Out of all the various
attributes and qualities of mind that an individual can develop, none
is more important, more needed in the world today generally, than
FAITH. It is to show how faith can
be acquired by the same law as health itself that this book has been
written.
In it, the author has told as simply as possible the law of the healing
consciousness,
showing it to be in perfect harmony with true knowledge and the science
of
nature and of mind; showing how results are secured by simply knowing
the truth
or the law, and how we may use the some law to demonstrate faith itself.
Book Contents
PART 1: THE
LAW AND HOW TO
USE IT
1
- The New Consciousness
2 - Cosmic Consciousness
3
- Personal
and Impersonal Consciousness
4 - The Law
of Consciousness Stated
5 - The Law of
Consciousness Outlined
6 - Subjective Consciousness Defined…
7 - Practical Use of Vision:
Visualizing Prosperity
8
- On
Visualizing Success and Keeping the Law
9 - Visualizing Health
10 - Organic
Disease—The Cure of "Incurables".
PART 2: HOW TO DEVELOP FAITH
THROUGH USE OF THE LAW
1 - The New Healing and Prosperity
Consciousness...
2 - The Law and God—Faith in the
Control of Natural Forces
3 - How to
Demonstrate Faith
4 - How to Develop the New Faith in Faith
5 - Developing Faith Through Feeling
6 - How to Have Faith in Your Healing Word
7 - Faith in the Great Within—One Day At A Time..
8 - Faith in
Yourself—How to Develop Self-Confidence
9 - How to Develop Faith in Happiness
10 - Keeping
Your Faith in
the World
11 - Pray As
You Run—Everyday
Faith
12 - Wearing Other People's
Clothes— Showing the Need of Faith in Freedom…
13 - I Am That Big Deed Now—Faith in “The Big
Thing”
14 - Faith in
Your Unity with
God
15 - Faith in
the Continuity
of Life
16 - Faith in
God
17 - What Do
You Expect—Conclusion
Chapter 1
THE
NEW CONSCIOUSNESS
IT is easier to meet the
situations of life, if we
understand. It is ignorance that keeps us in fear. It is the unknown
that
haunts us and lays
its ghostly fingers upon us. For life to be at all livable, we must
know
something about it, since thought affects not only our immediate mental
states
but also the people arid things by which we are surrounded. And unless
our
thoughts arc right, our world cannot be right. There are, then, certain
questions upon which we must have decisive convictions if we are
to be happy
in the fullest way. There is little pleasure in an uphill trail if we
do not
know from whence we came, whither we are going, nor why we are on our
way.
I feel sure that, for all of us
who are thoughtful, all
these questions are related to what we believe or do not believe about
the
nature of the self and God. Most of us feel that to be able to relate
ourselves
with an Unseen but not Unknown Presence will go far to put us on the
pathway of
understanding and so of peace and attainment.
To
understand God and His way of working, is to understand our own self,
since we
are firmly enveloped in the Cosmic Consciousness from which our own
conscious-ness
springs, as we shall see. Or we may turn this about and say, that, to
know the
self in its truest and widest nature will bring us into a clearer
knowledge of
God. Then to know God and the self will help us to answer these big
questions
which confront the thoughtful heart: Is life worth while? Is there a
purpose
which this life fulfils or is intended to fulfil? What power have I to
control
the conditions of my body and environment? Is there magic in the realm
of
thought? "Whither do I go? Can I extract joy out of existence? Can I
have
health when I seek it: prosperity aside from mere chance: and
happiness
independent of rare good luck? In short, is there a law of life?
THE SELF AND CONSCIOUSNESS
"When we speak of
consciousness, we mean the power to
think; we mean the ability to be aware of the self and of that which
occurs in
relation to the self. The word "conscious" comes from the Latin words, cum or with, and scio, to know or have
knowledge. When we say one is conscious of a
thing we mean that he is "with knowledge of that thing," at least to
the extent of his being aware that it is. And the "consciousness
of a
person is the "knower," or that which, within him, knows. The knower
is the self, the "I am." There is neither any proof that there
is an "I am," nor any knowledge of what it is in its
ultimate
nature. Yet, if I know anything at all, I know that I am; and I must
either say
that I do not know anything at all, or else say that what I know can
only be
known because I, the knower, exist before that which I know. How could
anything
be known unless there were an "I," that is, a self to know it?
This may seem very involved;
but it is also very important
because it shows us that "consciousness" or the knowing
self exists
before the body. Before the physical Jesus was the spiritual self,
forever existent;
the Master himself said, "Before Abraham was, I am." It is true that
scientists once said that consciousness is a product of the brain, and
that
physical reactions in the brain cause us to think. They have
claimed this
because some kind of action does occur in the brain when we think. For
example,
if I hurt my feet, the nerve telegraph wires carry a vibration to the
brain; and
the message is recorded in a certain area by a little cell-shock or
explosion.
Then I say, "It hurts" and withdraw my feet. Now, my thought about
the hurt and the cell action in the brain occurred at the same time;
but that
does not prove that my brain produced the thought. "I," the self, the
consciousness, simply noted it; that is all. But, again scientists
said,
"We know that it is the brain that produces consciousness because, when
anything happens to any portion of the brain, we cannot think the
things which
that particular part of the brain is accustomed to think." In other
words,
we lose our consciousness to that extent. For example, they said,
"Suppose
I injure the brain center in which my hearing is recorded. My ear may
remain as
perfect; but I have lost that part of 'me' or the consciousness which
hears
because that part of the brain is injured. So that, if I continue to
lose parts
of the brain, the 'I' would disappear little by little until it would
be lost
altogether."
On the
contrary, other scientists call attention to the fact that the brain is
merely
the instrument of the consciousness and that whatever happens to it
merely
affects the power of the instrument but not of the consciousness. For
example,
if my eye is injured, the self can no longer use it as an instrument;
but the
self is not injured. If I break the lens of my binoculars, I cannot see
through
them; but I am still a "seer." And that the self still exists after
an injury to the brain, with its hearing and seeing consciousness
intact, is
shown by the fact that often the brain and cell life learn to use other
agencies than the eye and ear to do the work that "I," the conscious
self, wants done. Take, for illustration, the finer sense of touch
which the
blind man develops. It enables him to read, to get messages through his
fingers
from your lips, and to find his way about. He did not lose his seeing
consciousness, He merely lost one of its instruments; his
consciousness
immediately set to work to find another.
The fact is that we are safe in
saying that, if we cannot
prove just what the consciousness is in its essence, we can
say that it is, and how it works. And the
greatest of the scientists today are assisting us in showing a
pre-existent
self or consciousness.
We find, too, that the search
for the self or consciousness
is not to be ended by concluding that it has taken up a temporary
habitation in
the body any more than we can say that a man is inseparable from his
house
merely because he is at home. To find what the nature of the self is,
we must
look beyond the body; and our study will necessarily lead us into an
investigation
of the universe in which consciousness finds one of its fields of
expression.
"What is the nature of the world in which we live? Are we related to it
organically only or in some higher way? Is there a consciousness back
of it? If
so, what is its nature?
In
short, what is the Cosmic Consciousness?
Chapter
2
COSMIC
CONSCIOUSNESS
PHYSICAL science is making
enormous advances today; no
student of life can afford to be ignorant of the marvelous discoveries
of the
present hour. All the old landmarks are being swept away; a new spirit
and a
new order is at hand. Take, for example, the once fundamental law of
physics,—the indestructibility of matter. Today we know that matter can
be
resolved into energy so completely that the energy will not again
come back
into form.
Photographs can be taken of the
atoms of which material
substance is composed. Yet these atoms are merely vibration. The
experiments of
Le Bon, the French scientist, go further than this. They show another
so-called
funda-mental law of physics must go by the board,—the conservation of
energy.
This law claimed that even when substances are entirely changed in
their nature
by corrosion, decay, or fire, the energy in them still exists, simply
having
been converted from one form into another. But Le Bon states that
energy can be
entirely devitalized and returned into nothingness. This means that it
is no
longer in shape to be perceived by the physical senses. But this
"nothingness" may go under any name we wish to call it,—"The
Unknown," the ether, the imponderable. Physical science thus shows us
that
the universe appears and disappears, evolving from and dissolving into
a silent
sea of an immaterial somewhat.
What is this "immaterial
somewhat"? Science says
it is ether, everywhere existing, without bounds, continuous,
homogeneous,
never dissociated in parts in which one mass of ether would be separate
from
another. Out of this ether, the visible universe is evolved through
some
activity of energy. Whence this energy and how it acts are questions
which can
be answered, not by physics but by metaphysics.
THE UNIVERSE CREATED BY AN ACT OF WILL
Metaphysics is in harmony with
the postulates of science
when it says that energy is produced by the action of a Will; but it
goes still
further and says that to will is to think, that thinking is an act of
mind, and
that the ether of science is, therefore, better termed "Mind." For
Mind, too, is spaceless, timeless, continuous, homogeneous, never
dissociated
in parts. In other words, it is as eternally ONE as is the ether.
Then the act of will which
produces energy is the act of
Mind; or, in other words, energy is the action of thought. Mind
creates
energy by thinking; and energy forms the substance of the visible
universe.
That is why we can say that the universe is "alive" for it is made by
Intelligence out of Itself. No less prominent a scientist than a former
president of the American association, Edward Drinker Cope, affirms
that we
live in a "conscious universe" and that "energy can be
conscious." And he further says that "we are not necessarily bound to
the hypothesis that protoplasm is the only substance capable of
supporting
consciousness." In other words, he perceives that con-sciousness and
intelligence are not bound up in a physical universe or a physical
body. Consciousness
exists apart from all that we can examine with the five senses. It
exists
before creation and after.
It is not going too far to say,
then, that creation is the
body of God. Yet, as it would be absurd to say that the powers of man's
mind
are confined to his body, so is it absurd to say that all there is of
God is bound
up in the physical and visible universe. As all the forces of my mind
can be
converged to one intense point of interest, so can all the powers of
the Divine
Mind be brought to apply to any task which It may seek to perform.
Perceiving
that there is a universal intelligence apart from all limitations of
time and
space, we must conclude that Divine Mind can and does act, with
limitless or
infinite power, on its own thought. For since physical energy is but
the
emergence into expression of the Divine thought, for God to think is to
act.
When Mind acts, it is with limitless intelligence, since it is the
All-Mind: It
acts with limitless freedom since, as the Universal, It can have
nothing
outside Itself to constrain it to act contrary to its own desire. Being
the
homogeneous, non-dissociable, limitless One, It can have no rivals; and
there
is no place in the Universe for any spirit or Being contrary to Its
Nature.
"If God be for us, who can be against us?" Thus, when we speak of the
"Cosmic Consciousness," we are speaking of the omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent One, whom we call God.
THE NAMES
OF GOD
Is there any advantage in using
this other term for God or our
Father? Only that it may bring home to us a new meaning and confidence.
Whatever
our earlier experience may have found in God, whatever peace, poise,
faith,
hope, and companionship there has been for us in the God of our earlier
faith,
can only be beautified and intensified by a deeper knowledge of His
nature. And
we can say with a greater intimacy of knowledge, "I know him in whom I
have believed." The Cosmic Consciousness is the Infinite Spirit of
Intelligence that "made and rules the summer flowers and all the worlds
that people starry space." A mystery of being? Yes, but no more a
mystery
than we find on every hand. We explain physical action and reactions as
due to
chemical affinity, capillary action, attraction of gravity, and so
on, and
think we have explained; but have we? What are these forces? What is
force? Can
any materialist among the scientists tell us? Only a true recognition
of the
mental nature of the universe can answer this question. This, at
least, the
mental scientist can say: If we are to judge by the way they act, force
and
thought are the same thing. There is no distinction between what we
call force
and what we call thought, for force is Mind at work; and Mind at work
is
thought.
It is plain then that the
Cosmic Consciousness is Intelli-gence:
for it acts by thought; it is Life, for all life is derived from it: it
is
Wisdom, for wisdom is harmonious action; and Spirit, as One, cannot
know
friction from another Will: it is therefore Harmony: It is Beauty, for
beauty
is merely the orderly arrangement of parts: It is Love, for love
is the unity
of kindred things: It is all that man calls "good." And yet we must
not confound this good with any idea of contrast as
over against anything that we call bad, for
that introduces two forces into the universe, God and a Devil, and to
admit a
Devil is to admit not a unitary universe, but a dualistic; and we have
just
seen that the universe is one. Jesus himself called attention to this
as of the
first importance. The greatest and first saying of the Mosaic law, said
he, is
this, "Hear O Israel, the Lord, thy God, the Lord is one, and beside Me
there is no other."
Accordingly by Good, we mean
that which is real or true and
that God as the Real and the True is the author of all that makes life
beautiful, happy, and satisfying. And by the same token, we must
perceive that
what we call "bad" is merely failure to work in harmony with the law
of the Good. Evil, then, is wrong thinking, the thing of a day. Truth
is
harmonious action, the thing of eternity. The one passes away, the
other
endures.
The Cosmic Consciousness is
therefore everything that is
true, eternal, enduring. And thinking of God in these terms of
intelligence and
bigness, ready to become to us just what we ask or think, we dare to
launch our
desire into the infinite, knowing that our vessel will return laden
with the
cargo which our faith has collected.
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