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THINKING IN THE HEART 
 
 OR 
 
 EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION, 
 
 BY 
 
 Kate Atkinson Boehme. 
 
 •» • " * o J3 a 
 
 Washington, D. C m 
 
 National Publishing Company, 
 
 1902. 
 
THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 CONCRES8, 
 1N«o Gowws Recsived 
 
 OCT, fg "1902 
 
 CnoVRlOMT ENTRY 
 
 CLASS C*-XXa No, 
 COPY 3. ' 
 
 
 Copyright, 1902, 
 By KATE ATKINSON BOEHME. 
 
THINKING IN THE HEART; 
 
 OR 
 EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION* 
 
 LESSON I. 
 
 In my experience with students I find that 
 one and all ask help for stronger realization. 
 All seem to know that mental action is aimless 
 and void unless it tends toward a truer under- 
 standing of Life as it is, and not as it seems. 
 To get away from the seeming and into the 
 reality is to walk the path of realization. 
 
6 THINKING IN THE HEAKT; OR, 
 
 Have you not seen a child reaching out to a 
 bit of flickering sunshine on the floor, and have 
 you not smiled indulgently at its baby efforts 
 to grasp the golden plaything? Your smile is 
 born of superior wisdom, but you are just as 
 ignorant of that which attracts you, now, at 
 your stage of the game, as is that baby on the 
 floor. There was a time when you also cried 
 and kicked in childish rage and disappointment 
 because you could not seize a bit of sunshine in 
 your chubby little palm. And here you are 
 chasing it still. No longer, as in your baby days, 
 do you creep after it, for with the growth of 
 years you have developed the power of running, 
 and so you follow in swift pursuit your fleck of 
 sunshine all over the world — and never grasp it! 
 
 Hence it follows that you are either crabbed 
 and embittered or else saddened and melan- 
 choly. From start to finish the sunshine you 
 sought to grasp was a bit of happiness, but al- 
 ways and ever it turned to illusion just as your 
 hand closed upon it. You have reached the 
 darkness of night. The sun has set and there is 
 no longer the tiniest speck of sunshine for you 
 to follow. So you say and think, but, O, child in 
 the house of truth, do you not know that the 
 sun does not sink to rise no more ? To-morrow 
 is coming and with it the sun. Possibly the 
 clouds may obscure it, but there is another day 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 7 
 
 after that. There is not a weather bureau in 
 existence which will predict cloudy days for- 
 ever, and there is a perfect analogy between the 
 physical and mental world, so I am sustained by 
 science in my fair-weather prediction. Some- 
 how, somewhen, somewhere, your sun will 
 rise and shine, whether you believe it or not. 
 
 But you never can grasp sunshine in your 
 hand. That has been your mistake. Moreover, 
 it would not do you any good if you could so 
 grasp it, for sunshine, by virtue of its fine, 
 etheric nature, permeates you and fills you with 
 its life-giving power, which it could not do 
 if solid enough to be held in your hand. Do not 
 quarrel with the sunshine for being just what 
 it is, but place yourself in a certain relation to 
 it and receive its influx. 
 
 And now look at the diagram which heads 
 this lesson while I explain it to you. It is that 
 of a radiant figure set in a dark background, and 
 I have chosen it to represent a central truth in 
 the law of Being. This truth is that God and 
 Man are one. If you can get a realizing sense 
 of this you are on the path of realization. You 
 will notice that as the rays from the centre push 
 outward they grow narrower, until finally they 
 reach a point, and just for the purpose of illus- 
 tration I am going to suppose that this point of 
 the ray represents the mind of man before it 
 
8 THINKING IN THE HEAKT; OK, 
 
 has much knowledge of Reality. Let the dark 
 background stand for negation or matter and 
 you will see that the mind at this stage of its 
 unf oldment has not at its command so much of 
 the central light as it must possess when active 
 in the wider and ever-widening ray as you 
 trace it toward the centre. 
 
 Now, right here I wish to make an impor- 
 tant distinction between consciousness and the 
 thinking process. They seem at first to be 
 one and the same, but they are not, for I can 
 think and be conscious of myself as thinking, 
 or I can think and not be conscious of that 
 thinking. For instance, I may set out to give 
 my undivided attention to a subject, and after 
 a few moments of concentrated thought, off 
 goes my attention to one or more extraneous 
 subjects, and I busy myself with them until I 
 pull myself together with a start and discover 
 that I have strayed away from my subject. 
 J During the interval of thinking I was not con- 
 scious of the straying, but now I know of it. 
 Undoubtedly there are mental operations con- 
 tinually going on in me of which I am not con- 
 scious, for I am a much larger being than I 
 formerly supposed myself to be. How large, 
 do you ask? Why, as large as Infinity itself, 
 for I am It and It is I. We are interchange- 
 able terms; one in essence, but dual in the sense 
 of being expressed or unexpressed. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 9 
 
 If consciousness is awake only at the point 
 of the ray, then I seem to be but a small being, 
 but with a wider consciousness comes a wider 
 sense of being; and so on until I come to the 
 place where the ray joins the centre, which is 
 the place of All-Consciousness. There, you and 
 I are one, but all along the ray consciousness 
 we seem to be two, and hence arise our rela- 
 tions one with another. We act and react upon 
 the external side of life, impelled to it by the 
 sense of separation. All this is right and beau- 
 tiful when back of it lies the knowledge of one- 
 ness of essence. Without that knowledge of 
 unity in variety discord reigns, causing unrest 
 of mind and disease of body. As a man think- 
 eth in his heart, you know, so is he; therefore 
 it makes a great difference to you what you 
 think in your heart. 
 
 What does it mean to think in your heart? 
 Does it mean anything more than thinking in 
 your mind? Yes, it does. To think in your 
 heart is to realize. A great deal of the process 
 we call thinking has no more life in it than the 
 rattling of dry peas in a pod, but thinking in 
 the heart is live thinking or realization. 
 
 If you therefore think of yourself as a little 
 pigmy which has somehow come into this world, 
 with no more self-generative power than an 
 automaton, you will believe yourself to be a 
 
10 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 weak thing indeed; a mere football to be kicked 
 about by circumstances, a mechanical toy like 
 the doll which cries when you touch a spring, 
 or the horse which walks when you wind up its 
 machinery and stops when it runs down. 
 
 To know that you wind up your own ma- 
 chinery, or better still, that you are the power- 
 house behind all action, and controlling it, is 
 to think in your heart, from whence are the 
 issues of life. 
 
 Remember, there is but one Being, although 
 there are many expressions of that Being, and 
 those expressions we call human beings. Trace 
 every one of these beings back to the source, 
 and they all come from it in a continuous flow, 
 not separated in the least from that with which 
 they are one. 
 
 If you can grasp this idea, though ever so 
 faintly, you will begin to feel a greater sense 
 of power. Consciousness will awaken at a place 
 a little nearer to the central Being, at a wider 
 place in the ray which we will call your human 
 being. It is really Divine Being, but, as it is 
 limited or expressed in form in the ray, it be- 
 comes human being. 
 
 You are doubtless familiar with the word 
 Introspection, but possibly do not know what 
 it means. Literally, it means to look into, or 
 within. At any place in the ray consciousness, 
 
EASY LESSONS IN EEALIZATION. 11 
 
 wherever you may find yourself, if you turn 
 your attention inward, toward the central Be- 
 ing, you are then introspecting. 
 
 And what will it do for you ? What is the 
 good resulting from it? Why, just this: Your 
 weakest endeavor in this direction calls more 
 Being into expression, so that your human be- 
 ing thus becomes enlarged, strengthened and 
 vitalized. Then with each accession of strength 
 your introspection grows stronger, and you are 
 able to make larger drawing on the Eternal 
 Supply. 
 
 It is well worth your while to take this sim- 
 ple lesson and study it in connection with the 
 diagram, for you will then see more clearly 
 what I mean by finding your radiant centre. It 
 is by getting into that centre that you begin 
 to think in your heart. Your thoughts then 
 become live things, and it is only when thus 
 alive that they can heal disease in yourself or 
 others. Only when thus alive can they create 
 for you the peace which passeth understanding 
 and the prosperity which shall beautify and 
 enrich your life. 
 
 Do not be impatient if a great flood of il- 
 lumination does not come to you at the first. 
 Sometimes it does so come, but more frequently 
 not. Calmness and expectancy never fail to 
 bring the longed-for result in time, because you 
 
12 THINKING IN THE HEAKT; OR, 
 
 are working with the law; and that law is, that 
 every human being shall come into the knowl- 
 edge of its radiant centre. The path is not 
 hard. Just a little quiet introspection each 
 day, and there will dawn within you an ever- 
 widening light, which will at last unfold into 
 the perfect day. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 
 
 LESSON IL 
 
 (1) 
 
 (2) 
 
 To enter into Realization it is necessary to 
 get away from the comparatively meaningless 
 action which constitutes the greater part of our 
 thinking. There is nothing to realize but Truth, 
 and all thinking which does not move toward 
 the knowledge of Truth is desultory, vague, 
 purposeless, unreal and useless. You, the 
 master workman, must learn how to use the 
 thought machine. You must also learn how 
 to let it rest, for you are not at the mercy 
 of your thoughts, except as you allow yourself 
 to be. You really stand behind all your thought 
 action and have the power to control and direct 
 it. By developing this power you acquire the 
 mastery over environment. 
 
 Edward Carpenter, in his " Visit to a Gnani," 
 
14 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OR, 
 
 speaks to the point. He says: "That a man 
 should be a prey to any thought that chances 
 to take possession of his mind, is commonly 
 among us assumed as unavoidable. It may be 
 matter of regret that he should be kept awake 
 all night from anxiety as to the issue of a law- 
 suit on the morrow, but that he should have 
 the power of determining whether he be kept 
 awake or not seems an extravagant demand. 
 The image of an impending calamity is no doubt 
 odious, but its very odiousness (we say) makes 
 it haunt the mind all the more pertinaciously, 
 and it is useless to try to expel it. 
 
 "Yes, this is an absurd position for man, the 
 heir of all the ages, to be in; hag-ridden by the 
 flimsy creatures of his own brain. If a pebble 
 in our boot torments us, we expel it. We take 
 off the boot and shake it out. And once the 
 matter is fairly understood, it is just as easy to 
 expel an intruding and obnoxious thought from 
 the mind. About this there ought to be no 
 mistake ; no two opinions. The thing is obvious, 
 clear and unmistakable. It should be as easy 
 to expel an obnoxious thought from your mind 
 as it is to shake a stone out of your shoe; and 
 until a man can do that, it is just nonsense to 
 talk about his ascendency over Nature, and all 
 the rest of it. He is a mere slave, and a prey 
 to the bat-winged phantoms that flit through 
 the corridors of his own brain." 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 15 
 
 Carpenter then goes on to say that this 
 power has long been known and practiced in the 
 East, but that, like other arts, it requires 
 practice to attain any degree of success, when 
 it no longer remains a thing of difficulty, or 
 even mystery. He continues : 
 
 "While at work your thought is to be abso- 
 lutely concentrated in it, undistracted by any- 
 thing whatever, irrelevant to the matter in 
 hand — pounding away like a great engine, with 
 giant power and perfect economy — no wear 
 and tear of friction, or dislocation of parts 
 owing to the working of different forces at the 
 same time. Then, when the work is finished, 
 if there is no more occasion for the use of the 
 machine, it must stop equally, absolutely — stop 
 entirely — no worrying (as if a parcel of boys 
 were allowed to play their devilments with a 
 locomotive as soon as it was in the shed) — and 
 the man must retire into that region of his 
 consciousness where his true self dwells. 
 
 "I say the power of the thought-machine 
 itself is enormously increased by this faculty 
 of letting it alone on the one hand, and of 
 using it singly and with concentration on the 
 other. It becomes a true tool, which a master 
 workman lays down when done with, but which 
 only a bungler carries about with him all the 
 time to show that he is the possessor of it." 
 
16 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OK, 
 
 I quote the foregoing because it bears so 
 strongly upon my statement that it is possible 
 to think as you decree to think, and not as you 
 are apparently obliged to through heredity, 
 habit, environment or any other cause com- 
 monly supposed to regulate and determine 
 thought action. 
 
 Assuming this to be true, and you can prove 
 it in your own individual experience, the ques- 
 tion then arises — If I can direct and control 
 my thinking, what shall be the manner of that 
 direction and control ? Granted the power, to 
 what end shall I exert it ? The answer is simple 
 enough. Let your thought move to the Cos- 
 mic Law. Let it begin with the nucleus of an 
 organic unity. Thought, to be alive, construc- 
 tive and powerful must be organic. It must 
 have a central purpose and move about that 
 purpose as planets about the sun. 
 
 What shall be that central purpose ? Let us 
 see. Observing again the Cosmic Law, we see 
 the evolution of the many from the one. As 
 one is the basis of mathematics, so is it the 
 basis of all manifestation or expression. One 
 is the basis of form, of proportion, of symmetry, 
 of action, of all that goes to make up the ob- 
 jective world. 
 
 This is also true of the subjective world, the 
 world of thought. You may be filled with thou- 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 17 
 
 sands, yes, millions of thoughts and varying 
 moods, and yet you know they are all unified 
 in you. From you, the one, they proceed. You 
 easily discover this, but here you stop. Nat- 
 urally, however, what is true of you is true of 
 your fellow-being, your brother, and so you 
 find another one. As many identities as you 
 discover in the world, just so many ones do you 
 find. 
 
 But there you stop, and that is the trouble 
 with your thinking. You are lost in the Babel 
 of multiplicity, the Babel of the confusion of 
 many tongues. You have stopped short of the 
 Supreme One, short of Wholeness, short of • 
 Perfection, short of the Unity of Being. 
 
 Somewhere in your mentality there stands 
 something which means God or Perfection, but 
 it is shut away from you. God is enshrined 
 in His own perfection, and to identify yourself 
 with Him seems nothing less than sacrilege. 
 
 What is the matter? You have unified all 
 that goes to make up your own being, but when 
 it comes to joining yourself to all things else in 
 a common unity, that fails you. There seems 
 to be a separation and you can not bridge over 
 the intervening chasm. 
 
 And yet, occult science is proving day by 
 day that the supposed line of demarkation, cut- 
 ting off man from man, or man from animal 
 
18 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 and plant, is really no line at all. In its place 
 is the lost link in evolution. There it is, hold- 
 ing the Cosmos as a unit, though the natural 
 eve be not fine enough to detect the linking. 
 
 It is not sufficient, then, to see yourself as 
 one. You must go further, and see yourself 
 as one with the Universe, with God and Hu- 
 manity. 
 
 When you begin to see this you are follow- 
 ing the Cosmic method and starting with one 
 as the nucleus of growth. Then your thought 
 energy, instead of being scattered in number- 
 less directions, is called in and concentrated 
 upon an organic centre. Then you begin to 
 unfold from that centre as does the flower, and 
 your growth becomes coherent and definite, 
 having the characteristics of an organic unity. 
 Previous to this, it was like the floating pro- 
 toplasm, incoherent, indefinite, aimless and well 
 nigh helpless. 
 
 The world is full of these protoplasmic people 
 who have not yet learned the secret of organic 
 growth, and they are ever at the mercy of time 
 and circumstance, but within each one lies the 
 germ nucleus of the higher organism awaiting 
 the stir of its potential life within. 
 
 A basic conception underlies the thought of 
 each individual, and according to the nature 
 of that conception, is the character of the 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 19 
 
 thought. If it be true, the thought is vital; if 
 untrue, the thought is non-vital. The concep- 
 tion to which I allude is the idea which the 
 mind holds regarding itself, its nature and its 
 relation to that which it believes to be the cause 
 of its existence. 
 
 To understand this better, let us revert to 
 the cut at the head of this lesson. It contains 
 two diagrams. No. 1 represents the false con- 
 ception; No. 2 represents the true. In the first 
 lesson of this series I used the diagram of a 
 radiant figure to stand for the entirety of Be- 
 ing. I said that there could be but the one Be- 
 ing, and endeavored to show that God and Man 
 must both be included in it, God being the 
 centre, and Man the ray proceeding from that 
 centre. This is the true conception of the one- 
 ness or unity of Being including both God and 
 Man. Diagram 2 in this lesson stands for this 
 true conception, as I have just said, while Dia- 
 gram 1 stands for the false, or mistaken con- 
 ception, which represents God as an enclosed 
 sphere, and Man as separate and apart from 
 this sphere. In some mysterious fashion, God 
 is supposed to act through intervening space 
 and externally upon Man, but there is the eter- 
 nal separateness and aloofness, not only be- 
 tween God and Man, but between Man and 
 Man. 
 
20 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OE, 
 
 Is it small wonder that the mind holding 
 such a conception should be painfully conscious 
 of its limitation, and feel itself cut off from a 
 source of supply? It would not be putting it 
 too strongly to affirm that all the weakness, in- 
 ability, poverty, disease and wretchedness in 
 the world to-day is in some way referable to 
 this false conception of the relation of Man to 
 God which has held the human heart so long 
 in bondage. 
 
 When once this is set right, the whole out- 
 look on life changes and all things become new. 
 One then passes into a mental realm which is 
 indeed a Kingdom of Heaven to the Hades of 
 a former thought life. 
 
 I can not lay too much stress upon the im- 
 portance of getting this basic conception right 
 to begin with. So often students write me that 
 they have been studying for years, seeking that 
 highest truth which shall bring them improved 
 mental and physical conditions, whereas they 
 only find themselves floundering more and 
 more helplessly in uncertainty, doubt and gen- 
 eral unhappiness. 
 
 This ought not so to be. This most essential 
 subject in the world should be made so plain 
 and direct in its rendering as to reach the needs 
 of all. Every mind must have its central truth 
 about which to build its organic unity. When 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 21 
 
 this is supplied, it can work to a definite pur- 
 pose, and be, O, so happy in its working. 
 
 "A diagram," says Clerk Maxwell, "is a fig- 
 ure drawn in such a manner that the geometri- 
 cal relations between the parts of the figure 
 help us to understand relations between other 
 objects." 
 
 It is with this intent that I have used, and 
 shall go on using, in these lessons geometrical 
 figures as a help to elucidate my meaning. Of 
 course, the blank space in the centre of the 
 radiant figure but poorly represents the won- 
 derful reservoir of Life from which all things 
 proceed, and yet that blankness may well sym- 
 bolize the unexpressed. 
 
 Symbols are helps to thought and to realiza- 
 tion, for the mind soon learns to rise from the 
 symbol to the reality or the thing symbolized, 
 and is thus led little by little into the under- 
 standing of Life and its ever-revealing mystery. 
 In the non-understanding of Life lie the mis- 
 takes and the pain of living. With its under- 
 standing comes increasing gladness. 
 
 Professor Eoyce, of Harvard; Dr. Caird, of 
 Glasgow University, and other thinkers of note 
 whom I might mention, emphasize the fact that 
 there is but One Self in the Universe, and my 
 diagram of the radiant figure will serve to ex- 
 plain how this can be. By following each ray 
 
22 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OK, 
 
 from its point of expression to the centre, 
 whence all proceed, it is evident that they are 
 one. This is the One Self. It is you; it is I; 
 it is all men; it is all things. 
 
 Is this hard to realize ? It seems the simplest 
 thing in the world to me now, although, I con- 
 fess, there was a time when I could not under- 
 stand it, and that was a time of weakness, of 
 mental depression, of distrust in my own ability, 
 of utter hopelessness, of the darkness of despair. 
 When I heard such affirmations as — I am all 
 there is ! or — I have all things now ! I was sim- 
 ply stirred to an impatient contempt for the one 
 who uttered anything so apparently illogical, so 
 absurd. 
 
 I could not see, and the time had not come 
 for my seeing, the inner world. I had looked 
 so long on things external that the reversion of 
 sight which opens to the view a new and hither- 
 to unsuspected world, was to me a difficult 
 turning. 
 
 Difficult though it was, I accomplished it ; but 
 here let me say that this inner seeing is like the 
 outer, a matter of growth. When a blind man 
 suddenly receives his sight he has no idea of the 
 distance between himself and that which he sees. 
 Some objects seem actually pressing upon his 
 eyes, and he instinctively attempts to brush 
 them aside. Others, really near at hand, seem 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 23 
 
 remote, and it requires time for him to see 
 things in their true relations to each other and 
 to himself. 
 
 But he keeps on looking toward that which 
 he desires to see, and in time he sees it correct- 
 ly; he sees it with the understanding. 
 
 It is just so with the inward seeing. If you 
 turn your eyes toward the inner Reality, though 
 you may only feel it vaguely to be there, you 
 will in time see clearly, understanding^. What 
 is it you see with, after all ? Is it the physical 
 eye ? No, indeed ! That is only a bridge over 
 which sensations walk into your consciousness, 
 and so loosely put up a structure is it that all 
 the finest sensations fall through it before they 
 reach you. Helmholtz once said that if any 
 manufacturer sent him an optical instrument so 
 poorly adapted to its ends as the eye, he should 
 return it as practically of little use. 
 
 There is something behind the eye which does 
 the seeing in spite of the physical imperfection 
 of the eye itself. This something supplies 
 more than we realize in filling in the detail of 
 every image thrown upon the retina. This 
 something can see independently of the eye; ab- 
 solutely without its intervention. It can look 
 straight to the heart of a flower and know more 
 about it in one instant than it can learn from all 
 the sensations coming in over the bridge. Af- 
 
24 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 terward, when these sensations come trooping 
 in, as they will, you can understand them as 
 never before, because you are getting at the 
 heart of things by this growing power of the 
 inner sight. 
 
 You do not know how good and sound this 
 old Universe is at the core until you begin to 
 look into it. It does seem pretty miserable and 
 crusty and seamed on the outside, as though it 
 were all going to pieces, but it isn't going to do 
 anything of the kind. It is as sound and rich 
 and beautiful at the centre as anything you can 
 imagine. Yes, better than anything you can now 
 imagine. You will see straight into its heart 
 some day, and then you will know all far better 
 than I can tell you. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 25 
 
 LESSON HL 
 
 =— =— = H 
 
 
 
 
 CZ— zzz^ 
 
 
 \ ■ — 
 
 
 \ ■ ■— 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 \ ~ = 
 
 
 V=~ - ■ ":t 
 
 ^~N^^ 
 
 ^s/^^^^" .-== 
 
 It has been thought that man's destiny is de- 
 creed by some power outside of himself. This 
 has led us to speak of the hand of destiny as the 
 outreach of this power, controlling a man in 
 spite of his own volition. Such a conception re- 
 duces him to a mere automaton, and it is small 
 wonder that the strong spirits of the world have 
 risen in their might against so arbitrary and 
 soul-crushing a tyranny as destiny must be if 
 outside of man and coercing him. 
 
 But we have seen in our preceding lessons 
 
26 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OE, 
 
 that man is inseparable from the entirety of 
 Being, and that in consequence of his oneness 
 with it there can be nothing outside of him to 
 destinate or decree his ends since Being includes 
 all there is and there can be nothing outside 
 of it. 
 
 Being controls itself and straight from its 
 centre or heart to the point of the ray, which 
 represents its manifestation or expression, runs 
 the line of destiny. Man's life starting from 
 that centre must perforce destinate itself. 
 
 But how happens it, then, you ask, that man 
 is unconscious of his destiny; that he does not 
 know himself to be acting and creating con- 
 tinually; that the events of each day are a reve- 
 lation to him, and that a screen is ever placed 
 between each day and its to-morrow % How can 
 all this be? 
 
 It happens in this way. We are screened in 
 a measure from our past. Even the immediate 
 yesterday cannot be wholly recalled, while the 
 more remote past escapes us altogether. Mem- 
 ory stops far short of the primeval form of life 
 from which we are supposed to spring. What 
 we know of our earliest history is largely a 
 matter of inference, and who shall say that the 
 outflowing of life or existence began with a bit 
 of protoplasmic slime ? For my part I do not 
 believe it. Why may not life have traveled 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 27 
 
 down the spires of form as well as up them ? As 
 the worm mounts, so may the God descend. Does * 
 all motion begin at a given point and go in one 
 direction forever? That which begins must 
 end. Show me the point of departure and I 
 will show you the point of arrival. One pre- 
 supposes and involves the other. Life is too 
 great to be circumscribed by the amoeba. We 
 are forced to go beyond it in our search for a 
 primal source. 
 
 The God-Head is the fountain-head. Living 
 things proceed from it and to it return, for 
 motion recurs or returns upon itself in cycles. 
 If man comes, in the latter instance, from the 
 amoeba, in the former he came from God. 
 That is the story of the fall. Not a sudden 
 declension, but a gradual descent. If I have 
 been the amoeba in the lower spiral I have been 
 the angel in the higher. 
 
 We have forgotten both the ascending and 
 the descending, but as the awareness of psycho- 
 logical states is dawning we become again cog- 
 nizant of the past. The line of destiny not only 
 proceeds from the heart or centre of Being, but 
 returns to it again from the ray, which in 
 our diagram stands for man as the expres- 
 sion of God. At the turning of the line we 
 begin our homeward journey toward that from 
 which we came forth; and all along our course 
 
28 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 we come upon states of consciousness with 
 which we are familiar. It is only in this sense 
 that the term recognition can be used with ref- 
 erence to our evolution in consciousness. To 
 recognize is to re-cognize or know again, and 
 recognition is therefore that act of the mind by 
 which it knows again something previously 
 known, but for a time absent from thought. 
 
 Running at right angles with the double line 
 of destiny extending into the ray in the diagram 
 before us, you will observe cross lines. These 
 are intended to divide the space in the ray into 
 sections, each representing a state of conscious- 
 ness. As the God-life flows out from the centre 
 it actualizes itself in the section nearest the 
 centre producing the highest type of existence, 
 a divine being far above our present conception. 
 Then the life passes out into the next section, 
 and to the next, until it reaches the end of the 
 ray. The number of these sections in the dia- 
 gram is merely arbitrary. I do not intend to 
 imply a definite number. I simply wish to show 
 what I believe to be a fact, that you and I and 
 all individuals have passed through states of 
 consciousness on the outgoing line of destiny 
 through which we are again passing on the in- 
 going line. As we approach each state again 
 it is like the hearing of a beautiful but partly 
 forgotten song, the song of Divinity, stirring 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 29 
 
 the secret recesses of the soul to a remem- 
 brance of its long-lost Eden. 
 
 At the heart of the universe there is perfec- 
 tion. Were it not so it must fall to pieces like 
 a decayed apple; and from that heart you and I 
 have destinated our present and our future. It 
 is all good and right and full of promise, what- 
 ever may be the seeming. 
 
 Though I have forgotten that former state in 
 which I predestined my present action, do I not 
 know that I am ensphered in Divinity; that in 
 perfect freedom I decreed to be what I am; 
 that the tendency within me to be myself and 
 not another is of itself good? I decreed with 
 wisdom, for in that past life when my home was 
 in Deity did I not know all things? Yes, I 
 knew all, I could see all, and the freedom of the 
 universal was mine. By that unerring law 
 which is at once my freedom and my security, 
 I came forth from Deity, and so did you, my 
 brother. Like two corpuscles in the life blood 
 flowing from out the human heart, we set forth 
 upon our way, moving with each other and yet 
 distinct, each with a separate and inherent ten- 
 dency to act, to do, to become. 
 
 We do not remember why we started as we 
 did, or what we wished to accomplish on the 
 outgoing or incoming journey, but some day we 
 shall recall it all. Then we shall know that 
 
30 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 never for one instant have we been lost, not one 
 inch have we gone astray, but always and ever 
 moving to the measure of the soul's highest 
 law we have trodden the path of destiny to its 
 glorious fulfillment. 
 
 The lost opportunity is not lost forever. We 
 shall meet it again and differently through the 
 gain of deeper and fuller experience. Some 
 time and somewhere there will come to us the 
 occasion for taking back the cruel word and un- 
 doing the deed of wrong, when fullest repara- 
 tion will be given in joy rather than penance. 
 
 Do not mistake the meaning of the diagram. 
 It is not intended to show that man himself 
 really travels from the centre to the circumfer- 
 ence of the figure, for then his states of con- 
 sciousness would be something apart from him- 
 self, through which he must pass. Instead of 
 that the figure stands for man himself, with Di- 
 vinity at the centre, and his objective life at 
 the circumference, while the line of destiny 
 and the sections through which it is drawn sig- 
 nify states or stages of awareness in the thought 
 life, accompanied, of course, by their corre- 
 sponding external conditions of the body and its 
 surroundings. 
 
 A word about this wonderful thing aware- 
 ness, and I have done. Spirit has been well de- 
 fined as, "Something which is and knows that it 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 31 
 
 is." Spirit acts and reacts. When it acts it is 
 not of necessity conscious of its action, but 
 when it reacts it knows itself as acting. Aware- 
 ness of psychological states is the reaction of 
 spirit upon itself. As the ocean throws itself 
 upon the shore and gathers its waters back in 
 the undertow, so does the spirit know itself in 
 the spiral of its motion. 
 
 You, therefore, as a ray from the central 
 sun of spirit, have this awareness of yourself, 
 but you have it not in full. You see but a 
 small part of your real self, and therefore do 
 not appreciate your greatness or your power. 
 What you seek is a fuller awareness, and you 
 will find it, because it is the law of your being, 
 the law of the spirit. 
 
32 
 
 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 LESSON IV* 
 
 Consciousness is really awareness, or seeing. 
 I have therefore placed an eye at the centre of 
 our Star of Manifestation to indicate the per- 
 ceiving principle which is at the centre of Be- 
 ing. Out of that inner seeing grows our physi- 
 cal sight, and I wish to show, if possible, in this 
 lesson, how a knowledge of the inner sight may 
 be turned to practical effect in improving the 
 physical vision. Among my patients I have 
 from time to time many with failing sight. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 33 
 
 With both young and old it seems peculiarly a 
 disease of the present age. Often patients ask 
 how they can cooperate with me so as to ad- 
 vance the cure as speedily as possible, and to 
 those patients I write in substance what I am 
 about to give in this lesson. Only, I am now 
 going to work out the ideas more fully than I 
 could possibly do in a letter. 
 
 In the April issue of the Radiant Centre I 
 published an article concerning a Russian physi- 
 cian who is perfecting an invention by which 
 the blind may be made to see, no matter how 
 badly the sight may be impaired. Dr. Stien 
 says: 
 
 "Man does not really see with his eyes, but 
 with his brain. The eyes are only an instru- 
 ment for receiving images, which are conveyed 
 to the centre of perception in the brain by the 
 optic nerve. The blind man who perceives the 
 size, shape and nature of an object with his 
 hands sees in a limited sense. If men had 
 evolved without eyes, but with all their present 
 brain power, they would doubtless be able to 
 see by some other method. Some of the lower 
 animals have no eyes, but perceive light with 
 their whole bodies. 
 
 "Now, if an image of material objects can be 
 conveyed to the brain by some other agency 
 than that of the eyes, it follows that a blind 
 
34 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OK, 
 
 man who has a sound mind will be able to see 
 perfectly well. This is exactly what my inven- 
 tion accomplishes. 
 
 "An image is gathered on a screen instead of 
 on the retina of the eye and is conveyed directly 
 by an electrical current to the brain. Such a 
 use of the electric current has already been 
 foreshadowed in the process well known to 
 science as cataphoresis. By this it is possible 
 to convey medicines, anesthetics and other sub- 
 stances into the interior of a man's body with- 
 out his being aware of it. By its aid cocaine 
 can be sent through the solid bone, conveying 
 insensibility to nerve and marrow. 
 
 "This instrument in a slightly varied form 
 will also enable the deaf to hear. 
 
 "I may point out to you that the mere fact 
 that we can see images in our dreams, in the 
 dark, and with eyes closed, is proof of the pos- 
 sibility of seeing without eyes as we at present 
 understand them." 
 
 In the concluding paragraph Dr. Stien admits 
 that we can see without eyes, but I think he 
 wtruld not be as ready to say that we could see 
 without the brain. I think we could, however. 
 If one material medium could be dispensed 
 with, why not another ? 
 
 Every system of metaphysical healing, by 
 whatever name it is called, builds upon this 
 
EASY LESSONS IN EEALIZATION. 35 
 
 basic fact — The externalization of a body with 
 its component parts and functions from an in- 
 ner, hidden, incorporeal Something. They are 
 at variance about the character of that Some- 
 thing, but they all postulate its necessity in or- 
 der to account for a physical body. They go 
 farther and say — As is that inner Something, so 
 is the body. 
 
 Now, we will not argue the possibility of 
 there being or not being this inner Something, 
 for that would fill the entire lesson and leave 
 room for nothing else. There are some things 
 which we only know through what is called 
 transcendental knowledge, as for instance, I 
 know that I am, I know that I know, I know 
 that I hope, I know that I love, I know there is 
 such a thing as mind, etc. These statements ad- 
 mit of no argument, for they are patent, incon- 
 trovertible. They simply are so, and we know 
 them to be so. 
 
 Metaphysical as well as physical science 
 must start with its hypothesis. When it works 
 we use it, when not we discard it. 
 
 Well, to be brief, men have somehow discov- 
 ered that the little beings which they know as 
 their separate selves are somehow all bound to- 
 gether in one common unity of being. They 
 have also discovered that there is an external 
 or phenomenal side to this one being and an in- 
 
36 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OK, 
 
 ternal or noumenal side. They have discovered 
 also that the inner, or noumenal side, is a 
 sort of cause-world to the outer, phenomenal 
 side, or effect world. 
 
 It seems a well-established fact, and the men- 
 tal therapeutist, taking it as a working hypo- 
 thesis, has used it to good effect. When it fails 
 will be time enough to discard it for another, if 
 another and a better there be. 
 
 But, taking it as the best we have at present, 
 let us infer that external seeing is the result 
 or effect of internal seeing. This inner Some- 
 thing sees directly anything which is incor- 
 poreal, like itself, but when it would extend its 
 sight into the corporeal world of effects it must 
 construct for itself a bridge of sensation by 
 which it can touch external forms of life. The 
 seeing is not in the bridge itself, but in the see- 
 ing faculty which uses it. This seeing faculty 
 is consciousness itself, the eye that never sleeps, 
 or the eye of the Spirit. 
 
 You, being Spirit, have the all-seeing eye at 
 the centre of consciousness. There is an outer 
 form of consciousness which does not see at all 
 times. It is a spurious form. It is not the real 
 thing, and it is in a measure blind; that is, its 
 sight is darkened. The outer consciousness is 
 very closely allied to the physical sight, and acts 
 directly upon it. This outer consciousness, tak- 
 
EASY LESSONS TN REALIZATION. 37 
 
 ing note, as it does, of the change in the exter- 
 nal world and seeing failure and decay written 
 on all things and accepting that as the ultimate 
 of life, stamps that ultimate upon the physical 
 eye, and it degenerates accordingly. 
 
 But that is not the ultimate. There is an in- 
 ner consciousness which knows better, and lit- 
 tle by little, for such is the order of life, the 
 outer consciousness impinges on the inner, thus 
 seeing more and more what it sees, and knowing 
 more and more what it knows. This is what we 
 call the at-one-ment, the reconciliation between 
 the outer and temporal life and the inner or 
 spiritual life. 
 
 Owing to this at-one-ment the way is opened 
 through the outer consciousness so that the in- 
 ner or all-seeing power can act directly upon 
 the physical organ of sight. 
 
 To apply this practically, refer to the dia- 
 gram, or Star of Manifestation. See yourself 
 as the ray proceeding from the Centre of Life ; 
 then trace yourself steadily back (for there is 
 no break) to that Centre. Eealize that you are 
 one with it; that because it has the power of 
 sight, so have you. Then let your thought pass 
 outward again to the end of the ray and feel 
 that you are carrying the power of clear seeing 
 with you, even to the extreme of outward 
 vision. In this way you will join your thought 
 
38 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OK, 
 
 to that of the healer and strengthen its effect, 
 or if your own thought be strong enough you 
 will be able to restore your sight without the 
 aid of a healer. 
 
 It is in this sense that you can truthfully say 
 "I can see," when your eyes have utterly failed 
 you, for you are speaking of that inner self, 
 the consciousness, whose sight is perfect and un- 
 failing, the awareness which is the eye of the 
 Spirit and never sleeps and never knows weari- 
 ness. This perfect vision is yours and can 
 manifest externally. 
 
 Now let me recapitulate. Consciousness is 
 seeing or awareness; man is conscious being, 
 therefore he has the power of seeing. Physical 
 sight is obscured because of a veil between an 
 outer imperfect form of consciousness and the 
 inner or real. The order of evolution or growth 
 is that this veil shall be swept away, allowing 
 the real consciousness to permeate the man 
 from centre to circumference. The sweeping 
 aside of this veil, which takes place gradually, is 
 the process of at-one-ment by which man's ex- 
 ternal being comes in direct touch with his in- 
 ner consciousness, and is thus born again, re- 
 generated, revitalized in every part. 
 
 And whatever you lack in bodily functioning, 
 know that the power dwells in perfection at the 
 centre of life, with which vou are one. See 
 
EASY LESSONS IN EEALIZATION. 39 
 
 that power at the centre and then trace it out 
 through the ray of your being. It will attend 
 your thought and go where you will it to go, 
 for such is the law. 
 
40 
 
 THINKING IN THE HEART; OE, 
 
 LESSON V- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 — , 
 
 ^=m 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■:; ■ ' \PAINahd 
 
 
 
 
 APPARENT. 
 
 
 ■== 
 
 Wis 
 
 If* 
 
 
 
 j§jl 
 
 
 ^TIi^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 You have now before you a diagram by which 
 I hope to prove to you that it is possible to out- 
 grow or get away from pain. It is well known 
 that pain has been, and still is, a factor in evolu- 
 tion. I do not deny that. On the contrary, I 
 fully believe it. What I do deny is that evolu- 
 tion shall always find that factor indispensable. 
 The time is coming when men cannot suffer. 
 Nature points to such a time. Even now she 
 will not permit her creatures to suffer beyond a 
 certain limit. When that limit is reached she 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 41 
 
 lulls them to unconsciousness or wakes them to 
 bliss. 
 
 William Flagg in his work on Yoga writes of 
 Saint John of the Cross, of whom it was said 
 that "through the silence of the night the sound 
 of his lash would reach the ears of the friars, 
 who trembled when they heard it, for they 
 knew how merciless he was to himself." There 
 came a time, however, when he could devise no 
 penance that did not yield pleasure instead of 
 pain, and Flagg accounts for that fact by sup- 
 posing that the practice of penance "thoroughly 
 and long persisted in has power, along with oth- 
 er bodily modifications it effects, such as ada- 
 mantine hardness, control of breath, levitation, 
 Herculean strength, etc., to actually reverse the 
 normal action of the sensory nerves and to con- 
 vert pain into pleasure, or else so completely 
 overcome pain by pleasure that none is felt, 
 which last, by the way, would hardly be more 
 strange than that a condemned witch could 
 tranquilly slumber on a pile of burning fagots, 
 a thing that has often happened." 
 
 I believe that Flagg's supposition is correct 
 and that a turning point can be reached by both 
 an individual and the race where the action of 
 the sensory nerves is reversed, yielding there- 
 after no more pain, but only pleasure. A subtle 
 sense of this must pervade the minds of those 
 
42 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OR, 
 
 who believe in mental healing. If there is no 
 ultimate escape from pain, to what end do they 
 work? The door of escape need not open 
 through self-inflicted penance. Lif e gives us 
 pain enough unsought. If we can only believe 
 it to be the passageway to bliss, how changed 
 and hopeful the outlook. In this sense only can 
 all be good. 
 
 And now let me refer to the diagram to still 
 further explain my meaning. I have shown in 
 the previous lessons that man in his outer life 
 bears the same relation to a vast and unex- 
 pressed central life that the ray of the star 
 bears to its centre. Man, in his real essence, 
 is the centre, but in his manifestation or expres- 
 sion he is an emanation or a ray of Being. 
 
 Pure light in passing into manifestation is 
 converted into a duality; into the relatives light 
 and darkness. 
 
 Pure bliss passes in like manner into the rela- 
 tives pain and bliss. 
 
 The perfect likewise becomes relatively both 
 perfect and imperfect. 
 
 Good becomes good and evil. 
 
 The real becomes both real and apparent. 
 
 Expression or manifestation is therefore a 
 mixture of light and darkness, of bliss and pain, 
 of perfect and imperfect, of good and evil, of 
 the real and apparent. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 43 
 
 That is, expression as we know ifc, is thus 
 dual, but we can imagine an expression which is 
 all light, all bliss, all perfect, all good and all 
 real. 
 
 This is the Ideal, the dream of the World, 
 and toward it the World presses. 
 
 Oh, this glorious Centre within and back of 
 expression in us all! Who would not call it 
 more and more out into the world of action? 
 
 Of course it is beyond our conception now, a 
 world without pain, darkness, evil, imperfection 
 or unreality, but so was our present state of be- 
 ing unknown and unimagined to the earlier 
 forms of life in which we functioned in past 
 ages. I might go back of that and say there was 
 a time when from a higher state we foresaw the 
 worm which we should become as well as our 
 return to Godhood, but that is foreign to the 
 argument. Whatever Ave had known was for- 
 gotten, as the worm, and yet hidden away in 
 that simple, tiny organism lay the nucleus of re- 
 membrance like a sleeping seed awaiting its life. 
 
 The worm saw not its destiny, but moved un- 
 erringly toward the man, drawn by an ideal 
 close at hand, but all unconscious of the larger 
 vision. Man moves to-day as certainly toward 
 the Ideal which he can not see in its fulness, 
 but none the less truly does he move toward the 
 highest life, the highest strength and the high- 
 est joy. 
 
44 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OK, 
 
 Heaven is within, said the Christ of past ages. 
 Heaven is within, echoes the man of to-day. 
 Yes, within, my brother, at the radiant centre 
 of all life, and yon are not separated from it 
 for one instant. You never were, and yon nev- 
 er can be. 3STo one can take heaven from yon 
 but yourself, and that by the closing of your 
 spiritual eye. 
 
 Eight in the midst of poverty, sickness and 
 distress, you can find the heaven within, and 
 when you do, all will be transformed without. 
 
 And even now when you do not thoroughly 
 understand the laws of mind you can accom- 
 plish much if you will try. When you feel de- 
 pression settling down upon you like a cloud of 
 gloom instead of sinking under the pressure, 
 you can say — I will be happy ! I will rejoice ! 
 If you say it weakly at first, say it again with 
 persistence, and more strength will come. Ev- 
 ery atom in your mind and body will move in 
 obedience to your affirmation, and soon you will 
 be happy, even though there be no immediate 
 change in your surroundings. But that change 
 for the better will also come. Until it does, re- 
 member you can rejoice, even though you are 
 physically worn with the care of your house, of 
 your children or the many responsibilities which 
 devolve upon you in greater or less degree. 
 
 Wherever you are and whatever you are do- 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 45 
 
 ing, remember you are in the pathway to heav- 
 en, which means only that your eyes are open- 
 ing so that heaven can be revealed to you, and 
 when it is so revealed a radiance will go forth 
 from your spirit which will illumine your whole 
 life and the lives of those about you. 
 
 And is it not enough to make anyone glad to 
 know that the movement of the world is to- 
 ward greater life and greater joy ? The passage 
 is from darkness to light and from pain to bliss, 
 otherwise it were a sad and cruel wojld indeed. 
 
 If, as you read my words, you are filled with 
 a sudden uplif tment of the spirit, know that it 
 is because my words are true, and, being true, 
 they are living words straight from the heart of 
 being. They are charged with health, with life 
 and with joy, and you in reading them are 
 moved to rejoice with me, for we light our 
 lamps not only at the central fire, but also one 
 of another. 
 
46 
 
 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OK, 
 
 LESSON VL 
 
 I am often asked if I believe in prayer. I do. 
 But let me explain what I mean by prayer. I 
 mean far more than is meant in the orthodox 
 interpretation, and yet I include that in my 
 conception. Every atom prays, reaching out 
 tiny hands to be filled with that which it 
 desires. Man can do no more, All action 
 }n the universe is based on prayer and its 
 fulfillment. The seed prays to the earth, to 
 the air, to the sun; that is, it sends out a de- 
 mand, and that demand is met and supplied. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATTON. 47 
 
 Emerson says: "As soon as the man is at one 
 with God, he will not beg. He will then see 
 prayer in all action. t The prayer of the farmer 
 kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of 
 the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, 
 are true prayers heard throughout nature, 
 though for cheap ends." 
 
 The man who is not at one with Gocl does not 
 see prayer in all action. He limits it to an en- 
 treaty from the human mind to a Divinity tran- 
 scendent, separate and distinct from itself. His 
 conception, so far as it goes, is true enough, for 
 Divinity transcends the human consciousness. 
 Not until it is merged, into the Divine does it 
 know itself to be not only the prayer, but the 
 answer as well. * 
 
 Those who have studied the foregoing lessons 
 in this series will understand the above dia- 
 gram to represent potential Being and its ex- 
 pression. The rays stand for expression or Be- 
 ing passing into manifestation. The space in 
 the middle of the diagram we call the radiant 
 centre from which radiates every expression 
 possible to Being, but in this instance we have 
 attempted only to represent the human ray or 
 expression. 
 
 The human consciousness in its progress to- 
 ward Divinity awakens gradually along the 
 whole length of the ray, beginning at the small 
 
48 THINKING IN THE HEAKT; OK, 
 
 end, where it focusses in external life, in cir- 
 cumscribed form, and widening with the ray un- 
 til it reaches the breadth and absolute freedom 
 of the centre. 
 
 In Kay (1) let us suppose that we have the 
 earliest awakening of the human consciousness. 
 The presence of Divinity is not realized, and 
 yet its pressure or influence is felt as of some- 
 thing coming from afar. The state is analogous 
 to that of our earth as it receives the light and 
 warmth of the sun. It only gets this light and 
 warmth after it has passed through many 
 strata of earth-enveloping ethers. The earth 
 does not know the sun as it really is, but as it ia 
 when affected by the intervening media through 
 which it must pass. To illustrate further: If I 
 were a lifelong prisoner behind red glass win- 
 dows my natural inference would be that all 
 light is red. Let me escape and I learn the 
 truth. It may not be the entire secret of the 
 solar spectrum which stands revealed to me, but 
 I at least know that the light which I had sup- 
 posed to be red was only so by virtue of the 
 medium through which it reached me. 
 
 In like manner the human consciousness 
 when it awakes at the end of the ray feels Di- 
 vinity, but has a misconception regarding it. It 
 can not be otherwise in the natural order of 
 things. It feels Divinity and reaches out in- 
 
 \/ 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 49 
 
 stinctively toward it blindly and feebly, and 
 this is its prayer, the earliest prayer of the hu- 
 man consciousness, weak, imperfect, but nat- 
 ural, orderly and necessary because it is the first 
 number of a sequence. In a sequential order of 
 unf oldment number one is as essential to that 
 order as the number which marks its end. 
 
 Divinity shines as surely upon the fetich wor- 
 shipper as upon the monotheist, but it touches 
 both through media, and is therefore not fully 
 revealed. 
 
 The prayer of the earlier consciousness opens, 
 the door to an inner place in the ray of Being 
 which lies nearer the centre. From this place 
 prayer reaches forth again, another door is 
 opened, and thus is the passage made from the 
 earliest dawn of the human consciousness to its 
 at-one-ment with the Divine. It is a gradual 
 awakening of life and action from the point of 
 the ray to its radiant centre. 
 
 I have only designated four degrees in my 
 diagram because my star has only five rays. In 
 four of these rays I have indicated the stages in 
 which prayer is both necessary and efficient. In 
 the fifth there is no longer need of it because 
 the human is one with the Divine and has all at 
 its command. It asks nothing because it has 
 all. It stands at the centre and speaks the cre- 
 ative word, the word of health, the word of 
 
50 THINKING IN THE HEAKT; OE, 
 
 power, and those words are made flesh; that is, 
 they take on embodiment and become manifest 
 in the external world. 
 
 The whole story of creation is told in that 
 one brief statement — The Word made Flesh — 
 taken in its esoteric significance. The soul of 
 every object is its thought or idea, and from 
 that thought or idea its outer being comes. The 
 things which we see and touch are embodied 
 thoughts, every one of them. 
 
 When we reach the creative realm we think 
 thoughts of health, of beauty, of happiness and 
 prosperity into existence for ourselves and 
 others. A message of pure joy goes straight 
 from the heart of the Infinite through the lips 
 of the finite and blesses all whom it touches. 
 
 Until this place is reached there will and 
 must be prayer. Until we come to the foun- 
 tain we must quench our thirst at the chalice 
 held by the uplifted hand of appeal. 
 
 And even when we find the fountain of all 
 life and taste its healing waters we often stray 
 afar from it, drawn by the rhythm of the earth 
 life back into primal conditions, back into the 
 weakness, back under burdens, but never to re- 
 main there, for prayer leads us again to the 
 centre. What it has done once it can do over 
 and over again until we are indeed and forever 
 one with the central life. 
 
EASY LESSONS EST KEALIZATION. 51 
 
 Why the rhythm ? Why the drawing away ? 
 Indeed I know not. I suppose it to be the 
 working of the one law r of the universe, the law 
 of Love, which draws us now here and now 
 there in the fulfilment of its blessed purpose 
 that by many and devious paths we may attain 
 to the fullest joy. 
 
 Therefore I believe in prayer, but I also be- 
 lieve that we outgrow it. Prayer and desire 
 both indicate lack, and how can there be lack 
 in Godhood, in Perfection? At the centre we 
 are God even now, and at the circumference we 
 are human. In many of us the God-conscious- 
 ness is awakened, though we do not live in it 
 continuously. We live also in the human, but 
 by holding close to the centre we glorify the 
 human, carrying to the extreme end of the ray 
 the pure light from the central radiance. 
 
 But, remember to pray in this manner. En- 
 ter into thy closet and when thou hast shut thy 
 door pray to thy Father which is in secret, and 
 thy Father which seeth in secret, himself shall 
 reward thee openly. I do not know what sig- 
 nificance these words carried when they were 
 uttered, but I know what they mean to me. To 
 go into the closet and shut the door indicates 
 silence, going within the consciousness and clos- 
 ing the door against the external world. There 
 you speak to the Father (or source of being), 
 
52 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OK, 
 
 which is in secret, or hidden from the external 
 eye, and that Father which seeth in secret (per- 
 ceiving mentally or comprehending your needs) 
 himself shall reward thee openly; that is. from 
 the internal hidden source there shall flow forth 
 in answer to your demand that for which you 
 ask. It shall come into external manifestation, 
 and thus shall you be rewarded openly. Out of 
 the potential or hidden world something shall 
 proceed which can be sensed openly, something 
 which is made manifest, externalized in the ma- 
 terial world. 
 
 Or, if it be a spiritual blessing which you ask, 
 there shall come something so vital and real 
 into your consciousness that there is no mistak- 
 ing it; a subjective reality coming into the open 
 of your mind from a hidden inner source. 
 
 Call it God or the Cosmic Consciousness, as 
 you will, there is Something to which the hu- 
 man heart instinctively appeals — Something 
 which answers the appeal and finally Something 
 with which the human heart is at last united, 
 when it no longer has need of prayer. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 
 
 53 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 As Man passes from his God-centre to his 
 human circumference of tangible and visible 
 expression he is subject to certain laws which 
 distort that expression. To use an old simile, 
 he is like a straight stick which appears crooked 
 when plunged in running water. He is living 
 a dual experience, that of a true and an untrue 
 life. Between the two he vacillates as a trav- 
 eler who is at home in neither. The untrue life 
 is a necessity and a part of expression, as es- 
 
54 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OK, 
 
 sential to it as the vapors which lie between us 
 and the sun and equally illusive. 
 
 While consciousness may be only awake to 
 the untrue life we are at the same time living 
 the true life, each and every one of us. That 
 we do not know it makes no difference; it goes 
 on just the same, adjusting our mistakes, in- 
 spiring us with new and higher ideals, guiding 
 and guarding us in all endeavor. 
 
 The awareness of life which we call con- 
 sciousness (the human consciousness, I mean, 
 which is a different thing from the Cosmic or 
 Universal Consciousness) first manifests itself 
 within the boundaries of the untrue life. It 
 sees things not as they really are, but as they 
 appear to be. You cannot convince a child that 
 the horizon is not the limit of the world, and it 
 is the limit of his world at the time, but it 
 spreads and enlarges with increasing intelli- 
 gence. When his field of vision becomes the 
 subjective realm he is encompassed by another 
 restrictive but ever widening horizon, which at 
 last becomes co-extensive with Being itself and 
 is one with the Cosmic Consciousness. 
 
 In our diagram, the star of manifestation, I 
 have drawn an inner star to represent the true 
 life. Between it and the outer limit lies the 
 field of the untrue life, the ephemeral, the 
 changeful. While the consciousness remains 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 55 
 
 within this field it is subject to the illusions 
 which it accepts as real. Here disease riots, 
 doubt and fear prevail, fleeting pleasure is fol- 
 lowed swift by pain and loss, spurious love ob- 
 tains with its heartaches and it jealous pangs. 
 This is indeed the country in which the prodi- 
 gal son found himself when, far away from the 
 Father's house, he fed upon the husks. 
 
 When the human consciousness passes from 
 this outer sphere into the inner state of Being 
 it is making the return to the Father's house 
 where plenty abounds and where hunger is un- 
 known, but it will not seek that house until 
 hunger grows intense and the fact is borne in 
 upon it that the husks contain no nourishment. 
 Not until all things fail in the far country does 
 it return to its home. 
 
 Wherever this spark of awareness is alight, 
 there the Ego knows itself. When it is alight 
 in the outer field, in the space between the in- 
 ner star and the outer, then the Ego is only 
 conscious of a weak and lowly conditioned self, 
 separate from its source of existence, but when 
 alight in the inner field then it knows its true 
 life and becomes cognizant of its great powers. 
 
 When consciousness enters the inner field, 
 and takes up its position there, it does not lose 
 its hold on the outer fields but reaches forth and 
 commands it as an outlying territory in which 
 
56 THINKING IN THE HEAKT; OE, 
 
 it does not care to dwell, but into which it may 
 make excursions at will as its lord and gover- 
 nor. It has thus lost nothing and has gained 
 much. It has found a better country in which 
 there are facilities for fertilizing or carrying 
 new life into the old. Now when it goes forth 
 it is not as the Prodigal, but as the Prince. It 
 finds the husk, but the kernel is within. 
 
 As I have said before, the true life has been 
 operative all the while, but there has been no 
 consciousness of that life — and here let me 
 make a distinction between consciousness and 
 life. I will only say that consciousness is the 
 knowledge of life. While there can be no con- 
 sciousness without life there can be life without 
 consciousness, or, in other words, there may be 
 life without a knowledge of itself. Most of you 
 can remember the time when as a child you had 
 no knowledge of yourself. I can distinctly re- 
 member the hour when a knowledge of self 
 came to me. It dawned somewhat cruelly, for 
 an angry playmate criticised me most unpleas- 
 antly. She told me that I had a large mouth, 
 and although I did not know the merit or de- 
 merit of such a possession, something in her 
 tone conveyed a strong suspicion of demerit. 
 For the first time I looked at myself in the glass 
 critically. The survey gave me no actual knowl- 
 edge, but I was a wretched child. A poor little 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 57 
 
 Eve had tasted of the fruit growing on the tree 
 of the knowledge of good and evil and was 
 straightway driven from Eden. 
 
 After a time my mother noticed that when- 
 ever I was called into the drawing-room to be 
 presented to callers I covered my month with 
 my hand, and she said: "Katie, don't do that. 
 It is very awkward." Here was a double grief. 
 I not only had a large mouth, but I was also 
 very awkward, but with the larger grief came a 
 larger consciousness of Self. I became very 
 thoughtful, my mind being a ground of debate 
 as to whether it were better to disguise the 
 large mouth or appear very awkward. Evident- 
 ly it was a choice of two evils and not a good in 
 sight. The good was to come later as the in- 
 trospection grew deeper when I looked not at 
 the mouth or any ungraceful action, but at that 
 which had been hidden and so far undiscovered. 
 
 Then introspection touched the subjective 
 self and went on until it reached the inmost sub- 
 jective or the true life. I have used the per- 
 sonal illustration to show in a way how the pas- 
 sage occurs and also to prove that consciousness 
 — the human consciousness of course I mean — 
 has its first awakening in the outer or objective 
 mind, thence moving to the inner or subjective 
 mind and finally to the inmost or spiritual Self 
 which always moves and acts in the true life, 
 but is not conscious of itself as so doing. 
 
58 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OK, 
 
 We are driven by lash and spur out of igno- 
 rance into wisdom, out of error into truth, out 
 of illusion into reality. Suffering and unrest 
 are the goads which drive us on. They can not 
 touch the real Self. That sits in motionless 
 ca]m watching the apparent self that is exploit- 
 ing in the outer field of illusion, and later in 
 that of the true life. The Self is the riddle of 
 the Sphinx, the riddle of the ages. 
 
 If you would solve this riddle watch your 
 Self. See how the real you stands back of all 
 action. Then see how the apparent you, the 
 one which you know more intimately, looks to 
 the real you for approval, for guidance and for 
 continued existence; for this apparent you has 
 no independent life of its own. It is as depend- 
 ent upon the real Self as the shadow upon the 
 object which casts it. Remove the object and 
 the shadow goes, too. But the real Self is 
 something which can not be removed; therefore 
 its shadow lingers until the Sun is at meridian. 
 Then is the shadow lost in substance. 
 
 And what is the true Self ? It is Deity. It 
 is Divinity. Let us not be afraid to affirm it. 
 
 I have apparently given you two contradic- 
 tory statements. I have said in one paragraph 
 that the spiritual or true Self moves and acts 
 and in another that this same Self is motionless 
 as the Sphinx. How can both statements be 
 true ? How does the true Self act ? 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 59 
 
 Well, let us see. Suppose I go to the piano 
 and play for you Beethoven's Sonata Appas- 
 sionata. I thus set up motion in mind and 
 body, but I am not in that motion. I cause it, 
 I oversee it, I control it, and for those very 
 reasons I am not in it. The apparent I is in it, 
 but not the real I. Note the expression — My 
 mind, my body, my self. What does it mean? 
 Simply that I have a mind, I have a body, I # 
 have a self. I, the master, cause this mind, %y 
 body and self to function, or act. It is thus 
 I express myself. In rendering the Sonata my 
 apparent self, or in other words, the self that 
 appears, must hold close to me, the true Self. 
 From this Self Beethoven wrote the Sonata, 
 from this same Self I render it, for do you not 
 understand, this Self of which I speak, was not 
 only a Beethoven, it is you, it is I, as well. It 
 is back of mind and function, but expresses it- 
 self through both. 
 
 The great central Self holds the entire So- 
 nata in the hollow of its hand. It encompasses 
 it round about. It sees it in its fulness. This 
 the functional self can not do, for it has not the 
 comprehensive vision, the omniscience which 
 sees the end with the beginning, but by virtue 
 of its functioning must pass through all the in- 
 termediate terms, cognizing each in its passage, 
 but never grasping the whole. 
 
CO THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 Every artist, musician, speaker or writer who 
 thrills us does so because his functional self is in 
 touch with the true Self, and obedient to it. All 
 else is mechanical, automatic, dead and unin- 
 spiring. Nothing can thrill but life, and life is 
 the effluence of the true Self. 
 
 Now, I ask, How can anyone feel alone, help- 
 less or uncared for with such a Self at hand, 
 full of infinite resources ? If you can not be- 
 lieve that you have such a Self, set the fact up 
 in consciousness and give it your attention, your 
 criticism, your cavil, if you will. Finally, it 
 will prevail and obtain your sanction, because 
 it is the truth. Entertain the stranger and you 
 have entertained the angel unawares, the angel 
 who is ever after to brighten your life with its 
 glorious presence. 
 
 And when you have found the true life, and 
 the angel and the shrine, you need not withdraw 
 from the illusions in the outer court of the tem- 
 ple. Seek them if you will, but take them at 
 their actual value. So will your sorrows be 
 lighter, your joys higher and your loves strong- 
 er and truer. 
 
 You lose nothing by going into the Imper- 
 sonal. On the contrary, you gain all. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN EEALIZATION. 
 
 61 
 
 LESSON VIIL 
 
 In the preceding lessons I have endeavored to 
 show that man is one with an all-comprehen- 
 sive Being which flows from centre to circum- 
 ference and from circumference back to centre 
 by its own intrinsic law or mode of motion. 
 This law is not imposed upon it from the out- 
 side, for there is no outside, since Being is all 
 there is. Being, or any part of Being, moves 
 as it does because it is what it is and for no 
 other reason. The reason is in itself and no- 
 where else. 
 
62 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OR, 
 
 We speak of ourselves as separate beings be- 
 cause we have lost sight of the central unity of 
 all life. We are not separated from it in re- 
 ality any more than the branch is separated 
 from the tree on which it grows, but if the 
 branch could be supposed to have a small mind 
 peculiar to itself and the tree a larger mind pe- 
 culiar to itself, this would illustrate very well 
 the difference between the state of conscious- 
 ness which becomes functional or acts in the 
 personal mind and that entire, whole, perfect 
 and complete Consciousness which projects the 
 personal, that Unity which projects from Itself 
 Plurality, the One making Itself the Many. 
 
 I use the star as a diagram because it shows in 
 a way, so far as any symbol can express verity, 
 how it is that the One becomes Many. It does 
 it by radiation from its own centre. 
 
 Now, you know Plato says: "If One is, the 
 One can not be Many." That is quite true. 
 Our One does not break itself up or become less 
 Itself because it becomes Many. And now no- 
 tice the difference between being and becoming. 
 Plato does not say, "The One can not become 
 Many;" he says, "The One can not be Many." 
 Being and becoming are not synonymous terms, 
 for being stands for the "ding an sich" (thing in 
 itself), while becoming stands for the acting or 
 doing of that "thing in itself." 
 
EASY LESSONS IN EEALIZATION. 63 
 
 For instance — I AM. That is a primary fact. 
 I do — That is a secondary fact. Were it not 
 for the "I AM" there would be no "I do." The 
 "I AM" is the subject in the sentence of Life, 
 the "I do" is its predicate. The "I AM" is the 
 centre of Being, the "I do" is its circumference. 
 The "I AM" is Divinity, the "I do" is Hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Very few understand this aright, and there- 
 fore when they read such a statement, they ex- 
 claim: "Oh what dreadful sacrilege !" To their 
 minds Divinity is thereby dragged from its high 
 estate down into the mire. Divinity can not be 
 dragged anywhere. It goes voluntarily. It de- 
 scends graciously, willingly into the mire every 
 time a lily or a rose is born. Did you not know 
 that ? You can see Divinity in the rose, you can 
 see it in the lily, but you do not realize that to 
 get to each it must go down into the soil — the 
 soil, mind you — and the soil, as its name would 
 indicate, has much in it that is far from pure 
 and sweet. The soil is composed of the dregs 
 of physical substance. It is full of putrefaction 
 and all uncleanness, and the fuller it is of these 
 base elements the better it is and the fairer the 
 flower springing from it. 
 
 Notice how naturally we call putrefaction or 
 impurity a base element and also notice that it 
 is the base of growth. It may be a fanciful con- 
 
64 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 struction, but I can fancy that the flower grows 
 away from such a base because of its own in- 
 herent purity, carrying with it just enough of 
 the lower or basic element to enable it to ex- 
 press itself on the material plane, for only thus 
 can it relate itself to that plane. Without the 
 base element it would so transcend the physical 
 as not to be visible or tangible to the senses, and 
 to us it would be non-existent. In other words, 
 a flower dwells in Divinity as a thought of God, 
 and like any other thought it clothes itself with 
 material substance and becomes a thought ex- 
 pressed. We see and touch it and for the first 
 time become conscious of the existence of that 
 which has lived in subjective spheres as a real- 
 ity, but is now visiting us on this plane as an 
 actuality. 
 
 It is the real life of the flower that appeals 
 to our sense of the beautiful. In its form, color 
 and perfume, which constitute its language, it is 
 telling of its triumph over the powers of dark- 
 ness, its passage from the unclean to the holy 
 and its apotheosis in bloom. 
 
 I remember once seeing two exquisite flow- 
 ers that told me their story in language never 
 to be forgotten. They spoke to me in a foreign 
 tongue, in the language of angels perchance, 
 but I found the translation in my inner life, and 
 it has remained with me, and will remain with 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 65 
 
 me always. The flowers were two blossoms of 
 the night blooming cereus. As I stood before 
 their wonderful translucent whiteness which 
 seemed to radiate delicate tremulous waves of 
 light, they seemed to me like celestial beings, 
 and I understood why our atmosphere must be 
 too heavy for them and why their stay with us \J 
 must be so brief. In an hour or two they would 
 return whence they came and breathe once more 
 their pure and native ether, but not until they 
 had given us their heavenly message. 
 
 It was a beautiful custom of the town in 
 which I lived, for the owner of a night bloom- 
 ing cereus to invite in all the friends and neigh- 
 bors upon the occasion of its blooming, and I 
 remember well the stillness that was in the 
 room as we moved in line, each stopping a mo- 
 ment in contemplation before those silent flow- 
 ers. Silent to the outer ear, but full of speech 
 to the inner. A hush fell upon the assembly, 
 the room was a shrine and within it was the 
 Holy Presence. An indescribable longing swept 
 over me to fall on my knees before those mes- 
 sengers from a celestial sphere and implore a 
 fuller revelation, for there seemed so close at 
 hand a glory to be revealed. But convention 
 held me and I passed on silent and wistful, 
 while the calm, sweet flowers seemed saying: 
 Peace ! Have faith ! There is nothing hidden 
 
66 THINKING TN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 that shall not be revealed. All that thou de- 
 sirest shall come to thee in good time, only do 
 thou be patient and faithful. 
 
 The apotheosis of the flower is also that of 
 the God-man or God-like human being. He 
 comes up out of the soil or impure life by virtue 
 of the Divinity within him, into the freedom 
 and purity of the air above, the lower life being 
 a necessity to the higher. It has been said that 
 the greatest sinners make the greatest saints, 
 and if this be true it must be on account of the 
 principle here involved, just as the larger and 
 more vigorous plant must extend its roots wider 
 and deeper into the soil to balance the greater 
 breadth and height above, while the smaller and 
 less vigorous can do with a slighter root hold on 
 the soil. 
 
 There is no premium on the impure life in 
 consequence of this principle. It is in fact a 
 going away from the central Sun and involves 
 an imprisonment in darkness, but only the go- 
 ing away makes possible the return with its un- 
 folding experiences and its joys; and hence the 
 descent of spirit into matter, with its so-called 
 evil and attendant penalty, is good. The things 
 we call evil are the imperfect, unfinished, un- 
 developed forms of good. There is no base de- 
 sire which may not be transmuted into its cor- 
 relative aspiration. A base desire is an incom- 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 67 
 
 plete aspiration. It is force going downward 
 before it goes upward. The isolated fact is an 
 evil, but taken with the whole it is an unques- 
 tioned good. Murder is an evil, but to the 
 slayer and the slain there must come, through 
 the Divine Alchemy, the ultimate good. Each 
 will wade through deep pools of suffering in 
 which the blood stains will be washed away, and 
 though the murder is the direct cause of the 
 suffering, it is good because it leads to an ulti- 
 mate good. 
 
 Take a man at the moment of crime, in the 
 act of murder for instance, and because he is 
 what he is and the situation is what it is, there 
 is but one course open to him. Because of past 
 action he is brought to a point of culmination 
 where nothing but the murder is possible to 
 him. Given the provocation and he is as certain 
 to become a destructive agent as gunpowder at 
 the touch of a burning match. It is the result 
 of natural law, and in the case of the gunpow- 
 der it ends in natural law, whereas in the case of 
 the man it does not, for spiritual law overlaps 
 the event, gathers it into the sphere of the Di- 
 vine and converts it into good. Now, that 
 which can be converted into good must have in 
 itself the elements of good. In a word — Evil 
 is but undeveloped good. A fiery new born 
 planet seething upon its orbit is an evil thing 
 
68 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 compared with that same planet in its produc- 
 tive period, but from the first it holds all good 
 and beautiful things in its bosom. They are 
 there, but concealed. Man is just the same in 
 his process of unfoldment passing from the 
 primal, chaotic, burning or passionate period of 
 his existence to his perfection of being. 
 
 The path from evil to good is the path of 
 penalty, of pain and suffering, or more strictly 
 speaking, the point of departure from evil is 
 marked by pain, for pain is that which fences in 
 evil, and like a barbed wire excludes us from 
 forbidden precincts. There is nothing within 
 those precincts which we really desire or which 
 is tributary to our happiness, therefore pain is 
 beneficent and good in the ultimate. 
 
 All states of becoming are more or less evil, 
 and we pass out of each owing to a degree of 
 pain or discomfort which we experience and 
 from which we would escape. This engenders 
 restlessness, want, desire, action, which all 
 amount to the same thing. All are forms of a 
 discontent (dis-content) signifying emptiness, 
 vacuum, a lack of contents, a state in which the 
 mind does not contain or hold within itself 
 something which it desires. It is hungry and 
 seeks fulness, reaching out into its environs for 
 impression and experience. This is the secret 
 of action, the secret of evolution, the secret of 
 becoming. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN EEALIZATION. 69 
 
 There are two methods of teaching in the 
 New Thought, each repudiating the other as 
 false. One busies itself with expounding the 
 active "I do" side of life and ignores the change- 
 less "I AM," while the other recognizes only 
 the "I AM" and ignores the "I do." These 
 contending factions remind me of the old fable 
 concerning two knights who approached a 
 trophy shield from opposite directions. One 
 side of this shield was gold and the other silver; 
 thus each knight, seeing but one side, was led 
 to dispute with the other about the metal com- 
 posing it, until from words they came to blows, 
 when, luckily, just at this juncture, a third 
 knight appeared upon the scene, to whom the 
 dispute was referred. This knight looked upon 
 both sides of the shield and then informed the 
 disputants that the subject of dissension was 
 gold upon one side and silver upon the other. 
 
 Let us suppose that the third knight had not 
 looked at both sides. Had he looked at one side 
 only, he must, in opinion, have taken a stand 
 either upon one side or the other and pro- 
 nounced the shield to be either gold or silver. 
 Then when other knights were added to the 
 company, each would naturally enroll himself 
 in one faction or the other according to his 
 angle of vision, and the factions would grow 
 until the original two disputants would swell 
 
70 THINKING IN THE HEAET; OR, 
 
 to thousands, while the entire feud would be 
 founded upon a myth or a half truth, which 
 amounts to the same thing. All feuds in de- 
 fense of truth have ever been based upon a half 
 truth or the imperfect cognition of a full truth, 
 for men are so constituted that they come into 
 the knowledge of truth gradually. They are 
 not born full grown. If they were, there would 
 be no growth for them either mentally or phys- 
 ically. 
 
 But to return to our shield story and its ap- 
 plication. It is evident that so long as each 
 knight was defending his own partial concep- 
 tion of the shield he drew no nearer to a full 
 conception of its entire substance, and it would 
 have led to greater wisdom to have taken a 
 look at the other side. It is therefore better 
 to emulate the third knight in the story and 
 attain to a wholeness of thought rather than 
 contend for an accentuation of differences. 
 
 The "I AM" and the "I do" factions are each 
 right so far as each goes, but neither is telling 
 more than half the story, leaving the other 
 half untold. The "I AM" faction claims to be 
 perfect now, to have all things now, and to it 
 there is no past or future, for all is in the eter- 
 nal Now. 
 
 This is wholly unintelligible to the "I do" 
 faction which traces its origin back to proto- 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 71 
 
 plasm and finds its whole life proceeding from 
 that beginning. It deals with the unfolding or 
 evolution of form, but says never a w r ord of the 
 infolding or involution of that which produecs 
 form. I^ot only this, but it ridicules and re- 
 pudiates all knowledge concerning such a pri- 
 mal cause. 
 
 The Radiant Centre teaching covers the en- 
 tire ground held by both factions. Recognizing 
 evolution as a fact and acknowledging the ex- 
 istence of something which does grow or evolve, \ 
 it also recognizes a Something back of all ac- 
 tion which is permanent and unchanging. Some- 
 thing which always is and never becomes. Some- 
 thing which produces action but is not involved 
 in it. 
 
 If we see only action in life and lose sight of 
 the calm centre of being we are drawn into a 
 maelstrom and are whirled ceaselessly about in 
 a round of mental activity without repose or 
 mastery, but when we see, in thought, the calm, 
 unchanging centre, the mental activity con- 
 verges toward it, becomes stilled and then goes 
 out from that centre with a new, direct and pur- 
 poseful impulse. It goes forth from the Master 
 and is therefore masterful. There is an en- 
 ergy of position, you know, and this sort of ac- 
 tivity, coming as it does from the energy of 
 position, acquires an energy unknown to the 
 
72 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 motion of the maelstrom. It goes out straight 
 from the centre instead of being whirled help- 
 lessly about that centre. 
 
 The potential or unexpressed world is in the 
 "I AM" of Being, while the actual or expressed 
 world is in the "I do" of Being. Both prop- 
 erly belong to it and one can not be divorced 
 from the other; but though they can not be 
 divorced in reality we can think of them sep- 
 arately or divide them in thought, and this has 
 been the error of our thinking. From erro- 
 neous thinking there can be but one result and 
 that is erroneous expression; hence we mani- 
 fest a lack of symmetry and beauty in face and 
 form, for, as a man thinketh so is he to the very 
 limit of his circumference. 
 
 The "I AM" people declare that each indi- 
 vidual is sufficient unto himself, that he has all 
 within himself and that he needs nothing out- 
 side of himself, and yet one of these very peo- 
 ple once said to me that it was often a great re- 
 lief to him to meet others who were not meta- 
 physical. It was a relief, he said, and gave him 
 a change of thought. He was really in the 
 camp of the "I do" people and did not know it. 
 I brought the fact to his notice, for being one 
 of the "I do" people myself, at the time, I did 
 not propose that he should come over into our 
 camp for ammunition to do his firing, and I 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 73 
 
 said so promptly, somewhat to his discomfiture. 
 Certainly if he needed association at any time 
 with a non-metaphysical person he was not suf- 
 ficient unto himself, and what nonsense it is, to 
 be sure, to deny the necessity for communication 
 with our fellow-creatures and indeed with all 
 other forms of life. 
 
 This brings me to the point I would make in 
 this lesson. I would emphasize the fact that while 
 all life proceeds from the centre where it is one, 
 as it passes into the separateness of form there 
 is and must be interaction between those forms. 
 Thus a line of action extends from the ray 
 (or form) A in the diagram to the ray B and 
 from the ray B back to the ray A, so that A 
 touches B from the exterior and B touches A 
 also from the exterior. 
 
 We touch each other through impression or 
 sensation, and that impression or sensation is a 
 call to the inner life to come forth and show 
 itself. It comes forth obedient to the call and 
 is manifest as externalized energy in one form 
 or another as the case may be. Of course it is 
 the inner life all the while that is working out 
 through the ray A and touching the ray B or 
 through the ray B and touching the ray A, but 
 the exterior action coexists with the interior life 
 and is essential to it. In fact each is correlative 
 to the other, and one can not be without the 
 
74 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 other unless one can suppose the entire field of 
 expression to be wiped from the vision, in which 
 event there would be small need for any argu- 
 ment in favor of either the "I AM" or the "I 
 do" factions. So long as there is expression 
 there must be an "I do" and an "I AM" behind 
 the "I do." 
 
 I, as the "I AM," which means I, strong in 
 the consciousness of my oneness with the centre 
 of existence from which all things flow, I, at 
 this strong centre can establish an activity 
 which is greater than the ordinary activity com- 
 mon to man. It is a spiritual activity and it 
 produces not a sickly puling, white-faced asce- 
 tism falsely called spirituality, but a healthy, 
 full blooded, muscular, intense, warm, living 
 and vital spirituality which is the true thing and 
 not its counterfeit. A glorified Humanity with 
 God in it instead of out of it comes from the 
 all-roundness of vision seeing the "I AM" in 
 its relation to the "I do," and then living the 
 life which is therein typified, a life strong at 
 the centre and free at the circumference. This 
 is the life of the perfect human, a life possible 
 to vou and to me. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 75 
 
 LESSON IX, 
 
 Why are you poor in the midst of plenty? 
 There must be some reason for it. You may 
 think that it lies in the existing order of things, 
 but I think it lies in yourself. The existing or- 
 der gets blamed more than it deserves. It has 
 become a regular scape-goat for the shortcom- 
 ings of the individual. In a sense it is respon- 
 sible, for it is you and I who make up the ex- 
 isting order. Because we are what we are, it 
 is what it is. Because we are mentally weak- 
 kneed, bow-legged and cross-eyed, we twist up 
 the existing order and get it all awry. When 
 
76 THINKING IN THE HEART; OK, 
 
 we straighten out ourselves, we shall straighten 
 also the existing order, for we produce it from 
 day to day, from hour to hour. 
 
 Just so long as we place power outside of us 
 instead of within, we shall continue in the 
 weak-kneed state and get no hold on the Eter- 
 nal Energy which lies within us and is ours to 
 command. 
 
 Financial independence ought to mean to the 
 metaphysician just what the word in-depend- 
 ence implies, a dependence on something with- 
 in. Instead of that the tendency is to look out- 
 side for that which we wish to come to us. 
 
 I believe with Emerson: "He who knows 
 that power is inborn, that he is weak because 
 he has looked for good out of him and else- 
 where, and so perceiving, throws himself un- 
 hesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights 
 himself, stands in the erect position, commands 
 his limbs j works miracles; just as a man who 
 stands on his feet is stronger than a man who 
 stands on his head." 
 
 I tell you, friends, the existing order of 
 things has nothing to do with our misfortunes 
 and our poverty. If it had we would not see 
 individuals here and there coming up in spite 
 of it. Nothing can drag us down but ourselves. 
 No circumstance can bold us down if we have 
 the will to rise. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN [REALIZATION. 77 
 
 If you have learned the truth which I have 
 tried to inculcate through this series of lessons, 
 if you can see yourself as a ray proceeding from 
 the Central Energy, if you can realize that in 
 that Central Energy all things that you would 
 be lie potentially and that you can call them 
 forth from within, you are then standing 
 squarely on your feet, with head erect, chest 
 well up, lungs inflated and power in your right 
 hand, ready for action. The existing order of 
 things then has no power over you, for whatever 
 it may be, you, by your very mental attitude, 
 have thus cleared a space for your energies and 
 have made a place for yourself in the world's 
 activities. 
 
 Picture yourself as standing thus, and so 
 great is the power of imagery that before long 
 your image will become an external reality. 
 
 You can do this all alone, if you have only a 
 crust to eat and your room rent is unpaid. Ill 
 luck and apparently insurmountable obstacles 
 are only the appliances in life's gymnasium on 
 which to increase your mental muscle. Would 
 you fall down weakly before such an aid and 
 eye it with terror ? You are foolish if you do. 
 You have seen a horse tremble with fear at 
 sight of a newspaper caught up and swirled by 
 the wind, and have, no doubt, smiled at its fool- 
 ish fright, but all the while you were subject to 
 terrors quite as unsubstantial. 
 
78 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 Now, look at the star which heads this lesson 
 for it illustrates the truth I am endeavoring 
 to place firmly in your consciousness, the truth 
 of your in-dependence. 
 
 You are in-dependent because the source of 
 your dependence lies within, and it is not a little 
 isolated spark of being either. It is the 
 WHOLE THING. You will never understand 
 that, unless you picture it to yourself in the 
 form of a radiant figure, like the star which I 
 use in these lessons. It has helped me and I 
 know it will help you. I used to be just as 
 weak-kneed as anyone possibly could be. At 
 the age of thirty-one I thought life was all over 
 for me. Every ideal and every ambition had * 
 failed me. Sorrow, misfortune and ill-health 
 crowded hard upon me until I fell into the 
 depths of nervous prostration. Just as life 
 seemed at the last and lowest ebb, help came 
 to me in the form of mental treatment and from 
 that time I began to grow in health, in hope 
 and in prosperity. 
 
 Knowing what I do, is it strange that I should 
 try to help my suffering friends and brothers. 
 If I do not make the truth plain enough, tell 
 me, and I will try to make it plainer. The dif- 
 ficulty is that some of these inner truths which 
 we feel so strongly ourselves are difficult to give 
 in so many words to others. That is why men- 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 79 
 
 tal treatments are often more effectual than 
 volumes of written instruction. The thought 
 passes in a hidden pathway from mind to mind, 
 and translates itself to the patient in renewed 
 hope, in an increase of mental strength, in plans 
 for the improvement of conditions and in gen- 
 eral health and well-being. 
 
 I am often asked if the radiant centre of Be- 
 ing is a reality. It is. It is the only reality. 
 It is substance. It is power. 
 
 If you come in contact with any external ob- 
 ject, you feel its presence. Well, just so do you 
 feel this inner substance of which all external 
 objects are the expression. 
 
 It is not found by thinking or reasoning 
 about it, but by feeling for it, as a blind man 
 would grope for an object. 
 
 Just as I was about to begin upon this lesson 
 I came upon the following passage, which I now 
 introduce as singularly appropriate : 
 
 "The statues that adorn the bridge of Saint 
 Angelo in Rome are reflected in the water be- 
 low. As you come upon the banks of the Tiber, 
 there on the placid stream are the clear out- 
 lines of the old heroic forms; and then as you 
 look up, you see the statues standing on their 
 pedestals of stone on the bridge above. So hope 
 is the reflection in the soul of blessings that are 
 above and beyond." 
 
80 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 In this way the soul dimly senses the presence 
 of its radiant centre. It is the reflection of its 
 reality in the stream of consciousness. From 
 the reflection, one is led to seek for that which 
 is so reflected, just as one looks up from the 
 banks of the Tiber to the heroic forms on the 
 bridge of Saint Angelo. 
 
 And how do you know when you are actually 
 in touch with your radiant centre ? You know 
 it by the change in your feeling. There comes 
 to you an inner warmth and life, a sense of ex- 
 pansion as though you were growing wings — 
 a delightful vision of approaching freedom, 
 a tendency to draw deep, full electrical 
 breaths — and, in short, all the sensations of 
 a new-born creature: for, indeed, you are 
 thus newly born. Old things have passed 
 away and all things are become new. You 
 stand in a new world of thought and feeling. 
 Youth returns to you with all its charm and 
 mystery of opening life, and you begin to grow, 
 grow, grow, like a beautiful flower from your 
 radiant centre. 
 
 Others may seek by much reasoning to un- 
 the mystery of Life. It is enough for me to 
 live it. I ask no greater joy. And to live it 
 one must begin according to the law of Life, * ^J 
 and unfold from a centre. From the smallest 
 to the greatest organism, this law regulates 
 growth and life. All else is a dead mosaic. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATTON. 81 
 
 You are a living organism, but growth may 
 be arrested in you and you may need the touch 
 of Life. Will it come to you ? Yes. 
 
 The healer can do no more than to arouse 
 the dormant energy within yourself, but that 
 is something worth doing and quite essential. 
 In this lies the value of success treatment. It 
 rouses YOU to a FEELING of the POWEE 
 WITHIN YOURSELF. THE FEELING is 
 the POWEE. So there you are ! If you have 
 the FEELING of POWEE you have the 
 POWEE. 
 
 POWEE be with you to do and to become all 
 that you desire. ALL POWEE IS YOUES. 
 
82 
 
 THINKING TN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 LESSON X. 
 
 If I were asked by what standard I judge of 
 any system of teaching, I must reply that its 
 merit is to be estimated by the amount of joy 
 it brings to the world. I think there is no bet- 
 ter or truer test. All religions, no matter 
 though their central thought be self-denial, self- 
 sacrifice and penance hold out the hope of a fu- 
 ture peace and happiness. Without this they 
 would instantly and forever lose all power over 
 the hearts of men. 
 
 The fact is, Men make their own religions 
 and they make them in accordance with the 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 83 
 
 brain material which they have evolved. Back 
 of the minds of men stands the Great Reality, 
 but it stands unexpressed to the human con- 
 sciousness only so far as that consciousness is 
 able to receive, apprehend or interpret. As it 
 receives, apprehends and interprets more and 
 more clearly the Great Reality of which I 
 speak, it is seen to be the source of happiness 
 and it is also seen to lay no penance, no suf- 
 fering, no sickness, no poverty, no wretchedness 
 upon any man. It does not even inflict present 
 punishment as a means to future blessedness. 
 
 Whence come, then, the suffering, the sick- 
 ness, the poverty and the wretchedness ? They 
 are incidents or attendants of growth and mark 
 the soul's passage toward the light. I will ven- 
 ture to assert on the strength of a law running 
 through all nature that every growing thing 
 feels pain and lack and oppression in the earlier 
 stages of its growth. The little seed says noth- 
 ing of the weight of earth upon its bosom or of 
 the darkness in which its life is enshrouded, but 
 I know it feels them just as we do, only in 
 lesser degree. It feels them as unhappy experi- 
 ences in its growth, but they are happily all for- 
 gotten when it gains its freedom in the air and 
 light above. Surely the apotheosis of a plant can 
 not be more than that of a human soul, and by 
 virtue of compensation a happiness awaits us all 
 
84 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 commensurate with our pain. It is written on 
 all things as well as in our hearts. The hope of 
 heaven is as universal as life itself, but our 
 greatest mistake has been in placing that heav- 
 en too far away. 
 
 This only goes to show the childish belief of 
 the race with its tendency to live in the outer 
 world and its inability to look within. I can 
 well remember the time, for it is not far in the 
 past, when I was utterly dependent on the hap- 
 penings of a day for my enjoyment. My first 
 thought on awaking in the morning was, I 
 hope something pleasant will happen to me to- 
 day. I looked continually to some external 
 stimulus for my happiness, and need I say that 
 I was as continually disappointed? Every 
 draught of happiness had its bitter dregs which 
 I seemed forced to drink, and every flower of 
 enjoyment its canker at the heart, so that it 
 withered and drooped in my hand. Life seemed 
 hard and cruel while over all a grim Deity held 
 sway, a Deity whose purpose seemed to beat and 
 crush me into subjection to his will. Of course 
 it all seemed very wretched, yet I saw no way 
 out, and there was nothing left me but to suf- 
 fer on. To say that I was rebellious was to put 
 it very lightly. The advice of Job's wife, to 
 curse God and die, appealed to me as good to 
 follow, but what would be the outcome ? There 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 85 
 
 was apparently no way of escape from that ter- 
 rible will which cast a blight on all innocent en- 
 joyment. I thought with ever increasing dis- 
 comfort of that passage in Psalms: " Whither 
 shall I go then from th$^y spirit, or whith- 
 er shall I flee from thy presence £ If I 
 ascend up into heaven thou art there; if I make 
 my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I 
 take the wings of the morning and dwell in the 
 uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy 
 hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. 
 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me: 
 even the night shall be made light about me." 
 
 Oh, that dreadful Omnipresence ! How I 
 feared and hated it as one might a relentless, 
 all-seeing, all-powerful tyrant with whom it was 
 impossible to cope and from whom there was no 
 escape. The utter hopelessness of my state and 
 of a whole world at the mercy of such a ruler 
 finally plunged me into the depths of melan- 
 cholia, but on that I will not dwell. It was all 
 right and good, though grievous at the time. 
 By the unerring law of the cosmos I was to 
 move, as do all things, from darkness into light. 
 
 If your path is dark, dear friend, it leads to 
 the light. Remember the seed, for its experi- 
 ence is yours. You are one in the universal pro- 
 cess of growth, and what is true of it is true also 
 of you. From darkness to light, from pain to 
 
86 THINKING IN THE HEAKT; OR, 
 
 joy. If the seed thinks, and we have yet to 
 prove that it does not, it may feel toward the 
 darkness and opposing forces which encompass 
 and circumscribe its little life something as I 
 once felt toward the power which thwarted me 
 at every turn and brought me the keenest suf- 
 fering. I feel sure that the analogy must hold 
 good throughout, and I know that during my 
 time of darkness I was wholly unconscious of 
 the good to come. 
 
 In his beautiful book, "Five Windows of the 
 Soul," Professor Aiken says something of the 
 sea-anemone which applies to the subject be- 
 fore us and is most suggestive. He says: 
 
 "When you take it out of the sea to bring 
 it home, its tentacles are all drawn in, and it is 
 a shapeless, slimy lump; but put it in a glass and 
 pour in water fresh from the sea, and it will 
 presently open out like a flower and gently 
 wave its hundred arms. It has no knowledge of 
 your presence, nor of its fellow anemone near 
 it, nor of the seaweeds and other pretty things 
 in the aquarium with it, nor of the sweet tones 
 of the piano playing in the room, nor of the 
 merry laughter of your children; to it all these 
 things are not. The soft feel of the water, its 
 gentle motion, perhaps its temperature, too hot 
 or too cold, these are the universe to your 
 anemone. But drop a small empty shell into the 
 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 87 
 
 water, so that in sinking it will touch the point 
 of one tentacle, and instantly that tentacle 
 closes on it. The anemone's world has widened. 
 It perceives the existence of something which 
 is not itself and not the water. And you soon 
 find that it perceives also some of the properties 
 of that thing; for after clutching it for a second 
 or two it relaxes its hold and drops it, whereas 
 if you try the same experiment with a piece of 
 raw meat, it will clutch tighter and tighter and 
 draw the morsel inward toward its mouth, 
 which will open and admit it. Should a luckless 
 shrimp come in contact with one of the ten- 
 tacles, it will be seized in the same way, but as 
 it struggles to free itself, other tentacles will 
 close in and hold it fast, and altogether your 
 anemone will display an energy which it did not 
 display when it was dealing with the shell or the 
 meat. It perceives not matter only, this time, 
 but motion. Assuming, then, that the anemone 
 has consciousness, we find that it has perceived 
 the existence of matter not itself and of some of 
 the properties of matter — resistance, hardness 
 or softness and weight, also of motion. So far 
 it has penetrated into the mystery of things. 9f 
 
 Now does it not occur to you that our posi- 
 tion in this world is very like that of the anem- 
 one? Is not our life a continual attempt to 
 penetrate the mystery of things ? The anemone 
 
88 THINKING IN THE HEART; OR, 
 
 in its small way as it reaches out with its ten- 
 tacles and touches the things of its narrow 
 world is realizing just as truly as are we who are 
 reaching inward after that which is unseen, but 
 none the less real. And as the anemone is un- 
 conscious of the music of the piano and the mer- 
 ry voices of the children, so are we in the pres- 
 ence of wondrous and beautiful things which 
 we know not. If our senses were fine enough, 
 we might see and know much that is now vir- 
 tually non-existent to us, for like the anemone 
 that grasps the meat and the shrimp, the while 
 unconscious of the music or the children's 
 voices, so do we touch but little of the world 
 about us. 
 
 As the world of the anemone widens, so does 
 ours. In both it is a growth in realization. It 
 is touching more of the outer and inner world. 
 The anemone does not think as we think, and 
 yet it distinguishes between the objects in its 
 world of consciousness. It knows that the shell 
 is not the meat and that the meat is not the 
 shrimp, although it can not spell the names we 
 have given to each. How does it know ? It re- 
 alizes the thing itself and not its name as so 
 many of us are in the habit of doing. To real- 
 ize is to make real, and whether we seek the 
 inner life or the outer, we should make our 
 world more real through feeling, through com- 
 ing in actual touch with it. 
 
EASY LESSONS IN KEALIZATION. 89 
 
 I have seen a simple soul filled with a joy and 
 peace which a brighter intellect might envy and 
 seek in vain. The simpler soul had found that 
 which no argument reveals and no process of 
 reasoning brings closer to the perception. 
 
 Does it require an argument to prove to you 
 that you exist ? Can any word or series of words 
 convey to you the fact of your existence ? IsTo ! 
 You simply feel that you exist. You may have 
 reached that feeling through a long line of ex- 
 periences in which thought played an important 
 role, still the result of it all is a feeling just the 
 same, and that feeling is realization. 
 
 Starting with a realization of your own be- 
 ing, which realization you possess now, is it so 
 difficult a matter to extend that realization and 
 see that being of yours widen and widen until it 
 exceeds all your past conceptions ? Can you not 
 imagine yourself on the inner side opening into 
 the deeps of infinity as a river opens into the 
 ocean ? To think about it will aid you in believ- 
 ing it possible, but the only thing which will 
 make it real is to reach out as does the anemone 
 with the tentacles of your spirit in order to feel 
 or experience or touch that which you seek. 
 That, and that alone, is realization. 
 
 I have said again and again that thought 
 without feeling avails nothing in the establish- 
 ment of health and happiness. I can not em- 
 
90 THINKING IN THE HEART; OE, 
 
 phasize that fact too strongly, for it is all-im- 
 portant in the attainment of improved mental 
 and physical conditions. Feeling is of the heart, 
 and the heart is the centre of life. From it pro- 
 ceed the issues of life. We make a distinction 
 between a hearty welcome and a merely civil 
 one. Both involve thought, but the former 
 also involves feeling, while the latter does not. 
 And why do we say hearty (heart-y) ? Because 
 it comes from the heart and is therefore full of 
 life. 
 
 Let me illustrate still further. Not long ago 
 I had a business transaction with a person who 
 claimed $25 more than I believed to be her due. 
 The result was an argument in which neither 
 was convinced. 
 
 I positively knew that I had justice on my 
 side, and so one day I sat down at my desk in a 
 judicial mood. I felt every fibre of my nature 
 hardening in the interest of justice and I dipped 
 my pen in ink to write page after page in justi- 
 fication of my own position. Suddenly, without 
 warning and apparently without cause, my 
 
 mood softened, and I wrote : Dear , Tou 
 
 are right. The $25 is yours. Here is my check 
 for the amount. Tours with love, ." 
 
 ISTow I never shall forget the delicious happi- 
 ness that stole over me as I enclosed the check 
 and sealed the letter. It was as though a heav- 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 91 
 
 enly benediction had descended upon my spirit 
 and it was worth a thousand times that paltry 
 twenty-five dollars. 
 
 But why did I say "You are right. The $25 
 is yours V 9 Simply because I felt that down 
 somewhere in the subconscious stratum of our 
 natures there is registered a different account 
 from that which shows upon the pages of our 
 daybooks and our ledgers, and in that subcon- 
 scious account it may be seen that some of the 
 things which seem to belong to us really belong 
 to others. The heart may know more than the 
 mind does about that hidden account, and in 
 that case feeling can move us to the deepest, 
 truest ends of justice. And had I not said: 
 "You are right. " Had I said: "You are wrong, 
 but I will send you my check to end the dis- 
 cussion/' I should have placed a canker in my 
 note which would have eaten all the love out 
 of it and taken away the joy it was to carry to 
 another heart. I speak of this to show the dif- 
 ference between thought and feeling. I thought 
 the $25 was mine, but I felt that it belonged to 
 another. 
 
 Who shall say that this prompting of my 
 heart was not a forecast of that day of brother- 
 hood, when we shall not draw hard and fast 
 lines about ourselves, our rights and our pos- 
 sessions ? If we desire the pulsing life from the 
 
92 THINKING IN THE HEAKT; OR, 
 
 heart of the universe, we must become one with 
 it, and we can not become one with it while we 
 shut our brothers from our hearts. You see 
 when I made the interests of another my own 
 and covered her need with my supply, the Spirit 
 of Life gave me benediction. In fulfilling the 
 law of Life more Life was poured out upon me. 
 The law of Life is Love. 
 
 The diagram at the head of this lesson is a 
 flower. It as truly represents a radiant centre 
 as does the star, and it was suggested by these 
 lines in Edward Carpenter's "Love's Coming of 
 Age." He speaks of his belief in "a society to 
 which we all in our inmost selves consciously or 
 unconsciously belong — the Rose of sotils that 
 Dante beheld in Paradise, whose every petal is 
 an individual, and an individual only through 
 its union with all the rest — the early Church's 
 dream of an eternal Fellowship in heaven and 
 on earth; the Prototype of all the brotherhoods 
 and communities that exist on this or any 
 planet. The innumerable selves of men, united 
 in the one Self, members of it and of one anoth- 
 er (like the members of the body) stand in eter- 
 nal and glorious relationship bound indissolubly 
 together." 
 
 In concluding these lessons, I have changed 
 the diagram from the star to the figure of the 
 flower, because I wished to throw a more defi- 
 
EASY LESSONS IN REALIZATION. 93 
 
 nite and living beauty into the conception of 
 oneness, for while the star itself radiates life in 
 the form of light, this is not fully expressed in 
 a geometrical design upon paper. Nothing ap- 
 peals to the heart and stirs it to new life like an 
 organized form of beauty, and the thought of 
 unfolding like a flower from the centre of Di- 
 vinity, must be an incentive to better and more 
 beautiful action. The form, the color, the 
 aroma of a flower delight us through the 
 senses it is true, but at the same time there is 
 a subtle and unrecognized appeal to the inner 
 life, because the still small voice of Divinity is 
 saying through the flower: "Behold Me in this 
 my symbol. I AM at the centre and I AM at 
 the circumference. I AM God at the centre of 
 the rose, I AM Man in its petals, and beside ME 
 there is none." 
 
 To feel this, dear friends, is the first step in 
 realization. It is not so difficult a thing. We 
 are accustomed to look upon the things ex- 
 ternal, which can be seen and touched, as real, 
 and the unseen things as unreal, while just the 
 reverse is true. We have developed crude 
 senses by which we see and touch these external 
 things and it remains for us to develop finer 
 senses by which we feel the inner things. A 
 seer once said: "The things which are seen are 
 temporal, but the things which are not seen are 
 eternal." 
 
 OCT i? 1*02 
 
94 THINKING IN THE HEAKT; OK, 
 
 Realization means, to draw the externalized 
 consciousness back to the centre where it 
 touches or is conscious of the spirit of power. 
 It means to remain calm and serene at that cen- 
 tre while also reaching out in healthful activ- 
 ity. To reach this place in consciousness, so 
 peaceful, so masterful, so creative, so blessed, 
 is the entire end and aim of these lessons in Re- 
 alization. They may seem to my readers very 
 much like a tune that is played on one string, 
 with but little variation, and indeed they are so, 
 for I well know the devious and wandering 
 paths by which so many are striving to escape 
 from the tangled labyrinth of many leadings. 
 A definite, short cut is needed, straight out of 
 the woods. I came upon it and it led me out. 
 "Now I would place a signboard, pointing the 
 way to others. With my whole soul I believe 
 there is no necessity for unhappiness, for fail- 
 ure, for poverty or disease, and I as fully be- 
 lieve that the day is at hand when every soul 
 shall recognize its own divinity and dwell in 
 majesty at the centre of Being, controlling cir- 
 cumstance and radiant with Life and Power. 
 
 H 148 82 
 
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