Chapter I
THOUGHTS TO BUILD UPON
W. John Murray
Mental
Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.
[1] If one
accepts the oft repeated declaration that
man was born to woe as "the sparks fly
upward," one will make no attempt to be
other than what he believes himself to
be; but if one believes that man is
formed for purposes of high resolve and
great accomplishment, then he will seek
by all the means at his command to work
out what he believes to be his destiny,
knowing, as the wise man always knows,
that his destiny is to attain to
Godlikeness, not merely in terms of moral
goodness but in terms of spiritual power.
Not only will he work by all the means at
his command, but he will command the
means, for man has resources of
which, until he [2] arrives at a true
appreciation of himself, he is not
conscious; therefore the only excuse for
any form of instruction is to make man
aware of those inner potentialities so
that he may no longer make excuses for
himself. Neither peculiarity of birth nor
environment are sufficient in themselves
to justify failure or mediocrity, for
these, failure and mediocrity, are based
more upon ignorance than upon prenatal
conditions and limiting surroundings. Not
knowing our divine prerogatives, we are
the slaves of conditions which we
presently overcome as soon as we discover
our true estate. The man who has found
himself no longer whines over conditions,
for he knows that these are not
insurmountable. On understanding's
strongest wings he soars above untoward
conditions as the lark soars above the
lowlands with their miasmatic vapors.
Formed for great things, and
knowing he is formed for great
things, he no longer grovels on the
refuse heap of his fears, neither does he
shrink at imaginary impending calamities,
for past, present [3] and future contain
nothing for him but the harmonious
working of that immutable law which can
never work contrary to its own nature.
Man, as he is observed on the material
plane, is as "vice has made him;" but man
as he shall "hereafter be," when Truth
becomes apparent to him, and he knows,
even as he is known of Him who created
him, will enter at once into the
enjoyment, not of things which have not
always belonged to him, but of things of
which ignorance has deprived him. The cry
of every soul that is higher than the
animal is for better conditions
individually and collectively, and
because of this we must infer that this
instinctive longing is based upon the
conviction that there is something better
in store for man than man is at present
experiencing. We look upon a world
apparently filled with fruitless work and
enfeebling woe, and we ask if God has
forgotten it, and we question as Shelley
questioned when he said,
"O Fairy! in the lapse of years,
Is there no hope in store? [4]
Will you vast suns roll on
Interminably, still illuming
The night of so many wretched
souls,
And see no hope for them?
Will not the universal Spirit
e'er
Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?"
If one can
imagine this Fairy of Shelley's to be the
eternal and infilling Christ, one can
also imagine this Christ speaking to the
inquiring soul as it spoke through Jesus
to the winds and waves on the Sea of
Galilee. To our disturbed mentalities the
eternal Christ is ever saying, "Peace, be
still," but our inner ears are stopped so
that we can hear nothing save through the
outer ear of sense; hence all our fears
and doubts. For the outer has nothing
else that it can convey, since it
bears no message from the Highest. Truth
bids us, "Be not afraid," while error
seeks to terrify, and will continue to
terrify, so long as we believe error to
be Truth. On the plane of sense there is
crime and misery, lust and
licentiousness, but these never disturb
the soul which is anchored in God, for
the cure [5] for all the miseries in the
world of sense is to turn at once to that
Eternal Order which underlies all
reality. When the enlightened soul
perceives this Eternal Order to be the
governing force of all things, visible
and invisible, it loses its fear of evil
through the conviction of evil's
nothingness, for Truth realized furnishes
man with the strong cord which binds all
error with consuming fire, "Until the
monster stings itself to death." The
Kingdom of God will come upon earth, as
Jesus prayed it should, when man,
instructed in Truth, shall co-operate
with that Truth in the working out of all
his problems, and not seek to solve those
problems as he does at present by
resorting to error's ways.
In the
unfolding of Truth to human consciousness
the spiritual world of Thought has had
its different conceptions as the
intellectual world has had its cycles of
civilization and as the material world
has had its geological changes. The
eternal Cause of things has been
acknowledged and adored according to
these ever ascending conceptions
throughout [6] all time. Nature's various
aspects were once worshiped as so many
gods. The sun, the moon, the elements
were all endowed with deific qualities so
that there were as many gods as there
were elements of force and fury,
benevolent or malevolent as the case
might be. From out of this vast system of
confused thought and polytheism, there
arose the conception of the Unity of
Cause, or monotheism, a monotheism
however which included in the One Supreme
and Only God all that was malevolent as
well as all that was benevolent in the
many gods. If before, there were many
causes for many maladies, now, through
the conception of One Cause, these many
maladies, universal and particular, were
ascribed to Him "from whom all things
proceed." That which hitherto had
converged to humanity's hurt from many
sources was now traced back from effect
to Cause until all the sin, sickness, and
sorrow in the objective world was made to
converge to a central source, and that
source was God. High in heaven's center
[7] sat the Ruler of the universe,
creating the sons of men and fastening
upon them as soon as they were born, aye
even before, the fate that should be
theirs despite their strong endeavors.
Some were born to disease and
decrepitude, others to health of body,
peace of mind, and with the proverbial
golden spoons in their mouths. When those
who could not reconcile all these human
distresses with a conception of God
higher than that of their religious
teachers, protested their disbelief in
such a monster, they were persecuted to
the death. It was the priest's conception
of God or no conception at all, and no
conception at all was accounted as
heresy, and heresy was a sin for which no
form of punishment could be too
severe.
That God,
however, is dead; that is, that monstrous
conception is dead, and the race is
better off in consequence. The wise man
does not mourn the death of a god who
could bless one and curse another, for he
has learned that God is a fount from
which there cannot proceed blessing and
cursing. Whatever [8] of misery and
unhappiness there is in human experience
the wise man ascribes to ignorance, and
knowing that all ignorance may be
overcome, he knows that earth will become
that "sweetest scene" when men everywhere
shall know that "Only the Good is true."
As the lowest forms of animal life are
said to have grown by slow but sure
processes of progressive evolution to the
point where we are told they have
culminated in man as we know him, so the
lowest conceptions of the Supreme Being
have steadily given place to other and
higher conceptions, until today the
conception of God that is most acceptable
to the thinker is that of God, the
changeless Divine Principle whose stately
laws once understood by man make of that
man a God in manifestation. As God,
Divine Mind, is the same, "yesterday, and
today and forever," He knows neither love
nor hate, approval nor disapproval,
favoritism nor prejudice. He regards all
things with most impartial eyes, for all
He knows is that for which He Himself is
responsible, [9] and this He has
pronounced "very good." It is for this
reason that we read in the Scriptures
that His ways are higher than our ways,
and His thoughts higher than our
thoughts.
There was an
age of God the Father, during which men
thought of the Ruler of the universe as
afar-off and only to be approached
through Moses or the prophets; so they
said, "Speak unto us through Moses lest
we die." Then there was an age of God the
Son, during which men believed that
salvation could only come to them through
the vicarious atonement or suffering of
one for the many. If before, God could
only be appeased by the blood of bulls
and of goats, now nothing would
suffice but the blood of His most
precious Son; and so for centuries we
have taken refuge in the belief that our
sins were atoned for by the redeeming
blood of the Lamb. In both of these ages
of God the Father, and God the Son, the
conception of an angry God
persisted, but today a new conception is
taking place, and it is that of [10] God
the Holy Ghost. When, at the River of
Jordan, as Jesus was being baptized of
John, the act was sealed by the words,
"This is my beloved Son in whom I am well
pleased," the New Dispensation commenced;
but later when this same Jesus said, "I
will send to you the Holy Comforter who
will lead you into all Truth," He
prophesied the advent of a new era, and
this era is now upon us. "He came unto
His own and His own received Him not,"
for the reason that no man can
receive what he cannot understand. The
Holy Ghost or Comforter (the Divine
Principle of Truth) is in the world today
but the world receives It not. Therefore
we should not flatter ourselves that if
we had lived in the day when Jesus Christ
walked among men, we should have
immediately recognized Him as Its highest
expression. Again we say we receive what
we understand, whether it be in
mathematics, music, or metaphysics: hence
the initiate neither condemns the
ancients for stoning the prophets, the
Roman for martyring the followers [11] of
the Nazarene, nor those of today who
ridicule the new philosophy of life.
Having eyes they see not, and the
initiate is sorry for them for the same
reason that Jesus was sorry for them that
drove spikes through those hands which
only healed, and those feet which were
beautiful on the mountains, as He brought
the glad tidings of Mind's supremacy over
matter. "Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do," is the prayer of
Him who knows, and knows that He
knows.
When
scientific apprehension of Truth takes
the place of sectarian belief, we shall
learn something of that state of mind
which characterized Guatama, and
Mahommed, Socrates and Plato, and above
all Jesus, and we shall also realize what
prayer is and what may be accomplished by
it. We shall neither mumble words nor
memorize formulae, for we shall know what
it is to dwell in the "secret place of
the Most High." Many creeds will die in
order that one eternal Christ may live in
the hearts of men and [12] work out
through these hearts in terms of peace
and power, a peace that is not of this
world, and a power which does not seek to
exhibit itself in deeds of selfish
exploitation of those less fortunate.
This
is the age of the Holy Ghost, for
it accepts the idea of the supremacy of
Mind as no other age has ever accepted
it. That some twist facts to suit their
own convenience regardless of the rights
of others, does not change these facts,
even though it gives a false direction to
the force of Thought. That man can
through thinking bring into his
experience the things he desires, is
true, but let him see to it that he
brings these by the lawful process of
working out from the Universal
rather than inward upon the individual.
Every true student of spiritual
metaphysics will understand what I mean
and realize that any attempt to get
through the particular what can
only be obtained from the Absolute
is nothing more than a subtle form of
self-hypnosis, the re-action from which
can only work harm to him who [13]
indulges in it. Until we find the right
way, we shall make many mistakes in
metaphysics as we have made mistakes in
mechanics, but we must be certain that
they are mistakes of head and not
deliberate intents of the heart. When an
experimenter in mechanics makes a mistake
he may profit by it, but a deliberate use
of the power of Thought to work
another harm or to get from him that
which may be better and more easily
obtained by going direct to the Source,
is the worst form of self-deception, the
results of which are always painful and
sometimes persistent.
The great
majority of the world's inhabitants are
as yet on the plane of the first
mental remove from that of the
animal; that is, they share all the
appetites of the animal such as hunger,
thirst and need of rest in unconscious
sleep; but in addition to these they are
conscious of things which the animal is
not conscious. For instance, the simplest
savage is conscious of a physical self
which he is inclined to adorn, and [14]
whether the savage, simple or complex,
ignorant or civilized, adorns himself
with the feathers of birds or the most
recent styles of London, Paris or New
York matters little; it simply proves
that in addition to all the appetites
which characterize the beasts of the
field there is a consciousness of
personality, and a desire to
improve that personality as well as to
minister to its lowest needs. If it shows
itself in what might be called vanity,
this is because this consciousness of
personality is as yet in its infancy; but
there will come a day when it will
manifest itself on the plane of the
intellectual, a plane which is as much
higher than the plane of self-adornment,
as the plane of self-adornment is higher
than the plane of self-satisfaction, or
the gratification of the appetites. When
we look back over the centuries and
observe how long a time man, as we know
him, has been in process of evolution we
ought not to become discouraged when we
are told we shall be a long time in
arriving at that goal of perfection
established as [15] the standard, by
Divine Mind. Neither ought we to become
feverish in our haste to arrive,
for this is to cheat our own end, to balk
our own purpose. To become on the outer,
what we are on the inner plane, is
accomplished more by letting than
be forcing. We must learn to let
our finest emotions have sway over our
lives instead of forcing our way into
places and positions in which we can only
remain through fitness. It is for this
reason then that we should, in
addition to personal adornment,
which is not a sin, reach out after
intellectual advancement, so that the
mind will become clothed with such
garments as may entitle it to appear at
the Court of the Highest, which is
Spiritual Illumination. That some have
become illumined without any special
intellectual training may be true, but
history records that by far the greater
number of those who have given to the
world such food as philosophers feed on,
have been men and women of rare
intellectual accomplishments as well as
of great spiritual aspiration. This [16]
is as right and proper as men who have
just enough personal vanity to wish never
to appear before others without being
becomingly garbed are more ready for the
next step, which is the adornment of the
mind, than the man who takes no pride
whatsoever in his personal appearance.
Each thing in its place, and everything
in its logical order. It does not signify
that because a man has arrived at the
place where personal appearance compels
his attention that he has suddenly lost
his appreciation for food. His taste in
this respect may become refined, but he
nevertheless continues to eat. He may
know that "Man does not live by bread
alone," but he also knows that until he
reaches a higher state of spiritual
development, he cannot live without it,
and so it is, that "The higher includes
the lower, while the lower cannot include
the higher."
From this
point then we are able to proceed to
where we can at least glimpse the view
above, where spiritual understanding
becomes the new acquirement, and where
all [17] that is worthwhile below it is
included in it, as the visible expression
of the interior state wherein tranquility
retains its changeless mood. Spiritual
understanding is the Saviour, the
Redeemer. It is that in man which treads
upon the lions and scorpions of the lower
nature, and which confers a power
obtained in no other way. When God, The
Holy Ghost, removes the inner cataracts
from the eyes of the soul, the soul sees
the "new heaven and the new earth," and
the old concept of earth and heaven
passes away with the ignorance which
begat it. In this hour a great revelation
takes place. Every place becomes sacred,
so that worship is no longer confined to
what are called the "sacred precincts of
the church." There are no times nor
seasons for prayer to the man who has
glimpsed the Whole which contains all its
parts, for to such a man religion becomes
something infinitely more than the
adoration of something inappreciable and
abstract. Religion dominates such a man's
whole being, so that he intakes and
outbreathes the [18] Divine that is in
him, as it was in Jesus. The events
which, prior to this revelation of the
Son of God in him, desolated all
his hopes and blighted all his prospects,
fade from memory so that nothing can ever
again give reality to that which Truth
annuls. Space, matter, time and thought
become the servitors of him who knows
that only God rules. All power is
vested in the Changeless One, and the
torments which came from the belief in
the changing many, subsides as this
belief subsides. The man who knows, does
not need to consult wizards for a proof
of immortality, for immortality is to him
as certain as the reality of his own
being. Neither is death to such an one a
thing to be dreaded or invited, since it
is nothing more than a crossing over the
threshold of a new experience from one
room to another, which does not give him
one moment's anxiety or curiosity. He
carries the statement of Jesus into
practical experience by realizing that,
"Sufficient for the moment is the
experience thereof." With no useless [19]
bewailing of the past, nor debilitating
fear of the future, the man of
understanding lives in an eternal present
which is filled with glorious
possibilities. That is a wonderful
conception of things which assures man
that because God knows neither past nor
future, neither can man who derives his
consciousness from God, know these
periods of time which have no place in
Eternity. One may believe in any series
of events, but one can never know
what is not to be known.
All things
are being re-created for him who sees
beyond the merely visible, but it
requires keenness of perception to note
the gradual renovation. It is for this
reason therefore that we cannot agree
with those who tell us that the heavenly
vision may come in the twinkling of an
eye, and this to one who has had no prior
preparation. Such a phenomenon would
indicate partiality or injustice, or
both, unless at some time, either before
or after what we call physical birth,
there had been some such longing as would
attract the thing desired. When the case
of [20] Pauls' sudden conversion on the
road to Damascus is used to illustrate
the miraculous and extraordinary, we need
to consider the state of Paul's mind
previous to this occurrence. We are apt
to over-emphasize the fact that he
persecuted the followers of Jesus, but we
must not forget that even this he did,
believing he was right. Paul was a
zealous man who believed it was as
necessary to denounce error as it was to
proclaim Truth, and like so many of
similar persuasion, he lost much time and
expended much energy which might have
been more profitably employed. He was
essentially a Truth-Seeker however, and
since every Truth-Seeker is a fearless
analyzer of his own states of
consciousness, he must have been engaged
in some such exercise as he journeyed. It
is when men ask questions of their inner
monitors concerning their thoughts and
acts, that these questions are answered,
and in no uncertain tone. Only when men
ask no questions but do what they
feel like doing, is there no sudden
arrestation [21] of impulse. There is
always a moment when that which has been
growing in thought tends to express
itself in manifestation, just as there is
always a moment when the bird emerges
from its shell, or the chrysalis
extricates itself from the cocoon. We do
not consider these occurrences miracles;
therefore we should not consider the
conversion of Saul of Tarsus a miracle;
and we would not, if we only knew that
all things work according to Law. When
these facts are better understood we
shall cease to live as we list, in the
mistaken belief that Illumination comes
providentially when it is ready to
come, and not before, and that
hence there is no advantage to the wise
man over the fool in such matters.
Illumination comes to the soul which has
prepared for it, just as light shines
though a lamp which has been cleaned and
filled with oil, and the wick of which
has been properly inserted and duly
lighted. Step by step does the soul
unfold in the direction of the
development of its latent capacities;
therefore every hour [22] of delay is a
postponement of blessings which are not
afar-off, but close at hand.
In the past,
Illumination seemed to be a special
dispensation to those rare individuals
whom we have since crowned with the glory
of Church approval or canonization, but
this was because they were so few and far
between that they were regarded as set
apart by God for special purposes. That
they were set apart is true, but when one
examines their lives and conversions one
is constrained to believe that they were
set apart by their own consent, their own
willingness to "live the Life." The sun
shines always for everyone, but only
those who come out of the shadows enjoy
its benignant warmth. Divine Love is the
same for all, but individual man must
enter into the spirit of it if he would
taste the blessings it bestows. It were
folly to think that spiritual
understanding comes without effort. One
must study to become a musician no matter
how much natural aptitude one has for
music. No matter how mathematical one's
mentality [23] may be, one cannot
calculate the movements of the heavenly
bodies so as to prophesy the day, hour
and moment of an eclipse, save that one
applies himself to a painstaking study of
the science of numbers. Who expects a
strange miracle to take place in these
departments of investigation? It is one
of the proofs of healthy-mindedness that
men know there is no Illumination
without investigation, and hence we
study. If Jesus had entertained the
opinion that Illumination, or spiritual
Realization, was an inexplicable
phenomenon which might come to one who
was not seeking it at all, while to one
who hungered for it it might never come,
He would not have said, "Ask and ye shall
receive, seek and ye shall find, knock
and it shall be opened unto you." If
these words of the Master, the most
highly Illuminated One, do not mean
persistent effort, I do not know what
they do mean. How then can some teachers
assert that a few lessons, either through
personal instruction or through the
methods of the modern correspondence [24]
school, confer upon one the ability to do
this without any greater effort than a
few Affirmations of a carefully written
formula, when that one may have no higher
conception of Illumination than that it
is a means of so employing Thought as to
attract material wealth, which may wither
like Dead Sea fruit? Must there not be
something back of all this system
of Affirmation, from which these
Affirmations derive their substance, and
without which all the Affirmations in the
world would be valueless as a painted
fire is valueless to produce heat?
Seeking personal blessings without once
considering universal principles,
indicates a woeful ignorance of Law and
the working thereof, as set forth in the
advice of Him who spake as never man
spake before when He said, "Seek ye first
the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto
you."
When the
limited area by which primitive man was
environed no longer supplied him with the
necessaries of animal existence, [25] he
reached out beyond that environment. Thus
exploration began through Necessity,
which is not only, "The mother of
invention," but the means to the end of
man's advancement; for where there is no
incentive, there is no endeavor, and
where there is no endeavor, there is
stagnation and death. The doctrine of
Necessity is far more understandable and
demonstrable than is the doctrine of
Calvinistic predestination, or the
unexplained doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception. The doctrine of Necessity
explains the immutable Law of Cause and
Effect, and reveals that nothing can
occupy any other place than the place it
is at present occupying, until Necessity
requires a change, and that no one can do
otherwise than he is doing, until
consciousness perceives the Necessity of
expansion. It is for this reason that we
are told, and we are coming to believe,
that "Motive is to voluntary action in
the human mind, what cause is to effect
in the material universe." As nothing
happens by chance or accident in the
material [26] world, so no growth takes
place in consciousness save as motive
impels, and thus it is that every
individual is irresistibly impelled to
act as he does act, and nothing can
change this unrecognized law until
Necessity compels consciousness to
explore a higher realm. All reformation
and all evolution from a lower to a
higher plane is the direct consequence of
the discovery that one's requirements are
always in advance of one's possessions.
No matter how much one may have of this
world's goods there is never, in material
things alone, that satisfaction which the
soul needs, if it is to thrive and be
content. This explains the all too
frequent unhappiness of the rich, who,
until they find the Source of riches,
which is Christ in themselves, seek in
things what can only be found in
thoughts. It also explains why the
poor so often remain poor,
notwithstanding that the Supply is always
greater than the demand.
* * * * *
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