habitation of devils, the hold--or, as the original Greek has it, the
prison of evil, an unclean spirit, the cage of every unclean bird. That
is the development which takes place in each individual who sets out to
misuse this mental power. The misuse may have a very small beginning, it
may be such as is taught in a certain school, which I am told exists in
London, where shop assistants are trained in the use of magnetic power,
in order to decoy or compel unknowing purchasers into buying what they
do not want. I am told there is such a school; I cannot quote you my
authority. That is a trifling matter. I go into a shop and spend two or
three shillings in buying something which, when I get home, I find
absolutely useless, and I say, "How in the name of fortune did I come to
buy this rubbish?" Well, I must have been hypnotised into it. It does
not make much difference to me, but it makes a great deal of difference
to the young man or young woman who has hypnotised me, because it is the
first step on the downward path. It may be only a matter of sixpence,
but it leads on step by step, and unless that path is retraced, the
final end is that of Babylon. Therefore it is that St. John says, "I
heard a voice from Heaven saying, 'Come forth, my people, out of
her'"--and that is out of Babylon--"come forth, my people, out of
her"--that is out of this inverted mode of using spiritual power--"come
forth, my people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins
and that ye shall receive not of her plague." Therefore, against this
inverted use of the hidden power I warn every one from the first day
when he begins to realise that there is such a thing as mental or
spiritual power which can be exercised upon other persons.
Are we then on this account to go continually in terror of suffering
from malicious magnetism, fearing that some enemy here, or some enemy
there, is turning on this hidden power against us? If so, we should go
in trepidation continually. No, I do not think there is the least
reason for us to go in fear in this way. To begin with there are
comparatively few who know the law of suggestion sufficiently well to
use it either affirmatively or negatively, and of those who do know it
sufficiently to make use of it, I am convinced that the majority would
wish only to use it in all kindness, and for the benefit of the person
concerned. That, I am confident, is the attitude of nine-tenths, or I
might perhaps say ninety-nine hundredths, of the students of this
subject. They wish to do well, and look upon their use of mental power
as an additional means of doing good. But after all, human nature is
human nature, and there remains a small minority who are both able and
willing to use this hidden power injuriously for their own purposes.
Now how are we to deal with this minority? The answer is simple. Just
see them in their true light, see them for what they really are, that is
to say, persons who are ignorant of the real spiritual power. They think
they have it, and they have not. That is what it is. See them in their
true light and their power will fall away from them. The real and
ultimate power is that of the affirmative; the negative is destructive,
the affirmative is constructive. So this negative use of the hidden
power is to be destroyed by the use of the affirmative, the constructive
power. The affirmative destroys the negative always in one way, and that
is not by attacking it, not by running at it like a bull in a china
shop; but by building up life. It is always a building power--it is
building, building, building life and more life, and when that life
comes in, the negative of necessity goes out.
The ultimate affirmative position is that of conscious union with the
source of life. Realise this, and you need not trouble yourself about
any action of the negative whatever. Seek conscious union with the
ultimate, the first cause, that which is the starting point of all
things, whether in the universe or in yourself as the individual. That
starting point is always present; it is the same yesterday, to-day and
forever, and you are the world and the universe in miniature, and it is
always there working in you if you will recognise it. Remember the
reciprocity between yourself and this truly hidden power. The power of
suggestion is _a_ hidden power, but the power which creates all things
is _the_ hidden power which is at the back of all things. Now realise
that it is in yourselves and you need trouble about the negative no
longer. This is the Bible teaching regarding Christ; and that teaching
is to bring about this conscious personal union with the Divine
All-creating Spirit as a present living power to be used day by day.
The Bible tells us there is such a thing as the mystery of iniquity,
that is to say, the mystery of the spiritual power used invertedly, used
from the diabolical standpoint; and when the Bible speaks of the mystery
of iniquity, it means what it says. It tells us there are powers and
principalities in the invisible world which are using precisely these
same methods on an enormous scale; because, remember one thing, there is
never any departure in any part of the Universe from the universal rule
of law; what is law upon earth is law in Heaven, law in Hell, law in the
invisible and law in the visible; that never alters. What is done by any
spiritual power, whether it is a spiritual power of evil or of good, is
done through the mental constitution which you have. No power alters the
law of your own mind, but a power which knows the law of your mind can
use it.
Therefore, it is so essential that you should know the law of your own
mind and realise its continual amenability to suggestion. That being so,
the great thing is to get a standard for fundamental, unchangeable, and
sufficient suggestion to which you can always turn, and which is
automatically impressed upon your subconscious mind so deeply that no
counter-suggestion can ever take its place; and that is the mystery of
Christ, the Son of God. That is why we are told of the mystery of
Christ, the mystery of godliness in opposition to the mystery of
iniquity; it is because both the mystery of the Divine and the mystery
of the diabolical are seeking to work through you, and they can only
work through you by the law of your own mental constitution, that is to
say, by the law of subconscious mind acting and re-acting upon your
conscious mind and upon your body, and so upon your circumstances.
The mystery of Christ is no mere ecclesiastical fiction. People have
distorted it, and made it not clear, by trying to explain what at that
time and in those days was not properly known, by trying to explain what
they did not know; because what is commonly now known regarding the laws
of mind was unknown then. But now this light has come we begin to see
that the Bible teaching regarding Christ has a great and a deep meaning,
and it is for these reasons St. Paul said to the Corinthians: "Little
children of whom I travail again in birth, until Christ be formed in
you." That is why he speaks of "Christ in you the hope of glory," that
is to say, the Christ conception, the realisation of the Christ
principle as exhibited in the Christ person, brings you in touch with
the personal element in the Universal Spirit, the divine creative, first
moving Spirit of the Universe.
Then you see that realising this as your fundamental fact, it is
continually impressed upon your subconscious mind, even when you are not
thinking of it, because that is the action of the subconscious mind to
take in and reason and argue in its own deductive way upon things of
which you are not at the moment consciously thinking. Therefore it is
that the realisation of that great promise of redemption, which is the
backbone of the Bible from the first chapter of Genesis to the last
chapter of Revelations, is according to a scientific law. It is not a
hocus-pocus business, it is not a thing which has been arranged this way
and might just as well have been arranged in some other; it is not so
because some arbitrary Authority has commanded it, and the Authority
might just as well have commanded it some other way.
No, it is so because the more you examine it, the more you will find
that it is absolutely scientific; it is based upon the natural
constitution of the human mind. And it is therefore that "Christ," as
set forth in the Bible--whether in the Old Testament symbology, or in
the New Testament personality--"is the fulfilling of the law," in the
sense of specialising in the highest degree that which is common to all
humanity. As we realise this more and more, and specialise it more and
more, so we shall rise to higher and higher intercourse and more and
more consciousness of reciprocal identity, reciprocal life with the
Universal Power, which will raise us above any possibility of being
touched by any sort of malicious suggestion.
If anybody should be, then, so ill-willed towards us and so lamentably
ignorant of spiritual truth himself as to seek to exercise the power of
malicious suggestion against us, I pity the person who tries to do it.
He will get nothing out of it, because he is firing peas out of a
pea-shooter against an iron-clad war vessel. That is what it amounts to;
but for himself it amounts to something more. It is a true saying that
"Curses return home to roost." I think if we study these things, and
consider that there is a reason for them, we need not be in the least
alarmed about negative suggestion, or malicious magnetism, of being
brought under the power of other minds, of being got over in some way,
of being done out of our property, of being injured in our health, or
being hurt in our circumstances, and so on.
Of course if you lay yourself open to that kind of thing, you will get
it. "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." That is why the Scripture
says, "He that breaketh through a hedge, a serpent shall bite him." That
is the serpent that some of us know something about, that is our old
enemy Nahash. Some of you, at any rate, are sufficiently trained in the
inner sciences to know the serpent Nahash. Break down the hedge, that is
to say, the conscious control of your own mind, and above all the hedge
of the Divine love and wisdom with which God himself will surround you
in the personality of His Son, break down this hedge and of course
Nahash comes in. But if you keep your hedge--and remember the old Hebrew
tradition always spoke of the Divine Law as "the hedge"--if you keep
your hedge unbroken, nothing can come in except by the door. Christ
said, "I am the door, by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved."
I have spoken of the two great mysteries, the mystery of godliness and
the mystery of iniquity, the mystery of Christ and the mystery of
anti-Christ. Now, it is not necessary, mind you, that you should
understand these mysteries in full in order to get into your right
position. If it were necessary that we should fully understand these
mysteries, either to get away from the one or to get into the other, I
think all of us would have an uncommonly bad chance. I certainly should.
I can touch only the fringe of these things, but we can realise the
principle of the affirmative and the principle of the negative which
underlies them both; one is the mystery of light, the other is the
mystery of darkness.
I do not say do not study these mysteries; they are exactly what we
ought to study, but do not think that you remain in a state of danger
until you have completely fathomed the mystery. Not a bit of it. You can
quite get on the right side without understanding the whole thing,
exactly as you travel on a railway without understanding the mechanism
of the engine which takes you along.
So then we have these two mysteries, that of light and that of darkness,
and therefore what we have to do is to exercise our will to receive the
mystery of light, and then that will make for itself a centre in our own
hearts and beings, and you will become conscious of that centre. Whether
you understand it or not, you will become conscious of it--and then from
that centre, that centre of light in yourself, you can start everything
in your life, whether spiritual or temporal. You do not have to go
further back; you do not have to analyse the why and the wherefore of
these things in order to get your starting point. It may interest you
afterwards, it may strengthen you afterwards to do so, but for a
practical starting point you must realise the Divine presence in
yourself, which is the son of God manifested in you, that is the Divine
principle of personality speaking within yourself.
So then, having realised this as your centre, you carry the
all-originating affirmative power with you, all through everything that
you do and everything that you are; day and night it will be there, it
will protect you, it will guide you, it will help you. And when you want
to do so you can consciously apply to it and it will give you
assistance, and because you take this as your starting point, it will
manifest itself in all your conditions; because, remember, it is a very
simple law of logic that whatever you start with will manifest itself
all down the sequence which comes from it. If you start with the colour
red you can make all sorts of modifications and bring out orange, purple
and brown, but the red basis will show itself all down the scale of
colour, and so if you start with a basis of blue, blue will show itself
all down the scale of various colours.
Therefore, if you start with the affirmative basis, the one starting
point of the Divine spirit, not taking it lower down the stream, but
going to the fountain head, that affirmative principle of life will flow
all through, showing its own quality to the very tips of your fingers
and beyond that out into all your circumstances. So that the divine
presence will be continuously with you, not as a consequence of your
joining this Church or that, following this idea, or that teacher, but
because you know the truth for yourselves, and you have realised it as
an actual living experience in your own mind and in your own heart; and
therefore it is that this personal recognition of the Divine love and
wisdom and power is what St. Paul calls "Christ in you, the hope of
glory."
Each one who recognises this, is one who answers the Biblical
description of a true Israelite indeed. That word "Israelite" in the
Bible is a very deeply symbolical word, and carries an immense amount of
meaning with it. So get this recognition as the real working fact that
each one of you is an Israelite indeed, and if so, then make yourselves
perfectly happy with the everlasting statement, which is as true now as
it was on the day on which it was uttered: "There is no divination or
enchantment against Israel."
1909.
III
THE "I AM"
We often do not sufficiently recognise the truth of Walt Whitman's pithy
saying, "I am not all contained between my hat and my boots," and forget
the two-fold nature of the "I AM," that it is at once both the
manifested and the unmanifested, the universal and the individual. By
losing sight of this truth we surround ourselves with limitations; we
see only part of the self, and then we are surprised that the part fails
to do the work of the whole. Factors crop up on which we had not
reckoned, and we wonder where they come from, and do not understand that
they necessarily arise from that great unity in which we are all
included.
It is the grand intelligence and livingness of Universal Spirit
continually pressing forward to manifestation of itself in a glorious
humanity.
This must be effected by each individual's recognition of his power to
co-operate with the Supreme Principle through an intelligent conception
of its purpose and of the natural laws by which that purpose is
accomplished--a recognition which can proceed only from the realisation
that he himself is none other than the same Universal Principle in
particular manifestation.
When he sees this he sees that Walt Whitman's saying is true, and that
his source of intelligence, power, and purpose is in that Universal
Self, which is his as well as another's just because it is universal,
and which is therefore as completely and entirely identified with
himself as though there were no other expression of it in the world.
The understanding which alone gives value to knowledge is the
understanding that, when we employ the formula "I am, therefore I can,
therefore I will," the "I AM" with which the series starts is a being
who, so to speak, has his head in heaven and his feet upon the earth, a
perfect unity, and with a range of ideas far transcending the little
ideas which are limited by the requirements of a day or an hour. On the
other hand, the requirements of the day and the hour are real while they
last, and since the manifested life can be lived only in the moment that
now is, whether it be to-day or ten thousand years hence, our need is to
harmonise the life of expression with the life of purpose, and by
realising in ourselves the source of the highest purposes to realise
also the life of the fullest expression.
This is the meaning of prayer. Prayer is not a foolish seeking to change
the mind of Supreme Wisdom, but it is an intelligent seeking to embody
that wisdom in our thoughts so as more and more perfectly to express
_it_ in expressing _ourselves_. Thus, as we gradually grow into the
habit of finding this inspiring Presence _within ourselves_, and of
realising its forward movement as the ultimate determining factor in all
true healthful mental action, it will become second nature to us to have
all our plans, down to the apparently most trivial, so floating upon the
undercurrent of this Universal Intelligence that a great harmony will
come into our lives, every discordant manifestation will disappear, and
we shall find ourselves more and more controlling all things into the
forms that we desire.
Why? Because we have attained to _commanding_ the Spirit and making it
obey us? Certainly not, for "if the blind lead the blind both shall fall
into the ditch"; but because we are _companions_ of the Spirit, and by a
continuous and growing intimacy have changed, not "the mind of the
Spirit," but our own, and have learned to think from a higher
standpoint, where we see that the old-world saying "know thyself"
includes the knowledge of all that we mean when we speak of God.
I AM IS ONE
This may seem a very elementary proposition, but it is one of which we
are too apt to lose sight. What does it mean? It means everything; but
we are most concerned with what it means in regard to ourselves, and to
each of us personally it means this. It means that there are not two
Spirits, one which is myself and one which is another. It means that
there is not some great unknown power external to myself which may be
actuated by perfectly different motives to my own, and which will,
therefore, oppose me with its irresistible force and pass over me,
leaving me crushed and broken like the devotee over whom the car of
Jaggarnath has rolled. It means that there is only one mind, one motive,
one power--not two opposing each other--and that my conscious mind in
all its movements is only the one mind expressing itself as (not merely
through) my own particular individuality.
There are not two I AMS, but one I am. Whatever, therefore, I can
conceive the Great Universal Life Principle to be, that I am. Let us try
fully to realise what this means. Can you conceive the Great Originating
and Sustaining Life Principle of the whole universe as poor, weak,
sordid, miserable, jealous, angry, anxious, uncertain, or in any other
way limited? We know that this is impossible. Then because the I AM is
one it is equally untrue of ourselves. Learn first to distinguish the
true self that you are from the mental and physical processes which it
throws forth as the instruments of its expression, and then learn that
this self controls these instruments, and not vice versa. As we advance
in this knowledge we know ourselves to be unlimited, and that, in the
miniature world, whose centre we are, we ourselves are the very same
overflowing of joyous livingness that the Great Life Spirit is in the
Great All. The I AM is One.
IV
AFFIRMATIVE POWER
Thoroughly to realise the true nature of affirmative power is to possess
the key to the great secret. We feel its presence in all the innumerable
forms of life by which we are surrounded and we feel it as the life in
ourselves; and at last some day the truth bursts upon us like a
revelation that we can wield this power, this life, by the process of
Thought. And as soon as we see this, the importance of regulating our
thinking begins to dawn upon us. We ask ourselves what this thought
process is, and we then find that it is thinking affirmative force into
forms which are the product of our own thought. We mentally conceive the
form and then think life into it.
This must always be the nature of the creative process on whatever
scale, whether on the grand scale of the Universal Cosmic Mind or on the
miniature scale of the individual mind; the difference is only in degree
and not in kind. We may picture the mental machinery by which this is
done in the way that best satisfies our intellect--and the satisfying of
the intellect on this point is a potent factor in giving us that
confidence in our mental action without which we can effect
nothing--but the actual externalisation is the result of something more
powerful than a merely intellectual apprehension. It is the result of
that inner mental state which, for want of a better word, we may call
our emotional conception of ourselves. It is the "self" which we _feel_
ourselves to be which takes forms of our own creating. For this reason
our thought must be so grounded upon knowledge that we shall _feel_
the truth of it, and thus be able to produce in ourselves that mental
attitude of feeling which corresponds to the condition which we desire
to externalise.
We cannot think into manifestation a different sort of life to that
which we realise in ourselves. As Horace says, "_Nemo dat quod non
habet_," we cannot give what we have not got. And, on the other hand, we
can never cease creating forms of some sort by our mental activity,
thinking life into them. This point must be very carefully noted. We
cannot sit still producing nothing: the mental machinery _will_ keep on
turning out work of some sort, and it rests with us to determine of what
sort it shall be. In our entire ignorance or imperfect realisation of
this we create negative forms and think life into them. We create forms
of death, sickness, sorrow, trouble, and limitation of all sorts, and
then think life into these forms; with the result that, however
non-existent in themselves, to us they become realities and throw their
shadow across the path which would otherwise be bright with the
many-coloured beauties of innumerable flowers and the glory of the
sunshine.
This need not be. It is giving to the negative an affirmative force
which does not belong to it. Consider what is meant by the negative. It
is the absence of something. It is not-being, and is the absence of all
that constitutes being. Left to itself, it remains in its own
nothingness, and it only assumes form and activity when we give these to
it by our thought.
Here, then, is the great reason for practising control over our thought.
It is the one and only instrument we have to work with, but it is an
instrument which works with the greatest certainty, for limitation if we
think limitation, for enlargement if we think enlargement. Our thought
as feeling is the magnet which draws to us those conditions which
accurately correspond to itself. This is the meaning of the saying that
"thoughts are things." But, you say, how can I think differently from
the circumstances? Certainly you are not required to say that the
circumstances _at the present moment_ are what they are not; to say so
would be untrue; but what is wanted is not to think from the standpoint
of circumstances at all. Think from that interior standpoint where there
are no circumstances, and from whence you can dictate what circumstances
shall be, and then leave the circumstances to take care of themselves.
Do not think of this, that, or the other particular _circumstances_ of
health, peace, etc., but of health, peace, and prosperity themselves.
Here is an advertisement from _Pearson's Weekly_:--"Think money. Big
moneymakers _think_ money." This is a perfectly sound statement of the
power of thought, although it is only an advertisement; but we may make
an advance beyond thinking "money." We can think "Life" in all its
fulness, together with that perfect harmony of conditions which includes
all that we need of money and a thousand other good things besides, for
some of which money stands as the symbol of exchangeable value, while
others cannot be estimated by so material a standard.