LESSON I
OMNIPRESENT LIFE
Helen Wilmans
A
Home Course in Mental
Science
Benedict Lust, N.D. M.D.,
Publisher
New York, 1921.
[11]
Emerson says there is but one mind, and
that we are all different expressions
of it.
The Mental
Science student means the same thing
when he says there is but one Life, of
which we are but individual
manifestations.
If there
is but one Life, then life is
omnipresent--it fills all space. There
is nothing outside of it. Indeed, there
is no outside. There is but one Life.
This Life is the universal Principle of
Being that men call God.
There is a
Life Principle, and it is unlimited; it
is one. It holds the visible universe
in place, though it is invisible. It is
a self-existent principle. It underlies
universal law. It is the one Law--the
Law of Attraction--and beside it there
is no other law. It is also the very
essence of love; and the recognition of
it as love is expressed by us in love
for each other.
All the
races of men have felt the presence and
the power of this Law of Attraction,
whose ultimate expression is love, or
life, in a myriad of different
forms.
The
undeviating Law has never been
violated, and never will be. And this
is our hope. It is unchanging,
diseaseless, deathless; and a knowledge
of it conforms us to it in a way
that renders us diseaseless and
deathless.
For the
law does permeate all visible forms. It
is one with all substance. And no doubt
that an expanded and spiritual
interpretation of the word
“God” has been the
foundation for the expression that
“God and man are one.”
For, in
spite of the personal, and, therefore,
limited interpretation of the word God,
there have been in all ages of the
world a few thinkers who were not so
entirely confined to its narrow
meaning, but they were able to see it
in an enlarged, in a spiritual sense;
in a sense that proved it to be the
moving impulse of all visible life. And
these men have said, “God and man
are one.”
A more
scientific statement of the same truth
would have been this: The Law and man
are one; or, man and all the visible
universe are one with the law of their
being--one with the indestructible Life
Principle, or the Law of Attraction;
the Love Essence.
Now, the
object of Mental Science, as I teach
it, is to rescue man from his beliefs
in his own limitations by showing him
his true relations to the Universal
Law; thus demonstrating to him the
unlimited possibilities of his
being.
Unlimited,
I say, because he is in the image and
character of the omnipotent Law. He is
an exponent of the Law, and cannot
divorce himself from it, except by his
own false and foolish beliefs.
To be
divorced from the Universal Spirit of
Life would be instant annihilation. On
the other hand, to know more of this
Universal Spirit of Life than we now
know, would be to have more life, more
health, more strength, more
intelligence, more beauty and more
opulence. Or, rather, it would be to
be these things, instead [12] of
having them. To truly mental creatures,
such as we are, knowing more is
being more.
The crying
want of the race is a remedy for
present conditions of sickness, poverty
and death; and the whole strength of my
effort in these lessons is to furnish a
clue to this remedy. Now is the time to
be saved. Tomorrow will not only bring
its own needs, but its own
remedies.
In Mental
Science, the great principle laid down
is this: Man is conjoined to the
Eternal Life Principle. He is that
Principle--its very self in
objectivity--and in proportion as
he becomes intellectually conscious of
this tremendous truth, he finds an
unfailing supply to all his needs, and
grows more into a knowledge of his own
mastery.
We are
manifestations of the unchanging Life
Principle; of the Universal Spirit of
Being; the inextinguishable I AM. It is
the soul to nature--the body. It is
internal man. Man is the external of
it. And the seeming two are
one.
This Law,
or Principle, is man in
subjectivity.
Visible
man is the Law, or Principle, in
objectivity.
When the
race knows this great truth, it will
appreciate its own dignity and worth
and power, and then there will be no
more (so-called) sin and sickness and
death; no more shedding of tears; no
more want or sorrow or the feebleness
of old age. We shall know that we are
one with the deathless Law of Being,
and that our progression through the
realms of the universe will be by
constantly knowing more and more of the
power and beauty and opulence of the
Law, which is the vital spark within
us.
A
condensed expression of the principles
of Mental Science would read as
follows:
There is but one substance.
This substance is both seen and
unseen.
On its unseen side, it is the
Universal Spirit of Life, or the Law
of Attraction, which is love.
On its seen side, it is Intelligence,
or mind--falsely called dead
matter.
All is
real. All is transitional. All is
perpetual. The universe yields its
substance to man in proportion as he
comes into an intellectual
understanding of it.
There is
no limit as to the supply you may
receive; there need be no limit to your
demand. But unless you demand aright,
you may as well not demand at all.
Mental Science will teach you how to
demand; and in so doing, it will unlock
the store-house of the universe to
you.
The
universe is one mighty magnet, having
its positive and negative poles. In
Mental Science, the two words
“positive” and
“negative” explain the
whole. And yet these words are used to
describe relative and not
absolute conditions; and the
words themselves are relative in their
application. There is nothing
absolutely positive. The
whole--everything we can see or get any
conception of--is one grand, sliding
scale; the negative growing into the
positive, and the positive into the
more positive throughout all time. The
words which will best explain negative
and positive are
“unintelligent” and
“intelligent,” or
“unripe” and
“ripe.” Let me illustrate.
The rocks are extremely negative as
compared with my hand, and my hand is
negative as compared with my brain, and
my brain is negative as compared with
that essence which it generates, and
which we call
“thought.”
And yet,
it is all one substance, through and
through the great whole. Thought is
substance just the same as rock is; the
endless variety of objects and
conditions to be met with everywhere
is this one substance in many
different degrees of positive and
negative development, the
difference in the manifestation being
due to different degrees of
development, and not to difference in
substance. We can think of nothing that
is not substance. This one substance is
apparent in all the different forms of
life, both animate and inanimate--in
the minerals, animals, [13] plants, and
in man, it expresses itself in
different degrees of positive and
negative (or intelligent and
unintelligent) development. The rocks
are not so intelligent as my hand, and
my hand is not so intelligent as my
brain, etc.; but the rock is not
absolutely negative, not absolutely
devoid of intelligence, or vitality,
because it contains the possibility of
all development, and it does develop.
The possibility of all life is in it.
It bides its time for incorporation
into these bodies of ours and its
evolvement into the highest
thought.
And where
is the dividing line between positive
and negative? In strict truth, there is
no dividing line; but for the sake of
convenience in making these lessons
clearer we will establish one; and it
shall be at that point in development
where we begin to be consciously
intelligent; where we begin to reason
on things, and to investigate ourselves
and our surroundings. In short, it
shall be as nearly as possible at that
point where the intuitive life of the
lower order of animals passes into the
consciously intelligent life of
man; though it must be remembered that
even inanimate things have
intelligence, but their intelligence is
unconscious; by which I mean
that it takes no thought of itself;
does not reason on itself. Man is the
highest expression of conscious
intelligence. It is the
consciousness of intelligence
that makes him the creature of power
that he is, and that gives him the
authority to rule over all things. I
have said that the universe is one
mighty magnet. It is all one. It is not
hard to understand that all the varied
forms of life--seen and unseen--are
composed of this one mental substance
when we consider that steam, snow and
ice are all different conditions of
water. “Uni” means one.
This idea of oneness must have had firm
lodgment in the minds of those who
first began to formulate our language;
hence the name universe as
applied to the whole. The universe is a
universe, and not a
diverse. Bear this in mind; for
if the student loses sight of this
point in these lessons, his bearings
will be gone, and from that time on, he
will find nothing in them that he can
clearly understand.
The
universe, to be a universe and not a
diverse, is composed altogether of one
substance, elaborated into many and
varied forms of individuality, both
animate and inanimate. The substance
out of which all is evolved is the same
throughout the whole, but the degrees
of development, or intelligence, differ
in regard to negative and positive, or
immature and more mature expression.
For it is the degree of
development, or intelligence, in an
object, that gives character to the
object--size, form, color, power of
motion, etc. In other words, each
individuality is dependent for that
which makes it more or less
individualized upon the degree to which
its intellect is developed.
And what
shall we call this one substance of the
universe; mind or matter? We cannot
call it matter because the word is used
and understood to express the absence
of intelligence and vitality, when in
reality there is not an atom in all the
universe absolutely devoid of
intelligence and vitality. We must call
this one substance of which all is
evolved “mind,” or
“mental substance,” or
“intelligence,” to
distinguish it from the old belief in
dead matter.
But for
this point we might call the universal
substance by any other name, provided
we understood that there was only one
substance. The visible universe is one
vast mind; one vast laboratory for the
evolvement of truth, or the making
manifest of the Law.
The Law
alone is absolute. All visible life is
the manifestation of certain phases of
the Law. It is the making apparent of
many shades of the Law through many
different shades of recognition of the
Law’s power. Every manifestation
is intelligence, and all intelligence
shows forth as substance.
And did we
have our starting point, ‘way
back, millions of ages ago, in the
deadness and dullness of such crude
[14] beginnings of intelligence as the
rocks exhibit? Who can say we ever had
a beginning? We must have been latent
in the eternal mind forever. But there
was a time when we were organized in
individuality, no doubt, but still
individuality. Drawn to
coherence through the Law of
Attraction, we became individual lives;
and we have come up through the ages,
always accreting intelligence through
the power of recognition and
appropriation, until we are here
today and able to reason about our long
journey, our surroundings, and how to
gain such control over them as to mold
them to our liking. To mold these
surroundings to our liking is the
secret of Mental Science which these
lessons are attempting to unravel. We
have been helpless because we did not
know our strength--not because
we did not possess strength. Strength
has been latent within us, and so has
health, because Omnipresent Being is in
everything, constantly developing from
negative to positive--and constantly
asserting a riper unfoldment of its own
enormous vitality. But only knowledge
could make us aware of this, and the
knowledge was lacking.
The law is
the great I am. It existed
always, and may be had for the
perceiving. The first step toward the
appropriation of truth is to recognize
it. This is the fulfilling of the first
injunction: “Believe, if you
would be saved.” Belief is
recognition. It is the wakening of the
intelligence to a perception of truth.
To recognize a truth is to believe it.
After believing--recognition--what
then? To him that overcometh are
all the promises given. And that which
we are to overcome is our former habit
of unbelief in the omnipotence and
omnipresence of Eternal Being. To climb
high enough in the scale of
intelligence to perceive that a truth
is a truth, is to place that truth
within our reach; and is
recognition. To then bring our
will-power into operation, and by its
operation to overcome our former
unbeliefs that conflict with the
acceptance of the new truth, this will
make that truth our own; and is
appropriation. We grow step by
step in this mighty magnet--the
universe--by recognition and
appropriation of truth. We have now
come up far enough in the light of our
constantly increasing intelligence to
recognize a very great truth,
indeed--the truth that in all the
universe there is no evil,
nothing but absolute Life or Being; and
because we have at last recognized this
master truth, we are called upon to
bring all our past beliefs under review
and judge them by a stronger light than
they were ever subjected to before.
The
evolutionary view of creation is the
correct one. That man has ascended the
scale of life from the nomad, I do not
doubt. For man to be all, it is
necessary that he should live
all. We have lived all so far as we
have come; no less a power than that
gained by having conquered every
condition of life that we have been
over; for it is only by overcoming our
environments through intelligence, or
the recognition of truth, and the
exertion of the will in its
appropriation, that we come into such
power as will enable us to mold our
conditions to our liking--thus
establishing us consciously in
our true position of mastery. Since man
is the highest expression of the Law of
Being, and since his life lay folded in
the animal life, and the animal life
lay locked in the vegetable life, and
the vegetable life was unwrapped from
the remoter earth conditions still; and
since he has gained the apex in his
long series of developments by conquest
over crude conditions through his
increasing knowledge and appropriation
of truth (whether he gained it
consciously or otherwise)--he is at
the present time master of the earth
and all its conditions. He is
master by virtue of having lived
all below him--lived every obstacle out
of sight--and put every one under his
feet. His being in the human form, with
a dim foreshadowing of his free moral
agency is a proof of his mastership.
But he has not recognized this, because
the [15] conquest and the effort to
attain it were almost unconscious with
him up to the present time, when his
reasoning faculties are just beginning
to develop; when he is just coming into
the position where he can see what he
has been doing, and can trace the long,
slow journey by which he became the
embodiment, or expression, of all the
truth or intelligence he has recognized
on the way.
Man, like
the universe, is a magnet; he is a
whole. Being a whole, he has his
positive and negative poles. Thought is
the positive pole of the magnet man,
and his body is the negative pole; and
between these two poles of positive and
negative, he ranges the entire scale of
his life.
Thought
is the most positive, and hence the
most powerful factor in the magnet man.
His brain is probably the next most
positive degree or factor in him,
because it generates the thought which
controls him. The brain, then, is more
negative than the thought. His body,
controlled by the thought which his
brain generates, is more negative than
either brain or thoughts; thus showing
that the physical body (the negative
role of the magnet man) is the most
closely allied to the negative earthly
conditions of any part of him; and
being the most negative or earthly
part, he has already gained control
over it in having conquered earthly
conditions to reach his present
position. The old history says that man
was created out of the dust of the
earth. This statement, with its mental
interpretation, is in full accord with
the evolutionary theory, and is
literally true. The life of man was and
is found contained in that crude
stratum of mind called “the dust
of the earth.” And it is the
effort of Mental Science to make this
apparent to the student, in order to
put those negations of the Life
Principle or the Law of Being, called
sin, sickness and death, under his
feet. Then, as I have said, we have at
last climbed to a recognition of a
saving truth, and, therefore,
absolute--the truth that all is good
and there is no evil; or that all
is life and there is no death.
I call
this truth absolute. Being
absolute, it makes the demand that
every truth not absolute shall adapt
itself to it. For the absolute does not
conform. It stands in mighty majesty,
just as it has stood forever,
compelling each soul who climbs to a
sight of it to re-adjust every thought
of his life to conformity with it.
Every life is a manifestation of truth
as far as it goes. As far as it
manifests anything, it manifests a
certain degree of truth, or Being. A
snake manifests a certain amount of
truth, or Being; but the truth, or
Being, manifested by the snake, is
negative to the truth, or Being,
manifested by me; and the truth, or
Being, I now manifest, is negative to
that which I will manifest when I learn
more of the truth, or the Law of Being.
A greater truth circumferences minor
truths. It holds them in solution, as
it were. A greater truth is all the
minor truths, and something more. And
thus is man’s life a chain of
ever widening truth.
The whole
growth of our lives depends on our
power to recognize more and still more
truth, or Being. The recognition of
truth is being truth. For we are just
what we recognize. To recognize in a
small, limited way, we ourselves are
small and limited. To recognize that
truth is boundless, and to keep
discarding the old, ignorant beliefs,
and prospecting farther ahead,
resolutely investigating all that is
worthy of prejudice, a single obsolete
opinion to hold us, this is the way to
add to our knowledge of truth, and
thereby to widen and deepen and
strengthen the well-springs of eternal
Being within our personal lives; thus
enabling us to gradually overcome every
form of disease and old age and finally
death.
It is by
recognition and appropriation of truth
that we grow. We take no step forward
except by growth. We cannot fly through
the universe on the wings of the wind,
nor of our own imaginings. [16] We must
grow our way through the future as we
have done through the past--by the
recognition and the appropriation of
truth--and we must yield hard effort in
payment of our passage as we go. Truth
does not give herself to the sluggard.
She demands the full life service of
the man as her recompense.
Let me
repeat. The Law of Being, or the
Eternal Life Principle, exists. It
simply is. It had no beginning,
and it can have no end. It is the Law
of Attraction inherent in mind or
substance. And all substance is
mind--it is intelligent. It is not only
intelligent, but it is intelligence its
very self. It is the recognition
of the Life Principle by which the Life
Principle is fixed in belief and
becomes a visible manifestation.
The
visible universe is the Life
Principle’s recognition of
itself. All things are dual in the
sense of being internal and external.
Now the universe is dual in the sense
of exterior and interior; or seen and
unseen; or energy and intelligence;
intelligence being that attribute of
the Life Principle by which it
recognizes itself or its own functions
and powers.
Thus the
universe is one, though, in a sense
dual in its oneness. It is all Life
Principle on its unseen side, and all
the perception of the Life Principle,
or the recognition of the Life
Principle, or the belief in the Life
Principle, on its seen side.
These
perceptions, or recognitions, or
beliefs, change constantly; but the
Infinite Principle of Life never
changes. The personality of man belongs
to the seen side of life. It is
individual recognition of the power and
functions of the Law. It may be strong
today and weak tomorrow, or it may
cease to recognize the Law and,
therefore, cease to manifest it. This
we call death.
At the
present time there is scarcely any
knowledge of the Law at all. The lives
of the present day are more a negation
of the Law than a recognition of it.
This is why the race is so feeble and
sickly and wretched and poverty
stricken, and why it grows old before
it has gained any life-saving
knowledge, and dies before it has begun
to grow rightly.
Up to the
present time, the children of men have
been abortions. As seed germs of a
nobler growth, they have simply had
vitality enough to reproduce themselves
on the same plane of utter negation of
all saving knowledge of the Law,
without the power to put forth a
solitary sprout leading upward to that
life above the soil in which they are
withering.
You ask
why--if the race is a negation of the
Law rather than a recognition of it--it
should exist at all. It is because all
things, even recognition, is negative
as well as positive. Moreover, there
could be no positive recognition unless
preceded by the negative forms of
recognition. It is through a long
series of efforts on the part of
negative recognition that the power is
begotten to recognize on the positive
side.
Negation
of the Law is an incipient form of
recognition of the Law. It is a faint
or feeble effort to recognize it. The
terms “positive” and
“negative,” as I have
already said, are relative.
EXPLANATORY
My
expressions “Law of
Attraction,” “Life
Principle,” “Law of
Being,” “Life Force,”
“Vital Force” and
“Energy,” all have much the
same meaning; they all relate to the
unseen side of existence; to the moving
power which is out of sight, and which
is only perceived by its effects. To
perceive these effects is to
manifest them, and the manifestation is
the externalization, or the
showing forth, of the power of the
unseen or moving principle of
existence.
As there
are necessarily various terms used in
speaking of the unseen side of life, so
there are many terms used in speaking
of the seen side. Everything, indeed,
that relates to mental capacity, such
as the words mind, intelligence,
recognition, perception, concept,
understanding, truth--for [17] truth is
the verity or the proof of the
existence of the law--relates to the
visible side of existence. And I might
as well explain here that
“truth” is one of the most
comprehensive of all words; that its
real meaning includes every form of
belief, erroneous belief as well as
more correct belief. For truth means
simply verity, and it ranges the
entire scale of veritable or visible
manifestations from the most negative
to the most positive. The truth that
denies to man the power I claim for
him, is a truth on its own negative or
ignorant plane, no less than the truth
that man is a seed germ of all power.
The latter assertion is also truth, and
as a truth it is infinitely more
positive than the former truth.
Therefore,
the word truth means simply
manifestation, or the verification of
the Law, or of the Life Principle--the
Universal Energy, etc. The word
“truth” then, is synonymous
with mind, intelligence, recognition,
belief, etc., and relates to the
manifestation of the Law on the
external plane. But, as I said before,
the word “truth” being
negative as well as positive includes
the word “error,” just as
the word “intelligence”
includes (as its negative form of
expression) the word
“ignorance.” All of these
words that relate to the external side
of life are on the sliding scale from
negative to positive; from ignorant
beliefs to intelligent beliefs, and
from intelligent beliefs to still more
intelligent beliefs; from a very
limited conception of the Law of Being,
and the power of the Law, to a larger
conception of it. Therefore, in the
external world nothing is fixed;
everything is in incessant change, from
the fact that all creatures are
learning more and still more of the
power of the Law.
It is only on the unseen side that we
find the absolute and unchangeable;
the Eternal I Am, the Law of
Attraction, or Love, or
Life--Being.
LESSON
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
* * * * *
A Home Course in Mental
Science
Table
of Contents
