Mental Chemistry
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Before any environment, harmonious or otherwise, can be created, action of some kind is necessary, and before any action is possible, there must be thought of some kind, either conscious or unconscious, and as thought is a product of mind, it becomes evident that Mind is the creative center from which all activities proceed.

It is not expected that any of the inherent laws which govern the modern business world as it is at present constituted can be suspended or repealed by any force on the same plane, but it is axiomatic that a higher law may overcome a lower one. Tree life causes the sap to ascend, not by repealing the law of gravity, but by surmounting it.

The naturalist who spends much of his time in observing visible phenomena is constantly creating power in that portion of his brain set apart for observation. The result is that he becomes very much more expert and skillful in knowing what he sees, and grasping an infinite number of details at a glance, than does his unobserving friend. He has reached this facility by exercise of his brain. He deliberately chose to enlarge his brain power in the line of observation, so he deliberately exercised that special faculty, over and over, with increasing attention and concentration. Now we have the result--a man learned in the lore of observation far above his fellow. Or, on the other hand, one can be stolid in action, allow the delicate brain matter to harden and ossify until his whole life is barren and fruitless.

Every thought tends to become a material thing. Our desires are seed thoughts that have a tendency to sprout and grow and blossom and bear fruit. We are sowing these seeds every day. What shall the harvest be? Each of us today is the result of his past thinking. Later we shall be the result of what we are now thinking. We create our own character, personality and environment by the thought which we originate, or entertain. Thought seeks its own. The law of mental attraction is an exact parallel to the law of atomic affinity. Mental currents are as real as electric, magnetic or heat currents. We attract the currents with which we are in harmony.

Lines of least resistance are formed by the constant action of the mind. The activity of the brain reacts upon the particular faculty of the brain employed. The latent power of the mind is developed by constant exercise. Each form of its activity becomes more perfect by practice. Exercises for the development of the mind present a variety of motives for consideration. They involve the development of the perceptive faculties, the cultivation of the emotions, the quickening of the imagination, the symmetrical unfoldment of the intuitive faculty, which without being able to give a reason frequently impels or prohibits choice, and finally the power of mind may be cultivated by the development of the moral character.

“The greatest man,” said Seneca, “is he who chooses right with invincible determination.” The greatest power of mind, then, depends upon its exercise in moral channels, and therefore requires that every conscious mental effort should involve a moral end. A developed moral consciousness modifies consideration of motives, and increases the force and continuity of action; consequently the well developed symmetrical character necessitates good physical, mental and moral health, and this combination creates initiative, power, resistless force, and necessarily success.

It will be found that Nature is constantly seeking to express Harmony in all things, is forever trying to bring about a harmonious adjustment, for every discord, every wound, every difficulty; therefore when thought is harmonious, Nature begins to create the material conditions, the possession of which are necessary in order to make up a harmonious environment.

When we understand that mind is the great creative power, what does not become possible? With Desire as the great creative energy, can we not see why Desire should be cultivated, controlled and directed in our lives and destinies? Men and women of strong mentality who dominate those around them, and often those far removed from them, really emanate currents charged with power which, coming in contact with the minds of others, cause the desires of the latter to be in accord with the mind of the strong individuality. Great masters of men possess this power to a marked degree. Their influence is felt far and near, and they secure compliance with their wishes by making others “want” to act in accord with them. In this way men of strong Desire and Imagination may and do exert powerful influence over the minds of others, leading the latter in the way desired.

No man is ever created without the inherent power in himself to help himself. The personality that understands its own intellectual and moral power of conquest will assert itself. It is this truth which an enfamined world craves today. The possibility of asserting a slumbering intellectual courage that clearly discerns, and a moral courage that grandly undertakes in open to all. There is a divine potency in every human being.

We speak of the sun as “rising” and “setting,” though we know that this is simply an appearance of motion. To our senses the earth is apparently standing still, and yet we know it is revolving rapidly. We speak of a bell as a “sounding body,” yet we know that all that the bell can do is to produce vibrations in the air. When these vibrations come at the rate of sixteen a second they cause a sound to be heard in the mind. It is possible for the mind to hear vibrations up to the rate of 38,000 a second. When the number increases beyond this all is silence again; so that we know that the sound is not in the bell; it is in our own mind.

We speak and even think of the sun as “giving light,” yet we know it is simply giving forth energy which produces vibrations in the ether at the rate of four hundred trillion a second, causing what are termed light waves, so that we know that what we call light is simply a mode of motion, and the only light existent, is the sensation caused in the mind by the motion of these waves. When the number of vibrations increases, the light changes in color, each change in color being caused by shorter and more rapid vibrations; so that although we speak of the rose as being red, the grass as being green, or the sky as being blue, we know that these colors exist only in our minds, and are the sensations experienced by us as the result of the vibrations of light. When the vibrations are reduced below four hundred trillion a second, they no longer affect us as light, but we experience the sensation of heat.

So we have come to know that appearances exist for us only in our consciousness. Even time and space become annihilated, time being but the experience of succession, there being no past or future except as a thought relation to the present. In the last analysis, therefore, we know that one principle governs and controls all existence. Every atom is forever conserved; whatever is parted with must inevitably be received somewhere. It cannot perish and it exists only for use. It can go only where it is attracted, and therefore required. We can receive only what we give, and we may give only to those who can receive; and it remains with us to determine our rate of growth and the degree of harmony that we shall express.

The laws under which we live are designed solely for our advantage. These laws are immutable and we cannot escape from their operation. All the great eternal forces act in solemn silence, but it is within our power to place ourselves in harmony with them and thus express a life of comparative peace and happiness.

Difficulties, in harmonies, obstacles, indicate that we are either refusing to give out what we no longer need, or refusing to accept what we require. Growth is attained through an exchange of the old for the new, of the good for the better; it is a conditional or reciprocal action, for each of us is a complete thought entity and the completeness makes it possible for us to receive only as we give. We cannot obtain what we lack if we tenaciously cling to what we have.

The Principle of Attraction operates to bring to us only what may be to our advantage. We are able to consciously control our conditions as we come to sense the purpose of what we attract, and are able to extract from each experience only what we require for our further growth. Our ability to do this determines the degree of harmony or happiness we attain.

The ability to appropriate what we require for our growth continually increases as we reach higher planes and broader visions, and the greater our ability to know what we require, the more certain we shall be to discern its presence, to attract it and to absorb it. Nothing may reach us except what is necessary for our growth. All conditions and experiences that come to us do so for our benefit. Difficulties and obstacles will continue to come until we absorb their wisdom and gather from them the essentials of further growth. That we reap what we sow, is mathematically exact. We gain permanent strength exactly to the extent of the effort required to overcome our difficulties.

The inexorable requirements of growth demand that we exert the greatest degree of attraction for what is perfectly in accord with us. Our highest happiness will be best attained through our understanding of and conscious co-operation with natural laws.

Our mind forces are often bound by the paralyzing suggestions that come to us from the crude thinking of the race, and which are accepted and acted upon without question. Impressions of fear, of worry, of disability and of inferiority are given us daily. These are sufficient reasons in themselves why men achieve so little--why the lives of multitudes are so barren of results, while all the time there are possibilities within them which need only the liberating touch of appreciation and wholesome ambition to expand into real greatness.

Women, perhaps even more than men, have been subject to these conditions. This is true because of their finer susceptibilities, making them more open to thought-vibrations from other minds, and because the flood of negative and repressive thoughts has been aimed for especially at them.

But it is being overcome. Florence Nightingale overcame it when she rose in the Crimea to heights of tender sympathy and executive ability previously unknown among women. Clara Barton, the head of the Red Cross, overcame it when she wrought a similar work in the armies of the Union. Jenny Lind overcame it when she shoed her ability to command enormous financial rewards while at the same time gratifying the passionate desire of her nature and reaching the front rank of her day in musical art. And there is a long list of women singers, philanthropists, writers and actresses who have proved themselves capable of reaching the greatest literary, dramatic, artistic and sociological achievement.

Women as well as men are beginning to do their own thinking. They have awakened to some conception of their possibilities. They demand that if life holds any secrets, these shall be disclosed. At no previous time has the influence and potency of thought received such careful and discriminating investigation. While a few seers have grasped the great fact that mind is the universal substance, the basis of all things, never before has this vital truth penetrated the more general consciousness. Many minds are now striving to give this wonderful truth definite utterance. Modern science has taught us that light and sound are simply different intensities of motion, and this has led to discoveries of forces within man that could not have been conceived of until this revelation was made.

A new century has dawned, and now, standing in its light man sees something of the vastness of the meaning of life--something of its grandeur. Within that life is the germ of infinite potencies. One feels convinced that man’s possibility of attainment cannot be measured, that boundary lines to his onward march are unthinkable. Standing on this height he finds that he can draw new power to himself from the Infinite energy of which he is a part.

Some men seem to attract success, power, wealth, attainment, with very little conscious effort; others conquer with great difficulty; still others fail altogether to reach their ambitions, desires and ideals. Why is this so? Why should some men realize their ambitions easily, others with difficulty, and still others not at all? The cause cannot by physical, else the most perfect men physically would be the most successful. The difference, therefore, must be mental--must be in the mind; hence mind must be the creative force, must constitute the sole difference between men. It is mind, therefore, which overcomes environment and every other obstacle in the path of man.

When the creative power of thought is fully understood, its effect will seem to be marvelous. But such results cannot be secured without proper application, diligence and concentration. The laws governing in the mental and spiritual world are as fixed and infallible as in the material world. To secure the desired results, then, it is necessary to know the law and to comply with it. A proper compliance with the law will be found to produce the desired result with invariable exactitude.

Scientists tell us that we live in the universal ether. This is formless, of itself, but it is pliable, and forms about us, in us and around us, according to our thought and word. We set it into activity by that which we think. Then that which manifests to us objectively is that which we have thought or said.

Thought is governed by law. The reason we have not manifested more faith is because of lack of understanding. We have not understood that everything works in exact accordance with definite law. The law of thought is as definite as the law of mathematics, or the law of electricity, or the law of gravitation. When we begin to understand that happiness, health, success, prosperity and every other condition or environment are results, and that these results are created by thinking, either consciously or unconsciously, we shall realize the importance of a working knowledge of the laws governing thought.

Those coming into a conscious realization of the power of thought find themselves in possession of the best that life can give; substantial things of a higher order become theirs, and these sublime realities are so constituted that they can be made tangible parts of daily personal life. They realize a world of higher power, and keep that power constantly working. This power is inexhaustible, limitless, and they are therefore carried forward from victory to victory. Obstacles that seem insurmountable are overcome. Enemies are changed to friends, conditions are overcome, elements transformed, fate is conquered.

The supply is inexhaustible, and the demand can be made along whatever lines we may desire. This is the mental law of demand and supply.

Our circumstances and environment are formed by our thoughts. We have, perhaps, been creating these conditions unconsciously. If they are unsatisfactory the remedy is to consciously alter our mental attitude and see our circumstances adjust themselves to the new mental condition. There is nothing strange or supernatural about this; it simply the Law of Being. the thoughts which take root in the mind will certainly produce fruit after their kind. The greatest schemer cannot “gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles.” To improve our conditions we must first improve ourselves. Our thoughts and desires will be the first to show improvement.

To be in ignorance of the laws of Vibration is to be like a child playing with fire, or a man manipulating powerful chemicals without a knowledge of their nature and relations. This is universally true because Mind is the one great cause which produces all conditions in the lives of men and women.

Of course, mind creates negative conditions just as readily as favorable conditions, and when we consciously or unconsciously visualize every kind of lack, limitation and discord, we create these conditions; this what many are unconsciously doing all the time.

This law as well as every other law is no respecter of persons, but is in constant operation and is relentlessly bringing to each individual exactly what he has created; in other words, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

Arthur Brisbane says, “Thought and its work include all the achievements of man.”

Compare spirit and thought to the genius of the musician and the sound which issues from the musical instrument.

What the instrument is to the musician the brain of the man is to the spirit that inspires thought.

However great the musician, the genius must depend for its expression upon the instrument which gives it reality in the physical world, through sound waves produced in the material atmosphere, striking nerves that carry music to the brain.

Give Paderewski a piano out of tune and he can give you only discord and lack of harmony. Or give to Paganini, the greatest violinist that ever lived, a violin out of tune, and in spite of the genius of the musician you will hear only hideous, disagreeable sounds. The spirit of music must have the right instruments for its expression.

The spirit that inspires thought, the spirit of man, must have the right brain for its expression.

The more complicated and highly developed the instrument, the more displeasing to the ear is the result when the instrument is out of tune.

Among human beings a highly developed brain out of tune--for instance, the insane ravings of a powerful genius like Nietzche, with his mind broken down--is infinitely more painful and shocking than in the case of a human being with a mind in comparison feeble and simple.

Our minds are so little accustomed to deal with the abstract, we live so much in the material world, inanimate objects have so much meaning for us that many human beings live and die without ever thinking at all of the spirit, yet the spirit is the only real thing in the universe.

And thought is the expression of spirit, working through a more or less imperfect human brain.

Bring yourself to think for some time earnestly of the nature and mysterious power of spirit. There is no thought more inspiring, fascinating, bewildering.

Consider the Falls of Niagara, with their tremendous power, the vast moving machinery, the cities that are lighted, the blazing streets, the moving cars, all due apparently to the power in Niagara. Yet not due to that power in reality so much as to the spirit expressed in the thought of man. It was spirit that harnessed Niagara. It was spirit transferred the power of the Falls to distant cities.

Yet that spirit has neither shape nor weight, size nor color, taste nor smell. You ask a man “What is the Spirit?” and he must answer that it is nothing, since it occupies no space, and cannot be seen or felt. And yet he must answer also that the spirit is everything. The world only exists as it is because we see it in the eyes of the spirit. The optic nerve takes a picture, sends it to the brain and the spirit sees the picture.

It was the spirit acting on the brain of Columbus, and through him upon others, that brought the first ship to America.

It is the spirit working and expressing itself through the thought of brains more and more highly developed that has gradually brought man from hi former condition of savagery to his present comparative degree of civilization. And that same spirit, working in future ages through brains infinitely superior to any that we can now conceive, will establish real harmony on this planet.

Yet you know that spirit exists, and that it is you, and that except for that spirit which animates you, picks you up when you fall, inspires you in success and comforts you in failure and misfortune, there would be nothing at all in this life, and you would not be different from one of the stones in the field, or some of the dummies that the tailor sets in front of his store.

Compare the spirit and the material world as you see it with the genius that dwells in the brain of the great painter and the works which the painter has to do.

every statue, painting and church that Michael Angelo created already existed in his spirit. But the spirit could not be content with that existence. It had to visualize itself; it had to see itself created.

The spirit really lives completely only when it sees itself reflected in the material world. All the mother love is in the spirit of woman. But it has complete existence only when the mother holds the child in her arms and sees in reality, in flesh and blood, the being that she loves and has created.

The achievements of the greatest men are all locked up within them from the first, but the spirit of such men can reach full realization only when the spirit, acting through the brain and expressing itself through thought, creates the work.

We know that all useful work is the result of sound thought. If we realize that thought itself is the expression of the spirit, we are moved by a sense of duty to give to that spirit the best possible expression of which we are capable, the best chance that it can have, dwelling in imperfect bodies and speaking through imperfect minds such as those we possess.

It is an inspiration to realize that men here on earth, gradually improving, become less animal and more spiritual as the centuries pass, are destined to develop in their own physical bodies, instruments capable of interpreting properly the spirit that animates us.

Human beings improve from generation to generation--that we know. The improvement is due to the affection of fathers and mothers for each other and for their children.

This race of ours one hundred thousand years ago was made up of animal-like creatures, with huge, projecting jaws, enormous teeth, small foreheads and hideously shaped bodies. Gradually through the centuries we have changed, the brute has gradually disappeared, the prognathous face of man as become fatter. The jaw has gone in, the forehead has come out, and behind the forehead, gradually, thanks to the devotion and patient labor of women, we are developing a brain that will ultimately give decent and adequate expression to spirit.

Spirit and thought are identical in the sense that the genius of the musician and the sound that you hear when his music is played are identical. In music the sound represents and interprets the musician’s spirit. And the interpretation and the accuracy of that interpretation depend upon the orchestra, the violin or the piano. When the instruments are out of tune it is not the genius of the musician, but a misinterpretation that you hear.

And with our human brains, most of them out of tune, most of them incapable of expressing anything but the merest, faintest reflection of true spiritual life, there is as yet very little harmony.

Through the perfected brain of man, the cosmic sprit, in which each of us is a conscious atom, will speak clearly, and then this earth, our little corner in the universe, will be truly harmonious, governed by the spirit distinctly expressed instantly obeyed.

This cosmic spirit can and frequently does, operate through the brain of another. Many a man seems to be doing something very wonderful when in reality another man--another mind, not visible in the work, but actually at the work--does the heavy pulling.

You may see the salesman, the editor, the floor walker, the engineer, the architect--any kind of a man engaged in any kind of work--apparently doing something wonderful.

Yet he is not doing it all. An unseen power--another man, another brain, perhaps some little man with a small body and a big head, who keeps out of sight--is doing the work.

Every one of us without exception is pulled along or pushed ahead by some force unseen. It may be the man in the inside office, usually invisible. It may be the woman at home setting a good example, giving to the man at work the inspiration and the power that no one else could give. It may be paternal affection, enabling a man to do for a child what he could not possibly do for himself.

Very often the power is one that has long disappeared from the earth, a father or a mother whose energy and inspiration persists and does in the life of the son at work what the man could never have accomplished of his own accord.”

Cause and effect is as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as in the world of visible and material things. Mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance.

-James Allen