Chapter V
THE EXTERNALIZATION OF THOUGHT
W. John Murray
Mental
Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.
[119] One of
the most profound truths, and one that is of greatest benefit when
understood, is that thought has for its most persistent tendency the
trend to externalize itself. If it were not for this direction there
would be nothing for the human eye to rest upon but an unimproved
material world. Nature would not till her own soil; neither would she
use this soil to construct comfortable dwelling places for man and
beast. The sweet harmonies of music, which delight our souls when
expressed in audible tone, would remain forever silent were it not for
the musical thought of man following its natural course towards the
expression of itself. Architecture, which has been spoken of as "frozen
music," is nothing if it is not [120] thought seeking to give form to a
mental picture. Divine Mind, or the Universal Mind, creates substance,
but it is the human or the particular mind which is to shape this
substance into such form as will serve its immediate purposes. When the
Scriptures tell us that "God (Divine Mind) saw all that He had made and
behold it was very good" and that, "He rested from all His labors," it
is Wisdom's way of stating that the patterns of all that we see, or
ever shall see, exist in Universal Mind, and that the function of the
human, or particular mentality, is to bring these perfect ideas or
ideals into visible manifestation. This explains the ceaseless striving
to improve upon existing conditions which we see exhibiting themselves
on every hand in that which we call human restlessness and
dissatisfaction.
Humanity
instinctively realizes it is not getting all out of life that life
holds for it; and no amount of preaching will ever make it "content
with such things as it has." It knows instinctively that "more than we
[121] can ask, or think, or even hope to receive," the Universal has
prepared for it from "before the foundation of the world," or the
visible order of things.
As science,
physical and metaphysical, advances, we see the evidences of the power
of thought to produce manifold blessings and conveniences of which our
forefathers never dreamed. Forces which were unknown but which
nevertheless existed long before Adam, have been discovered and are now
being utilized, not only to make life more comfortable but actually to
prolong it. The insistent desire for health is due to an inner or
intuitional recognition of man's inalienable right to be well. The
insatiable longing for wealth, or abundance, is also due to an inner feeling
that there is enough for all, and that limitation is not a God-imposed
condition, but a man-accepted state of poverty.
As long as man
could be persuaded by church and state that there was "just so much to
go around," and that, if the few had much, the many must have little,
all went [122] comparatively well; but as thought expanded and the
"common people" heard gladly that Supply is inexhaustible, there came a
mental uprising and a universal protest. Strikes and revolutions turn
the world upside down for a time, but very frequently they turn it
right side up. In the economic world, the importunities of labor are
similar to disease and poverty in the mental world.
The educated
man of today is in a state of revolt against anything, and everything
that interferes with his free enjoyment of all that his instinct tells
him he is entitled to. He is dissatisfied and his dissatisfaction is a
healthy dissatisfaction. It is the kind of dissatisfaction which made
the stone plough give place to the steel, and then made the steel,
which ploughed only a single furrow, as obsolete as the stone plough
through the introduction of the gang-plough of today. There is a
satisfaction which makes for atavism, or a return to conditions
outgrown, and there is a dissatisfaction which makes for progression
and a prosperity undreamed [123] of by the ancients, or even by men of
our own day, whose thoughts are limited by their fears and false
beliefs.
Thought
protesting against injustice makes for revolution when it sees no other
way of escape: thought, protesting against personal limitation, makes
for evolution when the individual realizes that, "Our remedies oft in
ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven." The world and all that
is therein is ruled by thought, but a man who cannot rule his own
thoughts and drive them in the right direction, is like a man who owns
a motor car but who cannot guide it. Such a man is forever at the mercy
of his emotions. "Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom,"
according to Emerson, but there are those who call themselves
Emersonians who have not yet grasped the fullness of Truth embodied in
this statement. They know that thought, the thought of freedom
persisted in, made for the abolition of slavery of the black man, but
they do not realize that their own thoughts of sickness [124] have made
them sick, neither do they know that their own thoughts of health will
make them well.
Thought
accompanied by action, according to well-known mental laws, always
results in what is called material manifestation, as is evidenced by
the poet and his poetry, the dramatist and his drama, the architect and
his building. It is for this reason that we are cautioned by the author
of the "Primitive Mind Cure" [Northwoods note: Warren Felt Evans]
"never to lose sight of the deep law of our being, that all
ideas have an inherent tendency to actualize or externalize themselves
in the corporeal organism."
We speak of the
tendency of thought to externalize
itself as we speak of the tendency of water to flow down hill, or the
tendency of gas or vapor to rise. Thought, like any other force, has
a tendency, and the sooner we realize what this trend it, the better;
for then we can work with it, instead of against
it. Most of us in our ignorance of mental law, and our capacity to
utilize it, are making [125] of our lives a constant "pulling hard
against the stream," which results at best in our making no headway
against it, and at worst being swept backward by its persistent current.
One does not
have to be a profound philosopher in order to see before his eyes the
tendency of joy to actualize itself in a smile, or the tendency of
anger to demonstrate itself in a frown; the mere tendency to be
observant, not even very observant, is sufficient. These common
illustrations point to the more pronounced phases of phenomena, as the
poverty-thought tendency to express itself in financial distress; or
the old-age thought in the sure and certain tendency to express itself
in wrinkles and decrepitude.
Those who fear
poverty close the channels in consciousness through which opulence is
to flow. Those who fear old age see the accumulating evidences of its
advancement every time they observe themselves in the glass, and the
thing they fear most "comes [126] upon them." Fortunately for us there
is such a thing as reversal of process in the mental as in the
mechanical world. In the mechanical world we see this expressed when we
turn the tap one way, so that water may run, and another way, so that
it may cease to flow. This turning of the tap does not create the
supply; it simply draws upon it. Neither does it destroy supply when
the tap is turned off; it simply inhibits it. In this we have an
illustration of what thought may do for the individual in the matter of
obtaining what he wants. Thought is unable to create.
God has already done this, but thought can attract or repel supply,
according as it is bountiful or niggardly, courageous or fearful. If
then we can remember that the Universal Mind is supply, inexhaustible
and omnipresent, and that the individual human mind is the channel
through which the Universal flows, and the quality of our thoughts
determines the extent of the flow, we shall think so as to attract the
fullest measure of good, the [127] true, and the beautiful. Let us not
lose sight of the fact that "We cannot get a three-inch stream through
a one-inch pipe." Neither must we blame the reservoir, if we do not
draw upon it intelligently.
Chapter
6
Mental Medicine
Table
of Contents
(Formerly at Northwoods Divine
Science Resource Center)
