Excerpts from

  The Key to Power & Personal Peace
by Uell S. Anderson




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Book description
In the pages of  The Key to Power and Personal Peace, you will learn of the unlimited power that is yours. You will learn how you can turn this power to work for you, here on earth, to make your life majestic and overflowing with good. The Key to Power is not a religion or a sect or a society. In its entirety it is a series of essays aimed at revealing to you your power over all things. You will learn that there is only one mover in all creation and that mover is thought. You will learn that there is only one creator and that creator is the Universal Subconscious Mind, or God. You will learn that this creator creates for you exactly what you think, and you will be shown how you can control your thoughts, not only to obtain answers to your problems but to create in your experience exactly what you desire.

You will not do this in a day or a week or even a month; but do it you will if you keep heart and keep faith. It requires only a few minutes of your time each day, a few minutes that will reward you with greater vistas in life, greater hope and promise than has ever been dreamed.

There is a cause! There is a reason! There is a power greater than you are, which you are a part of, which you can use to make your life good and great and vigorous and full of abundance.
--- excerpt from book's Foreword

Uell Stanley Andersen's describes methods of attaining personal peace, a positive attitude and success in a clearcut, easy to understand way. He handles deep spiritual truths in a simple way with an absolute minimum of metaphysical jargon. Andersen's philosophy is very enlightened (and enlightening) and transcends the borders of individual philosophies and religions. We are presented with a set of ideas that are free of dogmatism. It soon becomes evident that there is no "brainwashing" involved , and that the author's conclusions are self-explanatory once you grasp them.


CONTENTS

Chapter 1  - THE LOCK.............5
Chapter 2  - ILLUSION............25
Chapter 3  - MIND................48
Chapter 4  - FORM................69
Chapter 5  - INTUITION...........93
Chapter 6  - FAITH..............116
Chapter 7  - ATTRACTION.........142
Chapter 8  - LOVE...............166
Chapter 9  - SUCCESS............183
Chapter 10 - HEALTH.............202
Chapter 11 - IMMORTALITY........220
Chapter 12 - THE KEY............234




Chapter 1 - THE LOCK

O, raise up thine eyes to eternal sky
In thy bondage strike out to be free
Hush the whispering voice of the infinite why
With "I am and I was and I ever will be."



THE FORGING OF THE LOCK


Somewhere, in some city, town or hamlet, there is a child being born. Somewhere pure spirit is inspired into form. And even now the Lock takes shape. Mighty is the anvil that forges this Lock, for it is the memory of the Subconscious Mind. Light, sound, discomfort, pain, roughness, dampness, hunger, smells—all impinge on subconscious memory, forging the Lock that bars the door to the infinite.

There is something both sad and beautiful about this—sad because it seems sad to see spirit deny itself—beautiful because self-determination is beautiful. For this infant, wherever it is being born at this moment, is free, even as each member of the entire human race is born free—free to determine his destiny—free to discover the source of his being and the immensity of his power.


FALSE THOUGHT HABITS

Why is it, you may well ask yourself, that the great mass of humanity lead drab and colorless lives, concerned only with fear, frustration, and insecurity? What, you may well wonder, is the point of this scheme into which you have been drawn through no volition of your own and from which you will soon depart, a microbe in a microcosm, a pinpoint on a pinpoint, a flicker in a flash of light? These thoughts are products of your Conscious Mind, and it could not be otherwise. For only the Conscious Mind remembers its beginning and looks forward to its end.

The world, said Wordsworth, is too much with us. Circumstance shapes our destiny, and this should not be so. There is a resource which can raise the human soul above all circumstance, but how few people use it!

Do you know this man? John Jones was born in San Francisco in 1906. His parents were immigrants, and his father was a laborer. John grew up in modest circumstances and was a child during the first World War. His father was drafted and killed overseas, and the burden of support of his mother and two smaller brothers fell entirely on John's shoulders. Following the line of least resistance, John became a day laborer. Each week his paycheck went to his mother. Later, when his brothers were able to contribute to his mother's support, John continued at his job as a laborer. He was, as he thought, unable to do anything else, and the full blame for his lost future he laid at the doorstep of a cruel fate, personified in resentment towards his mother. When he was forty-two, John developed a brain tumor and spent the latter years of his life bedridden, partially paralyzed, dying at the age of forty-eight.

Does this sound like one of the children to whom, as Jesus put it, it is the Father's good pleasure to give the Kingdom? Does this sound like a free soul expanding into conscious cosmic power? It most certainly does not. Multiply John Jones by a million and a million times it does not. Yet John Jones was using the same power as Einstein, Homer, Plato, Lincoln, Emerson, Buddha, and Jesus.

Thought habits of the Conscious Mind shaped John Jones' life. He thought he was hemmed in by circumstance, and so he became; so that even when the circumstance dissipated of its own accord, he still could not stir away from his own conception of his position. He harbored a resentment toward his mother until it grew within him, in the form of a tumor, to end his life; even as he was wishing his life ended through his own attitudes of defeat.

Conceptual habits of the Conscious Mind are the greatest bar to man's discovery of himself.


THE SAME POWER BRINGS BOTH GOOD AND EVIL

If you have engaged in competitive athletics, you have seen a sign on the locker room wall that read, "A team that won't be beat, can't be beat." And you know that a team that understood the meaning of that sign was a winner.

If you are a business man, you have heard it said, "Think big, do big." And you know that the men who operate on this premise do big things.

If you are a member of a family, you have seen the power of faith work miracles—in an illness, in financial insecurity, in birth, in death, in all of life's events.

If you are a member of an organized religion, you have seen the tremendous power of prayer.

If you have ever in your life been faced with a crisis, you know the calm inner self you have turned to in a flash, which has rewarded you with an answer in an instant.

Everyone has experienced this power to some degree. It is not so securely locked away that each human being does not touch it during some period of his life. Yet, strange to say, the vast majority of humanity shrug it off as perhaps only a fortunate circumstance, a coincidence, a "piece of good luck."

It is important for you to remember—every day of your life—that the same power that brings you good fortune brings you bad fortune and it does so according to how you use it. The only reason it brings so little good fortune to the great mass of people is that they do not know it exists, use it but sparingly, and use it the wrong way. Their conceptions of themselves are locked in the Subconscious Mind. And just as surely as the earth rotates, their futures are mapped out according to these conceptions and thoughts. The only way they can become free to achieve success and happiness and health is to arrive at truth—unlock the Lock—discover the Key!


THE MIND THAT NEVER SLEEPS

Perhaps you do not know or truly understand that the mind of man is not alone memory and reason such as he exerts when in a conscious active state. There is in man a mind that never sleeps, that is constantly active, with untold reservoirs that have never yet been plumbed—a mind of such infinite capacity and power that it could not possibly belong to one man alone. This is the Subconscious Mind, as sharply delineated from the Conscious Mind.

The advent of psychiatry has told us a good deal about this Subconscious Mind. We know, for instance, that its memory is perfect—not just for important facts but for every shade and detail and scene ever experienced. The skilled psychiatrist can run back twenty years in a patient's Subconscious, eliciting a scene from him when he was six years old, and lo, the scene unfolds with color, sound, and detail such as could not be recorded on photographic film. A bird's song faint on the summer air, the soft rustle of maple leaves drying on the grass, the distant rumble of a train, the grimace of a countenance, the movement of a person, words, inflections—all exact even to emotional impact. And yet here is a scene that the Conscious Mind had long forgotten.


PROBING THE SUBCONSCIOUS

Psychiatry, concerned with restoring people to mental health, has run back along the time track of the Subconscious Mind, probing for emotional "sore spots," then exposing them to the patient's Conscious Mind so that he can rationally judge how trivial they are. Varying degrees of success have been achieved in the restoration of mental health by such methods, and certainly enough to have merited the procedure. Sometimes, alas, disaster has occasioned when a serious "rejection" of the Conscious Mind has been elicited from the Subconscious and submitted to the patient, who in terror at this exposure has lapsed into hysteria or a stony depression, so great have been the emotional conflicts aroused.

But this probing of the Subconscious Mind has unearthed a vast store of hitherto unknown material. Under deep hypnosis, patients have described noises and surroundings that could have been experienced only in the womb. In the same manner, there have been patients who have described scenes and times that it would have been impossible for them to know of or witness. A previous life? Some other person's life? Thought transference? Perhaps the psychiatrist has occasionally laid it to "static" on the time track of the Subconscious Mind, but the existence of such phenomena is indisputable.

What a powerful stupendous toy this Subconscious Mind is turning out to be! Games played in parlors are now assembling in the laboratory. The psychic who can foretell the future, the thought reader, the hypnotist are falling under the scrutiny of the microscope. Measured, numbered, weighed, counted, tabulated and cross-tabulated, they all add up to one thing: The Subconscious Mind is the most powerful creative instrument in the universe; it spans space and time, manifests form from substance, reaches out to all knowledge. And it exists in every man!


THE MASTER AND THE SERVANT

You might wonder why, with such an inexhaustible subject as this, we should concern ourselves with the Conscious Mind at all—the tiny, insignificant Conscious Mind, that only remembers a very few years, that only remembers a very few facts, that barely has learned the rudiments of thought, and indeed is scarcely capable of dealing with its immediate surroundings.

We are concerned because here we are dealing with master and servant, and startling as it may seem, the tiny, little Conscious Mind is the master!

It is like a button that works a switch, that works a lever, that starts an engine, that generates electricity, that moves the world!

The Subconscious Mind does exactly what the Conscious Mind tells it to do!


THE PROMPTER—PAIN REJECTION

Herein lies the problem. No one consciously wants to be sick. No one consciously wants to be poverty-stricken, unloved, unsuccessful. It would be impossible to elicit admission from anyone in the world that he consciously desired these negative things. Yet, if he has them, just as surely as there is life, he has ordered them for himself.

He is the victim of "Prompters" set into the Subconscious Mind by the Conscious Mind. These have been buried by the Conscious Mind, much as a forgetful dog might bury a bone, remembering neither the place of burial nor even the fact of burial.

These Prompters in the Subconscious Mind are responsible for the great hordes of unhappy people who now troop to psychiatrists. They have spread more mischief for individual lives and for humanity as a whole than any other single thing. They have given the world insecurity, hostility, greed, corruption, and hate. They are broken keys in a divine instrument. They have thrown mankind out of tune with the Infinite. They are the Lock that bars the door to self-realization.

For example, Fred Smith is an unwanted baby. As an infant, his first searching for love from his mother meets with complete rejection. To cope with his hurt, Fred Smith develops an aggressive, arrogant attitude toward life. As he grows older, he forgets that he ever desired love from his mother at all. He takes pride in the fact that he needs nobody and nothing to make him complete, and he runs roughshod over people to attain his ends. Here is the making of a dictator or a murderer. Fred Smith hates life because his first reaching for life was rejected. He is simply rejecting that which first rejected him. He can't help himself. Consciously, he has long forgotten the cause, but the memory of the Subconscious Mind is perfect. The pain remembrance or Prompter buried there will not let him rest.


MAN AGAINST HIMSELF

The psychiatrist, as has been pointed out, has faced up to this problem by running down these Prompters in the Subconscious Mind and exposing them to the patient. For example, Miss B comes to the psychiatrist complaining that she has recurrent headaches. Investigation shows that these headaches always occur when she is cooking at her gas stove. It also develops that Miss B harbors a fear of fire. Running back through the subconscious time track, the psychiatrist discovers that when Miss B was two years old, her mother's gas stove exploded and in the resultant excitement Miss B's mother dropped Miss B on her head. Gas—gas explodes—pain in head; this is the simple subconscious memory that prompts Miss B's headaches whenever she must work around a gas stove.

Of course, the great majority of psychiatric treatments are not nearly so simple as this. The example is offered only to show how the existence of Prompters in the Subconscious Mind is widely recognized and that the damage they can do is unlimited.

Take the case of the man or woman who is poverty-stricken and desires money. No matter what he or she does there is always the unfailing outcome—little or no money at all. It would seem to this man or woman that the attainment of a comfortable amount of money is the most important thing in the world, but no matter the effort or time expended, only poverty results. Obviously, here is our Prompter at work. Strange as it may seem, the Prompter may be such a trivial thing as the subconscious burying of an infant-heard phrase: "There's never enough to go around." Think of that! The Subconscious Mind believes there is not enough, and lo, the manifestation of lack and limitation is all that this particular person can ever encounter.

The sick man wants to be well. That he cannot be well is evidence only of a Prompter. In this case the Subconscious Mind harbors such a phrase as "There's so much sickness in the world" or "I could have done better but I'm sick" or "You know, there are millions of dangerous microbes all around us." What chance has a person to be healthy with subconscious Prompters such as these?

The lonely person desires love and friends. Yet no matter the circumstance, he or she cannot seem to attract either a loved one or a social circle. There is a Prompter in this person that repels love, such as "Nobody ever did anything for me," "You can't trust anyone," or "People are just out to get what they can out of you." Or even worse, the Prompter may set up a sense of inferiority, such as "You're not good enough," "You don't amount to anything," or "Nobody loves you." Powerful Subconscious Mind! It manifests these beliefs into actuality.

Who can be successful with a subconscious Prompter that keeps convincing him that everyone is better than he? Who can achieve anything with a Prompter that convinces him that all achievement is worthless? Who can rise to heights with a Prompter that has him believing that he has no capability? The answer is no one. For the Subconscious Mind is the great creator, and it creates exactly what it is prompted to create.


SELF-MASTERY

Happily, you can remove each of these insidious Prompters yourself. What's more, you can, by understanding the laws and dynamics of life, remove the cause of them, so that they will plague you no more.

This reassuring fact we place before you; Nothing is impossible to the mind of man, for the Conscious Mind controls the Subconscious Mind and the Subconscious Mind is all-powerful.

Every condition, circumstance, and manifestation of your life can be changed to suit your conscious desires.

The commandments are only two: Know that fear is your enemy; and Understand the Lock.

For fear causes the Lock, and the Lock exists in the Subconscious Mind in the form of Prompters, placed there by the Conscious Mind.

Today, with this first chapter, we ask you to begin to undo the Lock. We ask you to eradicate from your mind all notion of yourself that has to do with where you live, where you were born, what you have done, and what your circumstances have been. We ask you to concentrate on only one thing and that is the spirit within you.

This real you, this conscious hidden intelligence that exists behind your eyes, is timeless, formless, and built from all the glory and magnificence that ever was. It is not a name or a job or a home; indeed it has nothing to do with circumstance or situation. The plain fact is that you exist. Dwell on that, nothing more.

I am.

Two more magnificent words were never put together. I am. This minute. This now. All the time that ever was.


ONLY ONE MIND AND YOU MUST USE IT

You are pure spirit, cast into human mold as a manifestation of divine intelligence, existing this little while on earth to help carry on the divine plan. Being pure spirit, you are a part of the only intelligence there is, and all the power and understanding of this intelligence are yours to draw upon.

There is only one intelligence, one mind in all creation, and everyone is a part of it. Thought transference, hypnotism, clairvoyance are only a few examples of the fact that we all are using one mind. Every book has been written by the same author, every building and bridge built by the same engineer, every picture painted by the same artist, every sonnet composed by the same poet, all music conceived by the same musician. You and your neighbor, us, everybody, one. That is the way it is.

The Universal Mind that flows through everyone knows no limitation or lack, and nothing is impossible to it. Its great dominant characteristic is creativeness. Since it is all knowledge and all substance and all power, indeed the only thing it does is create. And it creates exactly what the mind of each individual person thinks into it.

Now we are not discussing something that you can either use or not use as you see fit. We are discussing something that you use every day of your life, that you can't help using because it is a part of you, in fact, is altogether the real you.

This Universal Mind knows no big or little, rich or poor, great or insignificant. It gives of itself according to need, and it creates according to desire. It is creating for you right now exactly what you are thinking into it!

Construe this mind, if you will, as a great plastic medium containing all energy, all knowledge, and all substance. Conceive of it as a medium responsive only to thought and responsive in degree and time according to how such thought is sped with conviction.

We might then have a simple formula like this. Thought plus Conviction equals Manifestation.

There is manifested in your experience exactly that which you are convinced of!

However, even though our Conscious Minds desire success, if our subconscious Prompters believe it to be impossible, then our emotional thought is all aimed at failure, and failure will result.

The Lock that forbids achievement and happiness is the existence in the mind of subconscious Prompters that make automatons out of free persons.


EXPOSING THE SUBCONSCIOUS

Though hypnotism as a science is in its infancy, it illustrates perfectly the remarkable power of the Subconscious Mind and how it operates entirely by suggestion.

The hypnotist, through his methods of putting the Conscious Mind to sleep, simply removes the control which the Conscious Mind exerts over the Subconscious Mind. The patient, when under hypnotic sleep, acts on every suggestion of the hypnotist as if it were truth, for the hypnotist has now taken the place of the Conscious Mind. The hypnotist says, "You have no feeling in your right arm," and forthwith the patient has no feeling in his right arm. So deep, in fact, is this anesthetic that it far outdoes any drug known to science. The hypnotist may say to the patient, "When you wake up, I am going to count to ten, and as I count, you will gradually lose your hearing, so that when I get to ten you will be able to hear nothing at all. When I start counting backwards from ten, you will gradually regain your hearing, so that when I arrive at one, your hearing will be fully restored."

This is post-hypnotic suggestion. The patient is awakened, the hypnotist counts to ten, and the patient gradually loses his hearing. At ten, a gun is fired behind the patient, and not a single tremor indicates that he has heard. When the hypnotist counts backwards from ten, the patient's hearing is fully restored.

This is the mighty Subconscious Mind at work! This is but one small example of the miracles you can perform for yourself. For you, your Conscious Mind can take the place of the hypnotist, and your power is magnified a thousand times because you are working toward your own desires.


DISSOLVING YOUR NEGATIVE PROMPTERS

First, however, we must be concerned with removing all negative Prompters from the Subconscious Mind and installing in their stead a group of positive Prompters which will lead us in the path of attainment and happiness.

We need not remove these negative Prompters as an especial procedure. Since positive will override negative, all that is necessary is for us to install in the Subconscious a group of positive Prompters. The existence of these will dissipate all negative Prompters and allow the individual to expand to the full blossom of his power.

For example, if you are consistently sick, it is a long way toward recovery to search the Subconscious Mind for the Prompter that is causing your sickness. Rather, it is best to install a Prompter that says that it is natural to be well, that health and vigor are birthrights of mankind, that you exist in a spiritual medium that is perfect, and that your body as a manifestation of this perfect medium is perfect also. Once this positive Prompter is thoroughly installed in the Subconscious, the negative "Sick Prompter" will wither and disappear.

It is, of course, a great aid in this therapy to understand the origination of all negative circumstance in your life, the cause of all sin and punishment, for heaven and hell are within you, and reward and punishment are simply cause and effect in your use of the great spiritual laws that govern all life.


INTUITION

It has long been established that the principal compartments of the human mind consist of Memory, Reason, and Imagination. These three mental factors, however, when added together have failed to yield the mystical whole of the human personality, leading psychologists to believe that all the factors of the human mind were not being studied. For some time past, an additional factor has come under laboratory scrutiny—the factor of Intuition, the ability of a number of individuals to know the correct answer to a problem without being versed in the parts of the problem. It has been discovered that not all persons are so gifted, or rather that not all persons are intuitively "awakened," but where such an awakening exists, Reason and Memory have flouted all measurement.

Intuition, then, is a compartment of the human mind.


FAITH

Still a fifth compartment of the human mind is only now achieving widespread recognition, even though ancient philosophers long ago proclaimed it to be the most important of all. This is the compartment of Faith.

See how common these quotations are: "Faith can move mountains," "As ye believe, so shall it be done unto you," "Think big, do big." And yet, even though these written revelations are as old as recorded history, the world has blithely gone its way, disregarding them.

How many of them we have chalked up to coincidence! There was the neighbor who rubbed a rag across the wart on your finger, buried the rag and informed you that when the rag rotted the wart would disappear. You believed it, and the wart disappeared. A coincidence, your adult mind says, because your education tells you that there is no way a rotting rag could possibly affect the existence of a wart. With such a conclusion you are looking in the wrong direction, for it wasn't the rag but the Faith that caused the wart to disappear!

Consider the life of Jesus. There can be no doubt but that this enlightened man was preaching to the world of the magnitude of his discovery of Faith. Through revelation, intuition, enlightenment, attunement with the infinite, Jesus knew as perhaps no one before or after him of the unlimited power of Faith. Through it he worked his miracles of healing and spiritual understanding.

Such miracles as the Bible discloses are happening every day of our modern life. A patient suffering with cancer of the throat was informed of a new X-ray machine that would cure his condition. This man could neither read nor write, nor was he informed about any of the instruments or procedures of medical practice. When he first sat down in the doctor's office and received into his mouth a thermometer with which the doctor sought to take his temperature, he believed he was undergoing X-ray treatment. The doctor, alert to the practices of psychology, recognized this, and after leaving the thermometer in the patient's mouth for ten minutes, excused him and told him to return in two days. Three weeks of treatment with a thermometer cured this patient's cancerous condition! Obviously, it wasn't the thermometer that did it. It was Faith!


CREATOR

Here then is the human mind as we find it today. Principal conscious compartments consist of Memory, Reason, and Imagination. Conscious memory is the ability to recall the past, while subconscious memory is perfect and contains the Prompters which have been placed there as pain rejections of the Conscious Mind. Intuition is a characteristic of the Subconscious Mind, a phenomenon attributable to a contact made by the Conscious Mind with the Subconscious Mind. Faith, the mover of mountains, the worker of miracles, is the Conscious Mind acting on the Subconscious Mind. Memory, Reason, Imagination, Intuition, Faith: these equal the Human Mind.

For the purposes of what we have to learn here, we need concern ourselves only with Intuition and Faith, for by Faith we will overcome the Lock, and through Intuition we will contact the infinite.

Nothing is impossible to the human mind when the Lock is removed. Ships, planes, electricity, radar, rocket power, automobiles, engines, electronics, atomic power have all been the result of thought. Thought is the great creator, master and mother of the universe, God in man, the infinite in the immediate. And there is no end to individual power through the right use of thought.

Thought plus Faith — Creator.

But before we can truly use or understand this great creator, we must first understand the Lock that bars us from its proper use.


JOURNEY TOWARD GOD

Man is pure spirit, in essence a part of God, in actuality a manifestation of the infinite. As such, man is perfect but temporal. His earthly existence is a matter of a moment, his form is ever changing. In this earthly form, his spirit undergoes a sense of isolation and personal responsibility, which in his daily material life causes emotions of insecurity and isolation and frustration. These memories of insecurity, isolation, and frustration are unbearable to his Conscious Mind, his material mind, and he rejects them, hiding them within his subconscious memory where they act as Prompters of limitation, lack, illness, etc. These subconscious Prompters act as a bar to the door of the infinite, keeping man from full contact with the power of the great Universal Mind in which he lives, moves, and has his being.

The complete removal of all negative Prompters in the mind, full contact with the infinite, complete recognition of the spiritual laws and the spiritual nature of mankind are the sum and substance of human existence and provide the path mankind treads on its journey toward God.


I
AM WILL NOT BE DENIED

It is possible that you will be unready to accept with this first chapter the complete realization of your own divine origin and power. Perhaps the subconscious Prompters in your own mind are now urging you to the conclusion that you are an insignificant bit of matter, accidentally sprung to life in a chaotic universe, without cause, without reason, without destiny, without power. Yet inside you, a still small voice knows the truth, and no matter the strength of your rebellion away from your true self, the fact of your spiritual existence, the great I AM, will not be denied. Have no fear, then, that you will be lost. If, in this first chapter, there are statements made and conclusions drawn with which you cannot find yourself in complete agreement, it is only because you are now contacting those hidden truths that may not be learned without struggle. This, you have in store for you: These chapters are not merely expositions; they are demonstrations. You will be given things to do, experiments to conduct, proofs to achieve that will convince you beyond all shadow of doubt that there is a power far greater than you and which you can use to make your life happy and fulfilled. The understanding of this power within yourself will expand your life to new and exciting horizons, will embark you upon the greatest adventure it is possible to know.


THE RESULT OF SELF-KNOWINGNESS

Take for instance your body. According to measurement, it is short, tall, slender, heavy, handsome, dainty, rugged, strong, or weak. Within the scope of these measurements, you have established to yourself in some degree what kind of person you are. When you first came into self-consciousness in this life, your body was with you. You didn't order it. You didn't go to the great Tailor and say, "Make me a body with two arms and two legs and two eyes and two ears and a nose and a mouth, and make it better-looking than other bodies, and make it stronger than any other bodies, and make it so it won't wear out." If you had, you probably would have placed just such an order, but you didn't have the chance. Your body was ordered for you. You possessed it in an infant state and grew within it, even as it grew around you. The spirit clothed itself with a gown of flesh!

The result of all self-knowingness is form, and so your form, or body, is the result of your knowing yourself, being aware of yourself. Your body is an embodiment of life, is an expression of life, for through your body your spirit expresses Itself.

It matters not the form of your body, for it is perfect, even as the spirit within it is perfect. It is a perfect instrument for the expression of your spirit, and only the misuse of spiritual law can cast from it its perfection. All illness and disease is thus the result of the misuse of spiritual law and the lack of spiritual understanding. For God is perfect, spirit is perfect, and the body that expresses them must be perfect.

The answer to why you and your body came into existence is as simple as knowing yourself. You, as spirit, are eternal and never came into existence. Your body is simply a manifestation of your spirit, a changing form made from eternal substance, even as all form must change. It is difficult to analyze and probe this mystery with the Conscious Mind, but it is relatively simple to demonstrate to the Conscious Mind the existence of Infinite spiritual power.


THE ELUSIVE INFINITE

Man's words and conceptions, with which he demonstrates his earthly control, are hardly adequate in tackling the realms of the spirit.

Take the word infinite. Man has decided that infinite means never-ending. He understands a straight line. He claims to understand an infinitely long straight line. Yet if you were to take two crossed lines, infinitely long, and attempt to uncross them, you would find that, as you moved them away from each other, the point at which they were crossed moved farther and farther away from you. But since the lines never ended, they could never be uncrossed! You could, at the point you were grasping them, be holding them parallel to each other, and still they would not be uncrossed, even though they were straight lines!

Obviously the Conscious Mind, in its measurements and numbers, is scarcely capable of dealing with the infinite.

Again take man's conception of time, a matter of the earth's revolution on its axis and its path about the sun, a matter of seconds and minutes and hours and days and months and years and centuries. Time, you might say, is as fixed a conception as there could possibly be, an unvarying measurement.

Yet, in human experience, it has long been established that a second can be as long as a minute, an hour as long as a day. Einstein, in his Theory of Relativity, has expressed in the language of science the variability of time. Essentially, he has shown that the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, is in man's conception infinitely fast. For at the speed of light, a mass would be infinitely big, and time would stand still. On the basis of this theory, it has been worked out that a space ship traveling 185,999.9 miles per second could circumnavigate the universe in a period of time that would be thirty years to the occupants of such a ship. Yet, to those on the earth, the space ship would be gone 10,000,000 years!

Yet, despite conceptual inadequacies, science has proven that every physical law of the universe has a corresponding spiritual law.

Science has shown us that matter and energy are one, that even the heaviest and sturdiest materials are simply a collection of free-moving molecules banging against each other, moving at tremendous speeds. Through the use of the spectroscope, elements have been discovered on far-flung planets that weigh as much as a hundred tons per cubic inch! Electronics may one day transmit masses around the world in a fraction of a second, even as pictures are now being transmitted! Certainly this is no age in which to hold the idea that anything in the way of bridging space and time and form is impossible to the mind or the spirit of man.


THE CHALLENGE OF THE INVISIBLE

There have been, in the records of history, many enlightened men; teachers, scientists, spiritual advisers, and poets; and each of them has had this thing to say in common: There is a great medium of mind and intelligence that is in and surrounds every human being. This intelligence is all-intelligence and knows and does everything. This intelligence, God, is an eternal creator, creating that which the mind of man thinks.

A doctor whose professed views on life were on a strictly material plane has said, "I have cut many a body open and I have never found a soul." To which it has been answered, "Undoubtedly true, but while you were there, did you ever find a thought?"

The invisible plane of human existence offers the greatest challenge and the greatest hope for all mankind!

A young woman, born and raised in the United States, not able to read or write and speaking only the English language, was sitting in the front room with her father not many years ago, when through the front door came a long-time friend of her father's who had just arrived from Greece. At the sight of him, the young woman rose from her seat and began speaking rapidly to him in his native tongue, a language she had never heard nor studied! The man from Greece broke down and wept, for the young woman had just informed him that his wife, back in Greece, had died!

Subsequent checking proved this young woman's revelation to be true. She had circumvented the barriers of space, time, and language to reveal this tragedy to this gentleman she had never seen before!

Another woman, whose contact with the universal intelligence was acute, was able to provoke physical occurrence through nothing but thought. In demonstration, under the surveillance of a group of highly trained scientific minds, she activated through nothing but thought, a light switch over which a soap bubble had been placed. The switch was turned on, the bubble remained unbroken!


THE TRUTH LIES IN LOOKING INWARD

So great is the new-found, newly recognized power of thought that groups are organizing throughout the world, aiming at the creation of peace through thought power. What else is this but prayer? What else is this but the transmission of desire into the creative mind of the universe? Done correctly and with power it must succeed!

The responsiveness of Universal Mind to thought has long been beautifully taught by Dr. Ernest Holmes and his Institute of Religious Science in Los Angeles. Dr. Holmes has authored a number of fine books on the healing power of positive beliefs, and maintains at his institute a spiritual treatment clinic that makes miracles an everyday occurrence. Yet Dr. Holmes smiles when they are called miracles. "They're only the use of the Law of Mind in Action," he says. "Change the idea of a thing, and you change the thing. It's that simple."

This great plastic creative medium, this Subconscious Mind, this mind of the universe in which there is all knowledge, all wisdom, and all power, is ours to use every day that we live. We are using it now; we can't help using it. We are using it in such degree and in such manner as we understand it; and more often than not we are using it in such a manner as to create unhappy circumstance and situation, delaying if not forbidding the realization of our own God-given divinity.

It is our purpose here to impart understanding of the great intelligence to which you belong, to point out the errors of thought and the false circumstances that have locked you away from self-realization.

This locked-in viewpoint, this limitation we impose upon ourselves must be dissipated. We have looked around us at the material world, made judgments about things and people and then imposed those judgments upon ourselves. By looking outward we have achieved what we believe to be knowledge about ourselves, and this is falsity of the very highest degree.


COMPETITION VERSUS CREATIVENESS

If you were to take an average person living in the United States of America, and ask him, "Who are you?" he would answer with either his name or his job or both. Similarly, he has an impression of his own success, his own wealth, his own ability, and his own desirability, which he has gained not from looking within but from comparing himself with those around him.

The essence of mankind is not competition; it is creativeness. In all this world there is not another you, nor has there ever been another you. Is it not ridiculous to attempt to mold yourself into a likeness of your fellows, to attempt to undo the work that God has done? For you, as an especial part of the universal intelligence, are manifested here on this earth in the form you now occupy to do work that only you can do! No matter how humble your job may seem, no matter how unprepossessing your position in life, take heart! The universe has sired no other person like you. Only you can be you.

Only you can draw upon the infinite for those divine powers that are yours.

There is a fine line of demarcation between competition and creativeness in the minds of everyone today. Yet they are black and white, complete opposites on the polar scale. Competition attempts to be like. Creativeness attempts to be unlike. Competition casts all humanity into the same mold. Creativeness makes of each man an individual counterpart of God.

Competition exists on the plane that makes you want to have a better home than Jack Smith, a better car than Jack Smith, a better job than Jack Smith. It leads you into the suffocating trap of not wanting the different but wanting the same, only better. It imposes upon you a scale of values that is not your own but belongs to a group.

Creativeness, on the other hand, is a world all your own. If you were to take brush and palette in hand right now and paint a picture in oils, the result—good, bad, or indifferent by the world's standards—would be all your own. The finest artist living could not copy it exactly. Does not this prove there is no other you? Conformity and competition are death knells to the spirit. Creativeness and non-conformity are an expansion into cosmic understanding.


ENLIGHTENMENT

Your security in life depends entirely on your recognition of your divine nature. Money, home, insurance policies, and position are like wraiths in the night. There are no banks in the hereafter, nor pockets in a coffin. All the things of the world change; they are born, they blossom, they bear fruit, and they die. Only the great unity—your own association with the infinite, your own individual manifestation of the Universal Mind of God—only that is changeless. Your recognition and use of this great truth will provide you with such security as you have never dreamed, will cast into proper perspective every aspect of your life, will unloose in you such a flood of creative energy as to fill your life to brimming with success, accomplishment, and vigor.

There is a Key to this attainment. Could we but break down the barriers established by your Conscious Mind, remove your Prompters with but a word, the Key could be given to you now and your life would be changed this moment. But the Conscious Mind acting in accord with the insidious Prompters is strong. Only hundreds of pages of discourse and proof will weaken its prejudice. Only diligent daily application of the principles of this book will finally dissipate all doubt. For Faith is the great mover, the father of all creation.

With each chapter you will develop your powers of Faith and Intuition. There will come a time, an hour, perhaps a moment, when you will feel a flash inside you, when suddenly all the world will assume a shape and a mold that will seem divinely inspired for you alone.


POINTS TO REMEMBER

In the meantime, you must go step by step. There is no quick, easy road to anything worthwhile. Take from this first chapter the principal points covered and record them indelibly in your memory. They are:

1. There is a power, greater than you are, which you can use to make your life vibrant, successful, and happy.

2. This power is the Universal Creative Mind, the Subconscious Mind, and you are using it now; you can't help using it.

3. All of us live and move and have our beings in the great intelligence that makes up the universe and the world.

4. This Universal Mind is responsive to thought. It creates what is projected into it.

5. The reason our conscious desires do not always manifest themselves in reality is twofold: 1) We are not projecting our thoughts with conviction. 2) There are Prompters in the Subconscious Mind which cause our thinking to go astray.

6. The Prompters in the Subconscious Mind make up the Lock which bars us from proper use of the great power of the infinite.

7. These Prompters are rejections of the Conscious Mind, buried in the Subconscious and long forgotten. They are primarily pain experiences, and thus are primarily negative, attracting and creating lack and limitation and disease and unhappiness.

8. This Lock, these Prompters, can be removed by understanding, study, and application of the great laws of spirit.


THE HIGH ADVENTURE

It is always necessary to understand something about a lock before you can use the key. It is equally important to understand a good deal about the key before you can use it to open the lock. In this first chapter, you have encountered the basic elements of the Lock that keeps you from enjoying but a small fraction of your God-like given power. Certain elements of the Key to the Lock have been discussed. In the following chapters, you will arrive at a complete understanding of the Lock and a complete understanding of the Key; so that you will, without further help, be able to embark upon the most productive and happy and vital years of your life. And you are not likely to ever again meet with such high adventure as you study and experiment with your own divine nature, as you discover for yourself the great source of power and wisdom that exists within you.


DON'T ARGUE WITH YOURSELF

Subsequent chapters will cover such subjects as Illusion, Mind, Form, Faith, Intuition, Love, Success, Health, Attraction and Immortality. The final chapter, THE KEY will reveal a great metaphysical secret.

Throughout the book we will undertake the study of Hypnotism, Thought Transference, and Clairvoyance, and we will show how they are all products of the vast power of the Universal Subconscious Mind.

Enlightenment, however, is not going to be as simple as just reading the chapters. You must devote at least ten minutes daily to the practice of what you have learned, for only with this cooperation and effort can the rewards of self-realization be achieved.

We ask you to spend ten minutes daily in meditation, projecting your thoughts into the creative Subconscious Mind, so that they can manifest into actuality. These meditation periods are designed to accomplish a purpose, to prove to you that you can achieve your desires through the proper use of mental law. Of course, if you spend ten minutes each day saying "yes" and the other twenty-three hours and fifty minutes saying "no," the "no" will result. Obviously, the only way the "yes" can be manifested is when you do more affirming than denying. The Subconscious Mind always actsand it acts on the most predominant thought. Therefore, commit the meditation to memory or carry it with you. Throughout the day, when circumstances appear to be negative, when disillusionment, depression, or discouragement knock at the door of your consciousness, simply bring the meditation to your mind and say it over to yourself. The simple saying of the words will immediately restore your peace and confidence.

You must understand that as a human soul you can't quit using the law. You can't help using it a single minute of any day of your life. You're using it now. If you decide that you cannot achieve success, health, happiness, and peace of mind,—then failure, illness, unhappiness and confusion are yours. For the law still works, and you can't stop it from working!

The only question you have to answer is whether you desire good or evil, for the law must bring you one or the other, according to your desire.


MEDITATION—MANIFESTATION

"In the beginning, the word," and so it is with all creation, for the word is the thought. Speaking the word with conviction and maintaining that conviction with faith is the complete chain of manifestation from the thought to the thing.

The first meditation, which is given at the end of this chapter, is designed to put you in contact with the Universal Subconscious Mind, to provide you with a sense of peace, power and security, for only with this sense of the absolute can you go through the entire book to complete self-realization and unlimited power. Subsequent meditations will aim at achieving specific results in the realms of success, accomplishment, money, health, love and happiness.

During your meditation periods, you must be alone. You must be in a place of quiet and solitude, undisturbed by other voices or the movements of other people. You must set your mind at rest, forgetting for the moment all cares and problems and people. You must let golet go of everything you know except self.

When you feel calm and peaceful, you will know that you are in contact with the Universal Mind. Then, and only then, speak the meditation aloud. But don't simply speak it. Understand it, feel it, project it. It will manifest for you in actuality.

RECOMMENDED READING

The Man Who Knew by Ralph Waldo Trine.


FIRST MEDITATION

I know that I am pure spirit, that I always have been, and that I always will be. There is inside me a place of confidence and quietness and security where all things are known and understood. This is the Universal Mind, God, of which I am a part and which responds to me as I ask of it. This universal mind knows the answer to all of my problems, and even now the answers are speeding their way to me. I needn't struggle for them; I needn't worry or strive for them. When the time comes, the answers will be there. I give my problems to the great mind of God; I let go of them, confident that the correct answers will return to me when they are needed. Through the great law of attraction, everything in life that I need for my work and fulfillment will come to me. It is not necessary that I strain about this, only believe. For in the strength of my belief, my faith will make it so. I see the hand of divine intelligence all about me, in the flower, the tree, the brook, the meadow. I know that the intelligence that created all these things is in me and around me and that I can call upon it for my slightest need. I know that my body is a manifestation of pure spirit and that spirit is perfect; therefore my body is perfect also. I enjoy life, for each day brings a constant demonstration of the power and wonder of the universe and myself. I am confident. I am serene. I am sure. No matter what obstacle or undesirable circumstance crosses my path, I refuse to accept it, for it is nothing but illusion. There can be no obstacle or undesirable circumstance to the mind of God, which is in me, and around me, and serves me now.


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