The Slavery of Fear, Two

The Slavery of Fear, Two

Your own highest invisible friends can and will aid you in your endeavor to be yourself. They can and will throw chances in your way, in whatever field of effort you wish to work. They cannot work for you in this way, so long as you are to‑day absorbing the thought of some inferior mind, and acting it out, and perhaps to‑morrow the thought of another and acting that out.

If you want a ship built for you, you don’t give it in charge of a ship‑builder to‑day, and the builder of a scow to‑morrow. Yet such, as to effect, is the condition of many impressional minds. Ignorantly taking in, or ruled by the thought of others, they are building after one plan to‑day, and another one to‑morrow.

You cannot speak out an unwelcome opinion in a circle of friends, so long as you fear such speaking will cost you a friend. So long as you have such a fear (and it be the time and place to speak that truth), and you are prevented by such fear from speaking it, so long are you under the rule of that friend’s mind. You value a friendship more than a truth. You barter a truth for the good‑will of a person. Then you are no longer free or independent. Unconsciously, perhaps, that person is then ruling you. Yet, so ruling you, he neither respects nor values you so much for being under his dominion. There is in human nature an inherent love and respect for whatever is free.

Fear cripples the spirit, and diseases the body. Fear is everywhere,—fear of want, fear of starvation, fear of public opinion, fear of private opinion, fear that what we own to‑day may not be ours to‑morrow, fear of sickness, fear of death. Fear has become with millions a fixed habit. The thought is everywhere. The thought is thrown on us from every direction. Fear makes the tyrant. It makes the merciless master the inexorable creditor. “I fear,” says the man of millions, “that unless I exact my rents or dues, that I can no longer enjoy the mania for heaping up millions, which do me no good but the thought of owning them.”—“I fear,” says his agent, “that unless I obey my master’s rigid orders, and collect his rents and dues, that I cannot live.” Because the agent has the rich man’s fear thrown on him. He absorbs that thought from him. He thinks the fear in and of the rich man’s brain. The agent must collect rent of the editor or the minister. He hands to them the fear he has caught of the rich man. They take the infection. “I cannot print this truth,” says the editor. “I cannot preach that,” says ‘the minister, “because readers and hearers would leave, and then where would be the money to pay our rents?” This thought of fear and actual unseen substance, as real as any other element in nature, in this way dribbles and drains from the rich man’s mind, way down to the miserable tenant in garret or cellar. It ends with the thief. “I fear,” he says, “starvation also.” He puts his hand directly in his neighbor’s pocket, and pulls out a sixpence.

There is no difference, save in method, between his act and that of the ruling spirit.

“I fear,” says some one commencing to learn an art, “the criticism of others on my imperfect methods in that art. I fear their ridicule.” Then you are ruled by them. You will never advance so fast as when you do not care for what they say. It is most desirable, then, to get rid of fear. It is the actual source of poverty of wealth, and poverty of health. To live in continual dread, continual cringing, continual fear of any thing, be it loss of love, loss of money, loss of position or situation, is to take the readiest means to lose what we fear we shall.

Does it help you pay a debt, to fear the creditor when there is no money in your purse? Does it help you make a living, to be ever in fear of want? Does it help you to health, to fear disease? No. It weakens in every way.

How shall we get rid of fear, and the rule over us of other minds crippled by fear? Attack in mind whatever you fear. Commence by seeing yourself in mind as brave. See yourself, in what you call imagination, as calmly defying whatever you fear, be it a man or a woman, be it a debt or a dreaded possibility. What so you figure to yourself in your mind is a reality. Such thinking will give you strength. Demand for yourself more courage. Ask for it. Pray for it, and the quality of courage will come to you more and more, and what so comes can never be lost.

Prentice Mulford,

Your Forces and How to Use Them

The Slavery of Fear

The Slavery of Fear

The most common, yet most unknown, form of slavery is that where you are ruled by the thought about you. You may be in the employ of another person. You do your best to earn your money. You are conscientious, and desire to earn your wages. Yet you are troubled by a continual fear, that you do not give full satisfaction, or that you may be discharged. You live in continual fear of coming to want, if so discharged, or of being obliged to continue this mere struggle for the body’s existence under still harder conditions.

The reason for these unpleasant thoughts is, that some other mind is acting on your own. Some one is hostile to you. You feel that hostile thought. It is not on your part a “notion.” There are many persons to‑day, living under control of undecided minds, and dependent on them, as they think, for a livelihood. They may give that undecided mind much of their own inspiration, plan device, invention, and fertility of thought. They may give this unconsciously. Because, it is worth repeating many times, “Thought is substance, and is absorbed by one mind from another.”

The person so ruled may have the superior mind. Such a person may be indispensable to the fickle, and possibly unjust and tyrannical employer. If taken away, that employer would feel that a prop had been removed. Yet that superior mind may go on, year after year, in slavery; giving to the other idea, and seeing it but half carried out, or imperfectly carried out.

No shackles are so heavy as these. They fetter the spirit. In such position you are not doing your own work. You are not carrying out your own design. You may be trying to do the work of another, when that other person has no clear idea of the work he wants done for himself.

This is one of the heavy prices paid for dependency. If you have no other view in life, save that of being a servant, or an assistant on wages, you must pay more or less of this penalty. You will find it really less costly and less painful to start some business of your own, no matter how small the beginning. You will then be called upon to take responsibilities. If you fear taking them, you are always a slave. If you know that you are the brains of any business, though not the seeming head, demand a just price for your work. What do you fear? If you take the brains away, will the business go on successfully? If you feel that you are robbed, you are equally guilty with him who robs you, if you stand by tamely and see yourself robbed.

To work and live in fear of the poorhouse, is to be in the poorhouse. You would not feel so poor if you were actually there. To live in such continual fear, injures mind and body. Whatever troubles the mind, is certain in some way to injure the body.

You cannot think your clearest thought so long as you are in the slavery of any fear. Clear thought and plan have a value in dollars and cents.

If you come under the control of a whiffling, undecided weathercock order of mind, if you absorb the thought of such a mind, you will be whiffling and undecided yourself. You will affect those who come to you for orders, be the work what it may, as you are affected yourself. If your employer does not know exactly what he wants, you will not know exactly what you want of others. As those under you, or in some way dependent on you, are so affected, so will they affect in turn others with whom they deal. If the head of an organization or business or movement is whiffling, whimsical, and uncertain, there will be uncertainty and dissatisfaction all along his line of control. You can never satisfy such a person, because that person is never satisfied with himself.

If you cannot find out what is really wanted of you, say so. Don’t try to do for any when they do not know what is wanted or needed to be done, themselves.

Stick by your own plan. If you see a good reason for any step, any detail, in it, no matter how trivial, don’t allow yourself to be argued out of it by another. The kingdom of mind is full of tyrants. They want to have their own way, simply from love of power. Very possibly they are not aware of their own motive. To greater or less extent, all of us may be such tyrants.

You can ask with profit for information of many. You can ask with safety for opinion, especially regarding your own purposes, of very few. The most thoughtful, considerate, and just are the most careful in giving opinion. They will also take care to tell you that their utterance is but their opinion. Ignorance, conceit, and injustice are full of dogmatic utterance. Ignorance speaks as it feels at the moment. Don’t mistake utterance of this sort for information. If you do, you will absorb that conceited thought, that prejudice. You will then be ruled by that mind. You may be thereby led to abandon what would have been most profitable to you.

If you feel yourself the superior, and allow yourself to be thus over‑ruled, or influenced in any way, by an inferior mind, you are crippling your own success. You derange most seriously the plans for your welfare of that order of unseen intelligence which can do most for you. You set in motion an order of forces contrary to theirs. In so doing, you oblige them to stop aiding you. They will not work for you, when they see their work thrown away.

The moment you allow the thought of another to influence you, against your own conviction, feeling, or intuition, in that moment you lose your own best thought. You commence thinking in part with the other person’s brains. You may then commence thinking with brains below yours in motive, in judgment, in far‑sightedness, in taste and discretion. You have muddied your own clearer intellect with a turbid stream.

The person so swaying you has an invisible following of minds like his own. When, unconsciously perhaps, you surrender your thought to him, you let in all his following likewise, to hang about, sway, and influence you. Worse, still; they will bar from you your own better, unseen counsellors. Because these can by this means easily be driven away. They are not driven away willingly, but their power with you may be limited. That power depends on the attitude of mind you keep toward them. If you, desiring to be all yourself, demand the wisest and best counsel in this endeavor to be yourself, you will get it. Keep up this demand. It will at last drive off any inferior unseen following.

Prentice Mulford,

Your Forces and How to Use Them

The Game of Life

The Game of Life

The game of life, like every game, is played within the framework of certain rules, and any violation of those rules carries a penalty. You and I are playing this game from morning to night, and should therefore learn its rules in order to play it well.

Ecclesiastes gives us this rule: 'Even in your thought do not curse the king, or in your bed chamber curse the rich, for a bird will carry your voice or some winged creature tell the matter." And Mark gives us another, as: "Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it and you will" If you must believe you have received your desire in order to attain it, then you must start your game by believing it is finished. You must feel yourself into and partaking of your goal. And you must persist in that feeling in order to achieve it.

Now, another rule is said in this manner: "Cast your bread upon the water and you will find it after many days." In other words, do not be concerned as to how it is going to happen - just do it. This statement hasn’t a thing to do with doing good as the world defines the word. Jesus was a carpenter. The word means one who produces from seed - as a flower, a tree, the earth.

The prophecy of the Old Testament is the seed which a carpenter called Jesus brings to birth. He comes not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them The word, “bread” in the statement: "Cast your bread upon the waters," means to devour; to consume. Water is a euphemism for semen, that living water which carries the sperm of man. The creative act is psychological, not physical; yet the intentions are the same. You must cast your bread upon the waters with passion! You must be consumed with the desire and literally on fire with love for its possession, for an intense imaginal act will always draw unto itself its own affinity.

Winston Churchill departed this world a very successful man; however, during his life he had many failures. Then one day he made this discovery, which changed his life. These are his words: "The mood decides the fortunes of people, rather than the fortunes decide the mood." Let me put it this way: The game of life is won by those who compare their thoughts and feelings within to what appears on the outside. And the game is lost by those who do not recognize this law. Being consumed by anger, they see no change in their world. But if they would change their mood, their circumstances would change. Then they would recognize the law behind their world.

There are those who are depressed all day long and remain that way all of their life. I remember back in New York City, when I would see certain people walking in my direction I would want to cross the street, because I did not want to hear their depressing stories. They would spend hours telling about their wife or husband, their children or grandchildren, and each story geared to depression. Never changing their mood, their world never changed. Seeing no change, they would not recognize a law between the inner world they maintain and the outer world of response.

But if you apply this law you can predict your future. Feel a new mood rise within you. Sustain it and soon you will meet people who embody this new state. Even inanimate objects are under the sway of these affinities. In a certain mood I have gone to my library and removed a book I have not touched in years. And when I casually open it, I find confirmation of my mood. A table, though remaining the same, will be seen differently based upon your momentary mood, for everything reflects it. It is your mood which decides your fortune, not your fortune that decides your mood. People feeling poor attract poverty, not knowing that if they felt rich they would attract wealth.

In the Book of Proverbs, it is said: "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord." Now, the lamp of the Lord is the light of the world. We contain that light; and nature - the genie - is our slave, fashioning the world as our mood dictates. By nature I mean all of humanity - the animal, plant, and mineral world. In fact, everything that appears on the outside is a slave of this lamp. Fashioned from within, this slave will fashion your world to reflect your thoughts; and no power can stop their fulfillment. Become aware of what you are thinking, and you will recognize a law between your mood and your surrounding circumstances. Then you will predict with certainty, because you know certain events - being in harmony with your mood - must appear. Everything - whether a living being or an inanimate object such as a book - must appear to bear witness to your mood.

Now, in order to play the game of life, you must know what you want to replace what you have. When you know what it is, you must assume the feeling that you have it. Although your reason and senses will deny its existence, persistence will cause your assumption to harden into fact and objectify itself upon your screen of space. Play the game this way. You may think it doesn’t work, but that’s because you have not tried it. You may believe the idea is stupid, but I tell you: the mood decides your fortune. Believe me, for I have proved this principle over and over again in my life.

It was Winston Churchill who galvanized the Western world by putting his words into practice. In spite of the horrors and bombing in London, Mr. Churchill sustained the mood of victory, and even in the darkest days he would not waver. Knowing the mood would externalize itself around the world, he sustained the mood - while his opponents, not knowing the law, put their trust in armies and machinery of war.

Mr. Churchill’s wonderful statement, recorded in the 'New York Times," has proved itself to me. By simply catching the mood I have changed the circumstances of my life. Now I teach others how to do it. I invite you to ask yourself how you would feel if your desire was now fulfilled. Toy with the thought. Play with it a while and the mood will come upon you. Keep that mood by playing with the senses it evokes, and watch your world change to match your new mood.

Let me tell you of a lady I know who, in her middle sixties, had nothing when she put this principle into practice. Every morning as she soaked in the tub prior to going to her $75 a week job, she would say to herself: "Something wonderful is happening to me now." She kept playing upon the mood, toying with the feeling that something wonderful was happening. That very week she received her first breakthrough.

The law has its positive as well as its negative side. I am not here to judge how you use the law, but leave you to practice it as you will. If you are in the habit of thinking negatively, you are not going to sustain the thought that you are all you want to be. You may hold it for a few seconds, and if it does not prove itself instantly you may deny it. But in order to play the game of life you must know the rules and apply them. And remember: as in every game, there are rules whose violation causes failure. You cannot deceive yourself, for God is not mocked; as you sow, so shall you reap.

In the world you may get away with a violation that the referee did not see; but you cannot get away from the observer in you, for he and you are one. If you know what you did, then he knows, for your awareness and the father of your world are one. You cannot deceive yourself. You cannot mock yourself. God is going to record your every violation and mold your world in harmony with your feelings.

It does not matter whether the body be that of a woman or a man, or what the pigment of the skin may be; within each one of us is the Son of God, who - radiating his glory and bearing the express image of his person - is the great lamp of the Lord. And one day this majestic being will rise out of your garment of death, and you will enter the land of life.

After you have assembled your mental state and allowed it to occur within you, you do not have to repeat the act. You cast your bread upon the water the moment you felt relief. Although you do not have a physical expression in a sexual manner, relief is possible; and of all the pleasures of the world, relief is the most keenly felt. When someone you dearly love is late, you anxiously await that key in the door. And when you hear their voice, your relief is keenly felt. That is the same kind of relief you will have when you have imagined correctly.

If you find it necessary to recreate the act every day, you are not casting your bread upon the water. You may imagine over and over again, but you are only going to impregnate once; and if you reach the point of relief, your bread has been cast upon the water to return, perhaps in the matter of an hour - . I have had the phone ring - minutes after I have imagined it - to hear confirmation that it has happened. Sometimes it has taken days, weeks, or months; but I do not repeat the action once I have done it and felt the feeling of relief, for I know there is nothing more I need to do.

Learn to consciously play this game of life, for you are unconsciously playing it every day. I am sure the millions who are on relief feel the government owes them a living; but there is no government, only we who pay taxes. The government has no money and can only give what it takes from our pockets. Those on relief are complaining, claiming they are not getting enough out of our pockets, and that mood persists throughout their day.

Their mood never varies, so they see no change and recognize no law between the mood they are sustaining and the outer world they dislike. If they were told that their mood was causing the phenomena of their life, they would deny it. No one wants to feel that he is solely responsible for the conditions of his life, yet there is no other cause. God is the only cause and he is man’s own wonderful human imagination.

When I speak of imagination I am referring to God in you, of which there are two sides: imagining and contacting. Contacts are what imagining is all about. When you imagine, you contact a feeling, and the feeling you imagine, you create. You are the same God who created the world and all within it, but while you are clothed in a garment of flesh and blood your power is keyed low.

I do hope you understand the rules to the game of life; and - because there is a positive as well as a negative rule - I urge you not to curse anyone. Ecclesiastes used the words “king” and “rich” because they are the ones most often envied. A person need not be a millionaire, however, to be envied. He could simply be a little bit better off than another. Someone could live in a better neighbourhood, pay more rent, maybe even go to a better restaurant, or buy better clothes, to be envied. So we are warned not to curse the king or the rich in our thoughts, for they cannot be concealed, as all thoughts are completely one; and by a law divine they mingle in one another’s being.

Awareness seems to be scattered, as everyone on the outside is aware. But no one needs ask another to aid in the change of his world if he changes it on the inside. If another is necessary to bring about the change, he will - with or without his consent. You do not have to single out the individual to play the part in bringing about the change you have imagined. He will play his part if necessary because we all intermingle. All you have to do is stand at the end, from within.

In your desire to go anywhere you must first go there in your imagination, and even those who may deny your request will aid you when the time is right. I got out of the army that way. Knowing I wanted to be honourably discharged and in my apartment in New York City, I slept as though it had already happened and I was already there. Then my captain - who had previously disallowed my discharge - had a change of heart and aided in my release. Anyone can do it. This game is easy to play and can be lots of fun in the doing. Think of an object you would like to hold. Think of a place you would desire to be. Then find an object in that room and feel it until it takes on sensory vividness.

Don’t make it a lamp, but that lamp; not a table, but that table. Sit in that chair until you feel the chair around you. View the room from that chair and you are there, for you are all imagination and must be wherever you are in your imagination. Now, cast your bread upon the water by feeling the relief of being there, and let your genie - who is your slave - build a bridge of incident over which you will cross to sit in that chair, hold that lamp, and touch that table.

In Genesis, the story is told of Isaac - who was unable to see, but capable of feeling - calling to his son, Jacob, saying: "Come close my son that I may feel you. Your voice sounds like my son Jacob, but you feel like Esau." At that moment Jacob - the imaginary, purely subjective state - possessed the qualities of Esau, the objective world. So Isaac gave the imaginary state the right to be born.

As Isaac, you can sit quietly and with your imaginary hands you can feel the difference between a tennis ball, a baseball, a football, and a golf ball If they are nothing (because they are subjective and not objectively real to you at the moment) then you could not discri min ate between them. But, if you can feel the difference between these so-called unrealities, then they must be real, although not yet made objective to your senses. The moment you give them reality in your mind’s eye, they will become real in your world.

Try it just for fun. Take an object and thank the being within you for the gift. Then thank the one on the outside, for within and without are vicarious, as is life; for by observing an odour, a look, or a feeling within, you will discover you are life itself.

Yes, life is a game. Paul calls it a race, saying: '1 have finished the race, I have fought the good fight and I have kept the faith." I call it a game. Both are competitive; but the opposition is with self and not with another, for there is no other. Do not try to get even with another. Grant him the right to use the same law to achieve his goal, even though it may be similar to yours. The knowledge you share will never rob you. Simply determine your goal Feel you have achieved it and cast your bread upon the water. Then drop it and let the game of life be fulfilled in your world.

Neville Goddard,

Edited Lecture from 1969

Hinduism…Contemporary India

Hinduism…Contemporary India

The ancient wisdom is still alive in contemporary India, for instance in the work of the philosopher Swami Rama. He is known as the first yogi to submit to tests by Western scientists at the Menninger Institute in the United States. Swami Rama was found to be capable of controlling or altering automatic and unconscious bodily processes through willpower. For example, he could induce a seventeen-second arrhythmia of over three hundred beats per minute without losing consciousness; he could change his blood pressure  and body temperature; he could manipulate the brain waves on his EEG into a pattern matching deep sleep; and he could perform feats of telekinesis (moving objects through mind power), Swami Rama writes:

It is not possible to understand what exists after death by intellectual arguments or discussions. The absolute Truth cannot be scientifically proven because it cannot be observed, verified, or demonstrated by sense perception…That is why scientists cannot reach any concrete conclusions on the immortality of the soul and life hereafter, and nothing can convince them either…The objective world is only one half of the universe. What we perceive with our senses is not a complete world. The other half, which includes the mind, thoughts, and emotions, cannot be explained by the sense perceptions of external objects…

The soul has not been created. It is essentially consciousness and is perfect. After the dissolution of the gross body, everything remains latent. The soul survives. Our souls remain perfect and are not annihilated, dissolved, or destroyed after death…Life and death are only different names for the same fact – two sides of one coin…Much of the fear associated with death is the fear that death may be painful. The process of death itself is not painful; it merely changes conditions. Lack of preparation and attachment are the cause of the pain experienced at the time of death.

According to this doctrine (Vedanta), pure consciousness has a primary presence in the universe while our mind (our thoughts and waking consciousness) is merely a spark or a reflection of this consciousness. The absolute or supreme consciousness is the source and foundation of the complete Self and of the universe.

Consciousness Beyond Life,

Pim van Lommel, M.D. 

Hinduism...Ancient India

Hinduism...Ancient India

The Upanishads are based on the Vedas, ancient Hindu stories that were passed down orally for thousands of years and documented around 800 B.C.E. In ancient Indian culture it was unthinkable that the human soul began with conception or birth. The ultimate aim of this belief was the realization that we are, in essence, immortal. This concept of immortality has no bearing on the physical body but rather involves the “Self,” And the Self does not become immortal but is immortal already. As soon as a person becomes fully aware of this, the Self can unite with the Supreme (Brahman). Without this realization, self-regard evokes the illusion that we equal our mortal body. In this state, we remain caught in the cycle of birth and death.

Below are a few quotations from various texts from the Upanishads, The Katha Upanishad features an exchange between Naciketas, who offers himself as a sacrifice so that his poor father can keep his few worldly possessions, and Death tells him:

The all-knowing Self was never born,

Nor will it die. Beyond cause and effect,

This Self is eternal and immutable.

When the body dies, the Self does not die.

If the slayer believes that he can kill

Or the slain believes that he can be killed,

Neither knows the truth. The eternal Self

Slays not, nor is ever slain.

Hidden in the heart of every creature

Exists the Self, subtler than the subtlest,

Greater than the greatest. They go beyond

All sorrow who extinguish their self-will

And behold the glory of the Self

Through the grace of the Lord of Love.

.....

The immature run after sense pleasures

And fall into the widespread net of death.

But the wise, knowing the Self as deathless,

Seek not the changeless in the world of change.

.....

The supreme Self is beyond name and form,

Beyond the senses, inexhaustible,

Without beginning, without end, beyond

Time, space, and causality, eternal,

Immutable. Those who realise the Self

Are forever free from the jaws of death.

.....

When the ties that bind the Spirit to the body are unloosed

And the Spirit is set free, what remains then?

…..

What is here is also there; what is there,

Also here. Who sees multiplicity

But not the one indivisible Self

Must wander on and on from death to death.

The Isha Upanishad features an almost literal description of endless consciousness:

The Self seems to move, but is ever still.

He seems far away, but is ever near.

He is within all, and he transcends all.

Those who see all creatures in themselves

And themselves in all creatures know no fear,

Those who see all creatures in themselves

And themselves in all creatures know no grief.

How can the multiplicity of life

Delude the one who sees its unity?

The Self is everywhere. Bright is the Self,

Indivisible, untouched by sin, wise,

Immanent and transcendent. He it is

Who holds the cosmos together.

Consciousness Beyond Life,

Pim van Lommel, M.D.

Thoughts are Things, Two

Thoughts are Things, Two

Thought being unseen substance is absorbed by all. If you absorb another person’s thought, it mingles with your own. Then in part, if not in whole, you will think that person’s thought. You will to some extent see, feel, judge, and form opinion, as does that person. You are to greater or lesser extent swayed and influenced by the person. His or her thought, or spirit, has mingled with yours. You are not then wholly yourself. You are in part that other person…

Every thought of yours has a literal value to you in every possible way. The strength of your body, the strength of your mind, your success in business, and the pleasure your company brings others, depends on the nature of your thoughts. Every one of your thoughts is a part of yourself. It is felt by others as a part of yourself. You need not always speak, to be agreeable company. Those near you will feel your thought pleasantly, if yours are pleasant thoughts. You need not always speak, to be felt disagreeably. Your disagreeable thought will also be felt. A person’s “magnetism” is their thought. Magnetic power or influence is simply thought felt by others. If your thought is despondent, gloomy, jealous, carping, cynical, it repels. If cheerful, hopeful, and full of earnest desire to do the most good possible to any one you meet, though but for a single minute, it attracts.

Too much association with any one of lower thought may lessen your natural power to attract. You may carry a part of their selfish, cynical, gloomy, or other evil thought with you wherever you go. You put it out with your own. It is felt as a disagreeable alloy with your own.

Your value and charm for others, as a companion, depends far more on what you think, than on what you say. If your thought is all pure, clean, bright, confident, and courageous, you are a value, and an increasing value, wherever you go. People will always be glad to see you. When you bring yourself (your thought), you bring an actual pleasure to people. You bring also a power and strength to them. Your thought helps to strengthen their bodies. They feel better for seeing you. You are as a fountain of health and pleasure wherever you go. You can disarm the sourest temper, and the person most opposed to you. When you can say in mind, “I refuse to look upon any person as my enemy,” you will have no enemies. When we talk of “having enemies,” and keep on, in thought, looking on certain people as enemies, we are making them enemies, because such people feel that order of thought coming from us. It is an element flowing from you to them. It affects them disagreeably. If you are ever sending out the thought, “I am not your enemy. I do not wish to feel disagreeably towards you. I want to like you better than I do,” they will soon feel this thought. They cannot resist its power. The thought of good is always stronger than that of evil. This is a law of nature…

If you persist in the thought of good intent to all, you are connecting yourself with the higher and more powerful order of thought element. You are then receiving of that thought from minds, and from a world of greater power than you can now realize of here. You are connecting yourself with a world which does nothing but build up, whose inhabitants are gods in power, and whose creations at will are beyond our wildest dreams. All that so‑called fable or fancy has conceived of are realities in the higher worlds of mind. When, by the thought of good intent to all, you so connect yourself with that world, you are receiving of their powerful thought. You are then absolutely safe against all enemies.

This is no myth of sentiment. It belongs to the same system of law whereby the sun gives heat, the winds blow, the tides move, the seed grows. In whatever mood you set your mind, does your spirit receive of unseen substance in correspondence with that mood. It is as much a chemical law as a spiritual law. Chemistry is not confined to the elements we see. The elements we do not see with the physical eye outnumber ten thousand times those we do see. The Christ injunction, “Do good to those who hate you,” is based on a scientific fact and a natural law. So to do good, is to bring to yourself all the elements in nature of power and good. To do evil, is to bring the contrary destructive elements. When our eyes are opened, self‑preservation will make us stop all evil thought. Those who live by hate will die by hate; that is, “those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” Every evil thought is as a sword drawn on the person to whom it is directed. If a sword is drawn in return, so much the worse for both.

Your Forces and How to Use Them,

Prentice Mulford

Thoughts are Things

Thoughts are Things

Your thought, or spirit, and not your body, is your real self. Your thought is an invisible substance, as real as air, water, or metal. It acts apart from your body; it goes from you to others, far and near; it acts on them, moves and influences them. It does this whether your body be sleeping or waking. This is your real power. As you learn how this power really acts; as you learn how to hold, use, and control it,—you will do more profitable business, and accomplish more in an hour than now you may do in a week. You will continually increase this power by exercise. This, and only this, was the basis of the miracles, the magic or occult power of ancient times.

Your prevailing mood, or frame of mind, has more to do than any thing else with your success or failure in any undertaking. Your mind is that amount of thought‑substance which has come together during countless ages, and after using many physical bodies. The mind is a magnet. It has the power, first of attracting thought, and next of sending that thought out again. You do not, of yourself, make your thought: you only receive and feel it as it comes to you.

What kind of thought you most charge that magnet (your mind) with, or set it open to receive, it will attract most of that kind to you. If, then, you think, or keep most in mind, the mere thought of determination, hope, cheerfulness, strength, force, power, justice, gentleness, order, and precision, you will attract and receive more and more of such thought‑elements.

These are among the elements of success. These qualities are of thought‑element as real things as any we see or feel. The more you set the magnet in this direction, the stronger it grows to attract these elements.

Whatever of thought you think or receive, you send from you again, an invisible substance to act on others.

Your own thought is now in the air, acting on and attracting to you of its kind the thought of others, whose bodies you may never have seen. The people you are in the future to meet, who may help or damage your fortunes, are those whose thought in like manner sent far from their bodies has already met and mingled with your own. That attraction tends to bring you together in the body. It will certainly bring you together in some form of existence.

When determined thought meets determined thought, and unites on a similar purpose, a double power for success comes of such union, be the bodies used by such thought, mind, or spirit, in the same house or a thousand miles apart. But if you are thinking most of the time discouragement or anger, or any form of ill‑temper, you are sending hundreds and thousands of miles away from your body this thought‑element of discouragement, hopelessness, or anger, literally a part of your unseen self. It attracts, meets and mingles with the same thought‑element similarly sent out by others (parts of such people). So it attracts you to them, your partners in misery. You hurt each other’s health and fortune.

A thought attracts thought of like kind. Keep any thought fixed in your mind, say the thought of strength or health, and you attract to you more and more of the thought‑element of strength and health. Keep in mind the idea of force, “go‑ahead,” push, and you attract to you in element that which gives you force, push, and go‑ahead.

So long as you are in a confident, determined, serene frame of mind, having some special aim in view based on right and justice, so long are you moving in this way the strongest silent power of your thought in attracting to you the persons you need to co‑operate with. If your aim is not based on right and justice, you will still move this silent power of your mind, but it will not affect results as beneficial to you as your thought based on your highest idea of right.

If you wish to gain through deceit and craft, you can do so. You will attract, by the same law and method, deceitful and dishonest thought in advance of its body. You will then work with the dishonest in the body. Dishonest mind herds together through a natural law. The dishonest are certain to injure each other at last in some way

A thought, be it good or bad, is a thing or construction of unseen element as real as a tree, a flower, a clock. It is already made before you think or receive it, as your mind through its mood, frame, or attitude attracts it. As you think it, you put it out again to act, move, or influence others. But your thought spoken or whispered in the privacy of your room is put out with more force so to act on others than if you merely “think it.” And if two or more persons talk together without wrangle or disagreement on a common purpose in any business, they send out a proportionately greater volume of force to work on other minds relative to such business. If your company so putting out thought‑element or force do not agree, if they are angry and wrangle with each other, the force so sent from them is injurious to that business. If they talk peacefully, and will set aside individual preferences or prejudices in order to work out the common purpose in view, the thought or force they generate is constructive, and acts favorably on other minds far and near to advance that business.

Your Forces and How to Use Them,

Prentice Mulford