Chapter I
THOUGHTS TO BUILD UPON
W. John Murray
Mental
Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.
(Continued)
When man learns to govern his life according to Principle rather than
by personal opinion, he will not be swayed by externals. Realizing that
he lives and moves and has his being in that eternal order where
Harmony is the only state of consciousness, he will understand what
Jesus meant when He said, "Nothing shall by any means hurt you;" for he
will know that no thing which has proceeded from
Principle, can be in any wise injurious, and he will acknowledge
nothing that does not proceed from this One and
Only Principle. Herein lies the test to be applied to all man's
experiences. If they proceed from Principle, they are true and good; if
they are not true and good, they do not proceed from Principle: and man
is empowered by his knowledge of Truth to free himself from them by
saying to them, whatever their name or nature, "Get thee behind me,
Satan." Satan is the name given to that sum total of error which
masquerades as Truth, and [55] whose only reality is the reality which
men give to it by believing in it, and fearing it because they do
believe in it. In the spiritual infancy of the race, Satan was a person
of ugly or pleasing mien as it pleased ignorant humanity to regard him.
Then human consciousness expanded to the point where it robbed Satan of
all personality and made of it what theology called that "principle of
evil at work in the world;" and now consciousness has expanded still
farther to where it robs evil of all right to reality, on the ground
that God is all. Its pretentions are exposed until now it can deceive
only those who do not know its nothingness; just as a ghost, so-called,
can frighten a child so long as he does not know its unreality.
With this
perception of evil's nothingness, man is now free to consider
intelligently his own relation to the Infinite. No longer does he grope
in the dark concerning his own identity, for having discovered the
Principle of his Being to be God, and having also discovered that this
Principle never ultimates [56] itself in anything unlike itself, his
unity with God becomes first an intellectual persuasion, and then a
demonstrable science. It has been said that "The greatest study of
mankind is man," and this would be so were it not that God is prior to
man and hence the study of man rests upon the study of man's Maker.
From time immemorial those divinely inquisitive members of the race who
are ever in advance of those who take everything for granted, have
asked with the Psalmist, "What is man that thou art mindful of him, or
the son of man that thou visitest him?" But this question would never
be asked were it not for the fact that reason assures us that there is
more of man than can be contained "between his hat and his boots," as
Whitman puts it. The thoughtful individual is not content to regard
man, especially himself, as so much matter. It is not a question with
him as to how much he weighs, neither is it a question as to how tall
or short he is physically. He is concerned to know what he is mentally
and above all spiritually, [57] and hence his question, which is merely
the repetition of the question asked by the Psalmist, and Carlyle, and
others. When Carlyle asked, "What is man?" he answered himself by
saying, "To the eye of vulgar logic (that which makes its assertions on
the evidence gained through the senses) man is an omnivorous biped
wearing breeches." But Carlyle was not satisfied with vulgar logic's
definition and so he asks the question again, this time of his own
intelligence: "To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit
and a divine Apparition."
Now it is a
question with each of us as to what we shall be in our own
consciousness, "an omnivorous biped" or a "divine idea." I say in our
own consciousness, because, regardless of any belief
we may have concerning our real selves, the fact will always remain
that we are "now the children of God." Greater than the discovery of
gold in the hills, pearls in the sea, electrical energy in the
atmosphere, or the North or South Pole, is the discovery of Self. It is
written in [58] the Scriptures that, "The Lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living soul...And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to
fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed
up the flesh instead thereof; and from the rib, which the Lord God had
taken from the man, made He woman, and brought her unto the man." This
is a description of man as he appears to all of us when we are as yet
on the plane of simple consciousness or that plane of consciousness
which we share with animals and young children. Judging man after the
flesh, or according to physical appearances, man is
little better according to his own estimation than the "omnivorous
biped." James the Apostle asks, "What is your life (in the flesh)? It
is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth
away." It is the conviction on the part of every intelligent man that
he is something more than he appears to be, which
compels him to ask, "What am I?" Is it not borne [59] in upon us every
day through human experience that the man of flesh or fleshly
inclinations is not the man which shall "hereafter be"? The word
"hereafter" in this connection is not used with reference to a
postmortem condition but with reference to that state of consciousness
and existence which will come here, after man
discovers his oneness with Pure Spirit. In our spiritual infancy we
conceive man to be material and therefore we associate him with all
that is material, and consequently subject him (in belief) to so-called
material laws. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till
thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," expresses the popular
conception of man as we know him through the senses; but when the first
dawn of spiritual consciousness comes we can say with Paul, "Wherefore
henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea,
though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we
Him so no more." This [60] spiritual illumination by means of which we
see through appearances to Realities, is what is called by Jesus the
"new birth," when He says: "except ye be born again ye cannot enter
into the kingdom of God." And He tells us distinctly to "Call no man
your father upon the earth: for One is your Father, which is in
heaven." By this it is not meant that we shall lose our respect for our
earthly parents, but that we shall see them as the channels
through which we came into manifestation. There is but One Father of
those we call our fathers and mothers, as well as of ourselves, for
there is but One Divine Principle, Source, Cause, Origin, Base and
Foundation from which all things including man proceed and to which all
things and man must inevitably revert. When this command of Jesus to
call no man our father upon the earth is observed, because it is
understood, we shall have a new law of heredity. We shall no longer
justify ourselves in our moral weaknesses because "Father and
grandfather drank or gambled [61] before us;" neither shall we be
afraid of this, that or the other disease because our progenitors died
as the result of it. Calling no man our father or grandfather upon the
earth we shall trace our ancestry to Him in whom all perfection is, and
in the consciousness of this glorious ancestry we shall claim our
divine right to health and holiness. "That which is born of the flesh
(false concept) is flesh (false appearance); and that which is born of
the Spirit (Reality) is Spirit" (manifested).
The teachings
of Jesus on this question of spiritual relationship are fraught with
tremendous import and practical value, for not only is it a great
spiritual comfort to realize that we have not
inherited sinful or sickly tendencies from our One and Only Parent, but
that we have inherited the very opposite of these
which we may bring into our experience, by Thinking
of ourselves, not as the offspring of the flesh, but as the children on
God. The child who was stolen in his infancy by gypsies and brought up
by them to [62] believe he was one of them, thought as one of them,
acted as one of them and made no claim to anything higher until he was
apprised of the facts concerning his princely relationship, is an
illustration of the condition of every man until he is made aware of
his kinship to the King of Kings. For the most part we are worse off
than the child stolen by gypsies, for we labor under the delusion that
we are now the children of men but that at some
time we may become the sons of God. That we must become
something is true, but it is not that we must become
the sons of God; it is that we must become aware
that we are that already, and that no mistake on
our part can ever make us otherwise. No delusion on the part of the
child stolen by gypsies could ever make him other than the natural son
of the Prince, but it could and it did shut him out from the enjoyment
of his princely privileges; and this is precisely what occurs to all of
us so long as we do not know what we are, in Spirit and in Truth.
Occasionally we get fitful glimpses [63] of our real natures, but we
are like the man who "beholdeth himself (in the glass) and goeth his
way and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." Only
yesterday a man was taken to the hospital dying of starvation, whose
name, when it appeared in the newspapers, attracted the attention of a
lawyer who associated it at once with that of one whose whereabouts had
been sought for a long time. An estate to which this man was joint-heir
could not be settled until it was ascertained where he was, dead or
alive. Once his identity was established he was removed from the
charity ward to a private room with all that goes with it. Was this man
dying from poverty or from a belief in it? Jesus
was the good lawyer who came to inform the man dying of starvation,
spiritually and materially, that an estate was awaiting settlement
which could never be administered so long as one of God's children
remained outside of His universal beneficence. He illustrated this by
the one lost sheep for which the Good Shepherd leaves [64] the ninety
and nine to seek and restore it to the fold.
It is this
restoration of man to his divine rights that is the crowning glory of
the mission of the Master, and this restoration can never be brought
about save as it is brought about by man's intelligent co-operation
with divine law. There can be no co-operation, however, without
understanding or true knowledge; and this is what Divine Science is
intended to convey. Once accept the fact that Great First Cause is
Spirit or Mind, and we must admit that Man as Great First Effect is
spiritual or mental, and that what seems to be material in connection
with man is nothing more nor less than man's material concepts of
himself at a certain period of his mental unfoldment. It is these
material concepts that Truth has come to destroy, so that we may enter
into the enjoyment of those things which God has prepared for us from
before the foundation of the world.
First of all
there are those false concepts [65] concerning God and man which the
race has entertained through countless ages, and which must be
dispelled. We must no longer think of God as a mammoth
man beyond the skies, neither must we think of man as a material being
subject to material conditions over which he has no control. We must
not be afraid to think of God as Principle instead of personality, as
this latter word is commonly used. While God may be "The Great
Unknowable" from the standpoint of personality, He is certainly not
unknowable from the standpoint of Principle, for from this standpoint
the Author of our Being is as knowable as is the principle of the
science of numbers, and just as demonstrable; and it is this
demonstrability of Divine Principle which reveals God as "A very
present help in time of trouble."
Is there any
time or place where one may not work out a problem in mathematics? Is
it not true that, since the principle of mathematics is everywhere, it
may be utilized in [66] the solution of any problem which presents
itself at any time, and in any place? Men have solved mathematical
problems in prison cells just as they have in palaces, and perhaps with
more ease because of their greater solitude, knowing that a principle
which is demonstrable anywhere is demonstrable everywhere.
If from now on
we supplicate Personality less, and demonstrate Principle more, we
shall profit by the change and glorify our Father which is in heaven in
ways of which we never before dreamed. "Herein is my Father glorified,
that ye bear much fruit" (accomplish many thing
through Truth understood). Having grown away from the false concepts of
a distant God and a material man as His image and likeness, we must now
grow away from the false concept which imposes itself on all of us in
the form of accepted limitation. There will always be an accepted
belief in the negative, forever expressing itself in negative thoughts
and utterances, and consequent negative conduct, [67] until man
outgrows the belief in limitations. Men say, "I can't" almost from
force of habit, and the result of this is that they do not try, and,
not trying, they do not succeed; not succeeding they either blame God
or society or economic conditions, when all the while their lack of
success is the consequence of their accepted limitations, which they do
not realize.
We speak of
material laws, and this is another false concept we must get away from,
for there are no material laws. All laws are mental, and the sooner we
admit this the better, for it is an admission which will enable us to
avail ourselves of those mental laws, and thus rise above our accepted
limitations by a purely mental process; the process of Thought, for
"Thoughts are things" and the most real things in the universe,
notwithstanding the materialists of whom, thank fortune, there are few
left.
If God is Mind,
Thought of a necessity is the plastic material with which Mind works.
This fact makes it easy for us to accept the [68] idea that, "The
universe is the Thought of God," and after this we ought not to
experience any difficulty in believing that the world, as we see it in
the objective, is the thought of man: that is, the world is to man what
man thinks it is; good if his thought of it is good; bad if his thought
of it is bad, and this according to Shakepeare's declaration that,
"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so."
The difference
between God's universe and man's world, is the
difference between law and order, and chaos and confusion. The only way
for man to conform his world to God's universe is to learn to form
mental pictures of the Ideal, that is, to think of things as they are
in contradistinction to things as they appear to be, to his disordered
senses. We must take the advice of the scientist, who said: "When thy
science and thy senses conflict, cleave unto thy science," and of that
greater scientist, Jesus of Nazareth, who said: "Judge not after
appearances but judge righteous judgment."
[69] The law of
Mind has no limits. We are limited in our application of the law by our
belief that it has limits. We are not merely affected and influenced by
our thoughts, but we are what we are, in actuality and in
manifestation--that which our thoughts have made us. In the Dhammapada,
one of the books of the sealed canon of Buddhism, there is a statement
which supports the above declaration. "All that we are is the result of
what we have thought; it is founded on our
thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts." So we see that this is not a
new doctrine and that what is called the New Thought is simply a
practical application of a philosophy and a science which is as old as
the Ancient of Days.
Though we
should ascend the loftiest heights or descend into the lowest depth, we
shall never go out of our mental realm; it will always be our own
thought that we shall perceive. Emerson substantiates this when he
says, "All that you call the world is the shadow of that substance
which you [70] are, the perpetual creation of the powers of thought, of
those that are dependent and those that are independent of your will."
In view of the
fact, therefore, that the most profound thinkers of all ages have
regarded Thought, not as something "light as air" and just as
unproductive, but as that plastic substance from which all form
proceeds, ought we not to be as careful in our use of it as we are now
careful in our use of electricity? Regardless of all the beneficent
uses to which electricity is being put, we, nevertheless, know that
there are uses to which it may be put that are hurtful and injurious;
for the same force which may be used to vitalize may also be used to
electrocute.
Just as there
is a science of electricity by means of which generic power may be
controlled and directed, so there is a science of righteousness or
right-thinking by means of which injurious thoughts may be cut out or
short-circuited and by means of which helpful thoughts and healing
thoughts may be [71] turned on, as one would turn off and on the
electric light; and the one is no more miraculous than the other. The
electrical displays of the twentieth century would be just as wonderful
(miraculous) to the disciples of the first century as the physical
healing by spiritual means of the first century, without any other form
of medication whatever, is to the people of today. "The supernatural is
only the divinely natural not generally understood." Just as we of
today dispel darkness by merely pressing a button and availing
ourselves of a law and an energy and a substance which we can neither
understand nor define, so those early disciples overcame disease by the
pressure of their own thoughts upon that ever-present Force of Mind
which is the Source from which all manifestation takes its rise.
It might be
well at this point to show what we mean by the pressure of Thought and
the result of that pressure in our bodies and in our affairs. We read
in "Medicine and Mind": "A lady saw a heavy dish fall [72] on her
child's hand, cutting three of the fingers. She felt great pain in her
own hand, and on examination the corresponding three fingers were
swollen and inflamed. In twenty-four hours incisions were made and pus
evacuated."
Dr. Day in the
"Medical and Surgical Journal," had a patient "whose lips and mouth
were suddenly enormously swollen from seeing a young child pass a sharp
knife between his lips."
Dr. DeFleury
tells us of a girl who dreams she is pursued by a man and falls into a
ditch and breaks her legs. Next morning she wakes bruised and declares
her legs are broken. It is not so; but her legs are paralyzed (by this
dream) for six months.
Dr. A.G.
Schofield says, "A gentleman known to me, seeing a friend with
stricture of the gullet, soon experienced an increasing difficulty
swallowing, which ultimately was a cause of death." So much for the
pressure of Thought in a negative way; and [73] this vouched for by
most reputable physicians.
The day has
come in the evolution of the race when Thought, like any other natural
force which has not been used except in a very limited way, even by
what the world calls Thinkers, is being called upon to yield up its too
long concealed resources. No longer do we feel that Thought is a
something which comes and goes at its own sweet will, regardless of the
Thinker, for we now know that what we are, we are as a result of what
we think. Therefore we are learning to select our thoughts as
horticulturists select seeds and bulbs from which their precious things
of color and fragrance are to proceed later on, knowing, as we do, that
ideas and mental pictures formed in the chamber of imagery are the
prototypes of whatever we desire to see in visible manifestation. If
what we are today is what we thought yesterday, then what we shall be
tomorrow will be determined by what we think today, and hence the
necessity of thinking today in such [74] a manner as will be
provocative of the best in the form of health and happiness, peace and
prosperity.
Man is free to
direct his attention, which is his concentrated thought, as he chooses;
but he must choose in accordance with law and order if he would have
law and order prevail in his affairs; inasmuch as law and order exist
in the mental world as they do in the physical world, which is nothing
more nor less than the mental, expressing itself in objective form.
Swedenborg points out this in his Law of Correspondences. The only
limits of mind are those which are encountered when the thinker would
impose conditions on himself or others which are contrary to the true
order of things as they exist in Divine Mind; it is from this misuse of
thought that sin and sickness come into manifestation as if to rebuke
us for our ignorance. No longer does the intelligent man think that
these distressing conditions are visitations from Divine Providence
over which man has no control. He has outlived, [75] or out-thought
this ancient error, as he has out-lived or out-thought the false belief
that he could not control those forces of nature; forces which at one
time were considered so destructive as to defy conquest and subsequent
utilization.
When the race
subdued the Nile so as to prevent inundation on the one hand and to
produce irrigation on the other, it prefigured what it would later
accomplish in a field far more subtle, the field of modern psychology.
The conquest of external nature is one thing, and a great thing, but if
man merely conquers that which is external to himself, while his inner
emotions and feelings remain untouched and undisciplined, of what avail
is it? The glory of the new psychology of life lies in the fact that it
not only theorizes about mind's supremacy over matter, but it
demonstrates it in such manner as to furnish us with the idea that it
was on some such basis that Jesus, the Master psychologist, performed
what we in our ignorance call miracles. Speaking to the woman [76] who
had touched the hem of His garment in the full belief that if she did
so she would be healed, He said, "Thy faith hath
made thee whole." This saying implies that her restoration was due to
an idea, or mental picture, carried to its ultimate conclusion; for
this is precisely what faith is,--an idea conceived in the womb of the
mind, carried through a period of gestation or expectation, until its
birth in manifestation is the natural consequence.
The trouble
with the faith of most of us is that, while we can conceive what we
want, we cannot carry the idea, or mental image, sufficiently long in
thought to have it make its impression on the subconscious mind; and
unless it does register there it quickly loses its power to reproduce
itself. The woman who touched His garment could not be disuaded from
her belief that if she did one thing, another thing would follow. The
"press" or crowd could not prevent her, invalid as she was, from
obtaining her desire. Unlike her, we are discouraged at the first [77]
sign of delay. Do we desire, as this woman desired? If so we shall be
as insistent as she was insistent. Desire which is not continued is
desire which is not gratified. One does not row across a stream with
one stroke of the oars; it requires a "long pull and strong pull," if
we would cross the stream which separates us from the things we desire,
but which we often fail to receive, not because they cannot be received
but because our demand is not sufficiently concentrated to attract
supply.
It is the
matter of concentration to which we must pay attention, if we would
draw from the Inexhaustible Reservoir those things which God has
prepared for them that love Him.
Chapter
2
Mental Medicine
Table
of Contents
(Formerly at Northwoods Divine
Science Resource Center)
