Chapter 8
AS A MAN
THINKETH
Abel Leighton
Allen
The Message
of New Thought
"Mind is the master-power that
molds and
makes,
And man is mind, and ever more he
takes
The tool of thought, and shaping
what he
wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a
thousand
ills:--
He thinks in secret, and it comes
to pass:
Environment is but his
looking-glass."
JAMES
ALLEN.
NATURE does not thrust powers and
accomplishments upon us. In her
infinite wisdom she left us a work to
perform. Endowed by Nature with
incipient powers, it was left to man to
develop them or not, as he should
determine.
Wisely was it ordained when man was
created that he should eat his bread by
the sweat of his brow. Labor has been
the propelling force in man's progress
and advancement in civilization.
Without it he would have placed no
value on that which satisfies his wants
and ministers to his comforts. We value
that most which we accomplish by our
own efforts, either physical or mental.
"Diamonds are found only in the dark
places of the earth; truths are found
only in the depths of thought," says
Victor Hugo.
That we may have a due appreciation of
the forces and powers within us, we
must learn to unfold and develop
them for ourselves. This we can do only
by the exercise of our own thought and
will power. If we wish mental power, we
can have it only as we exercise the
faculties of the mind and thus develop
and educate them for the work that
devolves upon us. If we wish character,
thought is the key to its development.
If we desire accomplishment along any
chosen line, we must put forth the
thought and effort necessary to produce
the sought-for results. If we wish to
utilize the subjective forces within,
only as we properly train the objective
mind to play upon them and impress its
thought upon them can we expect
valuable or important effects.
Cause and effect are written everywhere
in the universe. The law of
compensation is ever before our eyes.
If we would evade it, it steps in our
pathway to block our progress. We
must ever pay the price. Wherever there
is an effect, there was first a
cause.
Everything in the universe that we
observe, all the varied and marvelous
manifestations in Nature, all that
takes place in men's lives, proclaim
the truth and universality of this law.
From elections to worlds keeping their
orbits through infinite space, all
things animate and inanimate must obey
the positive mandates of this law. This
law is as inexorable, unerring, and
constant in the mental and spiritual
planes as in the physical universe. It
is never suspended, never varies; it is
fixed and eternal. The same law that
the planets obey, that causes the seed
to germinate and grow, that
brings the recurring seasons with equal
precision regulates and controls every
thought sent forth from the human mind.
Let us consider well what thoughts we
entertain, and how we shall send them
forth, for they are causes and will in
good time come into expression in our
own lives. As a man thinketh in his
heart, so is he. This wondrous truth is
old, and it is new. Its application is
new to us every moment of our lives.
Its real significance and true meaning
were never known until the discovery of
modern psychology.
Until we have learned something of the
nature of subconscious mind, we can
have but a faint understanding of the
import of this golden proverb. We must
first realize that the subconscious
mind has control of the functions and
forces of the body; that it is the
great mental and spiritual storehouse
of man; that it is amenable to every
suggestion of the objective or
conscious mind; "that the conscious
mind acts, the subconscious reacts; the
conscious mind produces the impression,
the subconscious produces the
expression; the conscious mind
determines what is to be done, the
subconscious supplies the mental
material and necessary power," before
we can understand its full meaning and
significance.
Translated into modern language, we
would say that as a man thinks deeply
and reaches down into the subconscious
mind and impresses it with his thought
the subconscious mind will respond
according to the nature of the thought
and impression.
Plato said: "Thinking is the talking of
the soul with itself." Thought is
dynamic. Thoughts are not things, but
the forces back of things; the creators
of things. Thought is power, thought is
force, thought is cause.
"Our todays are the result of our
past thinking, our tomorrows the result
of our present thinking. We have been
our own mental parents, and we shall be
our own mental children. All that a man
does and brings to pass is the vesture
of thought."
There is a correspondence between
thought and deeds, thoughts and
circumstances. Thoughts produce
conditions in our physical bodies, in
our lives and circumstances, according
to the character of those we harbor.
Emerson says: "The key to every man is
his thought. Sturdy and defying though
he look, he has a helm which he obeys,
which is the idea after which all his
facts are classified. He can only be
reformed by showing him a new idea
which commands his own,"
Every thought accompanied with deep
feeling, or impressed upon the
subconscious mind, produces chemical
changes and effects upon the body.
Thoughts of fear and anxiety disturb
the functions of the body and bring
weakness and disease. Pleasant,
agreeable, and joyful thoughts bring
health, strength, and poise.
"The pleasantest things in the world
are pleasant thoughts, and the greatest
art in life is to have as many of them
as possible."
The laws of mind are fixed, absolute,
and eternal. We are the results of the
sum total of our thinking. Thoughts are
revealed in our faces and manifested in
our lives. As we glance in the mirror,
we see the reflection of our thoughts.
Men foolishly believe their thoughts
are their own, and that they may
entertain them in secret and keep them
to themselves. Thoughts are not
secrets; they are not their own. Every
thought is registered in the archives
of the soul. Thought pencils the lines
in the brow. Thought plows furrows in
the cheek. Thoughts reveal their
character in the expression of the eye.
The face is the mirror, reflecting the
mind and thought of its
possessor.
Walt Whitman says:
"Sauntering the pavement or riding the
country road, lo! such faces.
Faces of friendship, precision,
caution, suavity, ideality!
The spiritual prescient face--the
always welcome common benevolent
face.
The sacred faces of infants, the
illuminated face of the mother of many
children.
The face of an amour, the face of
veneration.
The face withdrawn of its good and bad,
the castrated face;
This now is too lamentable a face for
man;
Some abject louse, asking leave to be
cringing for it.
This face is a haze more chill than the
Arctic sea;
Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch
as they go.
The melodious character of the
earth,
The finish beyond which philosophy
cannot go, and does not wish to
go,
The justified mother of men."
If we but observe, we too can see the
faces Whitman saw, as we saunter
through the highways and byways of
life. Similar faces appear in every
street and thoroughfare. Whitman looked
through the eyes of the seer, he saw
beyond the faces, he recognized the
silent causes there registered, he
understood. We, too, can look beyond
the expression to the cause and
understand they were all wrought in the
forge of thought. We can almost feel
the calculating thought of the man with
a face "A haze more chill than the
Arctic Sea." We can see a life of
unselfish love back of the face of "The
justified mother of men."
The character of thought betrays
itself, not only in the faces of men,
but in their lives and
characters as well. Thought determines
character. Thought is character. James
Allen has well said: "Think good
thoughts and they will quickly become
actualized in your outward life, in the
form of good conditions.
Control your soul forces, and you will
be able to shape your outward life as
you will. The difference between a
saviour and a sinner is this, that the
one has a perfect control of all the
forces within him; the other is
dominated and controlled by them.
"Dwell in thought upon the
grandest,
And the grandest you shall see;
Fix your mind upon the highest,
And the highest you shall be.''
What we sow, that shall we also reap.
Some men seem to think this law applies
only to outward acts and relates only
to the sowing in a physical world. But
the same law governs mind and
thought.
Thoughts of revenge, hatred, jealousy,
envy, and lust affect and mold the
character and lives of those who harbor
them as certainly as effect follows
cause. Sooner or later they will be
externalized and manifested in every
outward circumstance and condition of
life.
Thoughts generate health or toxins in
the system according to the kind of
thought entertained. Thoughts of
malice, fear, hatred, and envy
interfere with the normal functions of
the body, affect its secretions,
generate poisons, resulting in disease.
Thoughts of health, thoughts of joy,
thoughts of kindness, bring joy and
health to him who entertains them and
sends them forth.
If we think ourselves inherently bad,
we shall reap the fruits of that
thought. If we conceive of ourselves as
weak and unworthy, as Whitman said,
"Asking leave to be," we shall develop
those qualities and actualize them in
our daily lives. If we recognize divine
attributes as our inheritance, we shall
grow into the likeness of those
attributes. Whitman said: "I believe in
you, my soul--the other I am must not
abase itself to you. To me the
converging objects of the universe
perpetually flow."
It is the man of conscious power within
that wins in life's contest. He is
great, because his thought was first
great. The man who is conscious of the
potentialities of his own nature and
couples energy with that thought, is
master of circumstances. He is the
magnet that attracts power, attracts
success; he is success. A man may have
a lofty opinion of himself but as long
as he thinks small thoughts he will be
small. Man can only become great as he
thinks great thoughts, and to think
great thoughts he must seek to gain a
larger consciousness of real worth and
superiority.
Greatness is strength, without egotism.
It is power, with a desire that others
shall not recognize that power. Jesus
said, "Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth." He did not
employ the term "meekness" as the
synonym of "weakness." His thought was
that man should be great without
parading it, without ostentation:
strong without letting it be known.
This is the essence of all
greatness.
By the law of suggestion the
subconscious mind is amenable to the
thoughts and impressions it receives
from the conscious or objective mind.
The subconscious registers the
impression which is again given
expression in the life and character of
the individual. The subconscious
faithfully reproduces every mental idea
or state contained in the impression.
The law is as unerring as the law of
gravitation. As is the suggestion, so
is the result.
The subconscious is a rich soil, and
the seed thought planted therein by the
conscious mind will produce according
to its kind. If we plant flowers, we
shall pluck flowers. If we sow tares,
the crop will be tares. The
subconscious is an obedient servant. It
obeys the thoughts of the conscious
mind. What it receives, it reproduces,
and its effect is manifested in the
personality of the individual. If we
sow ideas of diseases, we shall reap a
harvest of disease. Thoughts of health
will be re-expressed in healthful
conditions. If we sow ideas of poverty,
that will be our portion. If we sow
thoughts of inferiority, weakness, and
fear, we shall build a personality
devoid of character and strength.
Ideals of abundance will produce
abundance, if we plus them with
intelligence and energy.
In that valuable little volume "The
Great Within," Mr. Christian D. Larson
has stated the law well and correctly.
"The subconscious mind is a rich mental
field: every conscious impression is a
seed sown in the field, and will bear
fruit after its kind, be the seed good,
bad, or otherwise. All thoughts of
conviction and deeply felt desires will
impress themselves upon the
subconscious and will produce their
kind, to be later expressed in the
personal being of man."
Since the subconscious is impressed
with every earnest and deeply felt
thought, it is easy to understand how
beliefs stamped upon youthful minds are
perpetuated in adult age, whether they
are true or false. The subjective mind
receives them in an impressionable age,
and there they remain and grow
throughout the years of life. Certain
institutions understand the
psychological law perfectly and
therefore insist on what they call
religious instruction in early life,
before they encounter any opposition
from auto-suggestion or independent
thought. The religious instruction
usually consists of teaching certain
creeds and dogmas, and in most
instances playing upon the emotions to
cause their teachings to be impressed
upon the subconscious. Fear has been
the favorite influence to cause these
impressions to become permanent in the
subconscious.
These impressions, being ground into
the subjective mind, remain to bring
forth fruit after their kind in the
succeeding years. It is no evidence of
their truth that they remain as fixed
belief in mature age. Men believe what
was impressed on the subconscious mind
in early life, because that belief has
become so firmly planted therein that
it becomes a habit. Habits thus formed
in childhood prevent the mind from
accepting any line of thought that does
not accord with those habits or
beliefs. They are accepted as
fundamentals, and logic and reason are
powerless to overcome them. Yet these
habits and beliefs, however firm or
fixed they may become, may or may not
be true. That they are thus believed in
mature life, by men of the highest
intellectuality, is no evidence of
their truth.
Men of greatest mental attainments
differ as widely in their religious
beliefs as the opposite poles of the
universe. They cannot all be true. The
question is asked, Why do intelligent
men differ so radically? The
explanation lies in a study of
psychological law, that the
subconscious mind is so thoroughly
impressed in childhood that the
impression is never eradicated, but
remains a fixed and permanent habit and
belief through life. Men are compelled
to believe as they do by reason of the
deep impression on the subconscious
mind. These impressions are so strong
that they color and warp everything
that enters into the mind thereafter,
even education itself. Thus education
and training become merely servants of
our earlier beliefs.
Then, too, ecclesiastical authorities
and ecclesiastical reverence are
important factors in silencing youthful
minds from questioning what they are
told. They are taught that they must
accept the instruction given, as the
final commands of authority, and to
make further inquiries would tempt the
divine patience. These become deep and
lasting impressions on the subconscious
mind, the tendencies of which are to
preclude further inquiries in later
years.
As long as the world continues to cling
to the idea that some men are clothed
with exclusive authority to teach
truth, or that their authority cannot
be questioned, so long will they be
able to fasten beliefs upon the human
mind that reason and judgment cannot
dislodge or eradicate.
So long as the child is taught that it
is dangerous to think except as his
spiritual advisers tell him and that he
must accept their interpretation of
what has been written, so long will he
refuse to see or accept truth or
enlarge his conceptions of truth.
Whatever his intellectual attainments
may be, he is likely to remain a
spiritual slave. Mr. Larson has well
said, "When you accept anything as
final, you bring your mind to a
standstill in that sphere of action;
and the fact that nearly the whole
world has accepted certain spiritual
ideas as final is the reason why
spirituality --real, living
spirituality---is almost unknown
today."
The conscious mind supplies the ideals
for the subconscious mind to work to
and bring forth into expression. This
is a subject for the deepest thought
and consideration, and is the key to
all true mental training. As is the
ideal, so will be the expression. It is
of the utmost importance that proper
and truthful ideals be always held
before the subconscious, for whatever
they are they will find expression in
the life, character, and personality of
the individual.
Chapter
9
* * * * *
The Message of New Thought
Table of
Contents
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