"_Jesus said unto him, go and wash in the pool of Siloam. He went his
way therefore and washed and came seeing_." ST. JOHN IX, 7.
When we read the history of the ages behind us we cannot help but see that
through every phase of human evolution there has run that subtle something
which men call "the power of the unseen."
Matty of our forefathers lived in self scrutiny and subjective
investigation, and many lived in lawless expression of their objective
selves with no idea of life in its subjective action and form. As humanity
advanced in its reverence it came to where lack of attention to
regeneration and self-comprehension was followed by an inner sense of
guilt, and those who know the power of the two states of consciousness,
the outer and the inner, have grown to where they look upon it as abnormal
to higher progress, to only enter these finer courts of being just to rest
and renew the physical body.
Men instinctively know that life is too serious and mighty to pass along
on the objective side of living without now and then going into the center
of being and holding an earnest deep contact with the silent
consciousness.
In the old thought world it was not strange for master men in every walk
of life to pray. The powerful warrior turned his eyes from the field of
battle to the strength of Heaven; the trusting mourner turned his eyes
from the loss of earth to the gain of dying; even Milton gave himself to
the discords of politics in action, and the symphonies of the seraphims.
In the silence great lives everywhere have mingled the meditations of the
Absolute with the thoughts of the discordant, differentiated and apparent
_now_.
There is not a family anywhere that does not possess at least one person
who in himself holds the proof of how real and earnest a thing are the
exercises and consciousness of the solitary vigil.
There is something of reverence yet in many lives as they recall the
blessing given at meals and the evening hour of prayer. To the wayward and
those living in the control of the outside things of life, it was an hour
of bondage, but to those who were at all awakened to the call of the
inside life, it was an even-tide of peace and power and rest.
It cannot be denied that the years have brought great changes in the
methods of human worship. The contempt with which some of the later
educators treat worship and religion betray an ignorance on their part
both of the true office of revelation and reverence, and this blinds them
to the real, innate, fundamental longing of human life.
There are many who come away from the old thought and who believe in the
promulgation of a new truth, but they attempt to build up the new through
the destruction of the old, and pass along as Iconoclasts seeking what
they can destroy. These lives are the lawful product of the undeveloped
human comprehension, and the only safety for the race is in the fact that
only a few ever take them seriously, and these soon see that they are not
inclusive enough to help more than the few, and that after a while, in
order to meet the demands of their own increasing individuality, they must
themselves pass into wider union, into worship and get away from their own
limitations.
Humanity must forever pass between the outside and the inside of life, and
only as each soul becomes awake in both conditions can it understand and
unite with the laws of perfect being.
New Thought is conscious of the open door between the inside and the
outside of life, the earth and Heaven, and it knows that each soul may
live from choice in either state of consciousness and pass in and out at
will.
Man instinctively knows the difference between the inside and the outside
of living; he can easily detect the laws of action, and the laws of
silence. The tendency of our New Thought development is to teach lives to
pass more and more into the inside power or, in other words, to come into
the unseen laws of being and work consciously with the energy that creates
and which is unmanifested, while at the same time they manipulate the
manifested, external things, and through the understanding of the finite
are able to bring into expression the absolute power.
It is slowly dawning upon the present day intelligence that through this
inner side of mind we can become more and more capable of controlling and
directing the outer states of human consciousness and men are recognizing
more and more that all physical objective form is inner spiritual
arrangement.
Today humanity is looking at the cant and form and creed of the crowd, and
giving them their own rightful place, power and function, but it is also
looking at the unseen and daring to affirm that an audience with God is
attainable, certain and possible and productive of its own natural
expressions in its own realm of higher recognition.
Today more than ever before new strength is being born into what the world
calls the devotional element of humanity and it is being born on a sane,
healthy plane of understanding which bids fair to revolutionize the world.
It does not take long to see, when we look with a clear vision, that those
who display most power today, and who are productive of the greatest good
to the developing world are not those who are living in fixed relationship
with the outside of life; it is true that those on the outer rim may boast
of perfect physical strength and a perfect brain and a physical beauty,
but the victory today is not from the without, but it is rather for those
who are psychologically practical, mystically enlightened and subtle with
a deep scientific relationship with all nature's finer forces and who know
life not alone as a science or as a philosophy, or as a religion, but as
an art.
The truth must some day beat its way into the developing minds of men that
we are now alive in a great age, and are coming to where the inside power
must become externalized and that those who today stand masters of life,
and those who will continue to become masters of life and leaders in power
and helpfulness, must do it by a development that is not so much
characterized by their objective knowledge as by their subjective holiness
or wholeness.
We must learn what we never seem to have learned before, that the moments
we spend in the external world are not wholly our strongest or sanest
moments and that all external outside action is the crudest form of
energy, and that when we want the _real_, we must turn the clear deep
eye of our nature toward the inner, the silent, and then all our power
seems to well up and meet us, because it is called in from the apparent to
the Absolute of being.
The next great truth is that all the old ways of life are never thrown
away until we have something to live by in the new; old truths never die,
they are always existent, but their methods of expression must be changed
to suit the developing intellectuality and spirituality of man.
In the old thought life prayer was the pathway to the interior world of
power, but today we know that recognition must be the guide to the
interior world of power. Prayer was the pathway of the old forefathers and
prayer in its first inception was a straight road to the center of divine
union, but after the minds of men, befogged between the glamour of the
external and the power of the internal, evolved a form of prayer that led
the race away from its center out into the rim of living, the power
ceased; prayer became full of cant and form, words became meaningless and
non-mystical; the truth that "God is a Spirit and they that worship Him
must worship Him in spirit and in truth" was lost in the increasing
bewilderment of the mind.
After a while humanity, seeing the futility of objective kind of prayer,
ceased its praying, not because it had worn out prayer, not because it had
wandered from its desire of worship and soul communion, but because it had
worn out the old useless method, and found the dross of the letter; no one
stood developed to where he could push faith into a new interpretation.
Self examination and supplication is natural to every life as soon as it
develops to a finer knowledge of what passes within itself. Until the last
man of the earth is dead this natural cry for the communion with the inner
states of consciousness and the union with the great absolute God-life
will rise up and flourish and wax strong in the souls of men.
We have learned now too much of the inside of living to ever be happy with
the outside form alone, and we have seen too much of the unseen forces
within us to ever yield ourselves servants completely to the external
powers. Our spiritual analysis is too fine to permit crude interpretation.
Men are leaving the old just as the seed must forever leave the mould and
dust of earth, and push its stalk up into heaven's bright sunshine.
Today we stop and in close self questioning and with a desire to know the
truth, and nothing but the truth, We ask what is it that has rendered the
old thought piety of our fathers unnatural and impossible to us? It does
not take long to answer this if we look with eyes that have clearer sight.
Men have turned away simply because they were too developed to be fed on
the husks of a worn out expression that was no longer large enough to
satisfy their developing thirst for Truth.
Our New Thought methods have come because men built them with their
desires; they called for methods that would fit the increasing spiritual
comprehension of developing humanity.
Today mankind is instinctively recoiling from every sense of separation
from God which our fathers felt; human life has become more human; the
outside of life is known at its real value, the inside of life is given
its place and power; Love has become vitalized; human affection has become
sweet and natural; human duties are blessed privileges and life is
elevated to a pinnacle of power before unknown; social interests are now
beginning in all and ending in all; the whole scheme of man's natural
moral and religious existence has a true worth and dignity of its own, and
humanity is listening, accepting and delighting to honor and obey. Only
the life in the outside ranks of living will ever condemn this new rise of
power, and only the cowardly can despise; it is whole, sane, sweet and
divinely human and humanly divine in its application and privileges.
We lost, perhaps, a great part of the old time manner of communion with
God because we first lost the old time spirit of supplication and the
groveling spirit of the outside world, but we have not lost communion or
devotion.
Today we are at home in the center of being, and feel and know ONENESS. We
have union now just as those who _know_ truth have always had, but
the method differs, and Silence has taken the place of the spoken prayer,
meditation and silence is the new pathway to the Cosmic heart, and through
this the developing children of men walk into perfect union, receiving the
messages of the Divine Host. They come into a grand comradeship with God,
not in the old time spirit of supplication and service, not asking, not
seeking really, not even penitentially suppliant, but in the new found
glory of a faith that looks up in perfect confidence of its ONENESS, and
which speaks from the very depth of its own glorified selfhood, and knows
that "I and my Father are _one_ and all my Father hath is mine."
The new race will keep all that is vital in the old one of prayer and
communion, and it will add to it all the great power of its own awakened
consciousness. We are awake now--wide awake to the despotism of the
outside world and its laws--and we are equally awake to the law of the
inner side of life and the dominion of the world of pure Being.
Today the silence of our new understanding has become for developed humans
the pathway of God, and it is indeed the pool of Siloam in which all may
bathe and be healed.
The Silence becomes for those who seek it a well of living water that
springs up into everlasting life.
It is promised that "the pure in heart shall see God," and anyone who
comes away from the outside of life and comes stripped to the soul into
the inner side of his own being will find God there, for like the vision
of the monk, He is always there, waiting to be manifest.
The outside of life is beautiful and sweet and has in it many forms of
self-realization; it is part of the plan of human development, but it is
only a part and the lesser side of living, and after we have mastered its
secrets and understood our own relationship to it, it is natural to turn
inward, and read the other side of our life's picture, and when we do this
it will be strange indeed if we do not feel the Eternal presence so close
upon our soul that we will long to say with bated breath, "Thou God seest
me."
The silence of the inner side of life and the power it produces cannot be
put into words; it is the pathway to the Absolute and the _language_
of _that_ land is not spoken in the outer world of sense and sight.
_Know_ the inner side of life, then _live_ it--this is the
pathway of peace and power and along this way there is found that strange
vital, vibrant glow of spiritual illumination sanctifying our senses, and
filling our soul and leading our mind into the fulness of Him who fills
all.
Life then becomes for us a something divinely sent, no longer distraught;
no longer to suffer; nothing but reality and a reality that has been known
by millions throughout the ages and will be known by millions yet unborn.
Do not think that this turning into the inner side of living is weakness
and cowardice and fear of the external world and its happenings; it is
not, it is simply all energies united; it is not fear nor halting power,
but it is rather the strength of the superhuman; it is not illusion, not
self-hypnotism; it is a divine reality; it is God's witness to those who
seek after his illuminated heights.
This living in the inner side of life each day is essential for the
preservation of equalization of our daily life. The outside of life cannot
help but become wearisome, and when we come away into the silence of our
inner self, we find the thrill of life and we find the human made radiant
with the glory of the Divine.
The inner side of life answers all the questionings of our mind, and as we
learn this truth we depend less and less upon the things created, but live
constantly in the energy that creates, and through this operate our whole
life.
Silence was first in the scheme of creation. Remember this: "The darkness
and the silence knew. So is a man's fate born."
There is no creation that will last that is born on the plane of external
action for the law of that plane is change. In the hush of the valley of
silence we accumulate the inward power which pushes our external
expression into bloom. In the inner side of living the soul enlarges its
dimensions and when it comes back into the earthly things it gilds them
with a glory not their own.
The inner side of life and its power is not a mysterious thing, it is only
the finding of God, and when we meet Him face to face, we speak in a new
tongue; we live in a temple not made by hands, eternal in the heavens, and
we live in the truth of the olden mystics and say with the power of our
new consciousness: "Our Father, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom has
come, Thy will is done on earth, as it is in Heaven."