How The Mind Works
	Finding Material For Mind Building <  Previous Contents Next  >

To live is to move forward but there can be no forward movement without new experience. Therefore in all advancement, in all progress, in all attainment, in all achievement, and in the living of life itself experience is indispensable. Experience being necessary to the promotion of advancement as well as to the increase of the value and the welfare of life, it becomes necessarily a permanent and continuous cause in the world of every individual, and as like causes produce like effects, both in quality and in quantity, experience should be sought and selected with the greatest possible care.

It is also highly important that we seek an abundance of experience because so long as the cause has quality it cannot be too extensive in quantity. Experience is the material from which character and mentality are constructed. Therefore the richer and more abundant our experience, the stronger and more perfect will our character and mentality become. Everything has its purpose and the real purpose of experience is to awaken new forces, new states, new phases of consciousness, and to originate new actions in the various parts of being.

To unfold and bring forth what is latent in the being of man is the principal object of experience. And it is well to remember that without experience no latent quality or power can ever be aroused and expressed. The power of experience to bring forth what is latent and to originate the new gives cause to enjoyment and happiness, as well as progress, and since experience is the only cause of enjoyment, it follows that what the enjoyment is to be in the life of any individual will depend directly upon what experience that individual will select.

The average mind makes no effort to select experience wisely, therefore fails to promote the real purpose of experience; and failing in this he also fails to awaken and develop those things in himself that can produce the most desirable of all experience, that is, the consciousness of a perpetual increase of all that has real worth in life.

The more experience the better, provided it is rich, constructive and wholesome, though no person should seek experience for the mere sake of passing through experience. The belief that experience itself builds life is not true, nor is there any truth in the doctrine that all kinds of experience, good and otherwise, are necessary to the full development of life. It is only a certain kind of experience that can add to the welfare of life and promote the purpose of life. Therefore to understand the psychology of experience and how experience is connected with the workings of mind is a matter of exceptional importance.

The daily purpose of each individual should be to seek the richest experience possible in order that the best material possible may be provided in the building of himself. To this end he should place himself in daily contact with the best that is moving in the world, and the more of this the better. Such a practice will develop the mind, perfect the character, refine and re-polish the personality, and increase perpetually the health and the wholeness of the body. It will also tend directly towards the promotion of a long and happy life.

The mind should be wide-awake to everything in its sphere of existence that can give expression to superior action, and seek to gain the richest possible experience by coming in contact with that action. To place one's self in mental contact with the best that is in action in the world is to originate similar actions within one's own mentality. These will arouse the superior forces that are latent in the deeper mentality and before long a superior mental life will have been evolved.

The more experience that the mind can gain by coming in contact with the best things that are alive in the world the larger, the broader and the more perfect will the mind become. It is therefore evident that the recluse must necessarily have a small mind whether he lives in the world or apart from the world. To live a life of seclusion is to eliminate experience to the smallest degree possible and thereby cause the mind to become so small that only a mere fraction of its power and intellect can be in conscious action. In consequence such a person can never be his best in anything, not even in a single isolated talent, nor can his ideas as a whole have any practical value, being based wholly upon one-sided opinions.

In this connection it is most important to understand that the philosophy of the hermit is useless in practical life. And the same is true of moral or physical views as formulated by those who live in seclusion. Such ideas may look well in theory and they may be accepted by millions of people, but nothing outside of mere intellectual satisfaction will be gained. Intellectual satisfaction, however, when not directly associated with physical, mental and moral progress is detrimental; the reason being that it produces a phase of mental contentment that culminates in mental inactivity.

The only intellectual satisfaction that is normal and that can be beneficial, is that satisfaction which comes from the consciousness of continuous advancement. Any other satisfaction means mental inaction, and mental inaction leads to death invariably, not only in the intellectual but also in body, mind and character.

Those who live in the world and who are daily required to meet the problems of the world should seek guidance and instruction when necessary only from those superior minds that have had experience in the world. Those who live apart from the world do not appreciate the conditions that exist in the world. They have not been awakened to the real nature of those conditions. Therefore the solution that they may offer for the problem which may arise from such conditions can be of no practical value. He alone really knows who has had experience, though experience is not the whole of knowledge. It is only a small part, but that part is indispensable.

Minds that live only for themselves or for a selected few only, will also become narrow in mentality and dwarfed 'in character. Such living invariably results in retrogression because too many of the elements of life, both physical and metaphysical, are compelled through the lack of experience to remain inactive. The entire mentality and the entire personality should be active, and to promote such activity the entire individual life should be entirely filled with rich, wholesome and intellectual experience.

In brief we should live while we live and not simply exist. The lives of young people in particular should be well provided with an abundance of wholesome amusements and of every imaginable variety, though this practice should not cease with the coming of the thirties. We should all enjoy this life to the fullest extent so long as we remain in this life, though not simply because it is the privilege of us all to enjoy every moment to the fullest extent, but also because there are few things that are more conducive to wholesome experience than that of wholesome, enjoyment. We gradually grow into the likeness of that which we enjoy. An abundance of wholesome amusement therefore will invariably produce a wholesome nature. And by enjoying the greatest possible number of the best things we shall naturally and steadily develop the best that is latent within us.

Every experience that we pass through awakens something within us that was not active before, and this something will in turn impress upon the subconscious the nature of the thought that was created during the experience. In fact the nature of the experience will determine what is to be awakened in the conscious mind and what is to be impressed upon the subconscious. And since subconscious impressions determine the character, the mentality and, the personal nature of man, it is of the highest importance that only such experiences be selected as are rich, constructive and wholesome.

What is awakened in the mind of man is awakened by experience alone. For this reason no change in the mind can take place, unless preceded by some experience whether that experience be tangible or imaginary. And what is awakened in the mind of man determines first what he is to think, and second what he is to do and to be. These facts prove conclusively that experience is the material from which character and mentality are constructed. And therefore experience should receive the most thorough consideration during every period of life, and especially during the first twenty-four years of personal existence.

The experience that a person passes through during this early period will determine to a very great extent what is to be accomplished in later years; the reason being that the early tendencies are the strongest as a rule, be they good or otherwise. We are not inferring, however, that man cannot change his nature, his character, his mentality, his habits, his desires or his tendencies at any time, because he can. But time and energy can be put to better use in later life than to that of overcoming the results of mistakes that could have been avoided if the proper mental tendencies had been produced early in life.

We should take advantage of favorable periods when we have them, and we should create such periods when we do not have them. This we can do, but when they come of themselves, as they do in the early years of personal existence, everything possible should be done to make these periods become a permanent power in our favor.

To permit the young mind or any mind to pass through experiences that are unwholesome or adverse is to cause tendencies to be produced that will work against him all his life, that is, if those tendencies are not removed later on, and they usually are not. But to limit the supply of experience at this period or at any period is equally detrimental. That person who enters the twenties in the consciousness of an abundance of rich experience is prepared for his career, and if he has a fair degree of ability he will succeed from the very beginning. He is ripe, so to speak, for his work. His mind has found normal action in nearly all of its phases and. he will make but few mistakes of any consequence. It is totally different, however, with that person who has entered the twenties in what may be called the green state. Even though his mind may be highly active he will accomplish but little, because being as yet unconscious of his real nature, his real capacity and his true state of normal action, he will misdirect most of his energies and they will be used up before his success can begin.

The mind that lacks experience does not know its own power, its own possibilities, its own desires nor its own natural sphere of action. It has not found its bearings, and even though it may have remarkable ability it will invariably misplace that ability, and will in consequence fail utterly where lesser minds, with an abundance of wholesome experience to begin with, have nearly everything their own way.

It is therefore evident that the practice still prevalent in thousands of homes of compelling young people to be ignorant of what is going on in the world is most detrimental to the future welfare of those people. Such a practice has caused many a young mind to be a complete failure until he was thirty-five or more, though if he had received an abundance of wholesome experience early in life he could easily have entered into real success more than ten years before. An abundance of rich experience secured early in life will awaken the best that is in the person. He will thus become acquainted with himself and will know what to do with himself. He will also know what to do with others and how to apply himself in the outer world.

However, we must remember in this connection that it is not necessary for anyone to do wrong or to mix with the wrongs of the world in order to gain experience. The fact is that such experience is not experience -simply a misuse of mind, thought and action. The proper kind of experience is just as necessary to the young mind as the proper kind of education, and parents should in no way eliminate the opportunities of their children to gain experience of value and worth. But they should not let their children loose, so to speak, without paying any attention to the kind of experience that children seek to enjoy. To pass through experience that is neither rich nor wholesome is to cause tendencies, desires, habits and traits to be formed that are adverse to everything worthwhile that the person may try to do. The results of such experience will have to be removed before real living and real achievement can begin.

All young minds should be given the freedom to enjoy every imaginable form of enjoyment that can be found, provided such enjoyments are wholesome. And here we should remember that those young people who stay at home ignorant of the world are not any better in character than those who go out to enjoy the best that is living and moving in the world. And as to mental power they are much weaker than those who have come in contact with the movements of life and thought in all its phases. Moral purity does not come -from keeping the mind in a state of inaction, nor does goodness come from the absence of desire. The best way to make the mind pure and the character strong is to give the person so much rich and wholesome experience that he will not care for that which is inferior or perverted. No normal mind will care for the lesser after he has gained possession of the greater. And those minds that are not normal do not need ethics, they need a physician.

An abundance of wholesome and most interesting enjoyment may be found anywhere, and the supply will increase with the demand. It is possible for any person to go out and come in contact with the world without going wrong, and the experience is invaluable, not only in a practical way but also in a way that touches the very cause of everything that has worth in the being of man. The more constructive experience that a person passes through the larger will the mind become and the more substantial will everything become that is active in his nature. An abundance of rich experience will invariably be followed by a larger subconscious life and this will add remarkably to the power and capacity of every talent and faculty. Such experience will also tend to give every force in the system the proper direction and thus prevent the waste of energy.

The more experience we seek the better, provided that experience is sought for the purpose of awakening the larger and the better that is latent within us. And since experience in some form is absolutely necessary to the promotion of this awakening, the art of securing experience becomes a fine art, in fact one of the finest and most important in the world.

Every experience produces a subjective impression and when a number of such impressions of the highest order are secured there is not only a feeling of completeness and satisfaction that is beyond price, but the entire individuality gains a marked degree of superiority and worth. An abundance of rich experience will also give a substantial foundation to the mind, a foundation that no circumstance, however trying, will be able to disturb. And so long as the foundation of the mind is secure the various elements and forces of the system will be able to perform their functions well, no matter what temporary conditions may be.

One of the greatest secrets of success in any undertaking, or in any vocation in life, is found in the possession of a mental foundation so strong and so substantial that it is never disturbed under any circumstance. And as the right kind of experience will tend to build such a mental foundation, we realize the extreme value of the subject under consideration.

To feel that you have received your share of the good things that have come your way is one of the rare joys of life. And this feeling comes invariably from the subjective memory of rich and abundant experience. This feeling produces the consciousness of mental wealth and without it life is not complete; but with it any person can pass through physical poverty and not feel poor in the least. While the mind that has had little or no experience is poverty stricken, no matter how extensive external possessions may be. Such a mind is practically empty, it finds no satisfaction in life and is incapable of turning its energies into constructive action. In brief, it flows with the stream and is almost completely in the hands of fate.

Experience, however, in the true sense is not synonymous with hardship. And to pass through trials and tribulations does not necessarily mean to gain experience. Occasionally it does, but as a rule it does not, and real experience awakens new life. It gives new points of view and enlarges the mental world. Instead of crushing individuality as hardships sometimes does it strengthens individuality, and makes the man more powerful both in mind and character than ever before.

To enjoy real experience, therefore, is not simply to pass through certain mental or physical conditions, but it is to gain something of permanent value while passing through those conditions. Experience of this kind may sometimes be gained through mistakes; that is, when the mistake causes the mind to seek the other way; otherwise the mistake does not produce experience of value, and nothing is gained. However, it is not necessary to make mistakes or to go wrong in order to gain valuable experience. Neither is hardship, pain nor adversity necessary to growth, progress and advancement.

The most valuable experience comes, not through mistakes, but through the mind's sympathetic contact with the best that is alive in the world. Such experiences, however, may not be had for nothing. But to employ a small percentage of one's earnings in procuring such experiences is to make a most excellent investment. The bank of rich and wholesome experience pays a very large interest. It will be profitable, therefore, for everybody to deposit as much as can be spared every week in this great bank. To keep in constant touch with the best that is living and moving in the world will give new ideas, new mental life, greater ambition, greater mental power, increased ability and capacity, and will in consequence increase the earning capacity of the individual. It will also increase the joy of living and make every individual life more thoroughly worthwhile.

The good things in the world, however, should not be sought for mere pastime. They should invariably be sought for the purpose of gaining conscious possession of the richness that they may contain. This will increase immeasurably the enjoyment of the experience, and will cause the experience to add directly to the power, the quality, the worth and the value of life. It will make living more and more worthwhile, and nothing is worth more.