Practical metaphysics

Contents

CHAPTEB PAGE

I. The Fountain of all Life 7

II. Disease only in Mind 10

Preface

" For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established." — Rom. 1 : 11.

To present an old truth in a new form is a privilege cheerfully accorded to all. Truth may assume as many forms as there are varieties of intelligence to receive it.

The fact that the seven notes in music have been presented to us in thousands of combinations, by different orders of genius, does not deter us from forming still other combinations with the hope of touching some chord in the human heart hitherto untouched, or of reaching some intelligence hitherto unreached.

Every demand creates a supply.

We do not need to apologize for saying again what has already been so well said.

Jesus did not hesitate to offer us truths that had for ages been embodied in the literature of the East. He did not hesitate to give us the Pater Noster as a model of prayer, because Hillel had already offered it to the world before he came. He did not consider it derogatory to his teachings to enrich them with literal quotations from the Talmud and other sacred books. The whole beautiful life of Jesus was a manifestation of truth, but he did not pretend to create truth. Truth cannot be created. It has always existed. It is here

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and now to every one of us. If our spiritual vision is not yet sufficiently developed to behold it readily, we must grope for it and find it as best we can, always helping one another in the search.

The wave of spiritual truth that is now sweeping over the western world is bringing refreshment and vitality to thousands of tender and living souls, which, like the green sapling in the tempest, yield to its quickening force. Those, however, who stubbornly deny and defy it, will be only bruised in the conflict, as the dead tree is snapped in twain by the rushing wind.

Those of you who are dead, wake up to life ! Life is within you. Summon it forth ! The cry of " Lazarus, come forth " is ringing in the air to-day as clearly as it was eighteen hundred years ago. The Lazarus, the real being, that appears dead but is yet alive, can come forth at the sacred summons. The divine spark that is surely within you can kindle into a flame that shall vivify your whole being. If you have not yet discovered that spark within yourselves, search for it with all diligence, and your search will surely not be in vain.

If during the perusal of the following pages certain inquiries should arise in the mind of the reader, we should be happy to receive them, in the hope of being sufficiently illumined from the Source of all Light, to be enabled to reply to them, weaving the reply into the texture of our next work.

Chapter I. The Fountain Of All Life

" For with thee is the fountain of life." — Ps. 36 : 9.

Metaphysics, as the root of the word implies, is the science of that something in us which is beyond the physical. Metaphysics has too commonly been regarded as dry speculation concerning the working of mind, and held in reserve as the monopoly of polite scholarship, and in no way referable to practical, everyday life. No knowledge is valuable that is not practical. Nothing is more practical than real metaphysics, which teaches the true relation of that something in us beyond the physical — the immortal part of us — to God, who created us, and to the universe in which we are placed. As we are every moment the creature of God, we are every moment in need of the knowledge of our true relation to him. As we are every moment in the universe, we are every moment in need of the teaching that enables us to adjust ourselves to that universe.

Metaphysics is rightly defined to be the science of mind over matter. It teaches the mind to assume its rightful province in dominion over matter. The maintenance of this true order of life has, in all ages of the world, been proved to result in sanity of mind and

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body. The great question, then, is how to maintain this divinely established order of our being. It is in no instance done without watching and working, even if accomplished — as it may be — without suffering. With spirit in full command of its servant matter, we are in that condition which brings us into true relations with the Eternal Being, we are in that attitude which opens us to the influx of the all-pervading life-principle.

The existence of an ever-present life-principle is universally acknowledged. It is one and the same under whatever name it may be designated ; whether it be the " Nature " of the materialists, or the " Od " of Baron Reichenbach, or the " Vril" of Bulwer-Lytton, or the " Divine Influx from the Lord" of Emanuel Swedenborg, or the "AJcasa" of the Adept Brotherhood of India, or any one of that list of names in the book of Hermes : " The Divine Thought" " The Celestial Ocean" " The Ether flowing from East to West" " The Breath of the Father" " The Life-giving Principle" " The Holy Ghost"

All life, in whatever kingdom it may be found, is sustained from this universal fountain so variously designated ; and if at any time matter ceases to imbibe its due supply, it becomes inert and dead. Matter has no life in itself. Our material body is alive, as we say, just in proportion to its capability of receiving from this fountain of life, and it is capable of receiving from this fountain of life just in proportion as it is dominated by that something in us beyond the physical, which in its divine essence is called soul and in its dual manifestation is called mind and spirit, the intellect and the affections, the male and female principles.

How comforting it should be to think that the power to be wholly alive is all within ourselves, that we can make slight effort and have partial health, or we can put forth all our energy and enjoy mental and physical health in its fulness and perfection.

There is no time when, there is no place in which, this life-principle may not be found. There are only conditions in us which open us to it, or close us against it. It is the atmosphere of the soul, as the air we inhale into our lungs is the atmosphere of the body. It permeates every crevice and every tissue of our souls, as the physical atmosphere permeates every crevice and every tissue of our bodies, if we permit it to do so. It is above us. It is below us. It surrounds us and presses in upon us on every side. It is even eager to be admitted. It is freighted with divine love, with divine intention to bless and to heal, if we will only allow it to do so.

We have first to believe that this power exists, and then with the turning of the mind towards it grows a faith in its saving efficacy, which faith increases with the working of the power, until it becomes that positive knowledge which opens wide the portals of the soul and makes its atmosphere one with the universal ether.

Chapter II. Disease Only In Mind

" Not that which goeth into the mouth ; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." — Matt. 15 : 11.

Only that which is within us, which is in the mind or in the heart, can harm us. No external thing can gain a hold upon us unless it find some point of affinity within us. All defilement, all disease, arises from within.

Before you can practically set to work to make your body whole by healing the mind, you must at least listen to the great truth that disease originates in mind. All are willing to admit that some diseases are created by a condition of mind, but many assert that other diseases are wholly physical ; that they are conditions of body irrespective of mind. In what are usually termed nervous ailments, even the materialist can trace the working of metaphysical law, for it lies so near the surface. But the deep and complex causes in mind which just as surely produce the whole list of so-called physical ailments, he cannot discern, for they are further below the surface than his science is able to explore.

We say you must listen to the truth that disease originates in mind; for if you are not yet opened to spiritual things, you cannot be expected to do more at first than give truth an unprejudiced hearing. You cannot be expected to be convinced of any truth through the intelligence of another person. Spiritual truth must come to you through your own spiritual perception, as intellectual truth must come to you through your own intellect. It is the office of the practical teacher to enable you to gain a knowledge of truth by your own practice, and not by the practice of another person. But in order to begin the practice of metaphysics rightly, you must start on at least the supposition that in mind is the cause of all effect in matter, not necessarily your mind, but some mind or minds. You must, therefore, direct your healing energy exclusively to mind, to the entire ignoring of matter. You must regard yourself as only a spiritual being.

Our great, ideal teacher, Jesus, in his marvellous works in healing, never alluded to the diseased body of the afflicted. He told them their sins were forgiven them ; that their faith had made them whole. He bade them go and sin no more. He commanded them to arise, to be whole; but never do we read of his making an examination of their physical body, or calling attention to the outward manifestation of the error which he considered within them. He addressed only the soul within. We have but to follow his pure and explicit example.

You may say it all sounds very well as theory, but we have had enough of theories. They do nothing for us.

If theories are not put in practice, they certainly can do nothing for you. We confess that in metaphysics, as in many other sciences, the wheat of truth is too often choked up with tares of mysticism and verbosity. There are largely circulated works on the old science of metaphysics, in which one is obliged to seek for gems of truth amid heaps of rubbish, works in which one golden sentence is found on a page, the remaining part of which is an insult to any rational understanding, because it is totally devoid of rationality. But that these works live in spite of their rubbish is proof that they live because of the little truth there is in them. " A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump."

We have no need of whole volumes to prove that there is no such thing as matter in existence, for matter certainly does (as the word implies) exist, or stand out, on the material plane as the lowest or ultimate manifestation of spirit. It is useless to say that we have no body. At this moment we have a material body. It is not (according to Material Science) in any one of its particles the same body we had seven years ago, but it is. nevertheless a body. It is real while it lasts. A shadow is real while it lasts, real as an effect. Our body, which is momentarily changing, is as real as a shadow. If we feel cold and uncomfortable standing in the shadow of a large building, the mere assertion that there is no shadow there, will not, so long as we believe there is one, make us feel warm. But if we can take the higher ground that while the shadow as an effect, as an appearance, does exist, yet we are in so positive a condition that we can hold our own against it, that we can be indifferent as to whether we are in shadow or in sunshine, then, relatively, the shadow will not exist. It will not exist for us.

Our material body is a shadow of our soul, as the whole material universe is a shadow of the spiritual realm.

The Persian book of Shet, in harmony with Swedenborg's Science of Correspondences, as well as with modern Greek philosophies, says : " Whatever is on earth is the resemblance and shadow of something that is in the sphere; while that resplendent thing remaineth in an unchangeable condition, it is well also with its shadow. But when the resplendent one removeth far from its shadow, life removeth from the latter to a distance."

These sentiments, whether expressed in the language of the Persians, or that of the Greeks, or in the Latin of old English Literature, are the sentiments of true metaphysics. When the spiritual world removes itself from us, as we say, — just as we say the sun leaves us r or God forsakes us, when it is only we who change — then life is removed from us.

The shadow depends for its existence and form upon the more substantial object that casts that shadow and the light back of the object. Material science does not teach us to make an examination of the ever-shifting shadow in order to learn the properties of the object that projects the shadow. Material science in search for such truth would ignore the shadow altogether. Much more should spiritual science, in its search for causation, ignore the existence of the soul's shadow, the transient body.

As we regard the shadow of the style on the face of a sundial, merely as an index of the sun's position with relation to that style, so should we regard the body, only as an index of spiritual light with relation to us.

Material science recognizes the fact that when our body is in a state of perfect health we are not conscious of a body. But material science asserts that in order to arrive at that state of unconsciousness, the body must first be in a condition of perfect health, while spiritual science reverses the assertion, and says that the body cannot be in a state of perfect health until we have arrived at a condition of unconsciousness of its existence. If we take care of the soul, the body will take care of itself. If we fill the mind with truth, the body will express that truth. All truth is beautiful. It is a universal conception that Jesus, that Buddha, that all the great spiritual lights of the world have been beautiful in body as well as in soul. All unsightliness of body originates in disease as a second cause. Disease is an index of a lack of spiritual light resulting in sin or weakness, or ignorance, either in ourselves or some other mind or minds that dominate us.

Some very upright, conscientious and even religious people will say that they live up to their highest light, and yet they are ill. Yes ; but their highest light may be darkness.

It is difficult for us to realize how little we are ourselves, and how much we are made up of the beliefs and opinions of others. The majority of the world believe, without question, what they have been taught to believe. It is only the exceptional mind that puts aside inherited and ingrafted belief and finds out truth for itself.

Medical science, and even religion, has for ages taught us that disease of body is a necessity of our mortal condition, and we are even told that it is sent by God as a necessary part of our development and discipline ; when the truth is, that it is wholly our own creation. We certainly do need it as a discipline when we are in a condition to have it. But if we are in such a condition now, let us not remain in it a moment longer. Let us at once learn the lesson taught us in this inevitable result of error, and cast out the error. There can be no effect where there is no cause.

So long as your child is in a condition to break the rules of his school, he is in a condition to need the suffering his transgression entails on him. But you do not tell him that punishment is a necessary part of his education, and that it is necessary for him to be disobedient in order to have the suffering which benefits him. You feel sure that if he obeys the rules he not only will not need to suffer, but that there will be no cause for his suffering, and therefore he cannot have the suffering.

If disease in us is the result of our error, if it is our own work, how can we undo that work and begin anew on a metaphysical basis. Can we carry these metaphysical theories into practice?

We can do so. We can begin to-day to live metaphysics.

You need not fear that you are so good that you will not be able to find your error. You need not fear that you will find nothing to correct in yourself; for after the intelligent introspection of an hour, you will be aghast at the host of errors, in the form of weaknesses and indigencies — to speak of nothing worse — that you will bring to the front. If you think you are all right within, when you have an ailment without, you must be blind indeed. Egotism has destroyed your visiom A tree is known by its fruit.

There is, perhaps, no universal error which seems so little like an error as an opinion regarding weather and climate. Pinching and poverty are suffered, large fortunes are spent, and valuable time is sacrificed, in order to avoid certain climates that are believed to be injurious, and gain certain other climates that are believed to be beneficial, when the truth regarding it is, that you have all climates within yourself. This bondage to atmospheric changes and conditions is a troublesome and expensive kind of slavery. A civil war is needed to blot it out of existence, a war within your own boundaries, a war at home, and with weapons that you have within yourself.

If it is only a matter of pleasure, and if duty does not conflict with that pleasure, there is certainly no harm in seeking the climate you like best. But do not imagine for a moment that a certain kind of climate is a necessity for you.

If duty, or even expediency, places you in a climate that you believe to be injurious to your health, contradict that belief at once. Remain in that climate and protect yourself in truth. Experience will then demonstrate to you (as it has to us) the fact that power over the elements is within yourself, and you will not run away to have your fighting to do another day, but you will stay and conquer, and you will enjoy the fruit of your great conquest over error more than you could possibly enjoy the most delightful climate on earth.

If you are a weather slave, work for your freedom ! If the fear of climate is the dragon that meets you on the threshold of your introspective chamber, seize it at once, and trample it under your feet !

We are equal to all the inevitable conditions in which we are placed. Our backs are fitted to the burdens

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that God has placed upon them. We will say more : if not even duty, but convenience or pleasure, calls us to a harsh climate, then we can endure a harsh climate and receive no harm, if we protect ourselves in truth. God does not intend us to be in bondage to these material things. The power of good can always protect us against evil.

If, for example, you fear dampness and believe that you cannot expose yourself to it without injurious results, then combat that fear at once. It is not the dampness but the belief in your mind that injures you. Dress yourself comfortably and protect yourself sensibly, and go out for a walk in the dampness or rain. If you have an object, and can be of service to some one by going, so much the better, for benevolence is a servant of metaphysics. Every moment of your walk deny, not that bad weather exists, but that it can possibly harm you. It is an error to suppose that it can do so. It can do so only as you allow it to do so. Deny this error again and again, if need be, until it finally retires, as it certainly will do, and you are troubled with it no more.

We know of a case in which a serious and chronic fear of dampness was overcome in two months. Now two months may not be required in your case, for spirit acknowledges no limitation in time. You may, perhaps, conquer the error in two days. But if more time is needed, do not be discouraged. Know that the limitation is in yourself and not in the power of truth.

Chapter III. Denial A Power

" The evil bow before the good." — Prov. 14 : 19.

Evil is always cowardly. Assert your rightful supremacy over evil, and it will cringe before you. If evil arrogates to itself the right of master, it is always because the true master is absent. Let the master return and deny the claim of the usurper. Good is the only supreme sovereign.

There are those who conscientiously object to denying what they say they know to be true. It is for you to realize that evil is true only in proportion as you make it true, and false in proportion as you make it false.

It is not necessary to deny that evil and disease exist. They certainly do exist as an effect, on the outward plane. But they find no lodgement in the inmost and eternal soul, the pure emanation from the All Perfect Being. If disease exists, it is no part of our real self. If you have a wart or a tumor, you do not consider it, a necessary part of your body, but you regard it as something that has been added by an interference with the working of natural law. You never saw a statue or any model of the human body with a tubercle included as a necessary part of that body. Disease has no more place in the material body as it was created, than sin has in the soul as it proceeded from its pure source. Both sin and disease are something added to our original self by an interference with the working of fixed law, producing an inharmony between us and God's established order. Then deny them both as real eternal conditions. Do not permit them to exist. Above all, at any time and every time deny the power of disease to harm you.

The most conscientious mother does not hesitate to say to her child who has just had a severe fall : " Get up, my son ! Be brave ! You are not hurt. It is well now. There is nothing the matter." She does not tell him that he did not fall, but endeavors to impress upon him the fact that if he thinks nothing about it, he will not be harmed. The child swallows his sobs, dries his tears, and runs to his play again. Do you feel that the mother has been untruthful ? There is a swelling upon the child's forehead, and you can see it across the room. What of that ? The pain has been driven out of his mind where alone it existed, and the lump upon his forehead is of no consequence whatever. But if you desire to increase that lump, you have only to place your mind upon it, and the child's in addition perhaps, to create an inflammation that will last him for many a day.

Mere belief in the power of disease is an error. Stout and sincere denial of an error weakens its power. It is the greater attacking the lesser, and that lesser must always retire maimed if not at once destroyed.

The denial of truth cannot weaken its power. The greater can always hold its own against the lesser. If truth in you seems to give way to error, it is because you have not a firm hold upon truth. Truth does not give way ; it is you that give way. When truth becomes a knowledge to you, when it is in your possession, it will hold its own against all attack. If a person who stood beside you as you looked upon a glorious sunset should tell you that there was no such thing as color, you would simply feel sure that he was blind, or at least color-blind. Your faith in the existence of color would not be shaken ; you would not only believe, but you would know that color existed. You may believe what is false, but you can know only what is true. Knowledge stands on the rock of truth and cannot be shaken. Mere belief is built upon the sand, which at any moment may shift and bring the feeble structure down in ruins. You may believe one thing to-day and its opposite to-morrow, but that which you know, is truth. It is unchangeable. It is yours forever. Deny evil, and, having nothing to stand upon, it will fall.

Mere words of denial do not possess the desired efficacy. If you deny the power of an ailment in a tame, mechanical way, with no spirit or faith in the power of denial, if you employ your words as a sort of magical

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incantation expected to operate upon certain occult forces, without your co-operation, you may as well say nothing and let the evil have its way unmolested. But the very energy that is put forth in earnest denial of error is a power that instantly begins the work of destroying that error. It expresses your desire, and paints upon the mind the perfect image that your body will as a natural sequence copy. If you perceive little result in one denial, deny again and again, if need be. Reiteration is a power.

You have perhaps heard that a person may tell a falsehood so many times that at last he believes it himself. Now, if a falsehood may be thus impressed upon the mind, why may not also a truth, to the same degree ? It may, to the same degree and to a thousand times greater degree. The power of truth always has been, is now, and always will be, a thousand times more than a match for falsehood. The powers of light are greater than the powers of darkness. The hosts of heaven outnumber the feeble ranks of hell. If you have joined the army of truth, victory is already yours. Raise high your colors and march on !

To make denial practical, suppose that at this moment you feel that you have a severe headache, then vigorously deny its power over you. Say, with the child who was offered medicine that he considered worse than his ailment, that you have it, but it does not hurt. It cannot harm you if you do not permit it to do so.

Argue away all cause for such a result. Make the statement that you are in a harmonious condition of mind and equal to the duty of the hour, whatever it may be, and with that statement is presented to you an image of yourself as you can be and will be, or, perhaps, there comes back upon you from the past a recollection of yourself at your best, and with that image, its corresponding condition of mind returns upon you. How many joys and sorrows of the past we live over again ! Why not utilize this tendency of human nature and turn it to good instead of evil account. Never live over your sorrows. But if your grip upon truth will not sustain you in the present without a backward look, then revert to some past joy, or some moment of perfect health or happiness, and use it as a crutch until you can stand alone in the present, firm and tranquil on a foundation of truth.

We know of an old man who always feels strong when he thinks of a certain day in his youth in which he saved a child from drowning. We tell him that if his mind rmist travel backward, then let it rest upon that day.

We know of a lady who always feels ill when she thinks of the day in which she refused to acknowledge the acquaintance of a friend for fear of harm to herself. We tell her never to think of that day again. Like the cowardly disciple Peter, she has wept over her error, and, like him, she can atone for it by noble living and noble teaching. She learned her lesson in her suffering, and now let her close the book forever.

Let the dead past bury its dead. All the good of your past is living in the present; it has lost but its worn-out shells, and is re-embodied in your words and deeds of to-day. Do not go back and rake up the corpses and skeletons that you have dropped along the road. You carry everything along with you that is worth carrying, and that without any effort on your part. Live in to-day, and live only in the good of to-day, denying the evil and dropping it along the way as you pass on.