I SAY, "An idea comes to me." Where did it come from? It must have had a source of like character with its own. Ideas are not visible to the eye, they are not heard by the ear, nor felt, nor tasted, yet we talk about them as having existence. We recognize that they live, move, and have being in the realm that we term mind.
This realm of mind is accepted by everybody as in some way connected with the things that appear, but because it is not describable in terms of length, breadth, and thickness, it is usually passed over as something too vague for consideration.
But those who take up the study of this thing called mind find that it can be analyzed and its laws and modes of operation understood.
To be ignorant of mind and its laws is to be a child playing with fire, or a man manipulating powerful chemicals without knowing their relation to one another. This is universally true; and all who are not learning about mind are in like danger, because all are dealing with the great cause from which spring forth all the conditions that appear in the lives of all men and women. Mind is the one reservoir from which we draw all that we make up into our world, and it is through the laws of mind that we form our lives. Hence nothing is as important
as a knowledge of mind, its inherencies, and the mode of their expression.
The belief that mind cannot be understood is fallacious. Man is the expression of mind, dwells in mind, and can know more clearly and definitely about mind than about the things that appear in the phenomenal world.
It is only from the plane of mind that one can know Truth in an absolute sense. That which we pronounce truth from the plane of appearances is relative only. The relative truth is constantly changing, but the absolute Truth endures; and what is true today always was and always will be true.
It does not require scholastic culture to understand mind. Persons who do not even know how to read or write may be very adept in the realm of pure mind. It does not follow that he who talks most fluently about mind knows the most. He may theoretically perceive the underlying principles without realizing their working factors in his own being.
Mind is not language; mind is not formulation. These are outgrowths of mind; they are man's way of communicating to his fellow man the concepts of his mind. Thus very simple persons, from the world's standpoint, frequently know a great deal about mind and its operation that they are unable to express in language.
Women as a rule know more about pure mind on its own plane than men, because they trust that inner
faculty of pure knowing called intuition more fully than men. The medically wise of the world today cannot comprehend how a quiet little person who knows nothing about physiology or medication can sit down beside their dying patients and bring them back to health without apparently doing anything. And they never will know until they delve behind a knowledge of externality and learn mind to mind the workings of Spirit.
Some persons confound the realm of knowledge about things formulated through the intellect with pure knowledge. Intellect and its plane of activity are not pure mind as the realm of matter is not Spirit.
The same essences of being enter into both, but wisdom is sadly lacking in the intellectual realm. Intellect has formulated its conclusions from the sense side of existence instead of from the spiritual side, and these two sides are divergent.
No one can know about the potentialities of mind and how they are manifested except through a study of mind itself without any reference whatever to things or their relations.
One may logically deduce a system of being from abstract intellectual reasoning, but it will lack the living fire that accompanies pure mind.
Those who study mind know the same things; and though they be dumb, they enjoy the communion that ever goes on in thought. No one should for a
moment imagine that because he lacks the technical education of the world that he is therefore not fitted to study the science of mind. No matter how ignorant you may be of the world's ways or God's ways, if you will give your mind to the attention of the one Mind, you will in due season become wise. This great law of mind and Mind recognizing each other and flowing together in unbroken wisdom has been known in all ages and among all peoples. The scribes and Pharisees who knew the life and lack of scholastic advantages of Jesus, the carpenter's son, exclaimed in amazement, "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?"
Mind is the great storehouse of good from which man draws all his supplies. If you manifest life, you are confident that it had a source. If you show forth intelligence you know that somewhere in the economy of Being there is a fount of intelligence. So you may go over the elements that go to make up your being and you will find that they draw their sustenance from an invisible and, to your limited understanding, incomprehensible source.
This source we term Mind, because it is as such that our comprehension is best related to it. Names are arbitrary, and we should not stop to note differences that are merely technical. We want to get at the substance which they represent.
So if we call this invisible source Mind it is because it is of like character with the thing within
our consciousness that we call our mind. Mind is manyfold in its manifestations. It produces all that appears. Not that the character of all that appears is to be laid to the volition of Mind; no, but some of its factors enter into everything that appears. This is why it is so important to know about Mind, and how its potentialities are made manifest.
So we know that that which we term Mind is the reservoir of the universe and man and that in it is stored up all that we may desire. So it behooves us to study this great reservoir and learn its laws. We call it Mind because through our study it has disclosed to us a quality that is not apprehended by those who study it in its phenomenal aspect. The physical scientist tells us that there is a universal energy in which all motion, light, heat, color, and the like, have their origin.
We claim that what they have discovered is the power side of God and that there is another factor that they have not discovered but that is associated with the universal energy. That factor is divine wisdom. They admit that there is evidence of design in the varied and beautiful manifestation of this universal energy, but they are at a loss for a way to make the acquaintance of the designer. To know this designer and manipulator of the substance and energy of the universe is what our system of mind development teaches. It instructs you how to acquaint yourself with the qualities of Mind and
through them to seize upon the substance and life of the universe and bring them into harmonious relations in your body and affairs. This is something that few learned physical scientists have attempted, and here is a field of discovery upon which few have yet launched forth. In fact but few of the materialistic school have ever caught the first ray of this light. They have, it is true, longed to know more about the wisdom of the Creator, but it does not seem to have dawned upon them that the wisdom of God is just as much present everywhere as energy and substance. By all the methods known to their science they have tested the many elements of the formed and formless earth and air and noted the methodical and orderly workings of each under certain conditions. They speak of molecular attraction, repulsion, polarity, and the like. Some have said that every atom of matter is apparently intelligent; but as these atoms do not speak their particular language, they have taken for granted that they could not hold converse with them on the plane of mind.
This is where we have set up a study that makes of every atom in the universe a living center of wisdom as well as life and substance.
We claim that on its plane of comprehension man may ask the atom or the mountain the secret that it holds and it will be revealed to him. This is the communication of mind with Mind; hence we call Mind the universal underlying cause of existence
and study it from that basis.
God is Mind, and man made in the image and likeness of God is Mind, because there is but one Mind, and that the Mind of God. The person in sense consciousness thinks he has a mind of his own and that he creates thought from its own inherent substance. This is a suppositional mind that passes away when the one and only real Mind is revealed. This one and only Mind of God that we study is the only creator. It is that which originates all that is permanent; hence it is the source of all reality. Its creations are of a character hard for the sense man to comprehend, because his consciousness is cast in a mold of space and time. These are changeable and transient, while the creations of the one Mind are substantial and lasting. But it is man's privilege to understand the creations of the one Mind, for it is through them that he makes his world. The creations of the one Mind are ideas. The ideas of God are potential forces waiting to be set in motion through proper formative vehicles. The thinking faculty in man is such a vehicle, and it is through this that the visible universe has existence. Man does not "create" anything if by this term is meant the producing of something from nothing; but he does make the formless up into form; or rather it is through his conscious co-operation that the one Mind forms its universe. Hence the importance of man's willing co-operation with God in
every thought, because unless he is very wise in his thinking, he may be sending forth malformations that will cause both himself and the universe trouble.
Thinking is a process in mind by and through which the abstract is made concrete. It is the process of working up into things those ideas in the one Mind which are not things. God does not see things nor conditions as man sees them, except through the thinking faculty in man (represented by man in the Godhead).
The ideas of Divine Mind are whole and complete in their capacity to unfold perpetually greater and more beautiful forms according to the thinking capacity in man. Man catches mental sight of an idea in Divine Mind and proceeds to put it in terms comprehensible to him on his plane of consciousness. All ideas have their origin in Divine Mind, but their character as unfolded by man depends entirely upon his acquaintance with God. The idea of a house as formulated by man varies all the way from a wigwam to the most magnificent castle. The original idea of a house, as it exists in God's mind, cannot be anything less than the perfected consciousness of man, of which his body is a symbol. This is the temple "not made with hands," and it is the only temple acceptable to God.
No man can acceptably serve God or do His will until he understands the fundamental principles of thinking and how thoughts are made manifest
as forms or states of consciousness. This is revealed by the Father to everyone who seeks to know His law and to follow it. When man has thus sought the Father with an eye single to His guidance, he begins to know that certain relations exist between him and the Father and that only through a maintenance of those relations can he come into harmony with God and do His will.
The idea of the man separated in consciousness from Divine Mind is that he was arbitrarily created by God, who could have chosen or not chosen to create him, and that not being responsible for his existence, man has a perfect right to be rebellious and petulant if hardships come into his life. This is a childish view of the great plan of creation, in which man is such an important factor. It is only when man becomes meek and lowly, an obedient receptacle for the Spirit of God, that he sees the divine plan of creation and his place in it. Then he becomes a willing co-operator, because his understanding accepts the law as it is and knows that it cannot be changed by either God or man. They are so intimately linked together that the harmony of existence depends upon their mutual understanding. When this is established by man's willing obedience and acceptance of his part of the work, a new order of things is set up and a new creation inaugurated. The first step in this new order is the realization by man that he is in the world to do a specific work. As
Jesus said at the age of twelve, "Knew ye not that I must be in my Father's house?" and in His last prayer are these words, "I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do."
The Father has sent each one of us out to do a certain work. Are we doing that work? Have we asked what it is? Or are we aimlessly wandering about the earth trying to find satisfaction in the fleeting things of sense?
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
This truth is that of the relation of man to God and of how creation is carried forward. The God-man relation is in one sense like that of father and child; in another sense it is like that of creator-creative instrument and creation manifest. Man constitutes the instrument of God through which He brings his potentialities into visibility. As such an instrument man is in a measure a dictator as to how it shall be done. That is, man has discretionary power or free will. Freedom of will is illusionary however because if man wills to carry on creation in defiance of the divine plan and order, his creations in due time fall into chaos through lack of coherency. God fixes the plan of the structure and gives into the hands of man all the materials for building. Man may also know the plan and build according to it, or he may go ahead without consulting the plan.
Humanity has built age after age only to find that its structures do not endure. They are faulty because the divine plan has not been consulted by the builder.
Mind is the storehouse of ideas. Man draws all his ideas from this omnipresent storehouse. The ideas of God, heaven, hell, devils, angels, and all things have their clue in Mind. But their form in the consciousness depends entirely upon the plane from which man draws his mental images. If he gets a "clue" to the character of God and then proceeds to clothe this clue idea with images from without, he makes God a mortal. If he looks within for the clothing of his clue idea he knows God to be the omnipresent Spirit of existence.
If man gets the clue idea from heaven and hell and devils and angels and looks without for clothing for his idea, he makes a locality in the skies and calls it heaven, and another under the earth and calls it hell. But if he goes to the Father for information he finds both heaven and hell within his own consciousness, both the result of his own thought.
So it is of the utmost importance that we know how we have produced this state of existence which we call life; and we should be swift to conform to the only method calculated to bring harmony and success into our life, namely to think in harmony with the understanding derived from communion with the God-Mind.