round about to manufacture into sugar and starch and alcohol? No chemist can do it. How do you suppose the potato knows? Of course it doesn’t. It has no sense. Yet it does all these things. It builds the starch into cells, the cells into roots and vines and leaves — and into more potatoes.
“Just old Mother Nature,” you’ll say. But old Mother Nature must have a remarkable intelligence if she can figure out all these things that no human scientist has ever been able to figure. There must be an all-pervading Intelligence behind Mother Nature — the Intelligence that first brought life to this planet — the Intelligence that evolved every form of plant and animal — that holds the winds in its grasp — that is all-wise, all-powerful. The potato is but one small manifestation of this Intelligence. The various forms of plant life, of animals, of man — all are mere cogs in the great scheme of things.
But with this difference — that man is an active part of this Universal Mind. That he partakes of its creative wisdom and power and that by working in harmony with Universal Mind he can do anything have anything, be anything.
There is within you — within everyone — this mighty resistless force with which you can perform undertakings that will dazzle your reason, stagger your imagination. There constantly resides within you a Mind that is all-wise, all-powerful, a Mind that is entirely apart from the mind
which you consciously use in your everyday affairs yet which is one with it.
Your subconscious mind partakes of this wisdom and power, and it is through your subconscious mind that you can draw upon it in the attainment of anything you may desire. When you can intelligently reach your subconscious mind, you can be in communication with the Universal Mind.
Remember this: the Universal Mind is omnipotent. And since the subconscious mind is part of the Universal Mind, there is no limit to the things, which it can do when it is given the power to act. Given any desire that is in harmony with the Universal Mind and you have but to hold that desire in your thought to attract from the invisible domain the things you need to satisfy it.
For mind does its building solely by the power of thought. Its creations take form according to its thought. Its first requisite is a mental image, and your desire held with unswerving purpose will form that mental image.
An understanding of this principle explains the power of prayer. The results of prayer are not brought about by some special dispensation of Providence. God is not a finite being to be cajoled or flattered into doing, as you desire. But when you pray earnestly you form a mental image of the thing that you desire and you hold it strongly in your thought. Then the Universal Intelligence, which is your intelligence — Omnipotent Mind —, begins to work with and for you, and this is what brings about the manifestation that you desire.
The Universal Mind is all around you. It is as all pervading as the air you breathe. It encompasses you with as little trouble as the water in the sea encompasses the fish. Yet it is just as thoroughly conscious of you as the water would be, were it intelligent, of every creature within it. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground with-out your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
It seems hard to believe that a Mind busied with the immensities of the universe can consider such trivial affairs as our own when we are but one of the billions of forms of life which come into existence. Yet consider again the fish in the sea. It is no trouble for the sea to encompass them. It is no more trouble for the Universal Mind to encompass us. Its power, its thought, is as much at our disposal as the sunshine and the wind and the rain. Few of us take advantage to the full of these great forces. Fewer still take advantage of the power of the Universal Mind. If you have any lack, if you are prey to poverty or disease, it is because you do not believe or do not understand the power that is yours. It is not a question of the Universal giving to you. It offers everything to everyone — there is no partiality. “Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” You have only to take. “Whosoever will let him take of the water of life freely.”
“With all thy getting, get understanding,” said Solomon. And if you will but get understanding, everything else will be added unto you.
To bring you to a realization of your indwelling and unused power, to teach you simple, direct methods of drawing upon it, is the beginning and the end of this course.
Chapter 3 — The Primal Cause
For thousands of years the riddle of the universe has been the question of causation. Did the egg come first, or the chicken? “The globe,” says an Eastern proverb, “rests upon the howdah of an elephant. The elephant stands upon a tortoise, swimming in a sea of milk.” But then what?
And what is life? As the Persian poet puts it —
What without asking, hither hurried whence,
And without asking whither hurried hence?
It has been said that every man, consciously or unconsciously, is either a materialist or an idealist. Certainly throughout the ages the schools of philosophy as well as individuals have argued and quarreled, but always human thought through one or the other of these channels “has rolled down the hill of speculation into the ocean of doubt.”
The materialist, roughly speaking, declares that nothing exists but matter and the forces inherent therein.
The idealist declares that all is mind or energy, and that matter is necessarily unreal.
The time has come when people have become dissatisfied with these unceasing theories, which get them nowhere. And today, as the appreciation of a Primal Cause becomes more clearly defined, the spiritual instinct asserts itself determinedly.
“Give me a base of support,” said Archimedes, “and with a lever I will move the world.”
And the base of support is that all started with mind. In the beginning was nothing — a fire mist. Before anything could come of it there had to be an idea, a model on which to build. Universal Mind supplied that idea, that model. Therefore the primal cause is mind. Everything must start with an idea. Every event, every condition, every thing is first an idea in the mind of someone.
Before you start to build a house, you draw up a plan of it. You make an exact blueprint of that plan, and your house takes shape in accordance with your blueprint. Every material object takes form in the same way. Mind draws the plan. Thought forms the blueprint, well drawn or badly done, as your thoughts are clear or vague. It all goes back to the one cause. The creative principle of the universe is mind, and thought is the eternal energy.
But just as the effect you get from electricity depends upon the mechanism to which the power is attached, so the effects you get from mind depend upon the way you use it. We are all of us dynamos. The power is there — unlimited power. But we’ve got to connect it up to something — set it some task — give it work to do — else are we no better off than the animals.
The “Seven Wonders of the World” was built by men with few of the opportunities or facilities that are available to you. They conceived these gigantic projects first in their own minds, pictured them so vividly that their subconscious minds came to their aid and enabled them to overcome obstacles that most of us would regard as insurmountable. Imagine building the Pyramids of Gizeh, enormous stone upon enormous stone, with nothing but bare hands. Imagine the labor, the sweat, the heartbreaking toil of erecting the Colossus of Rhodes, between whose legs a ship could pass! Yet men built these wonders, in a day when tools were of the crudest and machinery was undreamed of, by using
