Blueprints For Living
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WE ARE IN THE ATOMIC AGE. A new era is upon us and we are only beginning to touch the fringes of its possibilities.

Viewed objectively at the present time these look more like possibilities for evil than for good, with war inventions appearing to supersede opportunities for wise and better ways of living. Outworn modes and methods project themselves into a period in which they do not belong and drag with them the rags and tatters of the past. National leaders still turn their peoples toward war for protection as well as aggression. And war tuned up to fit the atomic discoveries is a fearsome thing.

To drop these old patterns of action, supplanting them with sounder ways of international and personal adjustments, still seems almost entirely beyond human comprehension. This is not surprising. No one can leap from the age just passed into this new one at a single jump. Humanity emerges slowly— the door is open but few see it and most of those who do, peer through with apprehension.

The adjustment to a new concept of substance and of one's own identity as well is slow—slow as mankind's progress has ever been. But no matter how desperately we cling to past opinions, traditions, customs, convictions, education, unless these are rooted in fundamental truths they are forced to yield to universal evolution.

Whether through the afflictions of our negative experiences or more happily through our own dawning recognition of the reality all about us, we will take our individual places in history's progression and find ourselves learning to live within the framework of a New Age.

There are those who see beyond the discoveries of the physicists and they give this age another name, The Age of Mind. Thus our concept of substance takes a step further than quantum physics: we see that what the explorers in this realm call force or energy is actually the substance of one universal mind. From this standpoint, our concept of our bodies and our world, our concept of everyday living too, will gradually advance beyond personal fear and beyond the possibility of personal danger.

We are about ready for the kindergarten in this amazing new stage of humanity's development. Volumes are being written about it from as many stand points. This book is for one department in this great kindergarten, drawing to it those for whom it has meaning. You may be skeptical at first reading. But if it commands your interest enough to study it seriously, you will find a way of living indicated here that is in harmony with the mind and substance of the Atomic Age.

Fear of this new era disappears as we begin to recognize its tremendous possibilities for good, as we learn how its basic discoveries can be made of practical, constructive, daily value. Modern war has horrified most of the world. People have closed their minds to the surety that the age in which A bombs and H bombs have appeared must inevitably include the means to nullify the destructive powers of these war inventions.

It is also hard to realize that the way to do this is not by mechanical inventions. It is in a man's own advancing understanding of the true Source and Substance of his mind, his body, and his world.

A way of individual living stems from this understanding that lifts a person above antiquated, outworn, yet prevalent systems into real accord with this Age. He can become a law to himself so that his daily experience shall be governed by the constructive laws of the universe. When this way of living becomes habitual he is no longer at the mercy of the outmoded methods that are actually in conflict with this Age and not an unavoidable part of it.

BLUEPRINTS FOR LIVING is published for those who feel within themselves some of the ideas put down here. As they read now and again they will say "Yes, I know this is true." The basic ideas of this book are radical and will not be acceptable to many, but wherever there is one who finds meaning in them he is seeing his own convictions taking form in words.

So that actually the ideas are already his, the words merely bringing them into focus and possibly making them more practical in everyday living. As these ideas become important to him the book is then registering his own advancing understanding. In that sense it becomes his book.

Thinking of it as "So-and-so's Book" (instead of something that he is realizing for himself) will retard his own intelligent living of whatever he finds that is valuable to him. Believing that the truths in it are being transferred to him from someone else will only get in the way of his comprehending them. The truth in this book does not belong to anyone ... or should we say paradoxically it belongs to everyone. Truth cannot be fenced in by any individual and dished out piecemeal to others.

No one has all the answers. The progression of truth or divine evolution will go on forever. There will never be such a thing as the full and final revelation of truth. The truth I see at this moment and that works for me now is the stepping stone to a further realization of truth. For this reason, we should never look back with shame on what we believed and practiced in the past, nor should we look down on another's beliefs.

Each is at his own stage of development and if he tries to live what he believes nothing more can be asked of him.

If this book is utter nonsense to someone I can feel no criticism or even disappointment about that. In writing this I am not trying to convert others to my own concept of what is true. I have just said it is published for others but I must qualify this.

I am also impelled to write what I see and understand of life through the individual necessity of self-expression. If this helps others it is because of their own comprehension and I can deeply rejoice with them....and continue to leave their spiritual progression in the hands of their inner unfoldment.

As long as I still feel the urge to make others see and accept the truths that I see, I myself have not arrived at the fullness of TRUTH. THE MIND THAT IS TRUTH SEES NOTHING OUTSIDE ITSELF THAT NEEDS CONVERSION.

One may read into this book more than is in the actual words. So again, this will be his book. He will see in it his own realizations and will go beyond what is written, into a greater and more comprehensive unfoldment of life.

I am not a teacher imparting to my readers the truth I know and they do not. Truth never comes that way. No one can teach truth to another. Truth unfolds itself directly. Truth is revealing itself in and as individual consciousness, not being passed on from one advanced thinker to another. The appearing of truth is not a relay race. It is the forever continuity of life individualizing itself.

One can read volumes of metaphysical statements, listen and talk for hours on the subject, but until he hears the bell of comprehension ring in his own understanding, the words mean nothing practical to him even if he wants to believe and accept them. Reality in its vital bearing on individual life comes as an inner awareness, a FEELING that needs no vocabulary. Words are only secondary forms that the fundamental FEELING can take when it is already being lived.

When the time has come for verbal expression, words can be found which voice a truth clearly and very simply. But it is an intellectual statement only, without living power, until the truth has been experienced in a practical way.

By this I do not mean that one is never benefitted by what others have said or written. On the contrary. Truth is true and its statement at any time and in any manner is a part of its eternal evolution. It has a universal and permanent effect. It is one's attitude toward what he reads or hears to which I refer. The idea that truth is something that cannot come to oneself direct from the Source but must be received through a mediator is a wall of obstruction to one's spiritual development.

It is this fixation of needing (and wanting) a mediator, that has kept mankind as a whole from approximating the lives of the few Wise Ones who humbly accept within themselves the immediate unfolding of truth.

There is a striking difference between a theory, a philosophy, or a religious doctrine, and the TRUTH revealing itself with authority because it is appearing in the living present.

This book deals extensively with man's immediate relation to the Supreme Cause of all existence and explains the nature of this Cause without hesitation. To many religious people these explanations will at first seem atheistic.

To others they will show the great Source of all being in a light that reaches to the very heart of life, bringing inner peace and strength of mind that enable us to walk erect in safety and fearlessness through a world transformed—to live a present life so satisfying that there is no need to look overmuch into the past or the future.

This book conforms to no religious teaching. It will not develop into another religious cult. It deals wholly with the now of everyday life. By the word TRUTH, I do not refer to a religious conviction but to what is actually and factually true and capable of proof in ordinary existence.

Most religions include firm views and teachings on pre-existence and future life. Mankind longs to know with certainty about these conditions and the religions claim to give us the answers. I must leave these questions and answers to individual convictions and to religious dogma. Like others I feel the pull to speculate on pre-existence and future life. But anything I might write about these would be merely hearsay and conjecture.

Unless I am fully aware of the past and the future I can have little of worth to say on these subjects. I have no knowledge of how I existed before this present life and not having passed beyond it I cannot say with authority what comes after. ... I do have a conviction of LIFE—LIFE that never began and that will never end. And I am realizing in a more and more valuable way what my life and substance are and why they are.

So it is about this experience in the NOW and HERE of life that this book deals.