Many people today are afraid of malignant thought projections, black magic, the evil eye, voodoo, and so on. There seems to be a general fear that there is some sort of hidden power somewhere which others can use to hurt them, or mar their happiness, or block their good. The greatest secret is within man. You will truly lead a full and happy life when you awaken to the greatest of all truths.
It's called the great secret of the ages. It is expressed in Deuteronomy, the sixth chapter, the fourth verse. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.
The word hear means to understand. O Israel means illumined, awakened man. A man who knows that when he says, I am, he's announcing the presence of God within him, as given to you in the third chapter of Exodus. A philo-Judaist 2,000 years ago said Israel means a prince ruling with God, a man who recognizes the God Presence and who tunes in upon it and realizes it's the almighty power.
The Lord means the lordly power, the supreme power. There's only one power, our God. Hear Israel, the Lord, our God, the lordly power, the supreme power.
Our God means our ruler, the infinite power, the infinite presence. He's one Lord, one power. not two, not three, not ten, not a thousand, just one. That's the greatest of all truths. The one power moving is unity, harmony, beauty, love, and peace that I principally knew.
When we were very young children and highly impressionable, our parents, who didn't know any better, told us about a punitive God and also about a devil who would tempt us. And if we were very bad, we might go to hell and suffer forever. Children and childish minds think only in pictures or mental images, and not knowing anything better, they projected images of God and a devil. The envision God up in the heavens on a golden throne surrounded by angels, and the devil down below in the flames of hell, not realizing that in actual fact all of us create our own heaven and our own hell by the way we think, image, feel, and believe.
Hell is an old English word meaning restriction, bondage. When they put the sheep in a corral, they say we put them in hell, meaning they are restricted. And heaven means your mind at peace, or father which art in heaven, meaning the invisible intelligence in which we live and move and have our being. Primitive man in the jungle attributed pleasure to the gods, and all pain, suffering, and misery to evil spirits or to devils of his own creation.
Prehistoric man realized that he was subjected to strange forces over which he seemed to have no control. Earthquakes and floods took place, and not knowing the cause, the jungle priests said that the gods were angry. Then they proceeded to offer up sacrifices to appease the angry wrath of the supposed gods.
The sun gave man heat, but in a prolonged drought, the same sun seemed to scorch the earth. Fire warmed man, but it also burned him. The thunder terrified him. Lightning paralyzed him with fear. The waters flooded his land at times.
His cattle and children were drowned. His understanding of external powers consisted of primitive and fundamental beliefs in many types of gods. From this crude and ignorant reasoning, Primitive man proceeded to supplicate the intelligence of the winds, the stars, and the waters, hoping they would hear him and answer his prayer.
He proceeded to make offerings and sacrifice to the gods of the wind and the rain. Primitive man divided the gods and genii into beneficial and malignant powers. Hence you will find the universality of these two powers in all the creedal beliefs.
of millions of people all over the world. A belief in two powers is a hangover from these age-old superstitious beliefs. The forces of nature are not evil. It depends how you use them.
You can use any power in either of two ways. The same wind will blow a boat on the rocks or carry it safely to the harbor. You can use electricity to fry an egg or to electrocute someone. You can use atomic energy constructively to drive a ship across the ocean. It can be used in medicine also.
Or you can use to destroy cities, towns, and people. You can use water to drown a child or quench his thirst. You can use fire to warm or burn a child.
We give purpose to the forces of nature. Good and evil are in the mind of the individual. The depend on his motivation, and they are nowhere else. Think good, and good follows.
Think evil, and evil follows. Judge Troward, author of Edinburgh Lectures, Edinburgh Lectures, and many other books, stated in 1902, Once you admit... that there is any power outside yourself, however beneficial you may conceive it to be, and you have sown the seed which must sooner or later bear the fruit of fear, which is the entire ruin of life, love, and liberty. We must contend earnestly, both within ourselves and outwardly, for the one great foundation, and never, now on to all eternity, admit for a single instant any thought which is opposed to this, the basic truth of being. That's the greatest thing Truert has ever said.
The basic truth is that your own I amness is the Lord God Almighty. The only immaterial power you know is your thought, and your thought is created. That's the only power you know.
When your thoughts are God's thoughts, God's power is with your thoughts of good. It's the only power in the world. Truert has stated a marvelous truth which each person should keep before him.
The suggestions of others have no power to create the things they suggest. The power is in your own thought, not because it is your thought, but because it is thought. The capacity of spirit is to think. Spirit is the presence of God in you. It is always the movement of your own thought which creates.
You have the power to completely reject any negative suggestion and unite mentally with omnipotence within you. then you're in tune with the infinite. Some years ago, I visited Cape Town, South Africa, to lecture for the late Dr. Her Brunt, who was in charge of the Science of the Mind Center there. The arranged for me to visit one of the gold mines in Johannesburg. An English physician attached to one of the mines I visited told me that when one of the men working in the mine violates the code, He gets a message from the voodoo doctor, such as, You will die at six o'clock, and he sits down and dies.
Postmortem examination shows no reason for the death, whatever. And the doctor added that fear generated by himself killed him. In other words, fear killed him.
This physician pointed out that the voodoo priests or doctors sometimes curse and pray for the death of foreign missionaries who are trying to convert their people to Christianity. He said they use all their magic potions, charms, suggestions, death prayers, and so on, to no avail. Now, the reason is obvious. There is nothing in the subconscious mind of the missionaries that admits fear of the curse. The simply laugh at it and ridicule these so-called powers.
The suggestion or negative statement of any person cannot hurt you unless you accept it. So these primitive people accept the suggestion of the Buddha doctor. It's the movement of their own thought and they kill themselves.
So always remember, it's the movement of your own thought and nothing else. If you went to a man board ship, a mariner or a sailor and told him, You look bad. You're going to get seasick.
He laughs at you. He treats you with scorn and derision. He knows his immunity to seasickness.
Actually, your suggestion that he's going to get sick is a stimulus to him. It reinforces his faith and his confidence and his knowledge of his immunity to seasickness. He simply rolls with the blows, doesn't he? A few weeks ago, I talked to a young woman who was in great distress because she said, There were some people in our former church praying against her, because she had left their group, and now everything was going wrong, and she thought that she was cursed, you know, something bad was going to happen. This is a movement, of course, of her own mind.
These people had no power. I explained to her that the curse she mentioned was really the negative use of the law of her own subconscious mind. and that she was imposing the curses on herself through fear. That which I greatly fear has come upon me, Troward says.
Reverse Sid. That which I greatly love has come upon me, and love is an emotional attachment. It's to be fascinated, entranced, absorbed in the great eternal truths of God. The suggestions of others had become a movement of her own thoughts, and since her thoughts were creative, she was hurting herself.
This she didn't know. The was transferring the power within herself to members of her former church, not realizing that they had no power at all. I explained to her that the power was within herself, and that she should immediately cease transmitting the power to others. God or spirit is one and indivisible.
It moves as unity. There are no divisions or quarrels in the living spirit almighty within you. Spirit cannot fight itself. One part of spirit can't be antagonistic to another part of spirit in China or India or any part of the world. And all she had to do was align herself with the infinite ocean of life and love within her, and give it her allegiance, devotion, and loyalty.
Then nothing would happen to her. The began to affirm, I dwell in the secret place of the Most High, and I abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress.
by God, in him will I trust. This, of course, comes from the 91st Psalm. I added to this, look at those people as extremely ignorant and have compassion on them.
The real and ultimate power is the great affirmative, which is constructive. The are using suggestions, which is a power, but not the power, which is God, which moves us harmoniously. beauty, love, peace, which moves as omnipotence, as omniscience, as the omniaction of the one, the beautiful and the good. Remember a suggestion has no power unless you give it power. Join up consciously with the infinite love, life, and power within you, and constantly realize, God's love surrounds me, enfolds me, and enwraps me.
I bear a charm life. The spell of God's love envelops my whole being. Whenever I think of the church people, I will immediately affirm, I loose you to God and I let you go.
Practicing the above simple truths, she was at peace and actually laughed at herself for giving them power. After about a week or so, she heard that five of these women became extremely ill. and that one had passed on. This young woman no longer received their negative thoughts and vibrations, and their evil thoughts returned with double force to themselves.
This is called the boomerang, and believe me, it's a boomerang. Some months ago, I listened to the story of a woman in Honolulu who said, that she had married outside her race and religion, and that since her father was a kahuna, a native priest, and had magical powers, he was determined, through sorcery, to break up her marriage. The explanation is oftentimes the cure.
This woman was a graduate of the University of Hawaii, had majored in psychology, yet she lived in fear, of her father's curse. I elaborated along these lines. If love united herself and her husband, no person or condition could break up her marriage.
God is love, and when two hearts beat as one, all the excommunications and curses of the world would be as papier-mâché aimed at a British battleship. It's like taking a pea-shooter. and firing at a dreadnought or a great battleship.
The susceptibility to impressions of our subconscious mind, coupled with the negative use of our imagination, has partially paralyzed millions of people who can't think straight. The was laboring under the delusion that her father's sorcery, which is negative use of the mind, was potent and would succeed. I told her the story of Plotinus, who lived over 1,700 years ago.
An Egyptian priest visited Plotinus. one of the great illumined men of the ages. The priest imposed a curse on Plotinus.
That is, he mentally concentrated on a death wish for Plotinus and aimed it mentally at Plotinus. Plotinus knew the trick and also knew that the foolish priest thought he had power. There is no power in a negative suggestion or a curse.
or imprecation hurl at you by any, all, by any or all the priests in the world, unless you are dopey, foolish, and ignorant enough to accept it. Plotinus sensed his oneness with the God of love. He had many internal illuminations.
He experienced the moment that lasts forever. He knew that one with God is a majority. If God be for us, the Bible says, who can be against us? That's in the book of Romans. Nothing shall by any means hurt you, the book of Luke, 10th chapter.
There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling, the 91st Psalm. I will fear no evil, for thou art with thee, the 23rd Psalm. The Psalms mean songs to God. It is recorded that the curse recoiled, and finding no place in Plotinus.
boomerang on the Egyptian priest who had tried to impose it. He fell into a fit and collapsed at the feet of Plotinus. Plotinus had pity on the priest's ignorance and took him by the hand and raised him up. This priest recognized the one power and became a devoted disciple of Plotinus. This explanation took a great load off the mind of this Hawaiian woman.
The said to her father, Dad, I am no longer afraid of you. You are to be pitied. You think you have power, but all you are using are negative suggestions, and what you suggest or wish for another, you are creating in your own experience. The power is within me, and I know my oneness with God, the one who forever is.
His love surrounds us and watches over us. Whenever I think of you, I affirm, God is for me. No one can be against me. I am free. The blessed her father, loosed him, and let him go.
Shortly afterwards, she wrote me, saying that her father continued to hate her and her husband, and had written her that his sorcery or black magic would destroy both of them. The paid no attention to his threats, and in a few weeks he dropped dead on the street. The said that her daddy had killed himself with hatred, and she was right, for hate murders love, peace, harmony, the denial of the divine presence within you. Hatred, jealousy, and hostility kill love, peace, harmony, joy, vitality, and goodwill. All his negative, destructive thoughts recoiled on himself.
and the double blow proved too much for him. Whatever you wish for another, you create and manifest in your own body and experience. In ancient times, the multitude believed that their priests had the power to curse those who displeased or irritated them. And the priests of that day took advantage of the ignorance of the people. Moses saw through the chicanery, deceit, and trickery of the Egyptian priests.
The were completely dumbfounded by him. The were afraid of him and agreed to let him and his entire following leave the camp. Moses taught the oneness of the spiritual power. The belief and faith of the Egyptians was built on a belief in many powers. Moses knew that God was one.
He said, We are all children of the I Am. with the children of the one, and his awareness scattered their negative ideas to the winds. It is absolutely necessary that you get this straight, that harmony, beauty, love, peace, joy, and all the blessings of life come from the one source. There's only one power.
God cannot do anything unloving, for God is boundless love. God is peace. God can't wish pain. God is joy. Can't wish sadness.
God is life. And in life there is no death. God can't wish death.
There is no death. Death in the Bible is ignorance of the great laws of life. God cannot wish pain, for God is absolute peace.
And God cannot wish sorrow, for God is absolute joy. For God is life, and that is your life now. That's why Paul says, I die daily. We die to the false beliefs of the world. Man is considered dead in the Bible when he doesn't know the God indwells him, walks and talks in him.
When he doesn't know the thoughts or things, what he feels he attracts, what he imagines he becomes. When a man doesn't know these things, he's called dead in the Bible, because he's dead to the truth of being. All so-called curses, sorcery, black magic, satanisms, come from the frightfully ignorant belief in a suppositional opposite power. There's only one thing to do, and that's have compassion on these people.
The have no power. The're frightfully ignorant. There's only one power, one God, not two, three, or a thousand, just one.
To believe in an evil power to challenge God is based entirely on a rank superstition, ignorance, and fear. Ignorance is the only devil, and all the suffering in the world is the consequence of that one thing, ignorance. When men use the one power constructively, harmoniously, peacefully, and joyously. The call it God. When men use the power ignorantly, negatively, and foolishly, they call it Satan, the devil, evil spirits, misery, and suffering.
When you turn to the living Spirit Almighty within you and open your mind and heart and daily affirm, God is and His presence flows through me as harmony, beauty, love, peace, joy, and abundance. us. God watches over me, and I'm always surrounded by the sacred circle of God's eternal love. And when you give complete allegiance, loyalty, and confidence to the one power within, you are called Israel in the Bible.
The Bible says, Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob. Jacob means a man who's awakening to the power of God within him. Neither is there any divinity against Israel.
Israel is a man who walks with God. And Hurriy, who is in tune with the infinite, and calls upon the God Presence, knows that when he calls it will answer. It will be with him in trouble.
It will set him on high, because he hath known his name. A man who recognizes the supremacy of the Spirit, and the power of his own thought, will find that all his ways are pleasantness, and all his paths are peace. It's a wonderful thing to know.
Know that God is the only presence and power. Cease going around in circles. Keep your eyes on the bead of God's glory and move forward in the light.
Cease going through life like a stereotype machine, repeating the same old clichés, thinking the same old way, and reacting in a mechanical way. When your car becomes old, you get a new one, for much the same reason from time to time. You get a new suit of clothes, a new home, perhaps a new and better office. What about acquiring a new vision, a new image of yourself, a new awareness, a new interpretation of life, a new knowledge of the inner meaning of the Bible, and learning the greatest prayers in all the world incorporated in the Bible?
Expect the best. Look forward with anticipation to a most glorious future. Believe it is possible. Live with the new image of yourself, and you will experience the joy and thrill of the fulfillment of your dream. What are you aware of today?
What is the level of your perception? You are looking at members of your family. You see your wife, your husband, your children, and you hear them speak.
Yet there are many things in your home of which you are not aware. You know if you turn the dial of a television set or a radio, you will hear voices and music which are here now. But are you aware of the divinity within you, which can heal, inspire, lift you up, reveal your hidden talents to you, and literally work miracles in your life?
This untapped power is always there. Begin now to use it. Dr. Lothar von Blanksmith, an air space scientist, member of the Rocket Society, who lives near me, is one of our ushers also.
He told me that whenever he has a problem in the engineering department at Lockheed, where he does research work relative to space projects, he stills the wheels of his mind and affirms quietly, Infinite intelligence within me casts light on this project. And suddenly his mind is illuminated with the answer, which sometimes appears as a graph in his mind, infinite intelligence within him. responds to his requests.
You must move mentally from the old patterns of thought, and in the realm of your own mind, dwell on the way you want things to be. If you want to go to San Francisco, you obviously must leave Los Angeles. Likewise, if you want to be a happy man, a joyous man, spiritual-minded man, a successful man, a prosperous man, you must leave behind Yes, the old grudges, peeves, negativity, and self-denunciation, and get a new self-image. Picture yourself as the man you want to be.
Be faithful to the new image, and it will sink down by a process similar to osmosis, to your subconscious mind, where it will gestate in the darkness. And after a while, it will come forth in your experience. as the joy of the answer prayer. You will become a new man in God, and you will go from glory to glory. Direct your mind joyously, positively, and definitely in the direction of advancement, promotion, achievement, and accomplishment.
Move mentally and spiritually to establish in your mind a new residence wherein you may live in the mental atmosphere of achieving, accomplishing, and achieving. and fulfilling your heart's desire. Your assumption that the new image of yourself is real, and you're sensing the reality of it in your mind, will cause your idea to gel within you, and thereby become a living fact. Don't go home or to work the same way every day. Don't read the same old newspapers all the time.
Don't talk the same old way. Avoid the clichés of your everyday speech. Get a new set of friends. Get a new friend every day.
Go home by a different route. You may perceive opportunities and values you never saw before. Think about everything and every person from the standpoint of the one power, and you will achieve and accomplish mighty things. Realize there is one power, one presence, one cause, one substance. Everything is made inside and out of it.
God is, and all there is is God. The presence and power are within you, flowing through you as harmony, health, peace, joy, right action, abundance, true expression, and inspiration. Realize you're a clear channel for the divine, and know that as you think and feel these truths, you will experience all the blessings of life. Make it a habit to meditate on the wonders of the infinite, and then marvelous things will happen in your life.
Realize God is guiding you. There's right action in your life. The divine law and order govern your life.
The divine peace fills your soul. Realize that God is love, and his love fills your soul now. Realize God is peace, and his peace fills your mind and body.
god is wholeness and beauty and that wholeness is flowing through you now in him there is fulness of joy in him there is no darkness at all heretofore he said you have asked for nothing now ask that your joy might be full come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden i the infinite will give you rest for it is the infinite which lies stretched in smiling repose and is waiting for you It says, Call upon me, I will answer you. I'll be with you in trouble. I will set you on high, because you have known my name. It also says, Before you call, I will answer. And while you're yet speaking, I will hear.
So before you call, the answer is there. For the infinite knows only the answer. It has no problem. If God had a problem, who would solve it?
So obviously the scientist, the astro-scientist, the astrophysicist, he contemplates the answer. for God knows only the answer. A few years ago I interviewed a man who had gone bankrupt a short time previously.
He had developed ulcers and high blood pressure, was, as he said, in a mess. He believed that there was a curse following him, that God was punishing him for his past sin, that God had it in for him, as he said, and that he was now reaping his just desserts. All these were false beliefs in his mind.
I explained to him that just as long as he believed there was a jinx following him, he would suffer for the simple reason that man's beliefs take form as experiences, conditions, and events. I gave him the following prayer, which worked miracles in his life. It will do the same for you as you listen to it now. Let it sink into your mind, into your soul.
There is but one Creator, one Presence, and one Power. This Power is within me as mind and spirit. This presence moves through me as harmony, health, and peace.
I think, speak, and act from the standpoint of infinite intelligence. I know that thoughts are things. What I feel I attract, and what I imagine I become. I constantly dwell on these truths. Divine right action governs my life.
Divine law and order reign supreme and operate in all phases of my life. Divine guidance is mine now. Divine success is mine. Divine prosperity is mine. Divine love fills my soul.
Divine wisdom governs all my transactions. Whenever fear or worry come into my mind, I affirm immediately, God is guiding me now. Or God knows the answer.
I make a habit of this when I know that miracles are happening in my life. He prayed out loud in this manner five or six times daily. And at the end of a month, his health was restored, and he was taken in as a partner in a growing concern.
His whole life had been transformed. The new idea enthroned in his mind became his master, for ideas are our masters. And the new idea compelled him to express the riches of life.
for the laws of your subconscious mind are compulsive. He was compelled to be a success. Yes, remember, ideas are our masters.
We are controlled and governed by ideas. Enthroned in your mind, the divine ideas suggested to this man, and watch wonders begin to happen in your life. Recently I talked to a woman who was being treated with ultrasonic therapy and aspirin for arthritis. The had been praying, but she said, Every time I begin to think of health, harmony, and peace, the thoughts of incurability, pain, and deformity fill my mind, and I can't think of health. The reason for this was that since infancy, she had been conditioned to a belief in the incurability of many diseases.
And since she believed that arthritis is crippling, and cannot be healed. The seemed to lack the capacity to deliberately, incisively, and decisively choose health, harmony, and wholeness. The was able to neutralize this attitude, however, after she followed the instructions. I explained to her that the first thing she had to do was disabuse her mind of a belief in two powers, one causing sickness and the other determining the degree of health.
The actually believed in these two powers and failed to perceive the simple truth that the cause of all sickness, poverty, misery, and suffering in the world is the rather prevalent belief in two powers, which causes the mind to be double-minded and unstable in all its ways. When a person believes in two powers, you don't know what he believes in. He's in a dilemma.
Let not such a man ask anything of God. He's like the double-minded man unstable in all his ways, tossed by the winds and the waves, you know. Because if you believe in two powers, no one knows what you believe in. How can you get rid of abnormal fear if you believe in two powers?
That's the cause of your fear. The decided to get back on the beam, so to speak, in bringing her mental field of vision into focus. The affirmed boldly, I believe once and for all. that there is but one supreme power. which is all wholeness, beauty, and perfection.
I know and believe that the greatest secret in life is to know and to believe in the one power which is infinitely good and perfect. I consciously claim that the healing love of this power which created me is now dissolving all deposits in my body which do not belong there. I am a temple. of the living God, and I glorify God in my body. As she continued in this prayer, her faith in the one power increased, and her belief in an evil power gradually diminished, until her conviction of the one supreme power reigned supreme in her mind.
The continued with ultrasonic therapy, which is good, of course, and gradually her limbs became supple. All the carcharious deposits gradually disappeared, were eliminated. The edema subsided, and her body became a channel for the one presence and the one power which always moves as beauty, love, and peace.
He enthronement of the one power in her mind and her belief that it was functioning in her body neutralized everything that contradicted this in her subconscious mind. A woman once told me about her wonderful philosophy of life. The had written a thesis called The Way of Life, all of which was very sound scientifically and true spiritually.
Yet her personal life was chaotic. The had been divorced four times. He age was twenty-five.
The was an alcoholic, and she was unable to pay the rent. And she wrote A Way of Life, which was very sound. I explained to her that her theories, postulates, and philosophical niceties must become embodied and made manifest in her experience, otherwise they were meaningless.
In other words, her head knowledge had to become heart knowledge. That is to say, she had to assimilate and appropriate these truths until they became a living part of her, in the same way as a piece of bread. becomes a part of your bloodstream and becomes a thought in your head. That's called transubstantiation. He thoughts, theories, and ideas, why lovely, were not demonstrated in her body, her experience, or her character.
The only way she could demonstrate her theories was to put them into practice in her life, which is exactly what she had failed to do. You can get 100% in a metaphysical examination and be a failure in life, be confused and neurotic, and at the same time be broke, because it's from the surface, it's from the intellect. No, these truths must be incorporated in your subconscious mind, they must become a living part of you, like an apple becomes your bloodstream.
You eat an apple, it becomes tissue, muscle, and bone, doesn't it? You must eat these truths too, mentally speaking. Then you're compelled to express them.
I gave her a pattern of prayer, and as she regularly and systematically filled her mind and heart with these truths, she became completely transformed. You see, these truths have to enter into your heart. And then, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he not in his head.
So is she, and so does she become, and so does she express. The prayer I gave her is this. God is love, and his love fills my soul.
God is peace, and his peace fills my mind and body. God is wholeness, beauty, and perfection, and that wholeness is my wholeness now. God is joy, and his joy is my joy, and I feel wonderful. The scientist puts forth a theory or a hypothesis. but before it is generally accepted as a scientific fact, it has to be validated objectively on the screen of space.
Otherwise, it remains merely a theory. The thought, the idea, the truth you affirm must be made flesh, which means they must be embodied in your experience. There can't be some airy nothing. You must demonstrate your religious beliefs in all area of your life.
Faith without works is dead. You must demonstrate what you believe. So the hundred percent in the examination means nothing.
Your sister, who probably doesn't know anything about it, is leading a marvelous life because she has a rugged faith in the goodness of God and the land of the living. The believes in success. The believes in health.
Perhaps she doesn't know anything at all about the mind, but she's practicing it. A man recently said to me, If God exists, why doesn't he stop war and crime and wipe out disease? You've heard that old story, I suppose, that has whiskers on it. The same cries on the lips of many people don't seem to think at all. It has been that way down through the ages.
Often you hear people cry, complain, whine, and say, Why does God allow me to suffer so? Why did God visit this sickness on me? That's falderal, balderdish, balderdash. It's just plain bunkum.
Then they say, I'm so good, I follow all the rules and tenets of the church. and yet I'm suffering. I give candy to babies. I sing hymns in church.
I read books, you know, and all that. The answer is very simple, and it is that God, the universal power, which is infinite mind, infinite intelligence, and infinite life, indwells every man. And every time man thinks, he is using the creative power for good or for evil.
You have volition, choice, initiative. Choose ye this day whom you will serve. All right.
What are you thinking? Ralph Waldo Emerson said, Man is what he thinks all day long. You're the thinker.
You're responsible, though you think. For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. In the 23rd chapter of Proverbs.
Occasionally I visit people in the hospital, and some say, Why did this happen to me? i hate no one others say god is punishing me why i am a good christian or i am a good jew or something well in him in the god presence there is no greek or jew no bond or free no catholic or protestant no hindoo or anything else only the ever-flowing reality flowing on forever the god presence is completely impersonal no respecter of persons the explanation to all this is very simple If you think good, good follows. If you think evil, evil follows.
Down through the ages, theologians have brainwashed and hypnotized people into believing that evil was caused by a devil with hoofs and horns, bat-like ears, and a pointed tail which stings. There's no such being. It comes out of the distorted, twisted, morbid minds of people. A sort of hideous monster attempts us to do evil.
There is no such thing. It's just plain ignorance. It's too stupid for words.
It's a figment of the imagination. It's a projected of the distorted, twisted imagination of man. When we were very young, our minds were impressionable.
We weren't capable of indulging in abstract reasoning. Therefore, we accepted these weird pictures, which were suggested by our parents and others. Just the same as if you hypnotized a person and said to him, You now see a snake crawling across the room. His subconscious mind would automatically accept that suggestion, and he would see the thought form of a snake.
To him it would seem to be real. This is why you read that Man Lothar threw an inkwell at the devil, which was nothing more or less than a projection. of his own thought caused by the illusions and delusions of his mind regarding good and evil.
That's all it was, simply a thought form. Just like a boy I knew once years ago, I was in school with him. He was somewhat neurotic, emotionally unstable.
He was reading always about the lures, you know, the virginate lures, Guadalupe and all that, and what happened in Portugal. And he was always saying to himself, someday I'll see the Virgin, someday I'll see the Virgin. He was hypnotizing himself, called self-hypnosis.
And of course, a picture of the Virgin was in his prayer book. And one day, when we were out for a walk, he said, I see the Virgin. I said, what does she look like?
Well, he said, she's dressed in white and she has beads and all this. So, just exactly the same. That's called hypnotic suggestion.
just the same you hypnotize if you are hypnotized or hypnotize yourself and like he was doing and say, I'm going to see the Virgin, and the Virgin gives a message to me, and so forth. Well, that's a subjective hallucination. And then I suppose if you said it, and you saw a subjective hallucination, you told people about it, you'd have about a quarter of a million people up in the park to see the same thing. But anyhow, that's the story. And most people don't see these simple, simple truths.
The're so simple that a boy of eight... could understand them. So, God is infinite, and infinity cannot be divided or multiplied. The Bible says, I form the light, and I create darkness.
I make peace. I create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. You read that in Isaiah 45. The Lord is the lordly power. How are you using it?
If you use the power constructively, you can call it health and happiness or God or whatever you want to. If you use the power ignorantly, maliciously, or in a negative way, you can call it the devil, Satan, misery, suffering, pains, aches, poverty, everything under the sun. To the fraud I am frorid, to the pure I am pure. Very simple, isn't it? The Bible quotation that I just gave you dramatizes and portrays lucidly that there is but one power which you can use to give you light, which means that you can… But when called upon consciously by you, infinite intelligence will cast light on any problem.
I form the light. I create darkness. You say there's no way out.
I'm in a dilemma. I'm all mixed up. I'm confused.
You're creating darkness. When you say I'm stymied, I'm blocked. You're doing it.
In him, there is fullness of joy. In him, there is no darkness at all. When you say there is no way out, it's hopeless. You're creating the darkness. I form the light and create darkness.
I make peace and I create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. That's lordly power within you.
You do all these things. It depends on the way you use it. The God power is absolutely perfect. How are you using it?
How are you using electricity? How are you using your mind? How are you using water? By your conscious decree, when you have adopted this mental attitude, you're simply saying, infinite intelligence does not weigh the way out, then you're an atheist.
If you say, I'm stymied, I'm blocked, there's no answer, I'm all confused, there's no way out of this jungle, you are saying infinite intelligence does not know the way out. At that moment, you're an atheist. You say you may believe in God?
No, no. If you believed in God, God is the infinite intelligence. You would believe God that created all things, created the desert, created the jungle, created all things, knows all and sees all.
This God presence doesn't need a compass. It doesn't need anything. It's all wise.
So there are millions of Christians who are atheists because they say, well, my son is hopeless. He's incurable. The're saying God can't cure him. The say God made him from a cell, but the God who made him can't.
to heal him. That moment you're an atheist. According to your belief, you see, he has done unto you.
So, in according to your belief, you live in the darkness and confusion created by your own ignorance or misuse of the supreme power. You create peace by dwelling mentally and whatsoever things are true, lovely, noble, and godlike. You create evil in your experience by thinking negatively, viciously, and destructively. In other words, ask yourself this question, how am I using the one power?
Yes, remember, it needs reiteration. When you use it constructively, harmoniously, and according to its nature, you may call it God in action. When you use it destructively, negatively, and contrary to its nature, you may call it the devil, or Satan, or something else. But you have to laugh at those people.
who talk about sorcery, black magic, Satan, worshippers of Satan, the devil, and things of that nature. The have no power, friends. The only thing they do is have compassion and just laugh.
That's all. All the forces of nature may be used two ways. How can any man on the face of the earth become a new man and experience a new birth or an inner transformation? Except he understands the simple truth expounded here.
Remember, you can never really grow and advance spiritually until you come to the absolute conviction. that there is but one power. Now that's an absolute truth.
And here's what Isaiah said, I am the Lord, that is my name. My glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. Yes, I am the Lord thy God, brought thee out of the land of Egypt, thou shalt worship. no other gods, or shalt have no other gods before man.
I am, and there is none else, and from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same, there is none else. Yes. So good and evil are in the mind of the individual, they are nowhere else.
Whether the thing is good or bad depends on the use to which it is put, and the final analysis that is determined by the thought of man. Believe nothing you do not understand. Put it on the shelf of your mind and say to yourself, my higher self sheds light on this subject.
Believe nothing you don't understand. I want to say that again. I want to emphasize it. Put it on the shelf.
Son talks to you, tells you you have to come back again and again and all that sort of thing to expiate for your karma. Well, it sounds kind of plausible and reasonable. Well, I said that a lot of people don't think so. And say, well, I don't quite understand that.
Or it doesn't make sense to me, or it's contrary to the law of nature. But I'll put it on a shelf, and my higher self will reveal the answer. Now, you'll get the answer on that, if you do it in that simple way. Every belief tends to manifest itself. For example, if you believe you have to come back again and again to this plane to expiate for your sins, you're definitely placing yourself in chains of bondage and thralldom.
Oh, yes, you are. You can't deny it or circumvent it. Because whatever you believe in your subconscious mind comes to pass.
Your subconscious doesn't take a joke. Therefore, you are placing yourself in thralldom, in misery, and in bondage. And you cannot grow spiritually. So why should you think along these lines?
Frankly, I don't understand it when people talk that way. I say, heavens, haven't they ever heard a word of truth? Don't they understand how the mind works?
After all, isn't that the first lesson in the mind? It's done unto you as you believe. Therefore, if you have to believe, you have to expiate for sure your sins, you have to atone, you have to work out your karma.
Aren't you putting yourself in chains? Aren't you putting yourself in jail, so to speak? This God Presence knows nothing about it.
The God Presence doesn't punish. It can't punish. All judgment is given to the Son.
The Son is your own mind. You punish yourself. The life principle doesn't punish. It doesn't judge. It can't.
If you burn yourself, you know that. It forgives you, doesn't it? It gives you new skin, new tissue, reduces the edema and the pain and everything else.
Cut yourself the same thing. It always seeks to restore you. Think big from now on. Enlarge your vision.
Contemplate freedom, peace of mind, abundance and goodwill to all. You become what you contemplate. Your new self-image has its own mathematics and its own power of self-expression.
There is nothing to oppose you, so there is no cause for worry, no cause at all for worry, because you are this being. All successful men and women possess one outstanding characteristic, that is their ability to make prompt decisions and to persist. in carrying these decisions through to completion. So come to a decision now, that you want to know more and more of this infinite ocean of life and love within you, because where there is no vision, the people perish. It also says, I will lift up mine eyes into the hills, from whence cometh my help.
I am sure your vision is directed towards perfect health, harmony and peace of mind. The spirit in you is timeless, changeless, ageless, and formless. There is no time or space.
Therefore, why should you think, should you think, that you have to atone for something, that somebody is punishing you, that you've got to work out your karma, and things of that nature? You can be absolutely convinced that the mental picture to which you remain faithful will be developed in your subconscious mind and may manifest consequently in your experience. Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I hath is thine.
This day he said thou shalt be with me in paradise, not tomorrow or next year or twenty years from now, but right now. The minute you turn to it in faith and adoration, with love in your heart, it turns to you. This one thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind, reaching forth to the things which are before, pressed towards the mark for the prize.
For the high calling of God, yes, the prize, of course, is health and happiness and peace of mind. But you forget. the things that are behind.
The past is dead. Nothing matters but this moment. When you change this moment and keep it changed, the past is dead. Your whole life is changed. A new beginning is a new end.
That's the simplest of all truths. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord. Therefore, begin with faith and confidence.
Begin with love in your heart. Come to a decision you want to become a new man in God. The past is forgotten and remembered no more.
I am not talking about perfunctory thought. I am talking about a man who has a tense desire to change his heart. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
And the man, therefore, who fills his mind with the truths of God, he wipes out the ogian stable that might have been dirty for forty or fifty years. For there is no time or space, and the one who forever is deep in the hearts of all men. and love casts out fear for he that feareth is not made perfect in love for perfect love casteth out fear and fear hath it torment and he that feareth is not made perfect in love and love frees love gives love is the spirit of god it has neither height nor depth neither length nor breadth it neither comes nor goes it fills all space but the ancients called it love it is an exudation of good-will it is an outreaching of the heart it is lifting others up but seeing the god presence in all people everywhere see the god presence in your son your daughter your wife your husband your friend your associate call it forth say i see god in the other person and god's love light truth and beauty are now resurrected in the minds and hearts of each of those people and wonders will happen in your life as you begin to do that Begin now. It's called the practice of the presence of God. See God everywhere.
See tongues in trees, sermons in stones, songs in running brooks, and God in everything. For if you take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, there shall the hand lead me, and the right hand shall hold me. That's the divine presence, the omnipresence of God. And it's very simple to realize what that means, because you're familiar with radio waves. And the man in Chicago.
and the man in london can hear the same program at the same moment they can hear the president speaking in china say same moment that you do and likewise there's the omnipresence of the infinite presence within you present everywhere you don't go over the seas to find it the word is nigh in thy mouth and thy heart to will and to do and the name of that word is i am called the lost word it's lost to millions for millions do not know that when they say i am The are announcing the presence and power of God within themselves, the greatest of all truths. What are you attached to? The I am.
Whatever you attach to I am, you become. It's called Am in India. Therefore, the presence of God is within you, for I am means being, life awareness.
Means the presence and power of God within you, the living spirit almighty, the self-originating spirit, the unconditioned awareness, unconditioned consciousness. it means all these things it has no it has no name it's the nameless one ever the same in my inmost being eternal absolutely one whole complete perfect indivisible timeless changeless and aged ageless without face former figure the silent breathing presence fixed in the hearts of all men that's the god-presence in you honour it exalted This is what Paul meant when he said, Therefore I put thee in remembrance, that thou stir up the gift of God within you. And God is the giver and the gift, and you are the receiver.
But everything has been given. The only thing you can give God is to glory and honor, and faith and confidence and trust. Turn your eyes to the God presence.
Keep your eyes on the beam of God's glory. He will rise higher and higher every day. You will go from power to power, from octave to octave, from glory to glory.
God keep you on this path, now and forevermore.