It is this psychological state that is referred to in mysticism
and in many religions as “attunement” or “grace,” and once we are involved
in it, our choices and directions are as warrants from on high; everything
does our bidding at the very moment our bidding is resolved. This aspect of “superknowledge” gives us our best indication of the nature
and usefulness of the will. Once we understand that desire opposed to the
aims of the Secret Self can avail the individual nothing but frustration, then
we finally have been awakened to the principle of attunement, which is the
secret of ef fective living. T o actually decide is not within the scope of
human knowledge, simply because human knowledge is limited to the
scantiest fraction of total knowledge. It is just no good trying to make a
decision about things when nearly the entire sum of their characteristics is
hidden. Individual will exercised against events and people is the sheerest
of vanities and avails nothing in the end but suf fering and defeat. Acts performed in the ego for advantages are acts performed without
understanding of their true significance, and any success or satisfaction
achieved through them is like froth on the crest of a wave, disappearing
with the wave. Our consciousness is placed so frontally on our total psyche
that we are forever being mesmerized by the blandishments, ur gings, and
pleadings of the ego. W e aspire to conquer peaks that, once climbed, revealthemselves as the lowliest of plateaus and force us to consider how false our
gods have been. T rue goals are spiritual, and laziness, procrastination, and
fear are overcome not by railing at the self, but by seeking the sustaining
seeds of consciousness that lie deep within the nature. The Liberating Law
 
As our understanding grows, so does our willpower , but bear in mind the
differentiation: true willpower is ef fective and achieves results through the
mere aiming; false willpower never achieves results at all. As consciousness
expands and takes in new levels of awareness, so the power of the
individual increases. Achieving increased awareness and communing with
higher heavenly powers are not things restricted to the isolated mystic or
contemplative saint, but are available to all, and the reward is always
complete ef fectiveness, whether in creative fields or executive, whether
spiritual, mental, or material; for in understanding is power , in knowledge
surety , and those who have arrived at enlar ged consciousness must therefore
be able to work their will and way on the world simply by becoming one
with it. To be what we truly ar e and to become what we ar e capable of becoming
are the only courses of action open to those of us who would live a fulfilled
life. No matter the barbs of fate that frustrate you, no matter how stacked
against you ar e the car ds of fortune — how you wer e born, wher e, into what
kind of body , gifted with whatever native intelligence — ther e is a liberating
law in the universe, and you can become the highest of the high, wisest of
the wise, for you have within your very grasp a tool with which to achieve
absolute fr eedom. Once you have acknowledged to yourself that within your
body is that supr eme consciousness that has author ed the worlds and the
universes, then at last you ar e bound to let the ego step down fr om the helm
and allow a wiser for ce to chart course thr ough life. Once you have placed
your fortunes and ener gies in the hands of the Secr et Self you will know a
peace and inner quietude that surpass any joy you have known. Y our lifewill gr ow into a whole thing. Each day will serve as a building block
towar d some definite goal or purpose. Y ou will finally be amazed at the
miracles wr ought when the Secr et Self takes over . Over coming Guilt and Hostility
 
Guilt and hostility are accoutrements of the ego, which arms itself with
delusions in order to survive. If a nagging sense of guilt accompanies you, it
is because the ego is made of accumulated things, teachings, blandishments,
sensual impressions, none of which have much relation to eternal truth, but
nonetheless they are a moral censor of every act performed by the
individual. If you feel guilty , never make the intellectual mistake of
thinking that your feelings arise from the censorship of the Secret Self,
which makes no such lean and human judgments. Guilt is generally the
accumulated teachings of society acting within the individual as a prompter
or deterrent of certain actions. Such censorship seldom is based on lasting
truth, since society’ s pressures for conformity are often at variance with the
Divine’ s pressures for individuality . Hostility is simply the other face of
guilt, manifesting as hostility in the aggressive person, just as guilt
manifests in the more passive. There is certainly nothing good about either
of these emotional blocks. They are products of the ego and vanish when
we center ourselves in the deeper regions of consciousness. Then it
becomes nearly impossible to be emotionally involved in the vanities of the
little self that is action servant of the Secret Self. The way to peace of mind lies in abandoning the will as a tool of the ego,
finally abandoning the ego also, and centering the consciousness in the
Divine. Through the widening of consciousness that this psychological
transference brings, there comes to us an understanding that before was
impossible to us. In a way that transcends material explanation we take on a
little of the identity of everything that crosses our awareness. In this manner
we understand others through actually participating in the consciousness of
others, and this superknowledge, this deep intuition, brings to our actionand work a high ef fectiveness and almost supernatural preordination. W e
move in the center of events as if we were ordering events, because we
move in accord with their true nature and are guided in all by a principle
that sees the end to be accomplished and the means of attaining it. And
because we have abandoned ego and move in response to this universal
will, we act with absolute surety , complete ef fectiveness; without hazard,
anxiety , or fear; and are dominated henceforth by inner peace and absolute
joy.OceanofPDF .com 
5
 
Mind over Matter
 
The almost universal path that people follow is to accede to
circumstance, to thr ow up their hands and say , “That’ s the way it
goes.” It is a curious and wry fact that when cir cumstances go against
our personal desir es we cr edit our frustration to bad luck, but when we
are carried to some pinnacle of success it is no longer fortune but our
superior skill that we cr edit. In actual fact, all luck and skill emanate
from deep-seated convictions in the subconscious mind of the
individual. Desir e and Destiny
 
The average person never really decides whether mind rules matter or
matter rules mind. They accept the fact that mind rules matter in certain
circumstances, but tend to regard these circumstances as the exception
rather than the rule. They see mental attitude determine the outcome of
athletic contests and overcome physical disability , but when it comes to
adopting completely a mind-first approach to daily living, they never quite
make it. If mind ever rules matter at all, it must do so as a result of an absolute
principle properly applied. This absolute principle could not be a thing that
worked some of the time or once in a while or capriciously responded tochance, but would have to be a law that always worked in exactly the same
way. If, for example, someone adopted the mind-over -matter approach in a
particular circumstance and failed to achieve the results they desired, it
would not be the law that had failed but their understanding of the law and
their application of its principles. When we examine accomplishment, the first thing we notice is that those
who don’ t want to climb a mountain never climb one. After that, we note
that even among those who definitely want to climb mountains, a lar ge
number never climb any . From this, we deduce that the first ingredient
essential to accomplishment is desire. After that, other more discretionary
and therefore more obscure factors become involved. It is dif ficult to say why people want anything. W e observe that nearly
everybody would rather experience pleasure than pain, but we are aware
that certain persons not only stick pins into their bodies but maintain
agonizing physical attitudes over protracted periods of time. Such people
appear to have chosen pain instead of pleasure, at least in a physical sense,
and to have done such a thing through an inner impulsion either above the
pain-pleasure principle or related to it obscurely . Desire for a goal is the
only thing that makes a pain-filled experience possible to bear . Desire is
also an opiate. Many people involved in crucial physical exertions report no
sense of pain whatever , though when the period of exertion is over wounds
are found on their flesh, and joints and muscles are strained. Football
players are a notable case in point. If we carry our observations even further , we soon note that there is a great
deal of dif ference in the degrees of desire. One person may want and hold
out their hand, and that is the greatest ef fort possible for them. Another may
want and rend chains, so great is their need. Desire is a thing that impels. The greater the desire, the more it impels, and this impulsion is rooted in
the inner vision that possesses the individual. T o the degree that we are
alive and imprisoned within reactive flesh, to that same degree we
relentlessly pursue the visions that possess us. Whether our mental images
are of buildings to be built or of banks to be robbed makes not the slightest
difference to the motor impulse that develops within us. Y ou can beabsolutely certain that the things that occupy your mind will soon be part of
your life, if they are not already . Blessing and Curse
 
A curious thing has evolved in the human being. The quality of mental
reflection which has slowly developed in our psyches over the eons of our
evolution has enabled us to form pictures within our minds in complete
variance to the world around us. W e can, if we will, on a flight of fancy ,
transfer ourselves from rags to riches, Kansas to Istanbul, in the twinkling
of an eye, and thus, in the conscious center of our being, no longer are we
slaves to the world in which we find ourselves. T wo principal phenomena
have resulted, one stigmata, the other a blessing. The stigmata are these: Life is lar gely a matter of disciplining oneself to
endure pain in order to achieve a desired end, but the immature person often
seizes on the image power of the mind to seek refuge from reality , and as a
result develops a kind of wish-thinking that makes them absolutely
ineffectual in all circumstances. They turn the power of the imagination
upon itself, destroying its ability to influence the outer world by setting it to
work on problems that have no relationship to the outer world. The victims
of such delusions are legion. Some populate our mental hospitals, addiction
treatment centers, and halfway houses. They constitute the majority of those
admitted to rehab for the treatment of alcoholism. And they are to be found
all over the world in a zombielike trance, making the movements of the
living, but with one foot in another world. On the other hand is the blessing that imagination brings. It is the mystic
seeing that enables us to gaze upon our surroundings with x-ray eye and
perceive in them their hidden potentiality . This harnessing of the image-
making power of the mind to the outer world of things and events has
transformed life on earth, has enabled us, in a few short centuries, not only
to achieve dominion over our immediate environment but to arrive at theverge of extending that dominion through the time-space continuum of the
universe. Most modern thinking conveniently divides the world into two dif ferent
classes of things, one substance, the other intelligence. Science takes great
pains to classify substance. It catalogs the elements and their various
combinations, delineates the makeup of the molecules whose cohesion
forms the elements, breaks down the molecule into various atomic weights,
and even dif ferentiates the atom into a nucleus and a certain number of
encircling electrons. At this point, the dif ference between hydrogen and
lead, for example, has become startlingly slight. Each has an invisible
nucleus encircled by a certain number of electrons, more in the case of lead,
but hardly appreciably more, and the dif ference between them appears to be
one of degree rather than one of kind. Our confusion grows when, through
the sudden process of nuclear fission, the atom itself is reduced to nothing
measurable, disappearing in a burst of flame, and we are forced to inquire at
last if substance is really substance after all but perhaps might not represent
a vastly subtler conception, of idea only , intelligence itself. Behind the Atom
 
If we examine any consciousness, we inevitably find a body of some sort, a
weight, scale, and dimension that houses the intelligence being examined
and refuses any kind of scrutiny separate from it. It seems most probable
that matter and intelligence are one and the same thing, that intelligence is
only a higher manifestation of matter , becoming apparent only in that
substance that takes on complexity . Once we have agreed that intelligence is
a manifestation of form, it is but a step further to gain a glimmer of the truth
that intelligence is evolutionary in the growth of matter , which leads us
inescapably to the conclusion that intelligence, while a manifestation of
matter , is superior to and has basic control of that matter . In short,
intelligence, or consciousness, or awareness, has inherent in itself control
over all physical circumstances, all events.The American artist and New Thought author W alter Russell is interesting
here: “That which man calls matter or substance,” he writes, “has no
existence whatever . So-called matter is but waves of the motion of light,
electrically divided into opposed pairs, then electrically conditioned and
patterned into what we call various substances of matter . Briefly put, matter
is but the motion of light, and motion is not substance. Our creative thinkers
must look primarily to light to perform tomorrow’ s miracles.”
Light, ener gy, intelligence — whichever of the three you choose to
acknowledge as the moving force behind the universe, the primary thing is
to be able to acknowledge that substance is only relative, not a solid and
absolute thing at all, but representative of the working of mind and always
subservient to mind. A desk is not a desk except in the most crudely sensual
way. In actuality it is an enclosure or series of enclosures in which
molecules are speeding about at many times the swiftness of rifle bullets. A
million times more volume exists outside the molecules than in them, and if
those in steel, for instance, were to cease their movement for a moment, you
could poke your finger through the steel with the same ease as you poke it
through air . Basic behind the construction of matter is an innate symmetry , a kind of
mathematical ideation that can only be attributed to a thinking mind. The
atom itself, the smallest building block of substance, has a cohesiveness and
aesthetic composition that, beyond all things, implies individuality . The
atom indicates purpose, and it indicates an ur ge to survival. And when a
sufficient number of atoms of the right electronic makeup were combined to
make a protein molecule, then it was a very short time indeed before arms
and legs and eyes and brain were grown and there moved about on the
surface of matter an autonomous being seeking dominion over his
environment — the human. Consciousness Is Pr oportional to Complexity
 When we turn our reflections back to the origins of life and the purposes of
evolution we are struck at once with the picture of increasing complexity . From amoeba to human has taken many millions of years, and the two seem
scarcely related. Y et the step from inanimate matter to animate matter , as is
represented by the amoeba, is perhaps more breathtaking than the step from
amoeba to human, for the latter represents simply an increase in complexity
while the former represents something entirely dif ferent from what
preceded it. Out of the masses of slag and rock and steam emer ged an
element that moved, that grew and maintained itself — life. Y et even
growth there was not so much the evolution of one thing out of another
dissimilar thing, but rather an adding unto one thing of characteristics
lacking in its predecessor , so that the dif ference in condition between an
animate and inanimate thing is primarily one of complexity as against
simpleness. No physicist or chemist will deny that the protein molecule is more
complex than the molecules of inor ganic elements. Some great change once
transpired in nature for life to grow from inanimate substance, but in order
for this to ever happen, consciousness had to be inherent in all matter . It is
consciousness that is responsible for form. Wherever form is, there also is
an intelligent presence. It inhabits the rock and the mountain just as surely
as it does the human being. The form of the thing is dependent upon the
idea that holds its whizzing molecules within boundaries, and this contour
is just as surely mental as the concept of mathematics, and just as surely is
held by a thinking being whose presence is always found within. This leads us dangerously close to the established province of religion, but
we are not concerned here with a father image who has created children and
is raising them to knowledge. What we are concerned with is the bottom
root of intelligence, how and why it manifests in the universe, and whether
humans are divorced from that originating intelligence, subject to it as
slaves to master , or umbilically tied to it in such a manner that they are it
and it is they . How Thought Conditions Things 
Those who see chaos as the originator of the worlds, coincidence as
responsible for the formation of human life, and futility as the earmark of
life, find at every hand just such a universe. Those who perceive a hardened
creator ordering his vassals about cannot help but be impressed by the
inequality of the human lot and perceive in the world much bitterness and
pain. Those who see an inhabiting presence in all things instinctively know
that all forms of the world are only ideas given substance, that the mind
which upholds each is resident within themselves, and that therefore they
are part and parcel of all peace, perfection, and ef fectiveness. The world, as
always, turns out to be exactly what our consciousness is conditioned to
see. It is this astounding and tremendously dynamic premise that life is built
upon, the central law upon which evolution itself hinges. We see only that which we think we will see, and in consequence the world
is peopled with things and events all dredged up out of our consciousness. A thing or a person or an event is not changed because of our
consciousness, but inherent in each are all qualities, and we sift out only
those that already occupy our awareness. It is for this reason that people are
villains in one circumstance, heroes in another; that each of us in our time
plays countless roles. It is not so much that we are dif ferent in each
circumstance, but that we are being constantly perceived by dif ferent
persons who view us only through a narrow slit of individual vision and
accept us for the thing they expect us to be. Consider an ordinary knife. T o the baker it is an instrument with which to
divide a loaf of bread into parts. T o the irate sociopath it is a weapon with
which to dispose of the object of his wrath. T o the sur geon, come to a
sickbed without instruments, it is a lifesaving tool that will allow her to take
from the abdomen of her patient a diseased appendix. T o the young boy
passing through the kitchen it is part of a game — mumblety-peg. Y et what
it actually is is a compound of inanimate elements and previously living
molecules — steel and wood, shaped a certain way and fashioned so — but
even this is but an indication of what it truly is, for our senses reveal only a
tiny part of the total qualities of anything that seizes our attention.So a thing is the kind of thing it is only because of the personal relationship
of the beholder , and it actually never has any true qualities at all because
our senses are too crude to perceive any truth about it other than that which
proceeds out of our consciousness. And it is this that af fects us most of all. For when we see the knife we do not think of the kind and quality of the
steel and whether it has substance or is only idea, but we look at the knife
only to determine its relationship to us, and that is the only thing we see. Matter Is Movement
 
Just to understand the scientific premise that matter is not matter at all but
intense movement confined within spatial limits is to arrive at a pinnacle of
mental and spiritual freedom that will never again allow you to be
intimidated by the things and circumstances around you. In deepest truth
they are no more real than the conditioning of your consciousness, and you
can, by an act of increased mental awareness, change them from the things
you think they are into something totally and completely dif ferent. Here we knock on the door of the occult. The ring of the foregoing indicates
we will be able to move mountains, change water into wine, still the winds;
and indeed we might once we learn the testing but veil-breaking truth that
all mountains are in the mind, as are all limitation and lack, all storms. Make this encompassing decision, that matter is subservient to mind, and
you will see at once that the world and everything in it is only an ef fect of
consciousness, a partial manifestation of thought; and inasmuch as it
remains always a reflection of idea in the mind of the beholder , it exhibits at
once another of its infinite reflections the moment the thought in the
beholder ’s mind changes. What that means is this: things show only a side that reflects the
individual’ s thought about them. They don’ t truly change when the thought
about them changes, but they contain all possibilities and reveal to the
beholder only an aspect that their consciousness is prepared to perceive.This metaphysical breakdown of the universe is a great help in adjusting
oneself to the premise of working first with mind and allowing events to
develop from an inner impulsion of their own. Once we are fully convinced
of the mental causes behind all things, we no longer feel impelled to run
about, lay on hands, attempt one way or the other to coerce the world to fit
the pattern in our minds. One intelligence lies at the center of all events and
things, and it is at the core of your own nature. Once you have gained
sufficient wisdom to be concerned only with your own consciousness and
the inner discipline that widens its awareness, then you can be sure that the
outer world will be a reflection of the inner , that you are working with the
root causes of your environment. All possibilities exist in each of us because each of us is a manifestation of
a mind that is totality , infinity , unity; and each is only less than the total
according to our isolation from it, and when we expand our mental nature,
we approach original perfection, power , omniscience. Mind over matter is
not so much a mental dominion over material things as it is an awareness of
their many-sidedness and unlimited potentiality . Acceptance by the
observer of any one facet of a thing as the totality of that thing
automatically confers such limitation on that thing as far as its influence
upon the observer is concerned. In this respect our lives are guided by
shadows, by the meaningful aspects we give the things and events we meet
in the world, and our consciousness is never as much a product of
circumstances as circumstances (in this subjective way) are a result of our
consciousness. Our Skin-Deep Selves
 
A little r eflection on the conditioning quality of consciousness is all that is
necessary to quickly r ealize how continuously it works in our lives. Love is
blind because the lover always per ceives the mental image of the beloved. The divor ce rate is a pr oduct of disenchantment. It is not because of
disenchantment that love leaves; disenchantment comes after love leaves.Places of triumph r evisited always seem strangely small and shoddy . They
do not fit the magnificent ar enas cast up by our emotionally char ged
memories. And when pain commingles with places and events, we can no
more bring ourselves to visit them or have contact with them or even dr edge
them up fr om our memories than we can spr out wings and fly , so capricious
is the pain-avoiding, pleasur e-seeking ego in its efforts to hide our true
selves. This veil-shrouding, fan-dancing, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’ t quality of
the ego is what makes each of us use a thousand selves in the conduct of
our lives, and never actually be any one of them or even all put together . Because we do not truly know who we are, we seek in every situation a role
to be played, usually feeling no sense of deceit or sham whatever , but
blithely accepting the fact of a chameleon self which adapts its colors to its
background. In the of fice we are a dif ferent self to the boss than to our
subordinates. At home we are a dif ferent self to our spouse than to our
children. W e are a dif ferent self at our club than with a small group of
confidants. And we often present a dif ferent self to the neighbor on one side
of us than to the neighbor on the other . We seldom know how it is that we
get into the various roles we play , but play them we must, and when we
have a dinner party and carefully select the guest list with an eye to their
getting along, it is not the homogeneity of the guests that our eye reviews
but whether we have played the same role with all of them and therefore
can be a single self at the party that night. If perchance an uninvited guest
arrives, this sudden loping in is greeted with deep consternation as the
necessity of playing two dif ferent roles is foisted upon us. It awakens deep
within our psyches the uneasy undertones of schizophrenia. Great dramatic coaches, in an ef fort to lead their protégés to understanding
of the characters they portray , always seek an under -the-skin approach,
instinctively realizing that a person is only truly understood from the inside,
that any other position deals with symptoms only . Humanity’ s investigation
of the world itself has taken this inner and outer course — the inner
exemplified by psychology , religion, parapsychology; the outer exemplified
by the physical sciences. Science has made the greater progress by far , but
the race is not always to the swift. Science has pursued substance in its
laboratories, from mountain to atoms, but unraveled no enigmas other thana kind of elementary construction, and its sole accomplishment in its search
for the secret of life has been to chase matter of f the physical stage into
some realm of invisibility where it no longer can be perceived, much less
understood by the methods and instruments available. Intuitive Per ception
 
We are reactive animals and generally play the roles expected of us. Rare
and wise is the person who is able to shuck of f this automatism. They are
able to do so only by recognizing that within each of us resides the identical
animating spirit. By inner understanding they are able to allow events to
develop through their own inner impulsion. This intuitive perception
permits them to take their place in each event according to the best interests
of their own nature. We are all born into a bondage of the senses, and insofar as we place
absolute credence in their evidence, we remain slaves to them. Only when
we arrive at a mystic intuition of the universality of intelligence are we
finally able to realize that matter in essence is only mind and that innate in
each of us is the same resident being, which exists everywhere at all times
and in all things, appearing to be dif ferent according to the form into which
it has entered but essentially remaining one, indivisible, and infinite. Once in a while someone arises who by some strange evolutionary leap
seems to have surmounted the bondage that holds others. Such a man was
Edgar Cayce, the wizard of V irginia Beach. Not only was he able to read
minds and see things and events at a distance, but he also seemed able to
call upon universal mind for all the knowledge within it. Cayce’ s
perceptions circumvented time, space, matter , and his carefully documented
exploits have never been disproved. He became in hypnotic trance the most
erudite of men, having at his fingertips all the knowledge in the fields of
medicine and religion, yet in his normal waking state he was totally lacking
in education. And Edgar Cayce does not stand alone as a mentalphenomenon. Nearly every child prodigy , every genius exhibits this strange
power to transcend the limitations of matter by a gigantic leap of mind. Mozart, Einstein, Gandhi, Jesus Christ, geniuses all, used some secret
power of the mind to perform their miracles. Though the person in whom
genius lives hour by hour is rare, each of us sometime in our life usually is
privileged with a moment of mystical intuition, sometimes several,
sometimes many . Inner Knowing
 
A young man named Geor ge suf fered intensely from migraine headaches. One night during a particularly painful siege he took to the streets in the
hope that walking would reduce his pain. Suddenly he was overcome by the
absolute knowledge that breathing pure oxygen would relieve him. He went
immediately to the emer gency hospital, won over the attending physician’ s
objections, breathed oxygen, was immediately relieved. Such treatment is
generally accepted in the medical fraternity today , but at the time it was
rarely used, and Geor ge had never heard of it. Another man named T om, in
the grip of a depression resulting from his loss of a job, awoke one morning
with the feeling that he would be very successful in the valve-
manufacturing business. T om’s acquaintanceship with valves was cursory . He knew they did something inside pumps and engines, but he didn’ t know
just what. He had had no training in engineering and scarcely any in
business, but that didn’ t deter him. He went to a valve company and
arranged a tour of the premises. He was immediately enchanted, sure that
valve manufacturing was for him. T wo weeks later he met at a party a man
who identified himself as an inventor . He drew designs of his new valve on
the hostess’ s tablecloth. T wo days later T om and the inventor found
themselves in the bank arranging financing. T oday their valve
manufacturing firm is one of the lar gest in the nation. The Latent Faculty
 
Intuition is the power by which all things are done. Nobody ever built a
building by piling blocks. A building is built first in somebody’ s mind;
someone sees it towering to the sun, clear and solid in his imagination, long
before the first physical movement is made to construct it. Those who go
through life totaling facts accumulate only the smallest percentage of the
knowledge that exists in the universe. That kind of person wants facts to tell
them what to do, but facts never do; there simply aren’ t enough of them. “In every man,” writes Rudolf Steiner , “there are latent faculties by means
of which he can acquire for himself knowledge of the higher worlds.” It is
inner certitude, intuitive hunch, that leads us into right action. W e take
inordinate pride in the powers of our reason, but we have put the cart before
the horse. W e actually seldom follow our reason; our reason usually follows
us. A look at the world’ s history shows us how true this is. Reason told
Columbus the world was flat, intuition that it was round. Reason would
have had him sail the safe seas around his native Europe; intuition led him
across uncharted waters to a new world. Reason told Pasteur that disease
was caused by fevers of the blood; intuition led him to search out bacteria
and a whole new area of preventive medicine. W e attain skill in works and
action when we learn to trust ourselves completely to an inner impulsion
and to cease acting in response to the events and circumstances around us. Doctrine of Mind over Matter
 
There are three principal points in the doctrine of mind over matter which
must be clearly understood. (1) An invisible but real cosmic medium exists
which supports the apparent world. (2) There is an established connection
between this real but unseen world and the illusory world of the senses. (3)This connection may be discerned and this relationship controlled by our
disciplined consciousness. Taking these points in order , we are struck immediately by the fact that it is
very dif ficult to prove the existence of the cosmic medium. Our methods of
scientific investigation have thus far done little to subject consciousness to
the laboratory microscope, though investigations of parapsychology have
been somewhat fruitful. Dr . J. B. Rhine’ s experiments at Duke University
have proved successfully that there exists some method of communication
between minds beyond the purely sensual, but this whole area of human
existence lies lar gely uninvestigated, like a strange and dark continent. People have dreams in which they see themselves doing a certain thing at a
certain place, and a few days later actually find themselves in that same
place doing that same thing. People report the sudden knowledge of a
friend’ s good or bad fortune, the inner conviction that a house is burning
down or of a loved one’ s pain or danger . Never a day passes without
countless manifestations of this kind being recorded around the world. The
dark continent of the uninvestigated human psyche beckons us. When we
finally have given it our complete attention, the world will witness an
evolutionary leap the likes of which have never been dreamed. Cosmic Medium
 
The cosmic medium that connects one person with another and one mind
with another is the universal intelligence that permeates all things, all
people, all places. By it each of us has an umbilical tie with our neighbor ,
for in a very real and actual sense each of us is one with our neighbor , since
the same basic mind is in everyone. As soon as someone is finally
convinced that the principle of infinite multiplicity is not valid in any
conception of the universe, then they finally are led to the concept of inner
unity , the absolute oneness of all things. When this new principle has really
come home to them, they realize that there is only one life at work in the
universe and it is in them as well as in their neighbor . They see that it workssecretly in the heart of all things, and by this insight they are able not only
to influence its manifestation within themselves but also its manifestation in
other persons, in other things. The world that is perceived through our senses is only a partially revealed
representation of the world that exists within the mind. Strange, then, that
the things that we encounter in space and time seem so very real to us. W e
knock upon a desk and know it is hard and that it is there. But the existence
of the desk as an extension of an idea is a concept we seldom entertain. W e
spend most of our days thinking and planning and scheming, trying to
originate ideas, but our actions are always predicated upon the fact that the
things that we encounter in the world are the things that are truly influential. When we are able to perceive all things as manifestations of thought
concepts, then we look beyond each to the idea that gave it form. Once we
have turned our gaze in that direction we have begun to deal with the basic
creative power of the universe and we have begun to see the possibilities in
the second point in the doctrine of mind over matter , the established
connection between the world of consciousness and the world of substance. Enamoring Ego
 
“The intellect by itself moves nothing,” said Aristotle, and modern
psychology has af firmed this law . We encounter those circumstances that
reflect the quality of our deeper consciousness. In short, we see only that
which we are, and it is this enamoring quality of our ego that deludes us
about the world. Most people keep running into the same situations over
and over again. Some are accident prone; others are eternally fretting about
their health; still others make a failure of one enterprise after another . Some
lives take on the tenor of an epic tragedy as fate seems to heap one
misfortune on top of another . But it is not misfortune that such people are
encountering; merely the outer manifestation of the inner working of their
own minds.Life keeps bringing us into contact with those things which we fail to
understand. As long as our consciousness does not grow , as long as our
inner sight does not penetrate, that long will we continue to run into the
circumstance that defeats us, until our heads are bloody and bowed, until
we finally understand or are beaten completely . The established connection
between the unseen world of the mind and the outer world of the senses is
this: the outer world is always a projection of the inner . Its emotional
content is the same as the emotional content of the consciousness beholding
it; its influence on us is always according to what we perceive; and what we
perceive comes from within us, not from outside. Magic Images
 
The first two points in the doctrine of mind over matter allow us to
understand how we are slaves to circumstance, how we never truly
originate action, but take action as a result of being stimulated into it. These
two points, if finally accepted without relief, would be a hopeless concept
of life indeed, but in the third point of the doctrine we find the leaven by
which the whole makeup of life is changed from the deadened aura of
hopelessness into the rosy-hued sparkle of anticipation. The third point in
the doctrine tells us that we can alter our environment and our
circumstances by disciplining our consciousness. “Magical operations,” says the French author and occultist Éliphas Lévi,
“are the exercise of a power which is natural but superior to the ordinary
powers of nature. They are the result of a science and of habits which exalt
the human will above its usual limits.” W ill, alone, is not the answer ,
however . Will, alone, is more often a pathway to pain than to power . When
we think of willpower most of us think of exercising our will against other
people and other things, but the only place where our willpower can be used
effectively is in disciplining our inner consciousness. W e can, in final
analysis, choose to think only those thoughts which we want to think, and it
is this power of mental choice that gives us our freedom. By it we are giventhe power to remake ourselves into any image we can envisage. W e can
heal our body , heal our soul, alter and exalt our own personality , enhance
our willpower , and produce hypnotic states, ecstasy . We can change
ourselves from the lowliest of idlers into the most accomplished and
effective of people, and all this not because we hustle about in the world but
because we gather our own inner being around us, take thought, alter the
quality of our own mind. All the power of each of us individuals lies in our
disciplining our own consciousness, and all our ef fectiveness consists of our
being able to produce faith within ourselves. For it is only faith that is able
to develop in us a mental image contrary to the one we have been
entertaining. Evidence of Things Unseen
 
“Faith,” wrote Saint Paul, “is the substance of things hoped for , the
evidence of things unseen.” Through faith we are able to act as if we know . When we have actual knowledge, we proceed with confidence; when we
doubt, we are unsure of ourselves, apprehensive. This is the contrast
between the person of great faith and the person of little faith: the former
goes through life as if they had a special genie at their side, a supernatural
power upon which they can call in every circumstance, while the latter acts
out the blurred and distorted vision within, cautiously , doubtfully , fearfully . The substance of things hoped for is a real substance, formed from pictures
in the mind as concrete and detailed as in the world itself. The evidence of
things unseen is an inner evidence gleaned through the image-making
power of the imagination. It is absolutely impossible for us to act against
our knowledge. A person will not step in front of a speeding automobile
because they know they will be killed; they will not walk upon the water
because they know that they will sink; sometimes they will not even
venture into a new business because they believe that they will fail. No
amount of persuasion can change their reaction to what they know . But
what they know can be changed, and the most direct and ef ficacious manneris through changing the images within their consciousness. If they learn to
visualize their goal clearly , one day they will be able to embark upon a new
venture and be successful. The emotional content of the image in their mind
will seep down into deeper regions of consciousness and provoke them into
right action. If we think of ourselves as being strong we eventually become strong. If we
think of ourselves as determined we eventually arrive at tenacity . If we
think of ourselves as endowed with power we eventually achieve
ascendancy over circumstances. The mind has infinite power to influence
us, for we act in accordance with its conceptions as it casts up before us
inner images that stimulate us into action and attitude. Eating, appetite,
sexual activity , motor response, intellectual activity are all triggered by the
images we entertain in our minds. W e are stimulated into all things by
ideas. The world itself is an idea, and we react to it. W e can change the
world’ s influence upon us, however , by originating ideas in consciousness
and thereby stimulate ourselves and cease reacting. Idea and Action
 
Dr. José Delgado, the late Y ale University sur geon and neurophysiology
professor , reported that the behavior of animals and presumably humans can
be drastically changed by painless electric char ges to the brain. In
experiments, monkeys ate seven times more food than normal or suddenly
became amorous or abruptly ferocious, and tests on humans brought on
fear, affection, giddy laughter , and remarkable feats of memory , all
depending upon which area of the brain was stimulated. It seems obvious
that in these experiments electrical stimulation is simply substituted for
what normally would be nervous stimulation, and when we recognize that
nervous stimulation is always brought about through reaction to the ideas in
our consciousness, then we become acutely aware how important it is to
control our thoughts and to treat the image-making power of the mind with
care.We always tend to become that which occupies our thoughts. In the long
run a person is not so much a body as they are the sum total of the ideas
within their consciousness. Y ou need only meet someone for a moment to
know many of those ideas. If the person is genial, you know that they
regard the world as a warm and comfortable place. If they are cold, then
you know that they find hostility around them. If they are indif ferent, then
you know that they are afraid of being hurt. Excess always provides the
clue. Someone who laughs too much may be hiding their tears, like
Pagliacci. W e eat too much as a substitute for love, or drink too much to
still our fears, or play too hard as an escape from the responsibilities of life,
or overwork to accumulate security in a changing world. But always our
response is to the image in our minds, the ideas that occupy us, the ghosts
we envisage, the demons that pursue us, the fancied pots of gold that lie
beyond the rainbow . We must learn to take up our positions with a steadfast belief in the
rightness of our stand. Doubt casts a pall of indecision over everything. W e
must shut out doubt from our minds and crystallize the images there so that
we can take positive action on all our problems. He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er believe do what you please. If the sun and moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out. — WILLIAM BLAKE
 
Designers of Life
 To start visualizing things clearly is not nearly so dif ficult as might be
imagined. Each of us has a deep psychological tendency to use our
imagination to envisage not only our present surroundings but also their
potentiality . We are deterred from this proper use of the imagination
because of an overreliance on material things. W e see, for example, the
established form of an automobile; we accept this form and no longer allow
ourselves to visualize anything dif ferent. Thus we give our creative
imagination an opiate and shut of f an important corner of our nature. Not
the designers, however . They cannot af ford to visualize the automobile in
its presently accepted form. For them, there must always be a new form. Their envisaging of it is their livelihood. We are all innately designers of life, and insofar as we accept the creative
power of our imagination, we are able to influence life’ s shape and
substance and its ef fect upon us. W e change events and people not by
altering them intrinsically but by changing our perception of them. Each
thing, each event, each person has infinite potentiality . We see in each only
that which our consciousness is capable of perceiving. When we learn to
look longer and with eyes of wonder , we develop a kind of insight that
enables us to penetrate into depths we hitherto had not suspected. Because
we then see dif ferently , we then react dif ferently , and our lives are changed
accordingly . To many people mental power implies such legerdemain as moving objects
by willpower or materializing or dematerializing things, or leading others
around by their mental noses, but in actual fact, mental adepts work on no
one but themselves. Theirs are the eyes through which all things are seen,
and only insofar as they are able to influence their own perception are they
able to influence the world. The greater their knowledge, the closer they are
to the heart of truth, and the closer they are to the heart of truth, the more
they identify themselves with other persons and other things. Through this
inner identification, they achieve understanding of the law of each person’ s
secret nature and their own lives and the world they live in. Change Y our Thinking and Change the W orld 
If there is a problem in your life that you would solve, do not set your will
to work on it. Y ou will conquer this problem in the end, not by fighting it,
but by understanding it. The reason it exists in the first place is because of
lack of understanding. Y ou must allow yourself to be convinced of this
simple premise, that all problems reside in ignorance, that they represent a
block in the understanding of the person who has them. As long as that
block exists, so long will the problem remain. There is absolutely no
possibility of ever solving a problem without gaining insight into its nature. Life is a constant movement by which simplicity is resolved into
complexity and complexity is resolved into simplicity , and the alchemy that
causes the natural growth of things is simply widened consciousness. The
most complex problem in the world yields to understanding, and once it has
been solved it becomes simple. To achieve the ascendancy of mind over matter you must accept the basic
premise of there being one animating presence residing in all persons and
all things. Behind all form is a basic unity , an essential oneness that is never
destroyed despite all dif ferentiation. When we are able, through higher
consciousness and increased insight, to penetrate the many masks behind
which the all-encompassing one mind and one life is hidden, then we
achieve ef fectiveness in all our works and actions through understanding
the dynamic law of becoming that exists within each form. All this is by
way of saying that there is nothing in the world that we cannot influence by
first influencing ourselves, for everything in the end is colored by the
quality of our consciousness. W e can change our consciousness and thus
change what we see, and the tool by which we can ef fect this change is
imagination. W e can learn to visualize in our minds only those things that
we wish admitted into our lives, and when we have truly learned to do this,
physical counterparts of those ideas will soon appear in our environment. You can be anything you want to be if you will only trust your imagination. Picture your heart’ s desire; never let the picture distort or tarnish; keep it
fresh and clear and bright. It will enter your life quietly and unobtrusively ,
without sound of trumpets or clashing cymbals, for it will be following alaw that exists throughout the universe, that everything basically is idea and
must first begin in the mind of the beholder .OceanofPDF .com 
6
 
Mental Imagery
 
“To have seen that V ision,” says Plotinus, “is r eason no longer , it is
more than r eason, befor e reason and after r eason, as also is the V ision
which is seen. And perhaps we should not her e speak of sight, for that
which is seen is not discerned by the seer , if indeed it is possible her e to
distinguish between seer and seen as separate things. Ther efore this
Vision is hard to tell of, for how can a man describe as other than
himself that which when he discerned it seemed not other but one with
himself?”
 
To Think Is to Be
 
That which is visualized in the mind becomes part of the possessor of that
mind because we ar e what we think. It is strange how little we know about
the mind. Not much mor e has been determined about it since the time of
Descartes and his brilliant basic pr emise, “Cogito, er go sum” — “I think,
therefore I am.” W e only know we exist because we think. Should thought
stop in us, we automatically would cease to be. Should thought begin at any
particular point in space, that point immediately would begin to live. It is
deeply significant that we exist by grace of thought, and it is even mor e
significant that at any particular time we ar e the sum total of the thoughts
we hold in mind.It seems reasonable to assume that the thinking being that inhabits us is
thought itself, that the more complex and universal our thoughts are, the
more complex and universal we become. It is impossible to separate the
image in the mind of a beholder from the beholder himself, because in a
very real sense the two are one. That which achieves the attention of
consciousness becomes that consciousness. When our attention is focused
on something, we become that thing. It is this power of consciousness, that
it becomes the thought it thinks, which gives the mind such ascendancy
over matter . Our investigation of the outer world has practically conquered
space and time, but we still know very little about what the human mind is
and what its influences are. Because thought is invisible, it never has come
under the scrutiny of the laboratory microscope. As a consequence, we are
nearly as poorly informed about the qualities and processes of thought as
we were at the dawn of written history . Even though it is recognized now
that the thoughts a person thinks determine their whole life, the average
person continues to think in response to sensual stimuli rather than in
response to their inner wishes and desires. Mental Law
 
The thought first, then the thing — that is the law . But the vast majority of
people live on the opposite premise — the thing first, then the thought. The
power of mental imagery still works even in this reversal of form, but in
this case it merely lends validity to everything they see and every situation
they encounter . Such people are unable to grow beyond the limitation of
their own emotions, for they give credence to all sensual stimuli. Each such
stimulus becomes bound up in an emotional reaction. Whenever they
encounter an event or thing which they have encountered before, they react
in a predetermined manner . It thus becomes impossible for them to progress
into any degree of ef fective living, for by the very nature of their mental
position the things of the world control them; they never control the things. They are either fearful or hostile, resentful, envious, or sad, but each of
these emotions is inspired by a stimulus from outside and never by innerconvictions or desires. These are the people who are the most strenuous
defenders of their mental aberrations. In ar gument they are easily provoked
to hysteria. Since their convictions are encysted in emotion, they defend
them with their lives, convinced of ultimate disaster should their delusions
be dissolved. The most fortunate thing that can happen is that life reduce
their egos to nothingness. T o a great extent their eyes are then cleared, and
they are able finally to see that they have always reacted rather than acted. When humility enters someone’ s soul, they at last are able to perceive that
they do not live alone in the world but with millions of brothers and that
hidden in the heart of each is the same animating spirit. Forecaster of the Futur e
 
“To know is nothing at all, to imagine is everything,” wrote Anatole France. That which seizes the attention of our consciousness is an infallible
forecaster of the future. Indeed, were we to know the thoughts that occupy
someone else’ s mind, we might provide them an accurate description of
their coming life, down to the most intimate detail. The success of fortune
tellers, via whatever medium they use — cards, tea leaves, crystal balls —
is always the result of a telepathic communication between seer and subject. The thoughts that possess us lead us around by the mental noses. There is in
thought a motor impulse that compels us to do the things we think about,
and this is a law far above moral or ethical considerations. It works just as
quickly for what is considered evil as it does for what is considered good. If
you keep thinking about robbing the corner service station, and you keep
this image in your mind for several weeks, you one day will find yourself at
the service station, gun in hand, prepared to empty the till. People who
commit so-called crimes of passion often report they were in the grip of a
compulsion they could neither control nor understand. Such compulsion
proceeds out of their thoughts. Images projected into the moving screen of
mind finally take root in the motor impulses of the body , and each person is
propelled into the action they visualize in the deeper recesses of their
consciousness. The Dhammapada cautions us to guard our thoughts, andindeed we should. Everything that is admitted into our mind takes shape,
form, and substance in our lives, and we can stop this from happening only
by ceasing to live, for the law of life is the law of thoughts becoming things. Clear Thinking
 
The quality of our mental imagery determines how quickly we get ef fects in
the outer world. Since most people are relatively unaware of thinking at all,
they give little consideration to how well they think, to the clarity and
reality of the images they envisage. Most of us are fuzzy thinkers. When we
call something to mind, it comes to us as a vague and shadowy presence. We do not really see it, feel it, hear it, touch it, penetrate it, take it unto us,
but rather are dimly aware of it by means of some verbal grasp of its idea. We say , “My house,” but the image does not call to mind the actual house,
only a vague idea of it in terms of whether the taxes have to be paid, the
outside walls painted, the lawn mowed, or a party given there Saturday
night. W e adopt meanings about everything in terms of personal
significance, but we seldom conjure up images in our consciousness for the
simple reason that we never have trained ourselves to think that way , never
have truly understood the significance of such images. Think about something familiar . Think of a r oom in which you spend a gr eat
deal of time. See yourself sitting in some particular chair in that r oom. Look
around. What do you see? Ar e ther e pictur es on the walls? Wher e and what
kind? What ar e their colors? Wher e are the furnitur e, books, papers? Is
there dust gather ed in the corners? Wher e are the lamps? How do they
operate? See yourself in that r oom with such intensity that you actually feel
that you ar e ther e. See the color , the solidity of objects. W ork on this for a
few days. If you ar e lucky , you will have an experience that will startle you. During one of these meditation periods, while you ar e visiting this r oom in
your mind, you will have the sudden feeling that you actually ar e ther e.
When this experience comes to you, you will be ther e, in a very r eal thoughpsychic sense; such is the tr emendous power of corr ect and clear mental
visualization. A Door A jar
 
There are other tests you can take to convince yourself how fuzzy your
thinking has been and how much power lies in making it clear . If you ar e
married, try suddenly to call to mind the face of your spouse. Y ou may be
shocked to r ealize how difficult this is. What you immediately call to mind is
an idea of your spouse, and this idea has the wavering shape of a shadowy
dream. Concentrate on making his or her face as clear in your mind as a
photograph. Bend the entir e effort of your attention towar d this end. Gradually the pictur e will clear . Soon you will see that face befor e you,
animated, alive, vibrant, so that you feel certain that if you r eached out you
could touch a cheek with your fingertips. Don’ t be surprised that evening if
your husband or wife says to you, “I was thinking about you all day today .”
This is not legend or superstition or wishful thinking. When we deal with
the mind we are dealing with the most significant thing in life. There are
undreamed-of powers in consciousness, and they have not even been
tapped. Our first fumbling attempts to understand the paranormal will be
very amusing to researchers a hundred years from now . The awakening to
telepathy and clairvoyance and precognition have barely jarred the door
into an enormous storehouse of fantastic powers and perceptions. W e take
our first step on the proper path when we realize the original power of mind
over matter and how our thoughts influence the world we live in. Once we
truly have apprehended the tremendous force that propels a mental image to
become a physical fact, then we see that we must dedicate our ef forts to
becoming clear and concise thinkers rather than rushers-around-in-the-
world. Psychic Imbalance
 
We must learn to visualize with complete clarity , so that an image called up
in mind exists with the same solidity , color , and dimension as one in the
physical world. Research conducted into the content of dreams has revealed
that some people dream in black and white, while others dream in color . Others dream in pantomime; still others with full sound ef fects. Some
people’ s dreams are populated with folks without faces; and in some
people’ s dreams it is always night; in others it is always day . Such research
has proved pretty well that emotional blocks in the subconscious restrict us
from completely visualizing things in our minds. W e might attempt to
envision ourselves successfully completing a task which we desire to do,
but no matter how hard we try to focus our inner attention, we never can
quite see ourselves in that position. If it would finally involve a change of
residence, for example, we might report that we are able to see the new
home and everything in it but are unable to visualize ourselves there. It is the subconscious that blocks us from such visualization. Some fear or
hostility or resentment has given us a deep mental block about moving and
forbids the picture from entering our minds and thereby bars the actual
event from happening in the physical world. It is no easy matter for us to
overcome this subconscious censoring of our thoughts. It represents a
wrong self-identification, a psychic imbalance. This psychic imbalance is
universally caused by the centering of consciousness in the ego rather than
in the deeper regions of being. Those of us who allow our surface self to
control our life are in the grip of a Lilliputian ghost. W e eventually will
become bound up mentally by thousands of little prompters that proceed out
of our subconscious. It is they that give form and substance to our ego, the
thing we regard as ourselves, which is never ourselves at all but only the
limitations that we have accepted and come to regard as real. Subconscious Pr omptings 
Modern psychoanalysis, in or der to test the psychic imbalance of the
individual, uses a test devised by the Swiss psychologist Hermann
Rorschach, in which the subconscious pr eoccupation of a patient is
diagnosed fr om spontaneous images which they see in complex ink blots. Since the ink blots ar e haphazar d and multiform, it follows that the images
that the patient sees in them r epresent the kind of thing that their
consciousness is habitually focused upon. In other wor ds, the test pr ovides
a key to the thoughts which occupy an individual’ s mind and gives the
psychologist a method of interpr eting neur osis. The pr emise that diagnosis
is based upon is that each of us sees in all things the thoughts that, a priori,
occupy our minds. Thus life itself turns out to be nothing mor e or less than
a gigantic Rorschach test. Shape and form and substance have infinite
meaning and infinite possibility . To the individual beholder each assumes
color and quality dir ectly taken fr om the thoughts that occupy their
consciousness. When we choose the thoughts we think, we choose our lives. The fact of the matter is that very few people are free to exercise choice in
their thinking because the bulk of their thought erupts from pain-insistent
memories in the subconscious. They are not free because they have wrongly
identified themselves. Their sense of self is primarily the memories of
events and relationships. In consequence, they assume themselves to be a
changing thing, an ego, a sense of self built upon dimly remembered and
barely perceived relationships. The ego thinks always in response to the
subconscious. Only the great self, the sense of self free of the limitations of
the ego, is able to originate thought or to be receptive to it in an unbiased
manner . We all put too much value on the ego. Personality represents for us
both a fascination and a delusion. By its very meaning, personality is
restricted to the individual and thus represents a limited sense of self. Only
from the wider and broader standpoint of the Secret Self is it possible for
the individual mind to orient itself correctly with life. Thus it is able to
grasp meanings and relationships from a lar ger and more encompassing
standpoint and to know by immediate perception rather than by reason and
deduction. Instinctive Performance
 
The ego thinks from a small standpoint in the center . It thinks outward. It
seeks to know by groping into the unknown, attempting to rationalize what
it finds there. Since infinite space surrounds it, it is impossible for it ever to
grow into great understanding. Since what it thinks is colored by what it
already knows, and since what it knows is based upon a strictly personal
and infinitesimal interpretation, it therefore, by its very nature, cannot ever
arrive at true knowledge. Before we can be truly wise, before we can arrive
at our birthright of power and understanding, we must in some degree shuck
off the trappings of the ego and take on a wider kind of consciousness. Instead of being central thinkers, we must learn to be peripheral or outer
thinkers. W e must learn to allow thought to develop in us under the
impulsion of something outside of and greater than ourselves. W e must
learn to be able to do things without focusing our attention upon them. W e
must learn to perform them through an instinctive understanding of their
true nature and the job to be done. The ego prevents us from performing in this manner . To be self-conscious is
to be fearful and restricted. The instinctive and natural performer thinks
with their outer and wider mind. Those who are enrapt in consideration of
their ego and sense of self are bound up in fear and tension during the
simplest of tasks. That which we do well we do not think about. W e simply
perform by grace of our outer and wider mind. When we lose our contact
with this mind, we fall from grace with a bang; for all by ourselves, focused
upon each little movement, we cannot perform the simplest of tasks. The centipede was happy quite
Until a toad in fun
Said, “Pray , which leg goes after which?”
That worked her mind to such a pitch,She lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run. — KA THERINE CRASTER
 
There seems to be absolutely no limit to the feats we can perform when we
are able to grasp them with our outer or peripheral mind.
_OceanofPDF.com_The_Magic_in_Your_Mind_-_Eckhart_TolleForeword_U_S_Andersen.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        It is this psychological state that is referred to in mysticism
and in many religions as “attunement” or “grace,” and once we are involved
in it, our choices and directions are as warrants from on high; everything
does our bidding at the very moment our bidding is resolved. This aspect of “superknowledge” gives us our best indication of the nature
and usefulness of the will. Once we understand that desire opposed to the
aims of the Secret Self can avail the individual nothing but frustration, then
we finally have been awakened to the principle of attunement, which is the
secret of ef fective living. T o actually decide is not within the scope of
human knowledge, simply because human knowledge is limited to the
scantiest fraction of total knowledge. It is just no good trying to make a
decision about things when nearly the entire sum of their characteristics is
hidden. Individual will exercised against events and people is the sheerest
of vanities and avails nothing in the end but suf fering and defeat. Acts performed in the ego for advantages are acts performed without
understanding of their true significance, and any success or satisfaction
achieved through them is like froth on the crest of a wave, disappearing
with the wave. Our consciousness is placed so frontally on our total psyche
that we are forever being mesmerized by the blandishments, ur gings, and
pleadings of the ego. W e aspire to conquer peaks that, once climbed, revealthemselves as the lowliest of plateaus and force us to consider how false our
gods have been. T rue goals are spiritual, and laziness, procrastination, and
fear are overcome not by railing at the self, but by seeking the sustaining
seeds of consciousness that lie deep within the nature. The Liberating Law
 
As our understanding grows, so does our willpower, but bear in mind the
differentiation: true willpower is ef fective and achieves results through the
mere aiming; false willpower never achieves results at all. As consciousness
expands and takes in new levels of awareness, so the power of the
individual increases. Achieving increased awareness and communing with
higher heavenly powers are not things restricted to the isolated mystic or
contemplative saint, but are available to all, and the reward is always
complete ef fectiveness, whether in creative fields or executive, whether
spiritual, mental, or material; for in understanding is power, in knowledge
surety, and those who have arrived at enlar ged consciousness must therefore
be able to work their will and way on the world simply by becoming one
with it. To be what we truly ar e and to become what we ar e capable of becoming
are the only courses of action open to those of us who would live a fulfilled
life. No matter the barbs of fate that frustrate you, no matter how stacked
against you ar e the car ds of fortune — how you wer e born, wher e, into what
kind of body, gifted with whatever native intelligence — ther e is a liberating
law in the universe, and you can become the highest of the high, wisest of
the wise, for you have within your very grasp a tool with which to achieve
absolute fr eedom. Once you have acknowledged to yourself that within your
body is that supr eme consciousness that has author ed the worlds and the
universes, then at last you ar e bound to let the ego step down fr om the helm
and allow a wiser for ce to chart course thr ough life. Once you have placed
your fortunes and ener gies in the hands of the Secr et Self you will know a
peace and inner quietude that surpass any joy you have known. Y our lifewill gr ow into a whole thing. Each day will serve as a building block
towar d some definite goal or purpose. Y ou will finally be amazed at the
miracles wr ought when the Secr et Self takes over. Over coming Guilt and Hostility
 
Guilt and hostility are accoutrements of the ego, which arms itself with
delusions in order to survive. If a nagging sense of guilt accompanies you, it
is because the ego is made of accumulated things, teachings, blandishments,
sensual impressions, none of which have much relation to eternal truth, but
nonetheless they are a moral censor of every act performed by the
individual. If you feel guilty, never make the intellectual mistake of
thinking that your feelings arise from the censorship of the Secret Self,
which makes no such lean and human judgments. Guilt is generally the
accumulated teachings of society acting within the individual as a prompter
or deterrent of certain actions. Such censorship seldom is based on lasting
truth, since society’ s pressures for conformity are often at variance with the
Divine’ s pressures for individuality. Hostility is simply the other face of
guilt, manifesting as hostility in the aggressive person, just as guilt
manifests in the more passive. There is certainly nothing good about either
of these emotional blocks. They are products of the ego and vanish when
we center ourselves in the deeper regions of consciousness. Then it
becomes nearly impossible to be emotionally involved in the vanities of the
little self that is action servant of the Secret Self. The way to peace of mind lies in abandoning the will as a tool of the ego,
finally abandoning the ego also, and centering the consciousness in the
Divine. Through the widening of consciousness that this psychological
transference brings, there comes to us an understanding that before was
impossible to us. In a way that transcends material explanation we take on a
little of the identity of everything that crosses our awareness. In this manner
we understand others through actually participating in the consciousness of
others, and this superknowledge, this deep intuition, brings to our actionand work a high ef fectiveness and almost supernatural preordination. W e
move in the center of events as if we were ordering events, because we
move in accord with their true nature and are guided in all by a principle
that sees the end to be accomplished and the means of attaining it. And
because we have abandoned ego and move in response to this universal
will, we act with absolute surety, complete ef fectiveness; without hazard,
anxiety, or fear; and are dominated henceforth by inner peace and absolute
joy. OceanofPDF. com 
5
 
Mind over Matter
 
The almost universal path that people follow is to accede to
circumstance, to thr ow up their hands and say, “That’ s the way it
goes. ” It is a curious and wry fact that when cir cumstances go against
our personal desir es we cr edit our frustration to bad luck, but when we
are carried to some pinnacle of success it is no longer fortune but our
superior skill that we cr edit. In actual fact, all luck and skill emanate
from deep-seated convictions in the subconscious mind of the
individual. Desir e and Destiny
 
The average person never really decides whether mind rules matter or
matter rules mind. They accept the fact that mind rules matter in certain
circumstances, but tend to regard these circumstances as the exception
rather than the rule. They see mental attitude determine the outcome of
athletic contests and overcome physical disability, but when it comes to
adopting completely a mind-first approach to daily living, they never quite
make it. If mind ever rules matter at all, it must do so as a result of an absolute
principle properly applied. This absolute principle could not be a thing that
worked some of the time or once in a while or capriciously responded tochance, but would have to be a law that always worked in exactly the same
way. If, for example, someone adopted the mind-over -matter approach in a
particular circumstance and failed to achieve the results they desired, it
would not be the law that had failed but their understanding of the law and
their application of its principles. When we examine accomplishment, the first thing we notice is that those
who don’ t want to climb a mountain never climb one. After that, we note
that even among those who definitely want to climb mountains, a lar ge
number never climb any. From this, we deduce that the first ingredient
essential to accomplishment is desire. After that, other more discretionary
and therefore more obscure factors become involved. It is dif ficult to say why people want anything. W e observe that nearly
everybody would rather experience pleasure than pain, but we are aware
that certain persons not only stick pins into their bodies but maintain
agonizing physical attitudes over protracted periods of time. Such people
appear to have chosen pain instead of pleasure, at least in a physical sense,
and to have done such a thing through an inner impulsion either above the
pain-pleasure principle or related to it obscurely. Desire for a goal is the
only thing that makes a pain-filled experience possible to bear. Desire is
also an opiate. Many people involved in crucial physical exertions report no
sense of pain whatever, though when the period of exertion is over wounds
are found on their flesh, and joints and muscles are strained. Football
players are a notable case in point. If we carry our observations even further, we soon note that there is a great
deal of dif ference in the degrees of desire. One person may want and hold
out their hand, and that is the greatest ef fort possible for them. Another may
want and rend chains, so great is their need. Desire is a thing that impels. The greater the desire, the more it impels, and this impulsion is rooted in
the inner vision that possesses the individual. T o the degree that we are
alive and imprisoned within reactive flesh, to that same degree we
relentlessly pursue the visions that possess us. Whether our mental images
are of buildings to be built or of banks to be robbed makes not the slightest
difference to the motor impulse that develops within us. Y ou can beabsolutely certain that the things that occupy your mind will soon be part of
your life, if they are not already. Blessing and Curse
 
A curious thing has evolved in the human being. The quality of mental
reflection which has slowly developed in our psyches over the eons of our
evolution has enabled us to form pictures within our minds in complete
variance to the world around us. W e can, if we will, on a flight of fancy,
transfer ourselves from rags to riches, Kansas to Istanbul, in the twinkling
of an eye, and thus, in the conscious center of our being, no longer are we
slaves to the world in which we find ourselves. T wo principal phenomena
have resulted, one stigmata, the other a blessing. The stigmata are these: Life is lar gely a matter of disciplining oneself to
endure pain in order to achieve a desired end, but the immature person often
seizes on the image power of the mind to seek refuge from reality, and as a
result develops a kind of wish-thinking that makes them absolutely
ineffectual in all circumstances. They turn the power of the imagination
upon itself, destroying its ability to influence the outer world by setting it to
work on problems that have no relationship to the outer world. The victims
of such delusions are legion. Some populate our mental hospitals, addiction
treatment centers, and halfway houses. They constitute the majority of those
admitted to rehab for the treatment of alcoholism. And they are to be found
all over the world in a zombielike trance, making the movements of the
living, but with one foot in another world. On the other hand is the blessing that imagination brings. It is the mystic
seeing that enables us to gaze upon our surroundings with x-ray eye and
perceive in them their hidden potentiality. This harnessing of the image-
making power of the mind to the outer world of things and events has
transformed life on earth, has enabled us, in a few short centuries, not only
to achieve dominion over our immediate environment but to arrive at theverge of extending that dominion through the time-space continuum of the
universe. Most modern thinking conveniently divides the world into two dif ferent
classes of things, one substance, the other intelligence. Science takes great
pains to classify substance. It catalogs the elements and their various
combinations, delineates the makeup of the molecules whose cohesion
forms the elements, breaks down the molecule into various atomic weights,
and even dif ferentiates the atom into a nucleus and a certain number of
encircling electrons. At this point, the dif ference between hydrogen and
lead, for example, has become startlingly slight. Each has an invisible
nucleus encircled by a certain number of electrons, more in the case of lead,
but hardly appreciably more, and the dif ference between them appears to be
one of degree rather than one of kind. Our confusion grows when, through
the sudden process of nuclear fission, the atom itself is reduced to nothing
measurable, disappearing in a burst of flame, and we are forced to inquire at
last if substance is really substance after all but perhaps might not represent
a vastly subtler conception, of idea only, intelligence itself. Behind the Atom
 
If we examine any consciousness, we inevitably find a body of some sort, a
weight, scale, and dimension that houses the intelligence being examined
and refuses any kind of scrutiny separate from it. It seems most probable
that matter and intelligence are one and the same thing, that intelligence is
only a higher manifestation of matter, becoming apparent only in that
substance that takes on complexity. Once we have agreed that intelligence is
a manifestation of form, it is but a step further to gain a glimmer of the truth
that intelligence is evolutionary in the growth of matter, which leads us
inescapably to the conclusion that intelligence, while a manifestation of
matter, is superior to and has basic control of that matter. In short,
intelligence, or consciousness, or awareness, has inherent in itself control
over all physical circumstances, all events. The American artist and New Thought author W alter Russell is interesting
here: “That which man calls matter or substance,” he writes, “has no
existence whatever. So-called matter is but waves of the motion of light,
electrically divided into opposed pairs, then electrically conditioned and
patterned into what we call various substances of matter. Briefly put, matter
is but the motion of light, and motion is not substance. Our creative thinkers
must look primarily to light to perform tomorrow’ s miracles. ”
Light, ener gy, intelligence — whichever of the three you choose to
acknowledge as the moving force behind the universe, the primary thing is
to be able to acknowledge that substance is only relative, not a solid and
absolute thing at all, but representative of the working of mind and always
subservient to mind. A desk is not a desk except in the most crudely sensual
way. In actuality it is an enclosure or series of enclosures in which
molecules are speeding about at many times the swiftness of rifle bullets. A
million times more volume exists outside the molecules than in them, and if
those in steel, for instance, were to cease their movement for a moment, you
could poke your finger through the steel with the same ease as you poke it
through air. Basic behind the construction of matter is an innate symmetry, a kind of
mathematical ideation that can only be attributed to a thinking mind. The
atom itself, the smallest building block of substance, has a cohesiveness and
aesthetic composition that, beyond all things, implies individuality. The
atom indicates purpose, and it indicates an ur ge to survival. And when a
sufficient number of atoms of the right electronic makeup were combined to
make a protein molecule, then it was a very short time indeed before arms
and legs and eyes and brain were grown and there moved about on the
surface of matter an autonomous being seeking dominion over his
environment — the human. Consciousness Is Pr oportional to Complexity
 When we turn our reflections back to the origins of life and the purposes of
evolution we are struck at once with the picture of increasing complexity. From amoeba to human has taken many millions of years, and the two seem
scarcely related. Y et the step from inanimate matter to animate matter, as is
represented by the amoeba, is perhaps more breathtaking than the step from
amoeba to human, for the latter represents simply an increase in complexity
while the former represents something entirely dif ferent from what
preceded it. Out of the masses of slag and rock and steam emer ged an
element that moved, that grew and maintained itself — life. Y et even
growth there was not so much the evolution of one thing out of another
dissimilar thing, but rather an adding unto one thing of characteristics
lacking in its predecessor, so that the dif ference in condition between an
animate and inanimate thing is primarily one of complexity as against
simpleness. No physicist or chemist will deny that the protein molecule is more
complex than the molecules of inor ganic elements. Some great change once
transpired in nature for life to grow from inanimate substance, but in order
for this to ever happen, consciousness had to be inherent in all matter. It is
consciousness that is responsible for form. Wherever form is, there also is
an intelligent presence. It inhabits the rock and the mountain just as surely
as it does the human being. The form of the thing is dependent upon the
idea that holds its whizzing molecules within boundaries, and this contour
is just as surely mental as the concept of mathematics, and just as surely is
held by a thinking being whose presence is always found within. This leads us dangerously close to the established province of religion, but
we are not concerned here with a father image who has created children and
is raising them to knowledge. What we are concerned with is the bottom
root of intelligence, how and why it manifests in the universe, and whether
humans are divorced from that originating intelligence, subject to it as
slaves to master, or umbilically tied to it in such a manner that they are it
and it is they. How Thought Conditions Things 
Those who see chaos as the originator of the worlds, coincidence as
responsible for the formation of human life, and futility as the earmark of
life, find at every hand just such a universe. Those who perceive a hardened
creator ordering his vassals about cannot help but be impressed by the
inequality of the human lot and perceive in the world much bitterness and
pain. Those who see an inhabiting presence in all things instinctively know
that all forms of the world are only ideas given substance, that the mind
which upholds each is resident within themselves, and that therefore they
are part and parcel of all peace, perfection, and ef fectiveness. The world, as
always, turns out to be exactly what our consciousness is conditioned to
see. It is this astounding and tremendously dynamic premise that life is built
upon, the central law upon which evolution itself hinges. We see only that which we think we will see, and in consequence the world
is peopled with things and events all dredged up out of our consciousness. A thing or a person or an event is not changed because of our
consciousness, but inherent in each are all qualities, and we sift out only
those that already occupy our awareness. It is for this reason that people are
villains in one circumstance, heroes in another; that each of us in our time
plays countless roles. It is not so much that we are dif ferent in each
circumstance, but that we are being constantly perceived by dif ferent
persons who view us only through a narrow slit of individual vision and
accept us for the thing they expect us to be. Consider an ordinary knife. T o the baker it is an instrument with which to
divide a loaf of bread into parts. T o the irate sociopath it is a weapon with
which to dispose of the object of his wrath. T o the sur geon, come to a
sickbed without instruments, it is a lifesaving tool that will allow her to take
from the abdomen of her patient a diseased appendix. T o the young boy
passing through the kitchen it is part of a game — mumblety-peg. Y et what
it actually is is a compound of inanimate elements and previously living
molecules — steel and wood, shaped a certain way and fashioned so — but
even this is but an indication of what it truly is, for our senses reveal only a
tiny part of the total qualities of anything that seizes our attention. So a thing is the kind of thing it is only because of the personal relationship
of the beholder, and it actually never has any true qualities at all because
our senses are too crude to perceive any truth about it other than that which
proceeds out of our consciousness. And it is this that af fects us most of all. For when we see the knife we do not think of the kind and quality of the
steel and whether it has substance or is only idea, but we look at the knife
only to determine its relationship to us, and that is the only thing we see. Matter Is Movement
 
Just to understand the scientific premise that matter is not matter at all but
intense movement confined within spatial limits is to arrive at a pinnacle of
mental and spiritual freedom that will never again allow you to be
intimidated by the things and circumstances around you. In deepest truth
they are no more real than the conditioning of your consciousness, and you
can, by an act of increased mental awareness, change them from the things
you think they are into something totally and completely dif ferent. Here we knock on the door of the occult. The ring of the foregoing indicates
we will be able to move mountains, change water into wine, still the winds;
and indeed we might once we learn the testing but veil-breaking truth that
all mountains are in the mind, as are all limitation and lack, all storms. Make this encompassing decision, that matter is subservient to mind, and
you will see at once that the world and everything in it is only an ef fect of
consciousness, a partial manifestation of thought; and inasmuch as it
remains always a reflection of idea in the mind of the beholder, it exhibits at
once another of its infinite reflections the moment the thought in the
beholder ’s mind changes. What that means is this: things show only a side that reflects the
individual’ s thought about them. They don’ t truly change when the thought
about them changes, but they contain all possibilities and reveal to the
beholder only an aspect that their consciousness is prepared to perceive. This metaphysical breakdown of the universe is a great help in adjusting
oneself to the premise of working first with mind and allowing events to
develop from an inner impulsion of their own. Once we are fully convinced
of the mental causes behind all things, we no longer feel impelled to run
about, lay on hands, attempt one way or the other to coerce the world to fit
the pattern in our minds. One intelligence lies at the center of all events and
things, and it is at the core of your own nature. Once you have gained
sufficient wisdom to be concerned only with your own consciousness and
the inner discipline that widens its awareness, then you can be sure that the
outer world will be a reflection of the inner, that you are working with the
root causes of your environment. All possibilities exist in each of us because each of us is a manifestation of
a mind that is totality, infinity, unity; and each is only less than the total
according to our isolation from it, and when we expand our mental nature,
we approach original perfection, power, omniscience. Mind over matter is
not so much a mental dominion over material things as it is an awareness of
their many-sidedness and unlimited potentiality. Acceptance by the
observer of any one facet of a thing as the totality of that thing
automatically confers such limitation on that thing as far as its influence
upon the observer is concerned. In this respect our lives are guided by
shadows, by the meaningful aspects we give the things and events we meet
in the world, and our consciousness is never as much a product of
circumstances as circumstances (in this subjective way) are a result of our
consciousness. Our Skin-Deep Selves
 
A little r eflection on the conditioning quality of consciousness is all that is
necessary to quickly r ealize how continuously it works in our lives. Love is
blind because the lover always per ceives the mental image of the beloved. The divor ce rate is a pr oduct of disenchantment. It is not because of
disenchantment that love leaves; disenchantment comes after love leaves. Places of triumph r evisited always seem strangely small and shoddy. They
do not fit the magnificent ar enas cast up by our emotionally char ged
memories. And when pain commingles with places and events, we can no
more bring ourselves to visit them or have contact with them or even dr edge
them up fr om our memories than we can spr out wings and fly, so capricious
is the pain-avoiding, pleasur e-seeking ego in its efforts to hide our true
selves. This veil-shrouding, fan-dancing, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’ t quality of
the ego is what makes each of us use a thousand selves in the conduct of
our lives, and never actually be any one of them or even all put together. Because we do not truly know who we are, we seek in every situation a role
to be played, usually feeling no sense of deceit or sham whatever, but
blithely accepting the fact of a chameleon self which adapts its colors to its
background. In the of fice we are a dif ferent self to the boss than to our
subordinates. At home we are a dif ferent self to our spouse than to our
children. W e are a dif ferent self at our club than with a small group of
confidants. And we often present a dif ferent self to the neighbor on one side
of us than to the neighbor on the other. We seldom know how it is that we
get into the various roles we play, but play them we must, and when we
have a dinner party and carefully select the guest list with an eye to their
getting along, it is not the homogeneity of the guests that our eye reviews
but whether we have played the same role with all of them and therefore
can be a single self at the party that night. If perchance an uninvited guest
arrives, this sudden loping in is greeted with deep consternation as the
necessity of playing two dif ferent roles is foisted upon us. It awakens deep
within our psyches the uneasy undertones of schizophrenia. Great dramatic coaches, in an ef fort to lead their protégés to understanding
of the characters they portray, always seek an under -the-skin approach,
instinctively realizing that a person is only truly understood from the inside,
that any other position deals with symptoms only. Humanity’ s investigation
of the world itself has taken this inner and outer course — the inner
exemplified by psychology, religion, parapsychology; the outer exemplified
by the physical sciences. Science has made the greater progress by far, but
the race is not always to the swift. Science has pursued substance in its
laboratories, from mountain to atoms, but unraveled no enigmas other thana kind of elementary construction, and its sole accomplishment in its search
for the secret of life has been to chase matter of f the physical stage into
some realm of invisibility where it no longer can be perceived, much less
understood by the methods and instruments available. Intuitive Per ception
 
We are reactive animals and generally play the roles expected of us. Rare
and wise is the person who is able to shuck of f this automatism. They are
able to do so only by recognizing that within each of us resides the identical
animating spirit. By inner understanding they are able to allow events to
develop through their own inner impulsion. This intuitive perception
permits them to take their place in each event according to the best interests
of their own nature. We are all born into a bondage of the senses, and insofar as we place
absolute credence in their evidence, we remain slaves to them. Only when
we arrive at a mystic intuition of the universality of intelligence are we
finally able to realize that matter in essence is only mind and that innate in
each of us is the same resident being, which exists everywhere at all times
and in all things, appearing to be dif ferent according to the form into which
it has entered but essentially remaining one, indivisible, and infinite. Once in a while someone arises who by some strange evolutionary leap
seems to have surmounted the bondage that holds others. Such a man was
Edgar Cayce, the wizard of V irginia Beach. Not only was he able to read
minds and see things and events at a distance, but he also seemed able to
call upon universal mind for all the knowledge within it. Cayce’ s
perceptions circumvented time, space, matter, and his carefully documented
exploits have never been disproved. He became in hypnotic trance the most
erudite of men, having at his fingertips all the knowledge in the fields of
medicine and religion, yet in his normal waking state he was totally lacking
in education. And Edgar Cayce does not stand alone as a mentalphenomenon. Nearly every child prodigy, every genius exhibits this strange
power to transcend the limitations of matter by a gigantic leap of mind. Mozart, Einstein, Gandhi, Jesus Christ, geniuses all, used some secret
power of the mind to perform their miracles. Though the person in whom
genius lives hour by hour is rare, each of us sometime in our life usually is
privileged with a moment of mystical intuition, sometimes several,
sometimes many. Inner Knowing
 
A young man named Geor ge suf fered intensely from migraine headaches. One night during a particularly painful siege he took to the streets in the
hope that walking would reduce his pain. Suddenly he was overcome by the
absolute knowledge that breathing pure oxygen would relieve him. He went
immediately to the emer gency hospital, won over the attending physician’ s
objections, breathed oxygen, was immediately relieved. Such treatment is
generally accepted in the medical fraternity today, but at the time it was
rarely used, and Geor ge had never heard of it. Another man named T om, in
the grip of a depression resulting from his loss of a job, awoke one morning
with the feeling that he would be very successful in the valve-
manufacturing business. T om’s acquaintanceship with valves was cursory. He knew they did something inside pumps and engines, but he didn’ t know
just what. He had had no training in engineering and scarcely any in
business, but that didn’ t deter him. He went to a valve company and
arranged a tour of the premises. He was immediately enchanted, sure that
valve manufacturing was for him. T wo weeks later he met at a party a man
who identified himself as an inventor. He drew designs of his new valve on
the hostess’ s tablecloth. T wo days later T om and the inventor found
themselves in the bank arranging financing. T oday their valve
manufacturing firm is one of the lar gest in the nation. The Latent Faculty
 
Intuition is the power by which all things are done. Nobody ever built a
building by piling blocks. A building is built first in somebody’ s mind;
someone sees it towering to the sun, clear and solid in his imagination, long
before the first physical movement is made to construct it. Those who go
through life totaling facts accumulate only the smallest percentage of the
knowledge that exists in the universe. That kind of person wants facts to tell
them what to do, but facts never do; there simply aren’ t enough of them. “In every man,” writes Rudolf Steiner, “there are latent faculties by means
of which he can acquire for himself knowledge of the higher worlds. ” It is
inner certitude, intuitive hunch, that leads us into right action. W e take
inordinate pride in the powers of our reason, but we have put the cart before
the horse. W e actually seldom follow our reason; our reason usually follows
us. A look at the world’ s history shows us how true this is. Reason told
Columbus the world was flat, intuition that it was round. Reason would
have had him sail the safe seas around his native Europe; intuition led him
across uncharted waters to a new world. Reason told Pasteur that disease
was caused by fevers of the blood; intuition led him to search out bacteria
and a whole new area of preventive medicine. W e attain skill in works and
action when we learn to trust ourselves completely to an inner impulsion
and to cease acting in response to the events and circumstances around us. Doctrine of Mind over Matter
 
There are three principal points in the doctrine of mind over matter which
must be clearly understood. (1) An invisible but real cosmic medium exists
which supports the apparent world. (2) There is an established connection
between this real but unseen world and the illusory world of the senses. (3)This connection may be discerned and this relationship controlled by our
disciplined consciousness. Taking these points in order, we are struck immediately by the fact that it is
very dif ficult to prove the existence of the cosmic medium. Our methods of
scientific investigation have thus far done little to subject consciousness to
the laboratory microscope, though investigations of parapsychology have
been somewhat fruitful. Dr. J. B. Rhine’ s experiments at Duke University
have proved successfully that there exists some method of communication
between minds beyond the purely sensual, but this whole area of human
existence lies lar gely uninvestigated, like a strange and dark continent. People have dreams in which they see themselves doing a certain thing at a
certain place, and a few days later actually find themselves in that same
place doing that same thing. People report the sudden knowledge of a
friend’ s good or bad fortune, the inner conviction that a house is burning
down or of a loved one’ s pain or danger. Never a day passes without
countless manifestations of this kind being recorded around the world. The
dark continent of the uninvestigated human psyche beckons us. When we
finally have given it our complete attention, the world will witness an
evolutionary leap the likes of which have never been dreamed. Cosmic Medium
 
The cosmic medium that connects one person with another and one mind
with another is the universal intelligence that permeates all things, all
people, all places. By it each of us has an umbilical tie with our neighbor,
for in a very real and actual sense each of us is one with our neighbor, since
the same basic mind is in everyone. As soon as someone is finally
convinced that the principle of infinite multiplicity is not valid in any
conception of the universe, then they finally are led to the concept of inner
unity, the absolute oneness of all things. When this new principle has really
come home to them, they realize that there is only one life at work in the
universe and it is in them as well as in their neighbor. They see that it workssecretly in the heart of all things, and by this insight they are able not only
to influence its manifestation within themselves but also its manifestation in
other persons, in other things. The world that is perceived through our senses is only a partially revealed
representation of the world that exists within the mind. Strange, then, that
the things that we encounter in space and time seem so very real to us. W e
knock upon a desk and know it is hard and that it is there. But the existence
of the desk as an extension of an idea is a concept we seldom entertain. W e
spend most of our days thinking and planning and scheming, trying to
originate ideas, but our actions are always predicated upon the fact that the
things that we encounter in the world are the things that are truly influential. When we are able to perceive all things as manifestations of thought
concepts, then we look beyond each to the idea that gave it form. Once we
have turned our gaze in that direction we have begun to deal with the basic
creative power of the universe and we have begun to see the possibilities in
the second point in the doctrine of mind over matter, the established
connection between the world of consciousness and the world of substance. Enamoring Ego
 
“The intellect by itself moves nothing,” said Aristotle, and modern
psychology has af firmed this law. We encounter those circumstances that
reflect the quality of our deeper consciousness. In short, we see only that
which we are, and it is this enamoring quality of our ego that deludes us
about the world. Most people keep running into the same situations over
and over again. Some are accident prone; others are eternally fretting about
their health; still others make a failure of one enterprise after another. Some
lives take on the tenor of an epic tragedy as fate seems to heap one
misfortune on top of another. But it is not misfortune that such people are
encountering; merely the outer manifestation of the inner working of their
own minds. Life keeps bringing us into contact with those things which we fail to
understand. As long as our consciousness does not grow, as long as our
inner sight does not penetrate, that long will we continue to run into the
circumstance that defeats us, until our heads are bloody and bowed, until
we finally understand or are beaten completely. The established connection
between the unseen world of the mind and the outer world of the senses is
this: the outer world is always a projection of the inner. Its emotional
content is the same as the emotional content of the consciousness beholding
it; its influence on us is always according to what we perceive; and what we
perceive comes from within us, not from outside. Magic Images
 
The first two points in the doctrine of mind over matter allow us to
understand how we are slaves to circumstance, how we never truly
originate action, but take action as a result of being stimulated into it. These
two points, if finally accepted without relief, would be a hopeless concept
of life indeed, but in the third point of the doctrine we find the leaven by
which the whole makeup of life is changed from the deadened aura of
hopelessness into the rosy-hued sparkle of anticipation. The third point in
the doctrine tells us that we can alter our environment and our
circumstances by disciplining our consciousness. “Magical operations,” says the French author and occultist Éliphas Lévi,
“are the exercise of a power which is natural but superior to the ordinary
powers of nature. They are the result of a science and of habits which exalt
the human will above its usual limits. ” W ill, alone, is not the answer,
however. Will, alone, is more often a pathway to pain than to power. When
we think of willpower most of us think of exercising our will against other
people and other things, but the only place where our willpower can be used
effectively is in disciplining our inner consciousness. W e can, in final
analysis, choose to think only those thoughts which we want to think, and it
is this power of mental choice that gives us our freedom. By it we are giventhe power to remake ourselves into any image we can envisage. W e can
heal our body, heal our soul, alter and exalt our own personality, enhance
our willpower, and produce hypnotic states, ecstasy. We can change
ourselves from the lowliest of idlers into the most accomplished and
effective of people, and all this not because we hustle about in the world but
because we gather our own inner being around us, take thought, alter the
quality of our own mind. All the power of each of us individuals lies in our
disciplining our own consciousness, and all our ef fectiveness consists of our
being able to produce faith within ourselves. For it is only faith that is able
to develop in us a mental image contrary to the one we have been
entertaining. Evidence of Things Unseen
 
“Faith,” wrote Saint Paul, “is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things unseen. ” Through faith we are able to act as if we know. When we have actual knowledge, we proceed with confidence; when we
doubt, we are unsure of ourselves, apprehensive. This is the contrast
between the person of great faith and the person of little faith: the former
goes through life as if they had a special genie at their side, a supernatural
power upon which they can call in every circumstance, while the latter acts
out the blurred and distorted vision within, cautiously, doubtfully, fearfully. The substance of things hoped for is a real substance, formed from pictures
in the mind as concrete and detailed as in the world itself. The evidence of
things unseen is an inner evidence gleaned through the image-making
power of the imagination. It is absolutely impossible for us to act against
our knowledge. A person will not step in front of a speeding automobile
because they know they will be killed; they will not walk upon the water
because they know that they will sink; sometimes they will not even
venture into a new business because they believe that they will fail. No
amount of persuasion can change their reaction to what they know. But
what they know can be changed, and the most direct and ef ficacious manneris through changing the images within their consciousness. If they learn to
visualize their goal clearly, one day they will be able to embark upon a new
venture and be successful. The emotional content of the image in their mind
will seep down into deeper regions of consciousness and provoke them into
right action. If we think of ourselves as being strong we eventually become strong. If we
think of ourselves as determined we eventually arrive at tenacity. If we
think of ourselves as endowed with power we eventually achieve
ascendancy over circumstances. The mind has infinite power to influence
us, for we act in accordance with its conceptions as it casts up before us
inner images that stimulate us into action and attitude. Eating, appetite,
sexual activity, motor response, intellectual activity are all triggered by the
images we entertain in our minds. W e are stimulated into all things by
ideas. The world itself is an idea, and we react to it. W e can change the
world’ s influence upon us, however, by originating ideas in consciousness
and thereby stimulate ourselves and cease reacting. Idea and Action
 
Dr. José Delgado, the late Y ale University sur geon and neurophysiology
professor, reported that the behavior of animals and presumably humans can
be drastically changed by painless electric char ges to the brain. In
experiments, monkeys ate seven times more food than normal or suddenly
became amorous or abruptly ferocious, and tests on humans brought on
fear, affection, giddy laughter, and remarkable feats of memory, all
depending upon which area of the brain was stimulated. It seems obvious
that in these experiments electrical stimulation is simply substituted for
what normally would be nervous stimulation, and when we recognize that
nervous stimulation is always brought about through reaction to the ideas in
our consciousness, then we become acutely aware how important it is to
control our thoughts and to treat the image-making power of the mind with
care. We always tend to become that which occupies our thoughts. In the long
run a person is not so much a body as they are the sum total of the ideas
within their consciousness. Y ou need only meet someone for a moment to
know many of those ideas. If the person is genial, you know that they
regard the world as a warm and comfortable place. If they are cold, then
you know that they find hostility around them. If they are indif ferent, then
you know that they are afraid of being hurt. Excess always provides the
clue. Someone who laughs too much may be hiding their tears, like
Pagliacci. W e eat too much as a substitute for love, or drink too much to
still our fears, or play too hard as an escape from the responsibilities of life,
or overwork to accumulate security in a changing world. But always our
response is to the image in our minds, the ideas that occupy us, the ghosts
we envisage, the demons that pursue us, the fancied pots of gold that lie
beyond the rainbow. We must learn to take up our positions with a steadfast belief in the
rightness of our stand. Doubt casts a pall of indecision over everything. W e
must shut out doubt from our minds and crystallize the images there so that
we can take positive action on all our problems. He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er believe do what you please. If the sun and moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out. — WILLIAM BLAKE
 
Designers of Life
 To start visualizing things clearly is not nearly so dif ficult as might be
imagined. Each of us has a deep psychological tendency to use our
imagination to envisage not only our present surroundings but also their
potentiality. We are deterred from this proper use of the imagination
because of an overreliance on material things. W e see, for example, the
established form of an automobile; we accept this form and no longer allow
ourselves to visualize anything dif ferent. Thus we give our creative
imagination an opiate and shut of f an important corner of our nature. Not
the designers, however. They cannot af ford to visualize the automobile in
its presently accepted form. For them, there must always be a new form. Their envisaging of it is their livelihood. We are all innately designers of life, and insofar as we accept the creative
power of our imagination, we are able to influence life’ s shape and
substance and its ef fect upon us. W e change events and people not by
altering them intrinsically but by changing our perception of them. Each
thing, each event, each person has infinite potentiality. We see in each only
that which our consciousness is capable of perceiving. When we learn to
look longer and with eyes of wonder, we develop a kind of insight that
enables us to penetrate into depths we hitherto had not suspected. Because
we then see dif ferently, we then react dif ferently, and our lives are changed
accordingly. To many people mental power implies such legerdemain as moving objects
by willpower or materializing or dematerializing things, or leading others
around by their mental noses, but in actual fact, mental adepts work on no
one but themselves. Theirs are the eyes through which all things are seen,
and only insofar as they are able to influence their own perception are they
able to influence the world. The greater their knowledge, the closer they are
to the heart of truth, and the closer they are to the heart of truth, the more
they identify themselves with other persons and other things. Through this
inner identification, they achieve understanding of the law of each person’ s
secret nature and their own lives and the world they live in. Change Y our Thinking and Change the W orld 
If there is a problem in your life that you would solve, do not set your will
to work on it. Y ou will conquer this problem in the end, not by fighting it,
but by understanding it. The reason it exists in the first place is because of
lack of understanding. Y ou must allow yourself to be convinced of this
simple premise, that all problems reside in ignorance, that they represent a
block in the understanding of the person who has them. As long as that
block exists, so long will the problem remain. There is absolutely no
possibility of ever solving a problem without gaining insight into its nature. Life is a constant movement by which simplicity is resolved into
complexity and complexity is resolved into simplicity, and the alchemy that
causes the natural growth of things is simply widened consciousness. The
most complex problem in the world yields to understanding, and once it has
been solved it becomes simple. To achieve the ascendancy of mind over matter you must accept the basic
premise of there being one animating presence residing in all persons and
all things. Behind all form is a basic unity, an essential oneness that is never
destroyed despite all dif ferentiation. When we are able, through higher
consciousness and increased insight, to penetrate the many masks behind
which the all-encompassing one mind and one life is hidden, then we
achieve ef fectiveness in all our works and actions through understanding
the dynamic law of becoming that exists within each form. All this is by
way of saying that there is nothing in the world that we cannot influence by
first influencing ourselves, for everything in the end is colored by the
quality of our consciousness. W e can change our consciousness and thus
change what we see, and the tool by which we can ef fect this change is
imagination. W e can learn to visualize in our minds only those things that
we wish admitted into our lives, and when we have truly learned to do this,
physical counterparts of those ideas will soon appear in our environment. You can be anything you want to be if you will only trust your imagination. Picture your heart’ s desire; never let the picture distort or tarnish; keep it
fresh and clear and bright. It will enter your life quietly and unobtrusively,
without sound of trumpets or clashing cymbals, for it will be following alaw that exists throughout the universe, that everything basically is idea and
must first begin in the mind of the beholder.
A psychological state
What is referred to in mysticism and many religions as "attunement" or "grace"?
Understanding the principle of attunement
What is the key to effective living, according to the text?
Frustration
What is the result of trying to decide on things when nearly all of their characteristics are hidden?
It will never achieve results
What is the problem with trying to use the ego as a tool?
Changing our own consciousness and perception
What is the key to changing the world, according to the text?