To set about getting rich in a scientific way, you do not try to apply
your will power to anything outside of yourself.
You have no right to do so, anyway.
It is wrong to apply your will to other men and women, in order to get
them to do what you wish done.
It is as flagrantly wrong to coerce people by mental power as it is to
coerce them by physical power. If compelling people by physical force
to do things for you reduces them to slavery, compelling them by mental
means accomplishes exactly the same thing; the only difference is in
methods. If taking things from people by physical force is robbery,
then taking things by mental force is robbery also; there is no
difference in principle.
You have no right to use your will power upon another person, even “for
his own good”; for you do not know what is for his good.
The science of getting rich does not require you to apply power or
force to any other person, in any way whatsoever. There is not the
slightest necessity for doing so; indeed, any attempt to use your will
upon others will only tend to defeat your purpose.
You do not need to apply your will to things, in order to compel them
to come to you.
That would simply be trying to coerce God, and would be foolish and
useless, as well as irreverent.
You do not have to compel God to give you good things, any more than
you have to use your will power to make the sun rise.
You do not have to use your will power to conquer an unfriendly deity,
or to make stubborn and rebellious forces do your bidding.
Substance is friendly to you, and is more anxious to give you what you
want than you are to get it.
To get rich, you need only to use your will power upon yourself.
When you know what to think and do, then you must use your will
to compel yourself to think and do the right things. That is the
legitimate use of the will in getting what you want--to use it in
holding yourself to the right course. Use your will to keep yourself
thinking and acting in the Certain Way.
Do not try to project your will, or your thoughts, or your mind out
into space, to “act” on things or people.
Keep your mind at home; it can accomplish more there than elsewhere.
Use your mind to form a mental image of what you want, and to hold that
vision with faith and purpose; and use your will to keep your mind
working in the Right Way.
The more steady and continuous your faith and purpose, the more rapidly
you will get rich, because you will make only POSITIVE impressions
upon Substance; and you will not neutralize or offset them by negative
impressions.
The picture of your desires, held with faith and purpose, is taken up
by the Formless, and permeates it to great distances,--throughout the
universe, for all I know.
As this impression spreads, all things are set moving toward its
realization; every living thing, every inanimate thing, and the
things yet uncreated, are stirred toward bringing into being that
which you want. All force begins to be exerted in that direction; all
things begin to move toward you. The minds of people, everywhere, are
influenced toward doing the things necessary to the fulfilling of your
desires; and they work for you, unconsciously.
But you can check all this by starting a negative impression in the
Formless Substance. Doubt or unbelief is as certain to start a
movement away from you as faith and purpose are to start one toward
you. It is by not understanding this that most people who try to make
use of “mental science” in getting rich make their failure. Every hour
and moment you spend in giving heed to doubts and fears, every hour you
spend in worry, every hour in which your soul is possessed by unbelief,
sets a current away from you in the whole domain of intelligent
Substance. All the promises are unto them that believe, and unto them
only. Notice how insistent Jesus was upon this point of belief; and now
you know the reason why.
Since belief is all important, it behooves you to guard your thoughts;
and as your beliefs will be shaped to a very great extent by the things
you observe and think about, it is important that you should command
your attention.
And here the will comes into use; for it is by your will that you
determine upon what things your attention shall be fixed.
If you want to become rich, you must not make a study of poverty.
Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposites.
Health is never to be attained by studying disease and thinking about
disease; righteousness is not to be promoted by studying sin and
thinking about sin; and no one ever got rich by studying poverty and
thinking about poverty.
Medicine as a science of disease has increased disease; religion as a
science of sin has promoted sin, and economics as a study of poverty
will fill the world with wretchedness and want.
Do not talk about poverty; do not investigate it, or concern yourself
with it. Never mind what its causes are; you have nothing to do with
them.
What concerns you is the cure.
Do not spend your time in charitable work, or charity movements; all
charity only tends to perpetuate the wretchedness it aims to eradicate.
I do not say that you should be hard-hearted or unkind, and refuse to
hear the cry of need; but you must not try to eradicate poverty in any
of the conventional ways. Put poverty behind you, and put all that
pertains to it behind you, and “make good.”
Get rich; that is the best way you can help the poor.
And you cannot hold the mental image which is to make you rich if you
fill your mind with pictures of poverty. Do not read books or papers
which give circumstantial accounts of the wretchedness of the tenement
dwellers, of the horrors of child labor, and so on. Do not read
anything which fills your mind with gloomy images of want and suffering.
You cannot help the poor in the least by knowing about these things;
and the wide-spread knowledge of them does not tend at all to do away
with poverty.
What tends to do away with poverty is not the getting of pictures of
poverty into your mind, but getting pictures of wealth into the minds
of the poor.
You are not deserting the poor in their misery when you refuse to allow
your mind to be filled with pictures of that misery.
Poverty can be done away with, not by increasing the number of
well-to-do people who think about poverty, but by increasing the number
of poor people who propose with faith to get rich.
The poor do not need charity; they need inspiration. Charity only sends
them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretchedness, or gives
them an entertainment to make them forget for an hour or two; but
inspiration will cause them to rise out of their misery. If you want to
help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can become rich; prove it
by getting rich yourself.
The only way in which poverty will ever be banished from this world
is by getting a large and constantly increasing number of people to
practice the teachings of this book.
People must be taught to become rich by creation, not by competition.
Every man who becomes rich by competition throws down behind him the
ladder by which he rises, and keeps others down; but every man who gets
rich by creation opens a way for thousands to follow him, and inspires
them to do so.
You are not showing hardness of heart or an unfeeling disposition when
you refuse to pity poverty, see poverty, read about poverty, or think
or talk about it, or to listen to those who do talk about it. Use your
will power to keep your mind OFF the subject of poverty, and to keep it
fixed with faith and purpose ON the vision of what you want.