such a spirit is as real a thing as is a stone to us. To them in thought we may be literally covered with garbage—or flowers.
A great poet, artist, writer, general, or other worker in any department of life, may have had a large share of his greatness due to his mediumship for unseen intelligences to work through. He may have been more the mouthpiece for them than the originator.
A man may be small, mean, petty, vain, and the victim of inordinate passions, yet at times give elegant expression to the most exalted sentiments. A small part of this man’s intellect responded to these sentiments. But his defects, his passions, his vices, are greatly in the ascendency. In certain moods he soars to sublime heights; in his ordinary mood he is relatively a small man. We have had poets whose sentiments, as given at different times, are almost contradictory. They express at one time purity; at another, the reverse. Their known lives have been low, coarse, and grovelling.
Such natures are used at favorable moments for a higher grade of unseen intelligence, to express their thought through. It is an absolute necessity for an intellect overflowing with richness of thought, with visions of the grandeur and beauty of life’s possibilities, to give expression to that thought. This necessity is a law of nature. Such minds are as pent-up springs, which must burst forth. It is not for such a duty, in the ordinary sense of that word; it is a necessity. If you are rich in thought, you must give out of such thought wherever you find opportunity. You are as a tree overloaded with ripe fruit. When the fruit is ripe, it must fall; when the thought is ripe, it must come forth. If there be none near you to hear it, you must go where it can be heard; you must go from the necessity of self-preservation. You cannot with safety keep a gift, a talent, a truth, a capacity for doing any thing well, all to yourself.
As spirits grow in richness of thought, as they even become oppressed by their own weight of richness, do they seek in every direction to give out this richness. They may find an impressional organization on the earth-stratum of life; they can to such impressional come singly and give of their thought; or, through a certain co-operation, a number of such minds united in purpose and motive, may come in a troop to the individual; they may, for a period, surround him or her with their own atmosphere of thought. Such atmosphere will act on the individual as a stimulant. It raises him in thought far above his ordinary level. He sees all things for the moment, in the light of a life higher and purer than any lived about him. In this mental condition, sentiment of an exalted order is impressed upon his mind; in other words, this co-operation of higher minds enables them to bring of their thought an actual substance, and keep it longer near the impressional on earth. He absorbs it, and feels its powerful influence. He is, in fact, “inspired” by it; that is, he breathes it in. He is exhilarated, almost intoxicated by it, because refined and powerful thought is a stimulant, whose influence on the individual is in proportion to the fineness of such individual’s organization, his impressionability, or his or her capacity to receive of such thought. Such stimulation is but another name for “magnetic influence.” You have in this the secret of the attraction one person may have for another. The person attracted is actually stimulated while near the other, by the thought absorbed from the one who attracts.
In the condition of mind above stated, a poet may give expression to the thought so brought to and surrounding him after his own taste or tendency as to rhythm and measure. Or the poem in question may be actually dictated to him.
Under similar mental states brought about by the causes above mentioned are novels written and inventions dropped into minds. Artists and sculptors may work under such inspiration. Generals have been similarly prompted and aided in military operations. In the world of business and finance the same law is at work. It is operating on every grade of purpose and motive, be it low or high. There is no great result effected in any department of life, no great effort of thought, no great invention, that comes of the unaided agency of any single mind. We are all parts of the same whole. We are all members of the same body. We can do nothing without co-operation, and the human unit who thinks it does is so thinking in the simplicity of its ignorance.
The poet who has so written under the inspiring power of another or other minds may pass away with a great name. Yet he may not have deserved all the reputation he gained. His writings are largely the result of the thought concentrated upon him by a co-operative association of unseen intelligences. They unloaded their thought upon him, partly to relieve themselves. So relieved, they were then able to climb higher, and absorb of newer, finer ideas. So fast as you give out to others of your present thought and idea, so fast will you receive of the new. If you hold back, you prevent for yourself the absorption of the newer thought. If you are a medium for any of the forces of the universe to pass through and be transmitted to others, you must be careful that nothing prevents the free passage of new thought through you. The moment you hold back any truth, any plan, scheme, or invention, with the idea that it is exclusively your own, you are clogging up that mediumship.
You will be made poorer in every sense by such holding back. If you give freely you will increase in richness, and out of your overflowing richness you can easily retain enough to bring you every needed material aid. The text, “Freely have ye received, freely give,” is based on a scientific fact in the unseen kingdom of thought.
There are re-embodied spirits to-day on the earth, who, during a former and quite recent existence, had a great reputation in some field of effort. There are on earth to-day poets who enjoy but a tithe of their fame in a former existence.
One reason for this is, that much of their source of inspiration has passed away. That is, the troop of spirits who in the former existence came to them of necessity to unload of their richness of thought, no longer labor under such necessity, so far as the mediumship of the impressional is concerned. These intelligences still have need to give of their thought in some place. But the thought they now absorb may be too fine to be received by any on earth.
With some, idea is organic. They are-creators as well as absorbers of thought. These are they who try to live up to their highest ideal, and in the greatest variety of life and occupation. When one sees the necessity of doing this, he brings to himself all that is best in the universe that he can appropriate. He is an absorber of spirit from every side. He puts out this same spirit again, colored with his or her individuality. Every such individual is as a glass reflector tinged with some peculiar shade. The light within, shining through such shade, spreads rays of the same light on every side. The light represents the spirit. The globe or reflector represents the individual the light shines through. The oil in our lamps may all come from the same source. The lights in a series of lamps may be of as many different colors as there are globes stained of different colors. So in a series of individualized persons, though each is fed of the same spirit, yet each reflects a peculiar light of his own.
We can be creative and original as we absorb of any spirit, and make its expression original. You see and admire the method of an actor or artist; then you absorb of his thought. But you will not be a mere copy of his method. His thought combines with your own. There is an actual chemical operation of unseen element. There is a combination of his thought and your own, resulting in the formation, of a new element—your own original idea. The purer your thought and motive, the more unselfish your purpose, the greater the rapidity of such combination, the more original and striking your thought. By such means is thought born in you. The qualities of justice and unselfishness are themselves elements and scientific factors in such birth.
The selfish spirit is content with being the mere borrower. If it appropriates another’s thought or idea, without ever crediting such idea to its rightful owner, or the desire so to credit it, it will always remain a borrower. But people to borrow from will not always be at hand. There must come a time, in this life or another, when such a spirit will be left entirely to its own resources. It will then find itself poor. It will be crippled by the habit of borrowing. It will find that this habit prevents the chemical assimilation and birth of the new element, or, in other words, original or individually shaded idea. You have simply taken another’s property, and passed it off as your own. You have not been a manufacturer. You have been
