by
Rev. W. John Murray
1927.
Originally issued as a series of 14 staple-bound booklets, this excellent course allows students worldwide to learn more about the Divine Science teachings. Each lesson is followed by a wealth of supplemental material including Affirmations & Denials, suggestions for the Silence, methods for the practical application of the Divine Science teachings, plus a series of study questions.
To derive maximum gain from the Murray Course it is essential that the student read the chapters of the books which supplement each Lesson. ALL of the supplemental reading material for this course is online at Northwoods.
Church of the Healing Christ
Waldorf-Astoria, New York
Dear Friend,
It is necessary that we ask you, in beginning the study of the Science we are about to present to you, that you should come to it with an open mind. We have no means of knowing what your convictions are on the subject of religion, what belief you may have as to a Supreme Being, or what your conception may be about the Universe and the world in which you live. But you have come to us for what we teach, and we ask you to approach the study with sincerity and earnestness. Our teachings may, and probably will, conflict with preconceived opinions of your own, and there will be times when your mind may refuse to follow the thought we give you. But we would like to have you, in all fairness, attend closely to what we have to offer you, laying aside all disposition to contend as to differences, and all prejudices that naturally exist in a discussion of Truth as to life, being, mind, substance, spirit, good, evil, God and creature, the better to enable your mind to receive and digest what we put before it.
No one learns much by resolutely standing on one belief and refusing attention to any other. This is narrowness. The great ones of the world are those who sought to learn from all men and from all books worthy of credence or serious consideration and who consequently broadened out to such a degree that they secured the universal outlook. He who will learn most will be the one who most opens his mind; who at all times is most open to Truth. Whatever your belief may be, whether you are an Agnostic, a Catholic, a Protestant or a Jew, these lessons will benefit you, since their purpose is not to rob you of anything you have but to expand your knowledge and widen your view. Whatever your present thought-system may be, it is responsible for your present condition and if you desire to change the latter you must necessarily give earnest consideration to a new system of thinking that will do it for you.
Respectfully,
W. John Murray
Lesson I
LIFE, HEALTH AND RELIGION
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
To Teach mental or physical health is to teach life; to teach life is to teach God; for God is life in all its manifestations. Therefore to know about health one must know about life and the principle of being, God.
There are many people who do not want to talk about God, nor about religion. They do not understand the one or the other, and do not wish to understand. This is unfortunate, because every human being is naturally religious. But false ideas of religion have made the word hateful and false ideas about God have made His name a synonym for cant and hypocrisy.
Let us understand what we mean by health, by religion and by the word of God. We cannot understand anything clearly until we first define our terms.
First, as to what we term religion, let us say what it is not. It is not a state or an ecclesiastical regulation, nor a creed, nor the performance of forms and ceremonies, nor the recitation of devout formulas, nor Bible reading, nor church membership, nor the bowing of the knee to a far-off Deity. These may be forms of religion, but they are not religion. Religion, as a word, is a combination of the two Latin words reand ligo, meaning to bind together. Religion is the method by which is effected a conscious union of the soul with God. The office of religion is to bind us to God.
Therefore we are not to think of religion in terms of external forms or theologized beliefs shaped into creeds, but in terms of conscious union with God. This sense of union should be given expression in words and deeds, spoken and performed under the promptings of spiritual impulses.
There has never been a people in all the history of the world without a religion. Man has been defined as a religious animal. There is within every man a reaching out for a higher existence, a hope of something beyond the present life, a realization within him, in rare moments, of something divine. This is an intuitional feeling and a deep interior monition. It is the prompting of the divine in us, suggesting the need of a dependence upon some power higher than our own.
Religion, then, has been well defined as an absolute dependence upon and a conscious relation to God. Its essence is found in the consciousness of God within, an intuitive perception of the life of God in the soul of man.
Health means wholeness, soundness, perfect lubrication of all parts, complete functioning of all organs, perfection and efficiency throughout the body, making every movement exquisite with joy and beautiful in harmony.
To be healthy is to be sound, full of strength and vigor, to be glowing with functional satisfaction. This applies to mind and body. We speak of a healthy person as “full of life,” so that the words health and lifeare so closely related that the one implies the other. Health is the joy of life. Life is the source of health.
Health and life are so inter-related that when we speak of life we imply health, for without health life is working against a barrier of some kind. It is not expressing itself freely.
When we come to define life we meet with the mystery of being. We use the term generally to express the principle of being. Life involves both the body and the mind. And these terms involve other mysteries that it is our duty to make an attempt to solve.
But let us say that life is the vital spark, the animating faculty of created beings, the principle in nature which involves birth, growth and development to maturity of fruition; quickness and motion instead of inertia and death.
These are rude definitions, but we wish to avoid the abstruse. Our object is to call attention to certain essentials for the more complete realization of physical limitations and mental possibilities.
The earth is a vast reservoir of life. A drop of water placed under a microscope reveals a world of life in forms so diminutive as to be unbelievable. The animalculae therein dart about with an amazing energy. The sea, too, is full of life. The air is replete with life. Look at a beam of sunlight filtering into a dark room and you will see millions of atoms of whose existence you are otherwise seldom aware. A bar of steel is a dense, solid body, but scientists have proved that it is composed of trillions of atoms, ions, electrons, racing about with the speed of an express train. Nature in all its forms is a swarming mass of all-pervading life.
Where does all this life come from? It is not man made. View the heavens and you see millions of stars, suns, planets, clusters of nebulae–all sustained by a life force or energy of which we know but little, all moved and moving under a harmony of law that dazes and mystifies us. Overwhelmed by these showings of life-force, whether in stars or in atoms, we are obliged to realize the existence of a Supreme Being, a Creator and Dispenser of all this abundance of life. This Being we commonly call God.
Thus in analyzing the subject of health we must refer it to life, and in studying the subject of life we must refer it to its Creator. That man can do this reasoning is proof of his being an exceptional creation of the Almighty, because there is no other production of nature that can reason about its origin.
Man stands above the rest of created life as does an Alpine summit above an ant hill. Man, by his reasoning faculty, has, indeed, dominion over all other creatures. That which gives him this dominion is mind. Mind is the producer of thought, but it is under the direction of will, and will is God’s special gift to man. It is the gift of freedom, a gift so wonderful that it may be used even against its Creator.
Have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror–looked deep into your own eyes and asked yourself: “Who am I?” You are conscious of looking at a being you do not yourself understand or know. There is a mystery in your being that you know of but cannot fathom. The things that you do are very often done through impulses whose origins are unaccountable to you. Even your will has been superseded by your mysterious self, whom you do not know, cannot always control and, as a rule, automatically obey.
The fact is that you do not realize the mental and spiritual forces at work within you. You have an objective mind and a subjective mind, above which are the soul and Spirit. The objective mind does your thinking, planning and conscious reflection; the subjective mind is the store-house that contains all your past impressions and thoughts. The objective mind acquires and learns whereas the subjective mind acts automatically on these acquisitions as through habit. The objective mind reasons from analysis and deduction. The subjective mind does not reason but acts from suggestion on what it has in its possession, transmitted by the objective mind. The mind, in this dual capacity, receives its power from the soul, which in turn takes its power from Spirit.
It is here that Spirit comes in. God is Spirit and there is in every man an emanation of this Universal Spirit. Man has no conception of his greatness or the enormity of the power that resides within him until he apprehends that he is a spiritual being; that the body is merely the physical part of him; that the spiritual part is the real man, and that by the development of his spiritual self he can so make contact with the Universal Spirit as to learn therefrom all the truths of life and how to conform with the law that is behind all the order and harmony in the universe and through which all good is secured.
God is the source of life, and being such must naturally be the source of health. A soul made in the image of God is God’s reflection and has power to bring about at any time a vital union with God. To know this is to apprehend Truth in its highest form, and it is of the greatest importance to know it, for its knowledge means to us health, happiness, success and a complete realization of our destiny.
We have been taught that God created the world, and that God is far away from us, in heaven, and far away from the world, and therefore we believe that after God created the world He endowed it with perpetual motion and left its operations to a blind force that we call Nature, which, operating under the laws by which it was originally endowed, keeps on creating and pro-creating, producing and destroying, moving along at all times with a blind, insensate force.
We shall see that this is not so. God was not present for the Creation alone. God is actively present in the world, in the universe, in what we call Nature, at all times. He is the immanent (indwelling) force in all that He has created; the power, the energy, the operating principle, the thought, the mind, the Spirit. God does not operate on things from the outside. He operates from within. He is not beyond the rim of things. He is at the center. “All of nature’s action,” says a well-known metaphysician, “is God’s action, and the uniform mode of the divine activity and procedure is what we call a law of nature.” God is not only present in all nature and the motive power thereof, but He is present throughout the entire realm of thought. He is universally present in all mind. It is in the realm of thought that the Divine Presence is most clearly felt and seen.
We view God in the physical universe with awe and wonder. Even though we do not realize that this physical universe is but a shadow or counterpart of the spiritual universe we stand breathless in amazement before a Niagara or a Grand Canyon. When we look at the skies at night we behold a revelation of Infinity. When we see a sunset in mid-ocean we marvel at the glory of the picture and the immensity of the canvas. When we see a snow-capped mountain range we breathe an ecstacy. If we follow the development of life from the primordial cell to the perfect type of a species we cannot withhold our astonishment. The precession of the equinoxes and the galaxies of suns and stars overwhelm us with our littleness. We observe the passing of the seasons and exclaim with praise over these visible evidences of the works of God.
But all these are as nothing compared with the wonders of the mind itself. Without mind none of these marvelous spectacles could be seen or appreciated. The more wonderful are the things we perceive the more wonderful is the mind that apperceives. What, after all, are all the wonders of sky and earth compared to the consciousness that assimilates them? Is it not clear that if God is present in all nature He is supremely present in the mind that has the capacity to apprehend and reflect upon it?
As we shall see in subsequent Lessons, all these wonders of what is called the material world are physical aspects of the Divine Mind; we shall see that there is really nothing material, that everything is mental or spiritual; that the Universe and all it contains is but the reflection of the Divine Idea in the mind of God; the outer evidences of God’s love, harmony, and abundance.
This is a very brief introduction to what we mean to teach you of Truth, and its purpose is to show you how your body, which may be the seat of so much disease and discord, so much inharmony and disorder, so much suffering, physical and mental, may be controlled by your higher faculties, and they in turn controlled and directed by the Creative Mind.
This is what Jesus came to teach us and what lies behind all of his teaching and miracles. Jesus said: “I and the Father are one,” and his prayer was that we might be one with the Father, even as he was. Saint Paul said of God: “He is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live, move and have our being.”
These Lessons will have much to do with the subject of this intimate inter-relation of God and man, and what we have merely touched upon in this First Lesson we shall amplify in later instructions. The purpose of all these Lessons is to show the unwisdom of man in following his own will to disorder and destruction and the wisdom of conforming our minds to the mind which was in Christ Jesus, Son of Man and Son of God, who showed us the Way, the Truth and the real Life.
Whatever evil we suffer from, whether sickness, poverty or failure, is man-made. None of it is of God or from God, and all of it can be banished by a conformance to the immutable laws of life, growth and development.
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PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“To think, to feel, to act, to be,
This is life’s mighty mystery;
But Being is the secret spring,
From which the rest their birth-right bring.”
Golden Grains
“That which I desire to be I shall be.” I AM–I CAN–I WILL.
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
“There is no Reality in evil. God is All in All, and God is Spirit. God is the only Power–The Principle of Good–In all, over all and through all. In God I live, move and have my being.”
Thought for the Silence
“Be Still and know that I AM GOD. I am now lifted up unto Thee that I may lift all others up unto me. The Glory of God expresses itself through me. The Strength of God supports me in all that I do. The Wisdom of God leads me into paths of Peace, Power and Prosperity.”
Three-Minute Meditation at Noon Silence
“The Order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself Now as perfect Health.”
Thought for Each Morning on Going Out
“Divine Love preserves my going out and my coming in, from this time henceforth and forevermore. I face the duties of the day knowing that ‘underneath are the everlasting arms,’ sustaining and supporting me.”
Read with this Lesson
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapter VIII, and the chapter on “Life” in “New Thoughts on Old Doctrines.” [Both books online at Northwoods.]
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DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Morning Devotions, Health, Abundance, Protection
(These are to be acquired as a substantial programme
for those who would “pray without ceasing.”)
Morning Devotions
On Arising. I arise, O Lord, to do Thy will. Thy will is perfect, working in me as unchanging Peace, Power and Perfection.
While Making One’s Ablutions. I am cleansed by the Purifying Water of Life from all that is unlike God. Nothing “common nor unclean” can attach itself to Man, the Divine Idea.
On Dressing. Clothe me, O Lord, in the garb of Righteousness (right thinking). Girt about with the armour of Truth and love, nothing can by any means hurt me.
Before Breakfast. “There is nothing from without that defileth a man,” therefore the food of which I am about to partake is blessed by Him who has provided it. It nourishes and invigorates me.
After Breakfast. I thank God that He has supplied me with that bread which cometh down from Heaven, of which I may freely eat and live.
On Going Out. Divine Love preserves my going out and my coming in, from this time henceforth, and even forevermore. I face the duties of the day knowing that “underneath are the ever-lasting arms,” sustaining and supporting me.
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
Abundance
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
Suggestions for the Silence
When you enter the Silence realize that God is Spirit and that it is only by closing the door of the outer senses to all disturbances and realizing your Unity with God that you can hear the “still small voice” that will guide you in all that you do. Be still, and hold the attitude of Growth, of Health, Strength and Spiritual Development.
Spend a little time morning, noon and night, in the Silence, for it is there that you quicken the inner powers and gain spiritual perception, uplift and growth. Think of God as Spirit dwelling in you, and then become receptive to the inflow of Infinite Power, Infinite Wisdom, and Infinite Love.
Resolution for the Week
“I Resolve this week to Live up to my noblest ideals; to keep my heart pure, my aspirations high, and to let no night envelope me in silence until every unkind thought, every wrong impulse has been mellowed and dispelled. I will let no sun set which does not bless some kind act, some helpful thought, some unselfish work begun.” I will live a simple, sincere, and serene life, reversing promptly every thought that is unlike God.
QUESTIONS
1. What is life?
2. What is its source?
3. What is religion? What is its function?
4. What is health?
5. What is man? What is the real man?
6. What is mind?
7. How can we accomplish what we desire?
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Lesson II
THE BRAIN AND THE MIND
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
There is a great confusion of thought displayed in the use of the word “mind,” and since we are to study the effect of the mind upon the body, and the nature of mind itself, above all as we are to show the nature of man, it is well to give first our attention to the physical origin known as the brain.
This confusion of thought extends even to the use of the word “brain,” for, strictly speaking, we have two brains, just as we have two hands, two legs, two eyes, two ears and so on with other members and organs of the body that are paired.
We have two brains, one on each side of the head. However, these are not for double use, as we use but one brain. This pairing of the brains is not the same as that of the eyes and ears, for if we lose the sight of one eye or the hearing of one ear the sight of the eye and the hearing of the ear remaining intensifies and in a way makes up for the deprivation. The brains are an exception to the rule of double usefulness for paired organs. We use but one brain, the other remaining idle. The brain that we use is opposite to the hand we favor. If we are right-handed we use the left brain and if we are left-handed we use the right brain. The first effort at speech made by an infant determines the use of the right or the left hand and correspondingly the use of the left or the right brain. To understand all the implications of this fact necessitates a discussion of man as a separate and superior species.
This takes us into the subject of “Evolution,” so-called. Modern teaching as to man’s origin would lead us to believe that we have been evolved from a primordial cell or jelly through everything that wiggles and creeps, swims, walks or flies, from the invertebrate form to that of the vertebrate (possessing a spine) and through the land animals up to where we are at present. Darwin did not declare this to be the case. He submitted a Theory of the Origin of Species, merely as a theory, but many of his followers have built upon it the general plan that we now know as “Evolution,” which accounts for our being on the line of “progression,” through a conscious demand for new needs of being, as also by a survival of such species as were best fitted to survive. Thus, Evolutionists declare, we have come to be what we are.
Considering man anatomically, from the physical side merely, there is much to be said for this theory. It is obliged to be more than plausible to convince the many people who are in the ranks of evolutionists.
The anatomical structure of the vertebrates is the general plan upon which man may be said to have been built. There is a remarkable resemblance anatomically between a man and an ourang-outang, or a chimpanzee, and this has been stressed so much that the popular idea of an evolutionist is that of one who believes that man is descended from the ape. The manner of generation and birth, in both, are the same. The unborn baby and the unborn ape at one period of gestation cannot be told apart. There is even a rudimentary tail to the unborn human that is eliminated before birth. With allowable differences between the arms and legs and the skin and features there is a startling resemblance physically between man and ape. As for the expression of the eyes, that of some monkeys is more intelligent than that of some men.
Furthermore, and this is the point we wish to bring out, the brains of an ape are almost identical with those of a man. It has been said that so far as physical structure goes there is less difference between the brains of a man and those of a chimpanzee or ourang-outang than there is between the latter and the ordinary monkey. The pattern of the principal fissures in an ape’s brain is identical with that of a man’s. Huxley showed that the human brain has not even one peculiarity not found in a baboon’s brain.
But there are two overwhelming facts against the theory of Evolution as commonly understood–that is, the accounting for the origin of man by tracing him through all animal life down to the protoplasm or primordial cell. The first is that each species is inclusively fertile and exclusively sterile. The feline may range through all forms, from the tiger to the kitten, but it never becomes canine or bovine, for example. Each species can interbreed, but it cannot breed outside of its own kind. New forms or new types may be produced from interbreeding within each species. The race-horse of today is the descendant of the little Eohippus which was no larger than a large dog and which had three toes, or rather, a twice-cleft hoof, and from the horse and the ass a mule may be produced, but there progress ceases. The lines between the species are impassable boundaries, fixed by an immutable law of nature, and no one has ever been able to show where this law has been set aside.
The second fact is the all-important consideration, since it proves incontestably man’s distinctive creation as a companion of the divine. There is one physiological standard by which alone man can be measured, and that standard accounts for the immeasurable distance between man and all other animals. It is the nature and significance of the Word of man. An impassable gulf stands between the minds of those who can speak and the minds of dumb animals. “They cannot be the same being in kind, however similar their bodily relationship may be,” says Wm.Hanna Thomson, “because the more we recognize what the presence of the Logos (the word) in man implies, the plainer becomes the reason why he stands alone in this world.”
The faculty of speech consists not in uttering words but in making them. No human being was ever born with a word. Every word has been made in his own brain by man himself through his mind. No speechless race of man has ever been found, and the speech of every race of men, whether savages or tribes of the lowest intelligence, consists of verbs, nouns and partitives. In other words it has a grammatical basis. Some of the finest languages known to man are spoken by uncivilized men. Max Muller says: “We have before us in the Turkish a language of perfectly transparent structure, and a grammar the inner workings of which we can study as if watching the building of cells in a beehive. An eminent Orientalist remarked that we might imagine the Turkish language to be the result of the deliberations of some famous society of learned men. But no such society could have devised what the mind of man produced, left to itself in the steppes of Tartary, and guided only by its innate laws or by an intuitive power as wonderful as any within the realm of Nature.”
Thus, from the first purposive gesturing or pointing of a baby’s hand, and from the first word articulated by tongue and throat, up to the achievements of a Mezzofanti, who spoke twenty languages, the human creates word centers in his brain. This is shown by the fact that in the hemisphere of the brain that is unused there is no speech functioning or mental area. Words are created in the brain by the individual himself, who, in creating them, automatically modifies his own brain. We repeat and repeat until we develop a brain record of the word. And a strange thing about this process is that each language learned occupies a separate part of the brain structure, so that a man may know several languages and suffer an accident to the brain that will destroy all record of one language while the brain retains intact the record of the other languages.
However, this discussion of the brains, the two lobes or hemispheres containing gray matter in the frontal parts of the head and in the cerebellum, with their strange but no longer mysterious convolutions, has to do not so much with instruction pertaining to the brain as with instruction concerning the mind, the principal purpose being to prevent confusion of thought and to emphasize the power of the mind in the use of its instrument for speech.
We often hear the remark that a man is “brainy,” or a woman is “brainy,” the thought attempted to be carried being that one person is better endowed with brains than another, and before modern discoveries concerning the nature and office of the brains had reached their present state there was a so-called science of phrenology, which was based on the shape of a man’s head as indicative of the size, quantity and character of the brains. But science tells us that one man possesses no better brains than another, that differences in brain weight mean nothing and the shape of the head less. Each of us has two perfect brains to start with, just as we have two good eyes, ears and lungs. It is the use that we make of the brain that is the determining factor in the matter of brain power, brain energy and brain capacity. What we have in our brains is the result of the mind’s effort to charge the brains with what we learn or wish to learn, or study, and hence, without attempting to explain the relation of the brain to the nervous system and the muscular economy we will get at once to our point in declaring that what makes one man a poacher and another a Shakespeare is not the brains but the mind. We have discussed the brains and their marvellous organization for the purpose of clearing away some of the confusion that is ordinarily associated with the word “mind.”
The brain is not the mind any more than the violin is the musician. The brain is the instrument of the mind. We cannot contemplate mind in its formal aspect without being clear on this subject. Scientists whose province is the study of the brain regard it merely as an instrument upon which the invisible, intangible inner spirit that constitutes the individual plays for its expression of thought through words that it creates and compels the brain to record.
What is this mysterious thing that we call mind? Scientists allude to it as the ego, the personality, the intelligence. Physiologists have no agreement as to a proper word for that which constitutes the self in each individual. Divine Science recognizes it as mind, soul and spirit. The brain, let us say, is the instrument, the mind the player, the soul receives from spirit and is the source of supply to the mind, the spirit contacts with Divine Spirit and is therefore the avenue or opening to the All. Briefly, the mind is the intelligence of the soul, the soul is, to use an electrical term, the “condenser” of the spirit and the spirit is an emanation of Divine Spirit, of eternal origin and continuance. The spirit is the divinity that resides in man. We shall probably use the words mind, soul and spirit inter-convertibly, because of the intimate relation of the three, which are all intimately related to the Divine Mind, reflected in man.
The point which interests us at present is the necessity of emphasizing the influence of the mind upon the body. The mind controls the body not only in a directive way, but in a creative manner. What man does in a creative way is effected by the mind and the mind’s creative domain is within us as well as outside of us. Every movement that we make is originated in the mind. We cannot lift a finger without the operation of the mind. What we believe is the result of the knowledge we have acquired through the mind, governed or directed by the will, the dynamic motor of the mind.
Thought is the supreme motive power of the body. If there is no thought, no operation of the mind, we are inert, dead. This is shown in the loss of consciousness through shock, or a blow, and in sleep. If we are unconscious we cannot move a muscle. Sleep is the counterfeit of death. It is thought that governs us, directs our movements, sustains us in action and calls a rest when the body can go no further.
If we wish to witness the effect of thought upon the body we have only to observe a man in a state of extreme fear. His blood “freezes.” His limbs shake. His heart contracts. The blood disappears from his face and he trembles in an ague of apprehension. The thing he fears may have no significance–a shadow, a picture in his mind of death in some form, or what he conceives to be a supernatural being. Or observe him in a state of violent anger or of excessive joy. His thought inflames and changes bodily aspect and action until the man is scarcely recognizable. Previous to such a state of mind the man might have complained of intense suffering. Under the power of the dominating thought all suffering has disappeared, been displaced. In fact any man is immune to suffering while under the influence of a dominating thought.
Men in a high state of excitement know nothing of cold or heat or wounds or disease. People known for years as paralytics, incapable of movement, have sprung from their invalid chairs and rushed out of a burning building. People have dropped dead on reading a message containing information that was entirely untrue, the thought from the letter or telegram delivering a mortal stroke to the body.
On the other hand, look at the constructive power of thought on the body. A sickly, lank, weak boy becomes a Roosevelt, a strong, powerfully-muscled man, the author of “The Strenuous Life.” Men and women given up to die have made up their minds to live and have become strong, healthy and long-lived. Pale, anemic beings have grown into sturdy, stalwart manhood and womanhood. A child who is deaf, dumb and blind and has never received a thought from another until she is seven years of age, becomes a Helen Keller, who, at eighteen, graduates from Radcliffe College in history, languages and mathematics, to say nothing of music.
Thought governs us, thought makes us, thought creates for us the conditions we desire. The mind is the supreme governor of the body, in joy, in pain, in sensation, in action and in the formation of the plans the body carries out that bring to us the desires of our heart.
Do not confuse the mind with the brain. An idiot has a defective mentality, a lunatic, a disordered mentality. A maniac may have a deranged or injured brain. Upon all three the mind, set to work, can accomplish great changes and perhaps complete recovery. In the case of those who become sub-normal, drunkards, thieves, harlots, dope fiends and the like, the soul’s admonitions to the mind have been ignored and unheeded and the mind has acted from sense impulses with resulting chaos in the moral control. Soul and spirit, always above the mind, with abundant power of right direction and food for right thinking, have been awaiting the opportunity to guide and direct, to furnish a plenteous supply of the good, but the lower tendencies have had constant access to the mind through the will to wrong-thinking and wrong-doing. Mind is always working to correct the thought engendered by the senses and when this fact is once realized the will may be resolved in the direction of right-thinking with the result that Thought can thus be engaged to correct and reform, to renew and restore.
Thus we can make invalids and wrecks of ourselves or we can make strong, healthy, wholesome beings of ourselves. We can think positive thoughts or we can think negative thoughts. We can choose to be diseased and sickly or well and strong, and by bending our mind in the one direction or the other we can tear down or build up, we can go up the mountain of high endeavor or we can sink into the valley of nothingness and extinction.
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PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“When, from the lips of Truth, one mighty breath
Shall, like a whirlwind, scatter in the breeze
The whole dark pile of human mockeries;
Then shall the reign of mind commence on earth,
And, starting fresh, as from a second birth,
Man, in the sunshine of the world’s new spring,
Shall walk transparent; like some holy thing.”
Golden Grains
Thoughts are very potent things, and work for weal or woe.
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
No mortal mind or Thought has any power. God is the only Mind, the only Presence, and the only Power.
I am now expressing, in every Thought, word and action, that Divine Spirit which is Life, Love, Harmony, Beauty, and Perfection, and by my Thought I am declaring my Unity with God, the Principle of Eternal Good.
Practice for the Day
How may the habit of Wrong Thinking be changed and the habit of Right Thinking be most quickly effected?
Answer: By reversing every thought that is unlike God.
As the brain cells become more plastic through Right Thinking, new pathways will form in the brain, recording and retaining the character of Thought, and confirming the new ideals and purposes of life.
The mind, open to the soul’s direction, grows by what it feeds upon, and this mental chemistry is continually crystallizing in conditions of health or disease, abundance or limitation, success or failure, according to the constituents of Thoughts.
There is a general order of Thought, productive of health, strength and peace of mind and of this order are those God-inspired thoughts expressed in faith, love, nobleness and good will. We renew our bodies as we renew our thoughts and our lives are changed with Thought for Life. It is a scientific law that whatsoever we desire to be we shall be, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.
“The source of all power is the mind,” and nothing blossoms more beautifully than the mind when it is fed on thoughts of love, happiness, good cheer and helpfulness to others. Every good and every right thought instigates an impulse to a good deed, and a good deed is a seed that multiplies many times in the Garden of Life.
Life is a steady climb upward, and each glimpse of Truth, each right thought or act, becomes a part of your consciousness and externalizes itself in bodily health, vigor and harmony.
Weave the Truth into your life as a working reality. Know that help is within yourself. Accept it. Believe it. Use it.
Knowledge of Truth is knowledge of God and the solution of all your problems, of all your mental and physical disturbance, is to know God aright.
Do not stop with the knowledge that you possess this indwelling power, but LIVE it–let God reveal Himself through your every thought and act.
Affirm positively every day that you are in every way giving expression to the demonstrable, living Truth, which lifts you up out of the errors of your own Wrong Thinking into the Spiritual realm of Reality and Harmonious Being.
The Kingdom of Heaven is within, and to know this is the realization of Right Living, Right Thinking and conscious communion with the Christ in you.
The Silence
Sit in the Silence for 15 minutes each day: morning and night. Seek a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Relax physically, let your mind be passive, put yourself in harmony with the Divine Mind, andknow that you are one with God. Then wait quietly and patiently on God for that inner illumination which comes when the soul is open to the Spirit.
Hold the consciousness that, within you, is the power to BE and to DO.
Remember that your soul is the real YOU, and in the Silence learn to think God’s thoughts from the very innermost of yourself. Then may you be sure that every earnest and right thought and desire will be brought into manifestation.
“The more thou searchest the more thou shalt marvel” at the wisdom and glory of God.
Thought for the Silence
“Be still and know that I AM God. The glory of God expresses itself through me. The strength of God supports me in all that I do. The Wisdom of God leads me into paths of Peace, Power and Prosperity.”
Read with this Lesson
Pages 121 to 129 inclusive of the “Astor Lectures.” [Online at Northwoods.]
“Concentration” (booklet) [Online at Northwoods as Chapter 2 of “Mental Medicine.”]
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DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Morning Devotions, Health, Abundance, Protection
Morning Devotions
On Arising. I arise, O Lord, to do Thy will. Thy will is perfect, working in me as unchanging Peace, Power and Perfection.
While Making One’s Ablutions. I am cleansed by the Purifying Water of Life from all that is unlike God. Nothing “common nor unclean” can attach itself to Man, the Divine Idea.
On Dressing. Clothe me, O Lord, in the garb of Righteousness (right thinking). Girt about with the armour of Truth and love, nothing can by any means hurt me.
Before Breakfast. “There is nothing from without that defileth a man,” therefore the food of which I am about to partake is blessed by Him who has provided it. It nourishes and invigorates me.
After Breakfast. I thank God that He has supplied me with that bread which cometh down from Heaven, of which I may freely eat and live.
On Going Out. Divine Love preserves my going out and my coming in, from this time henceforth, and even forevermore. I face the duties of the day knowing that “underneath are the ever-lasting arms,” sustaining and supporting me.
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
Abundance
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
QUESTIONS
1. How do we do our thinking?
2. Is the brain the source of thought?
3. In what lies the difference between man and all other creatures?
4. Is the theory of man’s ascent through other species provable?
5. Why should we avoid the use of the word “brain” when we speak of the mind?
6. Is the influence of the mind upon the body powerful? In what way?
7. Can we be well or prosperous if we choose to be?
8. How is thought constructive? How is it destructive?
9. How can we produce the physical results we desire and how can we realize our ambitions?
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Lesson III
INFLUENCE OF MIND OVER BODY
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
Forty years ago scientists laughed at the theory of hypnotism. It was denounced as fakery pure and simple. That one mind should dominate another to the extent of divesting that other of its thinking power, its personality, its mental conceptions and its direction of physical action was, they said, unthinkable. Hypnotic phenomena were but the tricks and frauds of charlatans. But today scientists accept hypnotism as a fact and utilize it in the cure of disease.
We see this attitude of skepticism in every discovery that pertains to mental science. So much has been assumed, and so little known, regarding the marvelous character of the mind that the very men who should be foremost in welcoming discovery in this field are those who most satanically flout the heralding of anything new. However, psychology has been making its way so rapidly that it is now being generally studied as a separate science. Psychology, broadly speaking, is soul knowledge, or knowledge of the inner self or ego, including all that pertains to the consciousness.
Hypnotism is one human mind dominating another. Divine Science reveals to us the constant suggestion of Divine Mind over all mentalities.
There is no matter. All is mind, or the expansion of Divine Mind. God is indwelling or immanent, in every human being manifested in Spirit through mind.
Thus, the scientists who demonstrated hypnotism as a fact made a discovery which has affected all of modern psychology. This is the discovery of the quality of mind, the existence in every person of a mind quite apart from the objective mind, a mind that operates entirely from suggestion, of which the secondary form of mind is called the subjective or subconscious mind.
The secret of hypnotism lies in the fact that once the hypnotic subject surrenders his will to the hypnotist, the latter, by his peculiar power of forcing the objective mind into a sleep or trance, takes possession of the subjective mind, which is the store-house of all the knowledge the active or objective mind has acquired, and by suggestion directs the subject to perform anything that the operator demands.
Now, if an outsider, a stranger, can step into our mental domain and control us, is it not a natural thing for us to be able to control ourselves? Certainly we cannot afford to admit that an outsider can successfully compel us to be a certain type of personality or to do a thing seemingly impossible to us and then admit that we ourselves are unable to become that being or perform that action on our own.
This leads us to ask: “What is this subconscious, or subjective mind?” The answer is a revelation in the direction of self-achievement that staggers us with its possibilities.
The subjective mind has no will or initiative of its own. It acts entirely from suggestion from the objective mind. The brain is like the wax cylinder of a phonograph. Every thought that we have entertained, every word that we have ever spoken or heard; every sound, smell or sense impression that we have ever received has been recorded on the delicate tablets of the brain as it has been received from the nerves. All these and other rarer impressions contacting on the brain are in the possession and custody of the subjective mind. We have forgotten the great mass of them, as the objective mind is more concerned with the reception of new impressions than with the retention of old. But the subjective mind takes these as they come and holds them preciously. It has every tiny detail of our physical and mental life in its grasp and brings it up at the particular moment its depths may be stirred by a situation or a climax that forces its recall. Who is it that cannot testify to the power of a strain of music to bring back the memory of an event that had been completely forgotten? Who is it that does not know of the effect upon the memory of a distinct odor? All the tricks of memory speak of the power and fidelity to truth of the subconscious mind.
What must we do to learn a lesson of this kind? Do we not have to repeat it over and over until we have it “by heart”? This action engraves a distinct record on the brain area that we use for the purpose, and this, then, becomes a possession of the subconscious mind. Thus, if one learns to play a musical instrument, the repetition of the command to our nerves and muscles, oft repeated, results in an automatic performance by them of the movements desired and thus we learn a piece of music, let us say, so that we can play it automatically–the brain having been called upon by the mind to direct every nerve and muscle and finger with such frequency that the whole performance becomes mechanical. All our habits are formed in this way, with the result that eventually we do not have to exert the objective mind to accomplish the habitual thing. As we all know, mechanical performances can be conducted perfectly while the objective mind is engaged in a thought far remote from the accomplishment of the thing in hand.
Now, who or what takes care of the performance of habitual acts? The answer is the subjective mind. The subjective mind is the faithful and loyal assistant of the objective mind. It runs the shop while the boss is loafing or engaged with some outside thought. And its main characteristic is its absolute loyalty and fidelity to instructions.
The subjective mind never sleeps. It is always around, ready for work, and if one’s sleep is light, if one is not completely asleep, one dreams–one is cognizant of thought movement in one’s sleep, sometimes so vivid in character that one is awakened and comes to a perspiring breathlessness. The subjective mind, with no one to guard and direct it, has shown its disorder and its activity with old impressions. Awakening from sleep the objective mind takes charge, order is resumed and sleep is returned to. Often in dreams faces long forgotten appear, names, words and sentences that were supposed to be in oblivion come up again, and frequently the awakening objective mind is thus given a clue to some thought which it had steadfastly sought in vain within its own domain.
This brings us to the contemplation of one of the most remarkable phases of this duality of mind of which we are the possessors. How often have you not charged yourself, upon retiring, to awake at a certain hour? Have you not found that you awakened not only at the hour but at the very minute of the hour? How often have we not concluded that it would be best to “sleep over” a problem, to find that the process has brought us to a correct decision? It is not a common experience though we all have had some experience of the kind, but it is a fact that men who have had problems to solve that were absolutely impossible of solution to them have found that after a sleep the mind has somehow found the solution.
Dr. W. Hanna Thomson, in his interesting work, “Brain and Personality,” cites two instances that came under his own observation. One was that while at college he was told by a fellow student that the latter’s roommate sat up late with him one night working at a difficult problem in mathematics. Failing to solve it the young man rubbed his slate clean, put out the light and went to bed. Long after midnight the first student was awakened by a light and perceived the second in his night clothes busy with his slate. In the morning, while both were dressing, the one who had worked while the other slept complained of fatigue. His friend said: “I am not surprised as you were working on your slate at three this morning.” This was denied, and to prove his contention the first student picked up the other’s slate and showed his astounded companion the problem worked out to a successful conclusion. The latter had no knowledge whatever of this action of his subjective mind and looked at the correct conclusion of the problem totally unable to account for the way he had worked it.
The second was that of a British consul in Syria, who afterwards became a great diplomat. He had been a diligent student of Arabic to fit himself for the duties of his position, when one night he tried to compose a letter to an emir at Lebanon. The consul endeavored in vain to compose the letter satisfactorily, with all regard to Eastern courtesy, tore up all that he wrote and went to bed blessing all Arabic composition in general. In the morning he found on his desk a freshly-written letter, which he must have penned, as it was in his own handwriting and so well worded that he was in admiration of it and immediately dispatched it.
Instances of this sort can be multiplied without end. They indicate the power of the subjective mind under strong suggestion. We all know that we do things quickly under startling emergencies with an effectiveness and a thoroughness that we cannot afterward account for. “Something in me just told me what to do, that’s all,” is the usual explanation, lame enough, but beyond question convincing.
We know also the force of habit, which is simply the direction of the body by the subconscious mind while the objective mind is inert or occupied with a different trend of thought. The discovery of the nature and operation of the subjective mind has explained to us many so-called mysteries of behavior, such as sleep-walking, that but for this knowledge we could never satisfactorily account for.
As we study the question it becomes clear to us that there is no greater truth than is comprised in the statement: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” We see not only the wonderful power of mind over body but the reinforcement of that power by a part of the mind, or a second order of mind, which is engaged at all times in carrying out the suggestion imparted to it by a resolution of the will and a determined mental expression of it. We learn that we have a slave within us whose business it is at all times to carry out the instructions given it. And, realizing this fact, we can understand why positive thought can create and recreate–and negative thought can tear down and destroy.
Whatever order we issue to the subjective mind it promptly undertakes to carry out. Whatever state of existence you declare to be in being, the subconscious mind assumes exists and works within you accordingly. If a friend asks you: “How do you feel today?” and you reply: “I am not well; I have a headache and I don’t feel good at all,” you are unconsciously setting the subjective mind to work to realize the state you declare yourself to be in. On the other hand, if you say: “I am well, happy and strong,” the subjective mind undertakes to realize this state for you. You set in motion forces in either direction by the expression of your will or the determination of your objective mind that proceed to produce the condition you describe.
Hence you can see what a wonderful power is within your control for your happiness or unhappiness, your condition of body and mind, and how necessary it is for you to use this power always in a positive direction. You are, in a word, what you think you are. This is not a theory, a fancy or a fad. It is a law. And the reason why the world is filled with sin, disease, misery and misfortune is because it requires effort to think positive thoughts while negative thinking is the result of inertia.
Friend, you can believe this, and the more firmly you believe it the more powerful you can become as the arbiter of your health and fortune. What we have said in this Lesson is the briefest outline of the truth and the facts. There is nothing more marvelous than this secret operation of the subjective mind.
Have you heard the saying: “You can be anything you wish to be?” You have not realized the immense force of it. But think of strong, successful people; think of all that you have read of men and women who have become great. Their lives became the expression of an idea determined upon at some point in life, early or late, and followed up with determination and perseverance in the face of all obstacles. Have you not yourself accomplished ends that you have aimed at by the exercise of sheer determination and the bending of your thought ever to the point you aimed at? There is nothing within the realm of accomplishment that you cannot perform if you set your mind to it and work persistently in the face of every obstacle with that object in view. The will to accomplish a definite purpose is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Everything gives way before it.
For here we come upon another strange fact. You will find that if you are the possessor of a controlling idea then information of service to you (and aid to help you accomplish your desire) will come to you from sources that you could never anticipate or reckon upon. You have doubtless noticed how there seems to be poured upon you at the time you are engaged in a serious task or line of thought, facts and instances that aid you remarkably in achieving the result you are after. Words said by daily associates, or by a stranger; newspaper or magazine articles which come to your attention; books you happen to see in a window or in the hands of a friend; lectures or courses of instruction that you hear about–all these come to you unbidden, out of the air as it were, to aid you in developing your idea or your plans. In short, the sort of help you need will turn up to assist in guiding you in the direction you wish to go. It may be said that the determined mind not only brings about within the individual the force he needs but that forces beyond him continuously flow to him to supply his need also.
Marie Corelli says, in “Life Everlasting”: “Nothing in the universe can resist the force of a steadfastly fixed resolve. What the spirit truly seeks must, by eternal law, be given to it, and what the body needs for the fulfillment of the spirit’s demands will be bestowed. From the sunlight and the air and the hidden things of space, strength shall be daily and hourly renewed. Everything in nature shall aid in bringing to the resolved soul that which it demands. There is nothing within the circle of creation that can resist its influence. Success, wealth, triumph upon triumph come to every human being who daily ‘sets his house in order’–whom no malice can shake, no derision drive from his determined goal, whom no temptation can drag from his appointed course, and who is proof against spite and calumny.”
The reason why people are ill and incapacitated is that they have cultivated a negative condition by wrong thinking. We have referred to the subjective mind as an assistant who works faithfully and loyally for the accomplishment of what it has been told to do while the boss is loafing or otherwise engaged. We should be a world of successes if the idea of a fixed objective and a set goal possessed us. But what, as a rule, becomes of God-given ideas and inspirations? We feel an enthusiasm about them at first and we determine upon action of some kind. But before we take action we begin to think negative thoughts. We allow ourselves to calculate depressingly on the number of obstacles we shall meet and the impossibility of overcoming them; we tell ourselves that others, exceptionally situated, might be able to put the idea into effect but we are surrounded by conditions that forbid us to entertain the thought of success. If it is a matter of health we argue against our ability to rescue ourselves from a sickness or a disease by thinking of our supposed inherited tendencies or our susceptibility to this or that particular weakness, or of what the doctor says of the seriousness of our case, and so on. The enthusiasm cools and the negative thinking effectually extinguishes its remaining sparks.
As a consequence the great generality of people are for the most part in a state of mental disorder. They are without guide or compass, and their subjective minds, instead of becoming willing assistants or devoted slaves grow to be like their objective minds, affected by whims and emotions–unregulated, unguided, disordered and discordant.
Our first duty, then, is to put our house in order. If we are sick we must prepare to take positive action with regard to ourselves. If we wish to overcome a disease or a defect we must lay out our plans to do so by adopting a positive basis from which we are not going to be swerved. We must prepare to charge the subjective mind daily, if not hourly, with the work it has to do. We must give to it its orders, treat it as the silent assistant that it really is, and affirm that we are what we want to be. Deny what we seem to be, affirm what we really are in the spirit–well, strong, powerful, successful, resourceful, capable, blessed with all things.
WE MUST form a fixed idea of the change we wish to effect or the direction in which we wish to go. We must institute order for disorder, faith and courage for hopelessness and disbelief. We must begin to exercise the creative power which lies within us in the sphere of our own particular world. We must seek to arrange things in such order as to set in motion a train of causation that will harmonize all our conditions, and do this without antagonizing the exercise of a like power by others. Thus we shall be able to compel all our innate powers to work for us, and in addition we shall enter the realm of unseen causes and induce them to co-operate with us, by attracting them to the thing we are doing.
Let us remember, then, that we have a wonderfully constructive, creative and recreative power within us that, properly directed, will bring into externalization the secret desire of our heart–health, success, wisdom, peace, power, happiness, and above all strong mental poise and control. We must first form the will, inspire ourselves with the faith we require, and then take up the process of putting the subjective mind into harness and making it push against the collar. This the subjective mind will do, we can depend upon it. What we aim at may not come at once, but it is bound to manifest in time. It is the Law. We are teaching you the Science that applies this knowledge of the law. The demonstration lies with yourself.
You may say: “Well, what has all this got to do with religion, or with God, or with the teaching of Jesus, since it is merely a matter of utilizing the latest discoveries in mental science and psychology?” Many people take this view. They see no further than secondary causes and effects and hence we have a large class of people who look only to the machinery of the mind since that appears to be all that is necessary to understand and produce results. But this is like saying that a self-playing piano is the producer of music; that all that there is about a clock is to keep it wound; that your only task with regard to an automobile is to supply it with gasoline. This reasoning ignores the principles of music, mathematics and mechanics. To properly understand the finite we must study its source at the Infinite. This we shall enlarge upon in later Lessons. At present we are concerned only with immediate causes and effects.
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“Then let your secret thoughts be fair;
They have a vital part, and share
In shaping words and moulding fate
God’s system is so intricate.”
Golden Grains
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
There is no matter–All is Infinite Mind and its Infinite manifestation, for God is All in All. I am now allied to the Infinite Love and Wisdom of the Divine Spirit which is, through my conscious Thought, guarding, guiding, and providing for me. By the Law of Being I claim from the Spirit the unlimited essence of Love, Wisdom, Power and Perfection of Mind and Body.
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ-Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
Divine Love preserves my going out and my coming in from this time henceforth and forevermore. I face the duties of the day, knowing that underneath are the everlasting arms, sustaining and supporting me.
Resolutions for the Week
I resolve this week to be grateful for the work God has given me to do. To be more content with what I have. To eliminate from my consciousness all false estimates and to live up to the Higher Ideals of life. To make my watchword Love and its expression Life and to live the life which shall every day be a “journey into the Infinite and every night, a return rich with discoveries.”
Suggestions for the Silence
In the Silence Be Still–be very still–and become conscious of the Divine Power within. Know that it is union with the Divine Spirit–Christ within–that brings Life, Health, Strength, Peace and Abundance. Realize that there is “Nothing but God”; that it is God in you that acts, God in you that thinks, God in you that speaks. Listen and you will hear His voice, and a new view of God’s world will open before you as the mists of doubt, fear, and discouragement are dispelled by the Sunshine of Divine Love.
Read with this Lesson
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapters III and IV. [Online at Northwoods.]
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DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The Order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth, Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Purity, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.
QUESTIONS
1. What discovery has revealed man’s power over his activities through suggestion?
2. What are the functions of the objective mind? Of the subjective?
3. What truth is confirmed by the knowledge of the operations of the mind?
4. What are the preliminaries to the beginning of the work of recovery and achievement?
5. What determines constructive processes? Also destructive?
6. What does this Lesson teach? Summarize.
* * * * *
Lesson IV
HEALTH AND SUCCESS
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
Why do we combine these two terms? It is because one is the complement of the other. Health begets activity. It brings about a glowing circulation of the blood and a perfect process of digestion and elimination. The blood, rich, clean and full of life, gives extra animation to the body and compels activity. It clears the brain and stimulates thought, thus starting up new and vigorous ideas. The whole physical organism feels the fresh impulses of health and seeks satisfaction in activity.
We often hear it said that mankind cannot stand the strain imposed by modern competitive conditions. Certain it is that we have developed an enormous number of diseases. Physical breakdowns are common. Nervous wrecks are found everywhere. City life, compelling so much employment that is confining and sedentary, deprives people of open air and sunshine and gives no exercise to the muscles that should be constantly in action. Hence there is a strain on nerves and organs, and resistance power is worn down to the vanishing point.
Naturally, without abounding health, success is next to an impossibility. The desire for success dies under the negative thoughts produced by negative conditions. Where there is no health there is apathy and apathy kills the high hopes raised by ambition.
Therefore, as health of body produces health of mind, people gain doubly from good health. They gain physical and mental activity and the combination spells success in whatever a person may undertake, for with health work becomes a joy and all limitations as to strength and achievement disappear.
So far our instruction has been largely philosophical. It is now necessary to begin to instruct you in the practical, deferring the larger philosophy and the more completely practical to later Lessons, when you will have acquired these first steps in the art of controlling the body through the power of the mind.
First let us say that, no matter what your physical condition may be, your healing lies in your own hands. You must become convinced of this. If we have so far failed to convince you, nevertheless take it for granted, for if we cannot convince you it is an easy matter for you to convince yourself providing you heed earnestly what we say. Whether you seek health and the joy of living, or success and the prosperity that comes with it, or whether you want both, the formula is the same. You must gain your ends by your own efforts, through the application of your own thought and by belief in your ability to do this. With this to begin with you are on your way and what remains is to persist faithfully, to persevere and to be certain of the result.
If you suffer from ill health, poverty, failure and despondency one fact must be clear to you: You are where you are because of your system of ideas. You have thought your self into where you are or you couldn’t be there for a moment. So what is needed then? Is it not a new system of ideas? To say a change of thought is to state the fact weakly. You want more than a change of thought, for that implies the possibility of reversion. You want a new state of mind. You can be transformed only by the renewal of your mind.
Now, how can this be done? It is a difficult task to take up a new system of ideas. If your garden has run to weeds you can put on your old shoes, take off your coat, get on the job and pull up or dig out all the weeds. Then you can spade the garden over and plant it with the seed of whatever you wish to grow in it. By watching it carefully, watering it regularly and biding your time with confidence as to the results, constantly attending to its needs and requirements, you will see the effects of seed germination, the coming forth of stalk and vine, and you can attend to these by keeping off the insects and pests that they attract. Thus, eventually you bring into flowering and fruitage a choice, ordered garden, where before there was an offensive mass of weeds, rank and overwhelming.
It is thus with the garden of the mind. Disease is a weed the seeds of which were attracted by the tendencies of your mind, or soil. You have neglected the soil and the weeds have grown strong and rank and crowded out the plant of health, and instead of digging these up and casting them out you have become afraid of them and have watered them with drugs and medicines and they have grown on you until you have come to the conclusion that your garden has been totally ruined. What are you going to do? Allow the weeds to choke the life out of the garden? Or are you going to tear out and destroy the weeds and plant anew?
You should begin this thought process at once. Study your garden over carefully and thoroughly. Look at each weed and endeavor to discover where it came from and how you have allowed it to grow. Look the whole garden over. Plan in your mind what you can do with this garden plot that God has given you for cultivation. Lay out the whole plot anew. Don’t think merely of getting rid of the weeds. Do some constructive planning and thinking. Make up your mind what you will place in one spot and what in another–what it is that you wish to produce. Health here, success there, peace of mind in this section, happiness and harmony in that, strength and vigor through all.
Now, as in laying out a garden plot with foresight and a knowledge of its requirements, lay out for yourself the garden of your mind. When you have your plans all drawn up begin the work of cleaning up the old garden. Here is a disease you want to get rid of. You cannot pull it up and destroy it as you would a weed, at once. It is too deeply rooted and its roots are imbedded in mental habits, they run under the walls of your system of thinking, they are twined about your convictions, they have struck down into the depths of your consciousness. And so you must begin to pull out the mental habits, revise your system of thinking, reshape your convictions and reform your consciousness. Pull away a little here and spade up a little there. And work all the time to produce a new system of thinking. Such a system we shall give to you in subsequent Lessons, furnishing you with the most dynamic motives known to life.
The instrument that you are to use is Positive Thought. The instrument that you are to abandon and throw over the wall is negative thought. What is a positive thought? What is a negative thought? Well, here is a list that will guide you in your selection. You will see that they stand in opposition to each other. One makes for construction and upbuilding and the other for destruction and tearing down.
Positive Thoughts:
God, Good, Life, Health, Strength, Beauty, Success, Happiness, Love, Purity, Peace, Power, Plenty, Harmony, Faith, Kindness, Generosity, Contentment.
Negative Thoughts:
Devil, Evil, Death, Sickness, Weakness, Ugliness, Failure, Unhappiness, Hate, Impurity, Discord, Fear, Poverty, Inharmony, Suspicion, Selfishness, Stinginess, Worry.
Take up your likes and dislikes. Examine them. You will find selfishness at the base of each. That is the main weed of consciousness. Don’t cultivate a liking for anything or anybody that will produce unhappiness for others. Wherever you produce unhappiness you produce inharmony, discord and resentment. These reflect back on you, for it is the law that whatever you give out you receive back. Give out harsh words and you get harsh words in return. Do an evil act and evil retaliates on you. It is the law–you cannot get away from it. The consequence is an inevitable disturbance of the order and harmony of your mind. You cannot afford to have your mind disturbed, for this generates negative thought. Disturbances will occur and they will in a sense be useful to you in showing you how strongly negative thoughts attack you and how necessary it is for you to cultivate a state of mind that will be impervious to them, that will turn everything it receives, good and bad, to sweet and wholesome uses. We repeat: “Don’t cultivate a dislike for anything or anybody. The tendency to liking and disliking, according to fancy or feeling, produces negative thinking or selfish thinking. Look for the good and ignore the bad, and this will become a habit with you. If you dislike a person try with all your might to see something good in that person and emphasize the good that you thus seize upon.
Here is an unfailing formula for the entire question: LOVE. Go about loving people. No matter who or what they are, find reasons for loving them. Love them with all your might. Not merely because that love will come back to you, for it will, but if you love for this reason you are always measuring returns and that leads to bitter disappointment, for you cannot measure returns; your measuring yardstick is far too short. The more you love the more you increase your capacity for loving. Love is Life. Love more abundantly and you receive life more abundantly and with it joy, peace and harmony–all positive conditions that dry up the roots of disease and strip the leaves from the weeds of selfishness.
Every once in a while there is a funeral in some community of some simple, obscure person whose only asset was the power of loving. When news of the death is heard everyone pauses and thinks of the good that that person accomplished in a quiet, unobtrusive manner. The whole community, irrespective of social, racial or religious connections, turns out to manifest their sense of personal loss and to furnish forth in this manner an evidence of the inner conviction always held of this person’s native greatness. Everyone feels the passing away of this person as a personal loss. Why? Because each has come to know that the soul that has passed on had a special love for him or her and the withdrawal of that love, although it had never been expressed or formulated, leaves him or her with a sense of something taken away that had been invaluable. Few realize the living happiness of the one who has gone, few think for a moment that it was the love thus given out so freely and generously that constituted the great life-happiness of the departed one.
Therefore, watch your thoughts. Watch every thought and determine for yourself whether it is a positive or a negative. When you get up in the morning control your first thoughts. See that they are full of love and harmony and a consideration for the welfare and happiness of others. If an evil thought presents itself, a critical or an unkind thought, stoop over and pull it up. Then put a good one in its place. Use the bad as a basis for the good. Remember, you are now dealing with your subjective mind. Heretofore you have filled the subjective mind with negative thought. It is now your duty to saturate it with positive thought. Remember that it is your servant, your slave, that it is carrying out your instructions to the letter. It is working for you all the time while you are unconscious of its operation.
And when the day’s duties are begun, put positive force into them. Do everything that you have to do as perfectly as you can. Every moment in that direction is a movement towards perfection. You are now forming new habits. You started the morning with love and harmony. Go forward with the same impulses. Fill the room with the fragrance of your happy thought. It is infectious. Let a smile take the place of a drooping of the lips, a clear brow the place of a frown, a good word the place of a rough order or a sarcastic remark. Do not criticize. Criticism implies the adoption of your own ideas instead of the ideas the other person has and is therefore an assumption of superiority seldom justified by the facts. Instead of criticizing give out love, sympathy and appreciation. “Make all your friends feel that there is something in them.” You have an idea how easy this practice is to acquire and how rich it is in results. Thus go through the day wishing well to everyone and looking for opportunities to express love and thoughtfulness for others, but unobtrusively and quietly. Don’t look for your reward from them. The reward is subjective. The reward comes from the subjective consciousness. You are getting joy into your life and joy is a curative agent of tremendous power.
And then when evening comes, think over the deeds of the day. Instead of thinking of some place to go for entertainment stay at home and think up things to do for others. Lay out your plans for the next day. Cultivate solitude. Attend to your evening duties. Try to secure an hour or two when you can be entirely alone. Now is the time to read and reflect. Take up the books that will feed you with this new Divine Science Philosophy and read them, a chapter or two at a time. Not too much, for you can jam your mind with too many constructive thoughts. Go slowly. You must bear in mind that reflection is a great requirement for self-perfection. It is as true now as when the Prophet Jeremiah wrote it: “With desolation is the world made desolate because no man thinketh in his heart.” Our follies are the consequences of our lack of meditation in solitude. There is a saying that a habit is acquired by the repetition of an act for seventeen days in succession. You see it does not take long to get a new habit and the new habit displaces the old as the old leaf is pushed off its branch by the new leaf in process for the coming spring. Keep your good resolutions alive by counting on the certainty of time and practice to give life and activity to them.
And then comes the most important time for your conquest of the subjective mind–the hour before retiring. Give yourself previously a period of silence. Vitalize your will into fresh accessions of power by repeating to yourself what you wish to become, declaring that you are healthy, strong, vigorous and full of life. If you have a disease, a sickness or a special physical trouble that you are treating yourself for, declare that it does not exist. Deny its existence and affirm the existence of its opposite. People who are ignorant of these laws will laugh at this process. They do not know about this Aladdin-like geni of the consciousness, the subjective mind. Rub your Aladdin’s lamp. Affirm health, strength, power, prosperity, success. Deny disease, weakness, sickliness, poverty or failure. Remember, you are talking to your subjective mind. You are impressing upon your consciousness that God-given power to recreation which is, through the renewing of your mind, to bring you out into vigorous health, freedom from limitation and lack of what you desire. Cultivate a power of soul in these repetitions. Use no intensity of force. Hold the thought clearly and calmly in your mind and go over the list of your ailments. “I have no cough, no cold, no catarrh, no stoppage of circulation, no diseased or starved nerves, no impediment, obstruction or congestion in any of the channels of the body; no inflammation, ulceration or suppuration,” and so on, covering whatever ailments you suffer from. “I have no pains or aches, no rheumatism or constipation, no vertigo, no disease of any kind or nature.” Say “I have no ____,” and name the disease you think you suffer from. Deny it. Affirm its opposite. Look it away. Take it away. Affirm that you have a perfect nervous system, that the circulation is perfectly normal, that it is feeding your body in its every part with healthy blood, that you are being flooded with health, life, strength, vigor. Take your time with it. Go slowly over the body and its ailments. Deny what you appear to have; say “I deny this appearance of ____,” and affirm what you desire to possess.
If you are solicitous of achieving success deny everything that is negative. You must deny that you are weak, that you are fearful, that you are incompetent, that you lack courage or initiative, that you are limited in talent or ability. Deny fear. Fear is the deadly enemy of the unsuccessful. Cast it out through denial. Deny poverty. Affirm competency, courage, power of initiative, fullness of talent and ability. Determine to stop thinking negative thoughts of any kind. Place no limit on your possibilities. Affirm power. Affirm a strong will. Visualize the man or woman you want to become and declare and affirm that you are that man or woman. Form a mental picture of the high position you wish to achieve. Think it out in all its details so that you will have it as a constant visualization in your mind, as clear as a photograph. Picture your office or workshop and your subordinates as you expect to have them. Picture the amount of business you want to create and must handle. Picture the house or the farm you intend to have and operate. Get in all the details and perfect it in your mind’s vision so that it will come to you in a flash whenever desired.
These denials and affirmations, if accompanied by a vivid mental picture, create in the subjective mind the nucleus around which it is to build the condition you require. Therefore see to it that the mental food for the development of the nucleus is constantly provided. Do not allow yourself to weary or tire of what may seem to you to be a monotonous and useless task, especially if at first you do not see any apparent results. Keep at it. You are working under a Law that will produce as certainly as the law of spading and seeding and gardening will produce. You have no more right to be impatient of the results in the one case than in the other. Spading, seeding, cultivating and gardening all require time, perseverance and patience, but the Law of Supply eventually brings the reward. It is the Law and it is immutable.
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“Words are great forces in the realm of life,
Be careful of their use. Who talks of hate,
Of poverty, of sickness, but sets rife
These very elements to mar his fate.”
Golden Grains
Thought is Health; Thought is Achievement; Thought is Success. “The tissues of the life to be we weave in colors of our own, and on the fields of destiny we reap what we have sown.”
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
No false belief of disease or limitation can touch me, the Divine Idea. I AM Health–I AM Strength–I AM Power. I AM a Spiritual Being, living consciously the Spiritual Life. I AM now raised to the Christ-Consciousness of Spiritual Understanding and I live in the Realization and freedom of TRUTH.
Thought for the Silence
The Lord is in His Holy Temple, let all the earth keep silent before Him. Truth and Love reign within me. My life is hid with Christ in God at this moment, therefore I am in the Eternal where there is no past and no future. The Way of the Christ is the path to Eternal Life, Health, Strength and Abundance, Here and Now.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
Divine Love preserves my going out and my coming in from this time henceforth and forevermore. I face the duties of the day, knowing that underneath are the everlasting arms, sustaining and supporting me.
Resolution for the Week
I resolve this week to prove my true worth in being, not seeming; To keep my “Thought-world” so filled with Truth, Love, Harmony and Good, that no destructive thoughts can find entrance nor abiding place in my mind. To think God’s thoughts, which shall translate themselves into terms of Health, Happiness and Success.
Suggestions for the Silence
In the Silence realize that you are in the Realm of the Infinite. “Look up unto the Hills from whence cometh your Strength.” Hold the clear, positive, consciousness that God is All–Life, Truth, Love, Wisdom, Peace, Power, Prosperity. That you are One with the Universal Spirit. Affirm that you are a Spiritual Being, living in a Spiritual Universe governed by Spiritual Laws. In a Universe filled with the presence of God there is no lack. God–the Principle of all Good–is the Source of all supply: Omnipresent, Inexhaustible. Know that Divine Love HAS met all your needs.
Read with this Lesson
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapters IX. [Online at Northwoods.]
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapter XVI (Page 180 to end of Chapter.) [Online at Northwoods.]
“God the Banker” (booklet). [Online at Northwoods as Chapter 7 of “New Thoughts on Old Doctrines”]
QUESTIONS
1. Why are health and success combined?
2. How should one approach the task of healing one’s self?
3. What form of thinking should we adopt?
4. What is the mind to be compared with?
5. Why do we need a list of positive and negative thoughts?
6. What practices does this Lesson enjoin upon us?
7. What does it teach us about denials and affirmations?
* * * * *
Lesson V
THE OLD THOUGHT AND THE NEW
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
Our instructions so far have consisted of what is known as Mental Science or Psychology. We have endeavored to show what may be accomplished by the mind alone, operating entirely through its own powers and depending entirely on what man has discovered for himself in the way of causation.
But this is very much as if we were to say to you: “Here is a player-piano. You have been using the wrong rolls of music. You have been playing sad pieces, funeral marches, monotones, chants and wails. Throw those away and put in lively rolls, glees, dances, two steps, jazz music and happy melodies. They will give you a complete change of spirit and you’ll forget all your woes and troubles and build up a new mental condition.”
Or again: “Discard your negative rolls and put in positive rolls. Don’t play negative music. Play positive music. The result will be that you will have a new state of mind and life will become pleasant instead of gloomy.”
Now the subjective mind is like an instrument and we can take out of it all negative forms of thought and replace them with positive forms. But to treat the subject of consciousness in this manner is to occupy the attitude of a materialist who believes in nothing outside of matter and who thinks that all the spiritual life of man is merely a question of sensation derived from a cerebro-nervous mechanism. To this attitude Divine Science is totally opposed. It is proper therefore to consider the question of what it is that Divine Science teaches and wherein it differs from the teaching we have been accustomed to receiving.
Divine Science teaches that Life is continuous; that it proceeds from Divine Life, which is Good in all its manifestations; that there is only one Power that we call God; that there is no evil except that which is man-made and that the Divine purpose is to express the joy of life.
Divine Science teaches the science of developing the divinity which is in every man.
It teaches that the normal state of man is abounding health, with full possibility of achieving and accomplishing, thus making certain a full and complete expression of all the good that is within the individual and making certain a sufficiency of supply.
It teaches that this happy condition is possible to all who will change their habit of thought, alter their attitude of soul, and thus, by coming into harmony with Divine Law, direct the life forces into their right channels and draw all good from the central Good, or God.
Divine Science teaches that man is the victim of his own thought, or of the thoughts of others. If by a purely mental attitude forces for good may be converted into destructive agencies, a reversal of thought process will result in a physical transformation.
Divine Science teaches that by study and reflection on the things that Jesus did and by following the instructions Jesus gave to his followers we can develop the Christ consciousness and do the things that Jesus did.
Ordinary mental healing operates by and through suggestion. It works from below and not from above, from without and not from within. It is concerned with measures of relief and conditions for success instead of with an expansion of Life drawn in fullness from the Source of Life. Spiritual healing, on the other hand, works through an inflow of Divine Life, from contact with God, or Good, in a complete union of mind with Divine Mind. Man should so live that Health will radiate from him because his soul radiates virtue, peace and joy. Health and Success are secondary considerations in comparison with that union with God which manifests health and right-thinking as the outward signs of inward peace and happiness.
God has been known of man since the very beginning of time. But man has sought “many inventions.” Until Jesus came, until the Christian religion was founded, no religion had taught the great truth that God is not a far-off, unapproachable Deity, but that He is within us. Jesus proclaimed that “I and the Father are one,” and his prayer was “That they may all be one; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.” And he promised in return for a love for him that “the Father will love you and we will come to you and make our abode with you.” The truth of the constant fulfillment of this promise is at the very heart of the religion of Christ.
And yet emphasis has not been laid on this teaching. Just as when Jesus came, the Jewish religion has hardened into dogma and a mere performance of rites and rituals and a struggle for eminence and prestige in religious position. Similarly, the Christian religion, from the accession of Constantine to the return of the New Thought of Jesus, has also been held down to specific creeds and dogmatic forms of belief, to conformance with rules and regulations, unmindful of the warning given by Jesus in his reproof to the Jews: “The letter killeth. It is the Spirit that quickens.” The Spirit has not had full opportunity to express itself among peoples taught to look to church creeds, ceremonies, rites, rituals and clerical assistance.
Notwithstanding that Jesus brought this New Thought into the world–the thought of the indwelling of the Eternal Spirit in the human soul–the race has reverted to the Old Thought of a God that is far-off, remote and inaccessible, whose interest in our affairs we question and whose presence we do not pretend to understand except in an academic sense.
The God that we have all been taught to believe in is the old tribal God of the Hebrews, an angry, irascible, vindictive God; a huge patriarchal Man-God, living in the skies, seated upon a throne surrounded by angels playing harps and offering incense. The heaven we have been taught about is an Oriental conception of a super-earthly palace, with walls of jasper and onyx, in a magnificent city of golden streets. God has been conceived of as the Great King, dwelling in power and majesty far above us, dispensing favors and punishments much as one of the world’s grand monarchs of the past bestowed largesse with one hand and inflicted penalties with the other. This is what is called an anthropomorphic God; anthropomorphic in the sense of being human in character and temperament. Do we suffer from sickness, grief and death? It is God’s will. Are we victims of poverty, failure and injustice? God has ordained them for us for the good of our souls. Have we received a well-earned blessing? God has sent it to us as a mark of His favor. The wicked may prosper and the good be worn to exhaustion, but we are to understand that there is a good reason for this, although no good reason has ever been given for it. People are so tenacious of this kind of a God that they consider it blasphemy for someone to deny that the Supreme Being is the sender of both good and evil, the dispenser of punishments and blessings, the one hand delivering a favor and the other withdrawing it.
Jesus did not so describe God. Jesus declared that God was Love and that He did not wish the death of a sinner but that he be converted and live. Converted, how? To some form of religion? Certainly, we were told. But we were not told that conversion means the conversion of the mind from false ideals to Truth. God wishes the sinner to be converted, or changed, or transformed, in mind; to cease following after sense pleasures and begin to see the joys of the Spirit; and to live rather than die. And if to live, then to live in health, and joy, and peace and love.
The church has been telling us how we are to prepare for death rather than how to prepare for life. The church, or churches, rather, have worked to keep our eyes on the New Jerusalem into which we would be admitted after death providing our lives were lived acceptably, and they have made it so hard for us to live that millions of people have found it impossible to follow them in their injunctions and restrictions. They have taken all the joy out of life and, as a consequence, a great number of Christian people have reacted so strongly against them that they object even to the mention of religion. This notwithstanding the fact that every man is religious at heart. The churches have so confused us with their interminable mixtures of moral conventions and church rules, with their dogmatic insistence on specialized beliefs and practices, based on over-emphasized texts from the teachings of Jesus, and with their religious bigotry and sectarian feuds, that we say with Mercutio: “A plague on both your houses,” and follow our own interpretations of religious truth in our own way, leaving the churches to thunder at us and fight out their own fights themselves. The New Jerusalem is a long way off, the Promised Land is here in sight, and the average person of common sense does not want to be marched about for forty years in a wilderness before he can be led up to the gates of the realization of the promises of God as they have been interpreted for us.
Why are the churches empty? Why do the people stay away? Is it because they do not believe in God, or in the Son of God, the Christ? Not at all. It is because the Holy Spirit is not found in the churches except as individual members bring it in within their own bosoms; because fashion and social conventions rule therein; because Mammon has become mighty among them; because they have become the centers of sham and worldly respectability; because they are too often run by the self-righteous and the Pharisee.
These are hard words and may jar the susceptibilities of many of those who read them. But they are not uttered harshly; rather with deep feeling, a feeling that even church leaders themselves are obliged to confess, although they do not always do so openly.
The necessity is strong upon us to return to the teachings of Jesus and to take up the thought that he implanted in the minds of his followers. Jesus taught above all things the apprehension of God as a loving Father, an indwelling power in the soul of every human being, a constant, tender, protecting interest, who supplied us with all things and to whom we should always turn as little children. He taught that life was love and joy, and peace and harmony, and above all health, as contributary to all. Jesus went about healing the people of their sins and their diseases, showing the relation between the two. “Sin” means, literally, mistake, or “missing the mark.” It means our failure to be true to the innate spirit of Good; it means a false system of thinking, the control of the body by the senses rather than by the soul. And as the fame of Jesus as a healer went abroad throughout the land they brought sick people to him in multitudes, and he healed them and told them to repent of their ways, to be converted and to live. He even raised people from the dead. This not to show his power but to reveal to us the power of the Father that was within him. He disclaimed any power for and of himself. All power came from his heavenly Father. And, he said, “The things that I do ye shall do also, and greater than these shall ye do,” providing they believed on him and on the power of the Father. And he did give this power to his followers. They healed and cured people and raised many from the dead. They went abroad teaching the truths that Jesus had imparted to them and the Word they gave out was confirmed by the “signs following,” the healing of the sick, the lame, the blind, the deranged, the leprous, the deaf.
But what have the churches told us about this power? That it was one that belonged to the apostles and their immediate followers only. That it was given in the beginning merely to demonstrate the truths spoken by Jesus and the glory of the Father. That as soon as the new church had found its feet it was withdrawn, and that all these healings and cures were “miracles,” supernatural wonders worked by God’s power for the upbuilding of the early church. It is admitted that here and there, later on, a “miracle” has been wrought by reason of the intense faith of some devout person, but it has been insisted upon that the “age of miracles” is past. “Miracles” are wrought no longer. They are scoffed at by Christians, most of all.
But that age has not passed. A “miracle” is today a religious certainty. “Miracles” are being wrought today by and with those who believe that the power of healing has never been withdrawn from the followers of Christ. That power has not been lost. It has not passed away any more than God has passed away. God’s power is manifest today in all the kingdoms of the earth, the animal, vegetable and mineral, in the earth itself, in the suns and in the stars. The sustaining power of God’s love, order and harmony is visible everywhere throughout the universe. Why should it be withdrawn from man? The people who live today are as dear to the heart of God as those who dwelt in Palestine at the time of the appearance on earth of the Christ and who were so blessed as to come under the personal touch of Jesus. To doubt that would be to doubt the whole realm of the Good. God and Good are synonymous. The words are the same in meaning as they are in our form of language. And we have it from Jesus himself that the earth itself shall pass away rather than his Word shall pass away. We teach this fact because we know it to be a fact. Those of us who are in Divine Science rely upon it and believe in the healing power of the Holy Spirit as we believe in God–one and the same. And we put it into practice, teach it and exemplify it. We believe in it as we do in the New Thought that Jesus brought into the world, not as it is known to mental scientists, but as it is known to Divine Scientists. And through Divine Science people can be healed of their sins and diseases and they can be brought into a state of mind where their consciousness is connected with and operates under the Divine Consciousness. This is the union of the soul with God that Jesus taught and to find it the soul has but to enter into a Silence with its Creator and Divine Companion, open the mind and listen to the still, small voice speaking in the secret places of the heart.
The life that we teach is the Hidden Life with Christ, and while we, in the previous Lesson, have taught the mechanics of the mental process of healing, we desire now to pass on to the true method of operating the mechanism, the union of the soul with God through prayer and contemplation, for while it is possible for the human will to operate alone in the matter of renewing the mind and restoring health, strength and vigor to the body, that is a power given to it by God and its true and effective operation must be undertaken in mental union with the God consciousness within the soul, thus insuring certainty and the “peace that passeth understanding,” the realization of being one with the Infinite and the Joy that is a certified promise to the soul that consciously unites itself with its Maker.
Emerson’s advice to “hitch your wagon to a star” has been used as a formula for worldly success and is quoted as proof that the adoption of a high idea is necessary for a perfect life; but what is this advice compared to the realization, once it fills the mind completely, that it is within our power to hitch our wagon to the Omnipotence that created the stars, the Power that sustains the Universe, and to become one with it?
Thus, instead of using the mind as a player-piano is used, to be fed with rolls of prepared music, we use it as an instrument consciously attuned to the music of the spheres, receiving its harmony from the Source of Harmony, revelling in sounds of joy and gladness imparted by the vibrations from celestial melodies composed and imparted by the great Master Musician. We take our music from its source. Instead of relying upon suggestion or hypnosis we rely upon Infinite Love, that “forgiveth all our iniquities,” that “healeth all our diseases.” We seek help not from without, but from within, contacting in spiritual wireless with the Oversoul, the currents from which fill us with all power, and enable us to approach perfection to the highest degree of which we are capable.
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“Think truly, and thy Thoughts
Shall the world’s famine feed;
Speak truly, and each word of thine
Shall be a fruitful seed;
Live truly, and thy life shall be
A great and noble creed.”
Golden Grains
“Search me, O Lord, and know my heart: Try me and know my Thoughts.”
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
There is no reality, life nor intelligence apart from Spirit. All is Infinite Mind and its Infinite manifestation, for God is All and in All. I am now allied to the Infinite Love and Wisdom of the Divine Spirit which is, through my conscious Thought, guarding, guiding, and providing for me. By the Law of Being I claim from the Spirit the unlimited essence of Love, Wisdom, Power and Perfection of Mind and Body.
Thought for the Silence
As you cross the threshold of the Silence, close the door on the discords of mental or physical activities–Be still and know that God is the Divine Principle of Love–Spirituality is the only Substance–Good is the only Law–Love is the only force. Then affirm, “I now claim and possess all that Divine Love hath in store for me, and I live in Truth NOW.”
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ-Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
Divine Love preserves my going out and my coming in from this time henceforth and forevermore. I face the duties of the day, knowing that underneath are the everlasting arms, sustaining and supporting me.
Resolution for the Week
I resolve this week: To keep an Open Vision, that I may see; To keep Open Ears that I may hear; To keep an Open Mind that I may be filled; To keep an Open Heart that I may Believe. To use the Words that will be helpful to all and that will stir in lonely hearts and lives a new Hope. I will Live, Think, Act and Speak the Truth. I will learn to increase my usefulness and helpfulness to others and to multiply my God-given talents.
Suggestions for the Silence
In the Silence, Be Still and be receptive to the whispered promptings of the Holy Spirit within–bring God into the very depths of your Heart, Soul and Being; The Soul language is silent but God knows your longings and hears your call, and you have only to go into that inner sactuary and close the door to all outer disturbances to feel the vibration of Love upon the sounding board of your heart. Hold the consciousness that the Christ is in you waiting to be made manifest in every word, thought and deed. See yourself “Ideally Divine” and you will become so. The higher the Spiritual Idea of yourself, the more rapid will be your Spiritual growth.
Read with this Lesson
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapter V. [Online at Northwoods.]
Pages 19 to 37 of the “Astor Lectures.” [Online at Northwoods.]
* * * * *
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me. That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
QUESTIONS
1. What does this Lesson teach?
2. What kind of God is the God we have been taught to believe in?
3. Is this the God that Jesus revealed to us?
4. Can we do the work that Jesus did?
5. Has the age of miracles passed?
6. What is necessary to effect spiritual healing as against mental healing?
7. How may we add the power of Omnipotence to our own?
* * * * *
Lesson VI
GOD
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
God, being the source of all life, must necessarily be the source of health. Health is the pure inflow of Creative Life coming to us freely for the free operation of all our powers. Life in its fullest and freest sense is synonymous with health. God is the source of all life, the fountain of health.
There are few men who do not believe in God. But the conception of God varies largely with the individual. We have spoken of what God is not. Let us speak now of what He is.
God exists in all created things. The word ex-ist means a standing forth out of, or a manifestation of, being. As the scientists have reduced all energy to the atom and this to the etheric principle we can see how God dwells in and composes all things. He manifests Himself in man in life, mental, physical and spiritual. Even the least religious person realizes that there is an area in the soul in which God can be felt. We cannot conceive of God through the faculty of reason so much as we can through the realm of feeling. We have an intuitional knowledge of the existence of God. We feel that He is within us, however elusive may be our idea of Him as an entity. We are conscious of a divine element in our composition.
St. Paul, in addressing the Greek philosophers in the Aereopagus, said:
“The God who made the earth and all things therein, seeing that He is lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made of hands;
“Neither is he served by men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth life to all, and breath and all things;
“And hath made of one all nations to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined all times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
“That they should see God, if perhaps they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from any of us;
For in Him we live, move and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’”
“If perhaps they might feel after Him,” Paul says, He hath made all men “that they should seek God.” Now that seeking must be done from within, and we find God by and through the feelings. Even the most ungodly man has his rare moments of deep self-introspection and questioning, when he is feeling after God. Even this man realizes in a dim way that “He giveth life and breath and all things.”
God is the Principle of Life. He is not a person, because if He were He could not be present in all things. He could not as a person be our life, our breath and “the health of our countenance.” To realize what God as Principle means, let us think of the principle of music or of mathematics. If we compare God as Principle with the principle of mathematics it is because in so doing we may more closely recognize the actuality and operation of God. What does St. Paul mean by saying: “For in Him we live, move and have our being?” This is a vivid description of God as Principle. In Him we live, that is the principle of life; in Him we move, that is the principle of power; in Him we have our being; that is the principle of Spirit; all operating under laws as immutable as the law of mathematics. The more we analyze this description the more we must become convinced of the fact that essentially we are an extension of Divine Principle.
God is the Principle of life in and through all nature. He is immanent (indwelling) in all created things. These are expressions of God, the projection of God’s thought into visible form. Hence, man is a manifestation or expression of the Divine Idea of Man, and here we must refer to the Mosaic account of Creation, wherein we are told that God made Man in His own image and likeness. This does not mean, as the Christian world has so long taken it to mean, that we are imaged in God’s form physically, or have a likeness to Him corporeally, for our physical formation is designed as an equipment for earthly requirements entirely. But it means that we are made in God’s image and likeness spiritually–we are all emanations of the Divine Spirit.
God is not a person and is therefore without sex. God unites Himself, the masculine and feminine, in His creative powers and in His attributes. In speaking of God it is necessary that we should employ human terms so that the simplest mind may comprehend Him. Jesus spoke of God as Father, for this word brings to the mind in the simplest form the quality of God as Love and His relation to us as our Creator.
God (Good) is without beginning and without ending. If He had a beginning then God has created Himself and could not be God, for He would owe His existence to an antecedent power. And if He had a beginning He would necessarily be obliged to have an ending. God is Life Eternal, the Principle of Life existing from all Eternity.
The inspired thought of all nations and men agrees that God was always existent as pure Being. The loftiest thought of all the great religions of antiquity conceives of Him as living in Self-contemplation, until, seeking to manifest more and more the joy of living, He by the power of His thought pressed life out into visibility, into external shapes. Thought is creative. To think constructively is to create, for the thought ever seeks to manifest itself in shape. Our thought is constructive. The architect thinks into shape the great building that he is engaged to design. Before the first sketch is made the architect’s mind has pictured it and his thought has shaped it, and so on to the completed drawings, through all the stages of arithmetical calculation and draughtsmanship, writing of specifications and drawing of plans to scale, the first image and the constructive thought have been projected into shape, and the contractor and the artisans then construct the building.
However, this is but a weak illustration. For God to think the Universe into shape was to employ constructive thought in terms of the Omnipotent and to cause conditions (etheric, for example) through which Substance could appear in all its varied forms, by the employment of the word expressing the idea in Divine Mind. The Universe and all that it contains is Thought clothed upon with Substance through the energy of the atom and the essential elements residing in the ethereal.
If we consider God first as Pure Being and then as the Creator of the Universe to manifest in Substance the Divine Thought by the spoken word, we can best apprehend God as Principle, since every created thing is an emanation from God and is informed with His life and power. Thus we speak of God as Life, Love, Wisdom, Substance, Omnipresence, Omnipotence and Omniscience.
Many people may regard this as a cold and abstruse view of God, whom they consider humanly as a tender, loving Father. But there is no other way in which He can be apprehended because He is Spirit; His Being is on a plane totally different from ours. It has been said that if fish could speak and reason as we do, living as they do in the element of water, they would consider God as a huge form of fish confined entirely to a water element. We are narrowed or limited in our conception of the Divine by the human elements we possess. We use the masculine gender in speaking of God when we should use both genders, masculine and feminine. A better understanding of God would be to postulate Him as our Father-Mother, and since there is no sex in Principle to refer to Divine Principle as “It.” But this we have to omit because the word “it” is used for the neuter, and God is not neuter, as we know the term, for that implies a sexlessness that is uncreate. We are in difficulties here because of the lack of terminology to properly express God. As we have said, He is best expressed as “Good.”
When God appeared to Moses He said–that is, the Voice said–“I AM THAT I AM.” Again He said: “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob hath sent me to you. This is my name (I AM) forever and this is my memorial to all generations.” Later, when Moses had begun the work commanded of him, the Voice said: “I AM the Lord. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them.”
Jehovah means “I am that I am,” or “I am that am,” a most complete definition of continuous being. Now, there is nothing about this that implies either masculinity or femininity. It is a thorough definition of what we understand as principle–immutable, changeless, perpetual, uncreated.
For instance, the principle of music, or of mathematics, or of goodness, is immutable, eternal. There never was a time when the principle of music was not in being, nor equally that of mathematics or goodness. Harmony is a law of symphonic vibration. Its expression is in rhymical reasonances. It is the soul of what we call music or the concord of orderly sounds. Harmony is order in expression, audible in sound, inaudible in feeling. The law of music permits no discord or disorder. Mathematics is a law, always was a law and always will be. Two and two makes four. It cannot be otherwise. You can put the symbols that we know as figures down on paper, and the results, by addition, subtraction or multiplication are always the same. We cannot think of any time that ever was or ever will be when this principle did not exist, or where it will not exist. Goodness, similarly, is always the same, is changeless, is ever-present and its results are certain in effect. True, it is understood by comparison with badness as something positive, but it is positive where evil is unknown as well as where it is. Evil is the opposite of goodness in this, that it is the absence of goodness, just as discord is the absence of harmony.
The Divine Principle is self-manifesting in Law, and as such can be and is in all things created and uncreated. It permeates the Universe. In personalizing God we are certain to err because of our conception of personality. We limit the Infinite in its powers and operations. The poet tells us that to the one who sees God in nature every bush is a burning bush and the ground on which he stands is holy. And we know that the statement is true. God’s omnipresence would be impossible were He a person.
But the spiritual or the metaphysical can be made known to us only in terms of human relationship and through the common language that each of us speaks. Jesus referred all his power to that of his heavenly Father because of the paternity of God and the reciprocal love between parent and offspring. Creator God is our Father, but He is our Father in a much more impressive sense than as our Creator. We are the consequence of Infinite Love seeking an outward expression and a reciprocal satisfaction. We are children of God created with all the possibilities of feeling for God the exquisite sensibility, the supreme ecstacy, of God’s love for us. We owe our immediate existence to our human parents who beget us in love, and the ecstacy of that love is a feeble approach to the Divine type of begetting the human race in Love. Our human parents act under the strongest impulse of the race, the passing on of themselves in perpetuity, self-expression in creativeness, and in this manner reflect God and God’s love. This love is expressed also in the sustaining love that nourishes and protects the offspring. Hence the word “Father” carries a tremendous significance.
It was this image that Jesus sought to impress on our consciousness. For while we can understand God best as Principle we cannot apprehend Him as principle solely, since principle is not sentient, whereas God is Principle and Consciousness both. We can understand Principle as power, law, order, harmony and life, but in God we must add intelligence, understanding, feeling wisdom, love and all those elements that are included in consciousness. Therefore while God is not a person, God has the qualities of personalness. It is only by considering His possession of the qualities of personalness that we can clearly apprehend Him. God has created nothing that is not in Himself, hence we speak of Him as Life, Love, Wisdom, Substance, Justice, Omnipresence, Omnipotence and Omniscience. In this way we can better understand how it is that “in Him we live, move and have our being.” Viewed as Conscious Principle we can apprehend God in all His phases.
This view takes nothing away from that which regards God as person merely. It adds scope and distance to that concept, which has been limited. It explains what before one could not well understand. It reveals God as Paul sought to reveal Him and we are the more illuminated by the larger view.
In this light we can understand the character of the power of healing and recreating that Jesus possessed and which he promised to his followers who believed on Him and had faith even as a grain of mustard seed, and it points to us the way to obtain healing and to order our affairs so as to express ourselves, in all things, in concord with the Divine harmony.
It illumines the darkness that has clouded the mystery of our own consciousness. By it we can apprehend the true meaning of the declaration that we are made in the image and likeness of God. We posess in thought the creative power inherent in thought and we can use that creative power upon ourselves through the manipulation of our own consciousness and the expression of the word. Understanding that life is health, and that as Principle God’s creations are perfect, obeying the operation of law in every particular, we can see that any interference with, any abridgement, impairment or extinction of, health is due to human error and can be corrected by the application of the creative powers in us that inhere in the Divine.
What, therefore, avails it to understand the mechanism and operation of the subconscious mind if we do not apply correctives in consciousness in co-operation with the Divine Mind? Must we not, when contemplating the wonderful power within ourselves realize also how immensely it is reinforced by the application of the Divine power within us? Must we not feel that this is another wonder revealed to us in order that we should “seek God?” There is but one answer to these questions and that is that if we ever needed anything to convince us of God’s tender love for us this revelation should surely bring that conviction.
For God is healing. When all is said and done about the power of the subjective mind we are yet to know that the supreme power of healing is in God, and that however much we may be able to do for ourselves the very powers we exert are God’s powers seeking manifestation through us.
Knowing God as Principle it is our business to seek the science of the operation of His laws. We use the word “science” in this connection not only as the equivalent of knowledge but as the equivalent of knowledge correctly applied. For spiritual healing is a science. It is the power of reforming and recreating applied through the knowledge of Divine causation.
Underneath all healing is the Law of Attraction, the law that attracts to conscious creation those forces of the Unseen which we are aware of but only dimly comprehend. And to work perfectly with this law we must work with the Unseen.
Now this explanation of God’s nature and attributes is made necessary in order to clarify what we in Divine Science believe God to be. It has been well said that the surest way to lose God is to attempt to define Him. To those who wish to know God we say that this knowledge is not to be had from books or teachers, or sermons or pictures. The best way, the only way, to know God is to seek Him by “feeling after” Him. We must seek after Him in the very center of our own being. All of those dim gropings for expression of the divinity within us must be recognized as efforts of the Spirit to impress itself on consciousness and must be waited on, attended upon and developed. God manifests Himself to the individual in His own way. And one experience of the individual with God as a directive, illuminating and sustaining influence is worth more by way of interior conviction than all the essays on the Divine ever written or sermons ever preached. “The Spirit witnesseth to our spirit that we are the children of God.” The Spirit is its own witness if we desire to put Him on the stand to testify to Truth. One revelation of God’s presence or power within the individual soul is worth all the books ever written so far as that one person is concerned. If every person who believes in God were asked as to the cause of his or her belief the answer would be: “I believe there is a God because He has manifested Himself to me. I have felt God within me.” As Job in the midst of his afflictions said: “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” There is a time in every person’s life “when Spirit with spirit doth meet,” when we know that, as Browning said,
“There is an inmost center in us all
Where truth abides in fullness; and to know
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.”
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“Then came the Voice, as soundless as the light,
I saw no phantom shape, no sound I heard,
But life unveiled itself in vivid Thought,
Distinct, imperative, and luminous;
For now mine eyes had seen Eternity,
The Source, the Truth, the work and urge of all;
The Soul of things, the Light ineffable,
That all the wide star-spaces floods with life;
This–This was God, and there was none else beside.”
Golden Grains
“Speak to Him thou, for He heareth
When Spirit with Spirit doth meet;
Closer is He than breathing,
And nearer than hands and feet.”
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
“There is nothing true but God. God is the Principle of all knowledge and Truth–The Source of all Activity, all Wisdom, all Substance. The Love of God is my only guide. The Christ within is my Light.”
Thought for the Silence
In the Silence, realize the Presence of God, and your Oneness with the Infinite. Affirm: “I shall not want for Guidance–God leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. My life shall manifest my realization of God and my gratitude for His loving kindness. I am now grateful for what I have received in the silence from Thee.”
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ-Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
Divine Love preserves my going out and my coming in from this time henceforth and forevermore. I face the duties of the day, knowing that underneath are the everlasting arms, sustaining and supporting me.
Resolution for the Week
I resolve this week to let my heart go out daily in tender compassionate love to all mankind. To look out upon each new day with heart and Soul open to the sunshine of God’s love. To each day give a word of courage and cheer to ease some troubled heart, and to radiate Light, Love, and Sunshine to others. To give expression in every way to the demonstrable, living Truth, which will lift all others up out of the errors of wrong thinking into the Spiritual Realm of Reality and Harmonious Being.
Suggestions for the Silence
When you enter the Silence realize that it is the Temple of God, the sacred realm of the Soul. Be Still and hold no thought of any Power but that of God. Realize that God is the Source–You are the outcome. God is the Cause–You are the effect. Know that at all times God–Divine Principle–the Law of all Good, is ever ready to hear your call, ever ready to guide, protect and govern you in your life and affairs. REALIZE that God is Spirit and is always and everywhere present.
Read with this Lesson
Pages 166 to 176 of the “Astor Lectures.” [Online at Northwoods as “Spiritual Healing.” Rev. Murray suggests reading a 10-page excerpt from the lecture, however, the entire text is very worthwhile and Northwoods recommends it be read by the student in its entirety.]
* * * * *
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health. The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth, sustains me. Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Purity, Prosperity, and Perfection of Mind and Body.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the source of life and of health?
2. How is God apprehended most commonly?
3. Is God a Person? If not, what is He?
4. What is the origin of the Universe?
5. How does one define Principle?
6. What is the proper way to view the sub-conscious mind?
7. What is the most convincing proof of the existence of God?
* * * * *
Lesson VII
JESUS THE CHRIST
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
There was a man born of woman whose name was Jesus and who is known as the Christ. His existence is as well certified to as that of Napoleon, Caesar or Alexander, or of any man of the past whom no living person has seen. Jesus was immeasurably the most remarkable personage the world has ever known. There have been many great spiritual men in the world; many leaders of world thought and uplifters of world aspiration, many founders of religions. But no man ever spoke as this man spake. Clear and pure in intellect, modest and self-effacing in character, sinless in life, detached and aloof from any desire for personal power, wealth, dominion, honors or luxury, he performed within a space of three years a work that saved the human race from extinction through sheer loss of spiritual vision. The Scriptural summary of Jesus’ life is: “God annointed him with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him.” (Acts 10:38, R.V.)
At the time that Jesus was born the world was entirely under the dominion of the Roman empire, which contained within the power, cruelty and brutality on which it was built the seeds of destruction and annihilation. Men were either bond or free; citizens or slaves; and the number of slaves was enormous and growing formidably. Woman was a chattel and virtue was at its lowest ebb, brilliant and cultivated as society appeared. The world was for the greater part plunged in idolatry, and would have been entirely thus had it not been for a few esoteric priesthoods and the little spiritual empire of the Jews.
Jesus began his ministry by working wonders–“miracles” as they are called. (A miracle is defined to be a suspension of the laws of Nature, an occurrence outside the domain of natural law.) He “began to speak of the kingdom of heaven and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among people.” He did what no world teacher before or since ever dared to do. He identified himself with God so that when he spoke of himself he spoke as, of and for God. These are among his declarations:
I and the Father are one.
I am the light of the world.
I am the door.
I am the bread of life.
I am the good shepherd.
I am the resurrection and the life.
Before Abraham was I am.
No man cometh to the Father but by me.
He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.
I am in the Father and the Father in me.
All things that the Father hath are mine.
If a man keep my sayings he shall never see death.
I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman.
Destroy this temple and I shall raise it up in three days.
He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.
Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name He will give it to you.
I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.
If a man love me he will keep my words and the Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode in him.
It is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up again at the last day.
Jesus is the supreme figure of the race. Millions of men have puzzled over these words. Millions have gone to their death for them. Countless millions have lived and died by them. The highest civilization the world has ever known has been built up on them. Jesus placed before men the loftiest ideals ever visioned. He declared them, expounded them, lived up to them and his chief solicitation was that we, too, should attain to them.
Jesus has won his way to the hearts of all men. He may have been hated, as he was persecuted; but hate for him no longer exists. He is the object of universal love and veneration.
The theory that Jesus was the victim of a strange hallucination has been held by many, and this theory is by some contended for today, but it is a theory that cannot stand the test of logic, since it amounts to the contention that an unsound mind is productive of truer thought than a sound mind; that insanity is a higher state of intellect than sanity; that disorder is more perfect than order–all of which are absurdities.
No, Jesus must be accepted on his own statement of being; that he was the way, the truth and the life; that he came to teach us all truth; that all that God possessed was his; that hereafter we should see him sitting at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven; that he and the Father were one.
It is not to prove the divinity of Jesus that this Lesson is written. For many centuries Christians believed that Jesus was the Second Person of the Triune God; the Son in the Divine Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost; that he was Very God of Very God; that he was the incarnation of God in human form. The mind of Christianity was resolved into this belief at the time that Arius stood out in the early church and held with all his strength for the conception of Jesus as man. At that time the Christian world was mostly Aryan and it took many years for the church to stamp out the belief. Yet this belief is what the world clings to and turns to more resolutely day by day. The Trinity of God is illogical and a fantasy based on belief in God as Person, or a tripartite Person, a Person with three personalities. St. Augustine said that the human mind can no more comprehend the Trinity than a hole made by a child in the sand can contain the ocean. And he was right. Not because of the incapacity of the human mind to comprehend God, but because of the incomprehensibility of the proposition.
Dispense with the idea of the Trinity; regard God as Principle and Jesus as a God-conscious man who realized to the fullest the divinity that is in every man, through whom the Christ of God was speaking, who revealed to us the truth and demonstrated to us Eternal Life–view the Holy Spirit as the active intelligence of God through which the Christ operates, and every one of the Christ mysteries becomes an open book, to be read and understood of all.
Jesus said he was the son of God; that we were the children of God also.
Jesus said that he and the Father were one and that we could become one with them.
Jesus realized his Christhood, took it up and lived it to its fullest consummation, pointing out the way to us to realize also the Christ within us.
Jesus was the Son of Man as he proclaimed himself to be, the Son of God as he also proclaimed himself and the Christ as he affirmed.
His mission was to show us that we are as he was, full of the same divine possibilities. The things that he did we could do and “greater than these” also. He was tempted in all things as we are; human in all ways as we are; and what he taught was that we could be divine in all things as he was.
His words are blasphemy taken merely in the human sense. Read them over, as this Lesson has given them to you, and you will see that, considered in a purely human sense, they are a preposterous assumption of all the powers that are God’s. But read them in a spiritual sense and the meaning is entirely clear. Jesus spoke as never man spake because he had developed the God-consciousness within himself to a point of complete absorption into God. He was in truth the Christ.
Jesus never claimed to be God. He claimed union with God, possession of the Father’s power and all that the Father had. “All power is given me in heaven and on earth,” he said, and “I shall be with you all days even to the end of the world.” Again: “This world shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away.” This is God-consciousness possible through the Christ spirit.
What Jesus did claim was that he was of God; that he had received from the Father. He disclaimed personal power. “It is not me, but the Father in me; He doeth the work.” He had reached the highest spiritual plane, union with the Father, where he was conscious of his tremendous eminence, of his having been with the Father before the birth of the day-star, where he could demonstrate all power because God shared power with him, endued him from on high and manifested Himself through him. All his acts were for the purpose of making God, the Universal Father, known to men, of “glorifying” Him. Surely we can approach God with more certainty knowing that Jesus was our elder brother given us to show the way, and demonstrating to us that we, too, can be perfect “even as our heavenly Father is perfect.” Jesus would not ask the impossible of us. He would not ask us to be as God is unless we had the possibilities within us to be what he himself was, humanity absorbed into divinity.
It is of the highest importance that we realize Jesus as one with ourselves, capable of a continuous union of his mind with the Divine Mind during all the years of his Silence of raising himself by illumination and power received from the Father to complete identification in spirit with Spirit, to the highest plane of Spirit’s operation, to Christhood.
For if we do not realize Jesus in this manner we lose the point of his teaching, our one-ness with God; the capacity within us of doing the works that he did, of becoming one with him and the Father.
This is exactly what Jesus taught us; and an understanding of our capacity as exemplified by him is the key to the solution of all his mystic utterances.
Place any one of his sayings under the searchlight of this understanding and the meaning of all his words becomes as clear as crystal. Nothing remains that is hidden or obscure.
This is the real thought of Jesus, and it is permeating the world in this wonderful age of ours, when, through marvelous material progress, all men are being brought within speaking distance of each other, as it permeated the little world of Judea, Greece and Rome when the Word was first carried abroad by the early Christians.
This New Thought that Jesus brought into the world is the New Thought of today, recaptured from the past, and made luminous by the developments of modern science. We are standing on the threshold of a new world of things. The powers of the mind are being disclosed in a new manner. The erroneous doctrines of materialism are being scorched into nothingness over the fire of a rigid investigation into the realms of the spiritual and the psychic. So-called “mysteries” of mind, force and energy are being cleared up by discoveries of operations of natural laws of the extent of which we had no conception. It would seem to one who is familiar, for instance, with the latest revelations in the field of psychology that the greatest discovery we moderns can boast of is that of the subconscious mind. The developments that are to follow this discovery may change the face of the world, reconstruct all systems of education and open wide the door into the kingdom of heaven.
For the conviction that we have within ourselves the power to shape our destiny leads to the highest knowledge, that of spiritual identity with universal Spirit, the power of the Word, the creative process in the individual based on the creative functioning of the Divine; the identity of the spirit within man with the Spirit of God.
This New Thought is not being spread abroad by churches or formulated into binding creeds of belief and practice, but is penetrating the mind of man everywhere, assuring us all of a common brotherhood and a united Fatherhood in God. It is beginning to operate through all religions. It is developing what has been well called “Cosmic Consciousness.” This is the oldest of thoughts and yet it is New because of its having remained unexpressed for so long a period although always more or less dimly comprehended.
God is the Father of all mankind and all races and peoples can unite in worshipping Him as Spirit. Jesus said: “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him shall worship Him in spirit and in truth.” And this is the true worship that we have come into–the recognition of Spirit in everything, in matter as in mind, the immanence of Spirit in all things and our sharing of it with, in and through all things.
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“Thy love shall chant its own beatitudes
After its own self-working. A child’s kiss
Set on the sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong.
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest.”
Golden Grains
“Grasp the weapons God hath given, the Light and Truth and Love of Heaven.”
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
There is no darkness. The Christ in me casts all darkness out of my own Thoughts and sheds Light and Peace on others. My Consciousness is now flooded with the Great White Light of Truth, whose Infinite rays illumine the innermost depths of my being, blotting out all vapory clouds of discouragement, all darkness of doubt, all shadows of fear.
Thought for the Silence
When you enter the Silence, be still–be very still and feel the Presence of God. Affirm: I am One with God and abundant Peace, Harmony, Health and Strength are given me by the Holy Spirit within–EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING IS SPIRITUAL. BEING SPIRITUAL IT IS PERFECT, BEING PERFECT IT IS WITHOUT SPOT OR BLEMISH.
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ-Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
Divine Love preserves my going out and my coming in from this time henceforth and forevermore. I face the duties of the day, knowing that underneath are the everlasting arms, sustaining and supporting me.
Resolution for the Week
I resolve this week: to utilize the Power of Love as the Life Principle for all demonstrations. To keep an ever-present Spiritual Vision that will enable me to work with a definite surety of purpose in all that I undertake for myself and others. I will let the Lamp that lights me to my labor be the Lamp of Love, and I will let this great light of Universal Love mirror itself in the lives of all others.
Suggestions for the Silence
In that inner chamber, in the very innermost center of your being, where none but you may enter, LISTEN for the TRUTH that is pulsing within you for expansion and expression. Rise in Consciousness to your Unity with God. Realize that the great Creative energy within, is renewing every cell and fiber of your body by its orderly activity. It is in this inner sactuary that you learn to quietly and confidently affirm your divinity. Know that Light and Love are within–look and you will find them; then will you radiate Light, Love and Sunshine to others.
Read with this Lesson
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapter VII. [Online at Northwoods.]
Pages 81 to 98 of the “Astor Lectures.” [Online at Northwoods.]
* * * * *
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. Now I live in God, in whom there is no imperfection, and no inharmony, and no harm shall come nigh my dwelling.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Purity, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the Scriptural summary of the life of Jesus?
2. How did Jesus begin his ministry and where did his powers come from?
3. Was Jesus Divine?
4. What was the mission of Jesus?
5. Why should we realize Jesus as man?
6. What is the New Thought brought by Jesus to accomplish?
7. Was Jesus the victim of hallucinations or a visionary?
* * * * *
Lesson VIII
JESUS THE HEALER
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
St. Matthew, begining his account of the public life of Jesus, says:
Mt. 4:23-25
“And Jesus went about all Galiliee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
“And his fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.
“And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea and from beyond Jordan.”
Thus is presented a first-hand picture of Jesus starting out on his mission of carrying Truth to mankind, and “glorifying God” in the use of great spiritual powers. We have no knowledge of all the miracles wrought by Jesus, but of the thirty-three recorded twenty-four were for the cure of the sick. He gave hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, activity to the lame and the paralyzed, health and cleanliness to the leprous, and called back to life three persons who had died. The epileptic had their devils cast out and the insane were restored to sanity. When necessity arose for money or bread Jesus spoke the word and money and bread were supplied.
Jesus did not make a secret of the source of his power. It came, he said, from the Father. It was used to confirm the word that he spoke, to convince the skeptical of his reception of power and authority from God. But this was merely an external reason. The true reason was that the healing of the sick and the diseased was inseparable from his spiritual mission. To save and to heal means, according to etymologists, the same thing. Salvation, a much-abused word, means healing, a saving from false-thinking and error. The healings effected by Jesus showed his love for humanity. He could not witness suffering without feeling an immense compassion for the victim of disease, bound down to false conditions and crying for aid. To the spiritualized Jesus the sight of men and women in the chains of sickness and disease must have been revolting, as he could see them only as the pure, celestial, perfect spirits they really were behind their physical bondage. No cry came to him from an earnest soul that was not immediately answered. Even the woman who touched the hem of his garment, reverently and in complete self-effacement, received healing from him as her thought impacted upon his and made him aware of her act.
The works that he did would be done, he said, by his followers, and even greater works if they had faith and believed on him. Anything, he said, that we would ask of the Father in his name the Father would do. If we had faith even as tiny as a mustard seed, he said, we could remove mountains.
Jesus showed that even death could be overcome, proving it by the raising of the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and the brother of Mary and Martha; but most conclusively by bursting the bonds of the grave in raising himself on the third day of his cessation from mortal life in the Resurrection.
The followers of Jesus performed miracles of a similar kind, even to raising of the dead. Almost at once, after the disciples of Jesus had received the Holy Spirit, they went out speaking in new tongues and working signs and wonders in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the risen Christ.
The power of healing continued in the early church, as attested by the Acts and the Epistles of the Apostles, confirming the faithful and bringing in armies of converts. The spread of the early church was remarkable because of the fervor and power of its members.
We have all received the teaching that has held for some seventeen centuries that this power was given by God in the beginning to enable the church to get a start, and that it was withdrawn as the church became established. Miracles had ceased to appear. Although now and then a miracle was wrought, and fully attested and verified, the teaching was that these were exceptional acts of God, earned by a faith so pure and a religious life so holy that the miracle was granted to testify to the saintly character of the worker. But in every age, and under circumstances publicly known, miracles have been wrought, and have been celebrated as proof, both of the person healed and the one who did the healing.
It is our claim that this contention of the church has been totally erroneous; that healing is an inseparable part of the spiritual life; that the conditions for healing laid down by Jesus are as applicable today as they were in the days of Peter and Paul; that healing is a mark of the new birth of Christ in the soul and that the power to heal others, present or absent, is a property of the Christ consciousness today as it ever has been when called into full exercise.
We believe that the power of healing one’s self or another is a birthright of the Christ-minded and that by its exercise and by absorption into Spirit it can be developed to the fullest degree; that it can overcome even death through faith and Christ-like purity of mind.
We believe that in the explanations of Jesus and his followers the full meaning of the powers of the soul are outlined, the supremacy of spirit over matter demonstrated and the conscious union of the soul with its Maker made understandable.
We believe that miracles are not acts performed by the invocation of supernatural powers so much as the exercise of conscious mental powers acting in union with the Spirit, or Father, through the Christ spirit in each of us.
Jesus healed people not only of their diseases but of their sins, and the connection between the two is not fortuitous or accidental but joint and positive. “Sin” is a false step, a missing of the mark, a grounding of the ideal in the sensual, a state of mind in which the god-like is lost in the bestial, “a descent,” as it has been well described, “of mind into matter.”
It is a mistake, we believe, to attribute sickness to sin. But there is this much truth in that contention, that sickness is an effect following from false thinking and sin is a condition resulting from a descent of the mind from the spiritual to the material. In each case disorder followed, and this being naturally opposed to the spirit has affected the mind in the one instance and worked out in the body in the other.
An abnormal spiritual state is at the root of every morbid condition of the body. The Christ principle is in natural antagonism to disease as it is to sin. The cure for the one and the other lies in faith in God and an effort to express through a strong mental conviction the supremacy of the spirit over the flesh.
Jesus lived a life of marvelous purity. Once, when heckled by the Pharisees, he turned upon them and threw this challenge at them: “Who among you can convict me of sin?” There was no reply, even from these, his bitter enemies. His life was spotless. Jesus had attained in the long Silence that preceded his public mission to the highest spiritual plane, absorption into the Divine. The laws of nature were known to him in all their fullness of action and reaction, of integration and disintegration. Just as we who live in the third dimensional state of consciousness are aware of the limitations of animals who live in that of the second dimension, so Jesus, who lived in the fourth dimensional state, was aware of all our limitations. As he said, he could lay down his life and he could take it up again. He did not suspend natural laws in what are called his miracles. He applied a power upon them that exists in the realm beyond the earth plane, the power of Spirit, of which they are but expressions, the scope of which we mortals are too dull to comprehend. It is only through a realization of the spirit power within us that we can come upon an apprehension of the powers exercised by Jesus.
“All power is given to me in heaven and on earth,” said Jesus. The power in heaven is the power of Spirit. Heaven is the home of order and harmony and it is not located on a distant planet but in the heart of man. “The kingdom of heaven is within you,” Jesus said.
“If a man love me,” said Jesus, “he will keep my words and the Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode in him.”
Here is the whole secret of our relation to God, to the laws of life and to membership in the kingdom. If we can but let this truth sink into us and come into complete possession of our consciousness, we have the power to overcome ourselves and the world.
This is the formula for spiritual power, for rising above limitations of the flesh, for entering into heaven,–not at some remote time, but now, today, this very hour. In the Christ consciousness that we can arouse in ourselves, which is our primal gift, we have life eternal. “I am come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly.” “God does not will the death of a sinner but that he be converted and live.” We are to be converted in mind, in thought, and we are to live a life rich with health and abundance, and this is the will of God, the Father of all of us, who begot us in love and who watches over and protects us even when we think we are far from Him.
Millions of people today believe that the diseases they are afflicted with are a punishment sent by God for offenses against Him or as a means of chastening them to a more spiritual state, or of disciplining them for the good of their souls. The wonderful power of healing has not only fallen into disuse, but the teachers of Christianity have so far departed from the truth as to declare that God has brought disease upon its poor victims as a mark of His displeasure. How far have they gotten away from a true conception of the all-embracing love of the Father! The results of our own errors attributed to Him who is Love itself–Love in such super form that we cannot even imagine it! If God sends disease to us as a mark of His displeasure or as a method of discipline, surely Jesus would not have healed the sick and banished disease–he would not have interfered with his Father’s will or set aside his Father’s discipline, nor would he have passed this healing power on to his disciples and followers–he would not have shown that disease is a mortal failure to be overcome with spiritual renewment.
There is truth in the observation that the Christ principle can do more for us with Christ as the Comforter than Jesus himself could do in the flesh. The record of the sayings of Jesus is full with promise of the power he would give us after he had gone to the Father and come again as the Comforter, or the Spirit that would recall to us all that he had said, and that in union with the Father would dwell within the hearts of those who love him and keep his words. There is to be assumed, therefore, an immense desire on the part of the Christ to come to us and manifest himself through us, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
We can therefore not only have no more doubt of our power to unify ourselves with Christ than that we can have of becoming a guest at a feast to which we have had a formal invitation. There is in fact through all the utterances of Jesus a note of pleading, a manifestation of utter tenderness and love, that requires hard-heartedness to resist.
We cannot promise to you that if you open your mind and heart to the Christ pleading for entrance you will have power from on high to heal your diseases and to heal those of others also. We can only assure you that this promise is made to you by Jesus, who said that heaven and earth would pass away but his word would not pass away. No promise is more sacred, none can be more certainly relied upon. The power employed by Jesus is seeking to diffuse itself through all human souls as their highest reach of mental energy and attainment. The Light of the World is ever ready to pour its beams into our darkened existence if we are willing to receive it, as it has poured itself into the hearts and minds of the God-inspired men of all times. But it has an added brilliancy and effectiveness in the spirit developed by and through the Christ. If we would consent, this spirit will arise in us “with healing on its wings,” and carry us forward into the paths of mortal well-being and spiritual illumination.
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, ineffable name?
Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands?
What, have fear and change from Thee who are ever the same,
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good; what was shall live as before;
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.”
Golden Grains
“Love glorifies the common air; it clothes with light the mountain bare, and shows the heavens all shining there.”
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
There is no Reality in Evil. There is nothing in a Universe filled with Divine Love for me to fear. I will say of the Lord: He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him will I trust. The Truth sets me free from every false sense. “The Law of the Spirit of Life hath made me free from the law of sin, sickness and death.”
Thought for the Silence
Be Still and know that I AM GOD. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer. Now Thou dost give to me that Peace which passeth all understanding. Speak to me Lord, for my spirit waiteth upon Thee.
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ-Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
Divine Love preserves my going out and my coming in from this time henceforth and forevermore. I face the duties of the day, knowing that underneath me are the Everlasting Arms. I spiritualize each action of the day with my Christ Consciousness.
Resolution for the Week
I resolve this week to prove in all my actions that “Love overcometh all things.” My errors are due to loving too little. I resolve to express God’s love in all things and to radiate it upon all with whom I come in contact.
Suggestions for the Silence
Increase the time you may set aside for the Silence. You have many duties that occupy the day. Make room for your duty towards God. Say to yourself during the day: “I have a rendezvous with God,” and that will serve to secure the necessary time to devote to the Silence. Enter the Silence with the thought given on the previous page and be not impatient with the swarms of worldly thoughts that, like flies, swirl about the mind. Say “they pass, they pass,” until perfect stillness comes. Be not tense or rigid, but relaxed and plastic.
Read with this Lesson
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapter 2. [Online at Northwoods.]
Pages 177 to 187 of the “Astor Lectures.” [Online at Northwoods.]
* * * * *
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth, Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.
QUESTIONS
1. What is it Matthew says of the doings of Jesus?
2. Were the healings of Jesus miraculous?
3. What did the churches do and what are we recapturing?
4. What are the spiritual means and what did Jesus promise to us?
5. What did Jesus heal people of besides disease? Did he give us his power?
6. Is sickness or disease a visitation from God?
7. Are the promises of Jesus made to us as well as to those whom he personally addressed?
* * * * *
Lesson IX
SOUL AND BODY
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
To understand properly the relation between soul and body we must take up the question of spirit and matter, as in Lesson II we took up the subject of Brain and Mind.
The world is conceived by man to be purely material. The rocks, the soil, the ocean, the animal, mineral and vegetable kingdoms–the stars, the celestial universe–all are reckoned as matter.
Does any one dare claim that these are spiritual–this solid flesh of ours, this table at which I sit, this pen with which I write?
Yes; there is more conviction in estimating the material as spiritual than in judging the spiritual as material. And the findings of modern science abet us strongly in this particular.
This flesh, this table, this pen, solid matter as it is supposed they are; these rocks, soils, minerals, stars, are all composed of atoms. Matter of any kind is reducible to the atom–a particle so minute as to be invisible to the naked eye. The atom is reducible to the ion, or electron, still more minute, and these to force or energy, that which causes motion or vibration, the etheric principle.
Light from the stars under the spectrum reveals the chemical composition of the stars, and this is the same as that of man. The organic chemistry of man and of a star is identical. Our materials are the same. Hence in considering man chemically we can at the same time consider the chemical organization of the universe.
Let us consider matter what it really is as a matter of fact–form, shape, appearance. Everything that we see of matter is a shape or in shape.
“Yes,” one may say, “but if I strike a block of steel with my fist I do not strike shape. I strike what hurts me, matter.”
Not so, for we come now to the main point: What hurts is not the steel block–it is the perception within yourself of the blow on the hand, of resistance. If you had no perceptiveness you would feel neither the block nor the hand. The perceptiveness is in sense. Assuming that you were devoid of sensation–drugged, unconscious–you would know nothing of the block, the hand or the sensation. Your mind would be asleep or in suspension and you would realize nothing of all three.
If you were blind you would know matter only as you feel it. You would not see it except as the mind, or the imagination, visualizes it.
In a word, everything that exists (stands out) is perceptible only as the mind apprehends it through the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. The universe is apparent to us only through these and the mental powers of correlation and coordination.
“If,” as the astronomer Flammarion says, “our planet was constantly covered with clouds we should know nothing of the sun, nor the moon, nor the other planets, and the world system would remain unknown with the result that human knowledge would be condemned to an irremediable falsity. Illusion forms the unstable basis of our ideas, our sensations, our sentiments, our beliefs.”
Our first illusion is as to the fixed condition of the earth. We do not know that it moves except as we learn it from books. Our next is that the earth is flat. We do not know that it is round except as we know that it has been so proved to be. Our planet rushes through space at a dizzying rate of speed. It makes an entire rotation every 24 hours. It is the plaything of fourteen different movements, none of which we actually know of except as we are informed through the mind. We know nothing of the movement of the tides except as we see the lines they mark in their upward flow–if there were no shore the tide would not be visible. We do not know that the air we breathe has weight. We know nothing of electricity except its manifestations. We know nothing of the magnetic radiation of the sun except as it affects the magnetic needle. Light is perceptible by the optic nerve only through vibrations of ether. Sound comes to us only through vibrations caught by the delicate mechanism of the ear. Odors are perceived by the sense of smell, which is weaker and different in human beings than in animals. It comes from particles suspended in the air that especially affect our olfactory nerves. The eye, the ear and the nose put us in touch with the world external to our bodies; the sense of taste and touch act only through contact and give us little information.
Would we not indeed be ignorant if we depended solely on sensations?
It is incontestable that our organs of perception do not reveal to us things as they are. They give us “appearances” merely, often false and erroneous impressions; so that we are not justified in thinking that what we see represents reality. We must, on examination, admit in fact to the contrary.
There is only one reality directly appreciated by us–that is our thought. What is most undeniably real in man is the spirit. The consciousness of ourselves is our real impression, and it is on the basis of our impressions that we can and must reason–they are the foundation of all reasoning.
My pen goes over my paper. I write out my thoughts. Is it the pen or the body that plans and lays out these Lessons–reduces them to order and symmetry of thought? No. It is I who do it–the I AM of me–the spirit. My body serves my intelligence. My body is not me. It is my servant–the servant of my mind, my spirit, my will, my intelligence. My mind is superior to it, encompasses it, controls and directs it.
That the soul is not a physiological faculty, combining, as is generally agreed, will, memory and understanding, is proved by the manifestation of faculties equally intrinsic to itself, less understood, but of which even the most ignorant are aware–by the powers, often exhibited through presentiments and visions, of foreseeing and foreknowing; by telepathy or “wireless” communication between minds separated by distance, and by intuitions and inspirations. These powers cannot be attributed to the material or the tangible. They are of the spiritual realm entirely. They represent the possibilities of a higher plane than that on which dwell the perceptions of sense.
Take from all material objects their sensible properties, or what the mind perceives, and what have you as a remainder? They cease to exist. They are, to you, annihilated. Matter has the root of its being in mind, and without mind it does not exist.
All the properties of matter are now viewed by scientific men as only so many forms of force. Color is only a sensation in mind. Light is a vibratory movement of ether. Hardness and solidity are only sensations of resistance. Heat is an expansion of atoms. If, therefore, as modern science confirms, all the properties of matter are forms of force, surely we must refer force to the spiritual. If causation is mental, matter is a manifestation of spirit and mind is the only real substance. “Nature is spirit visible and spirit is invisible nature.”
We do not mean to deny the reality of what we call the material world, but only to affirm that it is bound up in eternal unity with Spirit. Without Spirit it would cease to be, since it is sustained by Spirit and perpetually renewed by Spirit’s operations.
God, who is the Universal Life, may be described as the goodness that creates the world. He is the all-pervading Being of Life of whom the world is the phenomenon or manifestation. The same is true of the human body. It is the phenomenon of spirit, an appearance, of which the soul is the underlying reality.
The body has no independent being, or life in itself. The soul is the real man, and the body is its existence or outward manifestation to itself and to others. The body is the representation of the soul which the latter sees of itself as in a glass. It is a necessary condition of the minds becoming visible to itself. It is not a mere appendage of the soul, but is a manifestation of the soul under the limitations of time and space. Man is not made up of soul and body, a personality divisible into two distinct and separate halves, but of body, soul and spirit. The soul has taken, and ever will take, the body as its own creation into a personal union with itself, “a union,” says Professor Krauth in his edition of the work of Berkeley, “the most consummate and absolute of which we know, or of which we can conceive, infinitely transcending the completeness of the most perfect mechanical and chemical unions, and they are as completely one to us as if they were one substance.
Man, therefore, is soul. The soul encloses the body. The body does not house the soul. The soul without the body would cease to be an entity–it would be a part of vacancy. When we leave this life and advance into a higher plane of being the soul will carry with it its body-making powers and will endow itself with a body fitted for the requirements of a supermundane existence.
The body, therefore, is our fixed mode of thought and feeling organized into structure. It reveals the form or inward quality of the soul, for what the body is as to strength or weakness, health or disease, will ever depend upon the state of the soul.
The universe is the form of the thought of God, the Creator. The imaging of the universe in thought and the power of the Word brought it forth. The soul has a similar creative power. Its imaging is reflected in the body, in its strength or weakness, its wholesomeness or its debility. Our bodily condition is largely the result of our thinking and if we would change this condition for the better the soul or mind has the power to effect the change by imaging forth a more perfect body, by thinking health and soundness and by believing that the desired condition has been established.
The soul’s power over the body is complete. The body is the servant, the soul the master. Once we realize this truth, for it is a truth, we rid ourselves of all preconceived foolish notions about the cause and origin of disease and are able to look inward to the spirit to overcome the destructive bodily conditions that we complain of.
Spirit is pure, perfect, holy and harmonious. It is born of God and partakes entirely of God’s perfection. It cannot be sick or diseased. Sickness, disease, physical imperfection, is not of God–it is of man. Those who claim to be sick, diseased or unhealthy should ask themselves the question: “Is this condition of God?” If it is not–and it cannot be, for God is perfect–then it is an appearance only, is unreal and can be banished by the determined action of the soul. The soul is the master. Spirit is all there is. The appearance of disease is a manifestation of untruth in being. It must be denied, and denied vigorously, and the perfect quality of spirit must be affirmed as the creative power to destroy the appearance and reproduce the health it displaced.
In the foregoing there is naturally a confusion of meaning as to “soul” and “spirit.” How shall they be differentiated? How shall we know what soul is and what spirit is?
Soul is the individual ego of man. The soul is not the spirit but receives from the spirit the direction of the Universal Spirit. Our spirit is a part of the Universal Spirit. It is the divinity within us. It is God with us. We can open the soul to the spirit and receive our spiritual direction, or we can close the soul to the spirit and receive our sense direction. All of our difficulties arise from the fact that our soul refuses to be governed by our spirit. The spiritual power is always there, to be used by the soul if the soul desires, and to be used in increasing abundance.
Let us take the simile of lightning, for instance. For centuries electricity meant nothing to mankind but its appearance as lightning. The power of electricity was exhibited in violent forms of destruction. Franklin caught the lightning and brought it down to the uses of mankind. Electricity, we now see, is a force to be harnessed for the service of man’s needs. We have not changed electricity. The power is the same. We have learned its laws and govern our contact with it through its laws. Lightning is electricity uncontrolled, with power to destroy and annihilate. The electric current is electricity controlled, to serve the needs of mankind. Observe its obedience to the touch. A child of five by pressing a button may set off a dynamite charge that tears a hillside apart and shatters it into infinitesimal fragments. Or he may touch a button and turn on light or heat or power for daily use. Thus the feared celestial power becomes a tame and gentle servant, springing instantly to our aid at a touch of the finger.
The power of the Spirit is more accessible to us than the power of electricity, for the reason that we are Spirit. The soul is man’s condenser. Do we need spiritual power? The soul, by isolating itself, by dismissing from the mind all distracting thought, by going into the Silence, may, through its ever-watchful, ever-guiding spirit, contact with Pure Spirit and receive therefrom the direction it requires. This may not be done by the novice. Not immediately. But with patience, with persistence. Illumination comes, peace, contentment, solace. These are the fruits of the Spirit. Spirit, soul or mind (the operating force), body. These constitute man. And man is in the image and likeness of God, not bodily but spiritually, through the spirit, joined to Universal Spirit.
Just as lightning is electricity in violent, lawless, unrestrained form, so what we call “evil” is the violent and lawless operation of the soul. The soul turns away from the gentle admonitions of Spirit. It refuses the spirit and turns to the senses. The world as we see it today, with all its lawlessness, crime and violence, its false beliefs and false conditions, is the result of sensual impulse and emotion, the unrestrained fury of elemental forces proceeding from the refusal to be governed by the spiritual inward man.
To know these truths is to possess the key that unlocks the spiritual mystery of health and disease, success and prosperity, the power of the soul through Spirit to work the signs and wonders performed by Jesus.
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate’er you may believe.
There is an innermost center in us all,
Where Truth abides in fulness…and to know
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence that imprisoned splendor may escape.”
Golden Grains
There is but one Mind. Every mind is an inlet to the One Mind. Every mind is an outlet from the One Mind.
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
I am a part of Universal Spirit. God works in me to will and to do of His good pleasure. Spirit witnesseth to spirit that we are the children of God. I am a child of God and am strong, well and happy. I am Spirit, pure, holy and harmonious and work in harmony with spiritual laws. I open my soul to all the admonitions of Spirit and listen to the Voice that speaks in the secret places of the heart.
Thought for the Silence
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.” Bless the Lord, O my soul, and let all that is within me praise and bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgiveth all thy iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases. Unto Him be glory and majesty, dominion and power forever and ever.
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ-Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself NOW as perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
In all that I do this day I am governed by Divine Mind. The Lord is my keeper; He shall not suffer my foot to be moved. He who keeps me neither slumbers nor sleeps. The Lord, the Everlasting Truth; preserves me from all error.
Resolution for the Week
I resolve throughout this week to see in every person an expression of Universal Spirit, even as in myself. I shall show my love of God by loving my neighbor, who is a child of God, and who is an inlet to Divine Mind. I resolve to keep my soul open at all times to the admonitions of Spirit.
Suggestions for the Silence
You live your inner life alone, but in the silence of the Inner Chamber seeds of thought are planted that bring forth fruit, manifesting in Health, Success, Peace, Power and Prosperity. In the Silence water with good thoughts the garden of your soul and when the blossoms appear, as appear they will, you may trace them back to this quiet period with God alone.
Read with this Lesson
Re-read “The Realm of Reality,” Chapter V. [Online at Northwoods.]
Pages 109 to 120 of the “Astor Lectures.” [Online at Northwoods.]
* * * * *
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Purity, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.
QUESTIONS
1. What is that which we call “matter” finally reducible to?
2. What word should we use for “matter”? What is it really?
3. What powers have the soul that are called supra-normal?
4. What is the soul and how has it expressed itself physically?
5. Present the full constitution of man, as you understand it from this Lesson–body, soul and spirit.
6. How do you account for the lawlessness, crime and violence of the world?
* * * * *
Lesson X
FAITH
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
We have labored in vain if we have not convinced you of the supremacy of the soul of man over the body, of the ascendancy of spirit over matter. The use of the mental faculties alone can work miracles of healing, for these are faculties of the soul. But it is only through faith that we can be certain of our efforts in healing or betterment. Faith is the key to the mystery of the exercise of spiritual power for ourselves and for others. We can be healed, and we can heal others, through faith and right thinking.
Faith is defined by St. Paul as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is implicit belief. It is the indestructible confidence in a power that is higher than ourselves, a power that directs our affairs, comforts us and protects us. If we have faith, we are told, all things are possible to us. There is nothing more precious in the sight of the Father than faith, for it evidences an unquestioning loyalty in His wisdom and His love of the human heart in all its affairs.
Even this world is operated by faith. Every time we take in or pay out a dollar we do so on faith. All public service is conducted on faith. We take a train to a distant city and retire to a sleeping berth without question of our safety or of arriving at our destination on scheduled time. Our faith is in the engineer of the train and in the marvelous organization of the railroad system. The night may be dark and stormy, the ways tortuous and beset with danger, but we sleep serenely as we trust in the agencies responsible for transporting us. We voyage to distant ports with the same confidence in the steamship that carries us. It is the boast of one of our steamship companies that in forty years of service it has not lost a life entrusted to it, and of one of our great railroad systems that in a twelve-month period no passenger on its lines has been killed or injured.
We have faith in our institutions, in our laws and in our leaders. We pay our money into banks and into insurance companies. We accept bonds, we give and take credit. All of our movements are based on faith, from the operation of the alarm clock in the morning to our retiring for sleep at night with a sense of peace and safety. The nation, the state, society, the family–all are based on faith in fellow men and the keeping of agreements.
But faith of this kind often demands security. Oaths, pledges and bonds are required, together with documentary attestation, or symbols of some form assuring in their nature.
Faith in God is, however, faith in the unseen, and must proceed from the heart. We seek and we find. We knock and the door is opened. The assurance is hidden deep within the heart of man. Each discovers Truth for himself. By faith we call into operation our strongest forces and the greater and more complete the faith the more intensity we give to these forces. The faith of Job was an undying fire. Nothing could extinguish it–sickness, misfortune, the scattering of his family, the alienation of his friends, the humiliation of his pride in himself and his possessions–nothing could shake his faith–he stood as immovable and steadfast under the storms of calamity as the everlasting hills. “I know,” he declared, “I know that my redeemer liveth,” and again: “Even though He slay me yet shall I believe in Him.” Job is a type of the indestructibility of the human soul, and it is in the quality of his faith that he proved his greatness and the greatness of humanity.
David had the same quality of faith. “Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”
When the risen Christ appeared to the disciples, Thomas, one of the apostles, was not present. He refused to believe what was told him of the presence in the midst of the disciples of the Master and declared that he would believe only after feeling the prints of the nails in the hands and the wound in the side of Jesus. When Jesus appeared to a group of which Thomas was a member our Lord said: “Thomas, reach hither thy finger and behold my hands, and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless but believing.” Then Thomas answered: “My Lord and my God.” And Jesus said to him: “Because thou hast seen me thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”
That is our assurance, the assurance to all of us who have not seen. “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”
The words of Jesus on the efficacy of faith are uncompromising. He said to Peter, when the latter pointed out the fig tree that had withered because Jesus had condemned it for its barrenness: “Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain (obstacle) be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when ye pray believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them.”
This is the very essence of faith. “Believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them.” And it is the most essential requirement in practice. The things we ask for are already in existence. Our faith, our beliefs, our implicit assurance should be that our prayers are answered even before they are uttered. The answer may not realize itself at once, or in the form that we desire. The thing we ask may require time to externalize or become objective, but that it is ready for us is a necessity of belief.
And herein lies the reinforcement of all the findings of psychology and mental science, all the truth in the creative power of thought. We must have faith. We must believe that the thing we ask for will materialize, and the stronger and more implicit the belief the more certain the materialization.
The object we hold in mind is a nucleus about which thought builds in its creativeness. If we can form a vivid picture in our mind of what we ask for and desire whole-heartedly, and hold it there constantly before the mind’s eye, the law of attraction will work upon it and unseen forces will come to aid its realization. The thing we desire will take shape in ways to us unknown, and presently it will appear in form. The subconscious mind, sleeping or waking, with this mental image to go on, works steadily towards its manifestation. All that a man really is is in the realm of mind. Health and disease, heaven and hell, are located in the mind. The mind exerts energies of which we are almost entirely unconscious. The fixed resolve of a determined soul finds realization inevitably. God expresses through us. We have so long been slaves to the belief that God does things for us that we unconsciously assume that what we ask of God is to be presented to us–handed to us–much as Santa Claus is supposed to bestow his gifts and presents. But we clear the paths to realization enormously once we get the conviction thoroughly implanted in us that it is through us that the work is wrought. Often the thing that we storm heaven for is at our very hand. We have but to open our eyes to see it. But we must open our eyes. We must trust to our intuitions and inspirations and act upon them. The prayer of faith opens the eyes and the intuitions and inspirations are the accompaniments of activity on our part to bring our desire into being. How often, after we have realized what we have prayed for, have we not seen that the thing was all the time right at our very hand–that we could have had it at any time but we could not see it.
“A genuine act of faith in God is a movement of the whole being towards Him and brings the soul into a vital contact and a vivifying conjunction with the Central Life.” (Dr. W. F. Evans.)
Faith is the most intense form of mental action. It is a union of the intellectual and the emotional, a knowledge of principles underlying action and a feeling of deep and unquenchable confidence in the power that is appealed to. Therefore, when we work under Faith all of our powers, intellectual and emotional, combine in an irresistible pressure. We force out into expression the health or the supply that we are striving for. “Be not faithless, but believing.” Believe that you have already received and you shall have. It is the law. It is inevitably compelling.
A strong, enduring faith. This is the sine qua non for all mental achievement. But the faith that works miracles is a boundless faith in God’s love and Fatherliness.
This faith, it must be perceived, is not blind faith. It is intelligent, conscious faith. The faith that is merely a submission of the will is very often a matter of religious loyalty. Blind faith may be praiseworthy but it is not constructive. It is not the kind of faith that removes mountains of trouble and suffering. Genuine faith, the faith that Jesus lauded, is based on the union of “I know” with “I believe.” That is the faith that is vital and inexorable. Jesus did not reward blind faith. He said to the woman who had touched his garment: “Thy faith hath healed thee;” to those who had heard the speech of the Roman centurion he said: “I have not heard such faith in Israel;” to Peter who was sinking after a first success in walking on the water: “Oh, thou of little faith;” to all of us, “According to your faith be it unto you,” and “All things are possible to him that believeth.” James says: “And the prayer of faith shall heal the sick.”
Thus we see that the faith that has power is the intensely active, conscious process of knowing, feeling and acting with God. It is not a striving to know, but a knowing. It is not only belief in God, but immediate knowledge and awareness of the presence and power of God acting omnipotently in us and in all our affairs. This is the living faith.
Are you capable of great and sustaining faith? It is your test. You can accomplish all things if you intelligently believe. Faith is a blessed state of mind. It is something that sings and makes melody in our heart as we arise in the morning; it cheers and gladdens us through the day; it is a balm for the tired nerves at night.
Therefore let there be no attacks of unfaith. Believe whole-heartedly and sincerely. Unless you believe in this manner unfaith is sure to creep in and spread.
“It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute
And, ever-widening, slowly silence all.”
We should guard ourselves carefully against this rift of unfaith. As, again, the poet sings:
“Faith and unfaith can ne’er be equal powers–
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.”
Faith in God, faith in ourselves, a conscious knowledge of our powers–with these combined with earnest effort what is there that can stand unconquered?
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“Oh, doubting heart, where’er thou art,
No matter what thy lot may be;
Go forth in Faith, and play thy part–
All roads lead to Infinity.”
Golden Grains
“If ye have the faith of a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall obey you, and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
(Matthew 18:20)
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
“I believe, O Lord; help Thou my unbelief. I seek guidance from the Spirit within me. Through my faith I can remove mountains. My faith is as a grain of mustard seed, which grows into the largest of the trees of the field. Through faith I conquer all things. All that I desire to receive I believe that I have received.”
Thought for the Silence
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Oh, God, Thou art Omnipresent and wherever any of Thee is all of Thee must be, in Thy entirety and totality. Thou art here with me in this house, this room, in the inmost core of my heart, in every part of my being. Speak to me, Lord, for I hear Thee.
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ-Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself NOW as perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
I live in Thy presence and while I am engaged in the pressing duties of the day Thou shalt remain underneath me supporting me and imparting to me peace and power.
Resolution for the Week
I resolve to concentrate on Faith, to live in Faith and to govern all that I do by Faith in God the Father, Omnipresent, Omnipotent and Omniscient. I shall prove my faith by my mental attitude which is to believe and to seek ever for more Truth.
Suggestions for the Silence
“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven Thou are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold Thou are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me and Thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.”
(Psalms 139:7-12)
Read with this Lesson
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapter X. [Online at Northwoods.]
“Faith, Hope and Love,” page 99 of the “Astor Lectures.” [Online at Northwoods.]
* * * * *
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Purity, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.
QUESTIONS
1. What is Faith? What does St. Paul say of it?
2. Why is faith in God meritorious? What, in faith, do we call into operation?
3. What is the essence of faith?
4. How are we to proceed to obtain an answer to our desires?
5. Of what is faith a most intense form?
6. Which is preferable, blind faith or conscious faith, and why?
* * * * *
Lesson XI
THE POWER OF THE WORD
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
If you will refer to Lesson II of this series you will recall that we emphasized the fact that it is the power of word formation, or articulate speech, that raises man to his supreme elevation over all creatures. We endeavored to make clear the fact that it is man alone in the scale of mundane creation that has the power of forming words.
The term “word” in Greek is “logos.” Christ is introduced in the Gospel of St. John as the Logos. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” are the opening words of this great gospel.
Throughout the Bible the term “Word” is referred to in a mystical sense. We have seen in Lesson VI that God made himself known to Moses as “Jehovah.” This word means “I am that I am.” “Say,” the Voice said to Moses, “that I AM hath sent you.”
In the opening chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, “the book of beginnings,” the story of Creation is set forth in a simple but majestic manner. Its various stages are prefaced with the words “And God said”–let there be light, let there be a firmament, let us make man, etc. In all the acts of Creation the Voice speaks commandingly, calling into being the spiritual universe, in all its forms and species, and at the last, Man. So that all of Creation was brought into manifestation by God’s Word. The Word was the instrument of the Creator’s power.
Not only in the beginning, but in every instance where God is recorded as appearing to man, the appearance is not a personal appearance but is concealed behind the word of the Voice calling out to man. “Thus saith the Lord” is a phrase the counterpart of “And God said.” Whether an angel appears with a message, whether the message is communicated in a vision or spoken from the mouth of prophet or beast, it is always recorded as “And God said,” or “Thus saith the Lord.” In the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers almost every chapter begins with “And the Lord said unto Moses,” or “And the Lord spake,” or a similar expression. Hence we have what is called “the word of God,” and we see that the word is the expression of creative power. The supreme word, the great word, was the name God gave Himself, “Jehovah” or “I AM.”
“In the beginning was the Word,” says St. John, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
It is for the purpose of bringing men back to beginnings that John opens his gospel in this way, uniting the Christ with the act of Creation. He is the Word, the Voice, speaking through the man Jesus. And John goes on to say, to prove that Jesus was the Christ, “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” there appearing of the Spiritual following after thousands of years in which the physical and corporeal had usurped the place of reality.
And so Jesus, over and over, speaks of the word. “He that keepeth my word;” or “My word shall not pass away;” or “Be ye doers of the word;” or “The sower soweth the word,” or “My words are spirit and they are life,” and so on. “The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life,” he said.
The power of a single word is enormous. It expresses thought, and it is dynamic for good or the opposite. The word sinks into the consciousness of the person spoken to and creates a train of causation the extent and importance of which we can never know. Words carry joy or grief, praise or censure, power or infirmity, peace or unrest, order or disorder. How often, for instance, Jesus utters the word “Peace.” “Peace be unto you.” “My peace I give you.” Whether blessing a room with his presence or calming a storm he uses the word “peace” and even in reading it we get a glimpse of its power and majesty.
To man only is given this power of the word, the creative instrument used by the Almighty. How careful, therefore, we should be of our words, and how important is the warning that we shall be held accountable for every idle word spoken. “By thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”
The word was always, and is now, the active agent of creation. We have the privilege of using with God this instrument of power, this agent of creation, so that we may co-operate with the Father in His constant creative process in ourselves and others. The Divine Mind forms the idea, the mind of man receives it and puts it into expression, thus enabling God to work through man as He desires to do. Man’s inspirations, his intuitions, his burning thoughts, impelling him to constructive expression of ideas, are given forth in words. He sends out the word of an ideal to others. As he receives it, as his mind responds to it, he puts it out, either with selfish or with noble purposes. How base the use of the idea in the one instrance, how godlike in the others!
The New Testament and the Old, the Proverbs especially, are full of references to words as instruments of power.
If we need to realize the effect of words we have but to think of the many that we have received in the Old Thought, such words as “fear,” “wrath,” “sin,” “disease,” and “death.” These words hold our thought within darkened bounds and create a consciousness that produces melancholy and despair.
Suggestions are carried out through words. Characters are moulded by words. Words like “I am,” “I can,” “I will,” have made great men out of weaklings. One word, uttered every day with conviction, can produce any given result–a word, for instance, such as “courage,” “strength,” “forward.” In the military life the power of the word is well understood, from the password to the word of command. Think of the effect, on an army of men, of a word like “attack,” or “retreat!” Spoken at the right moment, how much it means to the final result. And it is powerful in proportion to the degree that the forces it acts upon are orderly.
In Lesson IV we gave a list of constructive words and of destructive words, which we called positive and negative. From these it will be seen that words are creative. We speak the word that expresses the thought demanding expression and at once we start a chain of force movement. As God spoke Creation into existence so man speaks his own self-creation into existence. He conceives the man he wants to be: strong, well, healthy, vigorous, prosperous and successful, and he speaks the word. The word goes forth to accomplish the end aimed at and the creative process sets into externalization. He repeats and re-repeats the word. He issues the command to himself and all of the subtle, hidden self-powers set to work in intelligent obedience and with ordered discipline to carry it out fully.
Divine Science is in no particular so marked as in the use of the affirmative word. The followers of M. Coue, the French pharmacist who received ovations wherever he went throughout the United States teaching his jingling affirmation: “Every day in every way I am getting better and better,” used with marked benefit this form of affirmation. But in this expression there is no reference to Divine power. It amounts simply to auto-suggestions. The power involved in it comes from below, and not from above. In Divine Science we refer all power to the Source of Power and we work consciously with the Divine Source to bring about the changes that we desire. This was the method of Jesus. Take the Lord’s Prayer as an example of affirmation. Phrase after phrase is affirmative. “Our Father, which art in heaven,” “Thy kingdom come,” “Thy will be done,” and so on. Our affirmations should always proceed from the Spirit and be made conjointly with the power of the Spirit. We should always be conscious that we are inlets to the Spirit and outlets from the Spirit. Thus when we make an affirmation it should be done consciously as an expression of the creative process. There is power in auto-suggestion, it is true, but to work through the Higher Power is the aim of the Divine Scientist, for in this way we express all the power of Omnipotence.
The name of God, “I AM,” is a word that has more power than any other word. It is one of the Mosaic commandments from God that this name shall not be taken in vain. What does this mean? Is it a commandment against profanity, as we have been taught? Is it not rather that the name “I AM,” shall not be taken for vain purposes? From the very infancy of life we syllable over and over “I am,” indicating being or proposed action. Listen to the man or woman who uses idle words and observe the constant repetition of “I am” in vain talk of vain purposes. Do not all the idle words cluster about “I am,” as the frivolous chatter goes on about what the speaker is doing and going to do, dilating upon his or her acts, thoughts and aims?
The use of the radio at the present time has brought out some wonderful facts about the lasting and penetrating power of the spoken word. Words are spoken into a transmitter and projected into the ether. The distance they are to carry is determined by the wave-length of the sending station. A French army officer, speaking at the Westinghouse plant at Syracuse, is enabled by radio to talk directly to his regiment in France, assembled to hear him speak from another continent, three thousand miles away, and his voice is heard by his comrades in arms as clearly as if he were in the same room with them. Recently a radio message, spoken ten years ago, was caught by a receiving machine. It had been held in the ether for all this time, traveling on no one knows where or in what orbit. The conclusion has been reached that words once spoken are held forever in the receiving ether. Does not this fact, discovered only recently by scientists, fill us with awe with respect to the importance of the spoken word, and does it not give a new meaning to the statement that we shall be held accountable for our every idle word?
See, then, what strength and power are combined in the conjunction of the word “I am” with the word “strong,” for instance, or “well,” or “happy,” or “better,” or “rich,” or “prosperous,” or “successful.” The creative power of the word is intensified to the highest degree by the intelligent use of the “I am.” It is using the name of the Creator with the creative process you are putting forth, and instantly induces Divine co-operation in power.
Hence the value of the affirmative word. “The word of God in us is quick and powerful.” This is the thought we must always hold as to words, that they are constructive, corrective, creative, dynamic. Take the word, therefore, that you need most, and apply it with “I am,” remembering the creative power of God seeking to express itself through the creative power in you, and keep alive the conviction that you are uniting for your purpose, by the power of the word, all the creative force of the Omnipotent.
One of the strongest affirmations you can make is this: “I speak the word of health (or abundance) and my word shall not return to me void but shall accomplish that for which I utter it.” Here is the power of the word used consciously, and the will of God concurs with yours in the expression. In this way you use your own power and reinforce it with that of the Omnipotent, which brings all power to you, with all its invisible forces aiding your own.
Apply to your daily work words like the following: “This thing I will do to perfection, to glorify God. I work in joy and gladness.” It will sweeten the labor you have to perform. It will vitalize the work you do. The word “perfection” is descriptive of the Omnipotent and symbolizes His method. You “glorify” him in the work you do. You express Him in joy and gladness. You make your work a part of the creative process. You consciously better your work day by day, in output and in character. Everything helps you, and your joy will be full because you invest the labor of your hands or brain with joy and gladness. Weariness and fatigue will disappear and when the day is done you can count it as a white stone in your pathway.
When you arise in the morning make immediately this affirmation: “I arise, O Lord, to do Thy will. Thy will is perfect, working in me unchanging peace, power and perfection.” Here you speak the word of “peace,” the word of “power” and the word of “perfection.” All three remain with you. In this manner all your acts of the day are consecrated.
When you have said this with power several times make this affirmation: “The Spirit of the Lord goes before me this day, making my way easy and successful.”
Then in the evening look back over the events of the day and you will be surprised to observe how the Spirit of the Lord, going before you, has made your way easy and successful. “The cares that infest the day” have failed to appear. What seemed difficult in contemplation has proved to be easy. Obstacles have been met and overcome by a wave of your hand or a smile. Opposition that you looked for has been converted into co-operation. The stream of happiness murmurs its music in your ear. You take into your evening reflections the joy and gladness that have been accumulating under your orders all day.
Then at night read or recite the 23rd Psalm, and add this from the 103d Psalm: “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all His benefits; who forgiveth all thy iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destructive; who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies; who satisfied thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“He who dares to assert the “I”
May calmly wait
While hurrying Fate
Meets his demand with full supply.”
Golden Grains
“I AM perfect, even as my Father in Heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 18:20)
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
I am now the expression of that unerring Intelligence which directs all creation. The Wisdom of all the ages is my Wisdom, for there is but One Wisdom. “My words are life to those that find them, and health to all their flesh.”
Thought for the Silence
Oh, God, Thou are the Lord of all Creation; the Only Power, the All in All, the One and Universal Father. Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom is from everlasting to everlasting and exalted by Thy reign; Thy Law has been established on earth even as it is supreme in heaven, for Thou art the Lord of the heavens above and of the earth beneath. Thou are the Life of my life, the Strength of my strength and the Health of my countenance.
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ-Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself NOW as perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
The Spirit of the Lord goes before me this day, making my way easy and successful. God is perfecting that in me which concerneth His business.
Resolution for the Week
I resolve this week to be careful of my words; to remember that words are creative or destructive as applied to the facts of life and that I shall be held accountable for every idle word spoken by me.
Suggestions for the Silence
In going into the Silence I relax every part and portion of my body and prepare my mind for the inflow of Divine thought. I rid myself of the swarms of idle thoughts as I would drive swarms of flies from the room. I take into the Silence the thought of God’s Omnipotence and Omniscience, saying: “For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether.” “The entrance of Thy words giveth light.” “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”
Read with this Lesson
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapters XXI and XXII. [Online at Northwoods.]
Entire 8th chapter of Romans.
* * * * *
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Purity, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.
QUESTIONS
1. Wherein lies the importance of this Lesson?
2. How have the messages of God to men been expressed? What is the significance of the term “Word”?
3. What does St. John declare of the “Word”?
4. How is the capacity of man to share creative power with the Creator shown?
5. Should we take seriously the declaration that we are to be held accountable for every idle word we utter?
6. What is the word we most frequently use?
7. What is the value of the word affirmation?
8. What is the effect of morning, noon and night affirmations?
9. Can we be too careful in the use of our words?
* * * * *
Lesson XII
PRAYER AND CONTEMPLATION
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
Man’s disorderly thinking, we have seen, is responsible for his disorderly conditions, and we have come to see that if he would change these conditions he must put his house in order and think in a new manner. We have taught you that God’s thoughts are in Divine order and that if you would work intelligently, having a given objective before you, you must think as God thinks, and your thoughts must be in the right relation.
We have seen that you have at your command all the powers by which the body can be transformed and renewed and resurrected at will. “Put ye on, therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Christ, as the Super-Conscious Mind, is the master of the situation. “Be ye transformed, therefore, by the renewing of your mind.” In this manner you can be born again, born into the Kingdom of God, to which you are joint heir with Christ Jesus.
The higher the ideas held in mind the more quickly will they bring the mind and body into normal relations. Man must forsake his old method of thinking and develop a new consciousness. He must be “born from above” if he would be saved from his limitation, inharmony, poverty, sickness and death.
Death will be no more when man lays hold of spiritual substance and life and squares himself to the standard of Divine law. Man is a lasting, eternal temple of the living God and man can know that temple as he turns to the Father within and prays and praises and learns of Him.
Prayer has a quickening power. Paul knew that prayer is the way that the spiritual consciousness is quickened when he said: “Pray without ceasing.”
But how much this injunction has been misunderstood! Men have thought of prayer as the repetition of a formula, or a constant gabble of a single prayer, or a recitation of litanies, rosaries and creeds.
Perhaps you think of prayer in this manner. Cease to do so. In the previous Lesson, on the Power of the Word, we have shown you how to “pray without ceasing” by the simple method of consecrating your day, your work and your night’s rest. Every act, every thought, every word, is under such consecration, and perfect prayer is offered without ceasing.
Here is what Jesus said about prayer, and in saying it he said all that could be said: “When thou prayest thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray…that they may be seen of men. Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door pray to thy Father, which seeth in secret and shall reward thee openly. Use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”
“Prayer is the divine method of opening the soul upward to receive what God is more than willing to give,” says Dr. W. F. Evans. Get that. It is a wonderful definition. “Prayer is,” Dr. Evans continues, “a valuable specific for the mental and spiritual disturbances that underlie all diseases. It is the vehicle, the medium, through which spiritual medicine is given. It is a natural instinct of the soul…If, in distress of body, or unhappiness of mind, we are drawn by a spiritual instinct to God in prayer, it is because it is a part of the Divine plan that we should thus find relief.”
Quotations on the efficacy of prayer could be multiplied to the extent of volumes, but we cannot refrain from giving Emerson’s definition because of its loftiness and because of its value in the interpretation of Divine Science. “Prayer,” says this father of the New Thought, “is the contemplation of being from the highest point of view.”
It is on the basis of this definition that we wish to go forward from Prayer, as we understand it, to Contemplation, which is prayer in its highest, or Divine, form.
When Jesus said: “Enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret,” he had the form of prayer in view that he followed himself. This does not mean only that you should draw apart to a quiet place to pray, but it means that you enter into the closet of yourself, “closet” meaning a closed room without windows and with but a door for an opening–the closet of your heart–the silent, secret place of being–and to close the door on all the disturbing thoughts clamoring for entrance. This is what we call “the Silence.” You carry this closet with you wherever you go, and, in the midst of the greatest crowds and noisiest disturbances, can enter into it and have solitude. You can create your Silence wherever you are and can, at least for a precious moment or two, close your eyes and hold communion with Divine Mind.
But the proper place for the Silence is in your own room and the proper time is your quiet hour. Then you can withdraw from the world, shut out all the noises of the day, “the tumult and the shouting,” and induce for yourself a calm in which all disturbance fades away.
Energy is not required for prayer. Intensity of thought may exist in a perfect peace, but passionate exhortation or dramatic declaration is destructive of the conditions in which your communication with the Divine should take place. We therefore cease from agitation and find a spiritual repose through a gradual relaxation. The mind is to be neither lulled to a torpid condition nor lashed to an emotional pitch. It is to be kept cool and collected, as if facing a momentous possibility, gathering within itself the importance of the contact it is about to effect, the petitions it is about to make, the problem it wishes to receive light upon and the reverential manner in which it is to present our wants. The very thought that we are to speak alone, soul to soul, with God the Creator, is so wonderful that every faculty, while stilled, should be alert. We should await on His presence with awe, realizing that we are to be still and know that He is with us.
We believe in the Omnipresence of God, and as in our Lesson V we learned of His nature, we know that He is everywhere at all times. God is in the room with us. He is in our mind with us. He is about us and within us more even than the air we breathe. He is the power behind our every action, for in Him we move, and He is in the texture of our thought, for in Him we have our being.
Wherever any part of God is, all of God is, in His totality and entirety. As the entire ocean is in a drop of sea water; as the whole of the atmosphere is in a breath of air; as all of the sun is in a shaft of light; so God is present in every place absolutely and completely. If we have difficulty in realizing this fact it is because the Old Thought that God is a person is still holding dominion over us and we think that if He is present here he must be absent from other places. When Paul said that “in Him we live, move and have our being,” he said everything, and we have but to still our agitations and close our eyes to realize this fully. We can hear music within ourselves, we can utilize the principle of mathematics within ourselves without for a moment losing sight of the fact that everyone else can do the same thing and that these principles are in nowise taken away from, added to or withdrawn from a given center by our doing so. It is thus with God. God is Life and God is Love, Wisdom and Power. He has no home but in the kingdom of order and harmony which is present throughout all nature.
We should enter the silence with the thought: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Followed at an interval by: “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the world be silent before Him.” And then we should begin contemplation in an orderly manner–one thing at a time–with a proper examination of each in all its phases, a pause for praise or adoration, and a proceeding to the next thing. We must not be like children, crying out all our wants in a confused babble of utterance. We should consider the Majesty of the Presence before Whom our soul stands as a child before its father, and in sweetness, in dignity and respect present our petitions.
We should not look for revelations in God’s Voice as to a Prophet; or for special spiritual manifestations, or for glorious visions, or ecstatic saturations, or for the occurrence of a great miracle. We should retain the calmness and considering power that we should bring with us to a church or to a temple of justice. We are not going to be swept off our feet by a heavenly vision or blinded by celestial illumination, or receive a particular recognition from God proclaiming us a beloved son in whom He is well pleased. Rather should we feel that we are in the presence of a fountain of sympathy and love from which we may draw as freely as we like–in the presence of a Wisdom that is omniscient and which flows into us silently rather than charges or admonishes us orally; in the presence of all Truth from which we may catch a few rays of inspiration.
If in the Silence and under these conditions our own thoughts grow strong and crystallize into conviction; if in this Silence we feel our own remissness in the performance of those acts necessary to bring into being the things we ask for; if in this holy state we receive an inner light that clears up the heart of our mystery; then we may well feel that we have had our touch with the Unseen, our bit of illumination and Divine counsel.
This method of prayer, followed steadily, is actually marvelous in exterior and interior results. We cast off the old habits of thought as a serpent casts his skin or a butterfly emerges from a chrysalis. We see everything about us in a new light. Truth, Justice, Mercy, Loving-kindness, Joy and Peace have a new and nobler meaning to us. We shed the commonplace and put on the white robe of idealism. This is our wedding garment. We are at peace because we know that we are under the shadow of the Almighty, that we are under the covert of His wings, that we are in possession of all things. Our spirit is invaded by a new and a gentler Presence. We grow wings, as it were. We drop the material. We learn to feel that we are dwelling in a spiritual universe; that we are not weak, we are not sick, we are not poor–we are spirit, having everything and are now and forevermore identified with the Christ of God.
Our revelations may not come to us at once–rather it were better to say that we do not detect our revelations for a while. But presently we get to see that some important thought possesses us; it may come to us in an old phrase that has always appeared to be trite and dull in its drab garments. But now it comes to us in a brilliant efflorescence and with a revelating meaning. “How is it?” you ask yourself; “I’ve never known before what that phrase meant. Isn’t it astounding?” And you roll it about in your thought as you would something sweet on the tongue, and you ruminate over it and press more sweetness and comfort out of it. It will ever wear its brilliant dress for you and your mind has but to turn to it to regain for it the lustre of the first inspiration.
Or you perform some action in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, and presently it brings about a surprising result. You consider this strange happening incredulously as your mind puts two and two together and the origin of the result is revealed to you as divine, or what is commonly called “providential.”
Or you hear a sermon and some truth presents itself in a chance remark or a quoted text that sends a fiery dart into your mind that sets the consciousness aflame with inspired thought. This thought, as glowing as a coal, literally burns a path through the commonplace avenue of your mind and consumes old beliefs and conceptions as chaff. The new thought crowds out all others for a time and then takes up a permanent, controlling position.
These, suggestions merely, are what happen to you if you practice Contemplation in the Silence and it is more than likely that it is in this way God will speak to you.
It requires long practice in the art of meditation before the high illuminations come. You cannot expect to have long meditations in the beginning, any more than you can expect to give long hours to first lessons on a musical instrument. One must begin with short exercises, playing the scales as it were, and if you are apt you persist until you obtain a certain facility. We often hear people say: “I cannot get anything out of the Silence because I cannot concentrate.” Too much stress has been laid on concentration. When it comes down to “brass tacks,” to use a popular expression, no one can concentrate for more than a minute or two at a time. Thinking is not a job like washing dishes or loading up a wagon, to be begun with resolution and gone through uninterruptedly, with energy and system. Thinking is a process like the movements of a goat, a jumping here, a leaping there, a bounding upward, a standing still with lowered head. The Latin word for goat is Capricornus and from this we get our word capricious. Thought is capricious. But it can be moved forward, even though it jumps sideways and backward, and leaps upward and tears off at a tangent–the mind can drive it along an appointed course even to a far destination. That is all that concentration amounts to–holding the thoughts in line, keeping to the objective ahead of you regardless of distractions or interior disturbances. Whenever a thought with a special meaning comes to you, cling to it and exhaust it before proceeding to the next one. Or, if it persists, let it stay with you, for it is fruitful and you must hold it until you extract from it all the meat you can find in it.
Don’t watch the clock–don’t have one around–and don’t limit yourself as to time if you can help it. Let time take care of itself, as it would at a theatre or in the company of friends. Remember that this is an hour for the exercise of your spirit, in which, as in physical exercises, you develop your mental muscles, your ability to think consecutively and to reason things out. If you are in earnest, this is your testing time. Practice with the spirit for the purpose of developing its thews and sinews, its stretching powers, its flexibility and endurance. The inner spiritual faculties have become inactive for lack of exercise. Learn to enjoy this quiet hour, and cultivate the development of your spiritual powers. It is in this manner that the great spiritual athletes have gained their strength, their wisdom and their simplicities, have become fit instruments for the Spirit.
If you are pressed for time, yet give a few moments; but make it a point to keep faith with this new practice by providing ahead for the required time. Carry in your mind each day the thought of your rendezvous with God and you will gradually, unconsciously, clear the deck for it by assembling all that you require to resume your silent communion with Spirit and getting rid of all cumbersome or disorderly material.
You will thus gradually learn to live constantly in the presence of God and to look forward with all the eagerness of a lover for the hour of your tryst. There will ensue a cleansing process by which your thoughts will be purified into a divine aspect, and you will grow into a consciousness in which it will be natural for you to think constructively, to be imbued with goodness, sweetness, love. Evil will drop away from you, worldly companions will leave you alone, new friends will come into your life and new activities to express God-thought in you will demand satisfaction. You will not be aware of it for a while but eventually you will recognize the fact that you are being recreated, made anew, in health, peace, power, prosperity and happiness. You will possess the peace that passeth understanding and will know that all is yours that God intends you to have and to enjoy.
Then your own healing will have been completed, and, if you will, you can take up the healing of others. Having learned the effectual prayer, having in the Silence been retaught in a new manner adapted to your individual requirements all that we have so far given you, you may be ready to go on to demonstrations that will confirm you forever in your discipleship.
The old method of prayer, by recitation of set forms of prayers, conflicts with the true conception of prayer, the method of which was set forth by Jesus as a retiring into one’s inner self and a union of the mind with Divine Mind.
Prayer is an opening of the mind upward to receive what God is willing to give. It is the medium through which spiritual medicine is given. It is a natural instinct of the soul and it is a part of the Divine plan that we should find relief in it.
The true prayer is Contemplation, in which we meditate upon what we are, upon the omnipresence and omnipotence of God, on what we need and aspire to, and upon God’s promises to those who seek Him in this manner. In this manner our lives are hid with Christ in God.
We can be certain of God’s co-operation, for after adopting the practice of meditation we discover the entrance into our lives and affairs of many new things and become conscious of radical changes in ourselves. We develop a new state of mind and new qualities of action, attract helpful friends, drop those that are not necessary to us and are inspired by new and glowing mental images.
How to approach the hour of the Silence and how to develop thought therein are explained, with a presentation of some facts about “concentration.” The process of self-healing sets in and we learn how the healing of others may be effected. Herein is the test of the spiritually-minded and to adopt this method of prayer is to enter upon the Way.
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“It is not the speech that counts
But the impulse that goes with the saying.
It is not the words of a prayer
But the yearning back of the praying.”
Golden Grains
“He prayeth best who loveth best, all things both great and small.”
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
There is no Reality in Evil. There is nothing in a Universe filled with Divine Love for me to fear. I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress; my God; in Him will I trust. The Truth sets me free from every false sense. The Law of the Spirit of Life hath made me free from the law of sin, sickness and death.
Thought for the Silence
God is calling you and me–Let us listen for that Voice of Truth that will liberate us from all limitation, and let us use the “two-edged sword” of Denial and Affirmation to overcome and destroy every thought contrary to Good.
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all Eternity, is expressing itself NOW as Perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
The work that I do this day I do to perfection, to glorify God. In all the Universe there is nothing for me to fear.
Resolution for the Week
I resolve this week to make for myself the necessary time to develop my spiritual powers in the Silence. I set apart each day a time in which to meet and talk with the Spirit.
Suggestions for the Silence
When you enter the Silence realize and feel the presence of God. Remember that you are now One with the Creator of the Universe. Think of the Universe of which you are the center, your own consciousness, which God moves and operates with the same power and precision by which He governs a planet.
“Speak to Him then, for He heareth,
When spirit with Spirit doth meet;
Closer is He than breathing,
And nearer than hands or than feet.”
Read with this Lesson
“New Thoughts on Old Doctrines, pages 60-72. [Online at Northwoods as Chapter 4 of that title.]
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapter XVIII. [Online at Northwoods.]
“Astor Lectures,” pages 60-72. [Online at Northwoods.]
* * * * *
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Purity, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.
QUESTIONS
1. Why does the old method of prayer conflict with the true conception of prayer?
2. What is prayer?
3. What is the true form of prayer?
4. How can we be certain of God’s co-operation?
5. How does prayer in the Silence develop for us a new state of mind?
6. To what form of training do you compare spiritual development in the Silence?
7. What are we to consider as to “concentration”?
8. Of what is the practice of prayer in the Silence a test?
* * * * *
Lesson XIII
CONSCIOUSNESS
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
Since the New Thought of God has reappeared, the word “consciousness” has come to have a new meaning.
Do you have a predominating passion? You have established a passion consciousness.
Are you sick or diseased? You have a sick or disease consciousness.
Are you unsuccessful? You have a failure consciousness.
Are you poor? You have a poverty consciousness.
What does this mean?
As to passion, if you have a predominating passion–gambling, drinking, clothes, lust, lying, scandal-mongering, whatever it may be, you have built up in your mind an intense desire to indulge the passion; you can see in all circumstances, in everything that passes across your line of vision, before anything else, an opportunity to gratify that passion. The possibility of its exercise fills every part of your mind, and all your sense, at all times. You have created a consciousness that saturates with its poison every particle of your being.
If you have a disease consciousness it is because you have created it through apprehension of sickness and disease. You are afraid that what you eat, breathe, touch or witness will make you ill. You are fearful of contracting disease–cancer, tuberculosis, blood infection, appendicitis, rheumatism, etc. Your main thought is occupied with disease and your imagination plays with it uncontrollably. And disease claims you for its own, since you are ever attracting it.
If you have a poverty consciousness it is because your absorbing thought has been fear of poverty. You are always envisioning dependency, charity and the poorhouse. You pinch and economize, save and scrimp, and think only of money-possession. Some of the richest men in the world have the poverty consciousness. With all their money they are always poor–always afraid to spend. Poverty has its iron grasp upon their consciousness and the possession of all the gold in the world can never liberate it.
It is the same way with failure to succeed. The man who is unsuccessful has the unsuccessful consciousness. He is beaten every time before he starts by the deplorable operation of his cherished thought that he hasn’t it in him to succeed, that he lacks the qualities of success. Such a man will read “Success” books and works on will-power and self-confidence and perhaps be spurred to some effort to succeed, but he has a consciousness that fights down every thought of success and he falls back into his settled belief that this age is too strong for him, that there is too much competition, that his talents are not adaptable to the times.
Our states of consciousness are built up from sense sources as a rule, and have grown upon us until they determine our character. We believe that we conceal them, but we deceive ourselves. We manifest them to whosoever desires to read them. Our associations, our language, our preferences, our predilections, our actions–all manifest them. We express our consciousness in our inclinations, our speech and our habits.
There are states of consciousness for the public mind: a war consciousness; a sport consciousness; a political consciousness, developed strongly during election campaigns. Some capital event is scheduled to take place, a public consciousness is formed about it and news of it is sought at every telegraph and telephone station throughout the land. What we know as “public opinion,” the power that moves the state, society and the world, is the holding of some dominating thought in definite form in public consciousness.
There is a religious consciousness, manifest at various times, such as the Crusades and the Reformation. At these periods the world was occupied mainly with religious thought. It supplanted all other subjects. Many people believe that we are now approaching a great period of religious consciousness. The recognition of the fact that man is spirit and not body, and that God reveals Himself to us not through an external medium but in the individual soul, is growing steadily. Psychology, Mental Science, Christian Science, New Thought, Divine Science, Spiritualism, Unity, Truth and Occultism are all furnishing new systems of thought that are producing a world consciousness. All genuine science and philosophy are drifting in that direction and all church organizations will eventually follow in their wake to save their membership and to preserve their existence. The world is ready for a new and constructive religious consciousness.
If you have followed these Lessons studiously, earnestly and sincerely, as we asked you to do in the beginning, you are undoubtedly at this time building up for yourself a new consciousness. Let us review what we have acquired to establish this consciousness:
1. We have learned new things about the human brain. These facts, now generally taught in the schools of brain science, were unknown fifty years ago.
2. We have learned new things about the mind. The discovery of the subconscious mind is a development of the past fifty years, although the occultists have known of it for thousands of years. Its control of the body is now understood and its study has created a new science.
3. We have begun to understand the influence of the mind over the body in terms that we are familiar with. This knowledge is influencing every advanced medical school in the world today–something that was laughed at when Hahnemann introduced homeopathy in the last century–reducing a dose of medicine 10,000 times on the theory that it wasn’t medicine that cured, but the idea of taking it.
4. We have learned of mental science and psychology–new developments of the study of the mind and how they are put into effect to insure health, happiness, success and prosperity. Psychology has been adopted by the businessmen of the world, as they have recognized the value of this science in handling men and developing new powers in salesmen and selling agencies.
5. We have shown the crudities of the Old Thought about God and have taught you what God is on a basis that unites rationalism and religion.
6. We have endeavored to interpret Jesus as the expounder of the great truths about mind and spirit, the unifier of God and Man, the healer of souls and bodies, the introducing power of the New Thought of the Divine in its relation to mankind, which Science today is beginning to confirm.
7. We have shown you the methods by which Jesus healed and his transference of the knowledge of these methods to his followers; how he opened up for us in spirit the secret of all knowledge.
8. We have explained the nature of the soul of man and of its relation to the body, to the external world and to the Creator, and the supremacy of spirit over matter.
9. We have shown the creative process of Spirit in the Supreme Being and in Man, both essentially the same, functioning in thought and expressing through the power of the word in form.
10. We have put before you the essentials of soul union with God, in which the creature and the Creator may commune, the one presenting his wants and the Other lending of His omnipotent power to meet them by substantiating them or converting them from their essence in thought to their externalization in form.
11. Withal we have outlined the chain of creation, if not link by link, at least logically, so that the imagination may bring the whole into harmonious form before the mental vision.
12. We have shown you your possibilities, human and spiritual; that the kingdom of heaven is within you; that there is nothing in all the universe to fear; that there are no limitations to the human soul; that we can become even as Jesus became, one with God; that this life is not a preparation for the next but is to be lived to its fullest now; that we can enter into the kingdom and have supernal powers immediately, and that we have but to will it to be renewed and transformed, lifted out of the much of matter and raised to the spiritual plane of love, joy, gladness, health, harmony, order, well-being and usefulness to our fellow men.
We have reinforced these Lessons with books and booklets in which the Truth is set forth in words of convincing power, and have evidenced to you the wonders and “signs following” resulting from the application of this Divine Science.
In all of this we have sought to create within you a new state of consciousness; one that will transform your mind and produce a new birth.
We ask you now to develop this consciousness so that it may grow ever deeper, more profound and absorbing. If you have dreamed of being of use in the world this revelation of the power to acquire a new state of consciousness will show you the way. We cannot create this consciousness for you. We can only feed it. No one can create it, under God, but yourself, and no one can tell what it will do for you except God, Who will work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure.
Do not, as some unhappy people do, regard all of this as casual information. It is too vital for that. It is Truth itself as the greatest thinkers of the world have known it and as those inspired of God have taught.
Fill your consciousness with it, for it is divine–holding all that is lovely, harmonious and vitalizing. Go on from the level you have attained in these studies to higher flights. “Every man,” said a medieval writer, “has within him the making of a great saint,” which is to say that each of us can develop the divinity that is within us to the highest point attainable. You may do so. We pray that you may make the effort.
It is not by the use of the personal will alone that you can reach the heights, but by a union of your will with the Divine in a conscious effort to produce the highest results. It is not by the use of the subconscious mind alone that you will effect your desires but by the use of it as a bridge to span the breach between the finite and Infinite.
All of time for you has been unfolding for this one particular moment. All of the life you have lived so far culminates right now. The past is dead. The future is wrapped up in the present. The action of some moment of decision determines the direction of agencies that crystallize the decision of the now into the destiny of the future. To these Lessons you may have been Divinely directed. You are now in the way to begin. All things with God are in the now. A thing that you are to do tomorrow, or next week, or “later on,” is a negative. “Now” is the positive. “Now,” said the Psalmist, “I will begin.” He was an old man when he wrote those words, but he was not too old to begin, for he knew that he was beginning aright.
May it be that this shall be the beginning of the new consciousness on your part, if it is not already in process of creation, and that you never lose it, but continue developing it along the ever-upward spiral.
* * * * *
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“Nothing was different, yet this much I knew,
My soul stirred in its chrysalis of clay,
A strange peace filled me like a cup–I grew
Better, gladder and wiser on that day;
This dusty, worn-out world seemed made anew
Because God’s way had now become my way.”
Golden Grains
“He knows that power is in the soul, that he is weak only because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so, perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands erect, commands his limbs, works miracles.” (Emerson)
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
Nothing exists but God and His manifestations. God is the Source of all activity, all Wisdom, all Knowledge, all Substance. The Spirit of God is my Health and my Strength–the Love of God is my only Guide. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
Thought for the Silence
“My own life is identical with that of the In-Dwelling Spirit, which is now working through me to will and to do of Its own good pleasure; for this is Its intention; and my intention is to bring all my thoughts into harmony with it, so that whatsoever I think or do shall be dedicated to the glory of God–the All Good.”
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all Eternity, is expressing itself NOW as Perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
God is my loving Father. His Kingdom is within me. I seek first His kingdom and its right way of thinking and all else is added to me.
Resolution for the Week
I resolve this week to cultivate to the highest the new consciousness that I have acquired in the study of Divine Science. My feet are now placed upon the Way and I shall ascend into the Mountain of High Vision.
Suggestions for the Silence
Always enter the Silence with the assurance that God searches the secret places of the heart and that He knows the words that are upon thy tongue, for before you can utter your word He hears you. “Be still, and know that I am God.” A new consciousness is born when God moves upon the face of the waters. “What is man that Thou art mindful of him or the son of man that Thou visited him?”
Read with this Lesson
“New Thoughts on Old Doctrines, pages 3-32. [Online at Northwoods as Chapter 1 of that title.]
Reread “The Realm of Reality,” Chapter 2. [Online at Northwoods.]
“Astor Lectures,” pages 19-28. [Online at Northwoods.]
* * * * *
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Purity, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.
QUESTIONS
1. What word in New Thought has come to have a new meaning?
2. Give examples of forms of consciousness.
3. What is a public consciousness?
4. Have these Lessons aided you in building up for yourself a new consciousness?
5. Review what you have thus acquired to establish a new consciousness.
6. Can you reach the heights by your personal will alone?
7. What is the importance of the present moment?
* * * * *
Lesson XIV
CORRESPONDENCES
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
Education, in its literal sense, is an educing or drawing out of what we have within us that is latent. The Divine Spirit is dormant within most of us. It is as we clear away our mental debris for its expression that it becomes active and dominant. This is the education that we should cultivate and pursue to the end most completely possible to us.
There are within us spiritual powers that can save the soul and heal the body. To discover these, and to draw them out to active potency has been the object of these lessons. We have but fairly outlined the possibilities of this study. The development of the complete structure rests now with the student to go forward to the fullest possible acquisition of the knowledge of Truth. We have tried to furnish a working basis, but we can no more than outline the possibilities in that direction. The individual must win forward for himself by resolutely further pursuing his studies in Christian metaphysics.
What we have tried to stress is the necessity of acquiring a spiritual consciousness, and in this, the last Lesson on Correspondences, we hope to emphasize the necessity of seeing through “appearances” and visualizing at all times the Real behind the seeming.
We see the sun rising and setting, but it doesn’t rise or set. We see the paralleled railroad tracks draw to a point in the far distance, but they do not draw to a point at any distance. We see a moon as big as a washtub, but we know that it is a satellite of great size and weight. We see the edge of the sea, but we know that it is not the edge. We see the halo of an electric fan, but know that it is the rapid revolution of four brass blades. We see motion pictures full of life and movement, but we know that the figures and the scenery are not real, but merely photographic impressions.
We must learn to see this world and all that it contains in the same manner. We must learn that this world and all that it contains is not real; that, like the motion picture, it is not real, and that the real is the pattern which is not seen. We must learn to find the Correspondences in the Real of all that is objective in the unreal.
Now, what is the Real?
The philosophy of Idealism, running back into the great religions of the remotest antiquity and brought to perfection by Jesus of Nazareth, is that what we see with mortal sight is not real, but merely the manifestation of thought. Lossius says: “Idealism is the assertion that matter (and consequently the human body) is only a sensuous seeming, and that spiritual essences are the only real things in the world.” Idealism is also defined as “that philosophical view which regards what is thought as alone the actually existent.” The Kabala says: “Thought is the source of all that is.”
In Lesson VI we spoke of the constructive power of thought, and used as an illustration the mental planning of the architect that manifests itself eventually in the form of the completed building. The picture produced by an artist is first and last an idea in mind; the tabernacle of Moses was built after the pattern shown to him on the Mount. Thus, every object in the world, every object in Nature, is built after a plan conceived in thought, and owes its existence to antecedent ideas which it represents on a lower plane of being.
The entire universe, with its worlds, planets, suns and constellations, and all of Nature, from the Betelgeuse, 8,000 times the size of our earth, to the atom, with its own planetary system of electrons and ions, are but reflections of the Real universe, an outward and imperfect projection of the inner and perfect Spiritual universe, its pattern in Divine Mind. There is nothing in all this outer universe that is not perishable. Therefore there is nothing in it that is real, for the Real is imperishable.
We must ever seek to differentiate the real from the seeming. Ideas are real, spiritual thought is real. They are the true causing power, and we must learn to distinguish the causing power as the reality of an object, and not the effect, or the thing produced by the cause.
Thought and feeling are opposites, but they imply each other and conjoin with each other. If you think you are well your feeling unites with the thought to produce well-being. If you think you are ill your feeling correlates the thought and produces the state corresponding to it. Thought ever seeks to unite itself with feeling, and thus becomes faith, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen,” and it will tend to manifest itself in expression through the body. The world of ideas has a constant creative relation to the world of sense. Without it sense would be inoperative, inert, dead. This world of ideas is the real world, “the kingdom of the heavens,” as Jesus called it. “Wherever,” says Dr. W. F. Evans, “there is a material thing there is, back of it, as its soul and life and cause, an idea. All things in the natural world are but representations of things in the realm of ideas.” This is the doctrine of correspondence.
Thus the correspondence of any object is the real thought behind its cause. The object is the external shape, or appearance, or phenomenon; its correspondence is the mental idea in thought–its reality. Let us suppose that you look at a skyscraper, a beautiful bridge, a delicate watch or an exquisite flower. You are struck with its shape and beauty. You go away and yet carry it with you. How? In mind. You retain the idea of it. What is it that you have then? Not the object itself, but its correspondence–it is not the object that is real, but the corresponding idea in mind. You may revisit the spot in which you grew up as a child. “All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.” Gone are the houses, the buildings, the landscapes that you knew. They were not real. They have disappeared. The real is your mental reproduction of them, which derives from the ideas of which they were once the expression.
This truth is expressed perfectly in the fourth and fifth verses of the Second Chapter of Genesis: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were created, when Jehovah God made the earth and the heavens and every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew.” The Universe was thus created in the realm of the Real before it was manifested in the realm of phenomena, or appearance. Every plant of the field was created before it was in the earth, and every herb before it grew. Their appearance under earthly conditions is to be understood as a degradation, but one that has a reward, for the process can go no further. They touch the lowest line of descent in spiritual devolution and must turn upward in the order of ascent from these conditions. That which ascends must first have descended. The further turn of the wheel, or cycle, is upward. Jesus said that he had a glory with the Father before the world was, and this is true of us also, considering that “before the world was” means before the world was, to us.
In considering the Law of Correspondences and its relation to things physical as well as metaphysical, we must, however, bear in mind the meaning of this law as Swedenborg, who coined the phrase, understood it. From the point of view of the Scandinavian seer and mystic every so-called material thing has its spiritual side, or invisible counterpart, from which it takes its rise and without which it could not come into manifestation. It is according to this opinion that the saying: “That which takes place on earth has already transpired in heaven,” has come into use. To clarify his statements and make them more acceptable to the modern mind it is well to emphasize a change in the terminology, one that will not alter the meaing of the statements but will afford us a clearer conception of them.
Instead of saying that every material thing has its spiritual correspondence it is better to say that it has its mental correspondence, for this places the responsibility for all error where it belongs, in the intermediate plane of action between Spirit and so-called matter. We can accept the idea that there is a mental discord without compromising our belief in Spirit’s changeless harmony.
If every material manifestation were the correspondence of some spiritual reality back of it then there would be no escape from it, since that which obtains on the spiritual plane is eternal and indestructible. But because of mind’s mutability–the human mind’s mutability–all objective manifestation is nothing more nor less than the reproduction in visibility of invisible states and stages of consciousness. It is because of this that we can understand that every material thing has its mental correspondence, and this without affecting the spiritual order of things in the slightest degree, for if the spiritual order were in reality the pattern from which all visible things were reproduced then the chaos and confusion which exist on the material plane would be merely the developed picture or magnified expression of fixed ideas in the mind of God, and this we cannot believe.
When the word “spiritual” is used by students of the Law of Correspondences it does not do justice to Swedenborg, for that clear thinker had a word of his own, which he used, as we now use the word “spiritual.” He spoke of that highest place whereon all is peace and perpetual harmony as the “celestial,” wherein the Celestial there is nothing that can project itself into visibility save that which is like itself in perfection. Therefore if we use the word “mental” when we refer to the invisible counterpart of visible things we shall avoid much confusion in our own minds, and prevent it in the minds of others, through faulty interpretations.
Moreover we shall be careful what thoughts we permit to enter into the mental realm when we realize that their natural tendency is to translate themselves into physical conditions after their kind. It is this aspect of the Law of Correspondences which is particularly interesting to students of Divine Science, inasmuch as it is the practical application of a philosophy which might otherwise remain coldly intellectual. It is now generally accepted by students of psychology that mental states and physical conditions are as closely related as are cause and effect in the material world; that one follows the other, as “the dust follows the cart wheel” which moves along the road. We are now thoroughly convinced that disease in the human organism is not self-creative, and we have come over to the thought that it does not emanate altogether from what are spoken of as physical causes, but that it is all too frequently the result of some unhappiness in the mind; some inner disturbance which we keep to ourselves as a suppressed emotion until it generates a heat of its own, which we call a fever or congestion, both of which are Nature’s methods of ridding the system of conditions which, if left alone, will lead to other and more serious conditions.
The connection between unhappiness and ill-health requires neither explanation nor emphasis, for it is well known by thoughtful people as the connection between fire and heat, or sun and sunlight. One presages the other inevitably. It is not that we need to be assured of this, but that we need to be shown the remedy for it all.
Admitting that we are unhappy, and sick in consequence, how shall we find happiness and the health which attends it? One thing, and perhaps the first thing, we must learn is that we carry within us the God-endowed potentialities of our own recovery. This may not seem to be the case at first glance, because we have tried “all we know how” without any relief, mentally or physically. But are there not many things which we try without success until some simple method is shown to us, when the difficult becomes the simple, and we wonder why we did not see it for ourselves? One may work for hours over some little difficulty on a typewriter or an automobile which keeps one from one’s work, when someone comes along and with a simple twist or two sets the matter straight. The possibility of establishing the cure was in the machine all along. The trouble is that one did not know where to look for it. Having been shown, should the same disease occur again one knows exactly what to do to cure it.
Discovering that these little mechanical corrections are within our own power we discover that it is in some such way that we are going to discover our spiritual potentialities and learn to so utilize them that good health, and its accompaniment of happiness, will be the most natural thing in the world. All the finest qualities of the human soul exist in us, as the plant exists in the seed, or the lily in the bulb. What we must do is that which Paul recommended Timothy to do, “Stir up the gift that is within thee.” Most of us are like certain liquids which have “to be shaken before taken.” We have allowed the gist of the Holy Spirit to become a sediment in our lives instead of an active agent for the elimination of mental unrest and physical disturbance.
There is in each of us an ideal, immortal man. We are constantly striving to climb upward to a realization of this perfect manhood, a union with the Divine. We are forever struggling to find this Ideal Man as a fact of consciousness and to recognize in ourselves “the pattern shown on the Mount,” wherein we see ourselves as the image and likeness of God. The divinity within man is forever calling upon him for complete union with Divinity Itself. To free ourselves of all the conditions in which we have been imprisoned is our chief and perfect aim, so that we may unite ourselves the more closely with the Infinite Source of Life and return to the Reality from which, it appears, we have been exiled. When we succeed in doing this we shall be glorified with the glory that we had before the world existed for us.
Therefore in spiritual healing we must look through the seeming to find the real. By the use of the X-ray the surgeon looks through this “too, too solid flesh,” and we may by spiritual discernment do the same thing to discover through it our spiritual essences. The spiritual man is perfect. He is in the image and after the likeness of his Creator. In the spiritual man there can be no sin, sickness or disease. The correspondence of the physical is the spiritual. The correspondence of disease is health.
What is needed always is to focus the mind on the Spiritual Man, the pattern in the mind of Jehovah God when He made man male and female, in His own image and after His own likeness, as spiritual beings. The power of suggestion, or enforcing one’s will upon another, is mortal, and healing through this means is not true healing. Healing must be done by impartation, not by suggestion. Healing is from above, flowing down through spirit, soul and body. To effect this we must not only use affirmations and denials, but we must visualize the Spiritual Man, pure, whole, painless, the perfect pattern in the mind of the Creator, of which physical man is but an imperfect copy.
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PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
Golden Grains
And, as the path of duty is made plain,
May grace be given that I may walk therein;
Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain,
With backward glances and reluctant tread,
Making a merit of his coward dread–
But cheerful in the light around me thrown,
Walking as one to pleasant service led,
Doing God’s will as if it were my own,
Yet trusting not in mine, but in His strength alone!
Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
Lead, lead me on, my hopes; I know that ye are true, and not in vain. Ye vanish from my eyes day after day, but arise in new forms. I will follow your holy deceptions; follow till ye have brought me to the feet of my Father in heaven, where I shall find ye all with folded wings, spangling the sapphire dusk, wherein stands His throne, which is our Home.
Thought for the Silence
“My own life is identical with that of the In-Dwelling Spirit, which is now working through me to will and to do of Its own good pleasure; for this is Its intention; and my intention is to bring all my thoughts into harmony with it, so that whatsoever I think or do shall be dedicated to the glory of God–the All Good.”
Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all Eternity, is expressing itself NOW as Perfect Health.
Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
“Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thy heart.”
Resolution for the Week
I resolve never to be deluded by appearances, but to see in all things only the Real.
Suggestions for the Silence
“So also did I conceive of Thee, Life of my life, as vast, through infinite spaces on every side penetrating the whole mass of the Universe, and beyond it every way, through immeasurable boundless spaces; so that the earth should have Thee, the heavens have Thee, all things have Thee; and they are bounded in Thee and Thou bounded nowhere.” (St. Augustine)
Read with this Lesson
“The Realm of Reality,” Chapter XXI. [Online at Northwoods.]
The entire 11th chapter of Hebrews.
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DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Purity, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.
(This is the last of the Series of Lessons in the Course.)
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Rev. Murray’s
ANSWERS TO STUDY QUESTIONS
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
LESSON I
1. Life is the animating Principle of the Universe, the sustaining power of Being proceeding from the Creator.
2. God is the Source of all Life.
3. Religion is the consciousness of God within the soul and its function is to bind together man and his Maker.
4. Health is wholeness, soundness; the perfect manifestation of Life and the perfect functioning of the physical.
5. Man is spirit and is an emanation from the one and only Spirit. Therefore man is spiritual and not material.
6. Mind is the functioning or distributing power of the soul. It is the master of the body and the source of creative power through thought. It is the mind that apperceives, and nothing exists for us except as apprehended by the mind.
7. We have the power through the mind and the will, directed by the soul, to accomplish or to be whatever we desire.
LESSON II
1. We do our thinking with the mind through the brain.
2. The brain is not the source of thought but the instrument of the mind.
3. The difference between man and all other creatures of the earth lies largely in the fact that man’s mind alone has the power of word-making, and that man alone expresses thought in articulare speech.
4. The theory of man’s ascent through all forms and species of animal life is unprovable because of the law confining each species to its own sphere, but particularly because Man has the Logos, or the Word.
5. Because the brain is but the instrument of the mind. Confusion of terms frequently produces the impression of brain power when mind power is meant.
6. The influence of the mind upon the body is powerful enough to cause even death, or to suspend pain that amounts to agony. Mental influence cures “hopeless” paralytics and makes giants of weaklings.
7. We can be sickly or well, strong or weak, prosperous or otherwise, according to the direction given to Thought by the mind, which always dominates matter.
8. When it is ordered by the mind acting under the direction of the soul. Whenever mind diverts thought from the soul’s purposes it becomes destructive.
9. It is within the power of each of us to use the mind so as to produce the best results possible for the realization of our desires and ambitions. The comprehension of the immense powers of mind, operating under the direction of the soul, which in turn is under the influence of Spirit, enables us to bring about the conditions we desire, providing we desire with intensity.
LESSON III
1. The discovery of the nature and functions of the subjective mind has revealed the power man has over his body and his activities through mental suggestion to the subconscious.
2. The objective mind is the mind that sees, thinks, reasons, wills and determines from facts placed before it. The subconscious or subjective mind does not reason but acts entirely on suggestion and is capable of marvelous performances under that power. All habits are formed by the subconscious mind, which is at work incessantly carrying out the orders of the objective mind.
3. “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” This truth is confirmed by a knowledge of the methods of mind operation, for all that we do and all that we are proceeds from mind, and happiness or unhappiness, peace or disorder; health or ill-health, are all results of mental states.
4. The necessity of coming to an apprehension of the truth on this subject and of putting our mental house in order are preliminaries towards beginning the work of recovery or achievement.
5. Constructive or destructive processes are determined by positive or negative thoughts and the conflict between them produces only confusion, disorder and disease, while the intelligent choice of thought produces the results we want.
6. This Lesson is a disclosure of the powers of the objective and subjective minds and a revelation of the fact that by right use of them we have the accomplishment of our dearest ambitions entirely in our own hands.
LESSON IV
1. Health and success are combined because one is the result of the other. With renewed health comes renewed mental activity.
2. You must be convinced of the fact that your healing lies within your own hands and make up your mind to do all that will be required of you to recover or achieve it.
3. Positive thoughts bring good results, negative thoughts bring evil results. To effect a change of thinking one must put one’s house in order and determine what results we wish to secure.
4. The mind is comparable to a garden and if it is overrun with weeds we must treat it as we would a garden plot similarly afflicted. The offensive weeds must be removed and the ground spaded over and replanted. We must then watch the new growths carefully and keep them free from mental pests and insects.
5. A list of positive and negative thoughts helps us to know what we have to cast out and that with which we must replace. The old thought can be made the basis of implanting the new. Here we have a chapter on practical work that we should often read and think over, as it is filled with suggestions based on experience in thousands of instances.
6. How to start well in the morning, how to make work a joy and gladness during the day and how to see what is best in your neighbor. How to spend the evening and how to acquire time for reflection and solitude, the planting and cultivating period. How to charge the subjective mind with constructive thought on retiring, the best time to instruct the subconscious mind.
7. The value of denials and affirmations and how to use both in the treatment of disease and failure, and for health and prosperity. Following this practice produces results, for it is a law.
LESSON V
1. This Lesson contains briefly the teachings of Divine Science as contrasted with the teachings of the Christian Churches of various denominations, and in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.
2. The God that we have been taught to believe in is an angry and wrathful Man-God, dwelling in the skies in a far-off heaven, with surroundings pictured by the Oriental mind of the Jewish people.
3. This is not the God that Jesus taught about, who dwells within us and who is at all times accessible to us through out consciousness.
4. The works that Jesus did we can do, for he passed the power on to us as power obtained through him with God, who “doeth the work.”
5. The age of miracles has not passed but is existing now as “miracles” of healing are wrought through the Christ consciousness in man.
6. It is necessary in order to contact with the source of Mind to use spiritual healing instead of mental healing. The mind is a part of the Universal mind and the Universal power can be attained to co-operate with, direct and guide it.
7. It is possible to all of us to add to our own powers those of Omnipotence through spiritual union and by understanding of the laws under which the Spirit operates.
LESSON VI
1. God, the source of life, is the source of health. He is the fountain of health.
2. God is apprehended more through feeling than through the mind. St. Paul’s address to the Greeks is quoted as revealing this truth and disclosing the Apostle’s knowledge of God as immanent, indwelling, Principle in all of us.
3. God is not Person but Principle. As Person He could not be omnipresent. As Principle He is the active power in and through all things.
4. The Universe is God’s thought expressed by the Word of Creation and externalized in form. It is the Idea in the Divine Mind pressed out into visibility.
5. Principle is best defined by illustrations from mathematics, music and goodness. Spiritual or metaphysical truths must be expressed in terms of human relations, and much confusion of thought results because of lack of proper words to express ideas relating to the spiritual plane. The conception of God as Father is the one generally adopted, although God is really Father-Mother.
6. An understanding of God as the source of creative energy and the Co-operator with us in expression is the proper way to view the subconscious mind.
7. No description of God is as convincing as God’s witnessing of Himself to the individual soul that seeks Him. It is in the depths of our own being that God makes Himself manifest. To attempt to define God is to lose Him.
LESSON VII
1. The Scriptural summary of Jesus’ life is: God annointed him with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.” (Acts 10:38, R.V.)
2. He began his ministry by healing and working wonders. His powers came from identity with Spirit. He spake as never man spake before because he was teaching the Divine Science to mankind.
3. Yes, as man is divine, or can become divine. Jesus developed within himself the divinity which is in all of us, and developed it to the highest point, to identity with God. In Jesus God is manifested as He is and as man ought to be.
4. To teach mankind the nature and obligations of Divine Sonship. To show us that what he did we could also do and that what he was we could be. To restore to man his spiritual inheritance.
5. It is of the highest importance that we realize Jesus as man, even as ourselves; otherwise we lose the point of his teaching. What he asked of us was perfection, and his life was an example of a perfection to which we may attain.
6. It is to permeate the world. It is certain of world adoption, not by old methods, but by world penetration. It will reconstruct civilization, revolutionize educational systems and clear the way to every man for his spiritual emancipation.
7. Jesus was not the victim of hallucinations or a visionary. His sanity is attested in all his words, his actions and his philosophy. To say otherwise is to attribute the highest thought of which man is capable to the possessor of a deranged mind, which, logically, is a fallacy.
LESSON VIII
1. See Scriptural quotation at end of first paragraph of this Lesson (VIII).
2. The healings of Jesus were not miracles in the sense that they were a suspension of Nature’s laws, but were the result of the application of the knowledge that Jesus had as the Christ in his union with the Father, God. “The words I speak are not of myself”; he said, “it is the Father who dwelleth in me. He doeth the works.” “It is the Father. He doeth the works.”
3. The churches threw away the key to this control through the Christ consciousness of the higher laws which Jesus gave us access to. A recognition of the fact that they were effected through spiritual means in union with the Father recaptures the Truth in the teachings of Jesus.
4. The spiritual means are faith, purity of life and a development of spiritual powers within us not exercised by us. Jesus gave us his word that “the works that I do ye shall do, and even greater than these shall ye do.”
5. Jesus healed people not only of their diseases but of their sins. To “save” means to heal. This is what is meant when it is said that Jesus came to save us from our sins. We have power through the Christ consciousness to heal ourselves and to heal others. It is not too much to say that we should regard Jesus as the Healer rather than as the Saviour.
6. The belief that sickness or disease is sent by God as a punishment for our sins, or as a discipline for our souls, is totally erroneous, since sickness and disease do not come from God but from ourselves. Jesus, in healing disease, would not set aside the operation of the will of God or of his discipline.
7. The promises of Jesus are of as much force and importance today as they ever were and can be relied on to the uttermost, since he declared that his word should never pass away.
LESSON IX
1. Final analysis of what we call “matter” reduces it to the atom and in more minute reductions we come to pure force or energy, the manifestation of Spirit.
2. The word that we should use for “matter” is form, shape or appearance. As for instance: “That appearance which we call matter.” All forms are visible to us through the optic nerves telegraphing to the mind’s eye, which is our real visual power.
3. Intuition, presentiments of things happening or about to happen, foreseeing and foreknowing, telepathy, visions of things happening at a distance, revelation through apparitions and the power of projecting itself beyond the physical plane and time and space as we know them.
4. The soul is the ego, or man; the individual. The body is its visible manifestation created so as to give it visibility. The soul has the creative power of Spirit and makes the body for itself here as it will make a form for itself hereafter.
5. The soul is the man; the body the physical appearance; the spirit the divinity within man. Soul and mind are interconvertible terms meaning the same thing. Spirit is God and our spirit is God manifesting Himself in us.
6. By the violent and lawless operation of the soul in turning away from the direction of Spirit and following the carnal impulses of the senses. By failure to realize Truth, the “Truth that sets us free.” To follow Truth is to live in the kingdom of heaven, and it is this we pray for when we say: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
LESSON X
1. Faith is implicit belief. It is the indestructible confidence in a power that is higher than ourselves, a Power that directs our affairs, comforts us and protects us. St. Paul’s definition of faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
2. Because it proceeds from the heart, and God, knowing the heart in all its movements, rewards it. Because it is faith in the unseen. By faith we call into existence our strongest forces and the greater our faith the more do we intensify them.
3. The essence of faith is to believe that the thing we desire and ask for is the thing we have already received. It is in existence, and our belief in its being, combined with fervent prayer, brings it into objective reality.
4. By holding in mind a picture of what we pray for, and by the prayer of a living faith, we are certain of an answer to our desires. Generally what we want is at our hand if we could open our eyes to see it, and prayer, inspired by faith, opens the eyes.
5. Faith is a most intense form of mental action, a union of the intellectual and the emotional. It is a means of unifying all our powers. It was what Jesus required, above all, from those whom he healed, and the quality that he set forth as a basis of power.
6. Conscious faith, because it is a union of heart, soul and intellect–all that we have–in a confession of unquestioning loyalty to the Father of all.
LESSON XI
1. The importance of this Lesson lies in the opening of the mind to the meaning and power of the spoken word.
2. All the messages of God to men have been expressed in words by a Voice speaking and the term “Word” has a mystic significance as the instrument of the Creator in uttering thought into form.
3. Christ is the “Word,” St. John declares, by which all things were made, who was with God in the beginning, and who was God, “and without him nothing was made.”
4. The capacity of man to share creative power with the Creator is manifest in his sole power, with God, to create by the expression of the word.
5. That we are to be held accountable for every idle word is a declaration to be taken with the utmost seriousness, for not only does our brain mechanism record words and our subsconscious mind retain them, but it would seem as if the very ether held them forever–that they are imperishable.
6. The word we most frequently use is the name of God as given to Moses: ‘I AM.” I-Am is especially a word of power in creating conditions of existence.
7. The value of the word of affirmation is that consciously spoken in appreciation of Divine co-operation we can bring about all the conditions that are necessary to our happiness and welfare.
8. Affirmative declarations for the morning, the day and the night consecrate the thoughts that we hold and the works that we do.
9. We cannot be too careful in the use of our words, for our accountability for them is a positive declaration of the Lord Christ.
LESSON XII
1. The old method of prayer, by recitation of set forms of prayer, conflicts with the true conception of prayer, because of its “vain repetitions” and “much speaking.”
2. Prayer is an opening of the mind upward to receive what God is willing to give. It is a natural instinct of the soul and it is a part of the Divine plan that we should find relief in it.
3. The true form of prayer is Contemplation, in which we meditate upon what we are, upon the Omnipresence and Omnipotence of God, on what we need to aspire to, and upon God’s promises to those who seek Him in this manner.
4. We can be certain of God’s co-operation because, after adopting the practice of meditation, we discover the entrance into our lives and affairs of many new things and we gain a new consciousness for ourselves.
5. The practice of silent prayer, or meditation, brings a new state of mind because it involves the elimination of carnal thoughts and conceptions and the adoption of Truth in the form in which it is most adaptable to our disposition and which will bring us the largest rewards.
6. To physical exercises or athletic training. Our long-used spiritual faculties respond to meditation on Truth in just the same manner that the muscles and sinews of the body respond to physical exercise.
7. That too much emphasis is laid on that power so far as Meditation is concerned. Concentration may be developed in the Silence, but we are not to refrain from taking up the practice of the Silence because of a belief that we cannot concentrate.
8. It is a test of the spiritually-minded and to adopt this method of prayer is to enter upon the Way.
LESSON XIII
1. The word “consciousness.”
2. Fear consciousness, poverty consciousness, disease consciousness, etc.
3. A war consciousness, a spirit consciousness, a political consciousness, etc., the state of mind that constitutes what we know as “public opinion” is a public consciousness of certain important facts.
4. This is a personal matter to be best answered by the student himself.
5. This is to briefly review the points enumerated in the Lesson.
6. No, we can reach the heights only through the union of our mind with the Divine Mind. The more perfect the will in that direction the more close the union is likely to be.
7. It is that all of life that I have lived so far culminates at this moment. The past is dead and the future is determined now. I am now in the Way to begin.
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http://www.angelfire.com/wi2/ULCds/wjmAA.html
Northwoods Divine Science Resource Center
Presenting the Divine Science teachings of
Rev. W. JOHN MURRAY
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