As a young man growing up in Newfoundland, an island Province in the easternmost part of Canada, my first awareness of the existence of different levels of consciousness came through reading various books which I had difficulty comprehending with the rational mind. There was one book in particular called Mount Analogue by Rene Daumal which is an allegorical adventure story about a group of people setting out on an expedition to discover a mountain said to exist somewhere in the South Pacific and which could only be reached at a certain time of the day because it existed on another dimension in time and space. When the adventurers finally reach the island after careful mathematical calculations which enabled them to break through normal time-space limitations, they learn that they need to find guides to take them to the base camp and that they cannot leave the base camp until they in turn bring others to that level. Only then can they move up.

I first read this book as an adventure story, but upon re-reading it, I discovered that it was written on many levels of understanding and that it contained many mysteries veiled in esotericism which awakened me to my own inner search for higher consciousness. It was a little like Jonathan Livingston Seagull discovering the vast potentials of flying. I began to believe, like Jonathan, that our process and that our own bodies are nothing but thought in form and by expanding the thought one could make the form anything one wanted to be. Then, Ouspensky’s book The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution led me further from my hitherto accepted philosophy into the realms of self-discovery and a study of my form.

There had been nothing in my education thus far that had even hinted at man expanding his limitations, which I began to see were self-imposed. It was a further revelation to me to learn that man is so structured that he has to first create the tools within himself in order to unleash the power to think, and that a man simply cannot comprehend new information or new knowledge until a corresponding vibratory brain cell has been willingly prepared to absorb it. This was explained to me in India where I talked with various holy men and gurus and which I subsequently verified through my own inner experiments. Then for the first time did I understand why it was so difficult to accept or even appreciate an entirely new idea.

This suddenly explained the dilemma presented in The Greening Of America which talks of the first three levels of consciousness. Having no brain cells capable of receiving new knowledge, man is naturally incredulous and simply does not believe. Worse still, man rejects new information and so becomes crystallized at his present level of consciousness.

The idea of having the ability to create new brain cells and thus expand one’s consciousness was the key out of a prison for me. Suddenly my ears were hearing of the law of attraction and the scientific method by which it can be put into operation. We never learn in schools and universities that every cell in the body is conscious and will respond to our conscious direction; nor are we told that the cells in turn are creators and the destiny of their pattern is also within our control; nor are we told that the quality of the brain is governed by our state of mind or our mental attitude, which depends on the quality of our energy and the fitness of our body, and that if undesirable mental attitudes are conveyed to the mind, they will, in turn, be transferred to the body. It is therefore obvious that if we wish the body to manifest health, strength, and vitality, these must be our dominant thoughts. We must at all times refuse to entertain negative thought.

I was never told, nor had I discovered in any of my college books that mental action is really a rate of vibration and that a higher state of vibration governs, modifies, controls, and can actually destroy a lower rate of vibration. This rate of vibration is governed by the character of the brain cells that we choose to create.

It slowly became obvious to me that in order to comprehend the possibilities of changing one’s level of consciousness one had first to destroy or at least control all negative thoughts, which are such a powerful force in closing off our minds to new thoughts. There is a mind in every atom of the body. Each cell is endowed as a living organism, with sufficient intelligence to perform its necessary duties. It is also endowed with sufficient intelligence to conserve the energies and perpetuate its own life.

Each cell is born, reproduces itself, dies, and is absorbed. The maintenance of health and life is dependent upon the constant regeneration of these cells. This is the mind in every atom of the body, and this mind is negative mind. It is the power of the individual to think that makes him positive so that he can control his negative mind. Indeed this is also the scientific explanation for metaphysical healing and will enable anyone to understand the principle upon which this remarkable phenomena rests.

It is obvious to all of us that all things have their origin in the mind and appearances are the result of thought. Each man is a reflection of the thought he has entertained during his lifetime. Yet strange as it may seem, there are many men who are not yet ready to enter into the discipline necessary to think correctly, even though it is self evident that wrong thinking has brought failure. But in my own personal search, all the material I read and all the great thinkers I ferreted out and all the hours, and indeed weeks, and months I spent in India and other parts of the world, failed to give me the secrets of the gigantic jigsaw puzzle I sought. I did not know if it was my own lack of consciousness which made it impossible for me to totally grasp what I was reading, or what they were saying, or whether they were deliberately giving out only scraps of information to whet my appetite.

True seekers soon realize that many Eastern books have lost much in their translation. One even gets the impression that the Western mind is deliberately led off the track, because the knowledge has been hidden. Yet all Eastern mysticism attempts to teach you to increase your level of consciousness and all any author can really do is attempt, through the quality of his own brain cells, to refine the material he has read and accumulated and pass it on to the reader in the most coherent manner possible.

The more we search and the more we travel, the more we realize that the search is an inner one, not an external one. As long as we think it is external, we can never find it and therefore whether we call it meditation or simply sitting quietly in a silent room and concentrating in the beginning on a word, which can simply be your name or love, or God, we discover by sitting quietly, with our backs straight and using the word to still the mind, that this is the beginning of cooling down the body and starting to realize the possibility of expanded consciousness. It is like the peeling away of onion skins. It is very subtle. It happens slowly and without a quiet twenty minutes each day we cannot change, even subtly, our present level of consciousness. We can read all the books we can find, but all they do is stimulate the mind into possibilities bringing us hopefully to a point where our desire is strong enough to carry us to accepting new knowledge.

All of us can see that this world is slowly approaching the threshold of a new consciousness.  The power to think is common to all of us.  Man is what he thinks, but man does not yet know that his power to think is infinite.  Consequently his own creative power is unlimited if he but believes.   There are three steps, each one is absolutely essential.  First, you must accept the knowledge of your own untapped power.  Secondly, you must have the courage to dare to unlock it and use it.  Thirdly, you must have the faith to do it purely. But you must also have a strong will, because if you scatter your energy forces, nothing is accomplished.  You require energy to concentrate.  This is vital to the unlocking of the knowledge you can obtain, and the lower the quality of energy, the lower the level of consciousness.  All of us can see that the less a man thinks, the more he has to work for those who think.  Therefore, in order to raise your consciousness from whatever level it is now, you must acquire the knowledge of how to obtain the necessary energy your body needs.  All mysticism including all Yoga, starting with Hatha Yoga, is designed to get your body in the proper physical condition and your mind harmonious in order that you may increase your consciousness.  This book is simply a gathering together and refining of as much material as possible on ways and means to increase your energy level, which in turn will increase your consciousness, which in turn will increase your power to think.

A new civilization is being born before our very eyes.  Old customs, old creeds, and outdated precedents are slowly but surely passing away.  Vision, new faith, and service are taking their place.  the long-forged chains of traditions are slowly, through increased consciousness, being melted from humanity.  Thought is being liberated and truth is rising in full orbit before the astonished multitude.  Our world in essence is on the threshold of a new consciousness, new power, and a new realization within the self.  It is a thrilling time to be alive.

Each of us now, if we desire, can join this new consciousness and expand our own potential beyond anything we have ever conceived possible.  But first we have to begin with correcting the faults and dishonesty within our own body.  It is hard for us to realize, starting with the most basic thing, and that is the amount of energy we use up in the body by digesting and clearing through the system a tremendous amount of unnecessary food that is stealing energy from us, thereby reducing the quality of our thinking and holding down our possibility for conscious expansion.

Most people take a long time to realize how they have been indoctrinated into thinking that they are eating good food or feeding their children good food, when actually they are eating a lot of dead food or totally useless food, thereby daily giving the body a great amount of unnecessary work.  A classic example of this is the breakfast cereals we have been led to believe were a necessary part of our morning food intake.  This has been exploitation of our gullibility, because we now know they contain little, if any, nutritious value and simply through dishonest advertising they have won the confidence of the consumer when actually they are destroying our energy and the energy of our children.  We simply have to utilize a large amount of body energy to digest and pass this useless bulk through our system when this energy could have been used much more constructively by the mind.  It is vital that we understand the importance of putting proper food into our systems and the systems of our children.

You are what you eat.  If you are eating garbage in the form of non-nutritious foods you are certainly not thinking.   You are only accepting advertising or traditional food habits that are simply inbred consumer indoctrination.  I believe that many diseases, including cancer, are created by wrong diet because the body enzymes use up so much energy digesting and clearing out this bad food, so that the enzymes are unable to maintain our physical balance.  The carelessness with which we put things into our mouths without thinking is monumental.  How can we expect our mind to develop the energy for higher consciousness when our bodies almost continually are wrapped around pounds of the wrong kind of food?

You are an organism seeking new knowledge and yet men spend years reading esoteric material, but they never think of fasting for two days to first clear out their system in order to give it a rest so that they can use the energy to increase their consciousness.  The thought that they might have to go forty-eight hours without putting any food into their body frightens many.  Yet it is perfectly safe and after two days, if you just drink water with some lemon juice, you will immediately discover how much better you feel, how much clearer your thoughts are.   But at the end of the fast, don’t simply stuff yourself again with useless food.   Eat some fresh fruit and lots of salads or fresh vegetables; but at least this will give you the opportunity to see how the body is in control, rather than the mind.   The body eats because it has developed appetite, not because of hunger.  We eat far too much and you only have to look to realize the unnecessary excess weight most people carry.  Most men in their early thirties are already carrying around a pot that they do not need but which their never-ending appetite keeps maintaining.

It is really essential to have at least one day a month, and preferably one day a week where you give your system twenty-four hours to rest.  If you think about this, after a few minutes, it becomes self-evident and if you are seriously interested and have the desire to increase your consciousness from its present level, you will have to entertain the thought of getting your body into shape.   It is the only thing you have to work with.  Even after twenty-four hours with nothing but juices the body will start generating more energy and you will find that you will be able to concentrate more easily.

Each man, of course, has the free will to be satisfied to spend the rest of his life at his present level of consciousness.  As Gurdjieff, the Russian philosopher has said, every man may be compared to a person in prison, but he does not even know that he is in prison.  The prison is one of our present level of consciousness but he has never related his consciousness to energy because he has never been taught anything about energy or the ability to develop it.   He only knows that when he exerts himself he becomes tired and he does not think as well when he is tired as when he is refreshed after a good rest.  Nor does he relate the way he tires himself through unnecessary worry or fear with his thinking processes.  

When a man goes to university, he starts to realize the difference in other people’s consciousness.  He also discovers that many of the professors are simply repeating a lot of information that they have accumulated but are not teaching new methods of thinking.  They are repeating other men’s thoughts in the belief that this is the learning process.  There are no courses, to my knowledge, in any of the present universities, on ways and means to increase consciousness and develop energy.  It is the sterility of our present day educational system that is making thousands and thousands drop out, refusing to waste their energy trying to simply memorize a lot of useless and, in many cases, incorrect information.

It is only when a person becomes restless and rejects the old methods and has the desire and the energy to seek elsewhere that he begins to learn.  Sooner or later, for at least a few brief moments, all of us start to feel pangs of curiosity to comprehend what seems to be a meaningless existence.   We start to feel that there must be more to learn and more knowledge to know, but it appears very illusive.  Nobody has explained to us the need or even the ability we possess to develop new brain cells, but once we understand this and accept the possibility, we have taken the first step in our long journey.

The law of attraction or the law of love is the law that is absolutely vital for any understanding of our ability to control our destiny.  If you think about it, you will accept that our mental attitude is like a magnet and like attracts like.  Consequently, one’s mental attitude will invariably attract such conditions that correspond to its nature.  Our mental attitude is in essence our personality, and this is composed entirely of the thoughts we have been creating in our own mind.  Therefore, if we wish a change in our conditions, we must first, of necessity, change our mental attitude.  Once we have changed our mental attitude our personality will change.  This in turn will change the conditions and experiences we meet in life.  We must accept however that it is not easy to change our mental attitude, but by persistent effort is can be accomplished.

Our mental attitude is patterned after the mental pictures that we have photographed on the brain.  If you are not satisfied with these pictures, destroy the negatives and create new pictures.  This is known as the art of visualization.  This may sound difficult because it is new information you have not heard about in exactly this way.  You haven’t been sitting still long enough to comprehend the possibility that you can change your personality.  But consider for a minute how your habits are formed.  We do a thing or say a thing and we do it over and over again until it becomes almost automatic.  The same rule applies in directing any and all bad habits.  First we have to stop thinking or doing a thing and then avoid it again and again until we are entirely free of it.  If we fail, we should by no means lose hope because only through our efforts is change possible.  Right gestures lead to right ways.

If you truly desire to raise your level of consciousness, regardless of your motive, a start has to be made somewhere.  Most men never even give any thought to the possibility.  They use their energy totally on whatever level their consciousness is to simply reach the material aims they have set for themselves.  They neither realize that the less they think, the more they will have to work for men who do think, nor do they question their aims, if indeed they have even formulated any, because the hypnotism of their own activity consumes their energy.   It is only when they have suffered some illness or their first heart attack and they lie on their backs immobilized do they begin to even question their aims, their motives, and the pattern of their lives.  Most men never experience the attainment of more than enough material goods, so they can never understand what enough is.  A few desire that there be other things that should have their energy besides simply making money.  I cannot speak for any man other that myself, but having achieved my material aims, I decided after a long and antagonizing period of restlessness to try and begin to comprehend all of the books I had read, only to discard them again in total frustration.

I decided that first is was going to be necessary to purify my body, and that in itself was quite a battle because my tastes had been carefully conditioned.  But after battling with my senses I was able to undertake a series of fasts, the longest of which lasted for ten days.  This demonstrated to me the change that was possible in the clarity of my own thinking and a tremendous improvement in my own physical well-being.  I then decided to do something that I had been thinking of, on and off, for years, and that was to go to India.  But my business activities had never allowed me the total freedom of going without a timetable, and I knew deep within myself that unless I could go, determined to stay as long as I needed to discover whatever I was seeking, that it was a waste of time.   Once you have a deadline you are always in a hurry and this fact alone, at least for me, made it impossible to go to India with the freedom to seek out whatever it was my curiosity seemed unable to ignore.  Finally I was able to detach myself from my possessions.

It was not necessary to give them up in the literal sense, but it was necessary to give them up in the sense of being possessed by them.  Once we detach ourselves from our possessions we are free of them.  They no longer own us.  We, for the first time, own them.  We are no longer the slave to money.  We have mastered it.  It’s not an easy point to reach.  It is probably the most difficult because we are haunted by insecurity.  We are fearful of the future, and this fear keeps us in bondage.  But finally I got on a plane with the determination never to return to the West unless I found what I was seeking.  I knew vaguely that all I was doing was taking my physical body to a distant land, and that really my search was an inner one, not an external search, but that maybe in some mystical way the actual change of vibrations in a culture totally different than anything I had ever experienced would unlock the barrier that I was trying to batter down.  Before going to India I fasted and meditated.

I got on the plane in Los Angeles and during the thirty-two hours it took to reach India I continued my fast because I wanted to prepare my body for a complete change in food and thereby conserve my energy so that my body would not be susceptible to all the disease I had been told existed on the Indian continent.  Consequently, during my entire stay in India I did not suffer any illness of any kind.  In fact my body grew stronger and stronger and although I had taken a little kit bag of all the best medication, including penicillin and antibiotics, I never once had to use it personally although I did use it on behalf of the other members of the group who picked up some of the various viruses that are so easily contracted in India where the sanitation is somewhat less than what our systems are used to in the Western world.

When I arrived in India, my first reaction was to get back on the plane.  It was a cultural shock of such magnitude that I found it hard at first to even comprehend and I am speaking, of course, of when one leaves the major cities and goes into the villages which is the same as going back five thousand years in time.  It took me several months to adjust to the change in vibrations that I felt all around me.  It is rather like being in a movie where everybody, except yourself, is in slow motion.  Time does not seem to exist.  If you met a stranger, he would talk to you as long as you wished to talk.  If you asked for directions, someone would volunteer and go for miles out of his way, without any thought of monetary reward, to help you find whoever you are looking for or wherever you want to go.

Slowly but surely, in the most isolated areas of India, my values and consciousness started subtly to change.  The western mind is so caught up with viewing everything on a material level and judging everything from appearances that it is extremely difficult, at least it was for me, to shake off my attitudes and my indoctrination’s.  But slowly one starts to see everything differently and to hear things differently, to realize that men are what they are inside, instead of judging them from their external appearances.  Surplus weight fell away and my body started to get lighter.  It was easier to recognize the subtleties of the ego, and to understand the need for discernment and to allow one’s feelings, as well as one’s thinking, to come into balance.

We have been told, at least in many of the eastern books, that when we are ready to find a teacher one will appear and there are many teachers, or proclaimed teachers, in the form of Gurus throughout India.  More and more Gurus are starting to appear in the west.  I discovered that most of these teachers seemed to me to be caught up in their own subtle game.  It was possible sometimes to question them openly and to evaluate their answers for the ring of truth but it is dangerous because many of the teachers have the ability, through their conservation of energy and knowledge, of exploiting one’s auto-suggestion and attempting to turn one into a perpetual follower by giving them only scraps of information and not really enough to free one from relying constantly on their presence.  This is how perpetual followers seem to be manufactured.

A really sincere and genuine Guru will tell you immediately that he is simply a channel, a reflection of your own self, on whatever level of consciousness you are caught on, and that all he can do for you is to help bring you to whatever level of consciousness he has obtained, through his own inner work and self-discipline.  When he has done this, he will acknowledge your progress and release you.  The many warnings of wolves in sheep’s clothing are valid, and it is important if one even temporarily surrenders his mind to a Guru to always maintain an independent witness of one’s own intuition who sits and judges and decides.

The true Guru is within yourself.  One must, however, be careful because the line between flowing and hearing the teacher and cynicism is very fine and it is difficult to recognize guide posts or cross-reference points.  This is why it is wise to talk to many different Gurus and not blindly follow one.  Instead, be like a bee gathering honey from any available flower.   Sooner or later you will find somebody you can trust. 

All Gurus will tell you that you first must learn how to meditate.  This means that you have to sit quietly with your back straight, in an upright chair or, if you can, in the lotus position.  In the beginning do this for twenty minutes in the morning and evening.  Unless you do this, no real progress is possible.  The body, you will discover, attempts continually to change the good intentions of the will.  I discovered, as a restless westerner, that the only way I could force myself to sit quietly for an hour was to set an alarm clock, and absolutely refuse to move my position until the clock went off.  This proved to be one of the most difficult things I had ever undertaken, ridiculous as it may sound to somebody who is more passive.  First, when you sit quietly, take ten very deep breaths slowly.  Hold the breath in for a few seconds and then slowly release it.   This has the effect of calming the body down, making it easier to sit quietly, and slowly but surely bringing it under control.  If you take twenty deep breaths, it is even better.

It is better to attempt this before you eat, because eating requires a great deal of energy and it is more difficult to sit in meditation when the body’s energy is using itself digesting and moving the waste material out of the stomach through the body.  Loss of energy is one of our greatest problems.   We use up energy every time we speak and most of our speaking is unnecessary.   However, the body enjoys talking just as it enjoys eating and I have always believed that the success of Wrigley’s Gum and Bell Telephone are due to the fact that the jaws like to be in constant motion.  If you doubt that it is difficult spending a day in silence, try it.  In fact, try spending an hour in silence.  Talking uses up energy and you need the energy to raise your consciousness.  The Guru or Indian holy man seldom does any physical actions.  He sits quietly in meditation for hours at a time, he does not indulge in sex, which in turn builds up a tremendous amount of energy, nor does he even think of sex, which in turn uses energy.  It is this accumulation of energy which the Guru radiates and which in itself unconsciously draws many women disciples to him.  The Guru uses the energy to enhance meditation and to experience new states of consciousness which simply cannot be achieved by those who lack energy and lack the secrets of accumulating it.

Recently the word ‘Kundalini’ has started to appear more and more often in the west.  There are now Kundalini institutes and lectures on the Kundalini taking place throughout the western world.  The Kundalini, or in eastern terms, the coiled serpent, rests at the bottom of our spinal chord.   This is the energy source in all mysticism and Yoga and is filled with ways of realizing this energy.  The Indians always meditate in the lotus position with the legs bent under the body.  One is actually sitting on the left heel, which is slightly behind the genital organ, thereby closing off the anal opening and cutting of unnecessary energy to the lower part of the body.  In the course of time, by increasing the purity of our thoughts, and meditating on a single word or sentence, additional energy is moved up through the spinal chord into the brain, creating higher quality energy which expands the mind and increases consciousness.  Such is the road to enlightenment.

The knowledge of how to arouse the Kundalini cannot be imparted by teaching alone; it can only be imparted by experiencing.   This alone is the basic teaching of all mysticism and was used since the dawn of recorded history.  In fact, some Egyptian statues show the Pharaohs sitting with straight backs on their thrones with various types of head ornaments that show what appear to be bumps on the top of the ornaments, indicating the expanded cosmic consciousness possible through the arousing of the Kundalini through meditation.

When one meditates, he should concentrate his energy on the centre of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.  The room in which he is sitting should be dark, and he should concentrate on one word, which as I said, could be your name, God, or love.  Only by experiencing what happens after a few weeks of meditation can one begin to understand any of the Eastern teachings.   There is a great deal of difference between having knowledge and having understanding through experiencing knowledge, just as there is a great deal of difference in having energy that you allow to become negative and turning the energy into a creative flow.  Whenever you criticize mentally or express the criticism, it is negative energy flowing.  You can direct the negative energy positively, with discernment and control and it will change your state.  This requires self-control because the will is only able to generate and direct energy and needs control, and the stronger the will and self-control, the greater the accumulation and the more positive the direction of energy.

Meditation through calming down the body and cooling it out is a means of increasing energy.   Just keeping the eyes closed conserves energy and increases concentration.  Two hours of meditation will refresh the body more than ten hours of sleep, and will revitalize the body as well as slowing down the aging process, thereby giving the body new energy and new life.   People who meditate daily are much quieter and more centered than those who do not meditate.  They are also much more decisive because there are not the continuous inner activities which leak out energy.  Meditation brings the body into a one-pointedness and harmony that simply cannot be obtained any other way.  Slowly but subtly it changes the vibratory level, creating more control over one’s own thought process.  As one obtains new energy, which also depends on the increased purity of one’s thoughts, one begins for the first time to evaluate the bondages of indoctrination, our attitudes, our habits, and our personalities.  This is the bringing into balance of man’s spiritual and material nature, which is the quality with which we are faced.   As we bring this balance into focus, we begin to realize many things that had previously escaped our conscience.

Many of today’s western youths have turned to the use of drugs which have the result of creating rushes of energy, and they have, for brief moments, experienced insight and indeed, spiritual revelations, of man’s duality.   But the mind is like a puncture-proof tire.  Drug-released energy breaks through and shows wonders that transcend the rational mind, but once the drug effect passes, memory fades and man returns to that level of consciousness he had before taking the drug.  Drugs give simply a glimpse over the wall of one’s potential.  They cannot keep a man perpetually high, but they can tantalize him with his untapped potential and let him know in the course of time that only through his own self-discipline and effort can he develop the energy necessary to keep himself perpetually high.

Man is indeed an evolving organism, but natural evolution requires thousands of years.  Only by concentrated effort can man speed up his evolution and it may well be that only a small percentage of men possess the desire in this incarnation to do so.  Only by expanded consciousness can man start to comprehend the contradictions that surround him at every level.  Only by acknowledging that higher states of consciousness exist has man any possibility in his lifetime of moving forward.  It is true that we create our own universe by our conscious actions or lack of them.

Man today, at his present level of consciousness, has been compared to a sleep-walker who thinks he is awake, but is actually in a state of sleep.  Indeed the Bible is filled with cries of “wake up”.  

The changing of one’s vibrations is extremely subtle.  It is like switching channels on a television receiver.   There are other channels on a subtle level of consciousness we can operate on, if we accept the possibility.  But first we must build the energy necessary to switch the channel.  All mythology tells us of the possibility and hints at higher stages of consciousness.  Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, tells us of these higher states.   Two thousand years ago, Jesus spoke of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.  He told us if we had eyes to see and ears to hear we could understand.  He also spoke of not casting one’s pearls before swine, in other words not to waste the energy trying to teach those who are not yet awake on a level of consciousness capable of hearing the message.  He ended His mission on this planet by showing man that the spirit was immortal and death was another part of life.

Yet man continues to see himself as a self-contained ego.  He cannot yet see the other man as a reflection of himself.   This is a veil of consciousness we must first remove.  It is the ego that man uses to separate himself, through nationality or through social class, from his fellow man.  To many it is inconceivable to look at another man of a different nationality as a brother.  They do not yet possess the energy to raise their consciousness to even entertain this possibility.  It is again, as Ram Dass has said, “We are caterpillars who do not know or recognize the fact that we can turn into butterflies.”

Man has within him a conscience.  This is the small still voice all of us hear and after a time, if we continue to reject it by losing or destroying our conscience, we destroy in essence our potential consciousness.   So again we sow as we reap.  Having destroyed conscience we destroy self-respect.  Having destroyed self-respect we cannot love our neighbours as ourselves.  Say a negative word to someone and watch yourself reap negativity.   Sowing and reaping is the easiest way to demonstrate the meaning of Jesus’ words.   He spoke that “Narrow is the gate and wide is the way.”  It is indeed a narrow gate we have to drive through our positive energy.  But if we can develop the habit of concentrating our positive energy, we then discover that wide is the way to our own fulfillment, once the narrow gate has been entered.  He spoke again of being trusting as little children.  When we destroy trust in ourselves by killing conscience, we give up the openness demonstrated by small children, because without trust we cannot love ourselves, and God is love.

This does not mean love without discernment.  We can love a tiger and yet acknowledge the need for discernment with a wild animal.  We can love and show compassion to an animal without allowing ourselves to be victimized by its lower state of consciousness.  Love starts with small gestures.  If, at first you do not feel love, practice the gestures of love and soon it will become a habit.  Start with loving animals.  They respond immediately to love, and all men need examples to experience confirmation of the teachings they are receiving.

Man’s greatest difficulty is freeing himself from the traditions that have been indoctrinated in him and which have become a form of bondage.  The belief that another man of another race or colour is inferior is a subtle tradition that has been indoctrinated into us over the years.  Once we are in bondage by the acceptance of tradition or the auto-suggestive powers of anyone, we restrict our own freedom and our actions.  To believe one is a king, first one has to free oneself of thinking of oneself as a peasant.  If indeed we are the sons of God, we have to believe it.  Until we can believe it, we are in bondage.  Until one believes that he possesses greater power than he had hitherto conceived, the power will never be awakened.  It is obvious that far back in the past man had this knowledge of how to awaken and control this power, but man’s fall was a fall from consciousness.   The knowledge was slowly lost and deliberately withheld from man, because power is knowledge.  It is known that up to a few hundred years ago the control of the printing press was in the hands of the kings.  Nothing could be printed that did not follow their idea of what the masses should know.  Man cannot be kept in slavery if he has the power of knowing who he is.  Man’s organism, through lack of knowledge and through bad food and improper exercise has been kept in bondage for thousands of years.  

Any man can now correct his physical body, if the desire is strong enough, thereby increasing his consciousness and can free himself from economic bondage, which is the bondage that enslaves most men, and which has been used down through the ages to control and exploit mankind, as so articulately exposed by Buckminster Fuller in his brilliant book Spaceship Earth.   

Man at the present time, operates entirely from lower nature, which in Eastern terms means he lives and dies in his second or third chakra.  It is the fourth chakra. or the heart chacer which, when opened through additional control of energy, brings man to the understanding of who he is.  The knowledge of how easy it is to manipulate man because he lives in his lower nature and therefore can be manipulated through his emotions was the knowledge that Hitler and other dictators used from time immemorial.  On the more subtle level it is still being used by modern day ad men and politicians.  It is in essence, negative energy being exploited through the knowledge of how to work mass media for one’s material advantage.   Raising one’s consciousness makes one realize who one is because we raise our consciousness from the gross to the subtle level of awareness.  To a dog, for example, his master is God.  He can provide food at will.  He can open doors and do many things which to a dog are miraculous.

In India it is possible to see certain men who have mastered levels of vibrations, do things which to the Western mind are miraculous, when actually they are simply acts made possible through higher knowledge.   It is difficult writing about miracles without immediately turning off the reader.   Yet it is possible in India to see a man materialize things through his knowledge.   For example, one proclaimed holy man, Sai Baba, born on November 23, 1926 in a village called Puttaparthi in Southern India, actually daily materializes small objects and anybody who wishes to travel to India can visit Sai Baba’s Ashram in South India and see him perform what to us appear to be miracles.  His disciples claim that he is not yet started on his real work and that he will live in his present human form until the year 2020.  They say he is still in the preliminary stage of his reconnaissance.

Sai Baba lives most of the time outside a small Indian town called Bangalore, which is only a two hour flight from New Delhi.   No matter how cynical you may be, no matter how much you may feel his acts are simply that of a clever magician, one has only to take the time and the money to fly to India and sit within a few feet of Sai Baba, any day of the week, and see him materialize small objects.  Nothing I can say, I am sure, will convince the mistrusting.   However, for three days in a row I sat watching Sai Baba, within a few feet of his presence, accompanied by two friends.  There was no question that he has the power to materialize objects.  It is done in full daylight and it is witnessed by hundreds of people.

I understand, although I didn’t visit them, that there are other men in India capable of doing the same things.  It is totally beyond the rational mind, and I mention it here only to give the reader an indication that such things exist and as Jesus said, we all have the power of such miracles, but should not abuse them, if we have the faith and the faith starts within ourselves by recognizing the possibility that we all have to raise our consciousness to higher and higher levels.   This materializing phenomena is a power; but when will is withdrawn the forms wither, and the vibratory tones of which they are composed slowly vanish.  This is regarded as misuse of power by many, just as materializing s�ances are created by the ability of the seekers to become negative, receptive, and passive, thereby cleaning themselves of the vital tones, which enables them to bring about vibratory thought forms.   It is regarded as dangerous as it opens the mental door to poisonous psychic auto-suggestion.

Christ’s own life is an example of discipline and personal development.  He raised His consciousness higher and higher until finally He was in direct communication with Cosmic Consciousness, which was a pure channel bringing Creative Intelligence through Himself to mankind.  The messages of Jesus are really simple.  Love yourself and you will be able to love others.   Respect yourself and you will be able to respect others.  We can return to this self-love and self-respect by being reborn in our own minds.

This rebirth is created by developing the energy through biological means to once again be as open as little children and only then can we enter the Kingdom.  But we cannot pass through these levels without starting with a simple exercise of sitting quietly for twenty minutes a day.  This seems like a fairly easy thing to do when we consider each day has twenty-four hours but as you read this book and experiment with these exercises you will discover, to your great chagrin, how very difficult it is to pass through the first portal.

The bondage, we will discover, is the bondage of our own ego.  What we must acknowledge is its existence and by melting it down through meditation we can then rebuild it in the form of God consciousness.  If Christians really existed they would believe in God and by the fact of their own existence they would also know that His Son did not suffer on the cross.  How could He have suffered when He was in direct contact with God?  Only the remnants of His ego suffered, if indeed any ego existed.  His infinite compassion on the cross for His mother and family, and even for Peter, who in fear of his own physical safety, denied his relationship with Christ three times before the cock crowed, did not affect His compassion and love.  If man has the consciousness and the energy to understand and accept the mystery that he is but a soul encased in the temple of the body, he would be able to live his life perpetually in the spirit and then comprehend and feel Jesus’ message to live daily in joy and not suffering; but man actually enjoys his own suffering.

Man’s ego loves to talk about his operation or his illness or negative things that have happened to him to indicate the extent of this enjoyment of suffering.  The cross is a symbol of suffering because we have accepted, through indoctrination that man is born in sin instead of accepting that man is born perfect as a new born baby and descends into the sin of ignorance by indoctrination.   Jesus tells us to seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened, that in His Father’s house are many mansions, and if it was not so He would not tell us.  The mansions are mansions of consciousness.  His seeking is the seeking to raise one’s consciousness and so understand the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.   Jesus proclaimed that we should rejoice, that we are all God’s children; to live each day fully in faith; not to worry about tomorrow because if we do our best each day, tomorrow will take care of itself; to live in the now, not in the past or future, but to live each day as if it were our last on this earth.  If you, the reader of the book, for example, could truly convince yourself that you had but one last week to live before you died, how changed would your attitude be when you looked at your wife, or husband, or best friend, or just looked outside, seeing the trees, and realizing the beauty all around you that you seldom really see.

Gurdjieff speaks of the fact that man can only awaken if he can realize constantly his own physical death and the death of every living creature.  Here is an example of trying to break through the veils we have over our eyes.  We shy away from any thought of our own death.  It is something we do not even want to contemplate or think about.  Even when someone dies, we put cosmetics and lipstick on the face to convince ourselves that they are only sleeping.   But each morning if we could accept the fact that this may be our last day on earth, how differently we would live.  How much more we would try to love and understand all those around us.  How changed would be our attitudes.  But it takes energy to even contemplate this thought.  Yet if we project ahead, we know that our physical time is limited.  Still we cannot struggle out of the illusion.   This is but one indication of how difficult it is for man to wake up and be able to live each day as if it were his last.

Instead, man lives in the future, looking forward to his two week’s vacation, or looking forward to what he is going to do tomorrow, forgetting to use his faculties to the fullest, and to live only here and now.  It is not a question of morbid contemplation of death.  It is a question of realizing our life now, and to live each day to the fullest.  Smile and say words of cheer to to the next face you meet and feel how you will change the vibrations.  That is how we create the universe we live in.  You know when you look at a frown on the face of another person, it brings you down and if you look at a smiling face, it improves your own state.  Yet these are the simple basic things that we find so difficult to comprehend.  How much more difficult, therefore, to comprehend the possibility of changing completely the physical way you now feel by getting control of the body’s demands, therefore developing additional energy that will change your life.  Living in the now is a truth so absolute that it transcends even our comprehension of how do it.

When Jesus was brought before Pilate the night he was arrested, Pilate asked Jesus what is truth.  Jesus remained silent, according to the sacred books, and did not answer Pilate because He understood that truth was relevant.  In other words it depends on one’s level of awareness.  The need of living in the now is an obvious truth to anyone who can comprehend through their level of awareness the vital necessity of doing so.  The fact that we cannot remember much that has happened to us in the past year except crises or unusual high events when we gained enough energy to be aware of the now, is an indication of man’s dilemma.  To a person who cannot comprehend the need to live life in the now, the statement that this is the truth to him makes no sense.  The lack of understanding of truth is itself a bondage.  Men on higher levels of awareness can actually carry on a conversation in a room filled with people and yet no one else in the room understands what they are talking about, because they are talking on a higher level of knowledge that requires higher energy to comprehend.

The more light of knowledge we put on anything, the more we dispel the darkness of ignorance.  To thine own self be true, and self is a collection of atoms.  Everything is energy and men are always changing.

If people feel constantly guilty they cannot respect themselves.  Man has through centuries carried sex guilt with him.   Man’s greatest difficulty is understanding spirituality and sexuality.  The sex act is an act of creativity.  It is a spiritual act not to be despised and from here all secular perversions have come.  In order to feel fulfilled the woman must first worship the man.  This is the oneness of man and woman that Jesus spoke about.   Both the virgin and the prostitute worshipped Jesus because they saw God manifest in Him and it was this image they worshipped, just as all women if they desire by total surrender, can see in their beloved the manifestation of God.  This brings sex to its highest potential but throughout the ages all mention of sex and sex energy has been removed from all religious books.  Temple scenes of the Kama Sutra in India were destroyed by the English, and the temples desecrated because the English wished to destroy these traditions, and in order to destroy former tradition, all signs and memories and meanings of them had to be wiped out.  The Kama Sutra depicted a truth of man and woman possessing the qualities of god and goddess, and that the creative act was not something to pervert into an act of guilt and sin, because it freed the masses from their guilt by recognizing the spirituality behind all sex energy.  The English, because of their own traditions, did everything in their power to destroy this knowledge.

Knowledge is light.  The more light we throw on a subject, the greater the understanding and the greater the understanding, the greater the power we have, and knowledge is power.  To withhold knowledge is bondage of the mind and after man’s fall, he bound himself with the traditions of suffering.   Yet a sin is only a sin when our traditions make it so.  Something that is a sin in one culture is not a sin in another, indicating how relative truth is dependent on man’s level of consciousness.  It is extremely difficult for the average man to rid himself of the traditions that have been so engrained and indoctrinated in his consciousness that it is impossible for him to even begin to question their meaning.   We know for example, that a child’s mind is completely open.  The amount of indoctrination he received at the age of three is equal to ten years of indoctrinating he may receive at twenty.

Sexual energy, which is the source of the Kundalini power, if directed properly, raises positive energy into a position where every man is able to question the meaning of any tradition and thereby remove the yoke of wasted energy by creating a union and harmony within the body, which is the aim of Yoga.   Our traditions have so bound us that we have forgotten that we were born free men.  Priests and nuns originally did marry in order to conserve their sex energy and use it positively as a means of increasing consciousness.  However, even the reasons for the vows of chastity have been lost.

True knowledge is indeed freedom, but when knowledge is controlled by those in authority for whatever motives, man is enslaved and manipulated.  At birth, a perfect body is born but it is an open nervous system totally receptive to indoctrination; and the indoctrination immediately starts in direct ratio to the parents’ consciousness and the consciousness surrounding the child during these formative years.  Only the child born into an enlightened family is automatically fed pure knowledge.  Few of us in this incarnation have enjoyed that privilege.  The terror of our position can be seen.

How can we, as parents, enlighten our own children unless we are first able to comprehend the fact that we can continue to raise our own consciousness.  Man is easily a victim of auto-suggestion.  To a large extent all men seem to wish to be followers, because they do not possess the energy or the knowledge of energy development to be capable of thinking through their own conclusions and developing original thought which other men with sufficient energy are capable of doing.  This is why men are constantly looking for opinions established by others and we have developed a whole culture of editorial writers and opinion makers instead of attempting to develop a public who can think for itself.

Anybody who has ever fallen in love understands what happens when we direct our energy and emotions to another person.   By giving off a pure feeling of love we change our vibratory levels and we receive back love.  As long as we can maintain this heightened feeling of love, we receive it back.  It is only lost when we slowly withdraw it by the slow erosion of time when we start seeing the other’s reflected frailties.  Again this loss takes place through allowing our energy to become negative instead of positive.  If we have the knowledge of how to continually save energy and develop it, we can maintain this state of love.   But love can only be maintained consciously.  As we fall from the level of consciousness, we fall out of love back into selfishness.  It is man’s constant fall.

It is hard to maintain a level of consciousness without recognizing all the subtle ways that the body uses up energy.   It requires a great deal of energy to digest a heavy meal.  The more gross the food we eat, the greater the energy loss.  The intake of alcohol burns energy.   Smoking of cigarettes burns energy.  Unnecessary body movements and tension burn energy.  Unnecessary talking and useless worry burn energy.  When we lack the knowledge of conserving and building energy, we lack the ability to stay consciously high.  There are many subtle things that burn energy that we are not aware of.   Seeing a movie that is negative burns energy.  Watching television burns energy and changes our state.  If you carefully watch yourself go through a single day, you will be amazed by the different states that subtly take place.  When a person lies, he burns energy because the lie then exists and has to be rationalized.   It is all a subtle waste of energy.

If you know somebody who is generally always positive, you will be attracted to them because they give off energy.  This is what is known as animal magnetism.  Some people, because of a better physical condition, radiate more energy than others.  Normally these are the leaders of any society, although in many cases, they become trapped by their own ego and misdirect the energy.  The Supreme Intelligence however, seems to have a great sense of humour because if one has power one must use it or he will lose it.  But by the same token if he abuses it, he will also lose it.

As one meditates one starts to slowly understand that real progress is impossible unless it is being done purely, which means that although it is being done to raise one’s own consciousness, having raised it one must not exploit others or he will again lose it.  We see examples of this when somebody develops and concentrates the energy the obtain success and then indulges in all sorts of materialism.  As he ages he makes all sorts of frantic attempts to maintain the attractiveness of the body, and yet the inner self is but a reflection of the outer self and the face, despite lifting or any other methods, starts to show the hardness of his own selfishness.  Other people as they grow older take on a serenity and beauty of face that cannot be obtained except through inner work and an unfolding through consciousness of life’s meaning.  We cannot underestimate the great difficulty of controlling our own ego.  But once one has entered the way it becomes easier.  The expansion of consciousness does make one more tolerant of others.  The discovery of additional energy sources not only greatly increases one’s health but gives new meaning to one’s life.  But one has to be careful that the ego does not bring him down.  As Ram Dass said, just as we start to become satisfied with our own progress, the ego tiptoes around us and taps us on the shoulder and tells us how great we are.  It is devious, it is clever, and it does not give up easily.  Yet the great drama of life, if we see it as a drama, truly offers us the opportunity to play any part we want.  We can be happy and contribute, or we can be negative and selfish.  We can follow the natural food laws or we can indulge and take pride in our indulgence.  We can share our knowledge and thereby obtain more, or we can withhold our knowledge and slowly lose it.   Man realizes, as he progresses, that he is not, as he thought, just one person.   He is many people.  Each person finds himself acting differently in different situations as different traits take over and proclaim themselves the real I.

Gurdjieff has explained that all of us have many little workmen inside us without a foreman.  One takes over and acknowledges that he is going to give up smoking.  But the others don’t agree and suddenly he finds himself smoking again.  Or one decides that he is going to get up early the next day and enjoy the dawn, but another turns the alarm clock off.  It is first necessary to develop a foreman who is able to keep the other I’s under control, and slowly, by withdrawing energy from them, weaken them until the foreman is truly in charge and is able to constantly develop energy and thereby raise consciousness to the extent that we never need fear losing the one-pointedness again, at least not for a longer period.

Eastern philosophy tells us that just as we cannot comprehend our own death, many of us cannot comprehend the thought of reincarnation, that we are provided with a body through which we can experience life after life, perfecting our being and not creating more karma.  Karma is an inheritance of our previous lives and it is desire for more experience that brings us back into a new incarnation.  So we have to burn off the karma of our desires and past actions until finally we are freed.

It is difficult for those of us who are Christians to even comprehend that the majority of human beings at present on this planet believe in reincarnation and that their entire life is lived in this knowledge.  The Indian who acts as a servant, acknowledges his master as an incarnation of God, that by serving him in his manifest form he will slowly end his previous karmas and that it is an honour to serve unselfishly.  If we can accept that this life should be lived in the here and now, and if we can control our desires for more and more material goods or more and more experience, we are able to understand the first steps to obtaining peace of mind.   But our entire Western philosophy is one of increased desires as a way of life.

All advertising is based on stimulating desires to make you unhappy with your present car, your present house, your present clothing, your present economic state.  It is constantly activating you as a consumer for more and more until you are finally burnt out in your endless quest for materialism.   The new American youth who confuses his parents by rejecting materialism and wearing old blue jeans, is in essence rejecting this vicious circle of materialism.   But like all things there must be a balance.  If we peacefully accept tour lot and sit and wait for death, we are just as guilty as if we spent our lives in a hectic race to accumulate materialism.  But if we set proper values on what is necessary for a happy life and use time to study and develop the possibility of increased consciousness, accepting life as an unfolding drama that requires conscious effort, we regain our enthusiasm. Our drama is an eternal drama.  Either Easter Sunday and the Resurrection and all the holy books are true or they are a gigantic hoax and man does not possess a spirit or a soul, and life is but an accident.  But in order to acknowledge the drama one must be conscious of one’s own potential and see one’s life as a never-ending, exciting, and beautiful adventure.

As we look back we see that God never imposed on us anything greater than we could bear.  Things which at the time seemed to be unpleasant, actually have turned out for the best and after the trial we emerge a more complete person.  But first to make any progress one has to have one’s house in order.

We have to start with the basic steps of looking inside instead of outside.  The Kingdom is indeed within ourselves if we will but recognize it.  We must cool down the body and the active mind and have our house in order.  This means getting our thinking in order.  This is only possible when one first starts to get one’s physical being in shape.  It must all start within.   It may seem an over-simplification to say we are what we eat.  But we are exactly what we eat.  Our minds, our bodies, and our muscles are what we eat.   They are manufactured by the food we put into our system.

Only through diet and proper exercise, which conserves energy instead of wasting it, can we put our physical house in order.   A vegetarian diet would greatly increase your physical well-being despite the heavy propaganda that meat should be an essential part of your diet.  It may be an essential part of the economic survival of the meat industry but the amount of energy required to transform meat in the body in the form of waste matter burns up a tremendous energy and there are many food substitutes that are superior to sirloin steak, with far less waste matter to clear through the system.  But again Western societies have been brought up with such mind manipulation that the ability to order sirloin steaks with French-fried potatoes is the ultimate in an affluent society.  I use this only to indicate the difficult job we are faced with in evaluating our bodily needs in order to obtain higher levels of consciousness.  We eat many foods because we are the victims of developed tastes, of consumer manipulation, just as we now eat ice cream which is no longer made from any dairy products.

Much of the food we eat is filled with all sorts of preservatives, many of which are not suspected of carrying toxins that can create cancer, because the enzymes in the body use up so much of their energy to destroy the toxins that they are unable to maintain the proper metabolism balance throughout our system.  The amount of energy required to digest and remove tasty but useless food through our systems is monumental.  But it is certainly to the advantage of the manufacturer to manipulate our senses and keep us as mindless consumers unable to develop the will power even to stop eating such food once we are hooked.  The information, for example, that most of our morning cereals are totally without nutritious value was simply rejected by the mothers of America, who like well-trained consumers no longer want to hear what is contrary to their indoctrination.

Freedom is certainly not an easy trip.   It is not something that happens over night.  But it is one of the reasons why many of our youth have gone back to the land where they can at least purify their bodies with pure food and develop the energy necessary to maintain their independence.  This is one of the reasons that natural food stores are starting to emerge all over America.   But even here, dishonesty is creeping in and many foods are not what the labels proclaim them to be.  We have reached such a stage that almost all of our food products are produced with minimum quality, only enough to avoid consumer riots.   This is also true of hardware.  With all the technology that America has to place a man on the moon, the level of business consciousness is such that they put a bumper on a car that cannot stand a head-on collision at more than three miles an hour, for the simple reason that the repair business and the replacement business brings in billions each year and a strong honest bumper would cost the manufacturer millions by avoiding minor accidents and repairs that a lesser bumper assures will happen.

The reader may feel that we are mixing levels by discussing such things, but we are attempting to point out the extent of man’s fall from consciousness.  Man no longer has the conscience of even being responsible to produce a good product.  The fact that his own children may be killed by such a product fails to motivate him.  He is so locked in through his level of money consciousness that he cannot see beyond.  Man’s exploitation of man at every level has no limitations once conscience is killed, whether it is individual conscience or big business conscience.  It is all part of the same and will the fall in consciousness we have reached our present state, where wars can now be fought and lives sacrificed for purely economic considerations.  The only road back is for each man to take the responsibility for his own growth, to regain his conscience and thereby his consciousness.   It is an inside responsibility.  Where does one start?

First of course, one has to have the desire to change and it is not a question of giving up anything.  It is a question of adding new meaning to one’s life.  Even if you are a business man, business will take on a freshness that has been lost.  I first discovered that by reading once again The Prophet by Gibran, it activated an inner chord.  This is turn led to Gurdjieff’s book Meetings With Remarkable Men.  Having re-read these books a few times, one should then read some heavier material.  A good start is The Bhagavad Gita and of course, the Bible.  From here on the list opens up a vista of countless proportions.  To just name a few of the finest available would be The Way of a Pilgrim by French, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, The Upanishads, Yogananda’s beautiful book Autobiography of a Yogi, the works of Patanjali, the works of Swedenborg, Huxley’s Island, which contains many gems, that hard to find book entitled Philokalia, works of the early church fathers, Govinda’s Foundation of Tibetan Mysticism, and Ramacharaka’s series of works on Yoga.  Any top bookstore contains an almost unlimited list of such books, such as Field’s Book Store in San Francisco, who over a period of time, were able to find all the books I wanted.

Many people are confused about Yoga.   They do not understand there are many types and many cults.  Hatha Yoga is a Yoga of exercise.  When properly done it is a form of worship which is designed to bring the body into harmony.  If you select only half a dozen exercises a day, it will give you a conditioning of the body that if done regularly, will tremendously improve your health.  The other types of Yoga are really for the student to discover for himself.

A book, as I have said, cannot simply be read once and discarded.  Even reading it for the first time, one discovers that he is completely unable to understand much of the material; but with concentrated effort and a second, third, and fourth reading, he will be amazed, particularly if he is practicing meditation, how much material will slowly unfold.  It is certainly a question of will-power, and although it may sound repetitious, will-power can only be obtained by developing one’s energy, and by conserving it.  There are simply no easy short cuts, and the cunning of the mind is monumental.  It can find so many excuses not to do even the simplest routine.  You will discover that other self that is lazy and spends most of its energy thinking up excuses for not making an effort.

Westerners are inclined to want instant success.  But at some time in one’s life, one may be ready for this new challenge.   It may come slowly, even after years of having read this book.  But undoubtedly some people are at this moment reading to receive new information.  After only a few hours of meditation, as little as a few week’s efforts, suddenly they will discover within themselves a new panorama which they did not know existed.  This is a thrilling and mind-blowing experience and once you have tasted this new knowledge you will never let go because you will be able to experience in your daily life the differences it can make to you and the changes it will create all around you.  There are many books more eloquent and far more detailed than any I could write.  These treasures remain to be discovered by the reader.  All that is needed is an open, receptive mind.

I think that there is no doubt that having young children in a house is the greatest way to maintain an example of open-mindedness and pure love.  But if you do not have any children, they are always easy to find and always receptive.  The sheer joy of spending ten minutes with a three year old little girl is such a beautiful experience that words cannot express.  Most of us with children, because they come at a time when we are just starting our business careers, find that we do not adequately give them the attention that is so necessary for our own development, and most people are grandparents before they give this time to children and then start to rediscover the great joys they have lost and the opportunities that have disappeared for self re-learning.  But this again was lack of consciousness and when one looks back on one’s life one realizes with amazement the amount of time that slips by because of lack of concentration and energy to live in the now.

Gibran speaking of freedom says, “Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff and my heart bleeds within me; that you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal of a fulfillment.  You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care, nor your voice without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound … and if it is a fear that you would dispel, the seat of the fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.”

It is almost like the famous quote of Franklin D. Roosevelt that impressed me so much as a youth when he spoke at his inauguration that the greatest thing we have to fear is fear itself.  Man seems to be always fearful – fearful of tomorrow, fearful of losing his masculinity.  He creates fears and lives with them.  Certainly harmony in the world within means our ability to control our own thoughts and we must destroy fear by creating inner harmony.   Harmony within results in optimism and affluence, and affluence within results in affluence without.  The world without reflects the circumstances and the conditions of the consciousness within.  This is a truism which our own experience can verify.

If we can see our consciousness as the removing of layers and layers, rather like the peeling of an onion skin, we realize how almost imperceptible are the changes that take place within us.  First we have to eradicate the groove that had been created in the form of attitude.  We are not really conscious of how unbelievably deep these attitudes have become and how difficult it is to change them.  Gurdjieff calls them buffers and says that a buffer cannot be removed until we are ready for its removal.  In fact, what is called a freak-out in modern psychedelic terms is when somebody has a buffer removed before they are prepared to see themselves from a different level.  The best seller, The Greening of America talks of these buffers in the form of consciousness one and two to remove the buffers that are necessary before one can move to even consciousness three.

There is no doubt that LSD under controlled conditions can remove some buffers, and it is being done at the Baltimore Research Institute under the direction of Dr. Stanley Grof, a brilliant scientist who is experimenting and making films of terminal cancer patients.  Viewing these films is indeed a revelation.  One sees people who are dying, close to panic as they face the unknown.  Then films have been taken showing the miraculous change that the drug affects in the brain as it removes the buffers, raising consciousness into new areas of comprehension.  The peace of mind and new consciousness that these people undergo is so remarkable that one would have to view the films to believe it.  The treatment, a religious experience that makes the patient understand the biblical revelations and removes from him any fear of death, brings the patient over an eight to ten hour period into a knowledge of who he really is.  It is obvious that mankind has not yet begun to discover the full potential that LSD and other new drugs may unfold.

Dick Albert, the former Harvard professor is now known as Baba Ram Dass, consciously undertook the same experiments, dropping acid every ten hours over a three week period.  He tells in his book how it changed his life, but he also tells us how through the practice of Yoga and other disciplines he was able to transcend the LSD experience.

The massive work and actual illustrations that have been compiled by Dr. Grof are certain to have significant effect on the future use and experimentation of this drug.  The uncontrolled sale of street drugs that were not only impure but contained all sorts of dangerous ingredients such as elephant tranquilizers, more than anything else created a bad national press for LSD.  At the same time many conventional psychiatrists, from their own professional point of view, are worried that the effects of drug therapy could well wipe out many hours of expensive couch therapy that is the mainstay of many, just as acupuncture has been denied for years by the Western medical profession, although it is an ancient practice that undoubtedly has some advantages which in the next decade may well become part of the training in all Western medical schools, and should have been accepted long ago.  This is one example of how it is difficult to bring in new knowledge if by its simplicity, it destroys a tremendous economic structure that has been built.  Few doctors today are working or giving any attention to the possibility of mind expansion including their own and thereby the refusal to remove their own buffers keeps their patients in bondage.

Even the colours in a room can affect one’s states and one’s emotional ranges, as every interior decorator is well aware.  But the ancient knowledge if colours and their use to effect emotional changes has, to a large extent, been totally unused, particularly in our hospitals, where patients have to lie for weeks staring at blank white ceilings which could, with the use of murals or changing projector slides, be turned into beautiful coloured landscapes and pastoral scenes which would add tremendously to the psychic and physical recovery of the patients.  There is a whole range of colour utilization for health that has been ignored by the medical profession.

Man has always assumed that naturally all knowledge will be utilized on his behalf, but such is not the case.  Knowledge is indeed power, and it has been withheld for the most selfish motives all through the ages.   Undoubtedly in future we may wee the development of machines that will be able to change individual vibratory rates to create healing as well as changing consciousness.   We are on the threshold of a breakthrough so profound that it staggers the imagination at our present level of consciousness.

I was amazed in India to discover that most of the teachings written down 5,000 years ago by Ptanjali have yet to be translated, which gives some idea of the amount of knowledge that is still available to us.  We have accepted the attitude that we know all there is to know.

There are at least six levels of consciousness that man can reach.  It is hinted in the East that the real meaning of God, the Creator working six days to create the ear, and resting on the seventh, really means the creation of six levels of consciousness and resting unmanifest in the seventh level.  It is like a man living on the basement of a seven story building, as Gurdjieff puts it, not aware that the house has six other floors.  This is why I have always rejected Darwin’s theory of evolution, because of the fact that man uses less than ten percent of his brain; in other words, we carry an organ between our shoulders which is only utilized to the extent of less than 10 percent.  Therefore, the other potential of ninety percent already exists if we can find the keys to unlock it.  We are not evolving in the sense that we are acquiring this additional potential; that potential actually exists.  It is now the question of unlocking the energy we all possess to be able to utilize this additional huge untapped reservoir.  The secret of miracles is the secret of this additional utilization of energy.

One Indian holy man explained levitation, which would also explain Jesus’ miracle of walking on the water, as the ability of the mind through the change of vibrational levels and body levels and body weight to levitate the body out of the gravitational pull, which would, of course open up undreamt avenues.   The miracle of the fish and the bread is the manifestation of material exactly by the same principles that I saw demonstrated by Sai Baba in India.  The Indian mystics explain that some people have these psychic gifts and are not aware of how they work.   In the case of Sai Baba, apparently on some days he can perform these acts, but on other days he cannot.  It is all part of the promise that all of us have the potential to exceed even the wonders performed by Jesus.  Once we have discovered how to control and develop our energy and vibratory rates, it is not inconceivable in the future that man can change from one dimension to another, although this thought is mind blowing to our present consciousness.  It would have been mind blowing to explain the possibility of television or even radio to somebody 200 years ago.  Right now all of us know that the very room we are reading this book in has dozens of television and radio signals passing through it and if we have a receiver tuned to the proper frequency, we can pick them up.  Our mind is such a receiver.  Creative people who can compose great works are picking up from cosmic consciousness.  They are receivers tuning in.   Yet their ego makes them only too willing to accept the works as their own.   This is true of all works and all the inventions that we have manifest on this material level.  I am sure this statement, like many in this book, will result in a great how of derision from those unwilling to entertain such a thought.  It is an example of the peeling away of a buffer before the mind is willing to accept it.  Yet how else could simultaneous inventions happen in distant parts of the world?

There is a yogi technique that if practiced for a number of months can bring in numerous sounds including celestial music.  But here again the individual must experience it through his own efforts.  The knowledge that it exists and the method for receiving these sounds is outlined in any number of yogi books for those who have the ears to hear.  It is all part of the unfolding of new knowledge which is coming into the Western world at a phenomenal rate and will change in a very short number of years every theory we now have.

The new American youth will accept what I have said as simply recognizable information which indeed many of them already possess beyond anything I have discussed in this book.  There are undoubtedly large numbers of enlightened individuals now on the planet.  Many of them for obvious reasons prefer to remain silent with their own knowledge, living in various communities, not wishing to draw attention to themselves because those around them would put them in the category with those who are insane, just as a few hundred years ago they burnt witches and pilloried anyone who did not accept the traditions and theories of the day.

Our educational systems are still to a large extent operating on MacLuhan’s theory of the rearview mirror.  We keep repeating old methods and old accepted theories and thereby perpetuating wrong thinking.   MacLuhan has been savagely attacked for simply expanding truisms just as Buckminster Fuller has, and others in the past.  Our history is filled with the martyrdom of advanced thinkers who dared to express their visionary thoughts and paid the price.  Fortunately their words were preserved, and in the course of time, long after their deaths, they were acknowledged by a more enlightened population.

It is difficult for a man to project new, advanced thinking because he is up against a stone wall of established thinking that means economic survival to a huge number of people.  To accept the new which means a new area, energy has to be expanded; as well, the previous theories and beliefs have to be discarded.  Man’s landing on the moon for example, resulted in the abandoning of a large number of theories that for years had been the accepted norm among many scientists.   This is but one small example of the difficulty in opening men’s’ minds.  It is a monumental task and it is easy for men or large groups of men to ignore information that is contrary to their accepted theories, and they have strong vested interest in maintaining the veils over their eyes.  Many of them, to be totally realistic, are incapable of the personal self-discipline that is necessary to develop and utilize the energy within themselves, which must be unlocked if they are to raise their consciousness.

It is also true that each man is tied down by a tremendous need to provide material goods for his family.  A man spends most of his life giving almost his total energy to obtain these material goods by spending his energy, at whatever job he is doing, so that a very small part of normal physical energy is left over for him to utilize for his own fulfillment.  This is why there is still in India, to a diminished degree, a tradition that a man at the age of fifty withdraws from the material world, leaves his family, and spends the rest of his life wandering through India, contemplating, and using his full energy for his own personal development.   It is, however, impossible for most Westerners to follow such a practice.  Our whole society is geared for material accumulation.  Our country does not have the interior of India and the Himalayas where one can suddenly disappear for a number of years to find enlightenment.  But it is true that if a man can detach himself from all materialism, he is then free from the yoke and free to turn his development inward.   Only the very fortunate or the very wise in our Western society can reach this stage.

A man does not have to give up his possessions in the literal sense.  He has to give up his attachment to his possessions, so that he becomes truly free of the worry of such possessions.  It is a question of giving it all up so you can have it all.  When one is not attached, one enjoys his possessions a great deal more because he is no longer worried and fearful of losing them.  It is a “question of balance” to use the words of the Moody Blues: the ability to keep one’s feet on the ground and one’s head on the subtle level so that the aim of his life becomes one of service.  And how better can he serve than by developing and expanding consciousness?  Then the service becomes truly one of selflessness and all who come in contact with such a man feel good vibrations and renewed faith.

It is not a question of being simply a do-gooder.  That in itself can become a bondage.  It is a question of being completely yourself, not afraid to say exactly what you think even if that makes you unpopular and all of us have known the terrible desire to please and be liked until we discover the insidiousness of comprising with our own thoughts.  It is never easy to be oneself in the Western world.  Even the way we dress or the length of our hair or whether we wear a tie or not are reasons for withholding jobs in many companies.  The pressure to conform is monumental; yet by conforming we give up our individuality.   Fortunately, the trend now is to more and more individuality.

This is not something that will happen overnight, but it is already happening among the young people of North America.  Yet they are still looking for leaders who can translate this new culture and who are willing to change the entire social structures to emphasize the quality of living, rather than the quantity of living.  But here again mankind is stuck with the work ethic that has been imposed since the industrial revolution, when large amounts of physical energy were needed for the spinning wheel and for the factories.

We have now conditioned the masses that it is not honourable not to work, that welfare, rather than being a redistribution of taxes, is a degrading thing and those who receive welfare are conned into a state of mind that instead of thinking of themselves as leisure citizens who can develop their own creative talents, they see themselves as the poverty-stricken who sit around idly and feel sorry for themselves.  Man no longer needs thousands of slaves to pick cotton and thereby burn up their energy; he now has developed cotton machines.  It is also true that we have developed machines that can literally feed and clothe, through semi-automation, almost our total population.  Those who fear that a guaranteed annual wage will destroy man’s initiative simply lack the consciousness to understand that only through leisure can man enter the golden age.  It requires leisure to develop our creative talents.  We can now utilize the machines and free man from slavery.

On the most realistic level, man cannot continue to provide full employment.  Advanced technology eliminates millions of jobs.  Man has the technology to free the slave, which is himself.  But he cannot comprehend the freeing of himself, because he does not acknowledge that he is a slave.  He lives in his own illusions.  Any computer can project that our increase in population makes it impossible for us to simply absorb the new workers with meaningful jobs in the next quarter century.

New thinking, possible only through higher consciousness, must now emerge.  But we see that any politician who even dares to question the work ethic is immediately attached by his opposition in the most ferocious way.  The opposition acknowledges the ease in which it is possible to arouse the emotions of the workers by suggesting that the more enlightened politician is not in favour of full employment.  It is exploitation of the workers’ limited consciousness.   Yet it is being perpetuated by some politicians because they themselves cannot entertain the fact that new thinking is an essential ingredient.

To speak of the divinity of each man and the possibility of the brotherhood of man being realized now is received only with gales of laughter from the vast majority of political figures around the world.  It is just too much for them to comprehend.  The favourite clich�s:  “You cannot change human nature”, “That is the way it is”, “Don’t talk rubbish”, and ad-infinitum show that the rationale of lower consciousness is unlimited.  Only in the few weeks before death or during their final illness will most men even begin to contemplate and re-evaluate their lives.  But if, as I have said, each of us this very minute could realize that this day was our last day on this planet, we would be able to look at things with new eyes.  If a congress of men were to gather together, all of whom knew that they had only a month to live, they might well be receptive to the institution of new legislations that would totally change the social and political future of their children and their children’s children.

The Bhagavad Gita is a symbolic unfolding of man’s battle with his lower nature or his lower consciousness.  But it is also acknowledged that at this material level, man is also engaged in a battle with those who would keep him in ignorance, and this is a consistent battle.  Those who do not have the eyes to see and the ears to hear cannot keep those with raised consciousness in bondage forever.

There is nothing that can stop the unfolding of creative consciousness.  Selfish men can hold it back, both with their unwillingness to allow new technology to free man, or their unwillingness to contemplate new methods which are contrary to their own self-interest.  But, for the individual, regardless of his economic position or his social structure, the change must start within.  The path to increased consciousness is open if he will but seek it out.

No books you read, no words you hear can raise your consciousness.   They can only point out the possibility through your own self-effort.  If you happen to be a Christian, at least ponder the question that either Easter Sunday and the Resurrection were a reality, or all the holy books and the thousands of books in every library throughout this planet are a total hoax.  There is no such thing as being slightly pregnant.  You are either pregnant or not pregnant, and there is no such thing as a little bit of faith.  You either have faith or you don’t have faith.   As Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

A book called The Master Key System which for years has been out of print, is a magnificent document of pure knowledge, written fifty-six years ago by Mr. Charles Haanel of St. Louis, Missouri.  I am sure the knowledge in that book was not mean to be suppressed; it was meant to be expanded.

Mr. Haanel points out, as all Yoga does, that all possessions in this world are based on consciousness; all gain is the result of an accumulative consciousness, and all loss is the result of a scattering consciousness; that much gathers more is true on every plain of existence, and that loss leads to greater loss is equally true; and one’s attitude of mind depends on what we think.  We can use our energy positively, or we can use our energy negatively.  But we must understand that the secret of all power, all achievements, and all possessions depends on our method of thinking.  We must indeed be before we can do, and we can only do to the extent that we are, and what we are depends on what we think.  And we need energy to think.

We cannot express power we do not possess and the only way to secure the possession of power is to become conscious of power.  And we can never become conscious of power until we learn that all power is from within.  Harmony in the world within will be reflected in the world without by harmonious conditions and agreeable surroundings.  Harmony within is the foundation of all help, all power, all attainments, all achievements, and all success because the world without is but a reflection of the world within.  Harmony in the world within means the ability to control our thoughts, to determine for ourselves how any experience is to affect us.   Man is so constituted that he must first create the tools by which he gains the power to think.

Man cannot comprehend an entirely new idea until a corresponding vibratory brain cell has been prepared to receive it.  This explains why it is so difficult for us to receive or appreciate an entirely new idea.  We have no brain cell capable of receiving it.  We are therefore incredulous.  We simply don’t believe it.  Each man has the power and ability to create the necessary brain cells which will enable him to comprehend the unlimited powers within.  This is done by concentration.

It is by concentration that deep thoughts, wise actions, and all forces are accomplished.  In the silence, through meditation, one gets in touch with the inner being, but as I have said, it is necessary to subject oneself to the mental discipline of sitting silently and developing familiarity with the inner self.  Man has within him millions of cells.  Each has a certain degree of consciousness.   Man is in essence billions of cells.  Some are busy building tissue.   Others are engaged in forming the various secretions necessary in the body.   Some act as carriers of material.  Others are surgeons who work to repair damage.  Others are scavengers carrying off waste.  Others are constantly ready to repel invaders or other undesirable intruders of the germ family.  Each cell is not only a living organism but is sufficiently intelligent to perform its necessary duties.  Each cell is born, reproduces itself, dies, and is absorbed.  It is therefore apparent that there is mind in every atom of the body.

This mind is negative mind and the power of the individual to think makes him positive so that he is capable of controlling the negative mind.  This is the scientific explanation for metaphysical healing and will enable anyone to understand the principles upon which this remarkable phenomena rests.

Every man is but a reflection of the thought he has entertained during his lifetime.  The stamp is on his face, his form, his character, and his environment.  Yet there are many who are not yet ready to enter into the discipline necessary to think correctly, even though it is evident that wrong thinking has brought failure.  It is an absolute truism that if you wish harmonious conditions in your life, you must be willing to expand and develop the necessary energy to develop a harmonious mental attitude.  That we reap what we sow is mathematically exact.   We gain permanent strength exactly to the extent of the effort expended to overcome difficulties.

Thought is creative, and the principles upon which this law is based are sound and inherent in all things.  But in order to possess vitality, thought must contain love.  It is love which imparts vitality to thought and thus enables it to germinate.  It is known as the law of attractive, or the law of love.

Thought may lead to action of any kind.  But whatever the action, it is simply the thought attempting to express itself in visible form.  It is evident therefore that if we wish desirable conditions, we can afford to entertain only desirable thoughts.  It is with words that we must express our thoughts, and if we are to use higher forms of truth, we may use only such material that has been carefully and enlightenedly selected for this purpose.  For this reason, insight must be exercised so that the thought which we entertain contains no moral or physical germ which we do not wish objectified in our lives.  Insight is a faculty of the mind whereby we are capable of examining facts and conditions at long range.  It is a kind of human telescope that enables us to understand the difficulties as well as the possibilities in any undertaking.  Insight enables us to plan to advantage and turn our thoughts and attention into the right direction instead of wasting the energy in channels which can yield no possible return.  Insight is therefore absolutely essential for the development of any great achievement.  Insight is a product of the world within and is developed in meditation by concentration.

From the process of meditation or self-contemplation comes expression, which is Creative Intelligence and which is undeniably superior to every element, force, or law of nature because it can understand, modify, govern, and apply all these to serve its own needs and purposes and therefore possess them.

Wisdom begins with the dawn of reason, and reason is but an understanding of the knowledge and principles whereby we may know the true meaning of things.  Wisdom then is illuminated reason, and this wisdom leads to humility for humility is a large part of reason.  If one concentrates, as an exercise, on any quotation from the Bible, he will begin to understand the development of wisdom.  For example, in the quotation, “Whatsoever things you desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them,” “Whatsoever” is very definite and implies that the only limitation which is placed upon each of us is our ability to think, to generate the energy to be equal to the occasion, to rise to the emergency, to constantly remind ourselves that faith is not a shadow but a substance – “the substance for things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen”.

Thought is the connective link between the infinite and the finite, between the universe and the individual.  This creative power depends upon our recognition of the potential power of the spirit or mind and must not be confused with evolution.  Creation is the calling into existence all that does not exist in the objective world.  Evolution is simply the unfolding of potentialities involved in things which already exist.  The great error of the present day is the idea that man has to originate the intelligence whereby the infinite may proceed to bring about a specific purpose or result.  Nothing of this kind is necessary.  The universal mind can be depended upon as the ways and means for bringing about any necessary manifestations.  We must, however, create the ideal and this ideal should be perfect.   Every success has been accomplished by persistent concentration upon an object in view.

If you require love try to realize that the only way to get love is by giving it out.  The more you give, the more you will receive.  The only way you can give love is to fill yourself with love.

Thought force is the most powerful means of obtaining knowledge, and if concentrated on any subject, will solve the problem.  Nothing is beyond the power of human comprehension.  But in order to harness thought force and make it do our bidding, personal work is required.  But thought is the fire that creates the steam that turns the wheel of fortune upon which your experience depends.  Ask yourself a few questions, concentrate on them silently and then reverently await the response.   To quote Larsen: “That a man can change himself, improve himself, recreate himself, control his environment, master his own destiny is the conclusion of every mind who is wide awake to the power of right thought in constructive action”.  It is important, however, never to dissipate the power of thought by scattering the thought from one object to another; and the energy to avoid the scattering must be developed through the power of concentration.  The sun cannot start a fire, but use a magnifying glass and the sun can start a fire.  So it is when one scatters one’s thoughts, no result is apparent.  But by focusing this power of thought on any single purpose, through concentration for any length of time, nothing becomes impossible.

In order to cultivate the powers of one’s thoughts, bring a photograph into your meditation.  Concentrate on the photograph of someone you love for at least ten minutes.  Examine it closely, the expression, the eyes, the form of the features, the way the hair is arranged.  Note every detail by concentrating for ten minutes.  Now close your eyes and you will start to see it mentally.  As you repeat this process you will learn the power of concentration.

Tension leads to mental unrest and abnormal activity of the mind.   It produces worry, care, fear and anxiety.  Before you meditate take a warm bath if necessary in order to allow the mental faculties to develop the greatest freedom.

The solar plexus has been likened to the sun of the body because it is the central point of distribution for the energy which the body is constantly exuding.   This energy is very real energy and is being distributed by very real nerves to all parts of the body and is thrown off in the atmosphere which evolves the body.  If this radiation is sufficiently strong, a person is called magnetic.  Such a person may become positively radiant and will yield immense power for good.  His presence alone, without a spoken word will often bring peace and comfort to the troubled mind with which he comes into contact.  It has been said that the solar plexus is the point at which the part meets the whole, the finite becomes the infinite, where the uncreating becomes the creating, the universe becomes universal, the invisible becomes visible, that it is the point at which life appears and there is no limit to the amount of life an individual may generate from this solar centre.  Conscious thought within is master of this centre from which the life and energy of the entire body flows; and the quality of the thought which we entertain determines the quality of the thought which our sun will radiate; and the character of the thought which our conscious mind entertains will determine the nature of the thought which this sun radiates; and consequently will determine the nature of the experience which will result.

Thoughts of courage, power, confidence, and hope all produce a corresponding state, but the one arch enemy of the solar plexus, which must be absolutely destroyed before there is any possibility of letting any light shine is fear.  Fear of the unknown, nameless fear – this enemy must be completely destroyed.  He must be eliminated.  He must be expelled.  His is a cloud which hides our sun, which causes perpetual depression.  He is a personal devil which we all have, which makes men fear the past, fear the present, fear the future, fear their friends, fear their enemies, fear anything and everybody.  When fear is effectively and completely destroyed your light will shine, the clouds will disperse, and you will have found the source of power, energy, and life.

The man who knows that he can develop the sun and power of the solar plexus will not fear criticism or anything else.  He will be too busy radiating courage, confidence, and power.  He will anticipate success by his mental attitude.   He will pound barriers to pieces and destroy the doubt and hesitation which fear places in our paths.  This knowledge works only through practical application.   We learn by doing.  Only through practice does an athlete become powerful.   If you are religiously inclined let your light shine.  If you have a bias against physical science, then awaken the solar system.  If you are strictly scientific, then impress your subconscious mind.  Mental concentration on the object of your desires is the means of impressing the subconscious.  This is the simplest and most effective way.  It is the method by which great inventors, great financiers, and great statesmen have been able to convert the subtle and visible forces of desires and confidence into actual, tangible, concrete facts in the objective world.  To quote James Allan, “Cause and effect is as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realms of thought as in the world of visible and material things.  Mind is the master weaver both of the entire garment of character and the outer garment of circumstances”.

It is strange when one reads something that suddenly has the ring of truth, because man is hearing knowledge he already possesses but has forgotten, and his bad habits, his misdirected negative energy, his indoctrination has made him look outside instead of inside for his real development.  Undoubtedly the Western mind has become so materialistic that it finds it difficult to even comprehend any metaphysical knowledge because it has not developed the necessary vibratory brain cells that must be developed in order to receive it.  This has never been taught in our schools, yet is has been known throughout the ages, particularly in ancient Egypt.

Knowledge is of priceless value.  That is why knowledge is power.  By applying knowledge we can literally make our future what we wish it to be.   When we fully appreciate, through the development of additional energy, that our present character, our present environment, our present ability, our present physical conditions are all the results of methods of thinking, we will amaze ourselves.  Let us remember that every thought produces an impression on the mind.  Every impression is a seed which will sink into the subconscious mind and form an attitude or a tendency.   This attitude or tendency will be to attract other similar thoughts and before we know it, we have have a crop which must be harvested – the metaphysical law of sowing and reaping.

Through the law of vibration the mind exercises control over the body.  Therefore, any given vibration can immediately modify every atom in the body.   Every life cell is affected and an entire chemical change is made in every group of life cells.  Everything in the universe is what it is by virtue of its rate of vibration.  Change the rate of vibration, and you change the quality and form.   We can change the vibration of our thoughts and thus produce any condition we desire to manifest in our body.  We are all using this power every minute.  The trouble is that most of us are using it unconsciously, and thus producing undesirable results.  The problem is to use it intelligently and possess only desirable thoughts.   This is not as difficult as it seems because we all have sufficient experience to know what thoughts produce pleasant vibrations in the body and we also know the causes that produce unpleasant and disagreeable vibrations.  We must consult our own experience when we uplift our thoughts and make them progressive and direct our energy into constructive, courageous, and noble thoughts.  Thus we set in motion vibrations which bring about positive reactions.  When our thoughts are filled with cynicism, envy, hatred, jealousy, criticism, or any of the other thousand and one negative thought forms, certain vibrations are set in motion which bring about certain other negative thoughts of a different nature and each of these rates of vibration, if kept up continually in our thought process, crystallize in form.

In the first case, the positive results will result in mental, moral, and physical well-being.  The negative thoughts will create discord, disharmony, and disease.  When we fully understand this, we understand something of the power of the mind over the body.  You must believe and have faith in the fact that the way to health is founded on the law of vibration.  It is a matter of individual effort and practice.  Our real world of power is within.  If we are wise we will not waste time and effort in trying to deal with effects as we find them in the world without, which is only an external reflection.  We shall always find the cause in the world within, and by changing the cause we change the effect.  Remember and believe that every cell in your body is enlightened and will respond to your direction.  The cells are all creators and will create the exact pattern which you give them.  Therefore, when perfect images are placed before the subjective, the creative energy will build a perfect body.  The quality of the brain is covered by the state of mind, your mental attitude, so that if undesirable mental attitudes are conveyed to the subjective, they will in turn be transferred to the body.  We can therefore readily see that if we wish our body to manifest health, strength, and vitality this must always be our predominant thought because we know that every element of the human body is the result of the rate of vibration.  Knowing this, we then know how to make any physical changes in the body we desire, because we know the higher rate of vibration covers, modifies, controls, changes, or destroys the lower rate of vibrations, and this rate of vibration is covered by the character of brain cells, and we know how to create these brain cells.   Therefore, we now know how to make any physical change in the body we desire, if we place ourselves in inner harmony.

There can be no doubt that most patients at present being treated in hospitals are unaware of what they can do for themselves.  By calming the mind and by developing increased energy through meditation, new feelings of joy, hope, faith, and love could be aroused by suggesting to their subconscious positive motives and thereby diverting their thoughts from their illness.  This of course, is the basic theory behind the Christian Scientist teachings which are valid; but like most teachings they have somehow been misinterpreted and viciously attacked by others who simply lack the willingness or the desire to create and develop the new brain cells necessary.

When you pray, you must already accept the fact that the prayer has already been answered, the condition you wish has already been obtained.  It is the power to believe and have faith before the materialization of the desire.  The absolute truth is that the “I” is complete and perfect.  The real “I” is spiritual and therefore can never be anything else but perfect.  It can never have any lack of limitation or desire.  The flash of genius does have origin in the molecular motion of the brain.  It is inspired by the ego, the spiritual “I” which is one with the Creative Intelligence and which is our ability, through meditation, to recognize this unity which is the cause of all inspiration and genius.  Truth is not the result of logical training, experimentation, or observation.  It is a product of developed consciousness.  Your life and your actions will depend upon the degree of truth which you are capable of perceiving, for truth will not manifest in creeds by any conduct.  It is this truth that shall make you free.  For it is the conscious knowledge of this truth which will enable you to overcome every difficulty.  The conditions which you meet in the world without are invariably the results of the conditions obtained in the world within.  Therefore it follows that by holding the perfect ideal in mind, you can bring about ideal conditions in your environment.  If you see only the incomplete, the imperfect, the limited, these conditions will manifest in your life.  But through additional energy development, if you train your mind to see and realize the spiritual ego, the “I” which is the perfect, complete, wholesome, and healthy condition, this knowledge will be manifested.

It is difficult for man to accept that the universal mind, or superior consciousness is the totality of all minds in existence.  Spirit and mind are there synonymous.  It is extremely difficult and has been the problem of all of us to understand and indeed to accept that mind in this sense is not individual.  It is omnipresent.  It exists everywhere.  It is universal.

Man has always used the word God to indicate this universal creative mind and therefore has been confused because he thinks of God as something outside, and this is exactly contrary to the fact.  The individual spirit is the reflection when it leaves the body that we know.  Therefore, spirit is all there really is of us, and the only activity which the spirit possesses is the power to think.  Therefore, thought must be creative because spirit is creative.  Yet this creative power is impersonal and your ability to think is your ability to control it and to make use of it for the benefit of yourself and others.

When the full truth of this information is understood and appreciated, you will have come into possession of what is called the master key of your own development.  But it has been said that only those who are wise enough to understand, broad enough to weigh the evidence, firm enough to follow their own judgment, and strong enough to make the sacrifices exacted may enter and partake.  It is true, as Marden has said, that the possibilities of thought training are infinite.  Its consequences are eternal and yet very few ever take the pains to direct their thinking consciously into good channels that will do them good.  As Haddock said, “The power to think constructively, deeply, and clearly is an avowed and deadly enemy to mistakes and blunders, superstitions and fanaticism”.  We must constantly remember that thought is creative vibration and the quality and the conditions created will depend upon the quality of our thought, because we cannot express powers which we do not possess.  We must therefore be, through our ability to develop energy and inner harmony, before we can do, and we can do only to the extent that we are, and so that what we do will necessarily coincide with what we are, and what we are depends on what we think.

All mental discovery and attainments are the result of desires because concentrated desire is the strongest mode of action.  The more persistent the desire, the more authoritative the revelation.  Desire added to concentration will wrench any secret from nature.  Concentration does not mean merely thinking on practical values.  The average person has literally no conception of concentration.   There is always the cry to have, but never the cry to be.  Men fail to understand that they cannot have one without the other.  They must first find the Kingdom before they can have the things added.  Momentary enthusiasm is of no value.   It is only by undenied self-confidence and by perseverance that any goal is reached.  To quote Horatio Bonar, “Think truly and thy thoughts shall the world’s famine feed.  Speak truly and each word of think shall be a fruitful seed.   Live truly and they life shall be a great and noble creed”.