can make your spirit fit to receive of these elements, and appropriate them, on its return to earth. Your whole organization would be finer then than now. You would be an inhabitant of the two worlds, the physical one about you, and that grade or stratum of the spiritual where you naturally belonged. This is to be the life of the future on this planet. This is the “New Jerusalem” let down to earth.
More men and women in the world’s history have awakened to this life, and lived in it, while using their bodies, than is generally known. Paul speaks of being “caught up to the third heaven, and there seeing unutterable things.” Swedenborg was in close relationship with this world. There have been many others during the ages; but they were discreet enough to keep their knowledge to themselves, knowing their story would not in their time be credited, and that to tell it would bring on themselves unpleasant results.
The time for such secretiveness is now over. More minds awakened and able, at least, to entertain these truths, are now on earth than ever before. These are re-embodied spirits who have entered on another earth-life, with a partial knowledge of these truths, and who will recognize them so soon as they are boldly put forth.
The age for materiality to crush out spiritual truths has passed. The age wherein spiritual truth shall assert itself, and rule materiality, has in reality commenced. It matters not how small is the apparent nucleus or group of persons alive to these truths. A pin-hole can reveal a vast landscape. The point of contact where the rope is made fast to the ship, to pull her off the shoal, is but a few inches wide, but that is all the space required to bring the force to bear on the vessel; and so the relative few who now can receive these things will be the power to raise the many upward.
III.
THE ART OF FORGETTING.
Thoughts are Things.
In the chemistry of the future, thought will be recognized as substance as much as the acids, oxides, and all other chemicals of today.
There is no chasm betwixt what we call the material and spiritual. Both are of substance or element. They blend imperceptibly into each other. In reality the material is only a visible form of the finer elements we call spiritual.
Our unseen and unspoken thought is ever-flowing from us an element and force, as real as the stream of water we can see, or the current of electricity we cannot see. It combines with the thought of others, and out of such combinations new qualities of thought are-formed, as in the combination of chemicals new substances are-formed.
If you send from you in thought the elements of worry, fret, hatred, or grief, you are putting in action forces injurious to your mind and body. The power to forget implies the power of driving away the unpleasant and hurtful thought or element, and bringing in its place the profitable element, to build up instead of tearing us down.
The character of thought we think or put out affects our business favorably or unfavorably. It influences others for or against us. It is an element felt pleasantly or unpleasantly by others, inspiring them with confidence or distrust.
The prevailing state of mind, or character of thought, shapes the body and features. It makes us ugly or pleasing, attractive or repulsive to others. Our thought shapes our gestures, our mannerism, our walk. The least movement of muscle has a mood of mind, a thought, behind it. A mind always determined has always a determined walk. A mind always weak, shifting, vacillating, and uncertain, makes a shuffling, shambling, uncertain gait. The spirit of determination braces every muscle. It is the thought-element of determination filling every muscle.
Look at the discontented, gloomy, melancholy, and ill-tempered men or women, and you see in their faces proofs of the action of this silent force of their unpleasant thought, cutting, carving, and shaping them to their present expression. Such people are never in good health, for that force acts on them as poison, and creates some form of disease. A persistent thought of determination on a purpose, especially if such purpose be of benefit to others as well as ourselves, will fill every nerve with strength. It is a wise selfishness that works to benefit others along with ourselves. Because in spirit, and in actual element, we are all united. We are forces which act and re-act on each other, for good or ill, through what ignorantly we call “empty space.” There are unseen nerves extending from man to man, from being to being. Every form of life is in this sense connected together. We are all “members of one body.” An evil thought or act is a pulsation of pain thrilling through myriads of organizations. The kindly thought and act have for pleasure the same effect. It is, then, a law of nature and of science, that we cannot do a real good to another without doing one also to ourselves.
To grieve at any loss, be it of friend or property, weakens mind and body. It is no help to the friend grieved for. It is rather an injury; for our sad thought must reach the person, even if passed to another condition of existence, and is a source of pain to that person.
An hour of grumbling, fret, or fear, whether spoken or silent, uses up so much element or force in making us less endurable to others, and perhaps making for us enemies. Directly or indirectly, it injures our business. Sour looks and words drive away good customers. Grumbling or hating is a use of actual element to belabor our minds. The force we may so expend could be used to our pleasure and profit, even as the force we might use with a club to beat our own body can be employed to give us comfort and recreation.
To be able, then, to throw off (or forget) a thought or force which is injuring us, is a most important means for gaining strength of body and clearness of mind. Strength of body and clearness of mind bring success in all undertakings.
It brings also strength of spirit; and the forces of our spirits act on others whose bodies are thousands of miles distant, for our advantage or disadvantage. Because there is a force belonging to all of us, separate and apart from that of the body. It is always in action, and acting on others. It must be in action at every moment, whether the body be asleep or awake. Ignorantly, unconsciously, and hence unwisely used, it plunges us into mires of misery and error. Intelligently and wisely used, it will bring us every conceivable good.
That force is our thought. Every thought of ours is of vital importance to health and real success. All so-called success, as the world terms it, is not real. A fortune gained at the cost of health is not a real success.
Every mind trains itself, generally unconsciously, to its peculiar character or quality of thought. Whatever that training is, it cannot be immediately changed. We may have trained our minds unconsciously to entertain evil or troubled thought. We may never have realized that brooding over disappointment, living in a grief, dreading a loss, fretting for fear this or that might not succeed as we wish, was building-up a destructive force which has bled away our strength, created disease, unfitted us for business, and caused us loss of money and possibly loss of friends.
To learn to forget is as necessary and useful as to learn to remember. We think of many things every-day which it would be more profitable not to think of at all. To be able to forget is to be able to drive away the unseen force (thought) which is injuring us, and change it for a force (or order of thought) to benefit us.
Demand imperiously and persistently any quality of character in which you may be lacking, and you attract increase of such quality. Demand more patience or decision or judgment or courage or hopefulness or exactness, and you will increase in such qualities. These qualities are real elements. They belong to the subtler, and as yet unrecognized, chemistry of nature.
The man discouraged, hopeless, and whining, has unconsciously demanded discouragement and hopelessness. So he gets it. This is his unconscious mental training to evil. Mind is “magnetic,”
