And All These Things Shall Be Added

A simple childlike faith in the beneficence of Life is both the highest and deepest mental and spiritual quality the human mind can possess. This faith comes only through a conviction that God is over all, in all, and through all. It comes only as we feel an intimate and direct relationship to the Spirit.

The Science of Mind is a technique, an adequate and intelligent way for the conscious use of mental faculties with which God has equipped us. Every practitioner and worker in our field needs, and must have, an understanding of this science. But the Science of Mind itself is merely a tool, an instrument for the use of those spiritual powers which all men have. Plotinus, who has been called the “King of the Intellectual Mystics of the Ages,” said that the Kingdom of God is something which all possess but which few use.

Jesus said that this Kingdom is immediate and available, that It is present with us here and now. He also said that when we seek this Kingdom, everything else will be added to it, because the lesser is always included in the greater.

The Science of Mind is a way through which we use the power of this Kingdom for practical purposes—an instrument of the Spirit within us. It is necessary for us to know that in a very true sense, thoughts are things. It is necessary that we understand how to use the power of right thinking for definite purposes. We need to understand that the Law of Mind in action is the movement of a universal Law of Cause and Effect. We must come to have complete confidence in this Law.

But more than this, and higher is the necessity for developing an intimate relationship with Life, a feeling that we belong to It and are one with It, a faith and conviction so deep and so all-pervading that no shadow of doubt is ever cast across the mind. No one has yet gained this intuitive perception, this interior awareness, without conscious and continuous communion with the Spirit, the result of a deep yearning of the soul to find its center and source in a universal wholeness, in the light, warmth and color of conscious union with God.

There is a vast difference between union and conscious union. We are already one with God by Divine decree. It is not that we need to seek God, but that we need to become more intimately aware of a union which is forever given. Since this awareness cannot be something separate from our own minds, and since we cannot feel that we are one with a God apart from us, we must of necessity become aware of an indwelling, as well as an overshadowing, God. This means that we must not only sense God as omnipresent, we must sense Him as inwardly present in all people and in all things. This in no way confines the Spirit to the person or the object through which It operates, but it does unify all people and things with one omnipresence which runs through and unites everything in one infinite Presence, in one Divine Will, in one everlasting Purpose and in one supreme Cause.

A simple, childlike trust and faith in this Divine Presence not only clears the passageway of the mind from doubt and confusion, it also offers a direct and personal approach to the Infinite, making everything intimate and personal to the mind. We must feel that we belong to this Presence, even as It belongs to us, that there is no place where It leaves off and we begin.

The flow of the Infinite into our personal intelligence is the flow of Life into manifestation. To have the Mind of Christ means to so sense our union with the Mind of God that each one of us comes to think of himself as an individualized center in a Universal Spirit. That which has created the personality, through individualizing Itself, must forever be personal to that which It projects.

We should all practice spiritual meditation for the purpose of drawing the Universal Presence down into our personality. This form of spiritual meditation is not for the purpose of using the creative Law of Cause and Effect, which is the Law of Mind in action, for any particular or specific purpose. This is the practice of the Science of Mind and has a legitimate and necessary place, but the supreme good lies beyond the realm of things, beyond the realm of having. It belongs to the realm of being, that which includes all having.

The only barrier, if there be any, between the influx of the Spirit and our own experience, is a psychological one. That is, it is a thing of thought. The mind, both consciously and subjectively, feels itself to be separate from a wholeness which even in its sense of isolation it intuitively feels must exist. This intuition is right and since the barrier, or that which seems to obstruct the passage of Spirit into our experience, is mental, it can be mentally penetrated and consciously removed.

This is the highest office of spiritual meditation. It has been called the contemplation of the Spirit, the identification of the individual with the Universal. It has also been called the mystical marriage. Any spiritual statement which includes a consciousness of one’s union with God, will help to remove the obstructions, consciously and subjectively, which inhibit the passage of Spirit through us.

We might say that the Spirit is there on the other side of the mind waiting to come in. But the mind is so confused with contradictory experiences and memories, so caught up in the confusion of living and the chaos of thinking that our thought is stopped in the realm of opposites, which is always a realm of mental combat and struggle. Spiritual contemplation must penetrate this, must pass through it, that it may emerge in the unobstructed realm, not only of pure and unconditioned Causation, but of perfect and complete satisfaction.

In this meditation, we forget all about what we want or think we need or ought to have, for all of these things will be added in such degree as we enter the wholeness of Being. They are merely incidental to our everyday experience. They are good and necessary and we should have everything that makes life happy and worthwhile. This should include health of body and happiness of circumstance, but it should include more than this. It should include the wholeness of Being Itself.

For instance, suppose one finds himself surrounded by confusion. Everywhere he looks in his objective world he sees confusion. Every time he thinks, he thinks confusion. The very things he reads, conversations he listens to, appear to add to this confusion. Even the statements which he makes, attempting to combat the confusion, seem rather to accentuate it. He is caught in a physical and mental whirl of confused thoughts and incidents.

If he takes the statement that God is peace, he will find a certain release in his mind, but even then he may be thinking of that peace which God is as being separate from the confusion which he experiences. He may be trying to bring his confusion up into peace and he is very likely to fail of his purpose. In spiritual contemplation, he must forsake the confusion. He must rise above it and dwell on the concept of peace itself, a peace which is independent of any and every circumstance. He must feel that this peace exists everywhere, not only that he is part of it, but that he is it.

Just the simple thought of peace, dwelling on nothing else, thinking of nothing else, without contradiction or combat or argument – just contemplating the word “Peace,” saying it softly to oneself, trying to feel it – not trying to do anything with it or about it, not trying to reach up or out to it, but rather penetrating its inwardness – just the word “Peace” repeated over an over quietly, calmly and without too much effort, will heal any confusion in any person’s life, no matter what its source may be.

Or we might take the word “Love” or “Joy.” Meditating upon the meaning of these words, trying to feel the substance of that meaning, trying to sense the presence of that meaning, will heal our thought both consciously and subjectively of everything which contradicts love and joy.

Let us all seek more consciously to enter into our Divine inheritance. Let each set aside definite times in which he is willing to surrender all that he is or has or wishes to become to the supreme concept, and lo! peace, joy and love will appear.

This article was written for the April 1948 Science of Mind Magazine.