AT_--_T

“ Reflection will show you that the only reason that you are unable to think of or picture a Causeless Cause, is because everything that you have experienced in this relative world of the senses has had a cause—something from which it sprung. You have seen Cause and Effect in full operation all about you, and quite naturally your Intellect has taken it for granted that there can be nothing uncaused—nothing without a preceding cause. ”

“ THE MYSTERY OF MIND THE writer, in this book, has treated the two manifestations of Life, viz., Mind and Substance, as if they were separate things, although he has hinted at his belief that Substance, at the last, might be found to emanate from Mind, and be but a cruder form of its expression. The better way to express the thought would be to say that he believes that both Substance, and Mind as we know it, are but expressions of a form of Mind as much higher than that which we know as Mind, as the latter is higher than Substance. ”

“ With this consciousness held in mind, your mental command to another, 'Let me alone—I cast off your influence by the power of my Spirit,' will operate so strongly that you will often actually see the effect at once. ”

“ Thus have We sent down Our verses unto one before thee, and recalled them unto thee, in this day, that thou mayest understand, and be of them who are well assured. O thou who assumest the voice of knowledge! This Cause is too evident to be obscured, and too conspicuous to be concealed. It shineth as the sun in its meridian glory. None can deny it unless he be a hater and a doubter. ”

“ The concept revelation in the sense that quite suddenly, with ineffable certainty and delicacy, something is seen, something is heard, something convulsing and breaking into one’s inmost self, does but describe the fact. ”

“ Who is to dictate to nature—what phenomena or qualities can inhere in what substances—what effects may result from what causes? Why should not thought be a property or result of matter, just as well as extension, or hardness, or weight, or digestion, or electricity? The psychologist must show that this cannot be the case, either because the supposition contradicts reason, or because it contradicts experience. ”

“ Even those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, are not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as to every one but the subject of them, they are known only as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body. ”

“ And, taught as we have been to regard these definitions as complete, we naturally and rightly reject the monstrous notion that out of such matter any form of life could possibly arise. But are the definitions complete? Every thing depends on the answer to be given to this question. Trace the line of life backward, and see it approaching more and more to what we call the purely physical condition. ”

“ But if, with reference to the scientific value of this popular view, we turn to psychology for advice, we find at the present time, in that science, decidedly opposed interpretations of the sense in which the human will can be regarded as a cause. According to one of these interpretations the word “act” is properly to be applied merely to the physical process by which our organism gets adjusted to its environment. ”

“ When it is realized that this great controller of the physical organism is so constituted that it accepts as truth the suggestions from the conscious mind of its owner, as well as those emanating from the conscious minds of other people, it may be understood why Faith, Belief, and Expectant Attention manifest such marked effects upon the physical body and the general health, for good or for evil, as indicated in the preceding chapters. ”

“ The very feelings or emotions themselves are so closely related to the accompanying physical expressions, that it is difficult to distinguish between cause and effect, or indeed to state positively which really is the cause of the other. ”

“ The sixth factor is the mind, which rules and guides the senses, and draws deductions from their impressions when collected and arranged. The seventh factor is the atma, which is the observer of the generalization which the mind makes from the impressions of the senses. It is the self, the sense of "I," in us, behind which it is impossible to go, either in logic or in observation. ”

“ Read what we have said in the "Advanced Course" about Force or Energy, shading into Mind-substance which is its parent. Realize that Mind is back of all this great exhibition of Energy and Force that you have been considering. Then will you be ready to consider the Oneness of Mind.
(5) Read what we have said in the "Advanced Lessons" about Mind-substance. Realize that there is a great world of Mind-substance, or an Universal Mind, which is at the disposal of the Ego. All Thought is the product of the Ego's use of this Mind-substance, its tool and instrument. ”

“ There is a first cause that has acted in bringing into being all that exists; but that first cause is unknown, nor can we ever come to the knowledge of it.
2. The immediate causes of all the modifications of beings, or states of being, are ignorance and kan.
3. All beings are but compounds of the four elements. The intellectual operations are carried on by the instrumentality of the heart, in the same manner as vision is obtained by the means of the eye and of an object to act upon. ”

“ If when the supposed cause is present the effect is present, and when the supposed cause is absent the effect is wanting, there being in neither case any other agents present to effect the result, we may reasonably infer that the supposed cause is the real one. ”

“ What will people think?—What will happen in the future?—and so on, and so forth.’
‘And what about the vital considerations?’
‘What do you call vital?’ I asked in my turn. ”

“ The faculty in question is one of the strangest faculties of our subconsciousness and beyond a doubt contains the key to most of the manifestations that seem to proceed from another world. Let us begin by seeing, with the aid of a living and typical example, how it is exercised. ”

“ LOOKING back now, in the light of the information I have gathered, I am able to trace very clearly, and almost hour by hour, the events of this day, and to understand how chance, laying hold of our cunning plan and mocking our wiliness, twisted and turned our device to a predetermined but strange issue, of which we were most guiltless in thought or intent. ”

“ Our enumeration commenced with Feelings. These we scrupulously distinguished from the objects which excite them, and from the organs by which they are, or may be supposed to be, conveyed. Feelings are of four sorts: Sensations, Thoughts, Emotions, and Volitions. What are called Perceptions are merely a particular case of Belief, and Belief is a kind of thought. Actions are merely volitions followed by an effect. ”

“ And in addition to the mental faculties common to all men, or rather, that are in evidence in a greater or lesser degree among all men, there are still higher faculties latent within Man, which when manifested and expressed render Man more than ordinary Man. ”

“ As my body has descended to me from God, so also has my reason and my understanding of life, and consequently the various stages of the development of that understanding of life cannot be false. ”

“ Even where the tendency is not, in the ordinary sense of the word, counteracted, but only modified, by having its effects compounded with the effects arising from some other tendency or tendencies, we are still in an unfavorable position for tracing, by means of such cases, the law of the tendency itself. ”

“ In scientific studies of the soul and the mind, habit is usually passed over—either as something contemptible—or rather for the further reason that it is one of the most difficult questions of psychology. ”

“ Either the Transcendental Being, or Pure Ego, or Spiritual Substance is represented in consciousness or it is not. If it is not, we need not take any account of it in describing the facts of consciousness. When we ask: How are states of consciousness possible? ”

“ In its typical form then, the judgment as a mental state seems to us to begin with a relatively incomplete or unstable or disconnected mass of consciousness, which we have called the Subject, as it first begins to be present to us. ”

“ When we discuss some question like the place of a certain battle, the temperature of the moon, or the appearance of a certain animal in the Pliocene, we first assume that there is a true answer; reasons for and against will appear, the former increase in number, and suddenly we discover in some book the assurance that, “We know the fact.” ”

“ Consciousness, thought, even the commonest sensation of pleasure and pain, or the simplest sense-perception, cannot be compared with “matter and energy,” with the movements of masses. They represent a foreign and altogether inexplicable guest in this world of matter, molecules, and elements. ”

“ Without taking sides in the above controversy, many psychologists proceed upon the hypothesis that there is a mutual action and reaction between emotional mental states and the appropriate physical expression thereof, each in a measure being the cause of the other, and each likewise being the effect of the other. ”

“ Mental Science is very near to being “straight suggestion” so far as the actual method of treatment is concerned, although it resembles some of the other cults when it begins to speculate or dogmatize regarding the nature of the universe, etc. ”

“ You may have heard, Anthony, that people in such a position as mine—people who are facing the possibility of speedy dissolution, are sometimes gifted with a clearer vision—an intuition—call it what you will. ”

“ If as a cause, the substance is either suffering action, or acting itself; if as a measure, it denominates the subject as in time, or in place, or in regard to the relative position of its parts, its posture, in the place which it occupies. ”

“ In this lesson we will tell you of the unfoldment of consciousness in Man, and in the next lesson, and probably in the one following it, we shall present to you a clear statement regarding the states of mind, below and over consciousness—a most wonderful region, we assure you, and one that has been greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted. ”

“ The New Psychology is the great reconciler of the various theories, dogmas and speculations concerned with the subject of the strange cures effected by the mind, as well as with the equally strange adverse effect upon the physical organism of negative thoughts. ”

“ If you ask what manner of partial Being, from the point of view of our Fourth Conception, such abstractly conceived but concretely excluded facts possess, I answer, precisely the fragmentary sort of Being which the consciousness of a specific purpose, that is the consciousness of a particular attentive selection, consciously assigns to them. ”

“ In the more common forms of its manifestation, such mental force or power is known as Thought Force, Mental Influence, etc., and in its more pronounced and less common phases it is known as Telepathy, Thought Transference, etc., but the basic principle is precisely the same in all of such cases, simple or complex though their manifestations may be. ”

“ Let us take, for instance, a motive, m, that impels us towards a particular action, and another, n, that hinders us. If these meet in us, the result is not simply a weakening of the power of the one, and a remaining motive of the strength of m minus n. ”

“ Now, if we think deeply upon this question, we shall gradually come to see that this expansive quality is to be found in the doctrine of the Atonement. It meets all the needs of our spiritual nature in a way that no other theory does, and responds to every stage of our progress. ”

“ I do not consider it necessary to go into details here regarding this phase of "holding the thought," for, as I have said, the average student is already familiar with the rules regarding the same. In a nutshell, however, I will say that each individual is largely the result of the thoughts he has manifested, and the feelings which he has harbored. ”

“ We are aiming to present the matter to the mind in such a manner that it may prepare the way for the dawning consciousness, by brushing away the preconceived notions and prejudices, and allowing a clean entrance for the new conception. ”

“ This theory of Mind and Substance considered as the two aspects of Something Higher, from which both have originated or emanated, will come to be regarded as the only "thinkable" proposition, in the end. And, with this [Pg 217] idea in view, we may use the facts and experiments of the Materialists, while smiling at their theories. And, with but a slight change of words, we may turn against them their own verbal batteries. ”

“ They consider all knowledge and wisdom as "sense;" and all such sense as being derived directly from their ordinary five senses. They ignore almost completely the intuitional phases of the mind, and are unaware of many of the higher processes of reasoning. ”

“ THE FIFTH LESSON THE ONE AND THE MANY. As we have stated in previous Lessons, all philosophies which thinkers have considered worthy of respect, find their final expression of Truth in the fundamental thought that there is but One Reality, underlying all the manifold manifestations of shape and form. ”

“ What our states of consciousness are, when we are said to contemplate these causes of pains and pleasures, with reference to ourselves, or as causes of our own pleasures and pains, we now proceed to inquire. ”

“ A little consideration will show us that there are two parts to a man's mind—or two phases of activity. In the first place, there is a part of one's mind which acts as does the mind of the higher animal, the savage, the child. ”

“ The subject, then, of Psychology, is the uniformities of succession, the laws, whether ultimate or derivative, according to which one mental state succeeds another; is caused by, or at least, is caused to follow, another. ”