stumbling-block to those who view the movement from the outside is the
claim it makes for Thought-power as an active factor in the affairs of
daily life. As a mere set of speculative opinions people might be
willing to pigeon-hole it along with the philosophic systems of Kant or
Hegel; but it is the practical element in it which causes the
difficulty. It is not only a system of Thought based upon a conception
of the Unity of Being, but it claims to follow out this conception to
its legitimate consequences in the production of visible and tangible
external results by the mere exercise of Thought-power. A ridiculous
claim, a claim not to be tolerated by common sense, a trespassing upon
the Divine prerogative, a claim of unparalleled audacity: thus the
casual objector. But this claim is not without its parallel, for the
same claim was put forward on the same ground by the Great Teacher
Himself as the proper result of "the Son's" recognition of his relation
to "the Father." "Ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you";
"Whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive, and
nothing shall be impossible unto you"; "All things are possible to him
that believeth." These statements are absolutely without any note of
limitation save that imposed by the seeker's want of faith in his own
power to move the Infinite. This is as clear a declaration of the
efficacy of mental power to produce outward and tangible results as any
now made by the New Thought, and it is made on precisely the same
ground, namely, the readiness of "the Father" or Spirit in the Universal
to respond to the movement of Spirit in the individual.
In the Bible this movement of individualised Spirit is called "prayer,"
and it is synonymous with Thought, formulated with the intention of
producing this response.
"Prayer is the heart's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed,"
and we must not let ourselves be misled by the association of particular
forms with particular words, but should follow the sound advice of
Oliver Wendell Holmes, and submit such words to a process of
depolarisation, which brings out their real meaning. Whether we call our
act "prayer" or "thought-concentration," we mean the same thing; it is
the claim of the man to move the Infinite by the action of his own mind.
It may be objected, however, that this definition omits an important
element of prayer, the question, namely, whether God will hear it. But
this is the very element that Jesus most rigorously excludes from his
description of the mental act. Prayer, according to the popular notion,
is a most uncertain matter. Whether we shall be heard or not depends
entirely upon another will, regarding whose action we are completely
ignorant, and therefore, according to this notion, the very essence of
prayer consists of utter uncertainty. Jesus' conception of prayer was
the very opposite. He bids us believe that we have already in fact
received what we ask for, and makes this the condition of receiving; in
other words, he makes the essential factor in the mental action to
consist in Absolute Certainty as to the corresponding response in the
Infinite, which is exactly the condition that the New Thought lays down
for the successful operation of Thought-power.
It may, however, be objected that if men have thus an indiscriminate
power of projecting their thought to the accomplishment of anything they
desire, they can do so for evil as easily as for good. But Jesus fully
recognised this possibility, and worked the only destructive miracle
recorded of him for the express purpose of emphasising the danger. The
reason given by the compilers of the Gospel for the destruction of the
fig-tree is clearly inadequate, for we certainly cannot suppose Jesus so
unreasonable as to curse a tree for not bearing fruit out of season. But
the record itself shows a very different purpose. Jesus answered the
disciples' astonished questioning by telling them that it was in their
own power, not only to do what was done to the fig-tree, but to produce
effects upon a far grander scale; and he concludes the conversation by
laying down the duty of a heart-searching forgiveness as a necessary
preliminary to prayer. Why was this precept so particularly impressed in
this particular connection? Obviously because the demonstration he had
just given of the valency of thought-power in the hands of instructed
persons laid bare the fact that this power can be used destructively as
well as beneficially, and that, therefore, a thorough heart-searching
for the eradication of any lurking ill-feeling became an imperative
preliminary to its safe use; otherwise there was danger of noxious
thought-currents being set in motion to the injury of others. The
miracle of the fig-tree was an object-lesson to exhibit the need for the
careful handling of that limitless power which Jesus assured his
disciples existed as fully in them as in himself. I do not here attempt
to go into this subject in detail, but enough has, I think, been shown
to convince us that Jesus made exactly the same claim for the power of
Thought as that made by the New Thought movement at the present day. It
is a great claim, and it is, therefore, encouraging to find such an
authority committed to the same assertion.
The general principle on which this claim is based by the exponents of
the New Thought is the identity of Spirit in the individual with spirit
in the universal, and we shall find that this, also, is the basis of
Jesus' teaching on the subject. He says that "the Son can do nothing of
himself, but what he seeth the Father do these things doeth the Son in
like manner." It must now be sufficiently clear that "the Son" is a
generic appellation, not restricted to a particular individual, but
applicable to all; and this statement explains the manner of "the Son's"
working in relation to "the Father." The point this sentence
particularly emphasises is that it is what he sees the Father doing that
the Son does also. His doing corresponds to his seeing. If the seeing
expands, the doing expands along with it. But we are all sufficiently
familiar with this principle in other matters. What differentiates an
Edison or a Marconi from the apprentice who knows only how to fit up an
electric bell by rule of thumb? It is their capacity for seeing the
universal principles of electricity and bringing them into particular
application. The great painter is the one who sees the universal
principles of form and colour where the smaller man sees only a
particular combination; and so with the great surgeon, the great
chemist, the great lawyer--in every line it is the power of insight that
distinguishes the great man from the little one; it is the capacity for
making wide generalisations and perceiving far-reaching laws that raises
the exceptional mind above the ordinary level. The greater working
always results from the greater seeing into the abstract principles from
which any art or science is generated; and this same law carried up to
the universal principles of Life is the law by which "the Son's" working
is proportioned to his seeing the method of "the Father's" work. Thus
the source of "the Son's" power lies in the contemplation of "the
Father," the endeavour, that is, to realise the true nature of Being,
whether in the abstract or in its generic forms of manifestation.[3]
This is Bacon's maxim, "Work as God works"; and similarly the New
Thought consists before all things in the realisation of the laws of
Being.
[Footnote 3: Everything depends on this principle of
Reciprocity. By contemplation we come to realize the true
nature of "Spirit" or "the father." We learn to disengage the
_variable_ factors of particular _Modes_ from the
_invariable_ factors which are the essential qualities of
Spirit underlying _all_ Modes. Then when we realize these
essential qualities we see that we can apply them under any
mode that we will: in other words _we_ supply the _variable_
factor of the combination by the action of our Thought, as
Desire or Will, and thus combine it with the _invariable_
factor or "constant" of the _essential_ law of spirit, thus
producing what result we will. This is just what we do in
respect to physical nature--e. g., the electrician supplies
the _variable_ factor of the particular Mode of application,
and the _constant_ laws of Electricity _respond_ to the
nature of the invitation given to them. This _Responsiveness_
is _inherent_ in Spirit; otherwise Spirit would have no means
of expansion into manifestation. Responsiveness is the
principle of Spirit's Self-expression. We do not have to
create responsive action on the part of electricity. We can
safely take this Responsiveness for granted as pure natural
law. Our desire first works on the Arupa level and thence
concentrates itself through the various Rupa levels till it
reaches complete external manifestation.]
And the result of the seeing is that "the Son" does the same things as
"the Father" "in like manner." The Son's action is the reproduction of
the universal principles in application to specific instances. The
principles remain unaltered and work always in the same manner, and the
office of "the Son" is to determine the particular field of their
operation with regard to the specific object which he has in view; and
therefore, so far as that object is concerned, the action of "the Son"
becomes the action of "the Father" also.
Again, there is no concealment on the part of "the Father." He has no
secrets, for "the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that
himself doeth." There is perfect reciprocity between Spirit in the
Universal and in Individualisation, resulting from the identity of
Being; and "the Son's" recognition of Love as the active principle of
this Unity gives him an intuitive insight into all those inner workings
of the Universal Life which we call the arcana of Nature. Love has a
divine gift of insight which cannot be attained by intellect alone, and
the old saying, "Love will find out the way," has greater depths of
meaning than appear on the surface. Thus there is not only a seeing, but
also a showing; and the three terms--"looking, seeing, showing"--combine
to form a power of "working" to which it is impossible to assign any
limit.
Here, again, the teaching of Jesus is in exact correspondence with that
of the New Thought, which tells us that limitations exist only where we
ourselves put them, and that to view ourselves as beings of limitless
knowledge, power, and love is to become such in outward manifestation of
visible fact. Any objection, therefore, to the New Thought teaching
regarding the possibilities latent in Man apply with equal force to the
teachings of Jesus. His teaching clearly was that the perfect
individuality of Man is a Dual-Unity, the polarisation of the Infinite
in the Manifest; and it requires only the recognition of this truth for
the manifested element in this binary system to demonstrate its identity
with the corresponding element which is not externally visible. He said
that He and his Father were One, that those who had seen him had seen
the Father, that the words which he spoke were the Father's, and that it
was the Father who did the works. Nothing could be more explicit.
Absolute unity of the manifested individuality with the Originating
Infinite Spirit is asserted or implied in every utterance attributed to
Jesus, whether spoken of himself or of others. He recognises only one
radical difference, the difference between those who know this truth and
those who do not know it. The distinction between the disciple and the
master is one only of degree, which will be effaced by the expansive
power of growth; "the disciple, when he is perfected, shall be as his
Master."
All that hinders the individual from exercising the full power of the
Infinite for any purpose whatever is his lack of faith, his inability to
realise to the full the stupendous truth that he himself is the very
power which he seeks. This was the teaching of Jesus as it is that of
the New Thought; and this truth of the Divine Sonship of Man once taken
as the great foundation, a magnificent edifice of possibilities which
"eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart
of man to conceive," grows up logically upon it--a glorious heritage
which each one may legitimately claim in right of his common humanity.
II
_The Great Affirmation_
I take it for granted that my readers are well acquainted with the part
assigned to the principle of Affirmation in the scheme of the New
Thought. This is often a stumbling-block to beginners; and I feel sure
that even those who are not beginners will welcome every aid to a deeper
apprehension of this great central truth. I, therefore, purpose to
examine the Bible teaching on this important subject.
The professed object of the Bible is to establish and extend "the
Kingdom of God" throughout the world, and this can be done only by
repeating the process from one individual to another, until the whole
mass is leavened. It is thus an individual process; and, as we have seen
in the last chapter, God is Spirit and Spirit is Life, and, therefore,
the expansion of "the Kingdom of God" means the expansion of the
principle of Life in each individual. Now Life, to be life at all, must
be Affirmative. It is Life in virtue of what it is, and not in virtue of
what it is not. The quantity of life in any particular case may be very
small; but, however small the amount, the quality is always the same:
it is the quality of Being, the quality of Livingness, and not its
absence, that makes it what it is. The distinctive character of Life,
therefore, is that it is Positive and not Negative; and every degree of
negativeness, that is, every limitation, is ultimately traceable to
deficiency of Life-power.
Limitations surround us because we believe in our inability to do what
we desire. Whenever we say "I cannot" we are brought up sharp by a
limitation, and we cease to exercise our thought-power in that direction
because we believe ourselves stopped by a blank wall of impossibility;
and whenever this occurs we are subjected to bondage. The ideal of
perfect Liberty is the converse of all this, and follows a sequence
which does not thus lead us into a _cul-de-sac_. This sequence consists
of the three affirmations: I am--therefore I can--therefore I will; and
this last affirmation results in the projection of our powers, whether
interior or external, to the accomplishment of the desired object. But
this last affirmation has its root in the first; and it is because we
recognise the Affirmative nature of the Life that is in us, or rather of
the Life which we are, that the power to will or to act positively has
any existence; and, therefore, the extent of our power to will and to
act positively and with effect, is exactly measured by our perception of
the depth and livingness of our own Being. Hence the more fully we learn
to affirm that, the greater power we are able to exercise.
Now the ideal of perfect Liberty is the entire absence of all
limitation, and to have no limitation in Being is to be co-extensive
with All-Being. We are all grammarians enough to know that the use of a
predicate is to lead the mind to contemplate the subject as represented
by that predicate; in other words, it limits our conception for the time
being to that particular aspect of the subject. Hence every predicate,
however extensive, implies some limitation of the subject. But the ideal
subject, the absolutely free self, is, by the very hypothesis, without
limitation; and, therefore, no predicate can be attached to it. It
stands as a declaration of its own Being without any statement of what
that Being consists in, and therefore it says of itself, not "I am this
or that," but simply I am. No predicate can be added, because the only
commensurate predicate would be the enumeration of Infinity. Therefore,
both logically and grammatically, the only possible statement of a fully
liberated being is made in the words I am.
I need hardly remind my readers of the frequency with which Jesus
employed these emphatic words. In many cases the translators have added
the word "He," but they have been careful, by putting it in italics, to
show that it is not in the original. As grammarians and theologians they
thought something more was wanted to complete the sense, and they
supplied it accordingly; but if we would get at the very words as the
Master himself spoke them, we must strike out this interpolation. And as
soon as we have done so there flashes into light the identity of his
statement with that made to Moses at the burning bush, where the full
significance of the words is so obvious that the translators were
compelled to leave the place of the predicate in that seeming emptiness
which comes from filling all things.
Seen thus, a marvellous light shines forth from the instruction of the
Great Teacher: for in whatever sense we may regard him as a Great
Exception to the weak and limited aspect of humanity with which we are
only too familiar, we must all agree that his mission was not to render
mankind hopeless by declaring the path of advance barred against them,
but "to give light to them that sit in darkness," and liberty to them
that are bound, by proclaiming the unlimited possibilities that are in
man waiting only to be called forth by knowledge of the Truth. And if we
suppose any personal reference in his words, it can, therefore, be only
as the Great Example of what man has it in him to become, and not as the
example of something which man can never hope to be; an Exception,
truly, to mankind as we see them now, but the Exception that proves the
rule, and sets the standard of what each one may become as he attains to
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
Let us, therefore, by striking out this interpolation, restore the
Master's words as they stand in the original: "Except ye believe that I
am, ye shall die in your sins." This is an epitome of his teaching.
"The last enemy that shall be overcome is death," and the "sting," or
fatal power, of death is "sin." Remove that, and death has no longer any
dominion over us; its power is at an end. And "the strength of sin is
the Law": sin is every contradiction of the law of Being; and the law of
Being is infinitude; for Being is Life, and Life in its innermost
essence is the limitless I am. Dying in our sins is thus not a
punishment for doubting a particular theological dogma, but it is the
unavoidable natural consequence of not realising, not believing in, the
I am. So long as we fail to realise its full infinitude in ourselves, we
cut ourselves off from our conscious unity with the Infinite Life-Spirit
which permeates all things. Without this principle we have no
alternative but to die--and this because of our sin, that is, because of
our failure to conform to the true Law of our Being, which is Life, and
not Death. We affirm Death and Negation concerning ourselves, and
therefore Death and Negation are externalised, and thus we pay the
penalty of not believing in the central Law of our own Life, which is
the Law of all Life. The Bible is the Book of Principles, and therefore
by "dying" is meant the acceptance of the principle of the Negative
which culminates in Death as the sum-total of all limitations, and which
introduces at every step those restrictions which are of the nature of
Death, because their tendency is to curtail the outflowing fulness of
Life.
This, then, is the very essence of the teaching of Jesus, that unbelief
in the limitless power of Life-in-ourselves--in each of us--is the one
cause of Death and of all those evils which, in greater or lesser
measure, reproduce the restrictive influences which deprive Life of its
fulness and joy. If we would escape Death and enter into Life, we must
each believe in the I am in ourselves. And the ground for this belief?
Simply that nothing else is conceivable. If our life is not a portion of
the life of Universal Spirit, whence comes it? We are because that is.
No other explanation is possible. The unqualified affirmation of our own
livingness is not an audacious self-assertion: it is the only logical
outcome of the fact that there is any life anywhere, and that we are
here to think about it. In the sense of Universal Being, there can be
only One I am, and the understanding use of the words by the individual
is the assertion of this fact. The forms of manifestation are infinite,
but the Life which is manifested is One, and thus every thinker who
recognises the truth regarding himself finds in the I am both himself
and the totality of all things; and thus he comes to know that in
utilising the interior nature of the things and persons about him, he
is, in effect, employing the powers of his own life.
Sometimes the veil which Jesus drew over this great truth was very
transparent. To the Samaritan woman he spoke of it as a spring of Life
forever welling up in the innermost recesses of man's being; and again,
to the multitude assembled at the Temple, he spoke of it as a river of
Life forever gushing from the secret sources of the spirit within us.
Life, to be ours at all, must be ourselves. An energy which only passed
through us, without being us, might produce a sort of galvanic activity,
but it would not be Life. Life can never be a separate entity from the
individuality which manifests it; and therefore, even if we conceive the
life-principle in a man so intensified as to pulsate with what might
seem to us an absolutely divine vitality, it would still be no other
than the man himself. Thus Jesus directs us to no external source of
life, but ever teaches that the Kingdom of Heaven is within, and that
what is wanted is to remove those barriers of ignorance and ill-will
which prevent us from realising that the great I am, which is the
innermost Spirit of Life throughout the universe, is the same I am that
I am, whoever I may be.
On another memorable occasion Jesus declared again that the I am is the
enduring principle of Life. It is this that is the Resurrection and the
Life; not, as Martha supposed, a new principle to be infused from
without at some future time, but an inherent core of vitality awaiting
only its own recognition of itself to triumph over death and the grave.
And yet, again hear the Master's answer to the inquiring Thomas. How
many of us, like him, desire to know the way! To hear of wonderful
powers latent in man and requiring only development is beautiful and
hopeful, if we could only find out the way to develop them; but who will
show us the way? The answer comes with no uncertain note. The I am
includes everything. It is at once "the Way, the Truth, and the Life":
not the Life only, or the Truth only, but also the Way by which to reach
them. Can words be plainer? It is by continually affirming and relying
on the I am in ourselves as identical with the I am that is the One and
Only Life, whether manifested or unmanifested, in all places of the
universe, that we shall find the way to the attainment of all Truth and
of all Life. Here we have the predicate which we are seeking to complete
our affirmation regarding ourselves. I am--what? the Three things which
include all things: Truth, which is all Knowledge and Wisdom; Life,
which is all Power and Love; and the unfailing Way which will lead us
step by step, if we follow it, to heights too sublime and environment
too wide for our present juvenile imaginings to picture.
As the New Testament centres around Jesus, so the old Testament centres
around Moses, and he also declares the Great Affirmation to be the
same.[4] For him God has no name, but that intensely living universal
Life which is all in all, and no name is sufficient to be its
equivalent. The emphatic words I am are the only possible statement of
the One-Power which exhibits itself as all worlds and all living beings.
It is the Great I am which forever unfolds itself in all the infinite
evolutionary forces of the cosmic scheme, and which, in marvellous
onward march, develops itself into higher and higher conscious
intelligence in the successive races of mankind, unrolling the scroll of
history as it moves on from age to age, working out with unerring
precision the steady forward movement of the whole towards that ultimate
perfection in which the work of God will be completed. But stupendous
as is the scale on which this Providential Power reveals itself to Moses
and the Prophets, it is still nothing else than the very same Power
which Jesus bids us realise in ourselves.
[Footnote 4: The Old Testament and the New treat the I AM
from its opposite poles. The Old Testament treats it from the
relation of the _Whole to the Part_, while the New Testament
treats it from the relation of the _Part to the Whole_. This
is important as explaining the relation between the Old and
New Testaments.
(a) "My Word shall not return unto me void but shall
accomplish that whereunto I send it."
(b) The Principle here indicated is that of the Alternation
and Equation between Absorption and Radiation--a taking-in
before, and a giving-out.
(c) "_Order_"--Whatever betrays this is "Disorder."
(d) "_Conscious_"--It is the degree of _consciousness_ that
always marks the transition from a lower to a higher Power of
Life. The _Life_ of _All Seven_ Principles _must_ always be
present in us, otherwise we should not exist at all;
therefore it is the degree in which we learn to _consciously_
function in each of them that marks our advance into higher
kingdoms within ourselves, and frequently outside ourselves
also.