[231] As these lessons are not a
novel to be read and tossed aside,
but a new system of thought to be
thoroughly studied and then carried
out into action, it is absolutely
necessary to repeat the ideas over
and over again in different words, so
that the student will at last come
into the clear and perfect
understanding of them.
Lesson thirteen, therefore, will
be a repetition, to a great extent,
of the ideas that have been gone over
in the former lessons. This is all
the more necessary because no writer
can go over the same ground twice
without cutting deeper and leaving
his work much more thoroughly done
and in better shape than it was. I
shall begin by asking a few
questions:
What is God?
God is a principle.
Is this principle not sometimes
called a Law?
Yes, it is called the Law of
Attraction.
Why?
Because it is the drawing power
inherent in atoms and worlds.
Is the Law of Attraction ever
called anything else?
Yes, it is called Being, and it is
called Love. Swedenborg calls it
Love.
Is Love also an appropriate name
for it?
Yes, because Love attracts.
What is nature?
Nature is intelligence, or mind.
Nature is the manifestation of the
Law of Attraction, or Love.
Is the Law of Attraction, or Love,
a visible presence?
No, the Law is forever unseen. As the
Bible expresses it, “No man
hath seen God.” Nature, which
is the Law in externalization, we all
see.
In what form does Love, the Law of
Attraction, exist in its broad
diffusion?
It exists as sex, or polarity, in the
atoms. Each atom has its positive and
negative pole, or its males and
female principle. Out of this male
and female principle comes the Law of
Attraction on which all motion and
manifestation of life depend.
To say that each atom has its
positive and negative pole is to say
that each atom is both Love and
intelligence--that is, both seen and
unseen; both spirit and body--that it
has an inner and an outer part; these
parts being in reality one, as light
and heat are one.
And indeed Being--the one life--in
its dual principle may be compared to
fire; the heat being like the unseen
principle of fire, and the light
being like its reflection in
nature.
Take this statement: Life is Love
manifesting intelligence, just as
fire is heat manifesting in
light.
All nature is intelligence. It is
the recognition of Love. Recognition
is intelligence. Therefore it is
perfectly [232] correct to say that
all nature is mind. If nature is the
recognition of the Love Principle,
then it is not the acknowledgment of
mind, but it is mind. It is
the acknowledgment of Love expressed
in intelligence, and intelligence in
mind.
Therefore there is no matter, and
the so-called laws of matter are
groundless.
This emancipates us at once from
the death sentence supposed to hang
over our heads from the beginning of
the world; and why?
Because mind cannot be killed. It
is diseaseless and deathless. It is
the comprehension, or the
acknowledgment of the omnipresent and
infallible Law of Love that we call
God.
If the Law is diseaseless and
deathless, then the understanding of
the Law, the mind that represents it
on the external plane, is diseaseless
and deathless also, for the seeming
two are in reality one.
As there is but one Life, so there
is but one Law of Life. That Law is
the Law of Attraction.
Is there no law of repulsion?
No, none in the universe. We are
not in the realm of matter, because
there is no matter. We are in the
realm of mind, under the Law of
Attraction. Intelligence seeks what
is desires, leaving behind it what it
does not desire, but repelling
nothing. Intelligence constantly
reaches forth to the new, never
troubling itself about that which it
has worn out. It “lets the dead
bury its dead.” This is the
true method of growth. It constantly
attracts the new, and by attracting
it passes out of the region, or off
the plane of the old, but it repels
nothings.
Let us take the peach as an
example. It represents a certain
amount of intelligence, a certain
amount of recognition of the Love
Principle, or the Law. It does not
repel its blossom, but it outgrows
it, and goes on gaining more and more
intelligence every day, showing forth
more and more of the Law of Love,
until it attains a point where its
intelligence ceases to reach forward
for any more. Then it becomes a
helpless thing and is attracted to
the earth by virtue of the
earth’s superior force as a
magnet; and we say the peach is dead.
Why is it dead?
Simply because it has no power to
recognize any further good or life.
It has reached a limit to its
intelligence. All things die or
undergo a change of form (that the
world calls death) at that point
where they cease to recognize further
good; or cease to recognize any more
of the Principle of Being.
To cease to recognize good is to
cease to desire it, and when this
point is reached the vital
intelligence that lifted the
creature, whether plant, animal or
man, above the earth is resigned, and
the earth claims her own through the
power of the Law of Attraction.
But the earth is a tremendous
magnet, and what can ever overcome
her attraction? How will it be
possible for any of us to grow away
from her ravenous clutches and remain
away permanently?
As stated previously, we are in
the realm of mind, and there is no
matter. The world itself is all mind.
Its mountains and its seas and rocks
are all mind. But they are mind of
the lowest possible grade of
intelligence. The smallest blade of
grass that grows has more
intelligence than the whole earth,
and proves it by its power to ascend
above it. And so long as the blade of
grass can recognize a higher good
than the dirt beneath it, it can by
virtue of this recognition overcome
the earth’s attraction. For, do
you not see that in the universe of
mind it is intelligence that makes
the strength of a magnet, and not
what we call bulk, or dead weight?
Therefore it is only when the peach
and blade of grass have ceased to
grow (to acquire more intelligence or
recognition of the Love Principle)
that the earth’s attraction can
overcome them.
Every creature that obeys the Law
of Growth without seeking to learn
[233] what the Law is, is in
unconscious obedience to the Law; and
the visible lives of all creatures on
the plane of unconscious growth
die.
The Law of Being must have
intelligent recognition, a
recognition so full and complete as
to render the creature a constantly
growing exponent of its own
possibilities and power. This
involves constant growth; a
constantly widening recognition of
the Love Principle, which, being
individualized in the man, becomes
the overflowing fountain of Life
within him.
The procession of enlarging
growths on the animal plane--all
leading up to man--are each of them
more or less unconscious of the power
they represent. Their recognition of
the Life Principle is expressed
through uses. The brain in them is
not ripened to that point where they
can say, from the basis of pure
reason, “There is a supreme
power within me that I recognize as
being able to overcome all foes to
never-ending growth, and to liberate
me entirely from all false or
misunderstood attractions, to the
attractions of pure, unmistakable
good.”
The movement of Mental Science is
a race movement, and it is the most
important step in advancement that
has ever been taken. It is nothing
less than the passage of the whole
people from the stage of blind,
unconscious growth to that of
conscious growth.
Blind, unconscious growth, as
intimated before, is growing like the
trees and brutes grow--without a
knowledge of how or why we grow. And,
as a matter of course, all growths
that do not expand to the full
knowledge of the Law of Growth and
learn how to do their own growing,
must necessarily succumb to the
earth’s attraction after a
time. It is earth to earth and dust
to dust.
The earth swallows up all of us
unless we can develop a constantly
increasing vitality that will bid
defiance to her attraction.
There is only one way to develop
vitality in a universe that is not
matter but mind, and that is by the
recognition of more and greater
truths all the time. Man has
completed his animal, or unconscious
growth, which has developed him into
a perfect organism, or laboratory,
for the manifestation of
intelligence. And he stands at this
point now--at the point where there
is no farther progression for him
under the law on unconscious growth,
or the method of growth as expressed
blindly in uses simply.
He stands at the point of the new
and great departure--that departure
toward which all ages have been
silently treading. And so important
is his position and his
responsibility that one backward step
would now plunge the world into
another dark age from which it would
take centuries to recover.
Indeed, so important is the
present situation that the failure to
use it judiciously would, to millions
of us, render the world a nonentity,
and make life as if it had never
been.
In order to show the student just
what I mean by unconscious growth as
expressed blindly in uses, I shall
give a fuller explanation.
All growth is by desire. In the
animal, desire seems not to soar away
from the body, but to be expressed
through it. Thus, the little amoeba,
which is but a tiny drop of
protoplasm, becomes hungry. It floats
in the water, and in coming in
contact with some other form of life
which will serve it as food, it folds
its body about it, holding it
enclosed as you might hold an acorn
in your hand, and when it has
absorbed the substance from it, it
unfolds its body from it and lets the
residue drop out, as you would open
your hand to let the acorn fall. The
amoeba has neither mouth, hands,
feet, eyes, ears, nor anything
resembling a digestive system, but it
has a desire for food. In a higher
organization to which the spirit of
this little creature passes, that
desire increases, and the result of
its increased desire is a compulsion
upon nature to furnish it with a
better digestive system. And so it
goes on up to higher and still higher
incarnations, [234] growing stronger
in its demands with each upward step,
calling louder and louder upon nature
for better means of supplying its
demands, until it has not only a
digestive system, but eyes to see its
prey, olfactory nerves to smell it,
ears to hear it, feet to run after
it, and claws to capture it.
This is the development of uses
through blind or unconscious desire,
and it is by this kind of development
that the perfect organization of the
man is built and his brain is
ripened.
But he may stand at this point
until the crack of doom and be
nothing more than the animal man
unless he begins to make his brain
serve him in his further development.
The very moment his brain does begin
to serve him in this capacity he is
passing out of the domain of
unconscious, or unreasoning, or blind
growth, into the realm of conscious
or reasoning growth.
But there never was a time during
the period of his unconscious growth
when he could have escaped the
penalty of unconscious life, which is
death; and the reason for this is in
the very nature of the Law.
Life is dual in the sense of being
inner and outer, unseen and seen,
love and intelligence. And
intelligence--a word that represents
the whole visible universe--can only
perpetuate itself as it recognizes
that it is the externalization of the
Love Principle, because it is only by
recognition of this fact that it
becomes consciously one with it, and
therefore as diseaseless and
deathless as it is. The animals and
plants are really one with the Love
Principle the same as man, but they
are not intelligently conscious of
it; that is, their reasoning powers
have not rendered them a substantial
reason for their existence, and so
they do not catch on by conscious
knowledge to the Law, and therefore
they die.
Intelligence and Love are one.
Intelligence is Love’s
expression of itself. When
intelligence really and truly
perceives that it is Love’s or
the Law’s expression of itself,
then it has become as deathless as
the unseen half of itself which we
call Love, or the Law. All nature,
with man at its head, is the spoken
word of Love. But the word spoke
itself. At first it spoke feebly,
like the unconscious babbling of the
child; but it grew in further
recognition of its power every day,
and at last it speaks more nearly in
accordance with the unseen and
vitalizing principle of itself--the
Law of Love, or Life.
This one universal Love! What a
strange, strange thing it is! It
fills all space and is absolutely
perfect in itself. It seems to go to
no trouble to explain itself, but
flows into and vivifies every
expression of itself, no matter how
negative or inadequate that
expression may be. This is why I have
said that man is the spoken word, and
that he spoke the word himself; for
while intelligence, or nature,
comprehends Love in ever-unfolding
degrees of recognition, Love seems
not to comprehend intelligence, or
nature, but simply to manifest itself
in proportion as it is
comprehended.
Speaking of the matter in this
way, it is almost impossible not to
convey the idea of a dual Life
Principle. But indeed there is but
one Life Principle, which is Love,
while intelligence is the showing
forth of it, as light is the showing
forth of heat. It almost seems as if
Love bursts forth in tiny jets that
expand by slow degrees, revealing
more and more of itself, until these
flames become conscious of themselves
and their true character, and exclaim
aloud, “Behold, behold, we are
visible loves!”
The fact of our recognizing
ourselves as visible loves, or
visible wills, living exponents of
the universal Principle of Love, or
will, is in itself sufficient to
banish disease and death, and
establish ourselves as conquerors in
the earth, thus breaking the power
old earth has had in drawing us all
back into her bosom because of our
ignorance concerning our own
power.
And now I must go back a little to
where I began to speak of unconscious
[235] growth, because there is a
mighty truth connected with it that
the student must never forget. This
truth will become an inestimable
comfort to him during every hour of
his struggle toward the place where
he is to feel himself conqueror of
all things--disease, poverty and
death included.
I spoke of the amoeba, the tiny
drop of protoplasm, in its search for
food. This little creature had begun
to speak itself into an unending
existence; a visible existence. It
was--as to its own personality--pure
intelligence; a tiny point of
recognition of the one Love, and it
wanted to recognize more. This desire
on its part formed the basis of its
individual growth.
Now, there are but two factors
essential to growth. These two
factors are desire and belief.
Desire, when accompanied by belief,
as it always is during the period of
unconscious growth, gets what it asks
for. Perhaps it may not always get it
in the limited sense of its asking,
but it gets it in a higher sense.
The amoeba asks for food,
ostensibly. In reality, it asks for
more intelligence, a wider range of
conception. It asks in faith, not yet
having reached even the negative pole
of conscious life where doubts of the
eternal Love, or Life principle,
begin. The little creature asks in
faith, I say, and the very universe
hears its cry, and the Law itself
stoops down, as it were, to put food
within the folds of its frail
organism.
Think of this. No cry for a wider
range of thought, no cry for more
truth, was ever uttered in vain. It
is a demand upon the eternal Love,
the universal soul, that is never
unanswered. And according to the
measure of faith we put in the asking
will the answer be prompt and
full.
Now, while the animal is crying
for food, which means ultimately a
more enlarged conception of Love, or
Life, we who have reached a much
higher plane ask directly, or demand
of our own organizations, that
intelligence which is the only food
that feeds us truly. And if we
demand, knowing the Law, it will come
to us, because the supply is equal to
the demand.
Intelligence to comprehend more of
Love--which is Life, the universal
Life, a recognition of which embraces
all creatures, and establishes
absolute justice and flawless harmony
in the affairs of men--this is all we
need. This is Being, without a flaw.
It is life freed from all beliefs in
disease and death. The more our
intellects expand to a conception of
this Love the farther away from all
our fears and all the old wretched
beliefs we grow. Life, eternal Life,
opens up to us more and more as our
power to recognize the Love Principle
increases.
Now, I have not heretofore made
the statement that Love and will are,
in a great measure, the same. There
is a difference, however, and I will
define it. Love is the attracting
power. It is the spirit of growth
reaching forth constantly. It is the
under strata of the will, and also of
desire. Love prompts to desire and
desire culminates in will. Desire
culminates in will when it has
obtained the sanction of the
reasoning power. And it is at this
point where the reasoning powers
endorse the desire, that man
discovers his own power to create
conditions for himself, and turns his
back upon his own beliefs, refusing
to be held by them any longer.
In ascending from the animal to
the mental plane we find that we
evolve more and more truth from our
own organisms; truth that is more
positive than any previous truth our
organisms have yielded us. Our
“physical” food supplies
the raw material for the truth
evolved, but our growing thoughts
constantly direct this food to higher
results. The evolution of the Love
man, or the will man, is through the
animal man. There is no object to be
achieved by the perpetuation in
existence on the visible plane of the
animal man. He is simply a creature
that serves as the root of the divine
man--by which I mean the creative or
will man. If the creative or will man
never germinates [236] in the brain
of the animal man and springs upward
to noble uses, then he might as well
die. And the race will continue to
die just as it is doing now unless
redeemed by the new thought beginning
to dawn upon it at this time.
That which serves its purpose
passes away. For thousands of years
the animal man has been a perfect
creature in his animalhood. But
because his splendid animalhood
failed to generate the thought that
would link him consciously to the
source and fountainhead of his
existence he has died, as he ought to
have done, since the world has
nothing to gain from animal men
beyond establishing them as roots for
the race of divine men now about to
step forth through a knowledge of the
science of being. The world has no
use for unproductive seed, and it is
right that they should rot in the
soil if the vital principle that
would lift them to a nobler growth be
wanting.
And yet, let no student think from
what I have just said that the spirit
of man is not immortal, and that its
chances are over with its failure to
catch on to that consciousness of
truth that would tide it over death
and render it immortal right here in
the flesh. For though this subject is
purely speculative, I feel that I
carry in my own organization latent
or unfolded proof of the fact that a
spirit never dies; that the desire
for life perpetuates life in some
condition or other, and holds it
until another chance is open for it.
The desire implies the
“I.” The “I”
is individually in essence, and
cannot be wiped out without its own
consent, and it never does consent.
Why, the spirit itself is a growing
thing. It was not created perfect at
the hands of a personal God. It grows
all the time by the recognition of
still greater power resident in the
Law of its Being. Remember that the
spirit is not the Law. It is that
finer and higher and more emancipated
part of our bodies which becomes too
big for the environment of the
body--its negative self--and which
slips cable and goes free from the
environment that was too inelastic to
yield to its growth. Nearly all
thinkers at this time believe that it
comes again and again into what we
call earth conditions. If it does
this, and I must admit that the
theory seems more plausible to me
than any other, why then the spirit
means to establish its own authority
upon the earth by eventually
conquering the environments that have
closed it out of our visible life so
often.
If man had been projected perfect
into visible life, he would have
possessed all the knowledge there is,
and would be the incarnate expression
or manifestation of all truth. There
would have been no further growth for
him; for all growth is by gaining
more wisdom. But instead of this he
was only the tiniest and feeblest
spark of intelligence at first, and
his intelligence has constantly
increased. And as it increased he
took wider and still wider views of
creation, until now he begins to see
that all is good and always has been;
only he did not know it. He begins to
perceive that the Law of Being
is, that no man and no power
has ever added to it or taken
anything away from it; and that all
creatures were great or small in
proportion as they could see this
mighty truth. For, though the Law is
forever unchanged, yet man changes
constantly; and this, too, in spite
of the fact that the Law and man are
one. Take this sentence from
man’s side, and it will read
this way: Man enlarges always by
learning more and more of the
infinite greatness and unchanging
goodness of the Law of Being, or the
Principle of Love, within him. For
the Love Principle is the unseen
power in every man; and so mighty is
this unseen power that all through
eternity men will never be able to
measure it. But the effort to measure
it and constantly increasing
recognition of its greatness will be
our means of growth, and all the
means of growth we shall ever have.
The attempt to measure it gives man
his own measure; for man is one with
it. And since man’s
appropriation of it is by his
recognition of it, it therefore
follows [237] that no one can rob
another of his inexhaustible
inheritance.
And it is because all growth is by
the acquisition of knowledge, or the
recognition of the Law of Being, that
we are able to state with absolute
certainty that the supply is equal to
the demand.
On the physical plane (so-called,
there is no physical plane and never
was) this was not so. That it was not
so was the natural sequence of our
mistake in thinking that there was a
limit to good; or, in other words,
that evil had an existence.
It will be seen all through these
lessons that man creates his own
conditions, and that he has fixed his
own limitation by his mistaken
beliefs, and that this is why, on the
so-called physical plane, the supply
was not equal to the demand; in
consequence of which some men have
thrived abundantly at the expense of
other men, and much poverty and
sorrow abounded. All of which will
cease so soon as men learn that they
are mental and not physical
creatures, and that the acquisition
of mental wealth--recognition of the
Law of Being, which is perpetual
life--is the only thing that can
enrich them; and that they can
acquire these riches without
defrauding anyone, since the source
of supply to this kind of wealth is
inexhaustible. And this is the
wealth, too, that will bring its
possessor such magnificent
surroundings as he can never acquire
while living in a belief of the
physical, with its limiting ideas,
and its false and foolish laws.
For the time has now come, so long
prophesied in history, when the race
should banish death from this planet,
and by a deeper understanding of the
Law should build it into an abode for
deathless creatures.
To bring this about will not
necessitate any combination of men
united in an organized effort to
overthrow the present monopolistic
systems. All such efforts, while they
are natural and manly on the plane of
their operation--namely, the animal
plane--are circumferenced by and
included in the one effort of the
day; the intellectual effort to grasp
the greatest of all truths that all
is good, or Life, right now, and that
heaven, or harmony, is already with
us though we do not as yet see
it.
Anything more logically conclusive
than the facts I am now stating has
never been spoken or written, and the
student will see this to be so before
these lessons are done, and he will
see it in so strong a light that no
power can ever shake his faith in
them.
For heaven is indeed here. All
there is of personal life is in this
seeing. That men do not see the
heaven I speak of is because they
have been seeing from a negative
standpoint, and what they have seen
has been, not the truth, but the
denial of truth. They have seen evil
when there was no evil. They have
believed themselves to be citizens of
a physical world, with a set of
narrow laws beyond which one’s
thought could not go, and thus shut
up in the gloomiest prison-house of
self-delusion, they have made no
effort to look beyond, and
consequently the light of this outer
and most glorious mental day is in
darkness to them.
Man believes in the existence of
evil, and thus has become faithless
of good and the power of good. And
so, in his darkened intelligence, the
universe is divided into two parts.
It is a diverse to him, and its
harmony is lost to his perceptions.
It is because man has so divided the
universe in his thought--the power to
think being his one power--that we
see the appearance of sin, sickness
and death; and they seem very real to
us indeed while we remain imprisoned
in a belief of physical laws, before
we have ascended to the freedom of
the mental, and before the
understanding of the Law of Being
shows their intrinsic falsity.
It is because of these ignorant
beliefs that life is called a
battle-ground, where each advancing
step is supposed to be through
warfare; and it is these ignorant
beliefs alone that produce all the
world’s (so-called)
inharmonies.
[238] When, by ascension from a
belief in the physical with its
limiting laws, we shall truly know
that the universe is one, and that
this one is all pure Love, whose only
law is the Law of Attraction--thus
banishing forever all ideas of
force--there will no longer be any
basis for inharmony in thought, or
belief, and those beliefs (or
conditions) called sin, sickness and
death will dissolve and show
themselves no more.
Now, the race, not knowing that it
is pure intelligence, and that for
this reason its beliefs are its
conditions; not knowing that there is
no law but the Law of Attraction,
which is the Law of Love; being
ignorant of the fact that the
universe is one, and believing from
the negative pole of existence such
beliefs as are based on fear, has
projected a thousand false beliefs
concerning itself and is to all
appearance--as seen from this
plane--externalizing these beliefs in
its experience.
When I say that the race is
actualizing these beliefs in
appearance only, I state the entire
condition of the race today. We are
living mistakes almost entirely, and
it is time we should understand the
truth and begin to live it. The truth
being that in a universe of Love
there is nothing to fear.
Fear is the result of ignorance.
It is the result of not knowing that
all is good and not trusting
unreservedly to this great fact. It
will be seen from this how utterly
baseless our position today is in the
world. We are living in beliefs based
on a false foundation. Because we are
all mind these beliefs are our
conditions. That these beliefs are
untrue is proved by the fact that all
is Love, and that the kingdom of Love
is not divided against itself, but is
a unit.
Living these beliefs, we are
living an utterly false life; living,
as it were, in a nightmare dream
induced by fear; a dream from which
we shall presently awake to find
ourselves housed in Love, and under
no law but the Law of Attraction, by
the knowledge of which we will create
conditions to suit ourselves.
The Law of Attraction being what
its name implies is purely an
attractive power. As an attractive
power it cannot bring us anything but
that which we desire. And as we
desire only good, that being the
object of all desire, and there being
nothing else to attract us in the
universe of all good, the idea of
evil is utterly annihilated. In
reality, evil has no existence, no
law, and we have no cause for fear,
and as we advance in the knowledge of
the possibilities of life now latent
within us, we will see that the old
beliefs are utterly groundless. We
will see that the universal Love is
all in all, and that we are
expressions of it.
In all the following lessons there
will be some repetition of the ideas
contained in the first twelve
lessons. This course is prompted by
the experience of a practiced
teacher, whose first lessons follow
the leading ideas to their legitimate
conclusion; and who then goes over
them again in order to fill them out
more completely, and often to show
them up from different standpoints,
so that the student may be at no loss
to understand the subject from any
point of view whatever.
It is my wish that one lesson
should illuminate another; and that
all the last lessons should throw
light upon the statements of all the
first ones. I want the lessons to
assist each other in becoming clear
to the student’s understanding.
The best way I have found to teach is
to go over the main ideas of the
lessons frequently, and at each going
over to incorporate something new;
some thought that strikes both deeper
and higher than the others have done.
It is the most effective method I
know of to eradicate completely old,
negative beliefs and to establish new
and positive knowledge in the
mind.
