Life begins with a question mark, and
it should end with an exclamation point! Our business here is to know
the realities, to accept them as such, to interpret life’s meaning by
the facts, and to adjust our thinking and living to that meaning. In
this way we open the whole field of knowledge. From this search for
knowledge we develop certain final statements of truth, which are
inclusive and conclusive, if not self-evident, which we call
categories.
The first category is Being, embracing all that we know
or may know of life, of substance, spiritual or material. The second is
Reality, embracing the
truth
in the unconditioned Absolute, and the relative. The third category is
that of Quantity, which
includes the truth of unity, plurality and totality. The fourth one is
the category of Quality,
having reference to reality, negation, and limitation. The fifth is Relation, embracing substance and
attribute, cause and effect, action and reaction. The sixth is Modality, embracing possibility,
actuality, and necessity.
These are loose adaptations of
Aristotle and Kant’s famous categories. We accept the categorical
imperative for all life in our study, which is the absolute claim of
moral law to our obedience, the legal supremacy of the right, as
revealed by scientific knowledge and as asserted by conscience or the
moral sense, over human life. We have not followed these categories in
any formal way, but have always kept them in view while blazing the
trail in a wilderness of opinions, where so many have pioneered, but
few have left any helpful landmarks.
We intend to interpret life according
to scientific principles, to present obligation in a rational
philosophy, to outline a conception of God, and formulate a destiny
based upon science and philosophy’s dealings with our experience,
rather than past traditions. We do not disregard or discredit these
traditions when they have any content of proven value, but use them as
side lights to interpret life. We seek to explain only one phase of
life: If there is a God, why do so many troubles loom so large? The
very inadequacy of the answers to this question has made many despair
of finding a suitable answer.
The origin, the course, and the end of
troubles resolve into a ministry whose outcome is beneficent. As we
ponder the course of human development, the furnace of trouble has
played a mighty part in the world’s evolution – from chaos up to form,
order and beauty, from animalism, to savagery, to barbarism, and
finally up to civilization. It has been our one chief means of
extracting the clinkers and slag from human nature.
The scientific observer beholds the
sparkle the fast-flying emery wheel of trouble polishing some rough
diamond of spirituality. We see pig iron refined into finely-tempered
spring steel by heat, chemical action and heavy hammering. We behold
the entire universe, which is ultimately one Spiritual Substance, and
the fundamental law that raising lower energy forms to a higher
expression requires heat, stress, and eons of time to reach the stage
of soil and fruit. This material world process corresponds to the
action of pain and trouble in lifting human nature from animalism to
Godlikeness.
All things in this universe are
incorporated into a University of Hard Knocks, into which we
matriculate ourselves at birth. It offers no correspondence course, no
proxies. Attendance is compulsory. We all begin as pupils and end
sometime, somewhere as masters. Life adapts the course to each pupil.
Just how we will have trouble depends
upon our heredity, environment, temperament, and other factors that
lend a personal bias. One takes his schooling in one allopathic
knockdown dose of calamities, while another gets hers in little
homeopathic pellets of annoyance. We may not always choose how we will
receive the lessons – life seems to adjust them to us automatically.
However, we may choose how well we learn them, and how soon we may
graduate. It is just possible that we may, as many have done, suggest
improvements in the course of instruction to the Absolute Wisdom, our
teacher, only to find that He retires into "ways that are not our ways,
and thoughts that are not our thoughts."
Sometimes we throw down our books and
quit school over night. Yet in the morning we find the tutors of pain
and trouble remain, and that school keeps right on. Daily we add new
words to our vocabulary. Every day an angel turns a new page in the
great book of life, and we find a new set of words to learn. Monday we
spell "joy," and Tuesday we wonder why we find lusterless "grief."
Wednesday we learn to spell "love," and too often we next learn
"disappointment." Friday we spell "happiness," and another day we read
"sorrow." One day we spell "wealth," the next day we meet the
hatchet-faced teacher, "want." Some words we have learned repeatedly,
until they are our very own. Often we rebel and feel like quitting
school, only to find that we cannot until we have at least learned to
take good and bad with equal good grace.
Often we worry about tomorrow’s
lesson. We find that the words that troubled our thoughts and dreams
are not on the page at all, but new and strange ones. When will we
learn that "sufficient unto the day is the spelling lesson thereof?" We
would go to school with a happier attitude and come home to a
refreshing rest if we were content to learn today’s lesson. As life
proceeds, we learn at length that some great, loving and wise purpose
lies back of all our experience, directs our schooling, and interprets
our thoughts and actions according to their spirit, rather than their
form.
This course is personally conducted.
It is yours while you are taking it, and the results will be yours when
you are promoted. You begin as a pupil, you develop into a student, you
are promoted to a teacher, and you unfold into a master. It matters not
whether you finish the course in this world. Having entered, you may
not quit until you finish the course. The illustrious ones of every age
are those who, without shrinking, have taken good and bad alike with
full understanding of their purpose and results, and have passed upward
into divine or cosmic consciousness.
Chapter 1
The College of Science,
Natural and Otherwise
Science’s function is to discover,
describe and register facts regarding the ways of being and of
happenings. It finds events occurring in a certain way, and formulates
the hypothesis that all similar facts occur in that way. This
hypothesis, which explains that class of occurrences, becomes known as
a law.
Science furnishes us with the great
hypotheses of gravitation, the undulatory theory of light, the
electronic theory of physics, the "Big Bang" hypothesis of cosmology,
evolution, etc. Since these theories of operation were the best
explanations of the facts in a given series of events, observers
accepted them as the law of procedure in their respective realms.
Similarly, by scientifically observing the effects of various methods
of directing mental and moral action for the individual and society’s
welfare, we have evolved a knowledge of the laws governing mind, morals
and conduct.
Science, concerning itself with matter
and material happenings, gathers a mass of facts, classifies them and
discovers how they happen. Certain axioms have arisen from this
scientific study, valuable self-evident truths, such as, "Out of
nothing, nothing comes. There is a cause for every effect. Nothing just
happens." The laws of matter apply to all material things, no matter in
what form they exist. The law of gravitation acts on the human body,
just as it does on a piece of iron, and no amount of thinking can
suspend this law.
The nutrients and methods of
metabolism, or change, are similar in all living forms. Oxygen, alone
and in combination with other chemicals, is indispensable to all
material life. Water is a large element in all living bodies.
Under the law of the conservation of
energy, the form of these bodybuilding factors may change, but
the substance must be present. Literally, "No man by merely
taking thought can add a cubit to his stature." Pure thinking alone can
no more build the body than can feeding the body train the mentality
without mental activity and "thought sustenance." Elijah, hungry,
deserted his duty, but twelve hours of sleep and two square meals made
him the lionhearted prophet again.
The body must have a proper ratio of
proteins, fats and carbohydrates, with water and minerals, and no
mental or spiritual substitutes exist for these. Science determines
that the mental powers develop through contact with the material world,
acting upon it and reacting to it.
The brain, the instrument of mental
activity and power, reaches its maximum weight about the age of forty.
Then it begins to decline in weight and efficiency, unless kept
constantly active by feeding on new truths, wrestling with new
problems, and seeking new achievement, in which case it constantly
increases in power. No material nor spiritual substitute exists for
mental exercise in the realm of truth and fact. A law of the mind
exists, just as does a law of the body.
The development of the spiritual life,
while largely influenced by the body’s condition, through the nervous
system and the mind in their contacts with the world of material
things, cannot depend on either material or mental things for its
sustenance. The soul must find its nourishment in a realm of purely
Spiritual Substance, and be sustained by discourse and communion with
an ultimate Spiritual Being.
Beyond the study of such exercises and
their effects, science has made no explicit pronouncement as to the
essence of the realm of Spirit. However the spiritual activities and
their effects warrant a cause, just as do movements and effects
elsewhere.
The ideas of God, the soul’s
immortality, the rational exercise of prayer, the effects of faith,
hope and love in producing character, all stand upon the same logical
base as do the theories of gravitation, evolution and other great
scientific doctrines. Their fundamental principles are identical, and
their manner of proof is similar. They best explain the facts to which
they relate.
The material method of science is one
of exactness by weight and measure. It has the facts in hand. In
studying the mind, the method deals with mental action and the results
left behind as the mind proceeds from the self as a center. In
spiritual things it depends upon secondary evidences, for example,
faith produces peace and content. These are determined and reported by
the actions and experiences of those who exercise and enjoy them.
A difficulty common to scientific
study of mental and spiritual activities is that the same stimulus
fails to affect two people in the same way, mentally or emotionally.
They do not see or feel alike. Also, the reliability of their states
and experiences is not always dependable, especially their reports and
explanations of the causes. Finally, the difficulty of reproducing
their experiences makes it necessary for science to generalize by
studying the spiritual activities of humanity at large. We may take no individual
experience as a criterion.
Science also discovers spiritual
occurrences and experiences that lie outside the methods of material
activity. It discovers the ego, or self, experiencing and perceiving
activities outside the range of the five senses, and the realm of
three-dimensional activity. It therefore posits, because of these
facts, a fourth dimension as a possible field of activity and
experience, such as Jesus used when he sent a vibration across a space
to heal the nobleman’s son. It also posits a sixth sense of universal
power of perception: Elisha, the prophet, saw the hosts of limitless
Power on his side, ready to help at Dothan. Jesus saw Nathaniel around
a material corner.
Science, from tabulated facts,
recognizes that character, intangible but very real, arises from such
spiritual activity. It also recognizes that we can grade and classify
character, every individual form of life eventually finds its own
level. Every person comes or goes to his own place according to a
certain "affinity" or spiritual gravitation.
Science, applying the law of the
conservation of energy, recognizes that all seen things have come from
the unseen, and that they may be resolved again into the unseen. Since
the source and goal is unseen, it follows that supplies from the unseen
constantly maintain all life and all that pertains to life, which God
sustains through the channels of activity, called laws.
Science reaches the dignity of Divine
Science when, by using the scientific method, they observe that all
things proceed from a first great Spiritual Cause, whose methods of
operation are uniform, whose effects are unfailing. The most potent
agencies are those nearest the purely spiritual. Those that we call
mental take their place lower down in the scale, while material forms
of energy are still less refined. Yet, they are divine energies,
adapted to use in their respective realms, as in Ezekiel 47:12 it is
said, "the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for
medicine."
Applying scientific methods to the
problem of health, we can study the incidents and experiences in the
careers of history’s great healers, and deduce certain general
principles. The first principle is that all disease comes from the
violation of law, technically called "sin." Thus, all healing,
technically called "righteousness" or "wholeness," comes by a return to
keeping the law.
Science finds many diseases and ills
of character purely material in their origin. Wounds, fractures,
lesions, infections, auto-intoxications and abnormal forms of cell
growth are in some way violations of material law. We cure them by
faithful obedience to the law that we have broken, and by using
material agencies, with a recognized specific action. Science
recognizes a large class of life’s ills, which arise from wrong
thinking habits or violations of mental laws, which we must cure by
reeducating the mind in the proper methods and thought habits.
Many ills and afflictions, both of
mind and body, grow from the violation of moral and spiritual laws,
whose cure must logically depend on the sufferer being restored to
harmony with the sources of moral and Spiritual Power and Life. The
great Healer himself stated the principle of all these classes of ills
arising from violation of the law, and their cure being in keeping the
law: "Thy sins be forgiven thee" – a declaration that invariably
attended and was understood in the injunction, "Be thou made whole." So
extensive was this truth that the Master Healer of the Ages made it
apply to every form of ill.
Facts gathered and classified by
scientific method reveal the common method of all healers, actively to
involve, or implicitly to depend upon the faith of the individual who
sought healing, or his friends’ faith. Without this faith, even the
Master himself "could do no mighty works."
The same scientific analysis of
healing reveals that faith was merely an instrument in the
healing. The patient must exercise implicit faith, no matter whether
the things that he believes are true or the person in whom he trusts is
genuine. Faith is the means of arousing within the patient powers that,
operating through the channels or laws of heath, restores the sick one.
The same analysis of healers’ methods reveals a spiritual quality in
the healer and in the patient, which proceeds from some unseen,
limitless reservoir of health and power.
Some mighty practitioners of healing,
such as Elijah and Jesus of Nazareth, frequently relied on the element
of physical contact and the use of material agencies. Elijah used the
working principle of the modern artificial respirator to restart a
boy’s breathing. Jesus touched blind eyes, deaf ears, paralyzed bodies,
put spittle upon the tongue. He anointed a blind man’s eyes with clay,
which by the time he had traveled to the pool of Siloam and scrubbed
off this sticky mess, had by manipulation thoroughly stimulated the
circulation and nervous activity in his eyes, besides arousing his
faith and expectation. We observe the same practice of material
contacts in the experiences of Paul, Peter and James. Similar
scientific analysis reveals the fact that a healer can send healing
vibrations without the use of oral word or direct contact with the
patient, as we see in the healing of the nobleman’s son and the
centurion’s servant.
The scientific deduction from these
facts is that the use of material agencies alone is sufficient in many
cases of purely physical ill to set in operation the healing powers
that work through physical law. Right thinking, established in many
mental disorders, will restore the sufferer to normal mental balance
and experience. The restoration of harmony with the Spiritual Source of
Life – the Infinite God – will produce health commonly arising from
spiritual disharmony. In other cases, combining two or all these
classified powers will prove effective where one might fail. Finally,
whatever agencies may be used, we can trace their source to that region
of perfect health from which One spoke and said, "I am the Lord who
heals thee."
In its last scientific analysis,
therefore, health is a spiritual matter, the result of spiritual powers
having their source in the Absolute and operating through every agency
which embodies the energy of the great "I AM." Similarly, we may deduce
the truth that every good for us, whether it is peace, harmony, power
or abundance, arises from our relationship to the invisible and
Spiritual Reality, and it does manifest according to the measure of our
conscious realization of that fact.
If knowledge of the truth gives us
such wonderful privilege, then it also follows that ignorance of the
truth imposes our only limitation. The supreme test of scientific
method is that thinking does not make anything true. We can know only
that which we have put to the test. The only way to graduate from the
U.H.K. is to know things by proving them.
We are steadily moving back toward the
Power House. We are still waiting for some master who shall give us the
formula by which we may unlock the atom and set free its vast power to
replace our clumsy efforts at power, using the fast diminishing stores
of coal, gas and oil.
Likewise the whole world
is
waiting
the author of the Principia of the Spiritual Life, giving us
its powers, principles and laws so that the spoken word of truth shall
become the living word of the Christ. Its miracle-working power shall
banish the physical miseries of humanity by the finger of God, and make
men whole through spiritual realization. The day is here – the glory of
its dawn is upon us.
