 The advantage and efficiency of the course here advocated rest in large part upon the important fact, perhaps not often noted, that those things a person is not thinking about are, to him, at the time, as though they did not exist. Thus, through forgetfulness, an object or an idea passes entirely out of consciousness, and, to the thinker, during the time of forgetfulness, it is as though it had never existed. It can be brought back by recollection, when the thinker will once more have it in mind; that is, by the mental action it will again become to him a reality. The mere sight of a thing is not what gives it reality, for to the sight of it must be added consciousness of that sight. This consciousness is itself a form of thinking which must take place before the thing becomes a reality to the one who sees it; therefore before it enters into consciousness and after it passes out of consciousness it does not exist to the thinker. We laugh at the person who becomes so absorbed in some special thought as to be wholly unaware of everything else. To him, at the time, the one thing he is thinking about is all there is in existence. On the other hand, he may be thinking so intently as to make a thing real to him even in its absence. A man was accustomed to shave himself every morning before a mirror which had hung for a long time in one particular place. The mirror was removed, but for several days he went as usual to the same place and shaved himself without accident, just as he had done when the mirror was there; but one morning his attention was called to the absence of the mirror, and he cut himself when he thus was made aware that he no longer had its assistance. To those who are specially intent on one particular thing, the only thing that exists is the one they are thinking about, and that is existent to them whether it is to others or not. The only difference between such a man and the ordinary person lies solely in the fact that he is recalled to consciousness of existent conditions with more difficulty than others are. Every one has sometimes been so engrossed aa to be wholly unaware of things going on around him; but this only indicates intense mental attention in one direction to the entire exclusion of all else. Many a person has become so absorbed in a game of cards as to lose all consciousness of pain, and some have indulged in the game that they might make themselves oblivious to both physical and mental suffering. This is a form of forgetfulness; the thought is no longer in the mind, and, having passed out of the mind, it no longer creates discord nor generates injurious chemical substances in the body. When this is made permanent it is called healing; and the person who has trained himself so that he has complete control over his mind can make it permanent without the excitement of a game of cards. Things are real to the thinker because they are in his mind, and it makes no difference to him how unreal they may be if he believes them to be real. This is illustrated by all those who labor under hallucinations. Non-existent things are real to such persons, and often they are so intently engaged in these unrealities and believe in them to such an extent as not to be aware of the realities which are pressing them. But we do not need to go to the insane for examples. He who is fully persuaded that his friend is false, however untrue that may be, is in the same condition both mentally and physically as if it were true. The world is full of such incidents, and they have come within the observation of every one. It is thinking that makes the thing real, and in the absence of that thinking it does not exist. Two things are to be noted in this connection. First, absence of the reality from the mind does not destroy that reality; it only makes it unreal to the one who is not thinking about it – makes it, to him, as unreal as though it did not exist. Second, presence of the unreality in the mind does not make it a reality. It is real only to the thinker; but, being real to him, its effects on him are the same as though it were indeed a reality. It is a well-known fact that a man who thought he was bleeding to death died from the thought, though he had not lost a drop of blood; and there are thousands of similar unnoted and unrecorded instances. The practice of substituting one thought for another is admirable and is not to be abandoned until something better can be done, but destruction of the discordant thought would be a far more effectual method. The exclusion of a thought from the mind is, for the thinker, its destruction while it is excluded; and its continuous exclusion, so that it should never return, would be its complete destruction for him. This is the supreme result of constant practice in the exclusion of erroneous or discordant thoughts. If it is an erroneous thought, or a thought of error, the error is thus for him literally and completely destroyed. If the whole world would thus exclude the erroneous thought, it would no longer have any existence. The correctness of this statement is more readily perceived in those cases which concern an erroneous belief in the existence of something which is easily recognizable as non-existent, such as the supposed falsity of a friend who is not false. While that falsity is a fact to the one who thoroughly believes it, still its destruction is complete the instant the thought is dropped out of mind, and if the thought is dropped forever, then the destruction is forever. The same thing is true of the fear of an impending disaster which will never occur. Such fear can be so completely dismissed from the mind that it is utterly destroyed. It is the same with all erroneous thoughts. The two methods of substitution and destruction work together; substitution sustaining and assisting the work, and, if persisted in, finally resulting in total obliteration of the objectionable thoughts. Some one has truly said that more than nine- tenths of the ills of life are occasioned by anxiety (thinking) about events that never happen. Neither the things nor the anxiety exist except in thought. Then if that thought is put out of mind, or destroyed, those ills disappear forever. They are destroyed. Though it is only a thought that is destroyed, yet in that thought exists a cause; and let it not be forgotten that every discordant thought is the cause of discordant mental and bodily conditions, and the cause being destroyed, the consequences do not ap- pear, so that literally the destruction of discordant or erroneous thinking is the destruction of the possibility of wrong conditions. The man who quits lying can do nothing else but tell the truth; so, too, The saddest fact in the world is sin, however it may be accounted for. But here is a method whereby it may be destroyed, and this is the method of Jesus, the Christ. (See last chapter.) He would have us put all error (and that includes all sin) out of the mind completely. To do this is the essential of forgiveness, because to forgive means to put away; and when we have put away from ourselves (by putting them out of mind) our own errors and the errors of others, they will not any longer exist to trouble us. When every one does this, there will no longer be any sin. He who destroys the discordant thoughts cannot do otherwise than think harmonious ones, and the destruction of all discordant thoughts would leave in existence only those which are harmonious. This would result in the production of none but harmonious actions and the establishment of harmonious conditions without any discordant ones to interfere. This is the grand ultimate object. It can be attained through mental control, and thus men may rid themselves of more of the ills of life and gain more of its advantages than one who has not tried it would believe possible. |
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