The Conditions

Scientists have made it very clear to us that it is no use to look for that Power in the physical world, for they have reduced all material things to nothing more or less than “changed space.”

And here, I expect, you pull up with a jerk and say “I don’t quite understand that last sentence,” Right, let us re-state it.

Scientists have proved to us that there must have been, at the beginning of all creation, a Universal Substance which, by the action of some Outside Force (the identity of which we will examine later), set in motion a process of change. This process consisted of the gradual building up of the universe and its inhabitants by successive stages of evolution. In other words, the universe and its beings are nothing more than Universal Substance which has undergone transformation. There, therefore, remains that essential basic factor to be remembered that, quite literally, “Ye are all One.”

So much for the Physical and Material Substance.

We can at once decide that the characteristic of Spirit-Intelligence is Thought, so let us see, by means of a simple illustration, where we are now heading.

I am typing these words at a desk on which there is a bowl of flowers. In examining these flowers I find that my knowledge of them is limited, entirely, to my own physical capacity for perception. I know their form only through my eyesight. I know their colour by the same means. I know their scent by my sense of smell, and therefore I am entirely dependent on my physical fitness and completeness for my appreciation of their Beauty. But if I am to find the everlasting all-Beautiful, all-Perfect, and all-Good, it is to the infinite capacity of my Mind and Thought that I am compelled to turn.

Exactly the same principle is found in the work of any creative artist. If we examine the case of a painter of a picture, we find that his finished work may fall far short of its original mental image which he first conceived in his imagination. But if that picture stirs up in the beholder a realisation of that primal mental picture, then it has reproduced in him the spirit that was the essence of causation of the picture.

Take the instance of our own bodies. If there is the perfect Body on the psychic plane whilst the physical Body is diseased, the reason for that disease lies in the mind which is the only conceivable channel between the psychic and the physical planes. On this fact the whole principle of mental healing is built up and the complete success in dealing with widely diversified diseases of many spiritual and mental healers is a fully adequate proof of the correctness of the principle.

Here is a rough summary of the facts at which we have arrived at so far, and which, if you wish, you may accept without worrying yourself unduly in an effort to completely understand all that I have found it necessary to say to arrive at them.

The Universe and its inhabitants can be treated as a single entity made from the same special ether by a Process of Change as the result of a definite Cosmic Law of Evolution.

The physical world as we know it is not the Ultimate Reality, but is a materialisation of what first exists on the psychic plane, i.e. in the immaterial realm of thought.

Nothing can exist on the physical plane that is not first conceived on the psychic plane.

Evolution and change is controlled by Spirit which is all-Pervading.

Spirit acts through individualised man and through all life forms by the Principle or Law of Attraction.