . And all nations shall call you  blessed, for ye shall be a delightsome land.”  Your mind is part of Universal Mind. And Universal  Mind has all supply. You are entitled to,   and you can have, just as much of that supply as  you are able to appropriate. To expect less is to   get less, for it dwarfs your power of receiving. It doesn’t matter what your longings may be,   provided they are right longings. If  your little son has his heart set on a   train and you feel perfectly able to get him a  train, you are not going to hand him a picture   book instead. It may be that the picture  book would have greater educational value,   but the love you have for your son is going  to make you try to satisfy his longings as   long as those longings are not harmful ones. In the same way, Universal Mind will satisfy   your longings, no matter how trivial they may  seem, as long as they are not harmful ones.   “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He  shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”  If we would only try to realize that God is not  some far-off Deity, not some stern Judge, but the   beneficent force that we recognize as Nature—the  life Principle that makes the flowers bud,   and the plants grow, that spreads abundance about  us with lavish band. If we could realize that He   is the Universal Mind that holds all supply, that  will give us the toy of our childhood or the needs   of maturity, that all we need to obtain from Him  our Heart’s Desire is a right understanding of His   availability—then we would lose all our fears,  all our worries, all our sense of limitation.  For Universal Mind is an infinite, unlimited  source of good. Not only the source of general   good, but the specific good things you  desire of life. To It there is no big or   little problem. The removal of mountains is no  more difficult than the feeding of a sparrow.  And to one—like the Master—with a perfect  understanding, the “miracle” of raising   Lazarus from the dead required no more effort  than the turning of the water into wine.   He knew that Universal Mind is all  power—and there cannot be more than ALL.   He knew that “To know God aright is life  eternal.” And Jesus knew God aright, so was   able to demonstrate this knowledge of life eternal  in overcoming sin, disease and death. For it is   one and the same law that heals sin, sickness,  poverty, heartaches, or death itself. That law   is the right understanding of Divine Principle. But what does this ability to perform “miracles”   consist of? What is the power or force by  which we can prove this ability? Perhaps the   simplest way is to begin with the realization  that Universal Mind is man’s working power. The Science of Thought Can you stretch your   mind a bit and try to comprehend this  wonderful fact—that the ALL POWERFUL,   ALL- KNOWING, EVERLASTING CREATOR and  Governor of the infinite universe,   “Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of  his hand, and meted out heaven with the span,   and comprehended the dust of the earth in a  measure, and weighed the mountains in scales,   and the hills in a balance,” is your working  power? In proportion as we understand this fact,   and make use of it, in that same proportion  are we able to perform our miracles.  Your work is inspired to the extent that you  realize the presence of Universal Mind in   your work. When you rely entirely on your own  conscious mind, your work suffers accordingly.   “I can of mine own self do nothing; for the works  which the Father hath given me to finish, the same   works that I do bear witness of me.” The miracles  of Jesus bear witness of the complete recognition   of God the Father as his working power. And mind you, this inspiration, this working   of Universal Mind with you, is available for all  of your undertakings. Mind could not show Itself   in one part of your life and withhold Itself from  another, since It is all in all. Every rightly   directed task, no matter how insignificant or  menial it may appear to you, carries with it   the inspiration of Universal Mind, since by  the very nature of omnipotence, Its love and   bestowals must be universal and impartial, “and  whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord.”  Too many of us are like the maiden in the old  Eastern legend. A Genii sent her into a field of   grain, promising her a rare gift if she would pick  for him the largest and ripest ear she could find;   His gift to be in proportion to  the size and perfection of the ear.  But he made this condition—she must  pluck but one ear, and she must walk   straight through the field without stopping,  going back or wandering hither and thither.  Joyously she started. As she walked through the  grain, she saw many large ears, many perfect ones.   She passed them by in scorn, thinking to find  an extra-large, super-perfect one farther along.   Presently, however, the soil became  less fertile, the ears small and sparse.   She couldn’t pick one of these! Would now that  she had been content with an ordinary-sized   ear farther back. But it was too late for that.  Surely they would grow better again farther on!  She walked on—and on—and always they became  worse—’till presently she found herself at the end   of the field— empty handed as when she set out! So it is with life. Every day has its worthwhile   rewards for work well done. Every  day offers its chance for happiness.   But those rewards seem so small, those chances so  petty, compared with the big things we see ahead.   So we pass them by, never recognizing that the  great position we look forward to, the shining   prize we see in the distance, is just the sum of  all the little tasks, the heaped up result of all   the little prizes that we must win as we go along. You are not commanded to pick out certain   occupations as being more entitled to the Lord’s  consideration than others, but “Whatsoever ye do.”   Whether it be in the exalted and idealistic realms  of poetry, music and art, whether in the cause of   religion or philanthropy, whether in government,  in business, in science, or simply in household   cares, “whatsoever ye do” you are entitled to and  have all of inspiration at your beck and call.   If you seem to have less than all, it  is because you do not utilize your gift.  “Now he that planteth and he that watereth are  one; and every man shall receive his own reward   according to his own labour. For we are labourer’s  together with God.” “All things are yours;   and ye are Christ’s and Christ’s is God’s.” How shall you take advantage of this Universal   Supply? When next any need confronts you, when  next you are in difficulties, close your eyes   for a moment and realize that Universal Mind knows  how that need can best be met, knows the solution   of your difficulties. Your sub-conscious mind,  being part of the Universal Mind, can know this,   too. So put your problem up to your subconscious  mind with the sublime confidence that it will find   the solution. Then forget it for a while.  When the time comes, the need will be met.  Dr. Winbigler corroborates the working  out of this idea in the following:  “Suggestions lodged in the mind can effect  a complete change, morally and physically,   if mankind would become in spirit ‘as a little  child,’ trusting in God implicitly, the greatest   power would be utilized in the establishment of  health and equilibrium, and the results would   be untold in comfort, sanity, and blessing. For  instance, here is one who is suffering from worry,   fear, and the vexations of life. How can he get  rid of these things and relieve this suffering?   Let him go to a quiet room or place, twice a day,  lie down and relax every muscle, assume complete   indifference to those things which worry him and  the functions of the body, and quietly accept what   God, through this law of demand and supply, can  give. In a few days he will find a great change   in his feelings, and the sufferings will pass  away and life will look bright and promising.   Infinite wisdom has established that law; and its  utilization by those who are worried and fearful   will secure amazing results in a short time. “The real reason for the change is found in   the possibility of recovery by using the  laws that God has placed within our reach,   and thus securing the coveted health and power for  all that we want and ought to do. The subliminal   life is the connecting link between man and  God, and by obeying His laws, one’s life is   put in contact with infinite resources and  all that God is able and willing to give.   Here is the secret of all the cures of disease,  and the foundation for the possibility of a joyful   existence, happiness and eternal life. Suggestion  is the method of securing what God gives, and the   mind is the agent through which these gifts are  received. This is not a matter of theory, but a   fact. If anyone who is sick or who desires to he  kept well will have stated periods of relaxation,   open-mindedness, and faith, he can prove the  beneficial and unvarying result of this method.” Chapter 15: The Master of Your Fate “A craven hung along the battle’s edge,  And thought, ‘Had I a sword of keener steel— That blue blade that the king’s   son bears,—but this blunt thing—!’ And lowering crept away and left the field.  Then came the king’s son, wounded, sore bestead And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,  And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,  And saved a great cause that heroic day.” —EDWARD ROWLAND SILL. (From ‘Poems,” Houghton, Muffin Co.) Where will you be at 65? Five men in six at the  age of 65 are living on charity. Just one in   twenty is able to live without working at 65. That is what the American Bankers Association   found when it took one hundred healthy  men at 25 and traced them to 65.  These hundred were healthy to start with.  They all had the same chance for success.   The difference lay in the way they used their  MINDS. Ninety-five out of one hundred just   do the tasks that are set them. They have  no faith in themselves—no initiative—none   of the courage that starts things. They are  always directed or controlled by someone else.  At 65, where will you be?  Dependent or independent?   Struggling for a living— accepting charity  from someone else—or at the top of the heap?  “I am the Master of my fate.” Until you have learned that,   you will never attain life’s full success. Your  fate is in your own hands. You have the making   of it. What you are going to be six months or a  year from now depends upon what you think today.  So make your choice now: Are you going to bow down to matter as the only   power? Are you going to look upon your environment  as something that has been wished upon you and for   which you are in no way responsible? Or are you  going to try to realize in your daily life that   matter is merely an aggregation of protons and  electrons subject entirely to the control of Mind,   that your environment, your success, your  happiness, are all of your own making,   and that if you are not satisfied with conditions  as they you have but to visualize them as you   would have them be in order to change them? The former is the easier way right now—the   easy way that leads to the hell  of poverty and fear and old age.  But the latter is the way that  brings you to your Heart’s Desire.  And merely because this Power  of Universal Mind is invisible,   is that any reason to doubt it? The greatest  powers of Nature are invisible. Love is invisible,   but what greater power is there in life? Joy is  invisible, happiness, peace, and contentment.   The radio is invisible—yet you hear it. It is  a product of the law governing sound waves. Law   is invisible, yet you see the manifestation of  different laws every day. To run a locomotive,   you study the law of applying power, and you  apply that law when you make the locomotive go.  These things are not the result of invention.  The law has existed from the beginning.   It merely waited for man to learn how to apply it.  If man had known how to call upon Universal Mind   to the right extent, he could have applied the  law of sound waves, the law of steam, ages ago.   Invention is merely a revelation and  an unfoldment of Universal Wisdom.  That same Universal Wisdom knows millions of  other laws of which man has not even a glimmering.   You can call upon It. You can use that Wisdom as  your own. By thinking of things as they might be   instead of as they are you will eventually find  some great Need. And to find a need is the first   step towards finding the supply to satisfy that  need. You’ve got to know what you are after,   before you can send the Genie-of-your  Mind a-seeking of it in Universal Mind. The Acre of Diamonds You remember the story of the poor Boer farmer   who struggled for years to glean a livelihood out  of his rocky soil, only to give it up in despair   and go off to seek his fortune elsewhere. Years  later, coming back to his old farm, he found it   swarming with machinery and life—more wealth being  dug out of it every day than he had ever dreamed   existed. It was the great Kimberley Diamond Mine! Most of us are like that poor Boer farmer. We   struggle along under our surface power, never  dreaming of the giant power that could be ours   if we would but dig a little deeper—rouse  that great Inner Self who can give us more   even than any acre of diamonds. As Orison Swett Marden put it:  “The majority of failures in life are simply the  victims of their mental defeats. Their conviction   that they cannot succeed as others do, rob them of  that vigor and determination which self-confidence   imparts, and they don’t even half try to succeed. “There is no philosophy by which a man can do a   thing when he thinks he can’t. The reason  why millions of men are plodding along in   mediocrity today, many of them barely making  a living, when they have the ability to do   something infinitely bigger, is because  they lack confidence in themselves. They   don’t believe they can do the bigger thing that  would lift them out of their rut of mediocrity   and poverty; they are not winners mentally. “The way always opens for the determined soul,   the man of faith and courage. “It is the victorious mental attitude,   the consciousness of power, the sense of  mastership, that does the big things in   this world. If you haven’t this attitude, if you  lack self-confidence, begin now to cultivate it.  “A highly magnetized piece of steel will attract  and lift a piece of unmagnetized steel ten times   its own weight. Demagnetize that same piece  of steel and it will be powerless to attract   or lift even a feather’s weight. “Now, my friends, there is the   same difference between the man who is highly  magnetized by a sublime faith in himself, and   the man who is de-magnetized by his lack of faith,  his doubts, his fears, that there is between the   magnetized and the de-magnetized pieces of steel.  If two men of equal ability, one magnetized by a   divine self-confidence, the other demagnetized  by fear and doubt, are given similar tasks,   one will succeed and the other will fail. The  self-confidence of the one multiplies his powers   a hundredfold; the lack of it subtracts a  hundredfold from the power of the other.”  Have you ever thought how much of your time  is spent in choosing what you shall do,   which task you will try, which way you shall  go? Every day is a day of decision. We are   constantly at crossroads, in our business  dealings, our social relations, in our homes;   there is always the necessity of a choice. How  important then that we have faith in ourselves   and in that Infinite intelligence within.  “Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy   thoughts shall be established.” “In all thy ways  acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”  In this ever-changing material age, with seemingly  complex forces all about us, we sometimes cry out   that we are driven by force of circumstances.  Yet the fact remains that we do those things,   which we choose to do. For even though we may not  wish to go a certain way, we allow ourselves to   pursue it because it offers the least resistance. “To every man there openeth  A way, and ways, and a way. And the high soul climbs the high way,  And the low soul gropes the low: And in between, on the misty flats,  The rest drift to and fro. But to every man there openeth  A high way and a low, And every man decideth  The way his soul shall go.” —JOHN OXENHAM. Now, how about you? Are you taking active control  of your own thought? Are you imaging upon your   subconscious mind only such things, as you want to  see realized? Are you thinking healthy thoughts,   happy thoughts, and successful thoughts? The difference between the successful man   and the unsuccessful one is not so much a  matter of training or equipment. It is not   a question of opportunity or luck. It is just  in the way they each of them look at things.  The successful man sees an opportunity, seizes  upon it, and moves upward another rung on the   ladder of success. It never occurs to him that  he may fail. He sees only the opportunity, he   visions what he can do with it, and all the forces  within and without him combine to help him win.  The unsuccessful man sees the same opportunity,  he wishes that he could take advantage of it,   but he is fearful that his ability or his money  or his credit may not be equal to the task.   He is like a timid bather, putting in one foot  and then drawing it swiftly back again – and   while he hesitates some bolder spirit  dashes in and beats him to the goal.  Nearly every man can look back— and not so  far back either with most of us—and say,   “If I had taken that chance, I  would be much better off now.”  You will never need to say it again, once you  realize that the future is entirely within your   own control. It is not subject to the whims of  fortune or the capriciousness of luck. There is   but one Universal Mind and that mind contains  naught but good. In it is no images of Evil.   From it comes no lack of supply. Its ideas  are as numberless as the grains of sand   on the seashore. And those ideas comprise  all wealth, all power, and all happiness.  You have only to image vividly enough on  your subconscious mind the thing you wish,   to draw from Universal Mind, the necessary  ideas to bring it into being. You have only   to keep in mind the experiences you wish to  meet, in order to control your own future.  When Frank A. Vanderlip, former President of the  National City Bank, was a struggling youngster,   he asked a successful friend what one thing he  would urge a young man to do who was anxious to   make his way in the world. “Look as though you  have already succeeded,” his friend told him.   Shakespeare expresses the same thought in another  way—”Assume a virtue if you have it not.” Look the   part. Dress the part. Act the part. Be successful  in your own thought first. It won’t be long before   you will be successful before the world as well. David V. Bush, in his book “Applied   Psychology and Scientific Living,” says: “Man is like the wireless operator. Man is   subject to miscellaneous wrong thought currents  if his mind is not in tune with the Infinite,   or if he is not keyed up to higher  vibrations than those of negation.  “A man who thinks courageous thoughts sends these  courageous thought waves through the universal   ether until they lodge in the consciousness of  someone who is tuned to the same courageous key.   Think a strong thought, a courageous  thought, a prosperity thought,   and these thoughts will be received by someone  who is strong, courageous and prosperous.  “It is just as easy to think in terms of  abundance as to think in terms of poverty.   If we think poverty thoughts we become the  sending and receiving stations for poverty   thoughts. We send out a ‘poverty’ mental wireless  and it reaches the consciousness of some poverty-   stricken ‘receiver.’ We get what we think. “It is just as easy to think in terms of   abundance, opulence and prosperity as it is to  think in terms of lack, limitation and poverty.  “If a man will raise his rate of vibration  by faith currents or hope currents,   these vibrations go through the Universal Mind  and lodge in the consciousness of people who   are keyed to the same tune. Whatever you  think is sometime, somewhere, received   by a person who is tuned to your thought key. “If a man is out of work and he thinks thoughts   of success, prosperity, harmony, position  and growth, just as surely as his thoughts   are things—as Shakespeare says—someone  will receive his vibrations of success,   prosperity, harmony, position and growth. “If we are going to be timid, selfish,   penurious and picayunish in our thinking,  these thought waves which we have started in   the universal ether will go forth until they come  to a mental receiving station of the same caliber.   ‘Birds of a feather flock together,’ and minds  of like thinking are attracted one to the other.  “If you need money, all you have to do is to  send up your vibrations to a strong, courageous   receiving station, and someone who can meet your  needs will be attracted to you or you to him.”  When you learn that you are entitled to win—in any  right undertaking in which you may be engaged—you   will win. When you learn that you have a right  to a legitimate dominion over your own affairs,   you will have dominion over them.  The promise is that we can do all   things through the Mind that was in Christ. Universal Mind plays no favorites. No one human   being has any more power than any other. It is  simply that few of us use the power that is in our   hands. The great men of the world are in no wise  SUPER Beings. They are ordinary creatures like you   and me, who have stumbled upon the way of drawing  upon their subconscious mind—and through it upon   the Universal Mind. Speaking of Henry Ford’s  phenomenal success, his friend Thomas A. Edison   said of him—“He draws upon his subconscious mind.” The secret of being what you have it in you to   be is simply this: Decide now what it is you want  of life, exactly what you wish your future to be.   Plan it out in detail. Vision it from start  to finish. See yourself as you are now,   doing those things you have always wanted to  do. Make them REAL in your mind’s eye—feel them,   live them, believe them, especially at  the moment of going to sleep, when it is   easiest to reach your subconscious mind—and  you will soon be seeing them in real life.  It matters not whether you are young or old, rich  or poor. The time to begin is NOW. It is never too   late. Remember those lines of Appleton’s: ( From “The Quiet Courage.”   D. Appleton & Co., New York.) “I knew his face the moment that he passed   Triumphant in the thoughtless, cruel throng— I gently touched his arm—he smiled at me—  He was the Man that Once I Meant to Be! “Where I had failed, he’d won from life,   Success; Where I had stumbled, with sure feet  he stood; Alike—yet unalike—we faced the world,  And through the stress he found that life was  good. And I? The bitter wormwood in the glass,  The shadowed way along which failures pass! Yet as I saw him thus, joy came to me—  He was the Man that Once I Meant to Be! “We did not speak. But in his sapient eyes  I saw the spirit that had urged him on, The courage that had held him through the   fight Had once been mine. I thought, ‘Can it be  gone?’ He felt that unasked question—felt it so  His pale lips formed the one-word answer, ‘No!’  “Too late to win? No! Not too late for me—  He is the Man that Still I Mean to Be!” Chapter 16 - Unappropriated Millions  “Somebody said that it couldn’t be done, But he with a chuckle replied  That ‘maybe it couldn’t,’ but he would be one Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.  So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin On his face. If he worried he hid it.  He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn’t be done, and he did it.” —EDGAR A. GUEST. ( From “The Path  to Home.” The Reilly & Lee Co.)  The main difference between the mind of today and  that of our great-great- grandfathers was that in   their day conditions were comparatively  static, whereas today they are dynamic.   Civilization ran along for centuries with  comparatively little change. Most people   lived and died in the places where they were born.  They followed their fathers’ avocations. Seldom,   indeed, did one of them break out of the class  into which he had been born. Almost as seldom   did they even think of trying to. No wonder,  then, that civilization made little progress.  Today we are in the presence of continual change.  Men are imbued with that divine unrest which is   never satisfied with conditions as they are,  which is always striving for improvement. And   thought is the vital force behind all this change. Your ability to think is your connecting link with   Universal Mind, that enables you to draw upon  It for inspiration, for energy, for power.   Mind is the energy in static form.  Thought is the energy in dynamic form.  And because life is dynamic—not static; because  it is ever moving forward—not standing still;   your success or failure depends entirely  upon the quality of your thought.  For thought is creative energy. It brings  into being the things that you think.   Think the things you would see manifested, see  them, believe them, and you can leave it to your   subconscious mind to bring them into being. Your mind is a marvelous storage battery of   power on which you can draw for whatever things  you need to make your life what you would have it   be. It has within it all power, all resource, all  energy—but YOU are the one that must use it. All   that power is static unless you make it dynamic.  In the moment of creative thinking your conscious   mind becomes a Creator—it partakes of the power of  Universal Mind. And there is nothing static about   one who shares that All-power. The resistless Life  Energy within him pushes him on to new growth,   new aspirations. Just as the sap flowing  through the branches of the trees pushes   off the old dead leaves to make way for  the new life, just so you must push away   the old dead thoughts of poverty and lack and  disease, before you can bring on the new life   of health and happiness and unlimited supply. This life is in all of us, constantly struggling   for an outlet. Repress it— and you die. Doctors  will tell you that the only reason people grow   old is because their systems get clogged. The  tiny pores in your arteries get stopped up.   You don’t throw off the old. You don’t struggle  hard enough, and the result is you fall an easy   victim to failure and sickness and death. Remember the story of Sinbad the Sailor,   and the Old Man of the Sea? The Old Man’s weight  was as nothing when Sinbad first took him on his   shoulders, but he clung there and clung there,  slowly but surely sapping Sinbad’s strength,   and he would finally have killed him as he had  killed so many others if Sinbad, by calling to   his aid all his mental as well as his physical  resources, had not succeeded in shaking him off.  Most of us have some Old Man of the Sea riding  us, and because he clings tightly and refuses to   be easily shaken off, we let him stay there,  sapping our energies, using up our vitality,   when to rid us of him it is only necessary  to call to our aid ALL our resources, mental   as well as physical, for one supreme effort. When a storm arises, the hardy mariner doesn’t   turn off steam and drift helplessly before the  wind. That might be the easy way, but that way   danger lies. He turns on more steam and fights  against the gale. And so should you. There is a   something within you that thrives on difficulties.  You prize that more which costs an effort to win.   You need to blaze new trails, to encounter unusual  hardships, in order to reach your hidden mental   resources, just as the athlete needs to exert  himself to the utmost to reach his “second wind.”  Have you ever seen a turtle thrown on its  back? For a while it threshes around wildly,   reaching for something outside to take hold of  that shall put it on its feet. Just as we humans   always look for help outside ourselves first,  but presently he draws all his forces within his   shell, rests a bit to regain his strength, and  then throws his whole force to one side—legs,   head, tail, and all—and over he goes! So it is with us. When we realize that   the power to meet any emergency is within  ourselves, when we stop looking outside   for help and intelligently call upon Mind in  our need, we shall find that we are tapping   Infinite Resource. We shall find that we have but  to center all those resources on the one thing we   want most—to get anything from life that it has. As Emerson put it, when we once find the way to   get in touch with Universal Mind we are— “. . . owner of the sphere,  Of the Seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar’s hand and Plato’s brain,  Of the Lord Christ’s heart  and Shakespeare’s strain.” Chapter 17: The Secret of Power  “The great were once as you. They whom men magnify today  Once groped and blundered on life’s way Were fearful of themselves, and thought  By magic was men’s greatness wrought. They feared to try what they could do;  Yet Fame hath crowned with her success The selfsame gifts that you possess.  —EDGAR A. GUEST. ( Published by   permission of The International Magazine Co.  (Cosmopolitan Magazine) Copyright, 1921 )  There is a woman in one of the big Eastern cities  whose husband died a year or two ago and left her   nearly $100,000,000. She has unlimited power  in her hands—yet she uses none of it. She has   unlimited wealth—yet she gets no more from it than  if it were in the thousands instead of millions.   She knows nothing of her power,  of her wealth. She is insane.  You have just as great power in your hands—without  this poor woman’s excuse for not using it.  You have access to unlimited ideas,  unlimited energy, and unlimited wealth.   The “Open, Sesame!” is through your subconscious  mind. So long as you limit yourself to superficial   conditions, so long as you are a mere “hewer  of wood or carrier of water” for those around   you who do use their minds, you are in no  better position than the beasts of burden.  The secret of power is in understanding the  infinite resources of your own mind. When   you begin to realize that the power to do  anything, to be anything, to have anything,   is within yourself, then and then only will  you take your proper place in the world.  As Bruce Barton has it in “The Man Whom Nobody  Knows”— “Somewhere, at some unforgettable hour,   the daring filled His (Jesus) heart. He  knew that He was bigger than Nazareth.”  Again in speaking of Abraham Lincoln, Barton  says—“Inside himself he felt his power,   but where and when would opportunity  come?” And later in the book—  “But to every man of vision the clear voice  speaks. Nothing splendid has ever been achieved   except by those who dared believe that something  inside them was superior to circumstance.”  No doubt Jesus’ friends and neighbors  all ridiculed the idea of any such power   within Him. Just as most people today laugh at the  thought of a power such as that within themselves.  So they go on with their daily grind, with  the gaunt specters of sickness and need ever   by their side, until death comes as a welcome  relief. Are you going to be one of those? Or   will you listen to that inner consciousness of  power and find the “Kingdom of Heaven that is   within you.” For whatever you become conscious of,  will be quickly brought forth into tangible form.  Don’t judge your ability by what you have done in  the past. Your work heretofore has been done with   the help of your conscious mind alone. Add to  that the infinite knowledge at the disposal of   your subconscious mind, and what you have done  is as nothing to what you will do in the future.  For knowledge does not apply itself. It is merely  so much static energy. You must convert it into   dynamic energy by the power of your thought. The  difference between the $25-a-week clerk and the   $25,000-a-year executive is solely one of  thought. The clerk may have more brains than   the executive—frequently has in actual weight  of gray matter. He may even have a far better   education. But he doesn’t know how to apply  his thought to get the greatest good from it.  If you have brains, use them. If you  have skill, apply it. The world must   profit by it, and therefore you. We all have inspired moments when   we see clearly how we may do great things, how  we may accomplish wonderful undertakings. But   we do not believe in them enough to make them  come true. An imagination, which begins and   ends in daydreaming, is weakening to character. Make the daydreams come true. Make them so clear   and distinct that they impress themselves upon  your subconscious mind. There’s nothing wrong   with daydreaming, except that most of us  stop there. We don’t try to make the dreams   come true. The great inventor, Tesla, “dreams”  every new machine complete and perfect in every   particular before ever he begins his model for it.  Mozart “dreamed” each of his wonderful symphonies   complete before ever he put a note on paper.  But they didn’t stop with the dreaming.   They visualized those dreams, and  then brought them into actuality.  We lose our capacity to have visions if  we do not take steps to realize them.  Power implies service, so concentrate all your  thought on making your visions of great deeds   come true. Thinking is the current that runs the  dynamo of power. To connect up this current so   that you can draw upon universal supply through  your subconscious mind is to become a Super-man.   Do this, and you will have found the key  to the solution of every problem of life. Chapter 18: This One Thing I Do “How do you tackle your work each day?  Do you grapple the task that comes your way With a confident, easy mind?  Do you start to toil with a sense of dread Or feel that you’re going to do it?  “You can do as much as you think you can, But you’ll never accomplish more;  If you’re afraid of yourself, young man, There’s little for you in store.  For failure comes from the inside first, It’s there, if we only knew it,  And you can win, though you face the worst, If you feel that you’re going to do it.”  —EDGAR A. GUEST. ( From “A Heap  o’ Livin’.” The Reilly & Lee Co.)  How did the Salvation Army get so much  favorable publicity out of the War? They   were a comparatively small part of the  “Services” that catered to the boys “over   there,” yet they carried off the lion’s share  of the glory. Do you know how they did it?  By concentrating on just one thing— DOUGHNUTS! They served doughnuts to the boys— and they did   it well. And that is the basis of all success  in business—to focus on one thing and do   that thing well. Better far to do one thing  pre-eminently well than to dabble in forty.  Two thousand years ago, Porcius Marcus Cato  became convinced, from a visit to the rich   and flourishing city of Carthage, that Rome had in  her a rival who must be destroyed. His countrymen   laughed at him. He was practically alone in his  belief. But he persisted. He concentrated all his   thought, all his faculties, to that one end. At  the end of every speech, at the end of every talk,   he centered his hearers’ thought on what he  was trying to put over by epitomizing his   whole idea in a single sentence — “Carthage must  be destroyed!” And Carthage was destroyed. If one   man’s concentration on a single idea could destroy  a great nation, what can you not do when you apply   that same principle to the building of a business? I remember when I was first learning horsemanship,   my instructor impressed this fact upon me:  “Remember that a horse is an animal of one   idea. You can teach him only one thing at a time.” Looking back, I’d say the only thing wrong with   his instruction was that he took in too little  territory. He need not have confined himself   to the horse. Most humans are the same way. In fact, you can put ALL humans into that class   if you want a thing done well. For you cannot  divide your thought and do justice to any one   of the different subjects you are thinking  of. You’ve got to do one thing at a time.   The greatest success rule I know in business—the  one that should be printed over every man’s desk,   is—“This One Thing I Do.” Take one piece of work  at a time. Concentrate on it to the exclusion of   all else. Then finish it! Don’t half-do it,  and leave it around to clutter up your desk   and interfere with the next job. Dispose of  it completely. Pass it along wherever it is to   go. Be through with it and forget it! Then your  mind will be clear to consider the next matter.  “The man who is Perpetually hesitating which of  two things he will do first,” says William Wirt,   “will do neither. The man who resolves, but  suffers his resolution to be changed by the   first counter-suggestion of a friend— who  fluctuates from plan to plan and veers like   a weather-cock to every point of the compass  with every breath of caprice that blows—can   never accomplish anything real or useful. It  is only the man who first consults wisely,   then resolves firmly, and then executes his  purpose with inflexible perseverance, undismayed   by those petty difficulties that daunt a weaker  spirit, that can advance to eminence in any line.”  Everything in the world, even a great business,  can be resolved into atoms. And the basic   principles behind the biggest business will  be found to be the same as those behind the   successful running of the corner newsstand. The  whole practice of commerce is founded upon them.   Any man can learn them, but only the  alert and energetic can apply them.   The trouble with most men is that they think  they have done all that is required of them   when they have earned their salary. Why, that’s only the beginning.   Up to that point, you are working for someone  else. From then on, you begin to work for   yourself. Remember, you must give to get and  it is when you give that extra bit of time   and attention and thought to your work that you  begin to stand out above the crowd around you.  Norval Hawkins, for many years General Manager  of Sales for the Ford Motor Company, wrote,   “the greatest hunt in the Ford business  right now is the MAN hunt.” And big men in   every industrial line echo his words. ‘When  it comes to a job that needs real ability,   they are not looking for relatives or friends  or men with “pull.” They want a MAN—and they   will pay any price for the right man. Not only that, but they always have a   weather eye open for promising material. And  the thing they value most of all is INITIATIVE.  But don’t try to improve the whole works at  once. Concentrate on one thing at a time.   Pick some one department or some one process or  some one thing and focus all your thought upon   it. Bring to bear upon it the limitless resources  of your subconscious mind. Then prepare a definite   plan for the development of that department or  the improvement of that process. Verify your   facts carefully to make sure they are workable.  Then—and not till then —present your plan.  In “Thoughts on Business,” you read: “Men  often think of a position as being just   about so big and no bigger, when, as a matter  of fact, a position is often what one makes   it. A man was making about $1,500 a year out of  a certain position and thought he was doing all   that could be done to advance the business. The  employer thought otherwise, and gave the place   to another man who soon made the position worth  $8,000 a year— at exactly the same commission.  “The difference was in the man—in other  words, in what the two men thought about   the work. One had a little conception of  what the work should be, and the other   had a big conception of it. One thought little  thoughts, and the other thought big thoughts.  “The standards of two men may differ, not  especially because one is naturally more capable   than the other, but because one is familiar with  big things and the other is not. The time was when   the former worked in a smaller scope himself, but  when he saw a wider view of what his work might   be he rose to the occasion and became a bigger  man. It is just as easy to think of a mountain   as to think of a hill—when you turn your mind to  contemplate it. The mind is like a rubber band —   you can stretch it to fit almost anything, but  it draws in to a smaller scope when you let go.  “Make it your business to know what is the  best that might be in your line of work,   and stretch your mind to conceive it,  and then devise some way to attain it.  “Big things are only little things put together.  I was greatly impressed with this fact one morning   as I stood watching the workmen erecting the  steel framework for a tall office building.   A shrill whistle rang out as a signal,  a man over at the engine pulled a lever,   a chain from the derrick was lowered,  and the whistle rang out again.   A man stooped down and fastened the  chain around the center of a steel beam,   stepped back and blew the whistle once more. Again  the lever was moved at the engine, and the steel   beam soared into the air up to the sixteenth  story, where it was made fast by little bolts.  “The entire structure, great as it was, towering  far above all the neighboring buildings,   was made up of pieces of steel and stone and wood,  put together according to a plan. The plan was   first imagined, then penciled, then carefully  drawn, and then followed by the workmen. It   was all a combination of little things. “It is encouraging to think of this when   you are confronted by a big task. Remember  that it is only a group of little tasks,   any of which you can easily do. It is ignorance  of this fact that makes men afraid to try.”  One of the most essential requisites in the  accomplishment of any important work is patience.   Not the patience that sits and folds its hands  and waits— Micawber like—for something to turn up.   But the patience that never jeopardizes  or upsets a plan by forcing it too soon.   The man who possesses that kind of patience  can always find plenty to do in the meantime.  Make your plan—then wait for the opportune  moment to submit it. You’d be surprised to   know how carefully big men go over suggestions  from subordinates, which show the least promise.   One of the signs of a really big man, you know, is  his eagerness to learn from everyone and anything.   There is none of that “know it all” about him that  characterized the German general who was given a   book containing the strategy by which Napoleon  had for fifteen years kept all the armies of   Europe at bay. “I’ve no time to read about bygone  battles,” he growled, thrusting the book away,   “I have my own campaign to plan.” There is priceless wisdom to be found   in books. As Carlyle put it—”All that mankind  has done, thought, gained or been—it is lying in   matchless preservation in the pages of books.” The truths which mankind has been laboriously   learning through countless ages, at  who knows what price of sweat and   toil and starvation and blood—all are  yours for the effort of reading them.  And in business, knowledge was never so  priceless or so easily acquired. Books and   magazines are filled with the hows and whys,  the rights and wrongs of buying and selling,   of manufacturing and shipping, of  finance and management. They are within   the reach of anyone with the desire to KNOW. Nothing pays better interest than judicious   reading. The man who invests in more knowledge  of his business than he needs to hold his job, is   acquiring capital with which to get a better job. As old Gorgon Graham puts it in “The Letters   of a Self-Made Merchant To His Son”— “I ain’t one of those who believe that   a half knowledge of a subject is useless, but  it has been my experience that when a fellow   has that half knowledge, he finds it’s the  other half which would really come in handy.  “What you know is a club for yourself, and what  you don’t know is a meat-ax for the other fellow.   That is why you want to be on the look-out all  the time for information about the business and   to nail a fact just as a sensible man nails a  mosquito—the first time it settles near him.”  The demands made upon men in business today are  far greater than in any previous generation.   To meet them, you’ve got to use your  talents to the utmost. You’ve got to   find in every situation that confronts you,  the best, the easiest and the quickest way   of working it out. And the first essential  in doing this is to plan your work ahead.  You’d be surprised at how much more work you  can get through by carefully planning it,   and then taking each bit in order and  disposing of it before starting on the next.  Another thing—once started at work, don’t let  down. Keep on going until it is time to quit. You   know how much power it takes to start an auto that  is standing motionless. But when you get it going,   you can run along in high at a fraction of the  expenditure of gas. It is the same way with your   mind. We are all mentally lazy. We hate to start  using our minds. Once started, though, it is easy   to keep along on high, if only we won’t let down.  For the moment we let down, we have that starting   to do all over again. You can accomplish ten times  as much, with far less effort or fatigue, if you   will keep right on steadily instead of starting  and stopping, and starting and stopping again.  Volumes have been written about personal  efficiency, and general efficiency,   and every other kind of efficiency in business.  But boiled down, it all comes to this:  1—Know what you want. 2—Analyze the thing you’ve got to do to get it.  3—Plan your work ahead. 4—Do one thing at a time.  5—Finish that one thing and send it  on its way before starting the next.  6—Once started, KEEP GOING! And when you come to some problem that “stumps”   you, give your subconscious mind a chance. Frederick Pierce, in “Our Unconscious Mind,”   gives an excellent method for solving business  problems through the aid of the subconscious:  “Several years ago, I heard a successful executive  tell a group of young men how he did his work,   and included in the talk was the advice to  prepare at the close of each day’s business,   a list of the ten most important things  for the next day. To this I would add:   Run them over in the mind just before going to  sleep, not thoughtfully, or with elaboration   of detail, but with the sure knowledge that  the deeper centers of the mind are capable   of viewing them constructively even though  conscious attention is surrendered in sleep.  “Then, if there is a particular problem which  seems difficult of solution, review its features   lightly as a last game for the imaginative  unconscious to play at during the night. Do   not be discouraged if no immediate results are  apparent. Remember that fiction, poetry, musical   composition, inventions, innumerable ideas, spring  from the unconscious, often in forms that give   evidence of the highest constructive elaboration. “Give your unconscious a chance. Give it the   material, and stimulate it with keenly dwelt-on  wishes along frank Ego Maximation lines. It is   a habit which, if persisted in, will sooner  or later present you with some very valuable   ideas when you least expect them.” I remember reading of another man—   a genius at certain kinds of work—who, whenever  an especially difficult problem confronted him,   “slept on it.” He had learned the trick as a  child. Unable to learn his lessons one evening,   he had kept repeating the words to himself until  he dozed in his chair, the book still in his   hands. What was his surprise, on being awakened  by his father a few minutes later to find that he   knew them perfectly! He tried it again and again  on succeeding evenings, and almost invariably it   worked. Now, whenever a problem comes up that  he cannot solve, he simply stretches out on a   lounge in his office, thoroughly relaxes, and  lets his subconscious mind solve the problem! VOLUME 6 Chapter 19: The Master Mind  “One who never turned his back  but marched breast forward,  Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed though right were worsted  Wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,  Sleep to wake.” —BROWNING. Among your friends there is  one of those men who doesn’t   have much use for the word “can’t.” You marvel at his capacity for work.  You’ll admire him the more the longer  you know him. You’ll always respect him.  For he not only has made good, but he  always will make good. He has found and   appropriated to himself the “Talisman of  Napoleon”—absolute confidence in himself.  The world loves a leader. All over the world, in  every walk of life, people are eagerly seeking   for someone to follow. They want someone else to  do their thinking for them; they need someone to   hearten them to action; they like to have someone  else on whom to lay the blame when things go   wrong; they want someone big enough to share the  glory with them when success crowns his efforts.  But to instill confidence in them,  that leader must have utter confidence   in himself. A Roosevelt or a Mussolini who did  not believe in himself would be inconceivable.   It is that which makes men invincible — the  Consciousness of their own Power. They put no   limit upon their own capacities — therefore they  have no limit. For Universal Mind sees all, knows   all, and can do all, and we share in this absolute  power to the exact extent to which we permit   ourselves. Our mental attitude is the magnet  that attracts from Universal Mind everything   we may need to bring our desires into being.  We make that magnet strong or weak as we have   confidence in or doubt of our abilities. We draw  to ourselves unlimited power or limit ourselves   to humble positions according to our own beliefs. A long time ago Emerson wrote: “There is one mind   common to all individual men. Every man is  an inlet to the same and to all of the same.   He that is once admitted to the right of reason  is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato   has thought, he may think; what a saint  has felt, he may feel; what at any time   has befallen any man, he can understand.  Who hath access to this Universal Mind,   is a party to all that is or can be done,  for this is the only and sovereign agent.”  The great German physicist, Nernst, found that  the longer an electric current was made to flow   through a filament of oxide of magnesium, the  greater became the conductivity of the filament.  In the same way, the more you call  upon and use your subconscious mind,   the greater becomes its conductivity in passing  along to you the infinite resources of Universal   Mind. The wisdom of a Solomon, the skill of a  Michael Angelo, the genius of an Edison, the   daring of a Napoleon, all may be yours. It rests  with you only to form the contact with Universal   Mind in order to draw from it what you will. Think of this power as something that you can   connect with any time. It has the answer to all  of your problems. It offers you freedom from fear,   from worry, from sickness, from accident. No  man and no thing can interfere with your use   of this power or diminish your share  of it. No one, that is, but yourself.  Don Carlos Musser expresses it well in “You Are”:  “Because of the law of gravitation the apple falls   to the ground. Because of the law of growth the  acorn becomes a mighty oak. Because of the law of   causation, a man is ‘as he thinketh in his heart.’  Nothing can happen without its adequate cause.”  Success does not come to you by accident. It  comes as the logical result of the operation   of law. Mind, working through your  brain and your body, makes your world.  That it is not a better world and a bigger one  is due to your limited thoughts and beliefs.   They dam back the flood of ideas that Mind  is constantly striving to manifest through   you. God never made a failure or a nobody. He  offers to the highest and the lowest alike,   all that is necessary to happiness and success.  The difference is entirely in the extent to which   each of us AVAILS himself of that generosity. There is no reason why you should hesitate to   aspire to any position, any honor, any goal, for  the Mind within you is fully able to meet any   need. It is no more difficult for it to handle  a great problem than a small one. Mind is just   as much present in your little everyday affairs  as in those of a big business or a great nation.   Don’t set it doing trifling sums in arithmetic  when it might just as well be solving problems   of moment to yourself and the world. Start something! Use your initiative.   Give your mind something to work upon. The  greatest of all success secrets is initiative.   It is the one quality which more than  any other has put men in high places.  Conceive something. Conceive it first in your own  mind. Make the pattern there and your subconscious   mind will draw upon the plastic substance or  energy all about you to make that model real.  Drive yourself. Force yourself. It is  the dreamer, the man with imagination,   who has made the world move. Without  him, we would still be in the Stone Age.  Galileo looked at the moon and dreamed of how he  might reach it. The telescope was the fruition   of that dream. Watt dreamed of what might be  done with steam— and our great locomotives   and engines of today are the result. Franklin  dreamed of harnessing the lightning—and today   we have man-made thunderbolts. Initiative, plus imagination,   will take you anywhere. Imagination  opens the eyes of the mind, and there   is nothing good you can imagine there that is  not possible of fulfillment in your daily life.  Imagination is the connecting link between the  human and the Divine, between the formed universe   and formless energy. It is, of all things human,  the most God- like. It is our part of Divinity.   Through it we share in the creative power  of Universal Mind. Through it we can turn   the drabbest existence into a thing of life  and beauty. It is the means by which we avail   ourselves of all the good, which Universal Mind  is constantly offering to us in such profusion.   It is the means by which we can  reach any goal; win any prize.  What was it gave us the submarine, the  aeroplane, wireless, electricity? Imagination.   What was it that enabled man to build the Simplon  Tunnel, the Panama Canal, the Hell Gate span?   Imagination. What is it that makes  us successful and happy, or poor and   friendless? Imagination—or the lack of it. It was imagination that sent Spanish and   English and French adventurers to this  new world. It was imagination that   urged the early settlers westward—ever westward.  It was imagination that built our railroads,   our towns, and our great cities. Parents foolishly try to discourage   imagination in their children, when  all it needs is proper guidance.   For imagination forms the world from which their  future will take its shape. Restrain the one and   you constrict the other. Develop the one in the  right way, and there is no limit to the other.   Uncontrolled, the imagination is like a rudderless  ship. Or even, at times, like the lightning.   But properly controlled, it is like the  ship that carries riches from port to   port. Or like the electric current, carrying  unlimited power for industry and progress.  Do you want happiness? Do you want success? Do  you want position, power, and riches? Image them!   How did God first make man? “In his image  created He him.” He “imaged” man in His Mind.  And that is the way everything has been made  since time began. It was first imaged in   Mind. That is the way everything you  want must start—with a mental image.  So use your imagination! Picture in it your  Heart’s Desire. Imagine it—daydream it so vividly,   so clearly, that you will actually BELIEVE  you HAVE it. In the moment that you carry   this conviction to your subconscious mind—in  that moment your dream will become a reality.   It may be a while before you realize it,  but the important part is done. You have   created the model. You can safely leave it  to your subconscious mind to do the rest.  When Jesus adjured His disciples— “Whatsoever  ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye RECEIVE   it,” He was not only telling them a great  truth, but he was teaching what we moderns   would call excellent psychology as well. For this  “belief” is what acts upon the subconscious mind.   It is through this “belief” that formless  energy is compressed into material form.  Every man wants to get out of the rut, to  grow, to develop into something better.   Here is the open road—open to you whether you  have schooling, training, position, wealth,   or not. Remember this: Your subconscious  mind knew more from the time you were   a baby than is in all the books in all  the colleges and libraries of the world.  So don’t let lack of training, lack of education,  hold you back. Your mind can meet every need—and   will do so if you give it the chance. The Apostles  were almost all poor men, uneducated men, yet they   did a work that is unequalled in historical  annals. Joan of Arc was a poor peasant girl,   unable to read or write—yet she saved France!  The pages of history are dotted with poor men,   uneducated men, who thought great thoughts, who  used their imaginations to master circumstances   and became rulers of men. Most great dynasties  started with some poor, obscure man. Napoleon   came of a poor, humble family. He got his  appointment to the Military Academy only through   very hard work and the pulling of many political  strings. Even as a Captain of Artillery he was so   poverty-stricken that he was unable to buy his  equipment when offered an appointment to India.   Business today is full of successful men who have  scarcely the rudiments of ordinary education.   It was only after he had made his millions  that Andrew Carnegie hired a tutor to give   him the essentials of an education. So it isn’t training and it isn’t   education that makes you successful. These  help, but the thing that really counts is   that gift of the Gods—Creative Imagination! You have that gift. Use it! Make every thought,   every fact, that comes into your mind pay you  a profit. Make it work and produce for you.   Think of things—not as they are but as they  MIGHT be. Make them real, live and interesting.   Don’t merely dream—but CREATE! Then use  your imagination to make that CREATION of   advantage to mankind—and, incidentally, yourself. Chapter 20: What Do You Lack? “I read the papers every day, and oft encounter   tales which show there’s hope for every jay who  in life’s battle fails. I’ve just been reading   of a gent who joined the has-been ranks, at fifty  years without a cent, or credit at the banks. But   undismayed he buckled down, refusing to be beat,  and captured fortune and renown; he’s now on Easy   Street. Men say that fellows down and out ne’er  leave the rocky track, but facts will show, beyond   a doubt, that has-beens do come back. I know, for  I who write this rhyme, when forty-odd years old,   was down and out, without a dime, my whiskers full  of mold. By black disaster I was trounced until it   jarred my spine; I was a failure so pronounced  I didn’t need a sign. And after I had soaked my   coat, I said (at forty-three), ‘I’ll see if I  can catch the goat that has escaped from me.’   I labored hard; I strained my dome, to do my daily  grind, until in triumph I came home, my billy goat   behind. And any man who still has health may  with the winners stack, and have a chance at   fame and wealth— for has-beens do come back.” —WALT MASON ( From “Walt Mason—His Book.”   Barse & Hopkins, Newark, N. J. ) Do you know why it is that the   Bolsheviki are so opposed to religion? Because religion, as it is commonly accepted,   teaches man resignation to conditions as they  are—teaches, in effect, that God created some   men poor and some rich. That this unequal  distribution is a perfectly natural thing.   And that we must not rail against it because  it will all be made right in the next world.  Napoleon, in his early Jacobin days, denounced  religion for that very reason. But when he had won   to power, when he planned to make himself Emperor,  then he found he had need for that religion,   and re-established the Church in France. For, he reasoned, how can people be satisfied   without religion? If one man is starving, near  another who is making himself sick by eating too   much, how can you expect to keep the starving one  resigned to his fate unless you teach him it will   all be made right in some indefinite future state? Organized society could not exist, as he planned   it, without some being rich and some  poor, and to keep the poor satisfied,   there must be an authority to declare— ”God  wills it thus. But just be patient. In the   hereafter all this will be different. YOU will  be the ones then to occupy the places of honor.”  Religion, in other words—as it is  ordinarily taught—is a fine thing   to keep the common people satisfied! But Christianity was never meant for   a weapon to keep the rich wealthy and secure,  the poor satisfied and in their proper place.   On the contrary, Christianity as taught  by Jesus opened the way to all Good. And   Christianity as it was practiced in its early  years was an idealized form of Socialism that   benefited each and all. No one was wealthier  than his neighbors, it is true—but neither was   any poverty-stricken. Theirs was the creed of the  Three Musketeers—“A11 for one, and one for all!”  “Ask and ye shall receive,” said Jesus.  “Seek and ye shall find.” That was not   directed to the rich alone. That was to ALL men. Providence has never made a practice of picking   out certain families or certain individuals  and favoring them to the detriment of other   people—much as some of our “leading families”  would have us believe it. It is only man that   has arrogated to himself that privilege. We laugh  now at the “divine right of Kings.” It is just as   ridiculous to think that a few have the right  to all the good things of life, while the many   have to toil and sweat to do them service. To quote Rumbold’s last words from the   scaffold—”I never could believe that  Providence had sent a few men into   the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and  millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.”  There is nothing right in poverty. Not only that,  but there is nothing meritorious in poverty. The   mere fact that you are poor and ground down  by fear and worry is not going to get you any   forwarder in the hereafter. On the contrary,  your soul is likely to be too pinched by want,   too starved and shriveled to be able to expand. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” to me that   means that Heaven is here and now. That if we  want any happiness from it we’ve got to get it   as we go along. I’ve never been much of a believer  in accepting these promissory notes for happiness.   Every time one of them falls due, you find you  just have to renew it for another six months or   a year, until one of these days you wake up and  find that the bank has busted and all your notes   are not worth the paper they are written on. The Cumaean Sibyl is said to have offered   Tarquin the Proud nine books for what he  thought an exorbitant sum. So he refused.   She burned three of the books, and placed the  same price on the six as on the original nine.   Again he refused. She burned three more books,  and offered the remainder for the sum she had   first asked. This time Tarquin accepted.  The books were found to contain prophecies   and invaluable directions regarding Roman  policy, but alas, they were no longer complete.  So it is with happiness. If you take it as  you go along, you get it in its entirety. But   if you keep putting off the day when you shall  enjoy it—if you keep taking promissory notes for   happiness—every day will mean one day less of it  that you will have. Yet the cost is just the same.  The purpose of existence is GROWTH. You can’t  grow spiritually or mentally without happiness.   And by Happiness I don’t mean a timid resignation  to the “Will of God.” That so-called “Will of God”   is more often than not either pure laziness on the  part of the resigned one or pure cussedness on the   part of the one that is “putting something over”  on him. It is the most sanctimonious expression   yet devised to excuse some condition that no  one has the energy or the ability to rectify.  No—by Happiness I mean the everyday enjoyment  of everyday people. I mean love and laughter and   honest amusement. Every one of us is entitled to  it. Every one of us can have it—if he has the WILL   and the ENERGY to get out and get it for himself. Joyless work, small pay, no future, nothing to   look forward to—God never planned such  an existence. It is man-made—and you   can be man enough to unmake it as  far as you and yours are concerned.  God never made any man poor any more than  He made any man sick. Look around you. All   of Nature is bountiful. On every hand you  see profusion—in the trees, in the flowers,   in everything that He planned. The only Law of  Nature is the law of Supply. Poverty is unnatural.   It is man-made, through the limits man puts upon  himself. God never put them there any more than   He showed partiality by giving to some of His  children gifts and blessings, which He withheld   from others. His gifts are just as available  to you as to any man on earth. The difference   is all in your understanding of how to avail  yourself of the infinite supply all about you.  Take the worry clamps off your mentality and you  will make the poverty clamps loosen up from your   finances. Your affairs are so closely related  to your consciousness that they too will relax   into peace, order, and plenty. Divine  ideas in your spiritual consciousness   will become active in your business, and  will work out as your abundant prosperity.  As David V. Bush says in “Applied Psychology  and Scientific Living”— “Thoughts are things;   thoughts are energy; thoughts are magnets which  attract to us the very things which we think.  Therefore, if a man is in debt, he will, by  continually thinking about debt, bring more   debts to him. For thoughts are causes, and he  fastens more debts on to himself and actually   creates more obligations by thinking about debts. “Concentrate and think upon things that you want;   not on things which you ought not to have.  Think of abundance, of opulence, of plenty,   of position, harmony and growth, and if  you do not see them manifested today,   they will be realized tomorrow. If you must  pass through straits of life where you do not   outwardly see abundance, know that you have it  within, and that in time it will manifest itself.  “I say, if you concentrate on debt, debt is  what you will have; if you think about poverty,   poverty is what you will receive. It is just  as easy, when once the mind becomes trained,   to think prosperity and abundance and plenty,  as it is to think lack, limitation and poverty.”  Prosperity is not limited to time or to place. It  manifests when and where there is consciousness to   establish it. It is attracted to the consciousness  that is free from worry, strain, and tension.  So never allow yourself to worry about poverty.  Be careful; take ordinary business precautions   of course. But don’t center your thought on your  troubles. The more you think of them, the more   tightly you fasten them upon yourself. Think of  the results you are after—not of the difficulties   in the way. Mind will find the way. It is merely  up to you to choose the goal, and then keep   your thought steadfast until that goal is won. The greatest short cut to prosperity is to LIVE   IT! Prosperity attracts. Poverty repels. To quote  Orison Swett Marden—“To be ambitious for wealth   and yet always expecting to be poor, to be always  doubting your ability to get what you long for,   is like trying to reach East by traveling  West. There is no phi1osophy which will help   a man to succeed when he is always doubting his  ability to do so, and thus attracting failure.”  Again: “No matter how hard you may work for  success, if your thought is saturated with   the fear of failure it will kill your  efforts, neutralize your endeavors,   and make success impossible.” The secret of Prosperity lies in   so vividly imaging it in your own mind  that you literally exude prosperity.   You feel prosperous, you look prosperous, and the  result is that before long you ARE prosperous.  I remember seeing a play a number of years ago  that was based on this thought. A young fellow—a   chronic failure—was persuaded by a friend to carry  a roll of $1,000 counterfeit bills in his pocket,   and to show them, unostentatiously,  when the occasion offered. Of course,   everyone thought he had come into some legacy. The natural inference was that anyone who carried   fifty or a hundred thousand dollar bills in  his pockets must have a lot more in the bank.   Opportunities flocked to him. Opportunities to  make good. Opportunities to make money. He made   good! Without having to spend any of this spurious  money of his. For most business today is done on   credit. I know many wealthy men who seldom carry  anything but a little change in their pockets for   tips. Everything they do, everything they buy,  is “Charged.” And big deals are put through in   the same way. If a man is believed to have plenty  of money, if he has a reputation for honesty and   fair dealing, he may put through a transaction  running into six or seven figures without paying   one cent down. The thing that counts is  not the amount of your balance at the Bank,   but what others THINK of you, the IMAGE you  have created in your own and in others minds.  What do you lack? What thing do you want most?  Realize that before it or any other thing can be,   it must first be imaged in Mind. Realize, too,  that when you can close your eyes and actually   SEE that thing, you have brought it into being—  you have drawn upon that invisible substance all   about you—you have created something. Hold it in  your thought, focus your mind upon it, “BELIEVE   THAT YOU HAVE IT”— and you can safely leave its  material manifestation to the Genie- of-your-Mind.  God is but another name for the invisible,  everywhere present, and Source-of- things.   Out of the air the seed gathers the essences  which are necessary to its bountiful growth;   out of the invisible ether our minds gather the  rich ideas that stimulate us to undertake and to   carry out enterprises that bring prosperity  to us. Let us see with the eye of the mind a   bountiful harvest; then our minds will  be quickened with ideas of abundance,   and plenty will appear, not only  in our world, but also everywhere.  “As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven,  and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth,   and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth  seed to the sower and bread to the eater;   so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my  mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it   shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall  prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”—Isaiah. Chapter 21 The Sculptor and the Clay  “Eternal mind the Potter is, And thought the eternal clay.  The hand that fashions is divine; His works pass not away.  God could not make imperfect man His model Infinite, Unhallowed thought  He could not plan—Love’s work and Love must fit.”  —ALICE DAYTON. When you step into your office on Monday   morning, no doubt you have dreams of wonderful  achievement. Your step is firm, your brain is   clear and you have carefully thought out just WHAT  you will do and HOW you will accomplish big things   in your business. Perhaps the very plans you have  in mind will influence your whole business career,   and you have visions of the dollars that  will be yours rolling into your bank account.  But do these dreams come true? Are you always able to put through   what you had planned to do—does your day’s  work have the snap and power you imagined   it would have? Are you ever forced to admit  that your dreams of big accomplishment are   often shattered because of “fagged nerves” and  lack of energy, because you have not the “pep”?  How easy it is to think back and see how success  was in your grasp if only you had felt equal to   that extra bit of effort, if only you had had the  “pep,” the energy to reach out and take it. The   great men of the world have been well men, strong  men. Sickness and hesitancy go hand in hand.   Sickness means weakness, querulous  ness, lack of faith, and lack of   confidence in oneself and in others. But there is no real reason for sickness   or weakness, and there is no reason why you should  remain weak or sick if you are so afflicted now.  Remember the story of the sculptor Pygmalion?  How he made a statue of marble so beautiful that   every woman who saw it envied it? So perfect  was it that he fell in love with it himself,   hung it with flowers and jewels, spent  day after day in rapt admiration of it,   until finally the gods took pity upon him  and breathed into it the breath of life.  There is more than Pagan mythology to that story.  There is this much truth in it— that any man can   set before his mind’s eye the image of  the figure he himself would like to be,   and then breathe the breath of life into it merely  by keeping that image before his subconscious mind   as the model on which to do its daily building. For health and strength are natural. It is ill   health and weakness that are unnatural.  Your body was meant to be lithe, supple,   muscular, and full of red- blooded energy and  vitality. A clear brain, a powerful heart,   a massive chest, wrists and arms of steel—all  these were meant for you—all these you can have   if you will but know, and feel, and think aright. Just take stock of yourself for a moment. Are   your muscles tough, springy and full of vim?  Do they do all you ask of them—and then beg   for more? Can you eat a good meal—and forget it? If you can’t, it’s your own fault. You can have   a body alive with vitality, a skin smooth and  fine of texture, muscles supple and virile.   You can be the man you have always  dreamed of being, without arduous dieting,   without tiresome series of exercises, merely  by following the simple rules herein laid down.  For what is it that builds up the muscles,  puts energy and vitality into your system,   gives you the pep and vigor of youth? Is it  exercise? Then why is it that so many day   laborers are poor, weak, anemic creatures, forced  to lay off from one to three months every year on   account of sickness? They get plenty of exercise  and fresh air. Why is it that so many athletes die   of tuberculosis or of weak hearts? They get the  most scientific exercise year in and year out.  Just the other day I read of the sudden death of  Martin A. Delaney, the famous trainer, known all   over the country as a physical director. He taught  thousands how to be strong, but “Athletic Heart”   killed him at 55. Passersby saw him running  for a car, then suddenly topple over dead.  “Exercise as a panacea for all human ills is  dangerously overrated,” Dr. Charles M. Wharton,   in charge of health and physical education at the  University of Pennsylvania, said today (March 20,   1926), according to an Associated Press dispatch. Dr. Wharton, who has been a trainer of men for   thirty years and was an all- American guard on  the Pennsylvania football team in 1895 and 1896,   declared the search for the fountain  of youth by exercise and diet has been   commercialized to a point of hysteria. “Someone should cry a halt against this   wild scramble for health by Unnatural means,”  said Dr. Wharton. “This indiscriminate adoption   of severe physical training destroys the  health of more people than it improves.”  Dr. Wharton said he was appalled  by the amount of physical defects   and weaknesses developed by overindulgence in  athletics by students in preparatory schools.  “I know I am presenting an unpopular  viewpoint, and it may sound strange   coming from a physical director. “In gymnasium work at the University   of Pennsylvania we try to place our young men  in sports which they will enjoy, and thus get   a physical stimulation from relaxed play.” Is it diet? Then why is it that so many people   you know, who have been dieting for years, are  still such poor, flabby creatures? Doesn’t it   always work, or is it merely a matter of  guess-work-and those were the cases where   no one happened to guess right? Why is it that  doctors disagree so on what is the correct diet?   For years we have been taught to forswear too  much meat. For years we have been told that   it causes rheumatism and gout and hardening of  the arteries—and a dozen or more other ailments.  Now comes Dr. Woods Hutchinson—a noted  authority, quoted the world over— and says:   “All the silly old prejudice against meat,  that it heated the blood (whatever that means)   and produced uric acid to excess, hardened the  arteries, inflamed the kidneys, caused rheumatism,   etc., has now been proved to be pure fairy tales,  utterly without foundation in scientific fact.  “Red meats have nothing whatever to  do with causing gout and rheumatism,   because neither of these diseases is due to foods  or drinks of any sort, but solely to what we call   local infections. Little pockets of pus (matter)  full of robber germs—mostly streptococci—around   the roots of our teeth, in the pouches of our  tonsils, in the nasal passages and sinuses of   our foreheads and faces opening into them;  . . . Our belief now is: ‘No pockets of pus,   no rheumatism or gout.’ Food of any kind  has absolutely nothing to do with the case.  “On the other hand, the very worst cases on record  in all medical history of hardening and turning to   lime (calcification) of the arteries all over  the body, and in the kidneys and intestines   particularly, have been found in Trappist and  certain orders of Oriental monks who live almost   exclusively upon starch and—that is, peas, beans,  and lentils, and abstain from meat entirely.”  Then what is right? Is it the combination of  diet and exercise? But surely the patients in   sanitariums and similar institutions would have  every chance to get just the right combination,   yet how often you see them come out little,  if any, better off than when they went in.  No. None of these is the answer. As a  matter of fact, the principal good of   either diet or exercise is that it keeps before  the patient’s mind the RESULT he is working for,   and in that way tends to impress it upon  his subconscious mind. That is why physical   culturists always urge you to exercise in front  of a mirror. If results are achieved, it is   MIND that achieves them—not the movements you go  through or the particular kind of food you eat.  Understand, I don’t ask you to stop  exercising. A reasonable amount of light,   pleasant exercise is good for you mentally and  physically. It develops your will power. It   helps to impress upon your subconscious mind the  image you want to see realized in your body. And   it takes your mind off your troubles and worries,  centering your thoughts instead upon your desires;   just where your thoughts should always be. Outdoor exercise, tennis, horseback, swimming—any   sort of active game— is the best rest there is  for a tired mind. For mental tiredness comes from   a too steady contemplation of ones problems. And  anything that will take ones mind completely off   them, and give the subconscious time to work out  the solution, is good. That is why it so often   happens that you go back to your work after a day  of play—not merely refreshed, but with so clear   a mind that the problems, which before seemed  insurmountable are but as child’s play to you.  You who envy the rosy cheek  and sparkling eye of youth,   who awake in the morning weary and un-refreshed,  who go to your daily tasks with fagged brain and   heavy tread—just remember that Perfect Youth  or Perfect Health is merely a state of mind.  There is only one thing that puts muscles  on your bones. There is only one thing that   keeps your organs functioning with precision  and regularity. There is only one thing that   builds for you a perfect body. That  one thing is your subconscious mind.  Every cell and tissue, every bone and sinew,  every organ and muscle in your entire body   is subject to the control of your subconscious  mind. As it directs, so they build or function.  True, that subconscious mind accepts suggestions  from your conscious mind. Hold before it the   thought that the exercise you are taking is  building muscle upon your arms or shoulders,   and your subconscious mind will fall in  readily with the suggestion and strengthen   those muscles. Hold before it the thought that  some particular food gives you unusual energy   and “pep,” and the subconscious mind will be  entirely agreeable to producing the added vigor.  But have you ever noticed how some sudden joy  (which is entirely a mental state) energizes   and revitalizes you—more than all the exercise or  all the tonics you can take? Have you ever noticed   how martial music will relieve the fatigue  of marching men? Have you ever noticed how   sorrow (which is entirely a mental state) will  depress and devitalize you, regardless of any   amount of exercise or health foods you may take? Each of us has within him all the essentials that   go to the making of a Super-Man. But so has every  acorn the essentials for making a great oak tree,   yet the Japanese show us that even an oak  may be stunted by continual pruning of its   shoots. Negative and weak thoughts,  thoughts of self-doubt, of mistrust,   continually prune back the vigorous life  ever seeking so valiantly to show forth the,   splendor and strength of the radiant inner self. Choose what you will be! Your responsibility   is to think, speak, act the true inner self.  Your privilege is to show forth in this self,   the fullness of peace and plenty. Keep steadfastly  in mind the idea of yourself that you want to see   realized. Your daily, hourly, and continual idea  of yourself, your life, your affairs, your world,   and your associates, determines the harvest, the  showing forth. Look steadfastly to your highest   ideal of self, and your steadfast and lofty ideal  will draw forth blessing and prosperity not only   upon you, but also upon all who know you. For mind is the only creator, and thought   is the only energy. All that counts is the  image of your body that you are holding in   your thought. If heretofore that image has been  one of weakness, of ill health, change it now—   TODAY. Repeat to yourself, the first thing upon  awakening in the morning and the last thing before   going to sleep at night—”My body was made in the  image and likeness of God. God first imagined it   in its entirety, therefore every cell and bone  and tissue is perfect, every organ and muscle   performing its proper function. That is the only  model of me in Universal Mind. That is the only   model of me that my Subconscious Mind knows.  Therefore, since Mind— God—is the only creator,   that is the only model of me that I can have!” Chapter 22: Why Grow Old?  “And Moses was an hundred and twenty  years old when he died: his eye was   not dim, nor his natural force abated.” Remember how you used to plough through   great masses of work day after day and month after  month, cheerily, enthusiastically, with never a   sign of tiring or nervous strain? Remember how  you used to enjoy those evenings, starting out   as fresh from your office or shop as if you  hadn’t just put a hard day’s work behind you?  No doubt you’ve often wondered why you  can’t work and enjoy yourself like that now,   but solaced yourself with the moth-eaten  fallacy that “As a man grows older he   shouldn’t expect to get the same fun out  of life that he did in his earlier years.”  Poor old exploded idea! Youth is not a matter of time. It   is a mental state. You can be just as brisk, just  as active, just as light-hearted now as you were   ten or twenty years ago. Genuine youth is just a  perfect state of health. You can have that health,   and the boundless energy and capacity for work or  enjoyment that go with it. You can cheat time of   ten, twenty or fifty years—not by taking thought  of what you shall eat or what you shall drink,   not by diet or exercise, but solely  through a right understanding of what   you should expect of your body. “If only I had my life to live   over again!” How often you have heard  it said. How often you have thought it.  But the fact is that you CAN have it. You can  start right now and live again as many years   as you have already experienced. Health,  physical freedom and full vigor need not   end for you at 35 or 40—nor at 60 or 70. Age is  not a matter of years. It is a state of mind.  In an address before the American Sociological  Society a few months ago Dr. Hornell Hart of   Bryn Mawr predicted that—“Babies born in the  year 2000 will have something like 200 years   of life ahead of them, and men and women of  100 years will be quite the normal thing.   But instead of being wrinkled and crippled, these  centenarians will be in their vigorous prime.”  Thomas Parr, an Englishman, lived to  be 152 years old, and was sufficiently   hale and hearty at the age of 120 to take  unto himself a second wife. Even at 152,   his death was not due to old age, but to a  sudden and drastic change in his manner of life.   All his days he had lived upon simple  fare, but his fame reaching the King,   he was invited to London and there  feasted so lavishly that he died of it.  In a dispatch to the New York Times on February  14th last, I read of an Arab now in Palestine,   one Salah Mustapha Salah Abu Musa, who at the  age of 105 is growing his third set of teeth!  There is an ancient city in Italy, which  can be approached by sea only through a   long stretch of shallow water full of rocks  and cross currents. There is one safe channel,   and it is marked by posts. In the days of the Sea  Rovers the city used to protect itself by pulling   up the posts whenever a rover hove in sight. Mankind has taken to planting posts along its   way to mark the flight of time. Every year we put  in a new one, heedless of the fact that we are   thus marking a clear channel for our Archenemy,  Age, to enter in from the sea of human belief.  But the fact is that there is no natural  reason for man to grow old as soon as he does,   no biological reason for him to grow old at all! Why is it that the animals live eight to ten   times their maturity, when man  lives only about twice his? Why?   Because man hastens decrepitude and decay by  holding the thought of old age always before him.  Dr. Alexis Carrel, Noble Prize winner  and member of the Rockefeller Institute,   has demonstrated that living cells taken  from a body, properly protected and fed,   can be kept alive indefinitely. Not only that,  but they grow! In 1912 he took Sonic tissue from   the heart of an embryo chick and placed it in  a Culture medium. It is living and growing yet.  Recently Dr. Carrel showed a moving picture  of these living cells before the American   Institute of Electrical Engineers. They grow so  fast that they double in size every twenty-four   hours, and have to be trimmed daily! The cells of your being can be made to   live indefinitely when placed outside your body.  Single-celled animals never die a natural death.   They live on and on until something  kills them. Now scientists are   beginning to wonder if multi-cellular  animals like man really need to die.  Under the title, “Immortality and Rejuvenation  in Modern Biology,” M. Metalnikov, of the Pasteur   Institute, has just published a volume that  should be read by all those who have decided   that it is necessary to grow old and die. Here is the first sentence of the concluding   chapter of the book: “What we have  just written forces us to maintain   our conviction that immortality is the  fundamental property of living organisms.”  And further on: “Old age and death   are not a stage of earthly existence . . . And that, mind you, is set forth under the aegis   of a scientific establishment that has no equal in  the world, and of a scholar universally respected.  As the Journal of Paris says  in reviewing the article:  “Most religious and philosophic systems assert the  immortality of the soul. But the positive sciences   have shown themselves more skeptical on this  point. This idea seems to them quite contradictory   to all that we know, or think we know, of animal  life. Animal life originates as a tiny germ,   which becomes an embryo, developing into an adult  organism, which grows old and finally dies. This   means the disappearance of all the faculties  of life that so clearly distinguish it from an   inanimate object. There is no scientific  evidence to show that at this moment the   ‘soul’ does not disappear with the body, and  that it continues its existence separately.   Biologists cannot even conceive the possibility  of separation of soul and body, so strong and   indissoluble are the bonds that unite all our  psychic manifestations with our bodily life.   For them an immortal soul only can exist in an  immortal body. What if it were so? What if our   organism is really indestructible? It is this that  M. Metalnikoy attempts scientifically to prove.  “Death is a permanent and tangible phenomenon only  in the case of man and the higher animals. It is   not so for plants and for the simpler forms of  animal life, the protozoans. These last, composed   often of a single cell, just observable under  the microscope, are however without the chief   faculties that characterizes the higher animals.  They move about by means of vibratory hair-like   processes, sustain themselves, seek their food,  hunt animals still smaller than themselves,   react to irritations of different kinds, and  multiply. But this multiplication is not effected   by means of special organs, as among the higher  animals, but by the division of the whole organism   into two equal parts. The common infusorians,  which abound in fresh water, thus divide once or   twice every twenty-four hours. Each daughter cell  continues to live like the mother cell, of which   it is the issue; it feeds, grows, and divides in  its turn. And never, in this constantly renewed   cycle in their lives, do we find the phenomenon of  natural death, so characteristic and so universal   in the higher animals. The infusorium is subject  only to accidental death, such as we can cause   by the addition of some poisonous element  to the water in which it lives, or by heat.  “Experiments along this line were made  long ago. The first were by de Saussure,   in 1679. Having put an infusorium in a drop  of water, he saw it divide under his eye.   Four days later it was impossible to  count the number of creatures. However,   some authors thought that this reproductive  facility was not unlimited. Maupas himself,   who made a minute study of it forty years ago and  succeeded in observing 700 successive generations   of a single species, thought that it was  finally subject to old age and to death.  “But the more recent works of Joukovsky at  Heidelberg, of Koulaghine at Petrograd, of Calkins   in England, of Weissmann, and still others, lead  to an opposite opinion. The degeneration observed   by these workers was due to autointoxication,  caused by not renewing the culture medium.  “Decisive experiments were made in Russia, ‘dating  from 1907, by Woodruff and by M. Metalnikoy   himself. Begun at Tsarskoe Selo, they continued  until the tragic hours of the 1917 revolution,   and were renewed at the University of Crimea.  These investigators took an infusorium found   in an aquarium, the Paramoecium caudatum,  whose characteristics are well determined,   and in thirteen years, in 1920, they had  obtained 5,000 successive generations. . . .  “Thus we are bound to say that a unicellular body  possesses within itself the power of immortality.  “And we ourselves are made up only by  the juxtaposition of simple cells.” The Fountain of Youth Four hundred years ago Ponce de Leon set sail   into the mysteries of an unknown world in search  of the Fountain of Youth, when all the time the   secret of that fountain was right within himself. For the fact is, that no matter how many years   have passed since you were born, you are  only eleven months old today! Your body is   constantly renewing itself. The one thing about  it you can be surest of is CHANGE. Every one of   the millions of cells of which it is composed  is constantly being renewed. Even your bones   are daily renewing themselves in this way. These cells are building—building— building.   Every day they tear down old tissue and rebuild  it with new. There is not a cell in your body,   not a muscle or tissue, not a bone, that  is more than eleven months old! Why then   should you feel age? Why should you be any  less spry, any less cheerful, than these   youngsters around you that you have been envying? The answer is that you need not—if you will but   realize your YOUTHFULNESS. Every organ, every  muscle, tissue and cell of your body is subject   to your subconscious mind. They rebuild exactly  as that mind directs them. What is the model you   are holding before your mind’s eye? Is it one  of age, of decrepitude? That is the model that   most men use, because they know no better. That is  the result that you see imaged upon their bodies.  But you need not follow their outworn models.  You can hold before your mind’s eye only the   vision of youth, of manly vigor, of energy and  strength and beauty and that is the model that   your cells will use to build upon. Do you know what is responsible for   the whole difference between Youth and  Age? Just one thing. Youth looks forward   always to something better. Age looks  backward and sighs over its “lost” youth. In youth we are constantly growing. We KNOW we  have not yet reached our prime. We know we can   expect to continually IMPROVE. We look forward to  ever- increasing physical powers. We look forward   to a finer, more perfect physique. We look  forward to greater mental alertness. We have   been educated to expect these things. Therefore  we BELIEVE we shall get them—and we GET them!  But what happens after we get to be thirty or  forty years of age? We think we have reached   our prime. We have been taught that we can  no longer look forward to greater growth—that   all we can hope for is to “hold our own” for a  little while, and then start swiftly downward   to old age and decay. History shows that no  nation, no institution and no individual can   continue for any length of time to merely “hold  his own.” You must go forward—or back. You must   move—or life will pass you by. Yours is  the choice if you will realize that there   is never any end to GROWTH— that your body is  constantly being rebuilt—that perfection is   still so far ahead of you that you can continue  GROWING towards it indefinitely—you need never   know age. You can keep on growing more perfect,  mentally and physically, every day. Every minute   you live is a minute of Conception and rebirth. You may be weak and anemic. You may be crippled   or bent. No matter! You can start today to rebuild  along new lines. In eleven months at the most,   every one of those weak and devitalized cells,  every one of those bent and crippled bones,   will be replaced by new, strong, vigorous tissue. Look at Annette Kellerman—crippled and deformed   as a child—yet she grew up into the world’s most  perfectly formed woman. Look at Roosevelt—weak   and anemic as a young man—yet he made himself the  envy of the world for boundless vigor and energy.   And they are but two cases out of thousands I  could quote. Many of the world’s strongest men   were weaklings in their childhood. It matters not  what your age, what your condition— you can start   now renewing your youth, growing daily nearer the  model of YOU that is imaged in Universal Mind.  Arthur Brisbane says that at the age of 85  George F. Baker is doing the work of ten men.  That is what every man of 85 ought to be doing,   for he should have not only the physical  vigor and strength and enthusiasm of 21,   but combined with them he should have the skill  and experience, the ripened judgment of 85.  There is no more despairing pronouncement than  the belief of the average man that he matures   only to begin at once to deteriorate and decay.  When the actual fact is, as stated in a recent   utterance by the eminent Dr. Hammond, there is  no physiological reason why a man should die.   He asserted—and the statement is corroborated  by scientists and physiologists—that the human   body possesses inherent capacity to renew and  continue itself and its functions, indefinitely!  Your body wears out? Of course it does—just as  all material things do. But with this difference   your body is being renewed just as fast as  it wears out! Have you damaged some part   of it? Don’t worry. Down inside you is a chemical  laboratory, which can make new parts just as good   or better than the old. Up in your subconscious  mind is a Master Chemist with all the formulas   of Universal Mind to draw upon, who can keep  that chemical laboratory of yours making new   parts just as fast as you can wear out the old. But that Master Chemist is like all of us—like   you. He is inclined to lazy a bit on the job—if  you let him. Try to relieve him of some of his   functions— and he won’t bother about them  further. Take to the regular use of drugs   or other methods of eliminating the waste matter  from the body, and your Master Chemist will figure   that your conscious mind has taken over this  duty from him—and he will leave it thereafter   to your conscious mind. Lead him to believe  that you no longer expect him to rebuild your   body along such perfect lines as in youth—and he  will slow down in his work of removing the old,   worn-out tissues, and of replacing them with new,  better material. The result? Arteries clogged with   worn-out cells. Tissues dried and shrunken.  Joints stiff and creaky. In short—Old Age.  The fault is not with the Master Chemist.  It is with you. You didn’t hold him to the   job. When a business or an enterprise or an  expedition fails, it is not the rank and file   who are to blame—it is the directing head. He  didn’t give his men the right plans to work on.   He didn’t supply the proper leadership. He  didn’t keep them keyed up to their best work.  What would you think of an engineer  who, with the best plans in the world,   the best material with which to build, threw  away his plans when he was half through with the   job and let his men do as they pleased, ruining  all his early work and all his fine material by   putting the rest of it together any which way? Yet that is what you do when you stop LOOKING   FORWARD at 30 or 40, and decide thereafter to  just grow old any which way. You throw away the   wonderful model on which you have been building,  you take the finest material in the world, and let   your workmen put it together any way they like.  In fact, you do worse than that. You tell them   you don’t expect much from them anymore. That any  sort of a patched up job they put together after   that will be about as good as you can look for. Man alive! What would you expect from ordinary   workmen to whom you talked like that? Your  inner workmen are no different. You will get   from them just what you look for—no more, no less. “Your time of life” should be the best time you   have yet known. The engineer who has built forty  bridges should be far more proficient than the   one who has built only a few. The model you are  passing on to your Master Chemist now ought to   be a vastly more perfect model than the one you  gave to him at twenty. Instead of feeling that   your heart is giving out and your stomach weak,  you ought to be boasting of how much better a   heart you are now making than a few years ago, how  much more perfectly your stomach is functioning   than before you learned that you were its boss. Of one thing you can be sure. God never decreed a   law of decay and death. If there is any such law,  it is man-made—and man can unmake it. The Life   Principle that came to this planet thousands or  millions of years ago brought no Death Principle   with it. For death is like darkness—it is nothing  in itself. Death is merely the absence of life,   just as darkness is merely the absence of  light. Keep that life surging—strongly.  In the Book of Wisdom, of the  Apocryphal writings, you read:  “For God made not death; neither hath He  pleasure in the destruction of the living.  “For He created all things that they might have  being; and the generative powers of the world are   health-some, and there is no poison of destruction  in them, nor hath death dominion upon the earth.  “For righteousness is immortal: “But ungodly men with their   works and words called death unto them. “For God created man to be immortal, and made   Him to be an image of His own proper being. “But by the envy of the devil came death   into the world.” “Whosoever liveth   and believeth in me (understandeth  me),” said Jesus, “shall never die.”  And again—“If a man keep my  saying, he shall never see death.”  Universal Mind knows no imperfection—no  decay—no death. It does not produce   sickness and death. It is your conscious  mind that has decreed these evils. Banish   the thought—and you can banish the effect.  Life was never meant to be measured by years.  I remember reading a story of a traveler who  had journeyed to a land of perpetual sun.   Since there was no sunrise and no sunset, no  moons or changing seasons, there was no means   of measuring time. Therefore to the inhabitants  of that land, time did not exist. And having   no time, they never thought to measure ages and  consequently never grew old. Like organisms with a   single cell, they did not die except by violence. There is more truth than fiction to that idea. The   measurement of life by the calendar robs youth  of its vigor and hastens old age. It reminds me   of the days of our grandparents, when a woman  was supposed to doff her hat and don a bonnet   at 40. And donning a bonnet was like taking the  veil. She was supposed to retire to her chimney   corner and make way for the younger generation. Men and women ought to grow with years into   greater health, broader judgment, and mature  wisdom. Instead of becoming atrophied, and dead to   all new ideas, their minds should through practice  hold ever-stronger images before them of youthful   vigor and freshness. The Psalmist says—“But thou  art the same, and thy years shall have no end.”  No one need retire to the chimney corner, no  matter how many years have passed over his head.   Years should bring wisdom and greater health—not  decrepitude. Many of the world’s famous men did   their greatest work long after the age when most  men are in their graves. Tennyson composed the   immortal lines of “Crossing the Bar” at the age  of 80. Plato still had pen in hand at 81. Cato   learned Greek at the same age. Humboldt completed  his “Cosmos” in his ninetieth year, while John   Wesley at 82 said—“It is twelve years now since  I have felt any such sensation as fatigue.”  You are only as old as your mind. Every function,  every activity of your body, is controlled by your   mind. Your vital organs, your blood that sends the  material for rebuilding to every cell and tissue,   the processes of elimination that remove  all the broken down and waste material,   all are dependent for their functioning  upon the energy derived from your mind.  The human body can be compared to an electric  transportation system. When the dynamo runs   at full power every car speeds along, and  everything is handled with precision. But let   the dynamo slow down and the whole system lags. That dynamo is your mind, and your thoughts   provide the energy that runs it. Feed it thoughts  of health and vigor and your whole system will   reflect energy and vitality. Feed it thoughts of  decrepitude and age, and you will find it slowing   down to the halting pace you set for it. You can grow old at 30. You can be young   at 90. It is up to you. Which do you choose? If you choose youth, then start this minute   renewing your youth. Find a picture— or, better  still, a statuette—of the man you would like to   be, the form you would like to have. Keep it  in your room. When you go to bed at night,   visualize it in your mind’s eye—hold it in your  thought as YOU—as the man YOU ARE GOING TO BE!  The Journal of Education had the  idea in their story of “The Prince   and the Statue” in a recent issue: “There was once a prince who had a   crooked back. He could never stand straight up  like even the lowest of his subjects. Because   he was a very proud prince his crooked back  caused him a great deal of mental suffering.  “One day he called before him the most skilful  sculptor in his kingdom and said to him:   ‘Make me a noble statue of myself, true  to my likeness in every detail with this   exception—make this statue with a straight  back. I wish to see myself as I might have been.  “For long months the sculptor worked hewing the  marble carefully into the likeness of the prince,   and at last the work was done, and the sculptor  went before the prince and said: ‘The statue is   finished; where shall I set it up?’ One of the  courtiers called out: ‘Set it before the castle   gate where all can see it,’ but the prince smiled  sadly, and shook his head. ‘Rather,’ said he,   ‘place it in a secret nook in the palace garden  where only I shall see it.’ The statue was placed   as the prince ordered, and promptly forgotten  by the world, but every morning, and every noon,   and every evening the prince stole quietly away to  where it stood and looked long upon it, noting the   straight back and the un-lifted head, and the  noble brow. And each time he gazed, something   seemed to go out of the statue and into him,  tingling in his blood and throbbing in his heart.  “The days passed into months and the months  into years; then strange rumors began to spread   throughout the land. Said one: ‘The prince’s  back is no longer crooked or my eyes deceive me.’   Said another: ‘The prince is more noble-looking  or my eyes deceive me.’ Said another:   ‘Our prince has the high look of a mighty  man,’ and these rumors came to the prince,   and he listened with a queer smile. Then went he  out into the garden to where the statue stood and,   behold, it was just as the people said, his  back had become as straight as the statue’s,   his head had the same noble  bearing; he was, in fact,   the noble man his statue proclaimed him to be.” A novel idea? Not at all! 2,500 years ago,   in the Golden Age of Athens, when its culture led  the world, Grecian mothers surrounded themselves,   with beautiful statues that they might bring  forth perfect children and that the children   in turn might develop into perfect men and women. Eleven months from now you will have an entirely   new body, inside and out. Not a single cell,  not a single bit of tissue that is now in you   will be there then. What changes do you want  made in that new body? What improvements?  Get your new model clearly in your mind’s eye.  Picture it. VISUALIZE it! Look FORWARD daily to   a better physique, to greater mental power. Give that model to your Subconscious Mind to   build upon—and before eleven months  are out, that model WILL BE YOU! Chapter 23: The Medicine Delusion “I find the medicine worse than the malady.” —SHAKESPEARE. We are getting rid of the drug illusion,” declared  Dr. Woods Hutchinson, the noted medical writer of   America, at a luncheon given on June 6, 1925, by  the English- Speaking Union to 700 American and   Canadian doctors assembled in London, England. “We are willing even to subscribe to the dictum   of Oliver Wendell Holmes,” the doctor added, “that  if 99 per cent of all drugs we possess were thrown   into the sea it would be a good thing for the  human race, but rather hard on the fishes.”  Sir Arbuthnot Lane, Surgeon to King George,  seconded Dr. Hutchinson’s remarks. “They   might say,” he went on, “that he was trying  to establish a ‘suicide club’ for doctors.   It practically came to that, because as the  public became educated in matters of health   the medical profession might disappear.  It was in fact an anomaly that a medical   profession should exist. If people were healthy,  there was no reason to have doctors at all.”  Twenty-five years ago, the charms  of the Patent Medicine fakir and the   incantations of the Indian Medicine Man  were in the heyday of their popularity.   So long as you talked about their aches  and pains, their diseases and ailments,   people would buy any kind of a nostrum that an  unscrupulous fakir chose to palm off upon them.   Patent medicine manufacturers made fabulous  fortunes selling cheap whisky adulterated   with burnt sugar and water, under a hundred  different names for $1.00 the bottle. You   could hardly pick up a magazine or newspaper  without seeing a dozen of their lurid ads.  The day of the Indian Medicine Man and  street-corner fakir has passed. And for a time,   thanks to the crusade against them  led by Collier’s, and backed by a   number of other reputable magazines, patent  medicine manufacturers suffered an eclipse.  But they are back again today in a more  respectable guise. Pick up almost any small   town paper and you will find a dozen “sovereign  remedies” for tired women or fretful children   or run-down men. Concoctions, most of them,  containing just enough alcohol to give you   a pleasant sense of stimulation, enough burnt  sugar to color them—and a whole lot of water.  But if that were all, no great harm would be done.  If the peddling of drugs depended entirely—or even   mostly—on Patent Medicine advertisers, the end  of it would soon be in sight. But it doesn’t. The   worst offenders of all are the ones who, of all  people, should know better—some of the doctors.  Understand, I don’t mean all of them. And  I don’t mean the best of them. There are   thousands of them like Dr. Woods Hutchinson who  have the courage to get up and say that medicine   itself cannot cure disease. That it never has  cured disease. That Nature is the only Healer.   Drugs can give you temporary relief from pain—  yes. They can cleanse—yes. But as for curing   anything, the drug is not made that can do it. The principal good that the administering of   a drug has is in its effect upon the mind of  the patient. Men have been taught for so many   years that drugging is the only way to cure  disease, that when you give them something,   they BELIEVE they are going to be cured, and to  the extent that they believe, they ARE CURED.  The best proof of that is to let two patients  suffering from the same complaint go to two   different physicians—the one a  doctor of the regular school,   the other a homeopath. The regular doctor will  administer a dose containing ten thousand times   as much of the mother drug as the homeopath. In  fact, there is so slight a trace of any drug in   the homeopath’s prescription that it might be  called none at all. Yet it frequently happens   that his patient will respond just as readily to  his denatured dose as the other will to his drug.  Dr. Gour, in a recent issue of Pearson’s Magazine,  said: “A few years ago there appeared an article   in the Atlantic Monthly written by a young woman  physician who was with the Red Cross in Russia.   Immediately following the Kerensky revolution,  the Russian peasants who, for the first time   in their lives, found that they could keep what  they earned, began to think of going to doctors   for ailments which had afflicted them for years,  but which they could never before afford to have   treated. Within two weeks’ time this young  physician exhausted her supply of medicine.   But the rush of peasant patients continued  and she was reduced to the placebo idea of   administering colored waters with a slight amount  of a single drug-quinine, if I recall correctly.   For several weeks she obtained such  wonderful results in every conceivable   form of affliction that she said her faith  in specific medication was completely lost.”  In a dispatch from Rome to  the New York Herald-Tribune,   under date of June 15, 1926, I read: “Under the skeptical eyes of local doctors   Don Luigi Garofalo, a priest in the Quarto sector  of Naples, alleges that he is curing all the ills   that flesh is heir to, from pneumonia to broken  bones, by a practical application of the theory   derived from the text, ‘Man is of dust and to  dust he shall return.’ Don Luigi argues that from   a homeopathic view point dust should be a curative  element. So from dust taken from the reddish earth   near Pozznoli, which contains traces of sulphur  and copper, he makes pills for the afflicted,   but he contends that any other earth will do. “The cures, most of which have been effected   by means of the red earth, include the  healing of broken limbs, tubercular cases,   toothache, internal lesions, heart  diseases, mumps, paralysis and fevers.”  Of course, it is not to be inferred from  this that reliance can be placed upon red   earth—or any other kind of earth—to cure you  of any ill. But it shows that even so common;   ordinary a thing as a bit of dirt can be used  to arouse people from the lethargic condition   in which sickness so frequently leaves them,  and gives them the power to help themselves.  Take another case. Your doctor prescribes  regular doses of some drug. You take it   once. It has the desired effect. You take it  again. The effect is not quite so pronounced.   You keep it up—and in a short time the  drug seems to have lost its efficacy.  Why? The same chemical elements are there. And if  you mix the same chemical elements in a retort,   you will get the same results whether you  do it once or a thousand times. Why doesn’t   it work the same way with drugs and your body? Because the strongest factor in bringing about   the desired effect in the beginning was your  BELIEF—yours and that of your doctor. But as you   kept on and on, your belief began to falter, until  presently it died away altogether. You may have   hoped, but the active belief suggestions to your  subconscious mind had stopped carrying conviction.  Dr. Richard C. Cabot, Professor of Medicine at  Harvard University, in a recent address, declared,   “three-quarters of all illnesses are cured without  the victims even knowing they have had them.  “Proof of this contention is to be found in  post-mortem examinations, which time after   time reveal indelible and unmistakable traces  of disease which the subject has conquered all   unknowingly. Ninety per cent of all typhoid cures  itself, as does 75 per cent of all pneumonia.   In fact, out of a total of 215  diseases known to medical science,   there are only about eight or nine which  doctors conquer—the rest conquer themselves.”  He went on to say that—”If nature, assisted by the  proper mental and emotional moods, is capable of   curing an ulcer in three or four weeks, why isn’t  it possible for the same force to heal a similar   ulcer in a few minutes, when the curative  processes have been speeded up abnormally?”  Great physicians have, on numerous occasions,  maintained that there is no science in medicating   people. In Preventive Medicine—yes. In Surgery.  In Obstetrics. In a score of different lines that   fall under the heading of the medical profession. But the art of drugging is little ahead of   where it was in the Middle Ages, when Egyptian  mummies were in great demand among druggists and   “powdered Pharaoh” was considered the greatest  remedy for any ill that flesh was heir to.  Every day brings the discovery of some new  drug, and the consequent dictum that the remedy   previously prescribed was all a mistake—that  it had little or no real value whatever.  One doctor says: “A medicine that will not kill  you if you take an overdose is no good.” Another:   “The most prominent doctors now claim that there  is not a single drug that will do what it has been   prescribed for in the past.” Dr. Douglas White,   writing in The Churchman, sums it up thus: “All cure of every disease is spiritual.   Healing can never be imposed from without by  either the surgeon or physician; it is the   living organism which, helped by the skill of the  one or the other, is enabled to work its way back   to health. The whole principle of healing in all  cases is the vis medicatrix naturae. And when we   speak of nature, we are only personifying the  principle of life which Christians call God.”  In the Medical Record of September 25, 1920,  Dr. Joseph Byrne, Professor of Neurology   at Fordham University Medical School, said: “At a conservative estimate it may be admitted   that of all the ailments for which relief  is sought, 90% or over are self limited and   tend to get well. It may also be admitted  that in over 90% of all human ailments,   the psychic is the dominating factor.” In other words, Mind is the Healer. Drugs   can sometimes make its work easier by removing  obstructions, by killing off parasites. But the   regular use of drugs is far more likely to harm  than to heal. We might well quote to the druggists   the old Hindoo proverb: “God gives the mango;  The farmer plants the seed. God cures the patient; The doctor takes the fees.”  In the Great War, the one drug that most proved  its worth was Iodine. And what is Iodine?   A cleanser. It killed germs. It cleansed  wounds. But it has no healing power. And   no healing was expected of it. It did all that  was asked. It cauterized—cleansed so that Nature   (Mind) could do its own healing, unobstructed. That would seem to be the most that should be   expected of any drug—kill the germs of sickness  or disease, cleanse so that Nature can then more   easily do its rebuilding. And that is where the  use of drugs should stop. Mind works best when it   is interfered with least—when we throw ourselves  entirely upon it for Support, rather than share   the responsibility with some outside agency. Dr. Burnett Rae, a well-known English specialist,   addressing a large audience on the subject of  “Spiritual Healing and Medical Science,” said the   term “spiritual healing” was sometimes used in a  manner which seemed to imply that there was a form   of healing which was of a non-spiritual character,  and that spiritual healing was incompatible with,   or opposed to, medical practice. Healing could  never be regarded as a purely physical process.   He would go so far as to say that healing was  always effected through the control of the mind,   and medicinal remedies only set the machinery  of the mind in motion. We are too apt to think   of medical science as concerned with drugs or  appliances and operations. These might completely   pass away during the next twenty or fifty years. It is not through drugs that the medical   profession has done so much of good for the world.  It is not through drugs that they have improved   the general health, cleaned up plague spots, cut  down infant mortality, and lengthened the average   life expectancy of mankind by fifteen years. It is by scotching disease at its very source.   It is by getting rid of artificially created  unwholesome conditions, getting back to   natural wholesome conditions. What is it causes typhus?   Filth—an entirely unwholesome condition,  man-made. And how do doctors prevent the   spread of typhus? By cleaning up—by getting  back to natural wholesome conditions.  What is it causes typhoid? Impure water. And  its prevention is simply the purifying of the   water—getting back to natural wholesome supply. Yellow fever has been practically stamped out   of existence. Typhus is almost a  forgotten plague, except in such   backward places as parts of Russia and Asia. Malaria has been conquered. And doctors predict   that in another generation tuberculosis  will be an almost forgotten malady.  How were these wonderful results brought about?  Not through drugs—but by cleaning up! Cleaning   out swamps and filth. Purifying water. Building  drainage systems. Making everything round about   as clean and wholesome as Nature herself. Cleanliness—Purity—Sunshine!  God gave us in abundance all that is necessary  for perfect health—clean air, pure water,   clear sunshine. All we need to do is to keep these  pure and clean, and to use all we possibly can of   them. The greatest good the medical profession has  done mankind is in discovering the value of these   gifts of God and showing us how to use them. The Chinese have long had the right idea—they   pay their physicians to keep them  well, not to cure them of sickness.   And the thing that made the reputation of such men  as Gorgas, Reed, Flexner, Carrel, was not their   cure of disease—but their prevention of it. That way lies the future of medicine—   bringing our surroundings back to the  natural wholesome conditions for which   we were created. That way lies health and happiness for all—cleanliness inside and out,   clean air, pure water, plenty  of sunshine—and right thinking  In the next Chapter, I shall try to show  you how you can apply the illimitable   power of Mind hopefully towards the  successful treatment of disease. Chapter 24: The Gift of the Magi “Sweep up the debris of decaying faiths;  Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out beliefs, And throw your soul wide open to the light  Of Reason and of Knowledge. Be not afraid To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.”  —ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. All over the world, sick, weak   and devitalized men and women are searching for  health and strength. By the hundreds of thousands,   they drag their weary and aching bones around,  or languish on sick beds, waiting for someone to   bring health to them corked up in a bottle. But real, lasting health was never found   in pillboxes or medicine bottles. There  is one method—and only one— by which it   can be gained and kept. That method is by  using the power of the Subconscious Mind.  For a long time the doctors pooh-poohed any  such idea. Then as the evidence piled up,   they grudgingly admitted that nervous troubles and  even functional disorders might be cured by mind.  Even now there are some who, as  Bernard Shaw put it, “Had rather   bury a whole hillside ethically than see  a single patient cured unethically. They   will give credit to no method of healing  outside the tenets of their own school.”  Yet, as Warren Hilton has  it in “Applied Psychology”:  “All the literature of medicine,  whether of ancient or modern times,   abounds in illustrations of the power of the  mind over the body in health and in disease.   And medical Science has always based much of its  practice on this principle. No reputable school of   medicine ever failed to instruct its students  in practical applications of the principle of   mental influence at the bedside of their patients.  A brisk and cheery manner, a hopeful countenance,   a supremely assured and confident demeanor—these  things have always been regarded by the medical   profession as but second in importance to  sanitation and material remedies; while   the value of the sugar-coated bread pill when the  diagnosis was uncertain, has long been recognized.  “The properly trained nurse has always  been expected to supplement the efforts   of the attending physician by summoning the  mental forces of the patient to his aid.  She, therefore, surrounds the patient with an  atmosphere of comfortable assurance. And by   constantly advising him of his satisfactory  progress toward speedy recovery she seeks to   instill hope, confidence and mental effort. “To quote Dr. Didama: ‘the ideal physician   irradiates the sick chamber with  the light of his cheerful presence.   He may not be hilarious—he is not indifferent—but  he has an irrepressible good-nature which lifts   the patient out of the slough of despond and  places his feet on the firm land of health. In   desperate cases, even a little harmless levity  may be beneficial. A well-timed jest may break   up a congestion; a pun may add pungency to the  sharpest stimulant.’ Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes   reduced this principle to its cash equivalent  when he said that a cheerful smile might be   worth five thousand dollars a year to a physician. “Today, psychotherapy, or the healing of bodily   disease by mental influence, has the unqualified  endorsement of the American Therapeutic Society,   the only national organization in America  devoted exclusively to therapeutics. It has   the enthusiastic support of men of such recognized  international leadership in the scientific world   and in the medical profession as Freud, Jung,  Bleuler, Breuer, Prince, Janet, Babinski,   Putnam, Gerrish, Sidis, Dubois, Munsterberg,  Jones, Brill, Donley, Waterman and Taylor.  “The present attitude of reputable science  toward the principle that the mind controls   all bodily operations is, then, one of positive  conviction. The world’s foremost thinkers accept   its truth. The interest of enlightened men and  women everywhere is directed toward the mind as   a powerful curative force and as a regenerative  influence of hitherto undreamed-of resource.”  The more progressive physicians everywhere now  admit that there is practically no limit to   how far mind can go in the cure of disease.  As Dr. Walsh of Fordham University puts it:   “Analysis of the statistics of diseases cured  by mental influence shows that its results have   been more strikingly manifest in organic than in  the so-called nervous or functional diseases.”  Everyone admits that the mind influences the  body somewhat; for everyone has seen others   grow pale with fear, or red with anger. Everyone  has felt the stopping of the heartbeats at some   sudden fright, the quickened breathing and the  thumping of the heart caused by excitement. These   and a hundred other evidences of the influence  of mind over matter are common to all of us,   and everyone will admit them. But everyone does not know that   our whole bodies seem to be nothing more  or less than the outward expression of our   thought. We sit in a draught, and education  teaches us we should have a cold or fever.   So we have a cold or fever. We eat something which  we have been told is indigestible, and immediately   we are assailed with pains. We see another yawn,  and our impulse is to follow suit. In the same   way, when we hear of sickness round about us, the  fear of it visualizes it in our own minds and we,   too, have it. The fear of these things seems  to bring them about, the mental suggestion   sent through to our subconscious minds. We have  been educated in a medical age to think that   most diseases are infectious or contagious. So the  mere sight of a diseased person makes most of us   withdraw into ourselves like a turtle within his  shell. We fear we shall catch it—when one of the   great dangers of disease is that very fear of it. For years it has been accepted as an acknowledged   fact that anyone trapped in a mine or other  air-tight compartment would presently die of   carbon dioxide poisoning—lack of oxygen.  Now comes Houdini to prove that death   for lack of oxygen is not necessary at all! “Fear, and not poisoning by carbon dioxide,   causes the death of miners and others  trapped in air-tight compartments,”   in the opinion of Houdini, according to an  Associated Press dispatch of August 6, 1926.  Houdini had himself sunk in a sealed coffin in  a swimming pool, without chance for a breath   of outside air to reach him, and stayed  there for an hour and a half, although,   according to all previous scientific belief,  he should have been dead at the end of four   minutes. Yet Dr. W. J. McConnell of the United  States Department of Mines, who examined Houdini   before and after the experiment, reported  no marked physical reactions from the test,   and Houdini himself said he felt only a slight  dizziness when he was released from the coffin!  “Anyone can do it,” said Houdini. “The important  thing is to believe that you are safe.”  The Chinese have a saying that when the plague  comes, 5,000 people may die of the plague, but   50,000 will die of the fear of it. Did you ever hurt a limb, or a finger,   so that you thought you couldn’t move it? And  then, under the stress of some sudden emotion,   forget all about the hurt and presently wake  to find yourself using the finger or the limb   just as readily and as painlessly as though  there had never been anything wrong with it?  I have before me a clipping from the New York  Times of March 29, 1925, telling of a cripple who   had been paralyzed for six years, but under the  spur of sudden fear, he ran up a stairway unaided,   without crutch or cane. He had been treated in  a number of hospitals, but because of an injury   to his spine received in an auto accident, had  been unable to walk without crutches or canes   for six years. The patient in the bed next  his own suddenly went crazy and attacked him,   and in his fear this paralytic leaped from his  bed and ran up a flight of stairs. According to   the report, the sudden fright cured him! Take the miracles of Lourdes, or of St.   Anne of Beaupre, or of any of the dozens of  shrines that dot the world. What is it that   affects the cures? Two things—Desire and Faith.  “What wouldst thou that I should do unto thee?”   the Saviour asked the blind man who kept following  and crying out to him. “Lord that I should receive   my sight.” And again of the cripple at the Pool of  Bethesda Jesus asked—”Wouldst thou be made whole?”  Sounds like foolish questioning, doesn’t it? But  you remember the story of the famous Saint of   Italy, who traveled from town to town healing the  lame, the halt, and the blind. A pilgrim hastening   to a town where the Saint was expected met two  lame beggars hurrying away. He asked them the   reason for their haste, to be told, to his  astonishment, it was because the Saint was   coming to town. As they put it—“He will surely  heal us, and where will our livelihood be then?”  So it is with many people today—not beggars,  mind you—but people in every walk of life.   They have become so wedded to their ailments;  they “enjoy poor health” so thoroughly, that they   are secretly a bit proud of it. Take away their  complaints and they would be lost without them.  You must have the sincere desire first. That is  prayer. Then the faith—the kind of faith that   Jesus meant when he said—“Whatsoever ye ask  for when ye pray, believe that ye receive it,   and ye shall have it.” Mind you, not “believe ye  are going to receive it.” “Believe that ye receive   it”—now—this very minute. Know that the REAL you,  the image of you held in Universal Mind—in short,   the Truth concerning every organ in your body—is  perfect. “Know the Truth.” Believe that you HAVE   this perfect image. On the day that  you can truly believe this—carry this   sincere conviction to your subconscious  mind—on that day you WILL BE perfect.  This is the faith that Jesus meant when he  said—“Thy faith hath made thee whole.” This   is the faith that is responsible for the miracles  of Lourdes, for miraculous healings everywhere.   It matters not whether you be Catholic  or Protestant, Jew or Gentile.   Desire and faith such as these will heal you. A month or two ago I read in the newspapers of   a farmer, blind for two years, who  went out in the field and prayed,   “that he should receive his sight.” At the end of  the second day, his sight was completely restored.   He was a Protestant. He went to no shrine—just  out under the sky and prayed to God.  Today I have before me a clipping from  the New York Sun of February 23, 1926,   telling of Patrolman Dennis O’Brien of the Jersey  City police force, who at the end of a Novena to   Our Lady of Help at the Monastery of St. Michael’s  in Union City, recovered the use of his legs,   which had been paralyzed since the time,  two years before, when a bullet had entered   the base of his spine, severing the cord of  motor and sensory nerves. He was a Catholic.  Then here is one from the New York Sun of June 26,  1926, telling how Miss Elsie Meyer of the Bronx,   New York, was healed overnight of a tumorous  growth that had troubled her for months:  “I realized last fall that there was an  unusual growth on my body,” she said. “It   might have resulted from the strain of lifting  a trunk. I wanted to know what it was, and I   first went to a doctor, who informed me it was  a tumorous growth and likely to become serious.  “But I would not be frightened and refused  to receive any medical remedies in the way   of cure. I have been a believer in faith  healing and member of the Unity Society,   a branch of the New Thought organization, for  a number of years, so I went to a New Thought   practioner. While this seemed to help me, the  tumorous growth remained. I guess my faith wasn’t   strong enough at the time. That was last fall. “I came to the congress with the same growth,   apparently unaffected by any attempts to cure  it. But after attending the healing meeting at   the congress yesterday I left with firm faith that  I would get the healing I had asked for. When I   retired I noticed the tumor was still on my body,  but when I awoke this morning it had disappeared.” The chronicles of every religion are full  of just such miracles. And the reason for   them is the same in every case— prayer and  faith. Given these, no healing is impossible.  Suppose we go back for a moment to the  lowly Amoeba, the first bit of animal   life upon the earth. I know not whether you  are Fundamentalist or Evolutionist. The facts   are a bit harder to prove from the Evolution  side of it, so let us argue from that angle. The Amoeba, as you will recall from Chapter  I, is the lowest form of animal life known   to scientists, a sort of jelly-fish with but a  single cell—without brains, without intelligence,   possessing only LIFE. No one would ever contend  that this jellyfish could improve itself.   No one would argue that it developed the next  form of life out of its own mind or ideas.  Yet, according to science, the next form of  life did develop from this jelly-like mass.   The Amoeba certainly was not responsible for  doing it. And it couldn’t develop itself. So   the conclusion is forced upon us that some  outside Intelligence must have done it.  But there were no other living creatures. The  Amoeba was alone of all animal life upon the   planet. The condition of the water and atmosphere  was such that few if any other forms of animals   could have sustained life at that time. So the  Intelligence, which developed the next form of   animal life, must have been the same that created  the Amoeba—that first brought LIFE to this Planet.   That Intelligence is variously called God,  Providence, Nature, the Life Principle, Mind,   etc. For our purposes here  let us call it Universal Mind.  Having formed life here on earth, Universal Mind  proceeded to develop it. Starting with a single   cell, It built cell upon cell, changing  each form of life to meet the different   conditions of atmosphere and environment  that the cooling of the earth crust brought   about. When the multi-cellular structure  became complicated, It gave a brain to it   to direct the different functions, just as you  put a “governor” on a steam engine. When land   appeared and the receding tides left certain  animals high and dry for periods of hours,   It gave these both lungs and gills—the  one for the air, the other for the water.  When the creatures began to prey upon one  another, It gave one speed, another a shell,   a third an ink-like fluid, that each in  its own way might escape and survive.  But always It progressed. Each new  stage of life was an improvement   over the previous one. And always It showed Its  resourcefulness, Its ability to meet ANY need.  Finally, as the culmination of all Its efforts,  It made MAN—a creature endowed not only with   a brain like that of the lower animals, but  with the power of reason— “made in His image   and likeness,” sharing Infinite Intelligence—  himself a Creator and a part of Universal Mind.  All through the creation—from the time of the  one-celled Amoeba right up to Man—every scientist   will admit that the directing intelligence of  Universal Mind was on the job every minute,   that It formed the models on which each new and  different kind of animal was made, that each of   these models was perfect—the one model best fitted  to cope with the conditions it had to confront.  Certainly when It came to Man, It is not likely to  have been any less successful in forming a perfect   model than it was in making the tiger or the  elephant. So we can take it, I assume, that all   will admit that Man as formed by Universal Mind  is perfect—that the idea of Man as it exists in   Universal Mind is perfect in every particular. And Universal Mind, from the very beginning,   has never taken a step backward, has never  stood still. Always it has PROGRESSED. So   it would seem safe to assume that man is not  going backward now—that he is a more perfect   creature than he was 5,000, 10,000 or 100,000  years ago—that he is constantly drawing nearer   and nearer the likeness of his Creator. The next step seems just as logical.   If there was inherent in even the earliest and  lowest forms of life the power to develop whatever   means was requisite to meet each new emergency,  such as a shell or lungs or legs or wings—if   this power is still inherent in the lower forms of  life such as the Plant Parasites referred to in a   previous chapter, does it not seem a certainty  that we have the same power within ourselves,   if only we knew how to call it forth? Jesus proved that we have, and his disciples   and followers added still further proof. After the  third century of the Christian era, that power was   allowed to lapse through disuse, but of late years  thousands have been taking advantage of it for   themselves and for others through psychology or  religion. A new Church has been founded upon the   words of James: “Faith without WORKS is dead.” It  differs from most Churches in that it teaches that   Jesus meant ALL that he said when he commanded  his disciples to—“Go, preach, saying, the kingdom   of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the  lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils; freely   ye have received, freely give.” The sick, the  lame, the halt and the blind have flocked to it   literally by the hundred thousands. That thousands  have been cured is beyond dispute. That many were   cases, which had been given up by the medical  fraternity, the doctors quite frankly admit.  And the basis of all these cures is that there  is nothing miraculous about the cure of disease   at all. That it is “Divinely Natural.” That it  requires merely understanding. That Mind is the   only Creator. And that the only image Universal  Mind holds of your body is a perfect image,   neither young nor old, but full of health,  of vigor, of beauty and vitality. That all   you have to do when assailed by disease is to go  back to Universal Mind for a new conception of   its perfect image— for the Truth concerning  your body. Just as you would go back to the   principle of mathematics for the Truth concerning  any problem that worked out incorrectly. When you   can make your subconscious mind copy after this  Universal image— the Truth—instead of the diseased   image you are holding in your thoughts, your  sickness will vanish like the mere dream it is.  Does that sound too deep?  Then look at it this way:  When you think an organ is diseased, it is your  conscious mind that thinks this. Inevitably it   sends this thought through to your subconscious  mind, and the latter proceeds to build the cells   of that organ along this imperfect, diseased  model. Change the model—in other words,   change your belief—and your subconscious mind  will go back again to building along right lines.  Your body, you know, is simply an aggregation of  millions upon millions of protons and electrons,   held together by mind. They are the universal  substance all about us, the plastic clay from   which the sculptor Mind shapes the forms you see. To quote the New York Sun: “Man’s body is made   up of trillions of miniature solar systems,  each with whirling planets and a central sun.   These tiny systems are the atoms of modern  Science. The atoms of all elements are made   up of protons and electrons in varying  quantities and arranged in various ways.  “But what are protons and electrons? “The masters of physics have succeeded   in weighing and measuring them. We know that  they carry the smallest possible charges of   electricity, and we are learning much about the  way they behave; but students are beginning to   doubt that they have real substance that they  are anything one could hit with a Lilliputian   hammer. Dr. H. G. Gale of the University  of Chicago, addressing the Ohio Academy of   Science the other day, said there was good reason  to believe; that electrons were composed entirely   of electricity and that their mass or weight  was only a manifestation of electrical force.   According to this view, nothing exists in the  Universe except electricity—and perhaps ether.”  Your subconscious mind partakes of the  creative power of Mind and because of that,   it is daily, hourly, changing the particles of  electrical energy, which constitute your body,   to conform to the image you hold before it. The clay cannot reply to the sculptor. No   more can these tiny particles of electricity.  Your body has nothing to say as to whether it   shall be diseased or crippled. It is MIND that  decides this. Jesus understood this, and it was   on the basis of this understanding that he was  able to cure any and all manner of disease. He   was not a magician or occult wonder-worker, aiming  to set aside the laws of nature. He was a TEACHER,   demonstrating those laws. He didn’t pick the  learned Scribes and Pharisees and let them in on   the secret of his wonder working. On the contrary,  the men he chose were simple fisher folk, and to   them he gave the UNDERSTANDING that enabled them,  too, to cure the sick, the halt and the blind.  For what is sickness? An illusion, a mortal  dream—merely the absence of health. Bring back   that health image, and the sickness immediately  disappear. Universal Mind never created disease.   The only image it knows of man is the  Truth—the perfect image. The only idea   it has of your body is a perfect, healthy idea.  “For God is of purer eyes than to behold evil.”  Then where does disease come from? Who created  it? No one did. It is a mere illusion—just as,   if you think a pin is sticking you, and you  concentrate your thought on the pain, it becomes   unbearable. Yet when you investigate, you find  that no pin was sticking you at all—merely a hair,   or bit of cinder lodged against the skin.  How often have you had some fancied pain,   only to have it promptly disappear when  your physician assured you there was   nothing wrong with you at all. It would be  the same way with all sickness, all pain,   if you would understand that it is merely fear  or suggestion working on your conscious mind,   and that if you will deny this belief of  pain or sickness, your subconscious mind   will speedily make that denial good. Don’t render  that mind impotent by thoughts of fear, doubt and   anxiety. If you do, it is going to get like a  working crew, which is constantly being stopped   by strikes or walkouts or changes of plans. It  will presently get discouraged and stop trying.  To quote Dr. George E. Pitzer again—“In  proper, healthy or normal conditions of life,   the objective mind and the subjective mind act  in perfect harmony with each other. When this is   the case, healthy and happy conditions always  prevail. But these two minds are not always   permitted to act in perfect harmony with each  other; this brings mental disturbances; excites   physical wrongs, functional and organic diseases. “Our unconscious is a tremendous storage plant   full of potential energy which can be expended for  beneficial or harmful ends. Like every apparatus   for storing up power, it can be man’s most  precious ally, if man is familiar with it and,   hence, not afraid of it. Ignorance and fear, on  the other hand, can transform a live electric wire   into an engine of destruction and death.” Even as long ago as Napoleon’s day,   men had begun to get an inkling of this. “Think  that you are well,” said the astute Tallyrand,   “instead of thinking that you are sick.” And  the formula of the Quakers is that an energetic   soul is “master of the body which it loves.” So keep in mind the one basic fact that covers   the whole ground — that Mind is all. There is no  other cause. When you drive the belief in disease   from your subconscious mind, you will drive away  the pain and all the other symptoms with it.  Few sick people have any idea how much they can do  for themselves. There is an old saying that every   man is “a fool or his own physician at 40.” When  the science of Mind is more generally understood,   that saying will become literally true. Every man  will find within himself the Mind, which “healeth   all thy diseases.” For every function of your body  is governed by your mind. When sickness or pain   assails you, deny it! Cling steadfastly to the one  idea that covers all—that Universal Mind made your   every organ perfect; that the only image of each  organ now in Universa1 Mind is this perfect image;   and that this perfect idea is endowed with  resources sufficient to meet any need.  Jesus’ command— “Be ye therefore perfect, even  as your father in Heaven is perfect,”—was meant   to be taken literally. And it can be followed  literally if we will model our bodies upon the   image He holds of us in Universal Mind. We are  all sculptors, you know, but instead of marble or   clay, our material is the plastic energy—protons  and electrons—of which we and everything in this   world about us are made. What are you making  of it? What image are you holding in mind?   Images of sickness? Of poverty? Of Limitation?  Then you are reproducing these in your life.  Banish them! Forget them! Never let them  enter your thought, and they will never   again manifest themselves in your life. You admit that mind influences your body to   some extent, but you think your physical organs  hold the preponderance of power. So you depend   upon them, and make yourself their slave. “Know ye not,” says Paul, “that to whom   ye yield yourselves servants to obey,  his servants ye are to whom ye obey?”  By holding before yourself the thought that your  organs are the masters, you make them your master,   and deprive yourself of the directing intelligence  of your subconscious mind. When an organ ceases to   function properly, you try to doctor it, when  the part that needs attention is your mind. If   you are running an electric machine, and the  current becomes weak or is switched off, you   don’t take the machine part, or oil it or tamper  with it to make it run better. You go to the   source of the rower to find what is wrong there. In the same way, when anything seems wrong with   the functioning of your body, the place to  investigate is your subconscious mind. Your   stomach has no intelligence, nor your heart,  nor your liver, nor any other of your organs.   Your liver, for instance, could never figure out  how much sugar should be turned into your blood   every minute to keep your bodily temperature at  98 degrees, when you are sitting in a room that   is warmed to only 65 degrees. It doesn’t know  how much more sugar is required to keep that   temperature normal when you go out into a driving  gale 10 below zero. Yet it supplies the requisite   amount—neither too much nor too little. And it  does it instantaneously. Where does it get the   information? You don’t know it. No mortal  man could figure it out in a year’s time.  It gets it from your subconscious mind. It gets  both the information and the directions to use   it. And every other of your bodily organs gets its  information in the same place. Your muscles are   not self-acting. Take away mind and those muscles  are just like any other bit of matter—lifeless,   inert. They have nothing to say as to what they  shall do. They merely obey the behests of mind.  Have you ever seen one of those great presses at  work in a newspaper plant? They seem almost human   in their intelligence. At one end, great rolls  of paper feed in. At the other, out comes the   finished newspaper, folded, ready for delivery.  Everything is automatic. Everything as perfect   as machinery can be made. The “fingers” that fold  the papers seem almost lifelike in their deftness.  But shut off the life-giving electric current—and  what happens? The machinery is powerless. Take   away the directing human intelligence, and  how long before that wonderful machine would   be a mass of scrap—mere bits of steel and  rubber? How long could it function of itself?  So it is with your body. A wonderful mechanism—the  most complicated, yet the most perfect in the   world. But switch off the current of your mental  dynamo; take away the intelligence that directs   the working of your every organ, and what is  left? A bit of bone and flesh—inert and useless.  In the final analysis, your body is merely  a piece of mechanism—dependent entirely upon   mind. It has no power, no volition, of its own.  It does as mind tells it to, insofar as mind   believes itself to be the Master. Your eyes, for  instance, are merely lenses, which transmit light   from the outer world to the brain within. They  contract or elongate, they open or close, just   as mind directs. And mind, in its turn, keeps them  constantly nourished with new, life-giving blood,   replacing old tissue, old cells, as fast as they  wear out, rebuilding ever, so that your eyes may   continue to function perfectly as long as your  conscious mind is dependent upon them for its   impressions of outer objects. It doesn’t  matter how old you may be or how much you   use them. Your eyes are like any other muscles  of your body—they improve in strength with use.   Give them but enough rest intervals for  mind to repair and rebuild the used tissue,   keep before your subconscious mind the perfect  image of eyes on which you expect it to rebuild,   and you need never fear glasses, you need never  worry about “your eyes going back on you.”  What is it happens when your muscles refuse to  work—fail to perform their functions properly? You   are what has happened. You have switched off the  current from some particular part. You have been   holding the belief so long and so firmly that the  muscles have the preponderance of power that your   subconscious mind has come to believe it, too.  And when the nerve or muscle suffers an injury,   the subconscious mind—at the suggestion of your  conscious mind—gives up all dominion over it.  All disease, all sickness, all imperfections of  the human body are due to this one cause—your   belief that your body is the master, that it can  act, that it can catch cold, or become diseased,   without the consent of mind. This is  the procuring cause of all suffering.   One disease is no different from another in this.  They are all due to that one erroneous belief.  If you will deny the power  of your body over your mind,   you can destroy all fear of disease. And when the  fear goes, the foundation of the disease is gone.  The way to begin is to refuse to believe or to  heed any complaint from your body. Have no fear of   climate or atmosphere, of dampness or drafts. It  is only when you believe them unhealthy that they   are so to you. When your stomach sends a report  of distress, when it tells you that something you   have eaten is disagreeing with it, treat it as  you would an unruly servant. Remind it that it   is not the judge of what is or is not good for it.  That it has no intelligence. That it is merely a   channel through which the food you give it passes  for certain treatment and selection. That if the   food is not good it has but to pass it through  to the eliminatory organs as speedily as may be.  Your stomach is entirely capable of doing this.  Every organ you have is capable of withstanding   any condition—given the right state of mind to  direct it. The only reason that they succumb   to sickness or disease or injury is because you  tell them to. Men have fallen from great heights   without injury. Men have taken the most deadly  poison without harm. Men have gone through fire   and flood and pestilence with not a scratch  to show. And what men have done once they can   do again. The fact that it has been done shows  that your body does not need to suffer injury   from these conditions And if it does not need  to, then it would seem that the only reason   it ordinarily suffers is because your fear of  injury is the thought you are holding before   your subconscious mind and therefore that  is the thought that it images on your body.  In a dispatch from Stockholm to the New  York Herald-Tribune dated January 18,   1926, I read that Dr. Henry Markus and Dr. Ernest  Sahigren, Stockholm scientists, have been able,   through hypnotic suggestion, to offset the effect  of poisons on the human system to a marked degree.  The scientists put three subjects into hypnotic  sleep and then administered drugs, carefully   recording the effects on blood pressure and pulse,  both with and without “suggestion.” When a drug,   which acts to increase blood pressure, was  administered without “suggestion,” the blood   pressure readings ranged between 109 to 130  and pulse readings from 54 to 100. But when   the drug was administered with the “suggestion”  to the mind of the patient that it was merely so   much harmless water, the blood pressures were  from 107 to 116 and pulse readings all less   than 67. From which one would judge that it  was the patient’s belief, which affected him,   far more than any power in the drug. Bear this in mind when anyone tells you   that certain foods are not good for you.  You can eat what you like, if you do it   in moderation. Just remember—no matter what  you may eat—if you relish it, if you BELIEVE   it to be good for you, it will be good for you! But, you may say, is not this like the tenets of   a well-known religion? What of that? If another  has uncovered certain fundamental truths why not   use them, regardless of whether or not we agree  with the philosophy from which they are taken.  To quote again from Dr. Richard C.  Cabot of the Harvard Medical School:  “There need be no conflict. There is opportunity  for all sincere, humble-minded effort. Let us   have no persecutions and no interference with  the spread of truth and light from any source.   Indictments against movements as powerful and  sincere as Christian Science and Preventive   Medicine are anachronistic. Let us all get busy  along our own lines. ‘With malice towards none,   with charity for all, let us  bind up the nation’s wounds.’”  It has often seemed to me that if all the churches  would take a leaf out of the book of ordinary   Business Practice, forget their differences  over dogma, and simply profit by the example   that Mary Baker Eddy, Discoverer and Founder of  Christian Science, has given them of building   up an enormous following almost overnight,  they would be much the better off thereby.  For what was it brought men and women into the  Church in such vast numbers in the early day of   Christianity? Healing! What was responsible for  the phenomenal growth of the Christian Science   Church? The healing of thousands of people  of any and every kind of ill. What is it   that people go to any Church for? To pray— and  to find how to get an answer to their prayers.   Show them the way to do this, show them the way  to heal themselves of all their ills and lacks,   and you will need to worry no more about  the crowded theaters and the empty churches.  “If this be treason, make the most of it.” The moment any symptom of illness shows in   your body, vigorously deny its existence. Say to  yourself—“My body has no intelligence. Neither has   any germ of disease. Therefore neither my body  nor the disease can tell me I am sick. Mind is   the only cause. And Mind has not directed them to  make me sick. The only image of my body that Mind   knows is a perfect, vigorous, healthy image. And  that is the only image I am going to build on.”   Then forget the image of disease. It is only an  illusion, and can be dispelled like any other   illusion. Keep in your mind’s eye the image of  perfect health, of vigorous, boundless vitality.  Your body cannot say it is sick. Therefore  when the belief of sickness assails you,   it must come either from your conscious mind  or from outside suggestion. In either event,   it is your job to see that no belief of sickness  reaches your subconscious mind, that no fear   of it, no thought of it, is imaged there. To treat one who has already succumbed to   the belief of sickness, explain to him, as I have  explained to you here, that his body has no power   for sickness or for health, any more than a log of  wood has. That his body is merely an aggregation   of millions of electrons—particles of electrical  energy, really— subject wholly to his mind. That   these particles of energy have neither substance  nor intelligence; that they are constantly   changing; and that the forms they take depend  entirely upon the images he holds in his own mind.  His body is, in short, a mental concept. It  is an exact reflection of the thought he is   holding in mind of it. If he has been sick,  it is because he has been holding sickly,   weak and unhealthy thoughts in his mind. If he  wishes to get well, it is first necessary for   him to change his thought. Instead of doctoring  the machine, he is to go direct to the powerhouse   and change the current. Let him repeat to  himself, night and morning, this little formula:  “There is no permanence to matter. The  one surest thing about it is change.”  Every cell, every tissue in my body is constantly  being renewed. The old, worn out tissues are being   torn down and carried away. New, perfect  ones are replacing them. And the model on   which those new organisms are being re-built is  the perfect model that is held in Divine Mind.  “For God made man in His image. That image  was perfect then—is perfect now. It is the   only image that Divine Mind knows of me. It is  the only image on which my subconscious mind is   ever again going to pattern its re-building.  Every minute of every day I am growing more   and more into the image of God—the True  Likeness He holds of me in His thought.”  If he will do that, if he will bear in mind that  matter as such has no feeling, no intelligence;   that it is the mind that feels, the mind that  directs, and therefore he has nothing to fear   from any external causes, his fear of the  disease will vanish. And the patient does   not exist who will not speedily recover  when his fear of the disease is gone.  “Verily, verily, I say unto you,” said Jesus, “if  a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.”   And again—“This is the life eternal.”  “Is,” you will notice, not “shall be.”  “The subconscious mind is God’s way of utilizing  His energy,” says the Rev. William T. Walsh,   Rector of St. Luke’s Church, New York City, in  his book “Scientific Spiritual Healing.” “God   evolved the subconscious mind. It is His  gift to us like all else that we possess,   and because it is from Him we should give  thanks and learn to use it intelligently.  “God has so fashioned us that we do not have to  give conscious attention to the vital processes.   He has given us what is called the subconscious  mind, which looks after all the vital functions.   This mind can receive commands from us and  has wonderful ability to carry them out,   for it is a law that every thought tends to  realize itself subconsciously in the body.  “If you allow evil thoughts to remain, they  are received by the subconscious which tends   to realize them in the body just as much as though  they were good, wholesome, health-giving spiritual   thoughts. For remember, the subconscious does not  reason and judge. It only receives and obeys.”   When you have an accident, don’t immediately think  that you must be hurt. On the contrary, deny at   once that you can be hurt. The denial will take  away the creative power of your thought from any   damaging condition. More than that, if you will  immediately call to mind the fact that the only   image of your body that Universal Mind holds is a  perfect image, and that this is the image on which   your subconscious mind is building, you will find:  that this subconscious mind will speedily rebuild   any damaged parts in accordance with that image. As a matter of fact, if we could thoroughly   realize that our bodies are made up merely of  vortices of energy subject wholly to the control   of mind, it should hurt us no more to run a knife  through them than it does to run it through water.   The water immediately resumes the shape  of the vessel that holds it. Just so,   our bodies should immediately resume  the shape that mind holds them in. But even with our present imperfect understanding,   we can perform what the uninitiated would call  miracles with our bodies. And each victory we   win gives us a bit more of power over them.  To conquer one diseased condition makes it   easier to ward off or to conquer other diseased  conditions. The body cannot oppose us. It is only   the bias of education and the suggestions  of those about us that we have to combat. There is no necessity for disease. There is no  necessity even for fatigue. “They that wait upon   the Lord shall run and not be weary; and they  shall walk and not faint.” Those words from Holy   Writ were meant literally—and they can be applied  literally if you will govern your body by mind,   and not let custom and popular belief make  your body the master. Whatever it is right   for you to do, you can do without fear, no  matter if it entails long-continued toil,   hardship or danger. Depend upon it, your  mind can call to your aid all the forces of   Nature if they are necessary to your emergency. “Therefore I say unto you,” quotes the Master,   “take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat,  or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body,   what ye shall put on. Is not the life  more than meat and the body than raiment?”  Diet, exercise and rules of health never  kept any one well of themselves. Often   they attract the mind to the subject  of sickness and thereby foster it.  Dieting is good insofar as it prevents gluttony.  Temperance is just as important in eating as in   the drinking of alcoholic liquor. But you  can eat in moderation anything you like,   anything that you relish and BELIEVE to be good  for you, without fear of its disagreeing with you.  Reasonable exercise, too, is fine for  both the body and the mind. Provided   you do not make a fetish of it. It isn’t  the exercise that keeps you well—it is the   mental image you hold in your thought. The exercise merely helps to impress   that mental image on your subconscious mind. Electrical treatments, skin tonics, alcohol rubs,   etc., all are useful only to the extent that they  center the attention of the subconscious mind   upon the parts affected. Exactly the same results,  even to that pleasant little tingling of the skin,   can be affected by mind alone. I remember  reading an article by Mrs. Vance Cheney,   telling how she cured herself of paralysis of  the legs in just that way. After lying for months   under the care of doctors and masseurs, she tired  of them and decided to depend entirely upon mind.   So, several times a day, she would  utterly relax in every nerve and muscle,   and then consciously send her thought down  along the nerves of her legs to her feet.   Presently there would be that little tingling  sensation in her feet—evidence of increased   circulation—followed after a time by a feeling  of drowsiness. A few weeks of these treatments   completely restored the use of her legs. The same effort can be made to throw off any   physical trouble. Put your hand upon the part  affected. Try to visualize that organ, as it   should be. See it functioning perfectly. BELIEVE  that it IS working normally again! Your thought   brings the blood to the affected part, clears  up the trouble, provides new cells, new tissue,   while your belief that the organ IS functioning  properly will bring about that normal condition.  This is a treatment, however, that must be used  with discretion, for to consciously interfere   in the regular functioning of the body without  any real need for such interference results in   confusion rather than help. It is like going down  a flight of stairs rapidly. Pay no attention to   the movement of your feet, and they flit over  the steps with never a sign of hesitancy or   faltering. But try to watch them step by step,  and you will either have to slow up or you will   presently miss a step, stumble or fall. “The centipede was happy quite,  Until the toad, for fun, Said, ‘Pray, which leg goes after which?’  This stirred his mind to such a pitch, He lay  distracted in a ditch, Considering how to run.”  There is one rule that will help anyone keep  healthy. That rule is to forget your nerves,   throw away your pills and your medicine bottles,  and hold before your mind’s eye only the perfect   image that Universal Mind has of your body. That  is the surest way to keep free from sickness.  And if you are already sick, the same rule  applies. Know that Universal Mind never   created disease—which it is but an illusion of  your conscious mind. Know that mind is the only   creator that as Shakespeare puts it, “There  is nothing, either good or bad, but thinking   makes it so.” Know that you have the say as to  what that thinking shall be. Know, therefore,   that by holding a perfect image of your body in  your thoughts you can make your body perfect.  Have you ever cut your finger? Who was it  coagulated the blood, stopped the gash,   wove new skin? Who was it called upon the little  phagocytes to come and kill the septic germs?  Not your conscious mind, certainly. Most people  don’t even know there are “any such animals.”   Their conscious minds don’t know the first thing  about healing. Whence comes the information?   Whence the directing genius? Where but  from the same intelligence that keeps your   heart and lungs on the job while you sleep,  that regulates your liver and your kidneys,   that attends to all the functions of your body? That intelligence is your subconscious mind.   With the proper co-operation on your part,  your subconscious mind will attend to these   duties indefinitely, keeping your every organ  perfect, your every function regular as clockwork.  But it is exceedingly amenable to suggestion.  Worry about sickness or contagion, hold before   it the thought that you are getting old,  or that some organ is becoming feeble,   and it will be perfectly agreeable to bringing  about the condition you suggest. Convince it   that there is no danger from contagion, hold  before it the thought of health and strength,   and it will be just as prompt in manifesting them. So what you must realize is this: Before anything   can be made, there must be a model for  it in mind. Before a house can be built,   there must be a plan, a blueprint from  which to build. Before you were created,   Universal Mind held in thought the model on which  you were made. That model was perfect then—is   perfect now. The only idea of you that Universal  Mind knows is a perfect model, where every cell   and organism is formed along perfect lines. True, many of us have built up imperfect models   in our own thoughts, but we can get rid of them  just as rapidly as we get rid of the fear of them.  Your body is changing every moment. Every cell,  every organism, is constantly being rebuilt. Why   rebuild along the old, imperfect lines? Why  not build on the lines held in the thought   of Universal Mind? You CAN do it! But the  essence of it lies in the words of the Master:   “Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, believe  that ye RECEIVE them, and ye SHALL HAVE them.”  It matters not what your ailment may be. It will  respond to that treatment. Suppose, as an example,   that your stomach has been troubling you,  that you cannot eat what you would like,   that you cannot assimilate your food, that  you are weak and nervous is consequence. Every   morning when you awake, and every night just  before you drop off to sleep say to yourself—  “My stomach has neither intelligence nor feeling.  It functions only as mind directs it. Therefore   I need have no worry about its being weak  or diseased, for the only image that Mind   knows of stomach is Its perfect image. And  that perfect image can assimilate or remove   anything I may put into it. It is perfect,  as everything that Universal Mind makes is   perfect. And being perfect, it can do anything  right I may ask of it without fear or anxiety.”  Concentrate on the one organ at a time, and  repeat this formula to yourself night and morning.   Say it, feel it, BELIEVE it—and you  can do what you please with that organ.   “As thy faith is, so be it done unto thee.” “Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me”  “I can believe all you say about my fears  and worries being responsible for my ‘own   illnesses,” write many people, “but how about  infants and little children? They have no fear.   Why do they sicken and die?” What many people  do not understand is that the subconscious   mind is just as amenable to suggestion from those  round about you as it is from your own conscious   mind. Otherwise you would be in no danger from  anything you did not consciously know of. And the   more ignorant you were, the safer you would be. Suppose, for instance, you took a draught of what   you believed to be pure “bootleg” whisky, but  which in reality was no more than wood alcohol.   Many others have done it. Your conscious  mind would expect no harm from it — any   more than did theirs. You would have no  fear of the result. No more did they. So,   you would say, you should experience no harm. Yet you would probably die—or at least go   blind—as have these others. Why? Because your  subconscious mind would know the wood alcohol   for what it is. Your own conscious belief, and  the preponderance of opinion of those about you,   has instilled the conviction in your subconscious  mind that wood alcohol is dire poison.   Therefore when you pour this poison into your  system — even though you do not consciously   recognize it as such—your subconscious mind  proceeds to bring about the effects you   would logically expect such a poison to produce. It is the same with contagion, with the hundreds   of diseases which most people scarcely know  the names of, but to which they are constantly   falling victims. They don’t know they have  been exposed to contagion. They don’t know   that their systems are in such condition that  certain diseases logically follow. But their   subconscious minds do know it. And they have so  thoroughly educated those minds to believe in the   necessity for ill health, in the inevitability  of sickness under certain conditions that the   subconscious proceed to work out the contagion  or the condition to its logical conclusion.  Grown people can change these subconscious  convictions by the proper counter- suggestions,   consciously given. But young children cannot  reason. They accept the beliefs that are held by   the generality of mankind, or that are strongly  suggested to them by those nearest to them.  That is why babies and young children fall  such easy victims to the fears of disease   and contagion of their parents and those  about them. That is why worry over a seeming   epidemic so often results in the children  catching it, even when they have apparently   been in no way exposed to the contagion. “Man,” says a famous writer, “often has   fear stamped upon him before his entrance into the  outer world; he is reared in fear; all his life is   passed in bondage of fear of disease and death  and thus his whole mentality becomes cramped,   limited, and depressed, and his body follows  its shrunken pattern and specification.   IS IT NOT SUPRISING THAT HEALTH EXISTS AT  ALL? Nothing but the boundless Divine Love,   exuberance, and vitality, constantly poured in,  even though unconsciously to us, could in some   degrees neutralize such an ocean of morbidity.” But the remedy is just as simple. Know that your   children are primarily children of God. That  the image He holds of them is perfect. His   perfect image has within itself every power  necessary to ward off disease of any kind.  Put your children actively under His  care. Throw the responsibility upon Him.   Depend upon it, when you do this in the  right way, no harm can come near them.   Whenever fear assails you, whenever your children  are exposed to danger or contagion, realize that   “He shall give His angels (his thoughts) charge  over them, to lead them in all their ways.”  If your children are sick or ailing, read these  thoughts aloud to them just as though you were   talking to a grown person. Only address  yourself to their subconscious minds.   Read over the past few pages. Repeat to  them the little formula outlined above,   adapting it to their own particular need. Above  all, BELIEVE it! Your faith will work just as   great wonders for your children as for yourself. Never doubt. Never fear. Go at your problem   just as you would approach a difficult  problem in mathematics. In mathematics,   you know that the problem does not exist for  which you cannot find the solution, provided   you follow the rules and work in the right way. As long as you do your part, the principle of   mathematics will do the rest. It is the same  in all of life. Don’t worry. Don’t fret. Go   at your problem in the right way, no matter  how difficult it may seem; follow the rules   herein laid down, and you can confidently look to  the Principle of Being to bring you the answer. L’Envoi “The Kingdom of   Heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field; the  which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for   joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath,  and buyeth that field.” This field is your own   consciousness—a treasure you find within yourself  —, which others cannot see. But you know it for   the in-dwelling Spirit—“the Father within you”—and  are willing to sell all that you have because this   treasure is worth more than all other possessions. If you have begun to realize this treasure,   and use it even in a small way, the most wonderful  thing that can happen to anyone on this planet has   happened to you. What does it mean? It means that  an ordinary human being, afflicted with all the   sufferings and fears and worries and superstitions  of the average man, has learned the Law of Being.   It means that he has acquired a power above all  that of his would-be destroyers. It means that he   has put his foot upon the Rock of Life that the  Doorway of Heaven is open before him, that all   of Good is as free to him as the air he breathes. “There hath not failed one word of all His good   promises.” “And we declare unto you glad tidings,  how that the promise which was made unto the   fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us.” Surely we have every reason to be grateful   for all the good round about us. Surely  we should be thankful for the infinite   power that has been given to us. And being truly grateful, by the way,   is the surest evidence of real faith that there  is. Faith, you know, is “the substance of things   hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,”  Remember, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead,   how He first prayed, and then thanked the Father  for answering His Prayer? There was not yet any   material evidence that the prayer had been  answered. But Jesus had perfect faith in the   Father. And it was justified. Immediately He had  given thanks, Lazarus came forth from the tomb!  The world today is so much more wonderful  than it was to former generations. Mankind   has begun to glimpse its illimitable powers.  The whole world is plastic and sensitive to   new ideas. The soul of man is finding itself,  and learning its relation to the Infinite. The   veil between the visible and the invisible is  being drawn aside. Through seeing the “Father   do the works,” we are becoming more assured of  our own power, beginning to assert “the Father   that is within us.” We know that, given the right  understanding, the works that Jesus did we can do   also. We recognize his “miracles” as divinely  natural laws, part of God’s continuous plan.  So let us go with Him unto the Mount of  Vision, taking as our motto His words—   “See that thou make all things according  to the pattern showed thee in the Mount.” I hope that you’ve enjoyed this presentation and   please remember to subscribe to receive  notifications of upcoming recordings. The views and opinions expressed  in this book belong to the author   and may not always reflect those of  Master Key Society or its affiliates. This recording is a production of  the Master Key Society. The video and audio is Copyright 2023, Master Key Society.