him with good things which he had only to exert himself in order to reach, you wouldn’t like it if he showed himself to the world half-starved, ill-kempt and clothed in rags, merely because he was unwilling to exert himself enough to reach for the good things you had provided. No more, in my humble opinion, does God.
Man’s principal business in life, as I see it, is to establish a contact with Universal Mind. It is to acquire an understanding of this power that is in him. “With all thy getting, get understanding,” said Solomon.
Happy is the man that findeth wisdom,
And the man that getteth understanding.
For the gaining of it is better than the gaining of silver.
And the profit thereof than fine gold.
She is more precious than rubies:
And none of the things thou canst desire are to be compared unto her.
Length of days is in her right hand:
In her left hand are riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
And all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her.
And happy is every one that retaineth her.
—
Proverbs.
When you become conscious, even to a limited degree, of your oneness with Universal Mind, your ability to call upon It at will for anything you may need, it makes a different man of you. Gone are the fears gone are the worries. You know that your success, your health, your happiness will be measured only by the degree to which you can impress the fruition of your desires upon mind.
The toil and worry, the wearisome grind and the backbreaking work, will go in the future as in the past to those who will not use their minds. The less they use them, the more they will sweat. And the more they work only from the neck down, the less they will be paid and the more hopeless their lot will become. It is Mind that rules the world.
But to use your mind to the best advantage doesn’t mean to toil along with the mere conscious part of it. It means hitching up your conscious mind with the Man
Inside You, with the little “Mental Brownies,” as Robert Louis Stevenson called them, and then working together for a definite end.
“My Brownies! God bless them!” said Stevenson, “Who do one-half of my work for me when I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood do the rest for me as well when I am wide awake and foolishly suppose that I do it myself. I had long been wanting to write a book on man’s double being. For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort, and on the second night I dreamt the scene in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the window; and a scene, afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuer.”
Many another famous writers have spoken in similar strain, and every man who has problems to solve has had like experiences. You know how, after you have studied a problem from all angles, it sometimes seems worse jumbled than when you started on it. Leave it then for a while — forget it — and when you go back to it, you find your thoughts clarified, the line of reasoning worked out, your problem solved for you. It is your little “Mental Brownies” who have done the work for you!
The flash of genius does not originate in your own brain. Through intense concentration you’ve established a circuit through your subconscious mind with the Universal, and it is from It that the inspiration comes. All genius, all progress, is from the same source. It lies with you merely to learn how to establish this circuit at will so that you can call upon It at need. It can be done.
“In the Inner Consciousness of each of us,” quotes Dumont in “The Master Mind,” “there are forces which act much the same as would countless tiny mental brownies or helpers who are anxious and willing to assist us in our mental work, if we will but have confidence and trust in them. This is a psychological truth expressed in the terms of the old fairy tales. The process of calling into service these Inner Consciousness helpers is similar to that which we constantly employ to recall some forgotten fact or name. We find that we cannot recollect some desired fact, date, or name, and instead of racking our brains with an increased effort, we (if we have learned the secret) pass on the matter to the Inner Consciousness with a silent command, ‘Recollect this name for me,’ and then go on with our ordinary work. After a few minutes — or it may be hours — all of a sudden, pop! will come the missing name or fact before us — flashed from the planes of the Inner Consciousness, by the help of the kindly workers or ‘brownies’ of those planes. The experience is so common that we have ceased to wonder at it, and yet it is a wonderful manifestation of the Inner Consciousness’ workings of the mind. Stop and think a moment, and you will see that the missing word does not present itself accidentally, or just because.’ There are mental processes at work for your benefit, and when they have worked out the problem for you they gleefully push it up from their plane on to the plane of the outer consciousness where you may use it.
“We know of no better way of illustrating the matter than by this fanciful figure of the ‘mental brownies,’ in connection with the illustration of the ‘subconscious storehouse.’ If you would learn to take advantage of the work of these Subconscious Brownies, we advise you to form a mental picture of the Subconscious Storehouse in which is stored all sorts of knowledge that you have placed there during your lifetime, as well as the impressions that you have acquired by race inheritance — racial memory, in fact. The information stored away has often been placed in the storage rooms without any regard for systematic storing, or arrangement, and when you wish to find something that has been stored away there a long time ago, the exact place being forgotten, you are compelled to call to your assistance the little brownies of the mind, which perform faithfully your mental command, ‘Recollect this for me!’ These brownies are the same little chaps that you charge with the task of waking you at four o’clock tomorrow morning when you wish to catch an early train — and they obey you well in this work of the mental alarm-clock. These same little chaps will also flash into your consciousness the report, ‘I have an engagement at two o’clock with Jones’ — when looking at your watch you will see that it is just a quarter before the hour of two, the time of your engagement.
“Well then, if you will examine carefully into a subject which you wish to master, and will pass along the results of your observations to these Subconscious Brownies, you will find that they will work the raw materials of thought into shape for you in a comparatively short time. They will analyze, systematize, collate, and arrange in consecutive order the various details of information which you have passed on to them, and will add thereto the articles of similar information that they will find stored away in the recesses of your memory. In this way they will group together various scattered bits of knowledge that you have forgotten. And, right here, let us say to you that you never absolutely forget anything that you have placed in your mind. You may be unable to recollect certain things, but they are not lost — sometime later some associative connection will be made with some other fact, and lo! the missing idea will be found fitted nicely into its place in the larger idea — the work of our little brownies. Remember Thompson’s statement: ‘In view of having to wait for the results of these unconscious processes, I ‘have proved the habit of getting together material in advance, and then leaving the mass to digest itself until I am ready to write about it.’ This subconscious ‘digestion’ is really the work of our little mental brownies.
“There are many ways of setting the brownies to work. Nearly everyone has had some experience, more
