The laws of Mind, or spirit, are not different from the laws of chemistry and physics. Metaphysics begins where physics leaves off. Everything is movement; everything we can take hold of and analyze, all things in the physical world or the world of form are in a certain rate of vibration and are an effect. This is the result of "an Infinite Thinker thinking mathematically."
To reduce this proposition to the practical life of the individual, our belief is that anything the mind thinks, it can unthink. If, therefore, by the law of cause and effect we have produced unpleasant conditions, we should be able by this same law to produce an entirely different effect.
Another principle which is fundamental to our practice is, that not only what is set in motion can be changed; but that the Truth known is demonstrated. The knowledge of Truth and its demonstration is both simultaneous and instantaneous. Since we are dealing with that which is Limitless, knowing no big and no little, the possibility of our demonstration rests not in the Principle, but in our acknowledgment of, and embodiment in it, of the ideas we desire experienced! The saying of "peace" will not produce peace unless back of the word is a realization of the meaning of peace. So in the simplicity of our own language, we try to convince ourselves of the reality of that for which we are treating, knowing that in such degree as we have an embodiment of the idea, it is thrown into a mechanical field and must operate.
"Spirit is the Power that knows Itself." Whatever that power within us is that knows itself, constitutes the part of us which is spirit or spiritual. To be self-conscious, is to be a spiritual entity. Mind, in Its self-conscious form, cannot be differentiated from Spirit. Mind, in Its subjective or subconscious state, is the Law of Spirit. Man is a spirit while God is The Spirit. Man is an individual, while God is the Universal, but since the individual comes from and is in the Universal, it follows that man is a little world within himself. This is what Jesus meant when he said that man has inherent life within himself. The meaning of inherent life is real life...creative life.
No limit can be placed upon the spirit of man. It merges with the Universal Spirit for the two are really One. God is in us as we are in God - the same essence, the degree apparently different. The one finite and the other Infinite, and since the Infinite cannot come from the finite, it follows that the finite must come from the Infinite - a little circle within the big circle.
Metaphysically, we recognize the Universal Spirit as the Source of all life and inspiration; an Infinite Self-Knowingness, which we grasp only in part but which is ever available, since the Infinite is omnipresent. The mind of man is an extension of the Eternal Mind or Spirit, and his evolution is the unfolding of this everlasting Mind or Spirit through his thought.
Only One Mind
There is no such thing as your mind, my mind and God's Mind. There is only Mind, in which we all "live and move and have our being."
Things are ideas in form. What else could they be? There is nothing from which to make things except ideas. In the beginning, we behold nothing visible; there is only an Infinite Possibility, a Limitless Imagination, a Consciousness - the only action of this Consciousness being Idea.
That which we call our subjective mind is, in reality, our identity in Infinite Mind. It is the result of our mental attitudes. It is our mental atmosphere, or center, in Universal Subjective Mind, in which are retained all of the images, impressions, inherited tendencies and race suggestions. We see then that our subjective mind is the medium through which experiences come to us.
There is One First Cause - Spirit, Soul and Body - Cause, Medium, and Effect; the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Not three gods, but the Triune Nature of the One God, the One Cause. We think of Spirit as Absolute, Self-Conscious Intelligence. We think of Soul as receptive to Intelligence and the Intelligence as always acting upon It. Spirit and Soul inter-sphere each other and both have omnipresence. The Spirit of the Universe permeates the Soul of the Universe, forever impregnating It with ideas. The Soul of the Universe is the "Holy Womb of Nature," producing the forms which appear in the manifest universe.
The Body of the Universe is the result of the thought of Spirit, operating through the medium of soul The Father is Absolute, Positive Intelligence; the Son is the Offspring of the Father; the Holy ghost is "The Servant of the Eternal Spirit throughout the ages." Spirit is Absolute Intelligence, operating through the Soul of Receptive Intelligence, impregnating It with "the Divine Ideas."
The "Personalness" of God
We should think of God, not only as Principle, forever pushing forward into expression; but as Infinite Person. In other words, if we merely think of an abstract Principle, and a mathematical Law of Cause and Effect, we shall lose all warmth and color. We should be very careful in abstracting the Principle not to forget the Essence.
There is something in the human mind that desires to think of God or Spirit as Person. Anything which has been in the human mind since time began - anything we are unable to erase from the human mind as a deep urge - arises out of Reality.
Let us not forget that there is inherent necessity for warmth and color. The Universe is more than an inexorable Law of Cause and Effect. PERSONALITY CANNOT EMERGE FROM A PRINCIPLE WHICH DOES NOT CONTAIN THE INHERENT POSSIBILITY OF PERSONALITY. In each one of us, to each one of us, through each one of us, something is personalized and that which is personalized is personal to its own personification! Spiritual evolution should make the Infinite not more distant; but more intimate.
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