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THE HIGHER POWERS
OF
MIND AND SPIRIT
BY
RALPH WALDO TRINE
AUTHOR OF "IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE," ETC.
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1933
First published May 1918
Reprinted November 1918.
Reprinted 1919, 1923, 1927, 1933.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW
FOREWORD
We are all dwellers in two kingdoms, the inner kingdom, the kingdom of
the mind and spirit, and the outer kingdom, that of the body and the
physical universe about us. In the former, the kingdom of the unseen,
lie the silent, subtle forces that are continually determining, and with
exact precision, the conditions of the latter.
To strike the right balance in life is one of the supreme essentials of
all successful living. We must work, for we must have bread. We require
other things than bread. They are not only valuable, comfortable, but
necessary. It is a dumb, stolid being, however, who does not realize
that life consists of more than these. They spell mere existence, not
abundance, fullness of life.
We can become so absorbed in making a living that we have no time _for
living_. To be capable and efficient in one's work is a splendid thing;
but efficiency _can be made_ a great mechanical device that robs life of
far more than it returns it. A nation can become so possessed, and even
obsessed, with the idea of power and grandeur through efficiency and
organisation, that it becomes a great machine and robs its people of the
finer fruits of life that spring from a wisely subordinated and
coordinated individuality. Here again it is the wise balance that
determines all.
Our prevailing thoughts and emotions determine, and with absolute
accuracy, the prevailing conditions of our outward, material life, and
likewise the prevailing conditions of our bodily life. Would we have any
conditions different in the latter we must then make the necessary
changes in the former. The silent, subtle forces of mind and spirit,
ceaselessly at work, are continually moulding these outward and these
bodily conditions.
He makes a fundamental error who thinks that these are mere sentimental
things in life, vague and intangible. They are, as great numbers are now
realising, the great and elemental things in life, the only things that
in the end really count. The normal man or woman can never find real and
abiding satisfaction in the mere possessions, the mere accessories of
life. There is an eternal something within that forbids it. That is the
reason why, of late years, so many of our big men of affairs, so many in
various public walks in life, likewise many women of splendid equipment
and with large possessions, have been and are turning so eagerly to the
very things we are considering. To be a mere huckster, many of our big
men are finding, cannot bring satisfaction, even though his operations
run into millions in the year.
And happy is the young man or the young woman who, while the bulk of
life still lies ahead, realises that it is the things of the mind and
the spirit--the fundamental things in life--that really count; that here
lie the forces that are to be understood and to be used in moulding the
everyday conditions and affairs of life; that the springs of life are
all from within, that as is the inner so always and inevitably will be
the outer.
To present certain facts that may be conducive to the realisation of
this more abundant life is the author's purpose and plan.
R. W. T.
_Sunnybrae Farm,
Croton-on-Hudson,
New York._
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. The Silent, Subtle Building Forces of Mind and Spirit 9
II. Soul, Mind, Body--The Subconscious Mind That
Interrelates Them 19
III. The Way Mind Through the Subconscious Mind Builds Body 37
IV. The Powerful Aid of the Mind in Rebuilding Body--How
Body Helps Mind 50
V. Thought as a Force in Daily Living 63
VI. Jesus the Supreme Exponent of the Inner Forces and
Powers: His People's Religion and Their Condition 76
VII. The Divine Rule in the Mind and Heart: The Unessentials
We Drop--The Spirit Abides 89
VIII. If We Seek the Essence of His Revelation, and the
Purpose of His Life 113
IX. His Purpose of Lifting Up, Energising, Beautifying,
and Saving the Entire Life: The Saving of the Soul is
Secondary; but Follows 140
X. Some Methods of Attainment 152
XI. Some Methods of Expression 173
XII. The World War--Its Meaning and Its Lessons for Us 191
XIII. Our Sole Agency of International Peace, and
International Concord 213
XIV. The World's Balance-wheel 231
THE HIGHER POWERS
OF
MIND AND SPIRIT
I
THE SILENT, SUBTLE BUILDING FORCES OF MIND AND SPIRIT
There are moments in the lives of all of us when we catch glimpses of a
life--our life--that is infinitely beyond the life we are now living. We
realise that we are living below our possibilities. We long for the
realisation of the life that we feel should be.
Instinctively we perceive that there are within us powers and forces
that we are making but inadequate use of, and others that we are
scarcely using at all. Practical metaphysics, a more simplified and
concrete psychology, well-known laws of mental and spiritual science,
confirm us in this conclusion.
Our own William James, he who so splendidly related psychology,
philosophy, and even religion, to life in a supreme degree, honoured his
calling and did a tremendous service for all mankind, when he so
clearly developed the fact that we have within us powers and forces that
we are making all too little use of--that we have within us great
reservoirs of power that we have as yet scarcely tapped.
The men and the women who are awake to these inner helps--these
directing, moulding, and sustaining powers and forces that belong to the
realm of mind and spirit--are never to be found among those who ask: Is
life worth the living? For them life has been multiplied two, ten, a
hundred fold.
It is not ordinarily because we are not interested in these things, for
instinctively we feel them of value; and furthermore our observations
and experiences confirm us in this thought. The pressing cares of the
everyday life--in the great bulk of cases, the bread and butter problem
of life, which is after all the problem of ninety-nine out of every
hundred--all seem to conspire to keep us from giving the time and
attention to them that we feel we should give them. But we lose thereby
tremendous helps to the daily living.
Through the body and its avenues of sense, we are intimately related to
the physical universe about us. Through the soul and spirit we are
related to the Infinite Power that is the animating, the sustaining
force--the Life Force--of all objective material forms. It is through
the medium of the mind that we are able consciously to relate the two.
Through it we are able to realise the laws that underlie the workings of
the spirit, and to open ourselves that they may become the dominating
forces of our lives.
There is a divine current that will bear us with peace and safety on its
bosom if we are wise and diligent enough to find it and go with it.
Battling against the current is always hard and uncertain. Going with
the current lightens the labours of the journey. Instead of being
continually uncertain and even exhausted in the mere efforts of getting
through, we have time for the enjoyments along the way, as well as the
ability to call a word of cheer or to lend a hand to the neighbour, also
on the way.
The _natural, normal life_ is by a law divine under the guidance of the
spirit. It is only when we fail to seek and to follow this guidance, or
when we deliberately take ourselves from under its influence, that
uncertainties arise, legitimate longings go unfulfilled, and that
violated laws bring their penalties.
It is well that we remember always that violated law carries with it its
own penalty. The Supreme Intelligence--God, if you please--does not
punish. He works through the channel of great immutable systems of law.
_It is ours to find these laws._ That is what mind, intelligence, is
for. Knowing them we can then obey them and reap the beneficent results
that are always a part of their fulfilment; knowingly or unknowingly,
intentionally or unintentionally, we can fail to observe them, we can
violate them, and suffer the results, or even be broken by them.
Life is not so complex if we do not so continually persist in making it
so. Supreme Intelligence, creative Power works only through law. Science
and religion are but different approaches to our understanding of the
law. When both are real, they supplement one another and their findings
are identical.
The old Hebrew prophets, through the channel of the spirit, perceived
and enunciated some wonderful laws of the natural and normal life--that
are now being confirmed by well-established laws of mental and spiritual
science--and that are now producing these identical results in the lives
of great numbers among us today, when they said: "And thine ears shall
hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye
turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left."
And again: "The Lord is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek
him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake
you." "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on
thee; because he trusteth in thee." "The Lord in the midst of thee is
mighty." "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall
abide under the shadow of the Almighty." "Thou shalt be in league with
the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace
with thee." "Commit thy way unto the Lord: trust also in him and he
shall bring it to pass." Now these formulations all mean something of a
_very definite nature_, or, they mean nothing at all. If they are actual
expressions of fact, they are governed by certain definite and immutable
laws.
These men gave us, however, no knowledge of _the laws_ underlying the
workings of these inner forces and powers; they perhaps had no such
knowledge themselves. They were intuitive perceptions of truth on their
part. The scientific spirit of this, our age, was entirely unknown to
them. The growth of the race in the meantime, the development of the
scientific spirit in the pursuit and the finding of truth, makes us
infinitely beyond them in some things, while in others they were far
ahead of us. But this fact remains, and this is the important fact: If
these things were actual facts in the lives of these early Hebrew
prophets, they are then actual facts in our lives right now, today; or,
if not actual facts, then they are facts that still lie in the realm of
the potential, only waiting to be brought into the realm of the actual.
These were not unusual men in the sense that the Infinite Power, God, if
you please, could or did speak to them alone. They are types, they are
examples of how any man or any woman, through desire and through will,
can open himself or herself to the leadings of Divine Wisdom, and have
actualised in his or her life an ever-growing sense of Divine Power. For
truly "God is the same yesterday, and today, and forever." His laws are
unchanging as well as immutable.
None of these men taught, then, how to recognise the Divine Voice
within, nor how to become continually growing embodiments of the Divine
Power. They gave us perhaps, though, all they were able to give. Then
came Jesus, the successor of this long line of illustrious Hebrew
prophets, with a greater aptitude for the things of the spirit--the
supreme embodiment of Divine realisation and revelation. With a greater
knowledge of truth than they, he did greater things than they.
He not only did these works, but he showed how he did them. He not only
revealed _the Way_, but so earnestly and so diligently he implored his
hearers to follow _the Way_. He makes known the secret of his insight
and his power: "The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself:
but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Again, "I can
of my own self do nothing." And he then speaks of his purpose, his aim:
"I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more
abundantly." A little later he adds: "The works that I do ye shall do
also." Now again, these things mean something of a very definite nature,
or they mean nothing at all.
The works done, the results achieved by Jesus' own immediate disciples
and followers, and in turn their followers, as well as in the early
church for close to two hundred years after his time, all attest the
truth of his teaching and demonstrate unmistakably the results that
follow.
Down through the intervening centuries, the teachings, the lives and the
works of various seers, sages, and mystics, within the church and out of
the church, have likewise attested the truth of his teachings. The bulk
of the Christian world, however, since the third century, has been so
concerned with various theories and teachings _concerning_ Jesus, that
it has missed almost completely the real vital and vitalising teachings
_of_ Jesus.
We have not been taught primarily to follow his injunctions, and to
apply the truths that he revealed to the problems of our everyday
living. Within the last two score of years or a little more, however,
there has been a great going back directly to the teachings of Jesus,
and a determination to prove their truth and to make effective their
assurances. Also various laws in the realm of Mental and Spiritual
Science have become clearly established and clearly formulated, that
confirm all his fundamental teachings.
There are now definite and well-defined laws in relation to thought as a
force, and the methods as to how it determines our material and bodily
conditions. There are now certain well-defined laws pertaining to the
subconscious mind, its ceaseless building activities, how it always
takes its direction from the active, thinking mind, and how through this
channel we may connect ourselves with reservoirs of power, so to speak,
in an intelligent and effective manner.
There are now well-understood laws underlying mental suggestion, whereby
it can be made a tremendous source of power in our own lives, and can
likewise be made an effective agency in arousing the motive powers of
another for his or her healing, habit-forming, character-building. There
are likewise well-established facts not only as to the value, but the
absolute need of periods of meditation and quiet, alone with the Source
of our being, stilling the outer bodily senses, and fulfilling the
conditions whereby the Voice of the Spirit can speak to us and through
us, and the power of the Spirit can manifest in and through us.
A nation is great only as its people are great. Its people are great in
the degree that they strike the balance between the life of the mind and
the spirit--all the finer forces and emotions of life--and their outer
business organisation and activities. When the latter become excessive,
when they grow at the expense of the former, then the inevitable decay
sets in, that spells the doom of that nation, and its time is tolled off
in exactly the same manner, and under the same law, as has that of all
the other nations before it that sought to reverse the Divine order of
life.
The human soul and its welfare is the highest business that any state
can give its attention to. To recognise or to fail to recognise the
value of the human soul in other nations, determines its real greatness
and grandeur, or its self-complacent but essential vacuity. It is
possible for a nation, through subtle delusions, to get such an attack
of the big head that it bends over backwards, and it is liable, in this
exposed position, to get a thrust in its vitals.
To be carried too far along the road of efficiency, big business,
expansion, world power, domination, at the expense of the great
spiritual verities, the fundamental humanities of national life, that
make for the real life and welfare of its people, and that give also its
true and just relations with other nations and their people, is both
dangerous and in the end suicidal--it can end in nothing but loss and
eventual disaster. A silent revolution of thought is taking place in the
minds of the people of all nations at this time, and will continue for
some years to come. A stock-taking period in which tremendous
revaluations are under way, is on. It is becoming clear-cut and
decisive.
II
SOUL, MIND, BODY--THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND THAT INTERRELATES THEM
There is a notable twofold characteristic of this our age--we might
almost say: of this our generation. It is on the one hand a tremendously
far-reaching interest in the deeper spiritual realities of life, in the
things of the mind and the Spirit. On the other hand, there is a
materialism that is apparent to all, likewise far-reaching. We are
witnessing the two moving along, apparently at least, side by side.
There are those who believe that out of the latter the former is
arising, that we are witnessing another great step forward on the part
of the human race--a new era or age, so to speak. There are many things
that would indicate this to be a fact. The fact that the _material
alone_ does not satisfy, and that from the very constitution of the
human mind and soul, it cannot satisfy, may be a fundamental reason for
this.
It may be also that as we are apprehending, to a degree never equalled
in the world's history, the finer forces in nature, and are using them
in a very practical and useful way in the affairs and the activities of
the daily life, we are also and perhaps in a more pronounced degree,
realising, understanding, and using the finer, the higher insights and
forces, and therefore powers, of mind, of spirit, and of body.
I think there is a twofold reason for this widespread and rapidly
increasing interest. A new psychology, or perhaps it were better to say,
some new and more fully established laws of psychology, pertaining to
the realm of the subconscious mind, its nature, and its peculiar
activities and powers, has brought us another agency in life of
tremendous significance and of far-reaching practical use.
Another reason is that the revelation and the religion of Jesus the
Christ is witnessing a _new birth_, as it were. We are finding at last
an entirely new content in his teachings, as well as in his life. We are
dropping our interest in those phases of a Christianity that he probably
never taught, and that we have many reasons now to believe he never even
thought--things that were added long years after his time.
We are conscious, however, as never before, that that wonderful
revelation, those wonderful teachings, and above all that wonderful
life, have a content that can, that does, inspire, lift up, and make
more effective, more powerful, more successful, and more happy, the life
of every man and every woman who will accept, who will appropriate, who
will live his teachings.
Look at it, however we will, this it is that accounts for the vast
number of earnest, thoughtful, forward looking men and women who are
passing over, and in many cases are passing from, traditional
Christianity, and who either of their own initiative, or under other
leadership, are going back to those simple, direct, God-impelling
teachings of the Great Master. They are finding salvation in his
teachings and his example, where they _never could_ find it in various
phases of the traditional teachings _about_ him.
It is interesting to realise, and it seems almost strange that this new
finding in psychology, and that this new and vital content in
Christianity, have come about at almost identically the same time. Yet
it is not strange, for the one but serves to demonstrate in a concrete
and understandable manner the fundamental and essential principles of
the other. Many of the Master's teachings of the inner life, teachings
of "the Kingdom," given so far ahead of his time that the people in
general, and in many instances even his disciples, were incapable of
fully comprehending and understanding them, are now being confirmed and
further elucidated by clearly defined laws of psychology.
Speculation and belief are giving way to a greater knowledge of law. The
supernatural recedes into the background as we delve deeper into the
supernormal. The unusual loses its miraculous element as we gain
knowledge of the law whereby the thing is done. We are realising that no
miracle has ever been performed in the world's history that was not
through the understanding and the use of Law.
Jesus did unusual things; but he did them because of his unusual
understanding of the law through which they could be done. _He_ would
not have us believe otherwise. To do so would be a distinct
contradiction of the whole tenor of his teachings and his injunctions.
Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, was his own
admonition. It was the great and passionate longing of his master heart
that the people to whom he came, grasp the _interior meanings_ of his
teachings. How many times he felt the necessity of rebuking even his
disciples for dragging his teachings down through their material
interpretations. As some of the very truths that he taught are now
corroborated and more fully understood, and in some cases amplified by
well-established laws of psychology, mystery recedes into the
background.
We are reconstructing a more natural, a more sane, a more common-sense
portrait of the Master. "It is the spirit that quickeneth," said he;
"the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, _they_
are spirit and _they_ are life." Shall we recall again in this
connection: "I am come that ye might have life and that ye might have it
more abundantly"? When, therefore, we take him at his word, and listen
intently to _his_ words, and not so much to the words of others about
him; when we place our emphasis upon the fundamental spiritual truths
that he revealed and that he pleaded so earnestly to be taken in the
simple, direct way in which he taught them, we are finding that the
religion of the Christ means a clearer and healthier understanding of
life and its problems through a greater knowledge of the elemental
forces and laws of life.
Ignorance enchains and enslaves. Truth--which is but another way of
saying a clear and definite knowledge of Law, the elemental laws of
soul, of mind, and body, and of the universe about us--brings freedom.
Jesus revealed essentially a spiritual philosophy of life. His whole
revelation pertained to the essential divinity of the human soul and
the great gains that would follow the realisation of this fact. His
whole teaching revolved continually around his own expression, used
again and again, the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, and which
he so distinctly stated was an inner state or consciousness or
realisation. Something not to be found outside of oneself but to be
found _only within_.
We make a great error to regard man as merely a duality--mind and body.
Man is a trinity,--soul, mind, and body, each with its own
functions,--and it is the right coordinating of these that makes the
truly efficient and eventually the perfect life. Anything less is always
one-sided and we may say, continually out of gear. It is essential to a
correct understanding, and therefore for any adequate use of the
potential powers and forces of the inner life, to realise this.
It is the physical body that relates us to the physical universe about
us, that in which we find ourselves in this present form of existence.
But the body, wondrous as it is in its functions and its mechanism, is
not the life. It has no life and no power in itself. It is of the earth,
earthy. Every particle of it has come from the earth through the food we
eat in combination with the air we breathe and the water we drink, and
every part of it in time will go back to the earth. It is the house we
inhabit while here.
We can make it a hovel or a mansion; we can make it even a pig-sty or a
temple, according as the soul, the real self, chooses to function
through it. We should make it servant, but through ignorance of the real
powers within, we can permit it to become master. "Know ye not," said
the Great Apostle to the Gentiles, "that your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your
own?"
The soul is the self, the soul made in the image of Eternal Divine Life,
which, as Jesus said, is Spirit. The essential reality of the soul is
Spirit. Spirit--Being--is one and indivisible, manifesting itself,
however, in individual forms in existence. Divine Being and the human
soul are therefore in essence the same, the same in quality. Their
difference, which, however, is very great--though less in some cases
than in others--is a difference _in degree_.
Divine Being is the cosmic force, the essential essence, the Life
therefore of all there is in existence. The soul is individual personal
existence. The soul while in this form of existence manifests, functions
through the channel of a material body. _It is the mind that relates the
two._ It is through the medium of the mind that the two must be
coordinated. The soul, the self, while in this form of existence, must
have a body through which to function. The body, on the other hand, to
reach and to maintain its highest state, must be continually infused
with the life force of the soul. The life force of the soul is Spirit.
If spirit, then _essentially one_ with Infinite Divine Spirit, for
spirit, Being, is one.
The embodied soul finds itself the tenant of a material body in a
material universe, and according to a plan as yet, at least, beyond our
human understanding, whatever may be our thoughts, our theories
regarding it. The whole order of life as we see it, all the world of
Nature about us, and we must believe the order of human life, is a
gradual evolving from the lower to the higher, from the cruder to the
finer. The purpose of life is unquestionably unfoldment, growth,
advancement--likewise the evolving from the lower and the coarser to the
higher and the finer.
The higher insights and powers of the soul, always potential within,
become of value only as they are realised and used. Evolution implies
always involution. The substance of all we shall ever attain or be, is
within us now, waiting for realisation and thereby expression. The soul
carries its own keys to all wisdom and to all valuable and usable
power.
It was that highly illumined seer, Emanuel Swedenborg, who said: "Every
created thing is in itself inanimate and dead, but it is animated and
caused to live by this, that the Divine is in it and that it exists in
and from the Divine." Again: "The universal end of creation is that
there should be an external union of the Creator with the created
universe; and this would not be possible unless there were beings in
whom His Divine might be present as if in itself; thus in whom it might
dwell and abide. To be His abode, they must receive His love and wisdom
by a power which seems to be their own; thus, must lift themselves up to
the Creator as if by their own power, and unite themselves with Him.
Without this mutual action no union would be possible." And again:
"Every one who duly considers the matter may know that the body does not
think, because it is material, but the soul, because it is spiritual.
All the rational life, therefore, which appears in the body belongs to
the spirit, for the matter of the body is annexed, and, as it were,
joined to the spirit, in order that the latter may live and perform uses
in the natural world.... Since everything which lives in the body, and
acts and feels by virtue of that life, belongs to the spirit alone, it
follows that the spirit is the real man; or, what comes to the same
thing, man himself is a spirit, in a form similar to that of his body."
Spirit being the real man, it follows that the great, central fact of
all experience, of all human life, is the coming into a conscious, vital
realisation of our source, of our real being, in other words, of our
essential oneness with the spirit of Infinite Life and Power--the source
of all life and all power. We need not look for outside help when we
have within us waiting to be realised, and thereby actualised, this
Divine birthright.
Browning was prophet as well as poet when in "Paracelsus" he said:
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception--which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to know
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.
How strangely similar in meaning it seems to that saying of an earlier
prophet, Isaiah: "And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying,
This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when
ye turn to the left."
All great educators are men of great vision. It was Dr. Hiram Corson who
said: "It is what man draws up from his sub-self which is of prime
importance in his true education, not what is put into him. It is the
occasional uprising of our sub-selves that causes us, at times, to feel
that we are greater than we know." A new psychology, spiritual science,
a more commonsense interpretation of the great revelation of the Christ
of Nazareth, all combine to enable us to make this occasional uprising
our natural and normal state.
No man has probably influenced the educational thought and practice of
the entire world more than Friedrich Froebel. In that great book of his,
"The Education of Man," he bases his entire system upon the following,
which constitutes the opening of its first chapter: "In all things there
lives and reigns an eternal law. This all-controlling law is necessarily
based on an all-pervading, energetic, living, self-conscious, and hence
eternal, Unity.... _This Unity is God._ All things have come from the
Divine Unity, from God, and have their origin in the Divine Unity, in
God alone. God is the sole source of all things. All things live and
have their being in and through the Divine Unity, in and through God.
All things are only through the divine effluence that lives in them. The
divine effluence that lives in each thing is the essence of each thing.
"It is the destiny and life work of all things to unfold their essence,
hence their divine being, and, therefore, the Divine Unity itself--to
reveal God in their external and transient being. It is the special
destiny and life work of man, as an intelligent and rational being, to
become fully, vividly, conscious of this essence of the divine effluence
in him, and therefore of God.
"The precept for life in general and for every one is: _Exhibit only thy
spiritual, thy life, in the external, and by means of the external in
thy actions, and observe the requirements of thy inner being and its
nature._"
Here is not only an undying basis for all real education, but also the
basis of all true religion, as well as the basis of all ideal
philosophy. Yes, there could be no evolution, unless the essence of all
to be evolved, unfolded, were already involved in the human soul. To
follow the higher leadings of the soul, which is so constituted that it
is the inlet, and as a consequence the outlet of Divine Spirit, Creative
Energy, the real source of all wisdom and power; to project its leadings
into every phase of material activity and endeavour, constitutes the
ideal life. It was Emerson who said: "Every soul is not only the inlet,
but may become the outlet of all there is in God." To keep this inlet
open, so as not to shut out the Divine inflow, is the secret of all
higher achievement, as well as attainment.
There is a wood separated by a single open field from my house. In it,
halfway down a little hillside, there was some years ago a spring. It
was at one time walled up with rather large loose stone--some three feet
across at the top. In following a vaguely defined trail through the wood
one day in the early spring, a trail at one time evidently considerably
used, it led me to this spot. I looked at the stone enclosure, partly
moss-grown. I wondered why, although the ground was wet around it, there
was no water in or running from what had evidently been at one time a
well-used spring.
A few days later when the early summer work was better under way, I took
an implement or two over, and half scratching, half digging inside the
little wall, I found layer after layer of dead leaves and sediment, dead
leaves and sediment. Presently water became evident, and a little later
it began to rise within the wall. In a short time there was nearly three
feet of water. It was cloudy, no bottom could be seen. I sat down and
waited for it to settle.
Presently I discerned a ledge bottom and the side against the hill was
also ledge. On this side, close to the bottom, I caught that peculiar
movement of little particles of silvery sand, and looking more closely I
could see a cleft in the rock where the water came gushing and bubbling
in. Soon the entire spring became clear as crystal, and the water
finding evidently its old outlet, made its way down the little hillside.
I was soon able to trace and to uncover its course as it made its way to
the level place below.
As the summer went on I found myself going to the spot again and again.
Flowers that I found in no other part of the wood, before the autumn
came were blooming along the little watercourse. Birds in abundance came
to drink and to bathe. Several times I have found the half-tame deer
there. Twice we were but thirty to forty paces apart. They have watched
my approach, and as I stopped, have gone on with their drinking,
evidently unafraid--as if it were likewise their possession. And so it
is.
After spending a most valuable hour or two in the quiet there one
afternoon, I could not help but wonder as I walked home whether
perchance the spring may not be actually happy in being able to resume
its life, to fulfil, so to speak, its destiny; happy also in the service
it renders flowers and the living wild things--happy in the service it
renders even me. I am doubly happy and a hundred times repaid in the
little help I gave it. It needed help, to enable it effectively to keep
connection with its source. As it became gradually shut off from this,
it weakened, became then stagnant, and finally it ceased its active
life.
Containing a fundamental truth deeper perhaps than we realise, are these
words of that gifted seer, Emanuel Swedenborg: "There is only one
Fountain of Life, and the life of man is a stream therefrom, which if it
were not continually replenished from its source would instantly cease
to flow." And likewise these: "Those who think in the light of interior
reason can see that all things are connected by intermediate links with
the First Cause, and that whatever is not maintained in that connection
must cease to exist."
There is a mystic force that transcends any powers of the intellect or
of the body, that becomes manifest and operative in the life of man when
this God-consciousness becomes awakened and permeates his entire being.
Failure to realise and to keep in constant communion with our Source is
what causes fears, forebodings, worry, inharmony, conflict, conflict
that downs us many times in mind, in spirit, in body--failure to follow
that Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, failure
to hear and to heed that Voice of the soul, that speaks continually
clearer as we accustom ourselves to listen to and to heed it, failure to
follow those intuitions with which the soul, every soul, is endowed, and
that lead us aright and that become clearer in their leadings as we
follow them. It is this guidance and this sustaining power that all
great souls fall back upon in times of great crises.
This single stanza by Edwin Markham voices the poet's inspiration:
At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky,
And flinging the clouds and the towers by,
Is a place of central calm;
So, here in the roar of mortal things
I have a place where my spirit sings,
In the hollow of God's palm.
"That the Divine Life and Energy _actually lives in us_," was the
philosopher Fichte's reply to the proposition--"the profoundest
knowledge that man can attain." And speaking of the man to whom this
becomes a real, vital, conscious realisation, he said: "His whole
existence flows forth, softly and gently, from his Inward Being, and
issues out into Reality without difficulty or hindrance."
There are certain faculties that we have that are not a part of the
active thinking mind; they seem to be no part of what we might term our
_conscious intelligence_. They transcend any possible activities of our
regular mental processes, and they are in some ways independent of them.
Through some avenue, suggestions, intuitions of truth, intuitions of
occurrences of which through the thinking mind we could know nothing,
are at times borne in upon us; they flash into our consciousness, as we
say, quite independent of any mental action on our part, and sometimes
when we are thinking of something quite foreign to that which comes to,
that which "impresses" us.
This seems to indicate a source of knowledge, a faculty that is distinct
from, but that acts in various ways in conjunction with, the active
thinking mind. It performs likewise certain very definite and distinct
functions in connection with the body. It is this that is called the
_subconscious mind_--by some the superconscious or the supernormal mind,
by others the subliminal self.
Just what the subconscious mind is no man knows. It is easier to define
its functions and to describe its activities than it is to state in
exact terms what it is. It is similar in this respect to the physical
force--if it be a physical force--electricity. It is only of late years
that we know anything of electricity at all. Today we know a great deal
of its nature and the laws of its action. No man living can tell exactly
what electricity is. We are nevertheless making wonderful _practical
applications_ of it. We are learning more _about it_ continually. Some
day we may know what it _actually is_.
The fact that the subconscious mind seems to function in a realm apart
from anything that has to do with our conscious mental processes, and
also that it has some definite functions as both directing and building
functions to perform in connection with the body, and that it is at the
same time subject to suggestion and direction from the active thinking
mind, would indicate that it may be the true connecting link, the medium
of exchange, between the soul and the body, the connector of the
spiritual and the material so far as man is concerned.
III
THE WAY MIND THROUGH THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND BUILDS BODY
When one says that he numbers among his acquaintances some who are as
old at sixty as some others are at eighty, he but gives expression to a
fact that has become the common possession of many. I have known those
who at fifty-five and sixty were to all intents and purposes really
older, more decrepit, and rapidly growing still more decrepit both in
mind and body, than many another at seventy and seventy-five and even at
eighty.
History, then, is replete with instances, memorable instances, of
people, both men and women, who have accomplished things at an age--who
have even begun and carried through to successful completion things at
an age that would seem to thousands of others, in the captivity of age,
with their backs to the future, ridiculous even to think of
accomplishing, much less of beginning. On account of a certain law that
has always seemed to me to exist and that I am now firmly convinced is
very _exact_ in its workings, I have been interested in talking with
various ones and in getting together various facts relative to this
great discrepancy in the ages of these two classes of "old" people.
Within the year I called upon a friend whom, on account of living in a
different portion of the country, I hadn't seen for nearly ten years.
Conversation revealed to me the fact that he was then in his
eighty-eighth year. I could notice scarcely a change in his appearance,
walk, voice, and spirit. We talked at length upon the various,
so-called, periods of life. He told me that about the only difference
that he noticed in himself as compared with his middle life was that now
when he goes out to work in his garden, and among his trees, bushes, and
vines--and he has had many for many years--he finds that he is quite
ready to quit and to come in at the end of about two hours, and
sometimes a little sooner, when formerly he could work regularly without
fatigue for the entire half day. In other words, he has not the same
degree of endurance that he once had.
Among others, there comes to mind in this connection another who is a
little under seventy. It chances to be a woman. She is bent and decrepit
and growing more so by very fixed stages each twelvemonth. I have known
her for over a dozen years. At the time when I first knew her she was
scarcely fifty-eight, she was already bent and walked with an
uncertain, almost faltering tread. The dominant note of her personality
was then as now, but more so now, fear for the present, fear for the
future, a dwelling continually on her ills, her misfortunes, her
symptoms, her approaching and increasing helplessness.
Such cases I have observed again and again; so have all who are at all
interested in life and in its forces and its problems. What is the cause
of this almost world-wide difference in these two lives? In this case it
is as clear as day--the mental characteristics and the mental habits of
each.
In the first case, here was one who early got a little philosophy into
his life and then more as the years passed. He early realised that in
himself his good or his ill fortune lay; that the mental attitude we
take toward anything determines to a great extent our power in
connection with it, as well as its effects upon us. He grew to love his
work and he did it daily, but never under high pressure. He was
therefore benefited by it. His face was always to the future, even as it
is today. This he made one of the fundamental rules of his life. He was
helped in this, he told me in substance, by an early faith which with
the passing of the years has ripened with him into a demonstrable
conviction--that there is a Spirit of Infinite Life back of all,
working in love in and through the lives of all, and that in the degree
that we realise it as the one Supreme Source of our lives, and when
through desire and will, which is through the channel of our thoughts,
we open our lives so that this Higher Power can work definitely in and
through us, and then go about and do our daily work without fears or
forebodings, the passing of the years sees only the highest good
entering into our lives.
In the case of the other one whom we have mentioned, a repetition seems
scarcely necessary. Suffice it to say that the common expression on the
part of those who know her--I have heard it numbers of times--is: "What
a blessing it will be to herself and to others when she has gone!"
A very general rule with but few exceptions can be laid down as follows:
The body ordinarily looks as old as the mind thinks and feels.
Shakespeare anticipated by many years the best psychology of the times
when he said: "It is the mind that makes the body rich."
It seems to me that our great problem, or rather our chief concern,
should not be so much how to stay young in the sense of possessing all
the attributes of youth, _for the passing of the years does bring
changes_, but how to pass gracefully, and even magnificently, and with
undiminished vigour from youth to middle age, and then how to carry that
middle age into approaching old age, with a great deal more of the
vigour and the outlook of middle life than _we ordinarily do_.
The mental as well as the physical helps that are now in the possession
of this our generation, are capable of working a revolution in the lives
of many who are or who may become sufficiently awake to them, so that
with them there will not be that--shall we say--immature passing from
middle life into a broken, purposeless, decrepit, and sunless, and one
might almost say, soulless old age.
It seems too bad that so many among us just at the time that they have
become of most use to themselves, their families, and to the world,
should suddenly halt and then continue in broken health, and in so many
cases lie down and die. Increasing numbers of thinking people the world
over are now, as never before, finding that this is not necessary, that
something is at fault, that that fault is in ourselves. If so, then
reversely, the remedy lies in ourselves, in our own hands, so to speak.
In order to actualise and to live this better type of life we have got
to live better from both sides, both the mental and the physical, this
with all due respect to Shakespeare and to all modern mental
scientists.
The body itself, what we term the physical body, whatever may be the
facts regarding a finer spiritual body within it all the time giving
form to and animating and directing all its movements, is of material
origin, and derives its sustenance from the food we take, from the air
we breathe, the water we drink. In this sense it is from the earth, and
when we are through with it, it will go back to the earth.
The body, however, is not the Life; it is merely the material agency
that enables the Life to manifest in a material universe for a certain,
though not necessarily a given, period of time. It is the Life, or the
Soul, or the Personality that uses, and that in using shapes and moulds,
the body and that also determines its strength or its weakness. When
this is separated from the body, the body at once becomes a cold, inert
mass, commencing immediately to decompose into the constituent material
elements that composed it--literally going back to the earth and the
elements whence it came.
It is through the instrumentality or the agency of thought that the
Life, the Self, uses, and manifests through, the body. Again, while it
is true that the food that is taken and assimilated nourishes, sustains
and builds the body, it is also true that the condition and the
operation of the mind through the avenue of thought determines into what
shape or form the body is so builded. So in this sense it is true that
mind builds body; it is the agency, the force that determines the
shaping of the material elements.
Here is a wall being built. Bricks are the material used in its
construction. We do not say that the bricks are building the wall; we
say that the mason is building it, as is the case. He is using the
material that is supplied him, in this case bricks, giving form and
structure in a definite, methodical manner. Again, back of the mason is
his mind, acting through the channel of his thought, that is directing
his hands and all his movements. Without this guiding, directing _force_
no wall could take shape, even if millions of bricks were delivered upon
the scene.
So it is with the body. We take the food, the water, we breathe the air;
but this is all and always acted upon by a higher force. Thus it is that
mind builds body, the same as in every department of our being it is the
great builder. Our thoughts shape and determine our features, our walk,
the posture of our bodies, our voices; they determine the effectiveness
of our mental and our physical activities, as well as all our relations
with and influence or effects upon others.
You say: "I admit the operation of and even in certain cases the power
of thought, also that at times it has an influence upon our general
feelings, but I do not admit that it can have any direct influence upon
the body." Here is one who has allowed herself to be long given to
grief, abnormally so--notice her lowered physical condition, her lack of
vitality. The New York papers within the past twelve months recorded the
case of a young lady in New Jersey who, from _constant_ grieving over
the death of her mother, died, fell dead, within a week.
A man is handed a telegram. He is eating and enjoying his dinner. He
reads the contents of the message. Almost immediately afterward, his
body is a-tremble, his face either reddens or grows "ashy white," his
appetite is gone; such is the effect of the mind upon the stomach that
it literally refuses the food; if forced upon it, it may reject it
entirely.