The higher consciousness is a never-failing source of expressive power. It is a reservoir from which one may perpetually draw fresh supplies of nervous energy and muscular strength. Spirit, unlike “will power,” is inexhaustible. When allowed free course, it permeates, energizes, and reinvigorates one’s whole system. It works like leaven through all the lower channels of expression. In its light one grows oblivious to difficulties. Power is due to poise. Doing is the result of being. Action depends on attitude. Energy proceeds from concentration, centering of attention. One cannot give…

Effort of expression diminishes as one’s ideal becomes clearer in the light of the Absolute. The most eloquent orator is frequently unaware of the words he uses. The thought with which his mind is permeated, clothes itself spontaneously in appropriate forms of expression. Even the most ignorant person may be able, under the impulse of some mental stimulus, to express himself in language which under ordinary circumstances would be beyond his control. In all cases, forms of expression approach perfection to the degree that the mind is filled with the…

Specters that seem very real in the dark, vanish in the light. A balloon rises because the specific gravity of the substance with which it is inflated is less than that of the medium in which it floats. Just so must one overcome the world by cultivating the quality of consciousness which renders him superior to the lower attractions of life. Paul recognized this principle when he said: “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds.” It is not by putting forth greater exertions, through titanic efforts of the…

The ideal of Jesus was to the materialist only a wild flight of the imagination, an impracticable dream. But together with the ideal came the power of realization. If we yield ourselves unreservedly to the power of the Absolute within us, and trust It to direct the course of our lives, the realization of our ideals will be spontaneous. Our failures are due to reliance upon external supports and props. We shrink from casting ourselves loose like the worlds in space, trusting the omnipotent inner law. But if, surrendering antagonism…

We invite impressions by rendering ourselves receptive to them. We may attune our thought to respond to the vibrations of low, coarse, material influences, or to those that are high, fine, spiritual. If to the former, a world of materiality, selfishness, sensuality, brutality, suffering and disease will dominate us and stand out as the one evident reality. But all material conditions are of comparatively short duration. The coarser vibrations that give rise to clashing discords and jarring dissensions are soon spent and neutralized; while the finer, spiritual ones continue unaffected…

In philosophy the majority of people still hold ideas of externalism, materialism. Ever since man began to think logically, he has tried to solve the problem of an outer, objective world of phenomena—matter. Considered solely with the understanding, that world seems, in its essential nature, very far removed from the inner, subjective realm of thoughts, ideas and principles. Apparently two worlds exist, interrelated and inseparable, yet distinct in quality and essence. Formerly the natural world of forms, colors and objects, was regarded as the finished work of Deity, who summoned…

Matter is the negative through which truth is revealed in perfect pictures. But men often err by looking for the picture on the plate itself. It is not there; we must go a step further and allow the light to shine through the negative so as to produce impressions on our highly sensitized spiritual nature. Those impressions prove to be precisely the reverse of the image registered on the material plate. As we look backward from the deck of a moving boat, the shore seems to move. The image of…

To illustrate: Our attention is attracted by some character which seems to us a perfect expression of goodness; i. e., the Absolute Principle discerned through that character, appears to us as goodness, for that Principle, shining through it, radiates in goodness. The same Absolute Principle, discerned through some external form, appears to us as beauty; discerned through some inward thought, it appears to us as truth. In a masterpiece of music it is revealed to us as harmony. Any medium through which we see the Absolute, becomes idealized for us.…

The doctrine of the “new birth” is founded on a universal principle. Beneath the distorted conception of conversion taught in the “old theology,” is a fact of experience that finds new emphasis in each successive epoch of the world’s unfoldment. Before any human being can appreciate his right relation to the universe, it is necessary for him to utterly forsake the viewpoint he accepted on entering this sphere of finite thought, the earthly life, to cease relying on intellectual impressions as the basis of absolute knowledge. Through the spiritual re-birth,…