YOUR GAIN FROM THESE
LESSONS
(A Personal Introduction by the
Publisher)
Benedict Lust, N.D. M.D.
New York, 1921.
You were
meant to achieve a great success. You
can learn how to be well, strong,
prosperous and happy. You can overcome
disease, poverty, fear, worry, weakness
of all kinds. You can do, have, and be
far more than you ever dared to
attempt, or even thought possible. You
have wonderful powers of mind and body,
that you need only recognize and use in
order to reach the very height of your
noblest ambitions and aspirations.
The
mission of these lessons is to help you
believe all this, and prove it. The
author of the lessons did prove it,
before writing the lessons. They are
not rainbow dreams of speculation, but
live chapters of personal experience
taken from the record of a teacher,
healer and philosopher known throughout
the world as one of the most powerful
thinkers and leaders that the world has
produced.
Millions
of people today who are using practical
psychology in their professional
duties, business problems, home
relations or personal life gained their
first knowledge of how to succeed from
the author of these lessons. Not only a
teacher, but a teacher of teachers,
this pioneer metaphysician gave to
hundreds of teachers and healers a
vision of what they could do for their
students and patients, and a vital
impulse and force irresistible and
inexhaustible.
Every
student or seeker of health, and every
drugless practitioner, needs a working
knowledge of Mental Science. The vital
organs and functions of the body depend
on the nerves for healthy action; the
nerves are controlled by the brain,
glands, solar plexus and subconscious
mind; all of which are made strong or
weak, healthy or sickly, normal or
abnormal, by the character of our
thoughts, emotions and
expectations.
The test
of a teacher’s truth is that he
has tried it out, and proved its
potency for himself, by himself, in
himself. Not many teachers do this.
Here is a teacher who has done
it. Your big source of inspiration and
expectation lies in that fact. You can
study these lessons with absolute
confidence in their power to guide,
help and transform you, just to the
extent of your faithful study and
practice of their truths.
A woman of
middle age, living among strangers,
torn by sorrows and worn by worries,
having no capital whatever, no
experience in managing a business, and
no money to pay her board bill, founded
a publishing concern that made money
from the start and put her on her feet
in a month after she went in business
by herself. That woman was Helen
Wilmans, Founder of Mental Science. No
other teacher, so far as we know, in
all the range of metaphysics, ever
began the work of teaching with so
powerful a demonstration.
Let her
tell the story in her own words:
“It may not be amiss here to
speak a word concerning my own
experience--it often happens that the
experience of another fires him who
hears it to a new effort--and I want
to tell how all things have conspired
to push and kick and starve me into
my present position of thought.
“My temperament is
lymphatic. I like my ease. I could
amuse myself with small pleasures. I
could bear much inconvenience and
endure bad treatment, finding
compensation in books, embroidery,
and other small enjoyments.
“But it seemed as if
everything I touched turned to
ashes--as if nature were in
conspiracy with fate to drive me on.
I lost my home, where I would have
been content to raise poultry for a
living. I was driven into newspaper
work from my very hunger.
“I was successful in this
work only a few months. My ideas
ripened too fast and I began, without
knowing it, to write ahead of the
demand made by the class of readers
who took the paper I was on. Then
this door shut in my face, and other
doors did the same, until I stood,
one sleety November day, out in the
Chicago streets with twenty-five
cents in my pocket, and not a soul on
earth from whom I felt free to ask a
dollar.
“And now note this: I was
stripped of every dependence save
that which I had in my lone self. And
oh, what a position it was! I shall
never forget it. Do you imagine that
I was frightened? The first attempt I
made to analyze my feelings brought
me the fact that I was not frightened
at all.
“Then came such a
consciousness of power as I never had
had before in my life. Everything was
swept from me and I stood alone in my
own strength. And this naked strength
is a tremendous thing to stand in.
There is nothing equal to it.
“For the first time in my
life I was perfectly erect; I touched
no one at any point. I felt myself an
unfathomable abyss of mighty
potencies. I was glad my purse was
empty; the thought of money should
never master me again. I started
toward my boarding house, with the
exultant freedom of a bird. I held a
power in my hands that nothing could
quell; that power was the absence of
fear--the sense of freedom, and the
consciousness of my own independent
and unaided strength.
“I went to my room and
began to write; and that article was
the most emphatic declaration of the
right of the ‘I’ that was
ever put in type. Looked at from a
conventional standpoint it was
utterly lawless. But when it came
out, it touched the people like a
shock of electricity. It said for
them what they wanted to say but
dared not. Hundreds of journals
copied it, and it ran through public
feeling like wildfire.
“I had just finished
writing it when there came a rap at
my door and my landlord came in. He
was a man who looked carefully after
his own interests.
“You came home
early,” he said, “and if
you do not care I want to know
why.” I told him that I had
lost my position.
“What will you do?”
he asked.
“I will make a paper of
my own that shall be free from the
fear of public opinion,” I
said.
“And then I read the
article I had written. Now this man
was almost a stranger to me. I simply
knew him by sight. When I read him
what I had written he stood up to go.
At the door he turned and with a
manner as respectful as if he had
been addressing a queen, asked if he
might have the privilege of
furnishing the money necessary to get
the paper out.
“But it was not
necessary. I finished writing the
other articles to be used and then
took them to the largest newspaper
publishers in the city. I told them I
wanted twenty thousand copies of the
paper. They asked no questions; the
paper came out in a few days and was
sent to such addresses as I could
command. The bill for the paper was
never presented to me. I called for
it some four weeks later and paid for
it out of the money that flowed in on
me in subscriptions, and I have never
lacked for a dollar since.
“I have told this for a
purpose, as the student may guess. I
want to show that the basis of
success rests in a person’s
power to stand alone; and no man will
ever be the magnet to attract success
until he can stand alone, straight
and tall as a liberty pole, glorying
in the position; free from fear;
independent of public opinion, and
daring to be himself. Here is the
strength that draws still greater
strength; here is that which all men
adore, and before which all false
assumptions of greatness doff their
tinsel crowns.”
This first
bold venture was the beginning of the
marvelous career of Helen Wilmans.
Going from strength to strength, always
aiming higher and achieving more, she
built a city, founded a colony, made a
fortune, wrote and published a library
of Mental Science, healed hundreds of
patients of all manner of ailments and
diseases, taught thousands of students
the way to heal, energize, upbuild and
emancipate themselves. You have, in
these lessons, the meat of all her
philosophy.
But,
because it is a new kind of mental
food, it must be taken slowly,
moderately, wisely. You will find it
strong meat for the mind. Perhaps it
won’t “agree” with
you at the start; many a wholesome food
for the body fails to
“agree” with the stomachs
of people who are somehow disordered;
just so, when the mind is very
sluggish, or feverish, or crammed with
undigested or ill-chosen thoughts, it
cannot receive and assimilate properly
the most nourishing mental food.
Do not
look for immediate results. Many of the
truths of these lessons are seeds to be
sown deep in your character, then
allowed to remain hidden while they
slowly take root and germinate. Most
people’s minds are choked with
weeds of error. You will have to spend
much time and effort pulling these out
before the seeds of truth can grow. Be
patient, be confident, be persistent.
The subconscious mind will yield ample
fruitage, and reward you richly, when
the time is due.
We are
prompted by an experience of
twenty-five years in teaching,
lecturing, healing and publishing to
offer a few suggestions whereby the
mastery of these lessons may be
rendered easier, and their value
higher. It is just as important to know
how to study as what to study, for
advancement.
1. Follow
the right study method. Fix your
method, and follow it. Don’t
study haphazard.
2. Plan a
regular study period. A lesson a week
is about all the average student has
time to think out and work out. The
best time in the day for study is
probably the early morning, before
breakfast. The next best time is the
evening, when you can be quiet and
undisturbed; never begin to study,
however, under an hour after you finish
the evening meal. Choose a time, in the
day and week, when you can be sure of
at least an hour, better two hours, of
unbroken solitude.
3. Take
the lessons in order. Master each
before you go on to the next. A basic
rule in either study or work is to
clean up as you go along--never leave a
job half done or poorly done.
Thoroughness, perhaps more than any
other quality or habit, makes a man
proficient. You cannot skim over these
lessons and realize much benefit; you
must dig down deep for their hidden
gold, as you would delve in a mine of
rare and precious metal.
4. Work
each lesson out, by mental and moral
exercise of your will. Make a habit of
doing something, whatever seems
to you the most important thing
suggested by each lesson, for a certain
number of days, regularly and
powerfully, immediately following the
study of that lesson. If it is only an
“affirmation” of health,
joy and strength, repeat it the first
thing in the morning, until the next
lesson furnishes another daily
exercise. You must train your mind for
healthy action by a series of mental
gymnastics. Your mind cannot be
thought into a high state of
vigor, clarity and efficiency, any more
than your muscles can; it must be
drilled and trained by exercise,
a constant repetition, and
demonstration, of the kind of thought
you wish to dominate the grooves and
cells of your brain.
5. Keep a
personal, private notebook for
comments, queries and exercises. A
notebook of approximate dimensions of
the coat pocket may be divided into
twenty blank sections, with a heading
for each specifying the number of the
lesson. You might put “Comments
and Queries” on each left-hand
page, and “Daily Exercises”
on each righthand page. The big purpose
of the notebook is to keep you
thinking, working, experimenting, on
original lines for yourself, and thus
proving and developing the mind forces
that are individual and supreme in
you, whatever they may be.
6.
Challenge the author, wherever you
disagree. Helen Wilmans claimed the
right to challenge the world--you have
as good a right to challenge Helen
Wilmans. Possibly she is wrong in a few
of her statements; no writer, no
teacher, was ever infallible. The
chances are, however, that in a case of
disagreement, your viewpoint is wrong,
not hers. Why? Because your thought is
likely to be inherited or acquired,
bought, borrowed, begged or stolen;
while her thought is likely to be her
own, therefore honest, keen, true.
Challenge her thought if you feel that
way; but make sure the question is of
your own experience, reason or
intuition, don’t insult her
honesty and your own intelligence by
retreating back of the world’s
fool opinion to save yourself a little
hard thought, and declaring her
statement incorrect when it is your
action that is cowardly. The fact that
you have held a certain opinion all
your life is pretty good proof that it
never was yours, created for yourself
by yourself; it was a
“hand-me-down” article, it
doesn’t fit you, it belongs in
the ragbag. If all you get from the
teachings of Helen Wilmans is a new
habit of mental sincerity, moral
bravery, spiritual candor, the final
reward that comes to you will repay
your study a thousand-fold.
7. Keep
your own counsel. Don’t talk
about Mental Science. Don’t
discuss with anybody the ideas offered
in these lessons. Your work and life
will do the talking--and the
convincing. When you talk about your
growth, you stop it, as you would stop
the growth of a flower by sending
blasts of superheated air across it.
When you attempt to proselyte, orate,
argue, or otherwise make a nuisance of
yourself, you merely stir up
antagonism, useless and harmful. Be
content to work out your own salvation.
Let other folks alone.
8.
[Written in 1921] Write me your doubts,
problems, queries, difficulties. They
will be answered, from time to time, in
the pages of my magazine “Herald
of Health,” by the best available
expert in psychology and efficiency; or
they will be referred to such an
expert, with whom I will arrange
personal consultations for our students
on special terms. You will be notified
in advance of incurring obligation or
expense, and there will be no charge
for my services in providing such
introduction or connection as your need
may call for.
9. Obtain,
for collateral reading, one or more of
the inspiring and empowering books by
Helen Wilmans, if any are still to be
had. These books are now rare and hard
to get, being mostly out of print, the
editions having been exhausted by the
great demand.
10. Pass
the benefit along. When you begin to
see how interesting, forceful and
helpful these lessons are, and what a
remarkable new line of thought and
progress they open up, think of your
friends, associates or employees who
would most appreciate and best use
them. It is a law of life that the more
we give the more we have to give. The
way to enjoy a blessing is to share it.
Your part in awakening and developing
the mind of the race will be to provide
an easy way for your friends to begin
the study of Mental Science.
B. Lust, Publisher
* * * * *
A Home Course in Mental
Science
Table
of Contents
