Prosperity Chapter V

Prosperity Chapter V: 

During his lecture tour in the United States, the great scientist, Sir Oliver Lodge, speaking on "The Reality of the Unseen," said: "Our senses are no criterion of existence. They were evolved for earthly reasons, not for purposes of philosophy, and if we refuse to go beyond the direct evidence of our senses we shall narrow our outlook on the universe to a hopeless and almost imbecile extent."

It is the most difficult thing in the world to convince people of the reality of anything they cannot perceive through the senses. Yet the realest things we know anything about are invisible; have never been seen by mortal eyes.

And right here lies the great difficulty for most people in changing undesirable conditions; in getting away from poverty and the things that are holding them back. They can't see beyond the present; they haven't learned to visualize the future, to see beyond the material things about them into the unseen world, packed with all creative energies, where the mind starts the creative processes.

They do not realize that everything in the visible world that man has produced began in a mental vision; that the power of mind picturing, of visualizing the things we want to come into our lives, is God's priceless gift to man, to enable him to bring into visibility out of the invisible world whatever he wills.

Anyone who knows how to use this marvelous power can begin now to visualize his future; to see himself as he would like to be; to see himself mentally doing the things he would like to do; occupying the position he aspires to; and thus he will draw to himself the means necessary to build, step by step, in the material world the future as he sees it in his vision.

Through His gift we can bring ourselves out of a poverty-stricken, discordant environment into harmonious conditions, a harmonious environment, with the refinements and, if we will, the luxuries of life; or we may pervert it, and hold ourselves in degrading lack and poverty, limited, held back from self-development, the unfoldment of our possibilities, and all the joys of living.

Whatever we visualize intensely and persistently we create, vitalize into form, build into the life, bring into the actual. In other words, the vital substance from which man fashions circumstances, destiny, is in the unseen world where all potencies and power dwell.

The very foundations of the universe and the things which are doing most for the world today are the unseen forces, eternal principles. The forces which transport us over the globe and bring its uttermost parts into instant communion; the power of the principles of chemistry, of gravitation, of cohesion, of adhesion, — all the mighty agencies operating in the universe and producing its phenomena, — we cannot see, hear, or touch, we cannot appreciate them with our senses only as we feel their effects; they are things we know little about, yet we know they are great realities.

Who knows or who has seen what is back of these great principles, these potencies which we know exist? Gravitation, which is holding the heavenly bodies in their orbits, which keeps the world so marvelously balanced in space, revolving at terrific speed around the sun, none of them varying in their revolutions in their orbits the fraction of a second in a thousand years, is an invisible force. Because we can't see or taste, or smell, or handle it, shall we say it is not a reality? That it does not exist?

We can see and feel the effects of electricity, but who knows what this invisible force is? The Edisons, the Bells, the Marconis have, through experiments, found out certain things, certain laws governing it, through the operation of which we get heat, energy, and light. They have put it to work for us in a multitude of ways. It carries our messages under oceans and across continents. It has already done away with a large part of the drudgery of the world, and is destined to serve mankind in ways perhaps not yet dreamed of by even the wisest scientists and inventors.

This mighty force, electricity, which he has used in his thousands of inventions, Edison confesses he knows nothing about. He stands in awe of this mysterious power which has come out of the cosmic intelligence in response to his efforts. He regards himself merely as a channel through which some of its secrets have been passed along to man, to make life less toilsome, more comfortable, and more beautiful.

It is nonsense for skeptics and materialists to say that they take no stock in anything that they cannot test with their senses, when we know that the real force in the very things we live on, the elements that nourish and keep alive even the material part of us, are all invisible.

We cannot see the life-building, life-sustaining gases in the air we breathe; we cannot see the air, yet we take it into our body eighteen or twenty times a minute and get the silent, unseen power resident in it. The blood absorbs and sends it to the billions of cells in our bodies. None of its mysterious potency can we see or handle, yet we know we could not live a minute without it.

No one has ever seen the force in the food we eat, but we know it is there, that we get strength from it, and that after a time the apparently dead, inert matter comes to life in the body; that it acts, dreams, has experiences, works, creates.

Notwithstanding all its marvelous discoveries, science has not been able to uncover the secrets of the unseen forces everywhere at work in the universe. Who can see or explain the mystery of the unfolding bud, the expanding flower, the generating of the wonderful fragrance and marvelous beauty of the rose? Yet we know that there is reality back of them, an intelligence which plans and shapes them, brings them to their glorious maturity.

We know that all these things come from the same. Omnipotent Source, that they are the creations of Divine Mind. Scientists are demonstrating that there is but one substance, one eternal force or essence, in the universe, and that all we see is a varying expression of it. To the senses this universal substance, which is the great reality back of all we see, is non-existent. We can neither see, nor touch, nor taste, nor smell it. Yet all the time science is piling up proof after proof that everything about us is merely a modification, a change of form, change of vibration of this universal substance, just as electricity is a manifestation of force in various forms.

We think we live in a material world, but in reality we live in a mental world, a world of externalized thought, a world controlled and guided by invisible forces. We contact with material things only at a few points in our lives. The corporal part of us is fed, warmed and clothed by material things, but we live, move, and have our being in the unseen.

When we come to the reality of ourselves, the soul, the spirit of man, which is one with God, we live altogether in an invisible world. The real self is the unseen self. The man whose reflection we see in the mirror is but the shadow of the reality. The material body of flesh and blood that we see, and can touch with our hands, is not the real man. That is behind what we see and touch. It is back of the cell, back of the atoms, back of the electrons which make up the body.

Prosperity Chapter V , continued...

The new philosophy is going back of appearance and showing us the real man, the invisible man. It is revealing his hidden potencies and possibilities, and pointing the way to their development and use.

It shows us that, the impotent, sickly, ailing man, the weakling, the discouraged, disconsolate, complaining being, the failure, the man full of discord, disease, inharmony, is not the man God made; that this is the unreal creature man himself has made. This is the being that wrong thinking, wrong living, and unfortunate motives have made, the being who is the victim of his passions, of his moods, of his ignorance of realities, the great eternal verities of life.

We all learned as children that man is made in God's image and likeness, but the new philosophy urges us to act on this truth; to look beyond the appearance to the reality, to see with the inner eye the real man, the invisible man, who is one with his Creator. He is strong, vigorous, robust, with Godlike powers and qualities. He matches God's ideal of manhood.

There is no suggestion of failure, of weakness, of instability, of sickness about him. He is perfect, immortal, unchangeable as truth itself, because the real man is the truth of being, changeless reality. No matter what his conditions or circumstances, the God stuff, the God principle, the divinity in him is still intact, still perfect, still contains all of his possibilities, is still stamped with nobility, with success, with health, with prosperity, with harmony, with the image of his Creator — for God's image and likeness is perfect, immortal.

If we could only realize this, and measure life with its infinite possibilities from the standpoint of the changeless reality of man, instead of from that of the changing unreality of the body; if we could only hold the thought that we are a part of the creative intelligence of the universe, co-partners with God in our work here on the earth, how much more we could accomplish, how much higher we could climb, how much happier we should be?

When man realizes the tremendous significance of the reality of the unseen; when he grasps the truth of his unity with his Maker, the unity of life, the oneness of the source of all things in the universe, and that all is a manifestation of Divine Mind, he will come into possession of the illimitable power the Creator has implanted in every one of us.

When Christ emphasized the fact that the kingdom of heaven is within us, he meant that this kingdom within is identical with the Divine Mind, and that it is there man taps the source of all power, of all supply. The kingdom within is the kingdom of power, where all man's creative work is started. It is there he connects with the universal substance, the great creative energy; and thought is the invisible tool with which he fashions his creations.

Acting upon the hidden, mysterious substance from which everything in the universe is evolved, the thought tool directs, controls, creates according to his desires. It finds its material in the unseen world, and in proportion as the mind grasps the reality of the unseen, the power and the possibilities are there.

It is in the unseen world that man, animated and inspired by the consciousness of his partnership with Divinity, is beginning to find some of the secrets of the universe — lifting the race from animalism and drudgery, changing the face of the world, pushing civilization up to new and more glorious heights.

Your prosperity, your health, your happiness, your success, the fruition of your ambitions, all are in the great formless creative energy, ready to come into form when your thought does its part in starting the creative processes. Limitless wealth, inexhaustible supply to meet our needs, inventions, great productions of art and literature, music and drama, marvels in every field of human endeavor, are in the great cosmic intelligence waiting the contact, of man's thought to come into visible form on our earth.

All the powers in the great cosmic intelligence are constantly working on the thoughts and desires of men. There is no favoritism in the unseen realities. The thoughts of the meanest man on earth are treated in precisely the same way as those of the noblest. Just as the sun and the rain, the wind and the dew give their potencies to the poor farmer and the good one alike, so the thief, the criminal, the murderer, the failure and the marplot have the same material to work in as the just man, the nobly successful, the great architects and artists, the great engineers, inventors, merchants, the great men and women in every field who are uplifting the race and making the world a better place to live in.

In other words, the creative force of thought puts an invincible power into man's hands, makes him a creator, the molder of his life, his destiny, his fortunes.

We cannot think without creating, for every thought is a seed planted in the universal substance; it will produce something like itself. You and I can sow in the invisible, constructive thoughts, beautiful thoughts, thoughts of love, of good will, of health, of prosperity, of happiness, of success in our chosen work; or we can sow destructive thoughts, ugly thoughts, thoughts of hatred and ill-will, of disease, of discord, of failure, of poverty, of all sorts of misery, and, one thing is certain, whatever we sow we shall reap. That is the law, and there is no escape from it.

Most of the poverty, disease, failure and unhappiness in the world come from ignorance of the law. These things do not fit God's plan for his children. The Father never intended that we should be subject to disease, that we should wear ourselves out in drudgery, in unhappiness, in failure, in poverty, in constant anxiety, fearing all sorts of trouble and misery.

The specter of disease and the wolf at the door are our own creations. They exist only in our minds; but as long as we visualize them, think on them, fear them, they will become real for us and manifest themselves in our lives.

Health, abundance, success, happiness, a glorious, joyful living — these are the things the Creator intended for all his children. But most of us drive them from us by our false, pessimistic thinking, and then whine and complain about "fate" and "hard luck," when just the reverse is true; when the invisible world about us is packed with infinite possibilities, awaiting our thought seed, our desire seed, our ambition seed, our aspiration seed, our prosperity and success seed, backed by our effort on the material plane, to make them manifest in the forms upon which we concentrate.

If you are poor, ailing and unsuccessful, you are working against the law, and until you come to a realization of the truth about the unseen forces at your command and work with the law you will continue to be poor, ailing, and unsuccessful.

Why not begin now to make the unseen forces your friends? Instead of making them your enemies, why not turn about face mentally and work with the law by simply holding the right thought? Why not turn your back on disease and poverty and failure by continually holding the health and abundance thought, saying to yourself:

No matter what your present circumstances and environment, if you hold fast to this mental attitude, to a firm belief in the reality of the unseen, where your supply is, and work in harmony with the law, you can, through the creative power of thought, acting on the invisible universal substance, fashion and draw out of the unseen realms of supply whatever you will — knowledge, wisdom, power, health, wealth, happiness, success, - the realization of all your hopes and visions. 

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