Your Forces and How to Use Them · 4 of 74

Volume I: IV. How Thoughts are Born

As in combinations of elements or chemicals, new substances are formed, so in the combination of thought substance, as it flows and mingles from mind to mind, new thoughts are formed or born. The character and quality of your thought are shaded, and to a greater or less extent changed, by every person with whom you associate, as theirs mingles and forms a new combination with yours. You are, to an extent, a different person through conversing an hour yesterday with a, than if you had interchanged thought with b. You have then grafted on you a shade of a’s nature, or quality of thought.

If you are much with the low and degraded, the thought in you born of your thought chemicalization with theirs, will be, despite your greatest endeavor and aspiration, weighed down with their grossness. So “evil communications corrupt good manners.” If your associates be refined, pure, lofty, aspiring, the thought born of such commingling and chemicalization is lofty, pure, aspiring, and powerful.

Associations with the low and impure lessen the power of your thought. What weakens the mind weakens the body, and also lessens the power of your thought to accomplish results afar from the body, on any business.

If there is constant association and mingling of the thought of a broad and generous mind with one low, ignoble, narrow, and mean, the force of the higher spirit or thought may be exhausted in repelling the lower. Thousands of finer natures are, to‑day, physically sick, because their spirits are saturated with the lower, grosser, more narrow thought of those about them.

New thought or idea brings strength to body as well as mind. For this reason, the real, active intellect of the world lives long, like Victor Hugo, Gladstone, Beecher, Bright, Bismarck, Ericcson, and others. True, there is a sort of fossilized life and intellect which may exist many years, but it enjoys little and accomplishes nothing. Increased knowledge of the laws of thought (that great silent force in nature) will, in the future, enable the spirit to use its body, not only in full, but ever‑increasing possession of its mental and physical powers so long as it pleases.

People’s bodies decay and lose vigor through thinking continually the same set of thoughts. Thought is food for your spirit as much as is bread food for the body. Old thought is literally old, stale substance or element. It does not properly nourish the spirit. If the spirit is starved, the body will suffer. It will become either a semi‑animated fossil, or, if the spirit be sufficiently strong to assert its demands caused by the gnawings of its hunger, there will be perpetual unrest, uneasiness, and some form of bodily disease. From such cause are thousands suffering to‑day. They “grieve the spirit.” That is, their worldly education, or rather that portion of their spirit trained almost unwillingly to conform to the opinion and life about them, resists the intuition or pleadings of their spirits which they often deem foolish whims and fancies.

New thought is new life, and renewal of life. A new idea, plan, or purpose fills us with hope and vigor. One secret of eternal life and happiness is to be ever pushing forward toward the new, or “forgetting the things which are behind, and pressing forward to those which are before.” Eternity and endless space are exhaustless of the new. Senility comes through ever looking back and living in the past. You have nothing to do with the person you were a year ago, save to profit by that person’s experience. That person is dead. The “You” of to‑day is another and a newer individual. The “You” of next year will be still another and a newer one.

“I die daily,” says Paul. By which he inferred that some thought of yesterday was dead to‑day, and cast off like an old garment. In its place was the newer one. When our spirits are growing healthfully, we have done forever with a part of ourselves at each day’s end. That part is dead. It is with us a dead thought. We have no further use for it. To use it will injure us. It is cast off as our bodies daily cast off a certain portion of dead skin. To him or her, who has increase of new thought, a new world is lived in daily. As regards happiness, it does not matter so much where we are, so that we can bring to ourselves this daily inflowing of new thought. We can so bring to ourselves happiness in a dungeon when people closed to new idea are miserable in palaces. We are, then, on the road to an independence, almost complete, of the physical world. Independence means power. So long as we are in any way dependent on a person, a food, a drug, a stimulant, or any condition of things about us, are we to that extent the slave of these things. So perpetual inflowing of new idea makes a way for escape out of the dungeons of material and spiritual poverty. You may be rich in this world’s goods, yet very poor in not being able to enjoy them. You cannot long remain poor in the worldly sense, if you are spiritually rich. But spiritual richness asks for no more than it can use and enjoy for the hour and the day. It will not hoard in bank vaults.

Daily inflowing of new thought brings new power. To him or her who so daily receives, a fresh force is added, pushing their undertakings farther forward toward success. The silent force of your mind then keeps up its steady pressure on other minds who are consciously or unconsciously co‑operating with you.

In the higher realms of mind are those who are ever joyous, cheerful, and confident of future success and happiness. They have lived up to the Law, and proven it. With them “faith is swallowed up in victory.” They know that by keeping the mind in a certain state, properly controlling their thoughts, there is brought a constant inflowing of happiness and power. Because power and happiness must move together. So must sin, pain, and weakness. They know, also, that their every plan (the Law being followed) must prove a success. Hence, life with them must be a constant succession of victories. Of this their faith or belief is as certain as is ours that fire will burn, or that water will extinguish fire.

We can, by earnestly and persistently desiring it, connect ourselves with this order of mind, and draw from them new life and force‑giving element. We clear the way to such valuable connection by the endeavor to drive from us all envy, gloom, quarrelsome, or other impure thought. Any thought doing us harm is an impure thought. Lifelong habit may make this at first a difficult task. Constant effort or aspiration will drive such damaging thought away with more and more ease. All impure thought is as rubbish or uncleanliness about us, preventing the near approach of the higher order of mind. A thought to such a spirit is as real a thing as is a stone to us. To them in thought we may be literally covered with garbage—or flowers.

A great poet, artist, writer, general, or other worker in any department of life, may have had a large share of his greatness due to his mediumship for unseen intelligences to work through. He may have been more the mouthpiece for them than the originator.

A man may be small, mean, petty, vain, and the victim of inordinate passions, yet at times give elegant expression to the most exalted sentiments. A small part of this man’s intellect responded to these sentiments. But his defects, his passions, his vices, are greatly in the ascendency. In certain moods he soars to sublime heights; in his ordinary mood he is relatively a small man. We have had poets whose sentiments, as given at different times, are almost contradictory. They express at one time purity; at another, the reverse. Their known lives have been low, coarse, and grovelling.

Such natures are used at favorable moments for a higher grade of unseen intelligence, to express their thought through. It is an absolute necessity for an intellect overflowing with richness of thought, with visions of the grandeur and beauty of life’s possibilities, to give expression to that thought. This necessity is a law of nature. Such minds are as pent‑up springs, which must burst forth. It is not for such a duty, in the ordinary sense of that word; it is a necessity. If you are rich in thought, you must give out of such thought wherever you find opportunity. You are as a tree overloaded with ripe fruit. When the fruit is ripe, it must fall; when the thought is ripe, it must come forth. If there be none near you to hear it, you must go where it can be heard; you must go from the necessity of self‑preservation. You cannot with safety keep a gift, a talent, a truth, a capacity for doing any thing well, all to yourself.

As spirits grow in richness of thought, as they even become oppressed by their own weight of richness, do they seek in every direction to give out this richness. They may find an impressional organization on the earth stratum of life; they can to such impressional come singly and give of their thought; or, through a certain co‑operation, a number of such minds united in purpose and motive, may come in a troop to the individual; they may, for a period, surround him or her with their own atmosphere of thought. Such atmosphere will act on the individual as a stimulant. It raises him in thought far above his ordinary level. He sees all things for the moment, in the light of a life higher and purer than any lived about him. In this mental condition, sentiment of an exalted order is impressed upon his mind; in other words, this co‑operation of higher minds enables them to bring of their thought an actual substance, and keep it longer near the impressional on earth. He absorbs it, and feels its powerful influence. He is, in fact, “inspired” by it; that is, he breathes it in. He is exhilarated, almost intoxicated by it, because refined and powerful thought is a stimulant, whose influence on the individual is in proportion to the fineness of such individual’s organization, his impressionability, or his or her capacity to receive of such thought. Such stimulation is but another name for “magnetic influence.” You have in this the secret of the attraction one person may have for another. The person attracted is actually stimulated while near the other, by the thought absorbed from the one who attracts.

In the condition of mind above stated, a poet may give expression to the thought so brought to and surrounding him after his own taste or tendency as to rhythm and measure. Or the poem in question may be actually dictated to him.

Under similar mental states brought about by the causes above mentioned are novels written and inventions dropped into minds. Artists and sculptors may work under such inspiration. Generals have been similarly prompted and aided in military operations. In the world of business and finance the same law is at work. It is operating on every grade of purpose and motive, be it low or high. There is no great result effected in any department of life, no great effort of thought, no great invention, that comes of the unaided agency of any single mind. We are all parts of the same whole. We are all members of the same body. We can do nothing without co‑operation, and the human unit who thinks it does is so thinking in the simplicity of its ignorance.

The poet who has so written under the inspiring power of another or other minds may pass away with a great name. Yet he may not have deserved all the reputation he gained. His writings are largely the result of the thought concentrated upon him by a co‑operative association of unseen intelligences. They unloaded their thought upon him, partly to relieve themselves. So relieved, they were then able to climb higher, and absorb of newer, finer ideas. So fast as you give out to others of your present thought and idea, so fast will you receive of the new. If you hold back, you prevent for yourself the absorption of the newer thought. If you are a medium for any of the forces of the universe to pass through and be transmitted to others, you must be careful that nothing prevents the free passage of new thought through you. The moment you hold back any truth, any plan, scheme, or invention, with the idea that it is exclusively your own, you are clogging up that mediumship.

You will be made poorer in every sense by such holding back. If you give freely you will increase in richness, and out of your overflowing richness you can easily retain enough to bring you every needed material aid. The text, “Freely have ye received, freely give,” is based on a scientific fact in the unseen kingdom of thought.

There are re‑embodied spirits to‑day on the earth, who, during a former and quite recent existence, had a great reputation in some field of effort. There are on earth to‑day poets who enjoy but a tithe of their fame in a former existence.

One reason for this is, that much of their source of inspiration has passed away. That is, the troop of spirits who in the former existence came to them of necessity to unload of their richness of thought, no longer labor under such necessity, so far as the mediumship of the impressional is concerned. These intelligences still have need to give of their thought in some place. But the thought they now absorb may be too fine to be received by any on earth.

With some, idea is organic. They are creators as well as absorbers of thought. These are they who try to live up to their highest ideal, and in the greatest variety of life and occupation. When one sees the necessity of doing this, he brings to himself all that is best in the universe that he can appropriate. He is an absorber of spirit from every side. He puts out this same spirit again, colored with his or her individuality. Every such individual is as a glass reflector tinged with some peculiar shade. The light within, shining through such shade, spreads rays of the same light on every side. The light represents the spirit. The globe or reflector represents the individual the light shines through. The oil in our lamps may all come from the same source. The lights in a series of lamps may be of as many different colors as there are globes stained of different colors. So in a series of individualized persons, though each is fed of the same spirit, yet each reflects a peculiar light of his own.

We can be creative and original as we absorb of any spirit, and make its expression original. You see and admire the method of an actor or artist; then you absorb of his thought. But you will not be a mere copy of his method. His thought combines with your own. There is an actual chemical operation of unseen element. There is a combination of his thought and your own, resulting in the formation, of a new element—your own original idea. The purer your thought and motive, the more unselfish your purpose, the greater the rapidity of such combination, the more original and striking your thought. By such means is thought born in you. The qualities of justice and unselfishness are themselves elements and scientific factors in such birth.

The selfish spirit is content with being the mere borrower. If it appropriates another’s thought or idea, without ever crediting such idea to its rightful owner, or the desire so to credit it, it will always remain a borrower. But people to borrow from will not always be at hand. There must come a time, in this life or another, when such a spirit will be left entirely to its own resources. It will then find itself poor. It will be crippled by the habit of borrowing. It will find that this habit prevents the chemical assimilation and birth of the new element, or, in other words, original or individually shaded idea. You have simply taken another’s property, and passed it off as your own. You have not been a manufacturer. You have been only a receiver of another’s manufactures.

It matters little whether you absorb idea in this way, and use it as your own, from minds whose bodies are visible to you or invisible. You still remain the mere borrower. You hurt thereby the power of making your own peculiar shade of individuality of light.

If spirits finding an impressional organization thrust their thought continually upon it through their own desire for expression, make it a perpetual mouthpiece, talk or write through such person continually, they may do a great injustice and injury. No matter how high or useful their thought, yet this pouring of ideas continually through one mind begets habit and desire of doing nothing else but talk or write or act, or perform some one thing continually. This will cause the person to grow all on one side. The balanced mind, the harmonious and organized adjustment of qualities necessary for the begetting of more and more originality, must come also of seeing and participating in all possible shades and kinds of life, as well as pure and unselfish motive. You need to mingle and sympathize with all manner of people, all manner of employments, all manner of professions, to make your own conceptions characterized by the greatest originality. You will then (unselfish motive being implied) not be a patchwork of borrowed bits from all with whom you come in contact; but a mosaic, of which every idea taken from others and grafted on your own has an individuality peculiarly your own.