Me, myself and I

If I one soul improve, I have not lived in vain.

2012-01-29T12:55:00.003-05:00

Professor James Beattie FRSE (1735 –1803) was a Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher. He was born at Laurencekirk, in the county of Kincardine, Scotland.
His father, a farmer of no considerable rank, is said to have been interested in reading and verifying but died when James was only seven, so he had little influence on his son’s mind.
He was sent to the only school available. His tutor was named Milne, of whom he later wrote

“as a good grammarian, and tolerably skilled in the Latin language, but destitute of taste, as well as some other qualifications essential to a good teacher.”

In 1749 he entered Marischal College, Aberdeen obtaining the first of the bursaries left fro the use of students whose parents are unable to support the entire expenses of academical education. In 1753 he took the degree of master of arts.
He wrote and published his poetry in a volume called the Minstrel. Part I was soon followed by Part II. In 1777 he published the two parts of the Minstrel together.

The Minstrel - Book II-XXXII
“Yet leave me not. I would allay that grief,
Which else might thy young virtue overpower;
And in thy converse I shall find relief,
When the dark shades of melancholy lour;
For solitude has many a dreary hour,
Ev’n when exempt from grief, remorse and pain:
Come often then; for, haply, in my bower, Amusement, knowledge, wisdom thou may’st gain.
If I one soul improve, I have not lived in vain.”

I had another blog about caring for the elderly. It helped one person realize that you're never alone and there is support for you.
That was nice.
Help at least one other person.

'working with nature ~ naturally'

2012-01-27T14:43:00.003-05:00

Bio-Ag Consultants & Distributors Inc. is a company devoted to understanding and working with nature. Since our founding in 1982, our mission has been to produce and supply products and services that warrant and support true sustainable agriculture. Through our research, we at Bio-Ag have become a major supplier of natural products and services for livestock and crop production.

Wellesley, Ontario, Canada

http://www.bio-ag.com/

Bio~Ag's 30th Anniversary Show

Murray & Florence Bast recollect 30 years of progress, and look to the future of organic farming with visionary perspective of what's to come.

http://youtu.be/WJTCWpdb7a8

Enzolac is a unique product that combines both the probiotic (a lactobacillus fermentation product) and live plant enzymes (Kreb Cycle) on a GMO free (genetically modified organisms) wheat carrier. It is made on-site in our drying facility at Wellesley. The enzymes enhance the efficiency of the probiotic and create a balance in the digestive system to ensure optimum health and productivity.

HANDEL'S MESSIAH (performance in amongst the cows)

2012-01-27T14:39:00.003-05:00

HANDEL'S MESSIAH-MICHAEL SCHMIDT-intro.mpg http://youtu.be/hXycuMH0rhA
First 5 minutes introduction of Handel's Messiah performed by Michael Schmidt and the Saugeen Chamber Choir and Orchestra. An emotionally charged experience of an unforgettably intimate and powerful musical performance in amongst the cows. The music will thrill you to the depths of your soul, among the horses, cows and children, and your spirit will soar with joy in this festive season!

"The LAW"

2012-01-26T19:42:00.003-05:00

Thou criest out that thou didst ask
And yet didst not receive,
And now thou sayest in thy heart
There is no law of good.
But hadst thou kept the law of good,
Or didst thou, asking, doubt?
Nay, nay, 'twas not the law that failed
'Twas thou who trustedst not.
Is law for Me alone to keep?
Nay, thou must do thy part.
Thou art to ask for naught but good
And asking, never doubt.
That is the law that thou must keep ---
Seek good, and e'er believe.
When thou hast kept this law of good,
Then ask; thou wilt receive.

A poem by Linda Buntyn Willie (circa 1915)

I like to re-Blog this once a year.

Metaphors of life.

2012-01-25T20:57:00.007-05:00

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea.
Examples:
• "Her eyes were glistening jewels.",
• ” She was a hippo compared to her aunt.”,
• ” The sun opened its sleepy eyes and smiled down on the Earth as a new day began.”

Do you stand on your principles? Beside them? Behind them?
What if someone pulls the rug from under you.

Where do you stand on your health, relationships, family or business?

Jesus taught in parables. A parable is a short tale that illustrates universal truth, one of the simplest of narratives. It sketches a setting, describes an action, and shows the results. It often involves a character facing a moral dilemma, or making a questionable decision and then suffering the consequences. Though the meaning of a parable is often not explicitly stated, the meaning is not usually intended be hidden or secret but on the contrary quite straightforward and obvious. “To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it? It is like a mustard seed...” (Mark 4:30-31).
How do you see God?

Are you disconnected?
Do you need to be reconnected?

Is someone above looking out for you?

What about the “Fall From Grace”?
“Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.”
Sitting on the wall of indecision, giving in to our fears, stops our growth as human and spiritual beings.
It wasn’t just a “great fall.” It was a “GREAT FALL!”
This is the “fall from grace”, the descent into darkness.
The ego must be shattered for us to enter the light of spirituality.

Do you go against the flow?
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
The song has been used extensively in popular culture, often to reflect existential questions about reality, reflecting issues about the need for self discovery.

How do you view the Christ within?

"The Metaphysics of Separation and Forgiveness" is an edited recording of the one-day workshop conducted by Kenneth Wapnick at the Foundation's Institute and Retreat Center in February 1992. This presentation summarizes the Course's teachings, specifically addressing how the metaphysical principle that the thought of separation and the physical world are illusory becomes the foundation for true forgiveness. http://facim.org/excerpts/mpseries.htm

Stand on, beside or behind your principles and values. Whatever best works for you.

You can also stand on, beside or behind health, family, business, social or personal. What ever works best for you.

But stand on Faith.

I keep an American penny. On one side it is stamped
“In God We Trust”.

Meditation and the inward quest.

2012-01-25T19:14:00.003-05:00

Paul Brunton (1898-1981) was a British philosopher, mystic, and traveler. He left a successful journalistic career to live among yogis, mystics, and holy men, and studied a wide variety of Eastern and Western esoteric teachings. With his entire life dedicated to an inward and spiritual quest, Brunton felt charged with the task of communicating his experiences to others and, as the first person to write accounts of what he learned in the East from a Western perspective, his works had a major influence on the spread of Eastern mysticism to the West. Taking pains to express his thoughts in layperson's terms, Brunton was able to present what he learned from the Orient and from ancient tradition as a living wisdom. Paul Brunton's writings sum up his view that meditation and the inward quest are not exclusively for monks and hermits, but will also support those living normal, active lives in the Western world. Brunton was probably born as Hermann Hirsch of German Jewish origin. Later he changed his name to Raphael Hurst, and then Brunton Paul and finally Paul Brunton.

"There has been so much friction and clash between the different religions because of this idea: whether God is personal or impersonal—so much persecution, even hatred, so unnecessarily. I say unnecessarily because the difference between the two conceptions is only an apparent one. Mind is the source of all; this is Mind inactive. Mind as World-Mind-in-manifestation is the personal God. Between essence and manifestation the only difference is that essence is hidden and manifestation is known. World-Mind is personal (in the sense of being what the Hindus call "Îshvara"); Mind is totally impersonal. Basically, the two are one."

Paul Brunton Philosophical Foundation

God's businessman.

2012-01-25T07:21:00.003-05:00

Robert Gilmour LeTourneau (1888–1969), born in Richford, Vermont, was a prolific inventor of earthmoving machinery. As the father of the modern earthmoving industry, he was responsible for 299 inventions. These inventions included the bulldozer, scrapers of all sorts, dredgers, portable cranes, rollers, dump wagons, bridge spans, logging equipment, mobile sea platforms for oil exploration, the electric wheel and many others. He introduced into the earthmoving and material handling industry the rubber tire, which today is almost universally accepted. He invented and developed the Electric Wheel.

With the help of his wife, the late Evelyn Peterson (1900-1987), he founded what became a private, Christian university, LeTourneau University, in Longview, Texas, and was known as a devoted Christian and generous philanthropist to Christian causes, including to a camp and conference grounds that carry his name, "LeTourneau Christian Center." He was sometimes called, "God's businessman.”
In 1902, at the age of fourteen, he left school, with the blessing of his Christian parents. He moved from Vermont to Duluth, Minnesota, then to Portland, Oregon, where he began to work as an apprentice ironmonger at the East Portland Iron Works. While learning the foundry and machinist trades, he studied mechanics from an International Correspondence Schools course that had been given to him, though he never completed any course assignments. He later moved to San Francisco, where he worked at the Yerba Buena Power Plant and learned welding, and became familiar with the application of electricity. In 1909, he moved to Stockton, California. During this time, LeTourneau worked at a number of jobs including wood cutter, farm hand, miner and carpenter’s laborer, acquiring knowledge of the manual trades that proved valuable in later life.
In 1911, LeTourneau was employed at the Superior Garage, in Stockton, where he learned about vehicle mechanics and later became half-owner of the business. In 1917, he married. Refused military service because of permanent neck injury, LeTourneau worked during WWI as a maintenance assistant at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, in Vallejo, California, where he was trained as an electrical machinist and improved his welding skills. After the war, LeTourneau returned to Stockton and discovered the Superior Garage business had failed. To repay his portion of the debts, he took a job repairing a Holt Manufacturing Company crawler-tractor and was then employed by the tractor owner to level 40 acres using the tractor and a towed scraper.
This type of work appealed to LeTourneau, and in January 1920 he purchased a used Holt tractor and, with a hired scraper, began business as a regrading contractor. In May 1921, he purchased a plot of land in Stockton and established an engineering workshop, where he designed and built several types of scrapers. Combining contracting and earthmoving equipment manufacturing, his business expanded and in 1929 incorporated in California as "R.G. LeTourneau, Inc."
The LeTourneau name became synonymous with earthmoving worldwide. LeTourneau was largely responsible for the invention and development of many types of earthmoving machines now widely used. He designed and built machines using technology that was years, sometimes decades, ahead of its time and became recognized worldwide as a leader in the development and manufacture of heavy equipment. The use of rubber tires in earthmoving;[4] numerous improvements relating to scrapers; the development of low-pressure, heavy-duty rubber tires; the two-wheeled tractor unit ("Tournapull"); electric wheel drive, and mobile offshore drilling platforms, are all attributed to LeTourneau’s ingenuity. During his lifetime, he held hundreds of patents on inventions relating to earthmoving equipment, manufacturing processes and machine tools. His factories supplied 70 percent of all heavy earthmoving equipment used by the Allied forces during WWarII.
In 1965, I.C.S. awarded LeTourneau his diploma in engineering, 50 years after he studied the course. LeTourneau was 76 at the time.
Being a man of great Christian commitment and dedication, for 30 years he flew thousands of miles each week to maintain Christian speaking engagements around the United States and overseas.
As a multi-millionaire, LeTourneau gave 90% of his profit to God's work and kept only 10% for himself. A special friend of Billy Graham, in his early days, LeTourneau designed a portable dome building intended for Graham crusades. He also founded a university that is thriving to this day.
LeTourneau said that the money came in faster than he could give it away. LeTourneau was convinced that he could not out-give God.

"I shovel it out,”

he would say,

“and God shovels it back, but God has a bigger shovel."

His life's verse was Matthew 6:33:

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you."

When will we cease running after Truth, and learn to "be still, and know that I am God"?

2012-01-22T13:57:00.002-05:00

Constant reading, discussions, interchange of opinions are all external ways of reaching the Truth from the intellectual side. These are a way, but "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," spake the voice of the Father through the Nazarene. "The anointing which ye received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that anyone teach you." "The Spirit of truth . . . shall guide you into all the truth and he shall declare unto you the things that are to come.

When will we cease running after Truth, and learn to "be still, and know that I am God"?
~ Emilie Cady's How I Used The Truth

Another fact that lies at the root of the world's major religions, as they were originally conceived, is the allness of God. Indeed, the allness, hence oneness of God was the heart and soul of original Christianity before mankind began to interpret it for himself—before the 'separate mind' rearranged things to continue a place for itself.

The fact is that God (Principle) is all that is. God is the only reality. God is the only power and presence. Beside God there is nothing else at all. God is total and alone. God is one. There is not God and 'me'. There is not God and the world, universe, heaven, hell, devil, or anything else. There is God alone!

Mankind is willing to agree that God's sphere of influence includes the universe entire. He will even concede intellectually that God is everywhere, but he is not so ready to admit that God, Fact, Reality, Principle is all of all—that God is the being of existence itself—that Divine Principle itself is being all there is to this universe—that people and things, as objects of perception, are nothing in and of themselves, but God is being all there is to people and things—that the value and importance is not in the object perceived but is in God, the reality, the fact which is being all there is to the object and to the perception of it.

The reason for mankind's hesitancy is obvious. “If I give God ALL the power and the glory, there is none left for ME,” he says. “If God is everything, I am NOTHING. This is self-destruction. It eliminates ME.”
~ 2+2=Reality By William Samuel

When will we learn to "be still, and know that I am God"?

Are your beliefs painting you into a corner?

2012-01-21T14:58:00.004-05:00

Memetics is a controversial theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. A meme, analogous to a gene, The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek "something imitated", "to imitate", "mime").

Terminology[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics]
• Memotype – is the actual information-content of a meme.
• Meme-complex – (sometimes abbreviated memeplex) is a collection or grouping of memes that have evolved into a mutually supportive or symbiotic relationship. Simply put, a meme-complex is a set of ideas that reinforce each other. Meme-complexes are roughly analogous to the symbiotic collection of individual genes that make up the genetic codes of biological organisms. An example of a memeplex would be a religion.
• Memeoid – is a neologism for people who have been taken over by a meme to the extent that their own survival becomes inconsequential. Examples include kamikazes, suicide bombers and cult members who commit mass suicide.
• Memetic Equilibrium – refers to the cultural equivalent of species biological equilibrium. It is that which humans strive for in terms of personal value with respect to cultural artefacts and ideas.
A meme, analogous to a gene, is essentially a "unit of culture"—an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour, etc. which is "hosted" in one or more individual minds, and which can reproduce itself from mind to mind through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena.
Thus what would otherwise be regarded as one individual influencing another to adopt a belief is seen memetically as a meme reproducing itself. As with genetics, particularly under Dawkins's interpretation, a meme's success may be due to its contribution to the effectiveness of its host. Memetics is notable for sidestepping the traditional concern with the truth of ideas and beliefs.
Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.
Proponents theorize that memes may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition and inheritance, each of which influence a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.
A field of study called memetics arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. Criticism from a variety of fronts has challenged the notion that academic study can examine memes empirically. However, developments in neuroimaging may make empirical study possible.

Other possible memetic infections:
1. Spiritist were taught by Allan Kardec, around 1850, that spiritual progress is effected by a series of compulsory reincarnations. However, the Spiritualist movement in England and America knew nothing of this until his teachings became known.
2. Table Tipping / Dowsing / Pendulums/”The Other Side”
3. UFO’s:'The Nine' (“Keys of Enoch”); the Guardians(Dorothy Martin/Sister Thedra)
4. Pleiadeans/Sirians
5. Channeling
6. Ascension and Ascended Masters: Guy Ballard , who founded I AM , the first Ascended Master Teachings religion, claimed he could teach people how to ascend to heaven without having to die. He accumulated over 1,000,000 followers in the 1930s. However, he died a normal death in 1939.
7. “A Dweller on Two Planets or The Dividing of the Way” written by Frederick S. Oliver around 1886.( the source of the idea that there is a hidden sanctuary of ascended Lemurian masters under Mount Shasta)
8. Stories or websites depicting an underground city at Giza
9. 2012 Mayan or Hopi prophecies, which evidently no similar predictions exist anywhere outside of North America.
10. Pandemic scares such as Swine Flu that never materialize. Is true or fear mongering that’s been perpetrated. Vaccinations? Necessary or a memetic.

Moonies are an example. [http://www.ted.com/talks/ex_moonie_diane_benscoter_how_cults_think.html]
Jonestown would be another.

The important thing is not to paint yourself into a corner.

I’ve let go of so many false beliefs it’s amazing.
And I continue to discover many more.
The Truth will set you free.
Try it.

Give yourself, if you wish to get others.

2012-01-16T19:06:00.002-05:00

Increasingly the fields of psychology and religion are being seen as intimately related. Unfortunately it is still true, as Dr. Seabury complains, that

"we find the churches and those who represent them lacking knowledge and application of psychology, and the average practicing psychologist antagonistic to man's need for religion." HOW JESUS HEALS OUR MINDS TODAY-1941

David Seabury on how to overcome neurotic anxiety

.” Every time you are in a situation that tempts you to worry substitute positive, wholesome images instead, and in time the very situation that acted as a trigger on your anxiety will become a conditioned stimulus for calm, collected, creative thought.”

I have been excited a good many years now over what seems to me a most amazing fact. The discovery of how to control matter, to make physical life easier, came to mankind slowly. Insight into how a like transformation may take place in a man’s handling of his own life has come in one generation. Most people are not yet aware of it. Few realize what has been happening, for millions are toiling greedily and fighting bitterly everywhere. They know that science and mechanics have made over the face of the earth. They do not know that psychology and its sister sciences are making a like change for man’s handling of his own nature.Build Your Own Future 1938

Give yourself, if you wish to get others. -- David Seabury

Four Fold Gospel

2012-01-16T18:56:00.002-05:00

Albert Benjamin "A.B." Simpson (1843 –1919) was a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an evangelical Protestant denomination with an emphasis on global evangelism. Simpson was born in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

The young Albert was raised in a strict Calvinistic Scottish Presbyterian and Puritan tradition. His conversion of faith began under the ministry of Henry Grattan Guinness, a visiting evangelist from Ireland during the revival of 1859. Simpson spent some time in the Chatham, Ontario area, and received his theological training in Toronto at Knox College, University of Toronto. After graduating in 1865, Simpson was subsequently ordained in the Canada Presbyterian Church, the largest of the Presbyterian groups in Canada that merged after his departure for the United States. At age 21, he accepted a call to the large Knox Presbyterian Church (closed in 1971) in nearby Hamilton, Ontario.
In December 1873, at age 30, Simpson left Canada and assumed the pulpit of the largest Presbyterian church in Louisville, Kentucky, the Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church. It was in Louisville that he first conceived of preaching the gospel to the common man by building a simple tabernacle structure for that purpose. Despite his success at the Chestnut Street Church, Simpson was frustrated by their reluctance to embrace this burden for wider evangelistic endeavor.
In 1880, Simpson was called to the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church in New York City where he immediately began reaching out to the world with the gospel. Beside active evangelistic work in the church, he published a missionary journal, The Gospel in All Lands, the first missionary journal with pictures. Simpson also founded and began publishing an illustrated magazine entitled The Word, Work, and World. By 1911, this magazine became known as The Alliance Weekly, then Alliance Life, and is now called a.life. It is the official publication of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, in the USA and Canada.

By 1881, after only two fruitful years at Thirteenth Presbyterian, he resigned in order to begin an independent gospel ministry to the many new immigrants and the neglected masses of New York City. Simpson began informal training classes in 1882 in order to reach "the neglected peoples of the world with the neglected resources of the church". By 1883, a formal program was in place and ministers and missionaries were being trained in a multi-cultural context (This school was the beginning of Nyack College and Alliance Theological Seminary). In 1889, Simpson and his church family moved into their new home at the corner of 44th St. and 8th Av. called the New York Tabernacle. This became the base not only of his ministry of evangelism in the city but also of his growing work of worldwide missions.
Simpson's disciplined upbringing and his natural genius made him a most effective communicator of the Word of God. His preaching brought great blessing and converts wherever he preached and his unique gospel of Jesus became known as the Four Fold Gospel: "Jesus our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King". The Four Fold Gospel is symbolized in the logo of the C&MA : the Cross, the Laver, the Pitcher and the Crown. He came to his special emphasis in ministry through his absolute Christ-centeredness in doctrine and experience.
Plagued by illness for much of his life since childhood, Simpson experienced divine healing after understanding it to be part of the blessing of abiding in Christ as Life and healing. He emphasized healing in his Four Fold Gospel and usually devoted one meeting a week for teaching, testimonies and prayer on these lines. Although such teaching isolated him (and the C&MA) from the mainline churches that either did not emphasize or outright rejected healing, Simpson's uncompromising trust in the Word and power of God kept him steadily forging ahead of his times without criticism or rancor with those who disagreed.
Simpson’s heart for evangelism was to become the driving force behind the creation of the C&MA. Initially, the Christian and Missionary Alliance was not founded as a denomination, but as an organized movement of world evangelism. Today, the C&MA plays a leadership role in global evangelism.
In his 1890 book, A Larger Christian Life, Simpson discussed his vision for the church:
“A plan for a Christian church that is much more than an association of congenial friends to listen once a week to an intellectual discourse and musical entertainment and carry on by proxy a mechanism of Christian work; but rather a church that can be at once the mother and home of every form of help and blessing which Jesus came to give to lost and suffering men, the birthplace and the home of souls, the fountain of healing and cleansing, the sheltering home for the orphan and distressed, the school for the culture and training of God's children, the armory where they are equipped for the battle of the Lord and the army which fights those battles in His name. Such a center of population in this sad and sinful world!”

A number of C&MA churches bear Simpson's name, as does
Simpson University in Redding, California,
the Albert B. Simpson school in Lima, Peru and
the A. B. Simpson Alliance School in Zamboanga City, Philippines.

A.B. Simpson and his wife, Margaret, are buried on the Rockland County Campus of Nyack College in Nyack, New York.

Self-enquiry

2012-01-16T18:52:00.004-05:00

Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879 – 1950), born Venkataraman Iyer, was a Hindu spiritual master ("jnani"). He was born to a Tamil-speaking Brahmin family in Tiruchuzhi, Tamil Nadu. After experiencing at age 16 what he later described as liberation (moksha), he left home for Arunachala, a mountain considered sacred by Hindus. He lived at the mountain for the rest of his life. Although born a Brahmin, he declared himself an "Atiasrami", a Sastraic state of non-attachment to anything in life and beyond all caste restrictions. The ashram that grew around him, Sri Ramana Ashram, is situated at the foothill of Arunchala, to the west to the pilgrimage town of Tiruvannamalai.
Sri Ramana Maharshi maintained that the purest form of his teachings was the powerful silence which radiated from his presence and quieted the minds of those attuned to it. He gave verbal teachings only for the benefit of those who could not understand his silence (or, perhaps, could not understand how to attain the silent state). His verbal teachings were said to flow from his direct experience of Atman as the only existing reality. When asked for advice, he recommended self-enquiry as the fastest path to moksha. Though his primary teaching is associated with Non-dualism, Advaita Vedanta, and Jnana yoga, he recommended Bhakt[1]i to those he saw were fit for it, and gave his approval to a variety of paths and practices.
[1]In Hinduism Bhakti is religious devotion in the form of active involvement of a devotee in worship of the divine. Within monotheistic Hinduism, it is the love felt by the worshipper towards the personal God, a concept expressed in Hindu theology as Svayam Bhagavan.

The “Calamity”

2012-01-16T18:42:00.003-05:00

Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti ( 1918 – 2007 ), known as U.G. Krishnamurti, or just U.G., was an Indian thinker who said that there is no "enlightenment".
Although necessary for day to day functioning of the individual, in terms of the Ultimate Reality or Truth he rejected the very basis of thought and in doing so negated all systems of thought and knowledge in reference to It.

"Tell them that there is nothing to understand."

In 1939, at age 21, U.G. met with renowned spiritual teacher Ramana Maharshi. U.G. related that he asked Ramana, "This thing called moksha, can you give it to me?" – to which Ramana Maharshi purportedly replied, "I can give it, but can you take it?". This answer completely altered U.G.'s perceptions of the "spiritual path" and its practitioners, and he never again sought the counsel of "those religious people". Later U.G. would say that Maharshi's answer – which he perceived as "arrogant" – put him "back on track".
From 1947 to 1953, U.G. regularly attended talks given by Jiddu Krishnamurti in Madras, India, eventually beginning a direct dialogue with him in 1953.
In 1967, U.G. was again concerned with the subject of enlightenment, wanting to know what that state was, which sages such as Siddhārtha Gautama purportedly attained. Hearing that Jiddu Krishnamurti was giving a talk in Saanen, U.G. decided to attend. During the talk, Jiddu was describing his own state and U.G. thought that it referred to him (U.G.). He explained it as follows:

“When I Iistened to him, something funny happened to me – a peculiar kind of feeling that he was describing my state and not his state. Why did I want to know his state? He was describing something, some movements, some awareness, some silence – "In that silence there is no mind; there is action" – all kinds of things. So, I am in that state. What the hell have I been doing these thirty or forty years, listening to all these people and struggling, wanting to understand his state or the state of somebody else, Buddha or Jesus? I am in that state. Now I am in that state. So, then I walked out of the tent and never looked back.”

He continues:
“Then – very strange – that question "What is that state?" transformed itself into another question "How do I know that I am in that state, the state of Buddha, the state I very much wanted and demanded from everybody? I am in that state, but how do I know?"”

The next day U.G. was again pondering the question "How do I know I am in that state?" with no answer forthcoming. He later recounted that on suddenly realizing the question had no answer, there was an unexpected physical, as well as psychological, reaction. It seemed to him like "a sudden explosion inside, blasting, as it were, every cell, every nerve and every gland in my body." Afterwards, he started experiencing what he called "the calamity", a series of bizarre physiological transformations that took place over the course of a week, affecting each one of his senses, and finally resulting in a deathlike experience. He described it this way:

“I call it calamity because from the point of view of one who thinks this is something fantastic, blissful and full of beatitude, love, or ecstasy, this is physical torture; this is a calamity from that point of view. Not a calamity to me but a calamity to those who have an image that something marvelous is going to happen.”

Upon the eighth day:

“Then, on the eighth day I was sitting on the sofa and suddenly there was an outburst of tremendous energy – tremendous energy shaking the whole body, and along with the body, the sofa, the chalet and the whole universe, as it were – shaking, vibrating. You can't create that movement at all. It was sudden. Whether it was coming from outside or inside, from below or above, I don't know – I couldn't locate the spot; it was all over. It lasted for hours and hours. I couldn't bear it but there was nothing I could do to stop it; there was a total helplessness. This went on and on, day after day, day after day.”

“The energy that is operating there does not feel the limitations of the body; it is not interested; it has its own momentum. It is a very painful thing. It is not that ecstatic, blissful beatitude and all that rubbish – stuff and nonsense! – it is really a painful thing.”

U.G. could not, and did not, explain the provenance of the calamity experiences. In response to questions, he maintained that it happened "in spite of" his pre-occupation with – and search for – enlightenment. He also maintained that the calamity had nothing to do with his life up to that point, or with his upbringing. Several times he described the calamity happening to him as a matter of chance, and he insisted that he could not possibly, in any way, impart that experience to anybody else.
Describing his post-calamity life, he claimed to be functioning permanently in what he called "the natural state":

A state of spontaneous, purely physical, sensory existence, characterized by discontinuity – though not absence – of thought.

Life a Ministry

2012-01-15T17:07:00.004-05:00

Oh, how the human intellect in its ignorance and egotism has twisted and turned and distorted the plain, simple words of the Master in order to make them conform to its darkened understanding!

Truly "the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not."

. . .

Marvelous way, is it not, in which the creature is to be made perfect and known and loved and great: simply letting God's will be done in us and in our circumstances and surroundings? Yet heretofore one's saying, "Thy will be done," has been associated in mind only with death and suffering and failure, and with a forced submission to these un-Godlike conditions, as though God were the author of them. "God is not a God of confusion, but of peace." Oh, how in our ignorance we have mistaken and misunderstood God, in consequence of which we are today pygmies when He wanted to make us giants in love and health and power by manifesting more of Himself through us! We would not let Him, because we have been afraid to say, "Have Thy way in me; manifest Thyself through me as Thou wilt"

. . .

Health is more life. Drugs will not give life. Travel and change of scene, so often resorted to in illness of mind and body, will not give life except in so far as they tend to relax the tense, rigid mind and body of man and permit God — who is always in process of outgoing as life toward us His children — to flow in to fill the lack. We do not have to beseech God. Life more abundant rushes into the souls and bodies of men, as air does into a vacuum, the moment they learn how consciously to relax and, turning toward God, let it.
People who are persistently ill or unsuccessful in any way say they are tired of it all and want to die. They know not what they say. They do not understand. It is not death they want but more life. This breath of the Almighty is to us the only health and strength, the only power and success of either mind or body.

. . .

What then are we to do?

Change our minds. Turn around. If through ignorance of the only and unfailing source of all life we have turned our backs upon God and our faces toward human helps, like drugs, change of environment, and the like, let us halt, face about!

. . .

The inner light comes to “every man, coming into the world"; but we may close ourselves to this light either through ignorance or willfullness — the result is the same — and live in darkness. The light within every man goes right on shining just the same, whether he accepts it or rejects it. 'The light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not." In this case the light is shut off through ignorance. "'And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light [free will], lest his works should be reproved [or detected}." Thus is the light voluntarily or willfully shut out, again as a matter of man's choice. Both conditions are dependent on the mental attitude of man. In the first instance he is not conscious that there is light within himself: "the darkness apprehended it not." In the second instance he stubbornly refuses to come to the light because he "hateth the light."

. . .

Life a Ministry

LOOKED AT from a purely commercial standpoint, the life of Jesus Christ was a failure. His place in the world was obscure, His occupation a humble one. The work of His hands commanded only the usual recompense. From the world's point of view His contribution was merely that of an average man.

Even after His public life began He seemingly failed just as signally as before. He made Himself of no reputation among men. In the field where His greatest visible success lay, the delivering of men from sorrow and trouble, He sometimes failed. "He saved others; himself he cannot save," they cried when deriding Him. All the way to His ignominious death He stood before self-satisfied men, chief priests and Pharisees, as a failure. Why? Because He and these men were living from entirely different standpoints. Men were living largely from the external; Jesus was living from within. Men were reckoning success then as the world reckons success today, largely in terms of numbers and figures and the possession of external things.

After two thousand years we can see that the life of Jesus Christ, lived so obscurely, so unostentatiously, really was not the failure that it seemed; that He was living a life that in the long run was the only successful one. For today, when His contemporaries have passed away and are forgotten. His life stands forth among men and within men as the inspiration of all love and all goodness, the inspiration of all success.

. . .

God gives without thought or hope of return. So do we as soon as we become conscious of an indwelling Christ; we cease any longer to expect or desire to be ministered unto.

If we would live the life of real success, real joy, real Christlikeness, we must keep the current turned to flow from within outward instead of in the opposite direction.

. . .

Christ is the light of the world. Christ is within us. This light is ever fed from the great fountain of all light, the Father in Him: "I in them, and thou in me." God made each one of US to be a radiating center, constantly shining outward toward others in a spirit of ministry and giving. If you draw out your soul to satisfy the afflicted, then your light will break forth as the morning and your darkness will be as the noonday (See Isa. 58:8-10); for I, very Christ, who have come to abide within you, I am the light of the world, and when anyone draws out his soul he draws Me out.

But if you put a bushel over your light by harboring the thought of not letting your neighbor receive from you anything for which he makes no return, you will simply find yourself walking in the darkness. 'If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness." As Christian Gellert said,

“whoever in the darkness lighteth another with this lamp [Christ] lighteth himself also; and the light is not of ourselves, it is of Him who appointeth the suns in their courses."

God a Present Help
by H. Emilie Cady
was first published in 1938.

Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.

2012-01-15T17:03:00.002-05:00

Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715 –1769) was a German poet, one of the forerunners of the golden age of German literature.
He entered Leipzig University in 1734 as a student of theology, and completed his studies in 1739. He established himself in 1745 as Privatdozent* in philosophy at the university of Leipzig, lectured on poetry, rhetoric and literary style with much success.

The esteem and veneration in which Gellert was held by the students, and indeed by persons in all classes of society, was unbounded, and yet due perhaps less to his unrivalled popularity as a lecturer and writer than to his personal character. He was the noblest and most amiable of men, generous, tender-hearted and of unaffected piety and humility. He wrote in order to raise the religious and moral character of the people, and to this end employed language which, though at times prolix, was always correct and clear.
*Privatdozent (abbreviated PD, P.D. or Priv.-Doz.) or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications (doctorate and habilitation) to become a tenured university professor.

Happy the man who knows his duties!
- Christian Furchtegott Gellert

SCMP-III ( Pray as if ye had already received.)

2012-01-13T15:55:00.002-05:00

I remember reading the “The Isaiah Effect” years ago. At the time I was in awe. But then I discovered true prayer was already spelled out in the New Testament.

As Hopkins wrote in SCMP:

In the Buddhist temples they have been striking sounding rims of great bells for generations, crying, "0 let the good come." There is such a pathetic intimation in this prayer that the good is not already here that it is no wonder the good has never appeared in the way they wish. They ought to name in certainty what good is already here. That will cause the good to appear, for indeed health is already in our midst, so we may say it is well. The good is in our affairs, and if we tell the truth about them, it will exhibit. We make nothing by our words; we only exhibit what is already made. Therefore, "Pray as if ye had already received." Of course we have already received, and why should we not be truthful and say so? Through truth the good is visible. Good waits for truth. Good will not show you good health, good strength, good provisions, good life, except through the glass of truth. Do not expect answers to begging prayers.

Look over all the answered prayers you have ever heard of and see how suddenly the beseeching hearts stopped and said "Thy will be done." The will of God is for health, for life, for prosperity, for peace, for friends, and peace in the home. So, when they ceased begging they were one with the Divine will and it was so their will that their prayer that moment was the kind of which Jesus spoke.

Perhaps we’ve been making contact the wrong way.

Loose Him and Let Him Go

2012-01-11T15:57:00.002-05:00

A case was that of a dear young friend who had been placed in my care. He was just entering on a life of drinking and dissipation. There were weeks of awful anxiety, as I saw him drinking day by day, before I reached the place where I could "loose him, and let him go." When I did reach that place and stood there steadfastly (in spite of appearances), it required only a few hours to see him so fully healed that although forty years have passed, he has yet to touch a drop of liquor or indulge in any form of dissipation since that time. The lesson Loose Him and Let Him Go was then written.

The moment we believe something to be true we begin to try to convert others to our belief. In our eagerness we forget that Truth is kaleidoscopic in its forms. We learn to say, with some degree of realization, "God worketh in me to will and to work for His good pleasure," but we quite forget that the same God is working equally in our brother "to will and to work."
Among the wise sayings of the ancient philosopher, Epictetus, we find these words: "Does any one bathe hastily? Do not say that he does it ill, but hastily. Does any one drink much wine? Do not say that he does ill, but that he drinks a great deal. For unless you perfectly understand his motives, how should you know if he acts ill? Thus you will not risk yielding to any appearances but such as you fully comprehend."
Every person has an inherent right to freedom of choice, a right to live his life in his own way. One of the surest signs that a person is no longer in bondage himself is his willingness to give others their freedom, to allow others the privilege of seeking and finding God as they will.Our great basic statement is "All is good, because all is God." In other words, God Is the only intelligence, the only life at the center of every form of existing life. We say that we believe the highest manifestation of God is in man; that God ever abides at the center of man, of all mankind, and is always in process of manifesting more and more of Himself, pure intelligence, perfect love, through man's consciousness until man comes to be consciously one with the Father in all things.
Do you really believe this fundamental statement? If you do believe it, where is there any cause for the anxiety that you feel about your loved ones who are not, as you say, "in the Truth"? If we truly believed that "all is good," we should not be troubled about those who apparently are going all wrong. They may be going wrong according to our limited conception of right and wrong, but my brother, my sister, you are not your brother's keeper. He that will redeem, aye! He that has already redeemed your brother, lives within Him. The Christ, who ever loves at the center of every soul, "will neither slumber nor sleep." God works, or as the original has it, "God is working effectually to perform" in your brother, to bring him to himself just as much as He is working in you and in me. We have absolutely nothing to fear about the eventual success of this worker. God never fails.
You have perhaps come to the flowering or the fruiting season, in your growth out of the darkness of sense belief into the light of spiritual understanding. It is blessed and beautiful to be where you are, and it is hard to human belief to see those whom you love just barely showing their heads above the earth of sin and mistake, or harder still to see them daily going deeper into the earth of an animal life, farther away from your conception of the good than ever before.
But just here is the place for us to cling faithfully and trustingly to our basic statement. "In hope were we saved; but hope that is seen is not hope," said Paul. Faith is not sight. Is our basic statement, "All is good," founded on Principle or on evidence of the senses? If on Principle, then it is immutable, unchangeable. And God is just as surely abiding at the center of your loved husband or son, working in him, when he is drinking, or going down, as when he is coming up.
God is just as much the life of the seed when it is being planted in the dark earth, where, to the human sense, it is dead and all is lost, as He is the life of the new leaf which a few days later bursts into sight, In fact it is because God is there at the center, working in the stillness, unseen, and not at all because of the fussy, noisy outside work that you and I do, that the seed comes forth into newness of life.
"Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit."
Thus it would seem that the dying, the failure, the going down of the old is a necessary step in all true salvation. Every man must go down till he strikes his own level, his own self, before there can be any real growth. We may seem to hold another up for a while, but eventually he must walk alone. The time of his walking alone with his own indwelling Christ, his own true self, will depend largely on our letting go of him. No one will seek anything higher than he is today, until he feels the need of something higher. Your dear ones must have the liberty to live out their own lives, and you must let them, or else you are the one who puts off the day of their salvation .
"But," says someone whose heart is aching over the error ways of a loved one, "should you not help anyone? Should you not run after him, and urge him continually to turn into the right way?" Yes and no. I gladly, joyfully help anyone when he wants help, but I could not urge anyone to leave his own light and walk by my light. Nor would I, like an overfond mother, pick up another and try to carry him in my arms by continually "treating" him.
A mother may--and sometimes does, mentally and morally, if not physically--through her false conception of love, carry her child until he is twenty years old, lest he, not knowing how to walk, fall and bump his nose a few times. But if she does this until he is a grown man, what will he do? He will turn and rend her, because she has stolen from him his inherent right to become a strong, self-reliant man. She has interposed herself between him and the power within him that was waiting, from his birth, to be strength and sufficiency for him in all things. She should have placed him on his own feet, made him know that there was something in himself that could stand, encouraged and steadied him, and so helped him to be self-reliant and independent.Hundreds of anxious fathers and mothers, sisters and wives say, "Ah! but I love this one so I cannot stand still and see him rushing on to an inevitable suffering."
Yes, you love him. But I tell you that it takes an infinitely greater, more God-like love to stand still and see your child burn his hand a little, that he may gain self-knowledge, than it does to be a bond-slave to him, ever on the alert to prevent the possibility of his learning through a little suffering. Are you equal to this larger love--to the love that does not hold itself on the qui vive to interpose its nagging bodily presence between the dear ones and their own indwelling Lord who is with them "always"? Having come yourself to a knowledge of the mighty truth that "God is all and in all," have you the moral courage to "be still, and know"; to take off all restrictions and rules from others, and to let the God within them, each one, grow them as He will; and, trusting Him to do it in the right way, keep yourself from all anxiety in the matter?
When Jesus preached of a glorious freedom from suffering, through a "kingdom . . . within," He often interspersed His preaching with the words, "He that hath ears, let him hear." In other words, the Gospel message of deliverance is for all who are ready for it. Let him who has come to where he wants it, take it.
No one has any right to coerce another to accept his ideal. Every person has a right to keep his own ideal until he desires to change it.
God is leading your friend by a way you do not and cannot know. It is a safe and sure way; it is the shortest and only way. It is the Christ way; the within way, "I am the door," says the Christ within every man's own soul. "If any man enter in, [that is, by way of the Christ in himself] he shall be saved."
Now you are trying to have your friend enter in through your door. He must enter in through his own Christ, his own desire, and you must let him alone to the workings of that indwelling One, if you want him to manifest good.
"But," you say, "is there nothing I can do when I see my husband, brother, friend, going down?"
Yes, there is something you can do, and a very effectual something, too.
"The sword of the Spirit . . . is the word of God." You can, whenever you think of your friend, speak the word of freedom to him. You can always and in all ways "Loose him, and let him go," not forgetting that the letting him go is as important as the loosing him. You can tell him mentally that Christ lives within him and makes him free, forever free; tell him that he manifests the Holy One wherever he goes and at all times, for there Is nothing else to manifest. And then you see to it that you do not recognize any other manifestation than the good in him.
It is written, "Whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." Will you invariably speak the word of remission or loosing to your erring ones? Or will you bind them closer, tighter in the bondage that is breaking your own heart, by speaking the word of retention to them continually?
If you really want your friends to be free, there is but one way for you: Loose them and let them go. For it is the promise of the Father, through the Son, that "Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Excerpt from HOW I USED TRUTH by H. Emilie Cady [1916]

There was a discussion on Linkedin about cutting chords. We`re spirit (i.e. mind), not bodies so the visualizing of cutting chords is ceremonial and psychological only.

The Spoken Word

2012-01-11T15:20:00.003-05:00

There are three realms in the universe: the spiritual, the mental or psychic, and the physical or material. These three, while in a way distinct, are so blended into one that it is difficult to know where one ends and another begins. All created things have Spirit, soul, and body. All things that we desire are now in being in the spiritual or invisible. But, as someone has said, thought and the spoken word stand between the invisible and the visible. By the action of these two--thought and the spoken word--is the invisible made visible.

When we desire anything--I use this word "anything" advisedly, for did not the Master in divine things say, "Whatsoever ye pray and ask for," "If ye shall ask anything"--we must take our thought entirely off the visible world and center it on God. We begin, as God began in creation, by speaking out into this formless substance all about us with faith and power, "Let there be so and so [whatever we want]. Let it come forth into manifestation here and now. It does come forth by the power of my word. It is done; it is manifest." We continue this with vehemence a few moments and then let go of it. This should be repeated with firmness and regularity and definite persistence, at least in the morning and in the evening. Continue it, absolutely regardless of any evidence or want of evidence. Faith takes hold of the substance of the things hoped for and brings into evidence the things not seen.

The moment one takes cognizance of circumstances, that moment he lets go of faith. Our spoken word first hammers the thing desired into shape. Our continued spoken word brings this shaped substance forth and clothes it with a visible body. The first action brings that which is desired from the formless toward the external as far as the psychic; the continued action brings it forth still farther and clothes it with visible form or material body.

This was illustrated to the writer, a few years ago. A woman, Miss C____, had been for days vigorously "speaking the word" out into the great universe of substance, for something she much desired. She had no confidante and recognized no human help.
One day she wrote an ordinary business letter to a friend in the country. This friend, on receipt of the letter, immediately replied, saying: "What is this strange thing about this letter of yours? When I took it from the post office it had the appearance to me of being covered with so and so [the very thing which the writer had been shaping in the invisible by her spoken word]. I opened the letter," she continued, "and for some minutes the opened letter took the form, to my sight, of a 'horn of plenty,' pouring out in unlimited quantity this same thing. Have I gone crazy, Or what does it mean?"

Do you not see? The word spoken by Miss C____, alone in the silence of her own room, had shaped and brought forth toward the external, as far as the psychic realm, the thing desired. The vibrations of her thought had permeated, all unknown to her, everything that she had touched. The friend, having some psychic power developed, saw, plainly surrounding this letter, the shape that Miss C____ had created, though it was yet invisible to the natural eye. It is needless to say that the continued word very soon brought this shape forth another step into the visible world as a solid manifestation of exactly what Miss C____ desired.

In this process, there are two conditions that must be carefully observed.

One is, do not talk with anyone about what you are doing. Talk scatters the precious divine substance; what we want to do is focus it. Needless talk diffuses and wastes one's power. One might as well pierce full of holes the boiler of a steam engine, letting the steam ooze at dozens of holes, and then expect to have enough power in the engine to draw the train. It is impossible both to diffuse and to focus at the same time.

The other important condition to observe is to continue with the spoken word. "Let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."

Excerpt from HOW I USED TRUTH by H. Emilie Cady [1916],

The absolute truth is

2012-01-11T15:05:00.003-05:00

There is a great difference between a Christian life and a Christ life. To live a Christian life is to follow the teachings of Jesus, with the thought that God and Christ are wholly outside of man, to be called on but not always to answer. To live a Christ life is to follow Jesus' teachings in the knowledge that God's indwelling presence, which is always life, love, and power within us, is now ready and waiting to flow forth abundantly, aye, lavishly into our consciousness and through us to others, the moment we open ourselves to it and trustfully expect it. One is a following after Christ, which is beautiful and good so far is it goes, but is always very imperfect; the other is a letting Christ, the Perfect Son of God, be manifested through us. One is an expecting to be saved sometime from sin, sickness, and trouble; the other is a knowing that we are, in reality, saved now from all these errors by the indwelling Christ, and by faith affirming it until the evidence is manifested in our body.
If, then, you are manifesting sickness, you are to ignore the seeming--which is the external, or circumference of the pool where the water is stagnant and the scum has risen--and, speaking from the center of your being, say: "This body is the temple of the living God; the Lord is now in His holy temple; Christ in me is my life; Christ is my health; Christ is my strength; Christ is perfect. Therefore, I am now perfect, because He dwelleth in me as perfect life, health, strength." Say these words with all earnestness, trying to realize what you are saying, and almost immediately the perennial fountain of life at the center of your being will begin to bubble up and continue with rapidly increasing activity, until new life will radiate through pain, sickness, sores, all diseases, to the surface, and your body will show forth the perfect life of Christ.
Suppose it is money that you need. Take the thought, "Christ is my abundant supply. He is here within me now, and greatly desires to manifest Himself as my supply. His desires are fulfilled now." Do not let your thoughts run off into how He is going to do it, but just hold steadily to the thought of the supply here and now, taking your eyes off all other sources, and He will surely honor your faith by manifesting Himself as your supply a hundredfold more abundantly than you have asked or thought. So also with "Whatsoever things ye pray and ask for." But remember the earnest words of James the apostle: "He that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord."
This matter of trusting the Christ within to do all things for us--realizing that we are one with Him and that to Him is given all power--is not something that comes to any of us spontaneously. It comes by persistent effort on our part. We begin by determining that we will trust Him as our present deliverance, as our health, our riches, our wisdom, our all, and we keep on by a labored effort, until we form a kind of spiritual habit. No habit bursts full-grown into our life, but every one comes from a succession of little acts.
. . . Finding the Christ in Ourselves
THERE IS A straight white line of absolute Truth upon which each one must walk if he would have demonstration. The slightest swerving in either direction from this line results in non-demonstration, no matter how earnest or intense one may be.
The line is this: There is only God; all seeming else is a lie.
We talk largely about Truth, and quote with ease and alacrity the words of the Master, "The truth shall make you free." Free from what? Free from sickness, sorrow, weakness, fear, poverty. We claim to know the Truth, but the question to be driven right home is, are we free from these undesirable things? And if not, why not?
Let us get right down to a good, hardpan, practical basis about this matter.
We talk much about the omnipresence of God. In fact, this is one of the basic statements upon which rests the so-called New Thought. "God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient." When I was a child in spiritual things, I thought as a child and understood as a child. I believed that God was here, there, and everywhere, within hailing distance of every human being, no matter whether under the sea or on the mountain top, in prison or outside, in the sick chamber or at the wedding feast. In any and all places He was so near that in an instant He could be summoned to help. To me this was God's omnipresence. Then His omnipotence meant to me that while sickness and poverty, sorrow, the evil tongue of jealousy or slander, and so forth, had great power to make one suffer, God had greater power. I believed that if He were called on to help us, He surely would do it, but it would be after a fierce and prolonged combat between the two powers of good and evil, or of God and trouble. (Perhaps Horatio Dresser was concerned whether the New Thought churches would continue to teach the Christ life as opposed the Christian Life.)
The absolute truth is there is no real lack anywhere, but a waiting abundance of every kind of good that man call possibly desire or conceive of. Stop believing the lie. Stop speaking it. Speak the Truth. It is the spoken Truth that makes manifest.
In the domain of Spirit there is neither time nor space. What is to be and already is must be spoken into visibility. Practice thinking and realizing omnipresence, that is, practice realizing that all good that you desire is here now, all-present; it is not apart from you and its coming to you does not require time. There is no time or space.
There is not God and--a body.
There is not God and--circumstance.
There is not God and--any sort of trouble.
There is only God, through and through and through all things, in our body, in our seemingly empty purses, in all our circumstances, just waiting as invisible Spirit substance, for us to recognize and acknowledge Him, and Him only, in order to become visible. All else is a lie.
God is.
. . . Unadulterated Truth

There must be an incoming of this divine Son of God to our conscious mind. The incoming will depend on our faithfulness in acknowledging the Source and affirming its manifestation. We cannot idly drift into it. We must speak the words of Truth before Truth will become manifest.
. . . If Thou Knewest
All condemnation springs from looking at personality.
We are one always and forever, whether we realize it or not.
. . . Neither Do I Condemn Thee
Do you fear to break loose from teachers, from human helps? Fear not. Trust to the great and mighty One that is in you and is limitless to manifest Himself as Truth to you and through you. There will be no failure, no mistake. Spend some time daily alone with the Creator of the universe. In no other way will you ever come into the realization that you desire. Learn to sever yourself from those around you. Practice this, and soon you can be as much alone with God in the street or in a crowded room, as you could be in the wilds of a desert. A little book called, "The Practice of the Presence of God," by Brother Lawrence, tells how he, for years, kept himself consciously in the very glory of divine Presence, even while at the most humble daily tasks, by always keeping the thought. "I am in His presence." All things that were not divine in the man died out, and dropped away, not because he fought them or resisted the uprising of the natural man, but because he persistently practiced the Presence (or thought of the Presence) of God, and in that Presence all other things melted away like snow before a spring sun.
We do not have, by some supreme effort, to draw this Mind into us, but simply to let it come into us. Our part is to take the attitude consciously of receiving, remembering first to enter the "inner chamber" of our own soul, and to shut the door on all thought but that of divine Presence.
. . . Oneness with God
Excerpts from HOW I USED TRUTH by H. Emilie Cady [1916], Chapters follow text.
http://divinelibrary.org/cadyEmilie/howIusedTheTruth/

SCMP-II (HOW I USED TRUTH)

2012-01-09T17:43:00.003-05:00

Perhaps, the best demonstration of the principles of SCMP come from Cady herself.

HOW I USED TRUTH
by H. Emilie Cady
1916.

The following are excerpts of a letter written by H. Emilie Cady to Lowell Fillmore.
Almost every one of the simply written articles in How I Used Truth was born out of the travail of my soul after I had been weeks, months, sometimes years, trying by affirmations, by claiming the promises of Jesus, and by otherwise faithfully using all of the knowledge of Truth that I then possessed to secure deliverance for myself or others from some distressing bondage that thus far had defied all human help.

One of these cases was that of my own old father, who, though perfectly innocent, had been kept in exile for five years; put there by the wicked machinations of another man. No process of law that I had invoked, no human help, not even the prayers that I had offered had seemed to avail for his deliverance. One day while sitting alone in my room, my hands busy with other things, my heart cried out, "O God, stretch forth Thy hand and deliver!" Instantly the answer came "I have no hands but human hands. Your hand is my hand; stretch it forth spiritually and give whatsoever you will to whomsoever you will, and I will establish it."

Unquestioningly I obeyed. From that moment, without any further external help or striving, the way of his release was opened ahead of us more rapidly almost than we could step into it. Within a few days my dear father came home a free man, justified, exonerated, both publicly and privately, beyond anything we could have asked or thought.* Then I wrote God's Hand.

*The case was written up by all the papers in the country in which my father resided as well as in the New York Sun. His innocence was clearly established. Once again he sat happily under the trees in his own dooryard and received congratulations. Delegation after delegation came from miles and miles around; friends who had known him from childhood came to assure him that his long life of uprightness had, in their minds, never been questioned. He was seventy-five years of age and, being an honest man, had felt the disgrace deeply. These stanch friends had been unable to help until God moved. The faith of many was renewed by his exoneration.

Another case was that of a dear young friend who had been placed in my care. He was just entering on a life of drinking and dissipation. There were weeks of awful anxiety, as I saw him drinking day by day, before I reached the place where I could "loose him, and let him go." When I did reach that place and stood there steadfastly (in spite of appearances), it required only a few hours to see him so fully healed that although forty years have passed, he has yet to touch a drop of liquor or indulge in any form of dissipation since that time. The lesson Loose Him and Let Him Go was then written.

Then came the question of money supply. I had a good profession with plenty of patients paying their bills monthly. But there were also other people coming to me daily for help, people whose visible means of support were gone. These cases of lack, as they presented themselves to me, were like cases of gnawing cancer or painful rheumatism. Therefore, there must be a way out through Truth, and i must find it. As always, instead of rushing to others for help in these tight places, I stayed at home within my own soul and asked God to show me the way. He did. He gave me the clear vision of Himself as All-Sufffciency in All Things ; and then He said: "Now prove it, so that you can be of real help to the hundreds who do not have a profession or business on which to depend." From that day on, no ministry or work of any kind was ever done by me for "pay." No monthly bills were sent, no office charges made. I saw plainly that I must be working as God works, without expectation or thought of return. Free gift.

For more than two years I worked at this problem, never letting a human being know what I was trying to prove, for had He not said to me, "Prove me now herewith . . . if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it?"

More than once in the ongoing the body was faint for want of food, and yet, so sure was I of what God had shown me that day after day I taught cheerfully and confidently to those who came to my office the Truth of God as the substance of all supply--and there were many in those days. At the end of two years of apparent failure I suddenly felt that I could not endure the privation any longer. Again, in near desperation from deferred hope of success, I went direct to God and cried Out: "Why, why this failure! You told me in the vision that if I would give up the old way and trust to You alone, You would prove to me Your sufficiency. Why have You failed to do it?"

His answer came flashing back in these words: "God said, Let there be light: and there was light." It was all the answer He gave. At the moment I did not understand. I kept repeating it again and again, the words God said becoming more and more emphasized, until at last they were followed by the words "Without him [the Word] was not anything made that hath been made." That was all I needed. I saw plainly that while I had, for two years, hopefully and happily gone on enduring hardships believing that God would supply, I had not once spoken the word "it is done. God is now manifested as my supply."

Believe me, that day I spoke the word of my deliverance. Suffice it to say that the supply problem was ended that day for all time and has never entered my life or mind since. This is the why of the article The Spoken Word.

I should like to give one more "Why" of How I Used Truth.

After days of excruciating pain from a badly sprained ankle, the ankle became enormously swollen, and it was impossible for me to attend to my professional work as an active medical practitioner. Ordinary affirmations of Truth were entirely ineffectual, and I soon struck out for the very highest statement of Truth that I could formulate. It was this: There is only God; all else is a lie. I vehemently affirmed it and steadfastly stuck to it. In twenty-four hours all pain and swelling--in fact, the entire "lie"--had disappeared. Out of this experience I wrote Unadulterated Truth.

DEDICATED
TO THE MANY LOVING FRIENDS ALL OVER THE WORLD WHO HAVE BEEN CHEERED AND HELPED BY THESE SIMPLE MESSAGES
-H.E.C.

SCMP-I

2012-01-09T13:47:00.007-05:00

Scientific Christian Mental Practice (SCMP) is refreshing. If only to get an idea of what Nona Brooks Myrtle Fillmore and others of the Mental Cure or New Thought era were taught, either by Emma Curtis Hopkins or representatives of her.

At church they talked of an Omnipresent God but never the Truth. I’ve studied that on my own. And in my journey I discovered what “What the Bleep”, “The Secret” and “The Celestine Prophecy” had to do with the Truth. Absolutely nothing.

Her 1st six lessons related to the ego and the Christ within, the power of your own mind.
The latter 6 lessons related to your relations in the world, your surroundings.

Lesson1.
The 1st lesson in Truth is the word God.
By mind alone we are taught we are to live and be strong.
By mind alone we are supported and defended.

The Truth is that Good is God., and God is omnipresent and omnipotent, thus the Good is omnipotent.
IT follows there is no apartness.

`There is good for me and I ought to have it.`
`There is good for everyone and everyone ought to have it.``
I and the Father are ONE.

Lesson2.

There is no evil.
There is no matter.
There is no absence of life, substance or intelligence.
There is nothing to hate.
There is no sin, sickness or death.

Lesson3.
Prosperity, is the acknowledgement, either consciously or unconsciously, of the presence of God.

My Good is My God. My God is Life, Truth, Love, Substance, Intelligence, - omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.
In God I live and move and have my being.
I am Spirit, Mind, Wisdom, Strength, and Wholeness.
The I AM works inevitably through me to will and do that which ought to be done by me.
I am governed by the law of God and cannot sin, or fear sin, sickness or death.

Lesson4.

I do not believe in sickness, I believe in health.
I do not believe, or think, that misfortune has any power whatsoever.
I believe in prosperity and success.

If we feel that around us is God we may hear from the bushes like Moses. We may hear a voice from the air, as Samuel did. We may hear a voice from the clouds as Jesus did. If we contemplate the God within us we shall feel the voice within us, and it will be as audible as if it were without us. Whichever way we nay hear it, we seem to turn our faith in that direction, and our strength comes from that kind of faith. If we are determined that ALL is God we shall not be limited to the voice within nor the voice without. Everything will bear witness that we are in God. Then there is no seeking, and no command to be firm.

Lesson5.

There is only One Mind. That Mind is the source of all thoughts.

There will come a moment when we appreciate how closely related our thoughts are to our world. We will see that our reasoning’s based on the premise of matter being real, are not enduring, as to the conditions they have made. If we have spoke of riches as being the possession of material things, and then reason why we should have riches, we are talking entirely of nothing. Riches are the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. All reasoning based on that premise is solid reasoning and will demonstrate in good symbols.

As Divine Mind, which I am, I work the works of God, who works through me to will and do that which ought to be done my me.
`The words of that I speak to you, I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.`

Lesson 6.

The mathematician who studies mathematics for the sake of a seat in the university is not a successful mathematician, he is superficial and external.

The science of spirit is to be studied for itself, not external performances, for in keeping your eye on external works you can see that the works are your goal, while the goal ought to be the Spirit itself.

The ego or Adam nature are the erroneous ideas of God and Life. The Christ nature holds the faithful ideas of God and Life.
One is shadow, the other substance.
One is unreal, the other real.
Matter and the intellect , part of the Adamic or ego nature, keep us in the darkness.
We abide in the Light when we acknowledge the Christ as our true nature.

All that is real demonstrates in health, goodness and peace. That which demonstrates otherwise is the Adam nature, the ego or shadow of thought, claiming to be real but never real at all.

You are the projector, projecting what you see. While you see the world through the eyes of the ego there remains a dark spot on each and every frame. When you see the world through the eyes of the Holy Spirit or Christ the lens has been cleaned and the dark spot has been removed.

“Your task is not to seek for love but to remove the barriers to love’s presence. (ACIM)“
“It is not for you to change the externals. You are to know what is true. This is your whole business in life. Knowledge of Truth is its own demonstration. (SCMP)”

“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

As Emmet Fox said in 1933: "seek the Presence of God in your own heart, and to use books, lectures, and churches only as a means to that one end".

I took a prosperity course once. Someone meant well but they used a template of the AA format and placed 4 additional conditions upon the course. There are no conditions to prosperity from the prospective of the Holy Spirit.

Just as energy vampires and negative energy are beliefs of the ego. I went to Sahaja Yoga with a friend once. I became a Yogi. They clear chakras and throw the energy anywhere and everywhere. I also went with a friend that channeled. She was told their were evil dark forces in opposition to the forces of Light.
That was her truth, not the TRUTH.

There's a cute picture of Myrtle Fillmore riding side saddle on her way to a healing convention with her sons at Unity. I often wondered how H.(Harriet) Emilie Cady got around to Boston, Chicago and other places teaching her "Lessons in Truth". I guess side saddle, horse and buggy or the train were the only means at her disposal. You have to admire their spunk.

Mistaking ILLUSIONS for REALITIES

2012-01-08T09:05:00.004-05:00

The 2008 book Trick or Treatment stated that "the energy field was probably nothing more than a figment in the imaginations of the healers."

The book evaluates the scientific evidence for acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal medicine, and chiropractic, and briefly covers 36 other treatments. It finds that the scientific evidence for these alternative treatments is generally lacking. Homeopathy is concluded to be completely ineffective: "It's nothing but a placebo, despite what homeopaths say."

In 1996 using a standard science fair display board, a then nine year old devised a single-blind [1] protocol, later described by other scientists as "simple and elegant," for a study to test practitioners claiming they could feel a "Human Energy Field" for her 4th grade science fair. There were two series of tests. In 1996, 15 practitioners were tested at their home or office on different days over a period of several months. In 1997, 13 practitioners, including 7 from the first series, were tested on a single day. The second series was observed and videotaped by the producers of Scientific American Frontiers. Each of the practitioners to sit at a table and extend their hands through a screen. On the other side of the screen, the girl randomly selected which of the practitioner's hands she would hold her hand over. The practitioners were then asked which of their hands detected her HEF. Subjects were each given ten tries, but they correctly located Rosa's hand an average of only 4.4 times. Some subjects were asked before testing to examine her hands and select which of her hands they thought produced the strongest HEF. she then used that hand during the experiment, but those subjects performed no better. The results showed that the practitioners could not detect the hand more often than chance, and she et al therefore concluded that there was no empirical basis to the HEF.
[1] Single-blind describes experiments where information that could introduce bias or otherwise skew the result is withheld from the participants, but the experimenter will be in full possession of the facts. Double-blind describes an especially stringent way of conducting an experiment, usually on human subjects, in an attempt to eliminate subjective bias on the part of both experimental subjects and the experimenters. In most cases, double-blind experiments are held to achieve a higher standard of scientific rigor.

One medical intuitive was tested using a research instrument specially developed to measure the accuracy of medical intuitive. Apparently the tests weren't randomized and a double-blind was not considered. Yet a diagnosis accuracy rate of 93 percent was achieved. In 1996 a PhD in Intuition and Energy Medicine from Greenwich University appeared on their credentials. Greenwich was an unaccredited institution based out of Australia, and that degree was from a correspondence-based branch of the school in Hawaii. Some people also noticed that the Medical Intuitive, themselve, were the creator and head of the department of Energy Medicine. So just how reliable is the field of Medical Intuition and are New Age credentials in general.

In the study of Table Tipping or Turning William Carpenter, in 1852, did not question the reality of the phenomena, nor the honesty of the people who were involved. He only disputed the explanation, arguing that,

"All the phenomena of the 'biologized' state, when attentively examined, will be found to consist in the occupation of the mind by the ideas which have been suggested to it, and in the influence which these ideas exert upon the actions of the body."

Thus Carpenter invoked ideomotor action as a non paranormal explanation for various phenomena that were being credited to new physical forces, spiritual intervention, or other supernatural causes.
William James concurred:

"Wherever a movement unhesitatingly and immediately follows upon the idea of it, we have ideomotor action. We are then aware of nothing between the conception and the execution. All sorts of neuromuscular responses come between, of course, but we know absolutely nothing of them. We think the act, and it is done; and that is all that introspection tells us of the matter."

The first major scientist to become concerned about the mischief being created by ideomotor action, although he did not know the concept by this name, was the French chemist Michel Chevreul. Chevreul, who lived for one hundred three years, became interested in the experiments of some of his fellow chemists around the beginning of the nineteenth century. These colleagues were using what was known as "the exploring pendulum" to analyze chemical compounds. Chevreul was intrigued, but he remained skeptical. He was surprised, however, to find that the pendulum worked as advertised when he tried it over a dish of mercury. He carried out more tests, however. To see if a physical force was responsible for the movement of the pendulum, he placed a glass plate between the iron ring and the mercury. To his surprise, the oscillations diminished and then stopped. When he removed the glass plate, the pendulum movements resumed. Finally, Chevreul did what none of his predecessors had thought of doing. He conducted the equivalent of what we would call a double-blind trial. He blindfolded himself and then he had an assistant interpose or remove the glass plate between the pendulum and the mercury without his knowledge. Under these conditions, nothing happened. Chevreul concluded,

"So long as I believed the movement possible, it took place; but after discovering the cause I could not reproduce it."

His experiments with the pendulum show how easy it is

"to mistake illusions for realities, whenever we are confronted by phenomena in which the human sense-organs are involved under conditions imperfectly analyzed."

Chevreul used this principle of expectant attention to account for the phenomena of dowsing, movements of the exploring pendulum, and the then current fad among spiritualists, table-turning.

The most publicized, elaborate and carefully controlled study of table-turning was reported by Michael Faraday in 1853. Faraday obtained the cooperation of participants who he knew to be "very honorable" and who were also "successful table-movers." He devised an ingenious arrangement to pin down the cause of the movement. And concluded:

"It was easy to see by displacement of the parts of the line that the sitters hand had moved further from the table, and that the latter had lagged behind -- that the sitters hand, in fact, had pushed the upper card to the left and that the under cards and the table had followed and been dragged by it."

Faraday's report was sufficient to convince most scientists that table-turning and related phenomena did not stem from new physical forces or occult powers.

From a study of Clever Hans , the “intelligient horse”, we learn:

“that people frequently give clues about what they are thinking or observing without realizing it. These subtle clues can guide the behavior of other individuals -- or even animals. Sometimes these individuals consciously detect these clues and use them to deceive, but frequently the person being guided by the clues is just as unconscious of them as is the individual providing them.”

So if a horse can read body language or subtle clues then anyone, including Psychics, Healers and Medical Intuitives, can pick up on that too.

The “REPORT OF A CLERICAL AND MEDICAL COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY INTO SPIRITUAL, FAITH, AND MENTAL HEALING”[ http://www.archive.org/details/spiritualhealing00cleruoft] from LONDON, England in 1914 is interesting.

The following questions formulated by the Committee were forwarded to each witness invited to attend, and carefully considered answers were in most cases given, while much additional information on the subject was elicited in reply to further general questions asked in the course of the interview.

(1) What do you understand by "Spiritual" healing? (2) Do you make any distinction between "Spiritual" healing and "Mental" healing? (3) Do you connect the "Spiritual" healing of the present day with the Gifts of Healing in the Apostolic Church? (4) Do you regard moral excellence in either the healer or the healed as an essential condition for "Spiritual" healing? (5) Do you consider that religious faith' on the part of the sick person is essential to healing by "Spiritual" means? (6) Have you personal knowledge of any cases where any organic disease has been healed by "Spiritual" or "Mental" influences alone? (7) Do you consider that “Spiritual" healing should be exercised apart from both medical diagnosis and supervision?

ABSTRACT OF ANSWERS.
Questions 1 and .2. — The witnesses differed in their definitions of "Spiritual" healing and in their distinctions between "Spiritual" and "Mental" healing. Some regarded the former as involving direct, external, Divine interposition above the ordinary laws of nature. Others seemed to draw no fundamental distinction between "Spiritual healing " and " healing by suggestion," except that the former was of a religious character and applied through religious rites such as imposition of hands, unction, and prayer. Question 3. — ^Most of the witnesses connected the " Spiritual healing " of the present day with the " gifts of healing " of the Apostolic Church, regarding these " gifts " as having been long dormant, though never entirely interrupted. Other witnesses could trace no such connexion. Questions 4 and 5. — There was consider able divergence of opinion as to whether moral excellence in the healer, or the healed, was an essential condition for success in "spiritual healing"; some regarding it as being indispensable in the healer, others as being advantageous though not essential. Most of the witnesses were agreed that while moral excellence was not requisite on the part of the patient, yet faith or at least expectation of benefit, was an important contributory factor. Question 6. — Many of the witnesses gave convincing evidence of beneficial results in cases of functional or nervous disorders, obsessions, alcoholism, drug habits, vicious propensities, etc., through treatment by "Spiritual" or mental influences. No satisfactorily certified case was adduced of any organic disease, competently diagnosed as such, which had been cured through these means alone. The value of religious and mental influences as contributory to recovery was not questioned. Question 7. — A few of the witnesses thought there was no objection to the exercise of "gifts of healing" by persons possessing no medical qualifications; but the greater number were keenly alive to the risk and danger of any independent treatment of disease by persons not medically qualified; and all felt there was room for a closer legitimate co-operation between the Clergy and Medical Profession.

The Committee are of opinion that the physical results of what is called "Faith" or "Spiritual" healing do not prove on investigation to be different from those of Mental healing or healing by "Suggestion."

The term Suggestion is used in this Report in a wide sense, as meaning the application of any natural mental process to the purposes of treatment.

They recognise that Suggestion is more effectively exercised by some persons than by others, and this fact seems to explain the "gifts" of a special character claimed by various "Healers." It is undoubtedly due to the striking benefits which sometimes result from Suggestion that the belief in such claims has been fostered.

Appendix A, on suggestion concluded with:

There is no doubt that a large number of mental processes are, i.e., have become by heredity or education, automatic and so subconscious; and they can be excited by the stimulus of suggestion upon the centres which govern them in the same manner as other function processes; or they can be promoted to greater activity by the temporary removal of disturbing currents of conscious thought. Again, such thought currents can be directed by an effort of will in aid of automatic effort. Thus reading is, with educated people, an automatic process. Concentration may be entirely diverted by outside disturbances, suggesting thoughts quite foreign to the subject matter of the book, but an effort of the will restores the attention of the reader.

Then there’s the case of Philip Aylesford. In 1972 some Canadian parapsychologists undertook an experiment. The members of the experiment attempted to create, through intense and prolonged concentration, a collective thought-form.
The group fabricated the fictitious identity, physical appearance, and personal history of their “Philip Aylesford” who was born in England in 1624. He had an illustrious role in the Civil War, becoming a personal friend of Charles II and working for him as a secret agent. But Philip brought about his own undoing by having an affair with a Gypsy girl. When his wife found out she accused the girl of witchcraft, and she was burned at the stake. In despair Philip committed suicide in 1654 at the age of thirty.
The group began conducting sittings in September 1972 during which they meditated, visualized, and discussed the details of "Philip"’s life. After going for months with no communication, the group attempted table-tilting through psychokinesis.
Some weeks after changing to the séance setting the group established communication with “Philip.” He answered questions that were consistent with his fictitious history, but was unable to provide any information beyond that which the group had conceived. However, “Philip” did give other historically accurate information about real events and people. The group theorized that this latter information came from their own collective unconsciousness.

Stringent single or double blind testing should be mandatory in medicine, Alternative Medicine, the pharmaceutical industry and the food supply, just to name a few.

A series of compulsory reincarnations?

2012-01-07T18:06:00.002-05:00

Allan Kardec is the pseudonym of the French teacher and educator Hippolyte Leon Denizard Rivail, (1804-1869), who is known today as the systematizer of Spiritism.

Allan Kardec was a disciple and collaborator of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, and a teacher in courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, physiology, comparative anatomy and French in Paris. For one of his research papers, he was inducted in 1831 into the Royal Academy of Arts. He organized and taught free courses for the underprivileged.

When, about 1850, the phenomenon of table-turning was exciting the attention of Europe and ushering in the other phenomena since known as "Spiritist", he quickly divined the real nature of those phenomena, as evidence of the existence of an order of relationships hitherto suspected rather than known, namely, those which unite the visible and invisible worlds. Foreseeing the vast importance, to science and to religion, of such an extension of the field of human observation, he entered at once upon a careful investigation of the new phenomena. A friend of his had two daughters who had become what are now called Mediums. They were gay, lively, amiable girls, fond of society, dancing, and amusement, and habitually received, when sitting by themselves or with their young companions, communications in harmony with their worldly and somewhat frivolous disposition. But, to the surprise of all concerned, it was found that, whenever he was present, the messages transmitted through these young ladies were of a very grave and serious character; and on his inquiring of the invisible intelligences as to the cause of this change, he was told that Spirits of a much higher order than those who habitually communicated through the two young mediums came expressly for him, and would continue to do so, in order to enable him to fulfill an important religious mission.

Much astonished at so unlooked-for an announcement, he at once proceeded to test its truthfulness by drawing up a series of progressive questions in relation to the various problems of human life and the universe in which we find ourselves, and submitted them to his unseen interlocutors, receiving their answers to the same through the instrumentality of the two young mediums, who willingly consented to devote a couple of evenings every week to this purpose, and who thus obtained, through table-rapping and planchette-writing, the replies which have become the basis of the spiritist theory, and which they were as little capable of appreciating as of inventing.

This philosophy is distinct from spiritualism as it is built on the main tenet that spiritual progress is effected by a series of compulsory reincarnations. Allan Kardec became so dogmatic on this point that he always disparaged physical mediumship the objective phenomena of which did not bear out his doctrine and encouraged automatic -writing where the danger of contradiction, owing to the psychological influence of preconceived ideas, was less[1].

As a consequence experimental psychic research remained twenty years behind in France.

In England Miss Anna Blackwell, a member of the Golden Dawn, was the most prominent exponent of the philosophy of Allan Kardec.
[1] He was proved wrong. In his paper "De la baguette", Chevreul explained how human muscular reactions, totally involuntary and subconscious, are responsible for seemingly magical movements. In the end Chevreul discovered that once a person holding divining rods/magic pendulum became aware of the brain's reaction, the movements stopped and could not be willingly reproduced.
[2] A writer on spiritism, J. Arthur Hill, calls attention to the fact that spiritism in France is reincarnationist, while in England and the United States on the whole it is not. The reason in the case of France is found in the fact that an early writer on spiritism, Kordec taught reincarnation.
http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-open-vision-study-of-psychic.html

Golden Dawn

2012-01-07T18:01:00.002-05:00

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (or, more commonly, the Golden Dawn) was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development. It has been one of the largest single influences on 20th-century Western occultism.
Concepts of magic and ritual at the center of contemporary traditions, such as Wicca and Thelema, were inspired by the Golden Dawn.

Influences on Golden Dawn concepts and work include: Christian mysticism, Qabalah, Hermeticism, the religion of Ancient Egypt, Theurgy, Freemasonry, Alchemy, Theosophy, Eliphas Levi, Papus, Enochian magic, and Renaissance grimoires.
The Golden Dawn as system and book has been the most intensively used source for modern western occult and magical writing. As a book it is both a text and an encyclopedia.
The Holy Order of the Golden Dawn Canada
The Holy Order of the Golden Dawn Canada is a worldwide organization dedicated to the illumination of the Western Mysteries. The path of the student within our Order begins with the necessary complete Alchemical Initiation. Once the ceremony of your initiation has taken place the Esoteric Hermetic Arts and discipline of physical self-mastery and spiritual transformation begins. To this end, many opportunities become available to you. Golden Dawn Grade material for both our local and correspondence members within the tradition and curriculum of this classical and magical Order as it began in the 1800's immediately becomes available according to the grade that each student has attained. http://www.golden-dawn-canada.com/
The original Golden Dawn Order and Tradition with Temples in Paris, London and throughout America and New Zealand was founded by 3 high ranking Freemasons; S. L. MacGregor Mathers, William Wynn Wescott and Dr. Robert Woodman has become the most influential force in the modern rebirth of the Western Mystery Tradition, since its inception in 1888. From the neo-pagan revival to the New Age movement, the Golden Dawn's wealth of teachings still has a profound and lasting effect on those who seek spiritual enlightenment in the western world. Today, these teachings plus true Initiation are invoked by the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn. http://www.golden-dawn-canada.com/

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

2012-01-07T17:58:00.003-05:00

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746 –1827) was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer who exemplified Romanticism in his approach. He founded several educational institutions both in German and French speaking regions of Switzerland and wrote novels explaining his revolutionary modern principles of education. His motto "Learning by head, hand and heart" is still a key principle in successful 21st century schools. Thanks to Pestalozzi, illiteracy still prevailing in 18th century Switzerland was overcome almost completely by 1830.
Pestalozzi was a Romantic who felt that education must be radically personal, appealing to each learner's intuition. He emphasized that every aspect of the child's life contributed to the formation of personality, character, and reason. He learned by operating schools at Neuhof and Yverdon. The success of the Yverdon school attracted the interest of European and American educators. Pestalozzi's educational methods were child-centered and based on individual differences, sense perception, and the student's self-activity. Pestalozzi worked in Yverdon to 'elementarize' the teaching of ancient languages, principally Latin, but also Hebrew and Greek. In 1819, Stephan Ludwig Roth came to study with Pestalozzi, and his new humanism contributed to the development of the method of language teaching, including considerations such as the function of the mother tongue in the teaching of ancient languages. Pestalozzi was an important influence on the theory of physical education; he developed a regimen of physical exercise and outdoor activity linked to general, moral, and intellectual education that reflected his ideal of harmony and human autonomy.
Pestalozzi's philosophy of education was based on a four-sphere concept of life and the premise that human nature was essentially good. The first three 'exterior' spheres - home and family, vocational and individual self-determination, and state and nation - recognized the family, the utility of individuality, and the applicability of the parent-child relationship to society as a whole in the development of a child's character, attitude toward learning, and sense of duty. The last 'exterior' sphere - inner sense - posited that education, having provided a means of satisfying one's basic needs, results in inner peace and a keen belief in God.

Myth of Progress

2012-01-06T15:07:00.003-05:00

Historian J. B. Bury[1] wrote in 1920:

"To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of human development would be a condition of society in which all the inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence....It cannot be proved that the unknown destination towards which man is advancing is desirable. The movement may be Progress, or it may be in an undesirable direction and therefore not Progress..... The Progress of humanity belongs to the same order of ideas as Providence or personal immortality. It is true or it is false, and like them it cannot be proved either true or false. Belief in it is an act of faith."

In historiography, the Idea of Progress is the theory that advances in technology, science, and social organization inevitably produce an improvement in the human condition. That is, people can become happier in terms of quality of life (social progress) through economic development (modernization), and the application of science and technology (scientific progress). The assumption is that the process will happen once people apply their reason and skills, for it is not divinely foreordained. The role of the expert is to identify hindrances that slow or neutralize progress.

[1]John Bagnell Bury (1861 – 1927), known as J. B. Bury, was an Irish historian, classical scholar, Byzantinist and philologist.

Some 20th century authors refer to the "Myth of Progress" to challenge the Idea of Progress, especially the assumption that the human condition will inevitably improve. In 1932 English physician Montague David Eder [2] wrote:

"The myth of progress states that civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction. Progress is inevitable..... Philosophers, men of science and politicians have accepted the idea of the inevitability of progress."

Eder argues that the advancement of civilization is leading to greater unhappiness and loss of control in the environment.
Sociologist P. A. Sorokin argued,

"The ancient Chinese, Babylonian, Hindu, Greek, Roman and most of the medieval thinkers supporting theories of rhythmical, cyclical or trendless movements of social processes were much nearer to reality than the present proponents of the linear view."

Philosopher Karl Popper emphasized the inadequacies of the Idea of Progress as a scientific explanation of social phenomena. More recently, Kirkpatrick Sale, a self-proclaimed neo-luddite author, wrote exclusively about progress as a myth, in an essay entitled "Five Facets of a Myth".\ Iggers (1965) says the great failing of the prophets of progress was that they underestimated the extent of man's destructiveness and irrationality. The failing of the critics of the Idea of Progress, he adds, came in misunderstanding the role of rationality and morality in human behavior.

[2] Montague David Eder (1865–1936) was a British psychoanalyst, physician, Zionist and writer. He was best known for advancing psychoanalytic studies in Great Britain.
During the early 1910s, Eder became interested in the psychoanalytical theories emerging from Europe. Eder also authored original articles on psychoanalysis. His influence stretched beyond medical circles: the novelist D. H. Lawrence alluded to Eder’s pamphlet The State Endowment of Motherhood in the book The White Peacock.

In 1932 he was elected president of the medical section of the British Psychological Society. and presented his 1932 study The Management of the Nervous Patient, calling for the combination of psychoanalysis into the process of medical diagnosis.

“'When this is not feasible,”

he said,

“the physician's intelligence… must be employed to guide his patient to a measure of mental wholeness.”

Also in 1932, Eder presented his concept of the Myth of Progress. Writing in the British Journal of Medical Psychology, Eder argued that while civilization is moving forward due to advances in science, politics and technology, these advances are actually contributing to greater unhappiness as man perceived to lose control over his environment.

Environmentalism

2012-01-06T15:00:00.002-05:00

Among environmentalists, there is a continuum between two opposing poles.

Optimistic Environmentalist.
The one pole is optimistic, progressive, and business-oriented, and endorses the classic Idea of Progress. For example Bright Green environmentalism endorses the idea that new designs, social innovations and green technologies can solve critical environmental challenges. Bright green environmentalism is an ideology based on the belief that the convergence of technological change and social innovation provides the most successful path to sustainable development.

Pessimistic Environmentalist.
The other is pessimistic, warning of impending doom (through global warming, for example) and tends to reject the very idea of modernity and the myth of progress that is so central to modernization thinking.

Mystical Experiences

2012-01-06T08:25:00.003-05:00

Is the world we see before us insubstantial- illusion -or not? The answer is: It depends upon the one who is looking at it.
The truth about ourselves and the truth about the world is never known except through our actual experience in Reality Itself. In Illumination alone can we learn what we are, and what the world is.
It is said that the world and our experience are within us. Actually, the world is not within us; nor outside of us. To That which is One-All, One-Whole, there is no within; there is no without.
In moments when we experience ourselves as we ARE, and the world as it IS, we know no difference between ourselves and our world. They are not two - one within the other. Self and world are one. We know everything in its beauty, form and color. Bucke 's book -Cosmic Consciousness - gives the striking experience of "C.M.C." as follows:
One day, for a moment, my eyes were opened. It was in the morning, in the early summer of 1894.I went out in happy, tranquil mood to look at the flowers, putting my face down into the sweet peas, enjoying their fragrance, observing how vivid and distinct were their form and color.
The pleasure I felt deepened into rapture; I was thrilled through and through, and was just beginning to wonder at it, when deep within me a veil or curtain suddenly parted, and I became aware that the flowers were alive and conscious. They were in commotion! What a revelation it was! The feeling that came to me with the vision is indescribable --I turned and went into the house, filled with unspeakable awe.
To those unacquainted with the Infinite -infamiliar and intimate fashion -such things are incomprehensible. To those who have themselves experienced Reality, such things are simple indeed -natural and understandable.
An occasion is recalled when the author would doubtless have been involved in a tragic situation had not the Supernal opened a way of escape, allowing something altogether different and transcendent to take place.
It happened while driving in this city.
I was about to descend a rather long and steep hill, when suddenly, and without warning, a tiny child emerged from the rear of a car, parked at the left curb.
She came running directly toward my moving car.
There was nothing I could do. Even then she was about to vanish directly in front of me. Relatively speaking, nothing could prevent a tragedy. At that precise instant, a new world opened to me, and I was part of it - I, my car and the child. Many things happened all at once. I cannot say which was first - I was immediately aware of so great a number.
It was as if the world-clock just instantly stopped -its age-long journey to nowhere coming to a sudden and abrupt halt. A gate or curtain swung aside -I was admitted into another realm. Here things went on at the same instant, and in the same place.
All personal sense of myself abruptly ended. Spontaneously, my Real Self took complete charge of everything. I was conscious that I was doing nothing personally, having no personal thought; yet I was keenly aware of everything taking place in and about me. With infinite skill -seeing all and knowing all - the Self was now in full command, doing everything. My arms and hands, taken over by this Presence, were at once filled with great new power.
Dexterously, and with lightning speed, the wheels were swung first one way, then the other.
The car was in constant motion, and at what seemed to be the same rate of speed, yet I had no glimpse of the little tot out in front of me. When the wheels were straight again, she emerged.
Running to the sidewalk, she disappeared from view.
It was then I distinctly felt the world-clock start up again- counting off its countless time as before. I was my former self again. Although I had been conscious of so much taking place, I seemed at the same place on the street as when I had just seen the child.
Filled with uncontrollable wonder and joy, I stopped at the curb. People were standing still on both sides of the street.
I knew they had been watching.
Two men approached me, their shining faces filled with deep concern and emotion. Desperately they tried to tell what they had seen, but found they could explain nothing. No words of theirs could explain the inexplicable.
They said that they had seen something which could not have taken place - nor could they fathom how the child had escaped both oncoming wheels.
Such experiences prove that things are not what they seem -the world before us is not as it appears. The Super world is not another world -but is the world of Pure Consciousness.
With finite view, we see everyone , and everything acting as many separate entities, each apart from the other.
Finite sense sees a finite world. How could it be otherwise? Seeing in and as pure Consciousness, there is nothing structural or material- there is nothing external to us. Time, place and thing are our own Consciousness.
Ouspensky, in his illuminating book -Tertium Organum -declares MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES to be super-logical, that is, to transcend the ordinary, logical point of view. He writes: "Mystical states give knowledge -WHICH NOTHING ELSE CAN GIVE. Mystical states give knowledge of the real world with all its signs and characteristics."
In Consciousness, things are neither small or great, they are not outside, within or separate from us.
Ourselves and our world are one -in inseparable
Harmony,
Beauty,
Love and
Light.

By Lillian DeWaters from "Light of the Eternal" written in 1945

110 different countries have visited this site.

2012-01-06T07:44:00.005-05:00

171 flags collected (including regions)

110th Country Jersey Visited January 5, 2012

Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and other rocks and reefs.

Jersey is a self-governing parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, with its own financial and legal and judicial systems.

The island of Jersey is the largest of the Channel Islands. It is not part of the United Kingdom and has an international identity separate from that of the UK , but the United Kingdom is constitutionally responsible for the defence of Jersey.

Please pass this on to Wyoming, USA and the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada.

Saint Theresa's Prayer

2012-01-03T18:45:00.003-05:00

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing,
Dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.

Saint Teresa of Ávila

ONENESS

2012-01-02T17:33:00.002-05:00

Dearly Beloved, do you take THE PERFECT INFINITE ONE to be your only Life, your only Mind, your only Existence, Body and Being, eternally? Do you give your Heart to ONENESS, in all Beauty and Tenderness, in all Glory and Love, in Freedom and Light, to honor and cherish throughout Eternity?

In the Secret Place of the Most High -— your Heart -— do you see ONENESS IN SELF-ILLUMINATION to be the living, ever present Christ, and are you ready now to sing the Eternal Song of Praise? Beholding THE ALL AS UNITY, beholding everyone as he is in the Life and Light of the Eternal, then sing the Song of David-—

ON THEE, ETERNAL ONE, I SET MY HEART! THE ETERNAL REIGNS!

GREATER WORKS

By Lillian DeWaters

1946

Happy New Year.

2011-12-31T12:20:00.002-05:00

I`m grateful I`ve blogged over 380 entries, exhausted almost all of the New Thought authors, discovered the Ancient Mysteries, prophecies, planetary alignments and doom and gloom are nothing new and largely just sensationalism or MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING(they sell books).

I`ve had 109 countries visit and got MOS certified too.

Don`t expect the world to change unless you change the way you look at the world.

Once the veil is lifted from your eyes and you see Truth and understand “this world” for the fantasy it is, you will never again be able to see it the way you did before. The veil is removed in Christ (which is Light - or understanding).
REGARDING THE WORLD OF APPEARANCES [Jane Woodward] Sept. 2005

A lot of people will be in denial when nothing happens over 2012.
Please use common sense.

There is no separation. God is all and God is Mind, thus all which appears to be - is in Mind, and actually is Mind. Understanding comes of Sound Mind, the True and Only Mind. The body, as you think of it, is "in Mind" as well.
“THE BODY [2005]” BY: Jane Woodward

The key to this year COOPERATION.

Love, Light and Laughter!

“Mastery”:

2011-12-29T12:17:00.003-05:00

Not all at once can the soul master its objective passions, and be truly ethical in its outer life. True wisdom consists in careful adjustment of means to ends, in slow, patient, persistent overcoming in close imitation of natural evolution, not in assuming that the victory is already won. It is a serious mistake to make this assumption. The entire life must be regenerated; and this is the work of time, for otherwise it is not healthy. He is truly aware of the higher law who at last really begins to practise what he preaches, when he at last obeys the law, and ceases once for all to be a hypocrite. This it is to be a man: to be and not seem, to do and not simply to talk, to have the right ideal, the true motive, and patiently to transform conduct in accordance with it.

[1] ~ Horatio W. Dresser ~ 1896

[1] Dresser is borrowing from the Epistulae Selectae of Pliny the Younger:

“This it is to be a man: to be and not seem, to do and not simply to talk, to have the right ideal, the true motive, and patiently to transform conduct in accordance with it.”

Ancient Mysteries: Recycled bunk or Legitimate?

2011-12-29T11:33:00.007-05:00

W. J. Colville (1862–1917)[ William Wilberforce Juvenal Colville]
Colbville wrote about the Occult, Theosophy and Spiritism among other things.

This is a curiosity:Ancient Mysteries and Modern Revelations (1916)

I. Bibles Under Modern Searchlight
II. Rivers of Life or Faiths of Man in All Lands
III. Ancient and Modern Ideas of Revelation-It`s Sources and Agencies
IV. Various Spiritual Elements in the Bible and Classic Literature
V. Creation Legends-How Ancient is Humanity on this Planet-Hindu Chronology
VI. Egypt and Its Wonders: Literally and Mystically Considered
VII. The Philosophy of Ancient Greece-The Delphic Mysteries
VIII. Apollonius of Tyana
IX. Five Varieties of Yoga-Union of Eastern and Western Philosophy
X. Ezckiels`s Wheel – What it Signifies – Astrology in Prophecy
XI. Emanuel Swedenborg and His Doctrine of Correspondences
XII. The Book of Exodus-Its Practical and Esoteric Teachings
XIII. The Story of the Passover and the Pillar of Fire in the Wilderness
XIV. The Message of Buddhism-Purity and Philanthropy.
XV. Magic in Europe in the Middle Ages-Its connection with Mysterious Healing and Marvellous Deliverance
XVI. Ancient Magic and Modern Therapeutics-Paracelsus and Von Helmont
XVII. Jeanne D’Arc, the Maid of Orleans
XVIII. Andrew Jackson Davis, A Nineteenth Century Seer-A Glimpse at His Philosophy
XIX. Bible Symbolism-Aaron’s Breastplate and Other Typical Ornaments and Emblems-The Moral Infleunce of Beauty
XX. Life and Matter-The Latest views on Evolution-Position of Sir Oliver Lodge
XXI. The Law of Seven and the Law of Unity
XXII. Spiritualism and the Deepening of Spiritual Life
XXIII. The Esoteric Teachings of the Gnostics-The Divine Feminine
XXIV. Halley’s Comet-It’s History and Portent-Visible in 1910

I guess in Occult, Theosophy and Spiritualism circles Halley`s Comet was a sign of something.
His other books: Fate Mastered; Universal Spiritualism; Life and Power from within;The Spiritual Science of Health and Healing; Spiritual Science of Health and Healing

So Ancient Mysteries I saw on TV were an updated version of
SAME-OLD-SAME-OLD
and
MUCH-ADO-ABOUT-NOTHING.

Charles Fillmore of Unity, for example, rejected the Occult and Spiritism. Definitely not New Thought.
http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2010/12/unity.html
There has recently been still another revival of the talk about the end of the world. Once again newspaper articles are being written and public meetings held, both in America and in Great Britain, where more or less sensational statements are made to the effect that the end of the world is now due, and may be expected at any moment. Ever since the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 the prophets have been exceptionally busy in this direction, and on several occasions groups of people have actually sat up all night waiting for the end. ... Lecture delivered by Emmet Fox at Victoria Hall, London, on September 6,1933. http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2011/01/2012-end-of-world.html

The antediluvian (or pre-diluvian) period – meaning "before the deluge" – is the period referred to in the Bible between the Creation of the Earth and the Deluge (flood). The narrative takes up chapters 1-6 (excluding the flood narrative) of Genesis. Colloquially, the term is used to refer to any ancient and murky period.

Jeanne D’Arc, the Maid of Orleans. Down to the present day, Joan of Arc has remained a significant figure in Western culture. From Napoleon onward, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory.

Philostratus' Apollonius of Tyana should be of special interest to students of the origins of Christianity. This is because, although you may think that Christianity has a solid history going back into the first century and before, if we follow a historical and archaeological investigation, the first Bible would appear to be that of Marcion of Sinope AD 140. This is consistent with the fact that archeological records started appearing dated 180-210 AD. The book Apollonius of Tyana disappeared from the Roman Empire into the Arab world from which it resurfaced in the 1500's. It was an immediate controversy in the Christian world because of the parallels with the Bible. For example Apollonius was educated in Tarsus and had a connection with Ephesus. Apollonius cast out demons and raised people from the dead. Yet Apollonius lived a long time, long enough to cover the lives of Jesus, Paul and all the Apostles. Why is it then that Apollonius of Tyana never mentions biblical events, and the Bible never mention Apollonius? Well it was always possible that Apollonius was Paul, or that Paul was 'plagiarized' from Apollonius by Marcion, who wished to continue his spritual tradition. After all, the names are more similar linguistically than is apparent to us.

Sir Oliver sought to bring together the transcendental world with the physical universe. He affirmed, with great conviction, that life is the supreme, enduring essence in the universe; that it fills the vast interstellar spaces; and the matter of which the physical world is composed is a particular condensation of ether for the purpose of manifesting life into a conscious, individual form. He investigated the famous Italian medium, Eusapia Paladino and was convinced she was the real deal, although she was eventually exposed as a fraud he was in denial over it. He was also interested in the medium Mrs. Leonore E. Piper.

The Law of Unity states that all things are of the same thing, energy, and the presence of anything is a momentary expression of all that is possible. Every existing thing is connected to every other thing in past, present, and future existence. The infinity of all things that ever have and ever will exist, is the unending fulfillment of energy’s potential.

The number Seven has been used since time immemorial to describe the creations and ordinances of God and the subsequent patterns that appear in the natural world. The Law of Seven involves an enneagram and can be traced back to Fourth Way Teachings (Ouspensky and Gurdjieff).

In this new age the HINDU CHRONOLOGY AND ANTEDILUVIAN HISTORY has been replaced by the Mayan calendar and 2012.Which has already turned out to be a big dud.

The Relation of Thought to Health

2011-12-29T11:25:00.003-05:00

Leander E. Whipple (1848-1916) was a teacher and practiced mental healing in Hartford, Conn. and New York City and authored several books. A native of Southborough, Mass, he used the term “mental science” when he began his work as mental healer. The interest aroused by his highly successful work made him a pioneer in mental healing.

He founded the Metaphysical Publishing Co. in 1893 in New York. In addition to publishing, it sold books and advertised that it would

“supply any number of copies of any book relating to Meta Physics, Philosophy, or any of the Mental Sciences and works on kindred subjects – which are its speciality. Also any book on any subject published in any part of the world. Those having overstocked libraries or possessing CHOICE EASTERN WORKS to sell or exchange should write us, giving full descriptions and prices.”

He founded The Metaphysical Magazine, a monthly review devoted to science, psychology, philosophy, metaphysics, and occult subjects. It was the first magazine devoted to mental healing in the country.
He began teaching metaphysics by correspondence before starting the American School of Metaphysics in New York. The science of metaphysics investigates first causes of existence and knowledge and seeks to explain the nature of being and the origin and structure of the world, uniting man’s physical, mental, and spiritual character

“into its true nature of holism.”

He predicted Metaphysics would influence the work of ministers and teachers in handling the emotional and physical problems of youth and maturity and in dealing with the sick and dying. He taught that

“the true metaphysician is a combination of teacher, healer, and counselor and espoused universal spirituality.”

During his 30 years of teaching, he authored a number of books including The Philosophy of Mental Healing in 1893. It addressed metaphysics versus hypnotism, mental healing and surgery, telepathy, thought images, the effects of fright, mental causes, curative influences, the law of correspondences, etc.
He wrote Mental Healing in 1905 and Practical Health in 1907. The latter discussed the effect that the mind has on cases of sickness either for good or bad. His A Manual of Mental Science (1911) gave concise rules for the application of mental science to everyday living. He wrote Healing Influences in 1913 which in 14 chapters described “The True Healing Power, Mental Processes and Healing Results, The Relation of Thought to Health, True and False Conceptions of Mental Science, Metaphysics and Health, The Idea and Its Image, Symbolism In Mentality, and Spiritual Healing.

Elizabeth Stuart, Leander’s teacher, was a member of an organization known as “Humanity.” which identified Truth as being established

“through the law of polar or real opposites and its twin sister, the law of contradictories, revealed to man by the science of numbers. It is to that science man must look for a solution of the problems of life in their varied relations.”

She also taught that the “imaging faculty is the highest known to man; through it he expressed the ideal, and it is the means by which he expresses to the senses whatever intellect accepts, thus forming the relation between mind and body. Through that open door fear enters and stamps upon the body distorted, untrue mental images, which physicians name, then proceed to try to erase from the body by physical means."

“As a man thinketh, that he be becometh. As is the mind, so is the thought; as is the thought, so is the image expressed in form externally. Let him who would have pure blood keep his picture-gallery free from impurity. Whatever he does not desire to appear in the external, must be watchfully kept out of mind. Once there, its picture hangs upon the inner walls ready for the favorable moment to appear. The imaging faculty is both cause and cure for all bodily discord.”

God is not God’s name.

2011-12-29T11:22:00.003-05:00

God is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in all.
- Reverend Forrest Church.

Frank Forrester Church IV (1948 - 2009) was a leading Unitarian Universalist minister, author, and theologian. He was Senior Minister of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City, until late 2006 when he was appointed as Minister of Public Theology. Church is best known as a leader of liberal religion. He wrote or edited more than 20 books. These include technical studies of Christian and Gnostic literature, as well as over a dozen books addressing a wider audience.

New Thought, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and Ossian Everett Mills

2011-12-28T08:42:00.005-05:00

The influence of the New Thought movement on Mills and Sinfonia was recognized by Rollin M. Pease (Supreme Historian, 1926-1934) in his words “A symphony of life our Master led.” In keeping with other references in his text, this is an allusion not only to a heroic figure, but also to Mills. The Symphony of Life was a book written by Henry Wood in 1901, which achieved world-wide fame. Wood’s writing was described as

“semi-mystical philosophy which professes to solve the mystery of the connection between mind and matter.”

A literary review described The Symphony of Life as “interpretations of the ‘higher evolution’ that has been in process in the thoughts of men” and said,

“Mr. Wood is not an extremist concerning the healing power resident in the new philosophy of life. What he says on this point is sane, and would commend itself to the approval of all schools of thinkers. The essays contain much that is suggestive and valuable on the art of making life beautiful and happy.”

The works of Henry Wood were concerned in large part with mental healing.

“The principles of New Thought are that the mind has an influence on the body, that good thoughts have a salutary effect and bad thoughts are injurious.”

The New Thought incorporated the views of Rev. W. F. Evans, a Swedenborgian clergyman, who became a noted and voluminous writer on mental healing. Evans was a disciple of Phineas Quimby (as was MBE, principal founder of Christian Science), who practiced methods in America similar to those of Swedenborg and Chevalier de Barbarin, who influenced the beginning of the spiritualist movement in Europe. In his 1908 book The New Old Healing, Henry Wood describes the healing power of music (http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2011/12/music-as-healing-power.html). One cannot fail to see the clear alignment of this New Thought philosophy on music with the musical aesthetics of subjectivity and feeling discussed earlier.

“Our very genesis was not really a beginning after all, but indeed the product of a personality - Father Mills.”

Some distinguished members of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity

• Andrew Carnegie, 1835–1919 (Alpha Honorary 1917; founder of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company which later became United States Steel; Philanthropist; Namesake of Carnegie-Mellon University, Carnegie Hall, and numerous libraries; By virtue of his birthdate, most likely to be the "third Sinfonian to be born", behind Theodore Thomas, born earlier in 1835, and Major Henry Lee Higginson, born in 1834)
• George Eastman, 1854–1932 (Alpha Nu Honorary 1927, Alpha Alpha National Honorary 1941(?); founded Eastman Kodak Company, invented the roll of film, namesake of Eastman School of Music)
• Elmer Bernstein, 1922-2004 (Gamma Omega 1964; American film score composer known for The Ten Commandments, The Man with the Golden Arm, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, Meatballs, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ghostbusters, and Airplane!).
• John Cacavas, 1930–present (Iota 1951; Composer of music from television shows including Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, The Bionic Woman, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, the films Airport 1975 and Airport '77; wrote the theme song for the 2005 video game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. The song, "March Popakov Remix", was sampled by DJ Danger Mouse and is used frequently in the game).
• Bill Conti, 1942–present* (Beta Omega 1960; Film and television composer, including Rocky, the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Cagney & Lacey, and the ABC Evening News) • Nelson S. Riddle, Jr., 1921–1985 (Gamma Omega Honorary 1967; Bandleader, Arranger, Orchestrator; Noted for the soundtrack of the 1960s Batman television series and movie)
• David Rose* (Gamma Omega Honorary 1968; Wrote music for The Red Skelton Show and Bonanza; Known for 1962 Billboard #1 hit The Stripper; Married to actress Judy Garland)
• Thomas Dewey, 1902–1971 (Epsilon 1920, Alpha Alpha National Honorary 1946; Governor of New York, 1943–1955; Republican nominee for President of the United States, 1944 and 1948; Author of Journey to the Far Pacific (1952) and Thomas E. Dewey on the Two Party System (1966). In addition, Dewey served as president of the Epsilon Chapter at the University of Michigan and as the Fraternity's supreme historian from 1922 to 1924.)
• Frank De Vol, 1911-1999 (Gamma Omega Honorary 1962, Sometimes simply known as "De Vol", American arranger, composer and actor; Recognized for his television theme tunes for Family Affair, The Brady Bunch, and My Three Sons, the latter of which was a hit single in 1961. As an actor, appeared in several TV series, such as I Dream of Jeannie, Bonanza, Petticoat Junction, The Brady Bunch, Get Smart (at least 2 appearances as Prof. Carleton), and The Jeffersons (where he portrayed a sad jingle-writer who moved into Mr. Bentley's vacant apartment), as well as the movie The Parent Trap)
• Nelson Eddy, 1901–1967 (New Zeta Honorary 1936; Baritone & Actor, performed at 1941 inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt)
• Art Gilmore, 1912–2010 (Chi 1934; Radio Personality; T.V. Announcer for The Waltons, The Amazing Howard Hughes, The Red Skelton Show, Garner Ted Armstrong & The World Tomorrow; Actor, Moonbeams, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Adam-12, Dragnet)
• Andy Griffith, 1926–present f (Alpha Rho 1946; Starred in title roles in The Andy Griffith Show, 1960–1968, and Matlock, 1986–1995)
• Lyle Russell Cedric "Skitch" Henderson, 1918–2005 (Original conductor for The Tonight Show and The Today Show)
• Sy Mann (Pianist & Arranger for The Arthur Godfrey Show)
• Mitch Miller, 1911–present ‡ (Record producer, host of 1960s show Sing Along With Mitch of "follow the bouncing ball" fame)
• Fred Rogers, 1928–2003 f (Xi Psi Honorary 1987; Creator and host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, 1968–2001) • Bo Diddley, 1928-2008 ‡ (Eta Omega Honorary 1999; Rock & Roll pioneer, Member Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) • Lee Loughnane, 1946–present (Kappa Phi 1965; founding member of Chicago rock band) • James Pankow, 1947–present (Kappa Phi 1966; founding member of Chicago rock band)
• Walter Parazaider, 1945–present (Kappa Phi 1964; founding member of Chicago rock band) • Glenn Hughes (singer), 1950–2001 (Kappa Pi 1970; founding member of The Village People, 1970s gay iconic pop band) • Ruben Studdard, 1978–present (Omicron Delta 1997; pop singer, [2003 American Idol winner])
• Shay Watson (Iota Nu 1994, founding member of Watson and Nash)
• Jimmy Webb, 1946–present (Pi Tau Honorary 1969, American songwriter, known for "Up, Up and Away" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix". His songs have been recorded or performed by Glen Campbell, The 5th Dimension, The Supremes, Richard Harris, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Isaac Hayes, R.E.M., and Chet Atkins, among others.)

Enlightenment ideals. In these groups men gather strength, support, and inspiration to advance music through their fraternal bonds, their shared devotion to spiritual ideals, and the earnest search for Truth and Beauty.

"So, let us, you and I, for the sake of our brother man, individually strive by example and influence to lift the standard of thought and conduct from the low level of selfishness and self-indulgence up to the lofty realms of aspirational thought and self-denial." Ossian Everett Mills (What are the Possibilities of Sinfonia: Optimism Runs High in Phi Mu Alpha, 1912)

Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia

2011-12-28T07:50:00.006-05:00

Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia (also known as Phi Mu Alpha, or simply Sinfonia) is an American collegiate social fraternity for men with a special interest in music. The fraternity is open to men "who, through a love for music, can assist in the fulfillment of [its] Object and ideals either by adopting music as a profession, or by working to advance the cause of music in America."

Ossian Everett Mills(1856 - 1920) was the founder of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity of America at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts on October 6, 1898. Often referred to as the "Father of Sinfonia", Mills was a familiar figure at annual conventions until his last years when his work would not permit his leaving Boston. He served the fraternity as its first and fourth supreme president (1901-1902 and 1904–1905) and was elected "Honorary Grand Supreme President for Life" in 1904.

"Let our friendship be marked by kind words, kind deeds, and lasting cooperation in our common work; and, remembering that our inspiration is from on High, from the God of all creatures, we should ever be constant in our humble attitude to this great source. Let our sincerity be manifest to all. Hypocrisy should be unknown to us, and a solicitude for our fellows should dominate our every word and action. Then our nobility will shine forth in our characters..." Ossian Everett Mills (The President's Message, 1902)

"I assure you that we men, all of us, need, perhaps more than we think, to withdraw from the active, noisy, materialistic rush of the world, not to mention the sensuous, intoxicating, social pleasures of life that minister only to the flesh, and in peaceful quiet meditate upon and consider together some of the deep things of life, listen to the voice of the Eternal and be taught by the infinite spirit of truth." (Greetings and other things from Father Mills, 1909)

"One of the most beautiful spectacles is to see men mutually interested in each other, so much so, that like 'David and Jonathan' they are ready to sacrifice, even to the laying down of their lives, for their brothers..." Ossian Everett Mills (Sinfonia-Yesterday, 1910)

The first Metaphysical Convention was held in Boston in 1889. Like Emerson, the New Thought societies did not define themselves with any particular form of creed or belief. The leaders advocated attendance at the already established churches and wished “to leaven all churches with their spirit, and not to form a new denomination to contend with the old ones.”

In 1891 George Williams(Supreme President 1903-1904) began attending the New England Conservatory15 and joined the Christian Endeavor society. He wrote:

During my sophomore year at college I attended church services at the great Tremont Temple. The pastor was Dr. George C. Lorimer[http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2011/12/george-claude-lorimer.html]… one of the most brilliant and powerful speakers I have ever heard… Under his persuasive preaching, all my somewhat scattered spiritual impressions were brought to a focus…
As I recall, it was about this time that I established a definite daily Quiet Hour Period, which I have maintained to the present time. Year by year this period of prayer and meditation has become more and more precious; and I now look forward to it as the most helpful and inspiring period of the entire day.
What do we of this noisy world need more than to learn how to be still, lest we lose all contact with our soul? To my mind, we are suffering, not from a loss of theological beliefs, but from a loss of solitude. Afraid to be alone, we are always going places, but in reality never getting anywhere.
Whatever our task, it will be better done if we definitely reserve some time each day for a Quiet Hour Period with God. Ten minutes each day—if not more—of quiet meditation and prayer—“a little hush amid the rush,” will help us, in the words of Plato, to “re-collect ourselves.” Surely there is something in the soul that is blood-relative to God. And thus the soul of all improvement is the improvement of the soul. As Pascal[http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2011/12/pascal.html]once remarked,
“The heart has reasons which the Reason does not know.”

“Music as a Healing Power”

2011-12-28T07:31:00.005-05:00

from The New Old Healing by Henry Wood, 1908.

The systematic use of music as a therapeutic agent has engaged the attention of a few specialists during the past few years, though but little general interest in the subject has yet been awakened. We congratulate ourselves upon the modern cultivation of voice and instrument, and yet have little appreciation of their possible restorative potency.

A general impression prevails to the effect that almost every art or science back in the past ages was but crude, or rudimentary, in comparison with the standard of to-day. And many would think, at first glance, that music as a healing instrumentality is but a recent development, whether it be mostly a fad, or otherwise. But the most superficial investigation of the subject will show that the present philosophy of musical healing is but a slight modern revival of principles which have been far better understood in times long past than in this self-satisfied era.

In reality musical restoration is but a variety of mind cure. Through the awakening of certain emotions which take hold upon the nerve-center, a change is produced in the status of the whole organism.

Musical vibrations can have no direct effect upon the body, as animate matter, but through the ear as a medium they change certain mental conditions which by means of the nervous equipment thrill the organism, and modify its action from head to foot. But human personality is variable, so that any scientific classification, or formula of specific principles, can hardly be laid down with accuracy. While as a rule certain kinds of music may soothe and act as a sedative, and others as a tonic or stimulant, and some as a simple diversion, still subtle individual idiosyncrasy is so variant that it will always remain an important element. In any case, efficacy must largely depend upon the interest and faith of the patient. While the same harmony of concordant sounds in itself will not produce quite the same effect upon different temperaments, the optimistic expectation of each is important. The precise nature of the external means is not significant, but the subjective impression upon the soul is all important.

A comprehensive history of the employment of musical therapeutics embracing all ages and civilization would be of great psychological interest. One comprehensive law would run through all. Great basic principles are proved and even become axiomatic by the examination of a great array of facts and phenomena which occur under conditions often outwardly unlike. These few instances and events might be reduplicated to any extent. From the most ancient historical records, forward, the proofs of musical healing are many and undoubted. Back in the childhood of the race the physician, priest and musician formed a closely related trio for the assuagement of human woes. The occult power of the priesthood, and the charm of melody, were held to be superior to the drug. Notwithstanding superstition prevailed, and oracle, omen and charm were common, they were not entirely irrational or without use. Their effect upon the mind was keenly observed.

There was no cold scientific materialism to cause unbelief, and faith in unseen potency was prevalent and easily aroused.

We moderns may look back with contempt upon the early ages, but were we not too proud we might learn much. While we would not go back to ancient conditions, there was a child-like responsiveness and intuitive spontaneity which possess a peculiar charm and altogether make up an element largely lacking in modern intellection. There is little subtle and delicate poesy in the present era, but rather an all-prevailing prosaism.

Back in the dawn of history in the days of Troy we learn that when the pest rages beneath the city walls it was driven away by music. In Rome 364 B.C. Etrurian flute players dancing through the streets banished the plague which was depopulating the city. The harp cured melancholia as demonstrated in the case of Saul.

Melodious sounds were often effective in freeing the victim of demoniacal possession. Pythagoras wrought wonderful cures through the systematic ministry of melody. Many physicians prescribed music for the recovery from madness. The great Galen recommended melodious strains as an antidote for the bite of a viper or scorpion.

Books enough to make a vast library have been written upon the influence of sweet sounds in disease and many of them are filled with the details of remarkable cases and cures. The disorder treated were in no wise limited to those of a nervous character. The great number of treatises upon the subject were, as a rule, written in Latin and published, notably during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Harmonic compositions, and also sentimental, artistic and immaterial means and methods were utilized to change the current of the human mind and thereby take the man out of himself. An intelligent and persistent effort in this direction would largely provide for the disuse of our modern asylums.

The multiform appliances which have been used to break up abnormally fixed thought are significant, and yet general observation as to the principles involved, is most superficial. If any human being is mentally crystallizing into morbidity he should be jostled or turned about, until a new combination is formed.

Whether music, poetry, sentiment or travel be the external and incidental means for the installation of a new state of consciousness, they are but suggestions in the direction of the great inner Fact. Either of them may be the fulcrum by the use of which the subject lifts himself into a condition of harmony and health.

Uplifting or entrancing vibrations therefore form one of the efficient methods of psychical reconstruction. As a modus operandi, if more freely illogical it may appear what matters it, provided the result be beneficent?

We are ever brought back to the basic and all-inclusive problem: How, and through what appliance, mental or physical, can an adequate and saving faith be evolved and a strong expectation awakened in man?

Henry Wood, The New Old Healing (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.: Boston, 1908)

The "New Age" movement has brought nothing "new".
They've repackaged the "old".

Pascal

2011-12-27T16:01:00.003-05:00

Blaise Pascal (1623 –1662), was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method. He rejected rationalism and empiricism (which are in contrast with idealism).

In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines, and after three years of effort and 50 prototypes he invented the mechanical calculator. He built twenty of these machines (called the Pascaline) in the following ten years. Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.

In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience during a brush with death in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: “the Lettres provincials” and “the Pensées”, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.

Pascal had poor health especially after his eighteenth year and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday.

George Claude Lorimer

2011-12-27T15:54:00.001-05:00

George Claude Lorimer [Dr. George C. Lorimer] (1838 - 1904) was a noted reverend, and was pastor of several churches around the United States, most notably the Tremont Temple in Boston, Massachusetts. In Louisville, Kentucky, he came under the influence of Reverend W.W. Everts, who turned Lorimer to Christianity. He was ordained in the Baptist Ministry, first holding brief pastorates in Harrodsburg, Kentucky and Paducah, Kentucky, and then for eight years at the Walnut Street Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. After another brief term in Albany, New York, he next took up an office at the Tremont Temple in Boston, where he would serve as pastor for twenty-one years, with some interruptions. Early in February, 1879, the financially distressed First Baptist Church of Chicago extended a call to Lorimer to come there from the Tremont Temple, and on May 4, 1879, he preached his first sermon as pastor of the Chicago congregation. Lorimer's pastorate was "successful in the highest degree", and by January, 1881, the church raised sufficient means to pay a substantial portion of its debt. On September 25, 1881. Lorimer delivered his farewell sermon in Chicago, returning to the Tremont Temple and leaving a gift of $1,600 to the reorganized Chicago congregation. In 1901 he took up a new pastorate for the last time, at the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in New York City.

Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré

2011-12-27T13:32:00.004-05:00

Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré is a town in La Côte-de-Beaupré Regional County Municipality, Quebec[4], Canada, along the Saint Lawrence River, 35 kilometers (22 mi) north-east of the Quebec City. The population was 2,803 according to the Canada 2006 Census. The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré is located in the town.
Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré stands in a rolling agricultural country, with the foothills of the Laurentian Mountains in the background. The first church was built by sailors who would often become ship-wrecked off Ile-Oeuf on their way to Quebec City. Saint Anne is the patron saint of sailors.
The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré is a major Roman Catholic place of pilgrimage and has a copy of Michelangelo's Pietà[1] (the original is in the Vatican City). The basilica is also known as a place of miracles. One of the builders of the original church, Louis Guimont, helped build the church despite having severe scoliosis and needing the aid of a crutch. When the church was complete, he was able to walk independently. Subsequent visitors to the church who have prayed have left their canes, crutches and walking aides behind as testament to their healing. The main wall when you first walk into the basilica is now completely covered with crutches.
In addition to the basilica, the town contains numerous religious edifices, the chief being the Scala Santa[2], built in imitation of the Holy Stairs in Rome.

[1] Michelangelo's St. Peter's Pietà. The Pietà (pl. same; Italian for pity) is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, most often found in sculpture.

[2]The Scala Sancta (English: Holy Stairs, Italian: Scala Santa) are, according to the Christian tradition, the steps that led up to the praetorium[3] of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, which Jesus Christ stood on during his Passion on his way to trial.
[3]The term praetorium, also spelled prœtorium or pretorium, was originally used to identify the general’s tent within a Roman castra, castellum, or encampment.

[4]Quebec is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level. Quebec is Canada's largest province by area and its second-largest administrative division; only the territory of Nunavut is larger. It is bordered to the west by the province of Ontario, James Bay and Hudson Bay, to the north by Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay, to the east by the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick. It is bordered on the south by the US states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York. It also shares maritime borders with Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia.

Material riches is not life, it is only a means for living.

2011-12-27T13:24:00.002-05:00

To the Psalmist, fear is a destroyer of calmness and peace of mind ; therefore, he prays,

"Hear my voice, 0 God, in my prayer ; preserve my life from fear."

But, the same Psalmist tells us, those who take refuge in God have no cause for fear, for God is with them always, watching over them, that no evil may befall them. Absolute trust and confidence in God is the best shield against fear.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear ?"

"The Lord is the stronghold of my life ; of whom shall I be afraid?"

"Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear."

This intense faith carries the Psalmist safely through all danger and affliction.

Faith in God, we see thus, is given as the antidote to fear. This faith must be genuine; it must be felt as sincerely as did the Psalmist. . . .And the fact that He resides in man, is the best assurance that man is protected against the invasion of forces hostile and destructive to his existence. God dwells in man, His presence is a tower of strength and a shield to guard him from all ill. Man must realize this truth, and the realization of it will drive out all fear.

Fear takes its inception from the fact that man feels himself to be alone in this world. When confronted with danger, he believes that the task of extricating himself from imminent peril lies upon himself, and at the same time regards himself as too feeble and insignificant to avert the impending calamity.

Material riches is not life, it is only a means for living.

From Conquest of Fear By Morris Lichtenstein
Morris Lichtenstein (1889–1938) was the founder of the Society of Jewish Science. Born in Lithuania, he later moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where he was ordained by the Reform Hebrew Union College in 1916, becoming the first Eastern European student to ever study at the institution. Lichtenstein served as a Rabbi in Amsterdam, Troy, and New York City, where he received a Master's degree in Psychology from Columbia University in 1919. He briefly served a congregation in Athens, Georgia before moving back to New York to marry Tehilla Hirshenson in 1920. Together they founded the Society of Jewish Science in 1921.

Smart Meters and Health

2011-12-27T11:38:00.004-05:00

SAY NO

B.C.'s provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall said the meters emit the same kind of radiation as cell phones, microwaves and baby monitors.

Given that cell phones, wi-fi and smart meters all transmit information with radio frequency waves, some members of the public have also argued that these devices, as well as baby monitors, and FM radio, which also use radio frequency transmission, be curtailed or banned.

Dr. Perry Kendall, British Columbia’s provincial health officer, recognizes these concerns. Dr. Kendall and his colleagues across the country regularly review information and new science as it becomes available, and have established ongoing review mechanisms to ensure that new knowledge is assessed quickly. http://www.bccdc.ca/healthenv/Radiation/ElectromagRadiation/CelluarandPCSDevices/PerryKendallCellPhoneStatement.htm

Dr. Magda Havas

Associate Professor Environmental and Resource Studies Program Trent University, Peterborough
• Professional Web Site http://www.magdahavas.org/

Welcome to Dr. Havas's Academic Website.
This site provides a collection of Dr. Havas's publications, technical reports, open letters, testimony as an expert witness at hearings, and invited presentations on chemical and electromagnetic contaminants.

• General Web Site http://www.magdahavas.com/

My research deals with the health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic energy at the extremely low frequency range associated with electricity (60 Hertz) and at the radio frequency range commonly associated with wireless telecommunication. I am particularly interested in monitoring exposure of the population in urban centres to radio frequency radiation and power-frequency fields. Since children are more sensitive than adults to the potentially harmful effects of EMFs I have been trying to encourage school boards to measure magnetic fields within their schools as part of their health and safety program. I also provide information to people who are concerned about antennas, power lines or transformers being built near their residence and am currently trying to help with a Private Member's Motion that will establish guidelines and standards that reflect recent scientific studies and will truly protect public health.
Articles at her website

WiFi “Laptops” affect male fertility
Wi-Fi in Schools is Safe. True or False?
Advice for Health Canada regarding Wi-Fi, cell phone antennas, and other forms of radio frequency emitting devices.
Multiple Sclerosis and Dirty Electricity

• Trent University http://www.trentu.ca/academic/ihs/mhavas.html

YouTube

1. Welcome to Planet Irth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtb8dTgB3LE
2. WiFi in schools and health effects of microwave radiation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-TJXRc5fzo&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
3. Cell Phones & Cigarettes: What do they have in Common? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4uz2TUcwnI&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
Peterborough is a city on the Otonabee River in (Central-Eastern) southern Ontario, Canada, 125 kilometres (78 mi) northeast of Toronto. Peterborough is known as the gateway to the Kawarthas, "cottage country", a large recreational region of the province. The Kawartha lakes are a band of lakes in south-central Ontario, Canada that form the upper watershed of the Trent River. The lakes all lie upon the boundary between the Paleozoic limestone regions of the Golden Horseshoe, and the Precambrian granite Canadian Shield of northern and central Ontario.

"Kawartha" is an anglicization of the word "Ka-wa-tha" (from "Ka-wa-tae-gum-maug" or Gaa-waategamaag), a word coined in 1895 by aboriginal Martha Whetung of the Curve Lake First Nations. It was hoped that the word, which meant "land of reflections" in the Anishinaabe language, would provide a convenient and popular advertising label for the area. The word was subsequently changed by tourism promoters to Kawartha, with the meaning "bright waters and happy lands."

Human Well-Being .

2011-12-27T11:29:00.006-05:00

Richard Cabot's (1868-1939) decision to leave full-time medical work in 1920 to teach social ethics illustrates some of the tensions inherent in twentieth-century medicine's transformation from clinical practice to a biomedical science. Cabot, then one of America's best known physicians, practiced medicine in an era in which science redefined medical practice and thinking. Although a champion of medical science, Cabot's primary concerns were clinical and humanistic. He emphasized the importance of ambulatory medicine, advocated group practice, founded hospital social work, did clinical epidemiologic research, lobbied for preventive medicine, created the Clinical-Pathologic Conference, and wrote extensively on medical ethics. In 1912, despite Cabot's great talents, a top professorship at Harvard Medical School was instead given to David Edsall, a clinician with more extensive basic science training. Cabot's efforts to define the physician's, as well as the health care system's, role in human well-being, however, presaged medicine's current attempts to emphasize the social context of the patient.
He is also credited with discovering Cabot rings(1), and for describing, along with his colleague, Locke, the eponymous Cabot-Locke murmur, a diastolic murmur occasionally heard in severe anemia, unrelated to heart valve abnormalities.
Paul Dudley White, the distinguished cardiologist, wrote of Richard Cabot after his death:

In every generation there are restless souls who cannot be made to fit the common mold. A few of these are valuable in keeping their communities and professions in a ferment by their constant challenge to the existing order of man's thought and action. But when, in addition to possessing these attributes, a rare individual is endowed with the divine fire and makes important contributions to the pioneering progress of humanity, then indeed we recognize a great leader. In the thick of the fray such recognition comes slowly but as soon as the smoke of the battle clears the acclaim is universal. (1939)

[1] Cabot rings are thin, red-violet staining, threadlike strands in the shape of a loop or figure-8 that are found on rare occasions in erythrocytes. They are believed to be microtubules that are remnants from a mitotic spindle. Cabot rings have been observed in a handful of cases in patients with megaloblastic anemia, lead poisoning and other disorders of erythropoiesis. They were first described in 1903 by American physician, Richard Clarke Cabot.
Cabot addressed the seventh annual New Thought conference as did Royce in 1907.

Knower

2011-12-26T12:22:00.005-05:00

Josiah Royce (1855 – 1916) was an American objective idealist philosopher.
Royce stands out starkly in the philosophical crowd because he was the only major American philosopher who spent a significant period of his life studying and writing history, specifically of the American West, “As one of the four giants in American philosophy of his time […] Royce overshadowed himself as historian, in both reputation and output”

Royce's key works include The World and the Individual (1899–1901) and The Problem of Christianity (1913), both based on lectures, given at the Gifford and Hibbert lectures series respectively. The heart of Royce's idealist philosophy was his contention that the apparently external world has real existence only as known by an ideal Knower, and that this Knower must be actual rather than merely hypothetical. He offered various arguments for this contention in both of his major works. He appears never to have repudiated this view, even though his later works are largely devoted to expositing his philosophy of community.
Two key influences on the thought of Royce were Charles Sanders Peirce and William James.
Horatio W. Dresser evidently did doctoral work with both William James and Royce.
Royce addressed the seventh annual New Thought convention in 1907 as did Dr. R.C. Cabot

Ixquick

2011-12-26T11:59:00.000-05:00

is a metasearch engine. Ixquick returns the top ten results from multiple search engines. It uses a "Star System" to rank its results - by awarding one star for every result that has been returned from a search engine. Thereby, the top search results are the ones that have been returned from the most search engines. Ixquick also can search in 17 languages. https://www.ixquick.com/

Time to clean up the old and make way for the new.

2011-12-26T11:50:00.003-05:00

Start with your computer.

For FireFox under Tools select Clear Recent History and click ClearNow.
For Internet Explorer - Tools- Delete Browsing History and click Delete

For Windows using the Start ICON choose Accessories under All Programs then choose System Tools and then choose Disk Cleanup and run it. After that you’ll want to run Disk Defragmenter, also found in Accessories-System Tools

I use Disk Cleanup but I also use CCleaner and Defraggler. Both are free. CCleaner installs an option on the Recycle Bin to run it from there and that includes emptying the Recycle Bin as part of the process.

CCleaner is the number-one tool for cleaning your Windows PC. It protects your privacy online and makes your computer faster and more secure. Easy to use and a small, fast download.
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/features

Use Defraggler to defrag your entire hard drive, or individual files - unique in the industry.
When Defraggler reads or writes a file, it uses the exact same techniques that Windows uses. Using Defraggler is just as safe for your files as using Windows.
http://www.piriform.com/defraggler/features

Make it a weekly or monthly habit.

Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World

2011-12-26T11:43:00.000-05:00

Part documentary, part detective story, Sweet Misery starts with filmmaker and narrator Cori Brackett's poignant story about how she discovered aspartame's ill effect on her health. Brackett had a strange cause-and effect experience with the diet cokes she was drinking and quickly found herself disabled and diagnosed with MS. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/sweet-misery-a-poisoned-world/

Relative risk vs Absolute risk

2011-12-26T11:40:00.000-05:00

A new study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases reveals that the flu vaccine prevents lab confirmed type A or type B influenza in only 1.5 out of every 100 vaccinated adults(98.5% Useless) … but the media is reporting this to mean "60 percent effective." Some clinical trials are only able to show a meaningful benefit because they focus on relative risk reduction rather than absolute risk reduction. In plain English, here's what that means: let's say you have a study of 200 women, half of whom take a drug and half take a placebo, to examine the effect on breast cancer risk. After five years, two women in the drug group develop breast cancer, compared to four who took the placebo. This data could lead to either of the following headlines, and both would be correct:
"New Miracle Drug Cuts Breast Cancer Risk by 50%!"
"New Drug Results in 2% Drop in Breast Cancer Risk!"

An important feature of relative risk is that it tells you nothing about the actual risk.

Merry Christmas to you!!!

2011-12-24T18:06:00.003-05:00

Santa Claus is coming to town!

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you never suffer.

May you feel loved!

Live the Life

2011-12-24T13:44:00.004-05:00

If you would help another, let love lead the way.

The Myrtle Fillmore Collection at Unity bears serious reading. She was reared and healed in the Scientific Christian philosophy or tradition. Which got me thinking. Years ago a DVD “Indigo Children”, a new age power of suggestion thingy, was orchestrated to open like a wave across the planet. Perhaps the Truth can be orchestrated to start as wave from each and everyone of us as we open to the Truth of our true nature.

Dresser points out :

"The simple truth is that all our illnesses, woes and vices are intimately related, and that really to be rid of one is to overcome all. It is not a question of gaining enough insight into the power of the human spirit to overcome a few maladies, and then disregard material things and laws as if they did not exist. The power of the spirit is not a half-way measure. It is not disclosed that we may do as we like. The real test of our spiritual faith is given us when we carry the spiritual life into every sphere of our natural and social interests. The power of our human spirit was given us to live by the Spirit. This Spirit has become manifest in this splendid world of space and time, objective in bodies and things, and the Spirit's manifestations are not to be ignored.”

We may say in brief that the one great reason why the world has not whole- heartedly adopted this new version of Christianity is found in the fact that this preliminary period was needed to bring us back to the Gospel. The pioneers cleared the way. They planted the new seed. Its fruitage was judged by appearances. Now we are learning that what seemed to be a mental device for winning people was in reality a call "to live the life." The requisite change of thought from the old order to the new was only a beginning. The psychology of success was merely an aspect of spiritual truths including the whole of life. Behind it all there was a priceless possession which the few caught sight of and have been cherishing. What was that priceless possession? Can we put it into words?

It was the truth of the Inward Presence once more made known to men. It was the rediscovery, made ever and again in human history, that there is in man a God-sense or power of direct communion with heavenly realities, such that experience is the test and verification of all spiritual wisdom. In a practical way this means that any man at any time, whatever his need, may lift his problem into heavenly light and see it transfigured by the guidance he needs. It means further that this light may be admitted into our whole nature, that there is guidance for every need whatsoever. And the application of this guidance to healing was the special phase which this wisdom brought us at first, because this truth needed to be restored to the world. This truth brought back, it became possible to regard the Gospel in its fullness anew. Thus the way to "Live the life" again opened before men as they had not seen it for ages.

The experience of the first pioneer in this re-discovery shows that anyone might make the same discovery--guided by the Spirit. For the heavenly light is always shining. What was needed to bring men to knowledge of it through quest for healing was a method of meditation or silent realization. This method was acquired by our pioneers through the prior discovery that man has inner senses or intuitive power enabling him to discern spiritual reality. All men have evidences of such inward power, but only a few put the evidences together to see that our spiritual nature is adapted for manifold use when we need power in any field. What is needed is an experience sufficiently absorbing so that we will follow it through and find the Spirit within the human spirit, the Lord of life presiding over our human life.

It was the truth of the Inward Presence once more made known to men. It was the rediscovery, made ever and again in human history, that there is in man a God-sense or power of direct communion with heavenly realities, such that experience is the test and verification of all spiritual wisdom. In a practical way this means that any man at any time, whatever his need, may lift his problem into heavenly light and see it transfigured by the guidance he needs.

It means further that this light may be admitted into our whole nature, that there is guidance for every need whatsoever. And the application of this guidance to healing was the special phase which this wisdom brought us at first, because this truth needed to be restored to the world. This truth brought back, it became possible to regard the Gospel in its fullness anew. Thus the way to "Live the life" again opened before men as they had not seen it for ages.

Right thinking assumes its proper place at last as instrumental to right living.

Live the life!

Excerpts from:
SPIRITUAL HEALTH AND HEALING
By HORATIO W. DRESSER. Ph.D. [1922]

"When you begin to understand this life principle, you will know that there is a wellspring of life, substance, and intelligence within you, and that yours is the privilege at any time of giving way to its flow. This may lead to one of the most important realizations that will ever come to you: If ever there is a lack of any kind, whether it is a need for employment, or for money, or for guidance, or even for healing, something is blocking the flow. And the most effective remedy: Give!"~ Eric Butterworth

This has been an exceptional year. From Myrtle Fillmore’s hand written notes I got a better understanding of how she was healed and her FAITH.

And Horatio Dresser’s notes on the “Silent Treatment” are phenomenal. It’s been preserved.

Ah, the legacy that Quimby left behind.

Dr. Quimby emphasized the importance of knowing what the life is before one could rightly adjust the thoughts.

MANY years ago Dr. Quimby remarked that the time would come when people would once more be healed by word of mouth as in the case of the remarkable healings wrought by Jesus and the apostles.

Maybe that time is NOW! We have the tools! Let’s learn to use them wisely!

The pioneers cleared the way. They planted the new seed.

The impetus is on us to Live the Life

As William Samuel (2+2= REALITY) wrote

“Isness—until you get off your soft sofa and actually make your own determination of Reality, of Truth, of Fact. You will never permanently rid yourself of the grind and grate in the pit of the stomach nor find yourself free of that feeling of impending doom until you make your own, individual determination of exactly what God is to you!”

"As they went, they were cleansed."

2011-12-23T19:03:00.003-05:00

Let us take a look at the means employed to heal the ten lepers as related in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke. The thing that strikes us in this story is the method that was used to raise their faith to the needful intensity. We are told that the ten lepers appealed to Jesus to "have mercy" on them– that is – to heal them. Jesus ordered them to go and show themselves to the priests, and "as they went, they were cleansed." The Mosaic Law demanded that when a leper recovered from his disease he must show himself to the priest to obtain a certificate of restored health. Jesus imposed a test upon the lepers’ faith and supplied a means by which their faith could be raised to its full potency. If the lepers refused to go – they had no faith – and, therefore, could not be healed. But, if they obeyed Him, the full realization of what their journey implied would break upon their minds as they went and this dynamic thought would heal them. So, we read,

"As they went, they were cleansed."

Prayer is the elevation of the mind to that which we seek. The very first word of correction is always "arise." Always lift the mind to that which we seek. This is easily done by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

ANSWERED PRAYER
Neville
(July, 1951)

"Be still, and know that I am God" ~ No pain, No shame, No Regrets.

2011-12-23T07:10:00.004-05:00

It was P. P. Quimby who introduced the distinction between the "scientific man" with the wisdom of Christ to draw upon[Divine Mind] and the "man of opinions," always changing, subject to errors, fears, and other false beliefs[Carnal Mind or EGO]. Dr. Quimby's silent realization consisted in making a clear-cut separation between the two minds. All later disciples of the silent method have made an equivalent separation in their own terms. The mind that is swayed by opinions is the "carnal mind," and to be "carnally minded is death." It is this carnal-mindedness which Dr. Quimby sought to banish by affirming the reality of the truth which makes men free, the truth we possess when we have the mind of Christ. No one can make much headway in this field without drawing this distinction.
Dr. Quimby also emphasized the importance of knowing what the life is before one could rightly adjust the thoughts. Not primarily concerned with theological matters, Quimby approached the subject of man's relation to God in a purely practical way. Laying emphasis on the Divine presence as Wisdom adequate to meet all occasions and all needs, he acquired a method of practical realization or silent spiritual healing, and used this method in the healing of disease because this was the work given him to do. He saw that healing included the life, and that it was necessary to change one's idea of God if the idea was ecclesiastical rather than practical; but his province was to make sure that people saw the connection between the Divine presence and healing, since this was the vital application of Christianity which the world had overlooked for eighteen hundred years. The method of realizing the Divine presence which was original with him could be applied with equal value to man's life as a whole.
It was in accord with our practical age that Quimby should bring the psychological elements of this realization into view. Quimby drew a fundamental distinction between the outer man or "man of opinions" and the inner mind which can know the Christ-truth. He believed that by absenting himself from the outward world with its opinions and errors, its notions about disease and suffering, one could unite in spirit with the Divine life ready at hand to guide the way to freedom. To enter vividly into realizations of the Divine presence is to banish every influence to which man is subject through opinion, including hereditary influences and those coming from the world. To "realize" is to become open to the Mind which never changes, whereas the mind of opinions is always changing. Quimby developed these realizations into an effective method of silent or spiritual healing which applied, as he believed, to all kinds of disease and trouble in the world.

If, for example, I misjudge a painful sensation due to inward pressure which might be explained by indigestion and attribute my pain to a disordered heart, not to a disordered stomach, I proceed to develop my misinterpretation according to my first error. I then entertain corresponding fears and other exciting emotions, enlarging upon my pain and describing my symptoms to other people. This is what Quimby calls "inventing a disease." But if I had been able to trace the disturbance to its right source, physically speaking, I should at least have avoided the initial error. I might then have proceeded to overcome the disturbance. But my indigestion might have been a mere expression of nervous tension and haste. Behind this there might have been one condition after another. At length I might come to the more interior state which was a prevailing cause of such disabilities. In any case very much depends on the opinion which I associate with my pain. There is a difference between removing the pain for the time being, for instance, by denying its power to cause disease; and endeavoring to live from the higher level so as to avoid all troubles of this sort.

MANY years ago Dr. Quimby remarked that the time would come when people would once more be healed by word of mouth as in the case of the remarkable healings wrought by Jesus and the apostles. How is such healing possible and when may we expect "the greater works" promised by the Master?

The keener the insight, the more sharp would be the separation made through the Christ-consciousness between the spirit of the patient and his former malady.

Dr. Quimby used to say that "the explanation is the cure." By this he meant the penetrating truth which struck home and touched the real cause of disease, whatever appearances might be. Strictly speaking, the cure was wrought by that insight, and if the patient grasped it, the cure was immediate, so far as the inner life was concerned. For we either see a thing or we do not. What leads up to it is preliminary. When the insight really comes, nothing more need be said. Hence Quimby very suddenly and convincingly spoke to some of his patients that illuminating word which carried the most far-reaching results, results affecting not only the health but the religion, business, mode of life and happiness of the patient.

PEOPLE do not like to have their diseases connected with their life as a whole. They approve of the artificial separation which Christians have made for centuries between sin and sickness, in the face of the fact that Jesus identified the two and sought to establish spiritual health or wholeness. They wish to be cured of their illnesses as things apart, that is, as bodily maladies susceptible to physical remedies only, that they may go on gratifying their favorite desires as before. They wish to keep such intemperance or excess as may please them, according to the conventional life they lead; and they refuse to classify these excesses as sins or diseases. Nearly everybody objects to any sort of teaching, whether urged by the Church, by physicians, by science, or by social reformers of any school, however liberal or radical, which traces human ills and evils down to selfishness and bids man master himself.
No rule for putting the mind into this illumined state at its best can be given. One can only say, Cherish it when it comes, observing the conditions which invite its coming that you may encourage their recurrence. By such an experience one learns in part what it means to "think with the spirit" rather than with the external mind. Thus one has a clearer idea what the spirit is.

. . .

MANY devotees of mental healing believe there is a shortcut to the curing of disease through the practice of denials. The word "denial" is not to be understood in the Christian sense of self-denial, losing the self that one may find it, but in the sense of a declaration that any alleged enemy, error or evil does not exist. The first proposition about life in general is, "All is good," and the next, "There is no evil." Radical believers in this method deny even the existence of the body and the natural world. While on the face of it such denials seem absurd, we may well ask ourselves what is the value of this method from a practical point of view.
The theoretical basis of these denials is as follows. Man has two selves or minds, the spirit which is never sick, which never sins or errs; and "mortal mind" or the consciousness of error, the intellect or false mind, always in process of change, essentially external and dependent on information gathered through the physical senses. These senses are discounted as giving misinformation merely, since "there is no intelligence in matter." It is in this false or mortal mind that all error resides. Disease, being an "error of mind," its cure consists in denying not only its alleged power over the flesh but even its existence.
The use of denials is that one may realize "our oneness with God." Otherwise stated, denials are for the sake of affirming the reality of the true self, which is pure spirit, never afraid, never disturbed, never selfish, never at fault. . . .
TO turn away from the violent emotion and connect with the stream of peace-energy is to feel a different mode of motion and to give forth a different kind of vibration. Here is the process in barest outline. You may call it either transmutation of energy, transfer of attention or upliftment of spiritual consciousness, as you will. The essential is to gain this power in some measure, then to increase it. When you win it you will have a basis in actual experience on which to build.

The impetus is on us to go WITHIN, connect with our source of strength.

It’s WITHIN.

Excerpts from:
SPIRITUAL HEALTH AND HEALING
By HORATIO W. DRESSER. Ph.D. [1922]

“Discover the Power Within You” ~ Eric Butterworth

Cherish it when it comes.

Observe the conditions which invite its coming so that you may encourage their recurrence.

“Build your church.”

2011-12-22T17:17:00.002-05:00

One of the world’s leading teachers and ministers of metaphysics was Reverend William H. D. Hornaday(1911 - 1992) of Founder’s Church of Religious Science in Los Angeles, California. Reverend William Hornaday, affectionately known as "Dr. Bill" to his congregation of over 7,000, is the leading minister at Founder's Church of Religious Science in Los Angeles, California. A former business executive, Hornaday earned his Doctor of Divinity in 1952 and studied under such prominent people as Carl Jung, Albert Schweitzer, Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Ernest Holmes.
His daily inspirational radio program, "This Thing Called Life," had aired since the 1970s in Southern California, and worldwide via the Armed Forces Radio Service.
It was on prodding from his mother-in-law that he went to hear Ernest Holmes. Speaking of the higher consciousness, Ernest said,

‘There’s a power greater than you, and you can use it.’

Books he has written include My Prayer For You, Today; Life Everlasting; Success Unlimited; Help For Today; and Your Aladdin's Lamp (with Harlan Ware).
Hornaday had a dream of a permanent home for his congregation. Dr. Bill discussed his vision for Religious Science with Dr. Holmes. At first, Dr. Holmes was hesitant, but it didn’t take long for Dr. Holmes to see the beauty of a Mother Church and what a symbol it would be for all. A gentleman’s agreement was reached and began to take tangible form when ground for Founder’s Church was broken in 1958 at Sixth and Berendo Streets.
On October 18, 1958, Dr. Holmes, assisted by Dr. Norman Lan Valkenberg, board members and staff, laid the cornerstone and time capsule to be opened in the year 2059. Items included in the capsule were the Holy Bible, a Science of Mind textbook, the October issue of Science of Mind magazine, and a special message from Dr. Bill. On January 3, 1960 the dedication of Founder’s Church took place. Dr. Ernest Holmes gave the dedication address on the auspicious day. On July 26, 1964, Holmes Memorial Chapel was dedicated

“to the light of God in man, in which Light he walks.”

Founder’s initial fund raiser in 1958 was started by a young girl who, after hearing Dr. Bill talk about his dream of a new church during a service at the Wiltern, told her parents that she wanted to talk to him. The little girl was introduced to Dr. Bill and she joyfully handed him three pennies from her purse and said,

“Build your church.”

The rest is history and Founder’s started as a testimony of the faith of a child and the power of the Spirit in action.

I, Monty

2011-12-22T07:56:00.003-05:00

"Success, or failure, very often arrives on wings that seem mysterious to us"
~ Marcus Bach

Marcus Bach(1906 - 1995) was born in Sauk City, Wisconsin. He trained for the ordained ministry at Mission House College and seminary in Plymouth, Wisconsin. After a pastorate in Kansas City, Missouri, Marcus Bach returned to school to pursue play writing . He received his M.A. (1937) and Ph.D. (1942) from the University of Iowa's prestigious interfaith School of Religion. There he taught about little known religious sects and also presented the course in radio.
Although he always continued to write and publish, in 1961, he resigned from the School of Religion to pursue lecturing and writing full time. He authored twenty-seven books, including Major Religions of the World, Had you Been Born in Another Faith, The Unity Way, The World of Serendipity, and The Power of Total Living. At one point in his life, Dr. Bach set out to meet the five people of his time whom he felt best exemplified the teachings of Jesus Christ in their lives. He travelled 40,000 miles in pursuit of this aim, interviewing Helen Keller[1], Pope Pius XII[2], Albert Schweitzer[3],Therese Neumann[4], and Shoghi Effendi[5].
Dr. Bach was founder and director of "The Fellowship for Spiritual Understanding." He has contributed to the Encyclopedia Americana, Theatre Arts, the Reader's Digest, and many other periodicals. and was director of special projects for SFF. The Rockefeller Foundation granted him a fellowship in “research and creative writing” from 1934-36
Marcus Bach is recognized as a leading authority on the world's religions and inter-cultural relations. Among his currently popular works are The World of Serendipity, The Power of Perception and the metaphysical allegory, I, Monty.
[1]Helen Adams Keller (1880 –1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degreeThe story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker. A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Wobblies, she campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and socialism, as well as many other leftist causes.
[2] The Venerable Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (1876 –1958), reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958.
[3] Albert Schweitzer OM (1875 –1965) was a German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of the German Empire. Schweitzer, a Lutheran, challenged both the secular view of Jesus as depicted by historical-critical methodology current at his time in certain academic circles, as well as the traditional Christian view. Schweitzer's passionate quest was to discover a universal ethical philosophy, anchored in a universal reality, and make it directly available to all of humanity.
[4] Therese Neumann ( 1898 –1962) was a German Catholic mystic and stigmatic. She was a member of the Third Order of St. Francis.
[5] Shoghí Effendí Rabbání (1897 —1957), better known as Shoghi Effendi, was the Guardian and appointed head of the Bahá'í Faith from 1921 until his death in 1957.

Creative Living

2011-12-22T07:38:00.004-05:00

Dr. Stuart Grayson(???? -2001) was a leading authority in the area of mental and spiritual self-development. He was a Minister and Director of the Center of Creative Living and Pastor of First Church of Religious Science in New York. He then became Pastor Emeritus in 1999. A renowned speaker, he was a frequent lecturer on the Science of Mind across the United States and abroad. He spoke weekly at Alice Tully Hall in New York’s Lincoln Center for thirty years. Many thousands of people have attended his lectures which explained how the principles of health, prosperity, and fulfillment may be used in their lives.
After experiencing a dramatic physical healing at an early age through spiritual means, Dr. Grayson devoted much of his time to the study of world religions. He personally investigated eastern and western spiritual philosophies and psychologies, practicing various methods of self-awareness. He studied at the Jung Institute in Switzerland and particularly with the world-renowned Dr. Carl Alfred Meier[1], co-founder of the Institute. As a result of his spiritual quest, Dr. Grayson affiliated himself with Religious Science and was a minister for 35 years.
Once active in the business world, Dr. Grayson was a corporate executive for many years. His conviction about the need to bring a practical spiritual philosophy to as many people as possible guided him into the full-time ministry. He soon became widely known and respected for his presentation of spiritual psychology and philosophy.
He was both author and poet, and his writings have been published in the U.S., Europe, South America, and Asia. Dr. Grayson appeared on a weekly television series, “Creative Living,” which he produced for the New York area. He also produced and appeared on a weekly talk-radio program in New York for several years.

[1]Carl Alfred Meier (1905 – 1995) was a Swiss psychiatrist, Jungian psychologist, scholar, and first president of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich. As a successor to Carl Jung, he held the Chair of Honorary Professor of Psychology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1949. Later, co-founded the Clinic and Research Center for Jungian Psychology in Zürichberg.
Professor Meier was born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland in 1905. He enrolled at the University of Zürich in 1924. In the winter semester of 1927, Meier traveled to Paris to study at the Medical Faculty of the University of Paris. Later, in 1928, he traveled to Vienna to study at the Steinhof (the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Vienna), and to attend the lectures of Julius Wagner-Jauregg.
A colleague at Steinhof invited him to attend a series of Wednesday seminars delivered by Sigmund Freud. In 1931, he began his study of psychiatry under H.W. Maier at Burghölzli.
His numerous books have made significant contributions to the understanding and practice of psychotherapy.

the Law of Eradication

2011-12-22T07:31:00.003-05:00

"The mind with which you think, plan, remember, grieve and rejoice is not an isolated phenomenon. Scientists are increasingly intrigued with the theory of a Cosmic Mind connection – and with the power this implies for those who know it and use it." ~ George Bendall

Influential Science of Mind minister Dr. George Bendall (1919-1992) was a close associate of Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes and pastor of Founder's Church in Los Angeles where he helped thousands to understand and celebrate the Science of Mind teachings.
A Southern "aristocrat" by birth and an engineering prodigy by nature and training -- he was among the few hundred young men personally exempted from military service by President Franklin Roosevelt.
By 1957, George Bendall had not only joined the Religious Science movement but had been ordained as a minister-at-large. He served a variety of churches in Southern California including Founder's Church until his passing in 1992.
Founder's Church of Religious Science
• Is Your Life What You Want It To Be?

Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life...

Dr. Bendall, puts the Science of Mind teaching in its most user-friendly terms, beginning with the Law of Eradication:

"the one certain way to be mentally and emotionally done with your problem-making patterns. After that, it’s really very smooth sailing – despite what 'they' may think."

Process Philosophy

2011-12-22T07:26:00.003-05:00

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), English mathematician and philosopher, was born in England in 1861, schooled at home until age 14, and graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1884. There he was a lecturer in mathematics until 1911. At the University of London he was a lecturer in applied mathematics and mechanics (1911–14) and professor of mathematics (1914–24). Ultimately, he moved to Harvard in 1924 where he was professor of philosophy and remained there for the rest of his life. He died in 1947 at the age of 86.
Whitehead's distinction rests upon his contributions to mathematics and logic, the philosophy of science, and the study of metaphysics. In the field of mathematics Whitehead extended the range of algebraic procedures and, in collaboration with Bertrand Russell, wrote Principia Mathematica (3 vol., 1910–13), a landmark in the study of logic. His inquiries into the structure of science provided the background for his metaphysical writings. He criticized traditional categories of philosophy for their failure to convey the essential interrelation of matter, space, and time.
Whitehead's life is often described as having three distinct phases roughly corresponding to his academic positions, and his influence can be felt in all three areas—
1. that of a mathematician and logician (Trinity1884-1910),
2. a philosopher of science (London 1910-1924) and
3. a philosopher of metaphysics (Harvard from 1924 onward). During this latter period he developed a comprehensive metaphysical system which has come to be known as Process Philosophy. In contrast to traditional philosophies, he asserted the essential inter-relationship of matter, space, and time; that objects may be understood as a series of events and processes. This concept was elaborated further in his book Process and Reality (1929) to assert that the process of becoming, what he calls an actual occasion, rather than substance, constituted the fundamental metaphysical constituent of the universe.

"Be still, and know that I am God" ~ V

2011-12-21T19:39:00.001-05:00

Bits and bites from:
SPIRITUAL HEALTH AND HEALING
by
HORATIO W. DRESSER. Ph.D.
1922

INTEREST in spiritual healing has reached a point where it is no longer necessary to dwell on such elementary matters as the influence of fear and worry, the power of suggestion and the utilizing of the subconscious. These considerations are now taken for granted by those who believe that inner healing is more than mental. Suggestion is not regarded as decisive except by those who would ignore the spiritual life and limit healing to the sphere of psychology. For those of us who believe that the spiritual life is inseparable from true spiritual healing, the question of mental influences and mental methods is forever secondary. It ought rather to be a question of cultivating the mode of life which produces spiritual health. All our efforts should be constructive. Our clues should be drawn from the ideal, not through study of conditions which produce disease.
To be normal, to live in spiritual health is to be in accord with the universe: to think, will, live by the Divine order.

. . .

Many writers have taught it in their favorite ways, since the time of P. P. Quimby, who was the first healer in our day to plead for a "Science of the Christ." This philosophy includes the idea of the Divine indwelling as the guiding principle of the inner life, of the spiritual world as the nearby source of real power; the idea that there is a heavenly purpose in our strivings, that the natural world is a theatre for the development of the soul. If different writers would express these introductory matters in various ways, all would agree that the endeavor to live by this higher wisdom is the great consideration.

. . .

Since 1919, the remaining branches of the movement, save one, have been united in an effort to make the Christ the cardinal principle. It is now a question of looking forward to see what the movement will make of the Christ as its ideal.
Critics of New Thought and Christian Science in its various forms have pointed out that we are not "parts" of God, because God is one and indivisible; that man is not "life in itself," for God only is life in itself; that man is not "one with God," but may be conjoined with Him through responsiveness: hence that man's recipiency of life is measured by his love, not by his affirmation or thought. . . The whole outlook changes with the adoption of this higher point of view. We realize that the spiritual life has hardly begun, since it is rather a gift of the Spirit in us than the work of our efforts at self-control and efficiency in the use of thought. . . .

. . .

To the average observer this new interest has meant little more than discovery of the power of thought and the hitherto concealed functions of the subconscious mind. We have all heard about suggestion by this time and have learned to make use of it in dealing with our fellow men. We know about the subconscious mind, and we take it into account when explaining experiences once attributed to mysterious forces outside the human personality. Whatever may be thought about mental healing as specific for all illnesses, we all acknowledge that our power over life has increased by the addition of this new interest. Here, however, the matter often ends, and the therapeutic movement is regarded as one more new cult assigned to its proper place.
The advocates of mental healing have been partly responsible for this. For much has been said and written about the utility of thought as a more direct way of securing success, as if success in material things were the chief end of life. Hence there has been a tendency to concentrate upon the psychology of success. The new interest could hardly mean more than this to people who had no genuine desire to alter their mode of life, who wanted to find a quicker way of being relieved of their ills while retaining most of their pleasures, habits and social occupations.

The entire self help movement including “Law of Attraction”. Charles Haanel selling a course for the price of a 1st class ticket on the Titanic. Wallace Wattles selling a dream. It continues.

Remember the “No money down” real estate courses of the 70’s. “Drop me off in any city with no money and I’ll buy property”. I remember attending a seminar by someone who made money selling ant farms in comics. He was selling his strategy.

Talk show hosts commonly propagate trends. “The Secret” had little to do with the Christ within but much ado about success. Abraham’s LofA about the universe are more about gimmee rather than the Christ within and a more spiritual way of life.

How do you know that you even have a “vibration”? This kind of magical thinking--”The Secret” and the Abraham-Hicks stuff on wanting--is pure ego. The Secret is trying to get what you want; The Work is wanting what you have, loving what is.

How would you know if you “choose your own reality” or not? Just because some “spiritual” writer says so? How does he know? How do you know that any such “entity” as Abraham is being channeled in the first place?

I’ve heard Tolle being interviewed on the radio over the internet and the hostess kept bringing up Law of Attraction and for the life of me I didn’t understand why.

How can you know that a “true soul”, “soul-mate” or “twin-soul” even exists. This is a very stressful thought, when you don't have a clue what or where such a thing as a “true soul”, “soul-mate” or “twin-soul” is.

. . .

The simple truth is that all our illnesses, woes and vices are intimately related, and that really to be rid of one is to overcome all. It is not a question of gaining enough insight into the power of the human spirit to overcome a few maladies, and then disregard material things and laws as if they did not exist. The power of the spirit is not a half-way measure. It is not disclosed that we may do as we like. The real test of our spiritual faith is given us when we carry the spiritual life into every sphere of our natural and social interests. The power of our human spirit was given us to live by the Spirit. This Spirit has become manifest in this splendid world of space and time, objective in bodies and things, and the Spirit's manifestations are not to be ignored. Life is surrounded by conditions intended to call the human spirit into power.
Our souls need to be tested to the full, and the tests are distributed along the line of life that we may meet them one by one, through divine guidance, and gradually grow into supremacy.

When you truly understand Hopkins, Cramer, Brooks, Murphy, Fillmore or Holmes you know, by Faith, there is nothing to test. God, simply, IS.

Many of us arrive naturally enough at the point where prayer spontaneously takes expression on our lips, and we realize that the power of prayer has never reached its limits with us. There are many believers in the inward light as the direct witness of the Spirit, the true reason for worship.
There is a further step which seems almost as new, as if no one had the habit of prayer, none believed in the inward light or purity of heart. This step is into knowledge of the Inward Presence as power. It shows one how to enter into quickening Life through vivid realization of the love and the wisdom that are ours. It shows the way to a dynamic experience passing beyond mere meditation or worship.
Realization is more detailed than prayer as most men know prayer. It enlists ideals made vivid and held before the mind. It is concerned with specific needs, with the conviction that the life made concrete through concentration will begin at once to take effect. Such realization becomes possible when the mind gives itself to the belief that our human spirit is rightfully an instrument of God, heir to divine wisdom, an immediate participant in the Inward Presence.

The Myrtle Fillmore Collection

2011-12-20T07:02:00.003-05:00

Is available @ http://content.unity.org/MyrtleCollection/theCollection.html

There are notes on Christian Science Lessons from classes attended in Chicago. Also, Personal Files are there too.

Also an interesting picture of her and her sons on horseback on their way to a Healing Revival in Colorado in 1901. The preferred mode of travel at the time.

Interesting because the notes are in her handwriting, so they add an extra dimension to the teachings which are Christian Science in nature. Not Quimby, which was much more intuitive and connected to higher guidance. Weltmer was somewhere in between.

Actually, her notes are quite refreshing. No one was waving their hands around anyone else to heal. It puts the original form of healing in the New Thought churches in a new light.

There is no such thing as a “disease” or incurable condition. These activities, weaknesses, or abnormalities to which the medical profession gives name are but the efforts of the God-given inner intelligence to deal with conditions that the individual has produced by his failure to understand the Truth and to recognize himself as the perfect child of God, and to live by the divine law of life. Anything that does not measure up to the Christ pattern of perfection can be changed.
Anything that the ideas of God-Mind, expressing in the mind of man, have not produced can be dissolved into the original nothingness by the understanding application of the power of spiritual thought and the resultant spiritual action.
Doctors, of course, judge by appearances, founding their opinions upon the study of effects, and drawing their conclusions from the outworking of mistakes the patients have made.
No one who has awakened spiritually and is seeing his threefold being in the light of Truth would speak of disease as something of itself. He would not think for a moment that the mind was fixed in old race beliefs or errors, nor that his body was unresponsive to the Spirit.
So when someone comes to us who has had a doctor diagnose his illness, we ask him to turn from the doctor’s opinions and verdict and cease to think of the name he gave to the condition that existed at the time of the examination and treatment. We ask him to cast out the assumption that this condition would not be changed and done away with, just as one would refuse to hold to and to think of some unworthy and untrue thing that he might have heard spoken as he walked down the street.
Excerpt from “Healing” by Myrtle Fillmore which can be found here @ http://www.freehealingbooks.com/bewell1.htm

“Primary Lessons in Christian Healing” by Annie Rix Militz can be found here @ http://www.freehealingbooks.com/bewell3.htm

2011-12-18T17:08:00.006-05:00

In “THE OPEN VISION - A STUDY OF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA” BY HORATIO W. DRESSER, Ph.D.[1920], he writes”

A writer on spiritism, J. Arthur Hill, calls attention to the fact that spiritism in France is reincarnationist, while in England and the United States on the whole it is not. The reason in the case of France is found in the fact that an early writer on spiritism, Allan Kordec [1], taught reincarnation.

[1] Allan Kardec was Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail. Rivail used the name "Allan Kardec" allegedly after a spirit identified as Zefiro, whom he had been communicating with, told him about a previous incarnation of his as a Druid by that name. Rivail liked the name and decided to use it to keep his Spiritists writings separate from his work, basically books for high school students. On April 18, 1857 Rivail (signing himself "Allan Kardec") published his first book on Spiritism, The Spirits' Book, comprising a series of 1,018 answered questions exploring matters concerning the nature of spirits, the spirit world, and the relations between the spirit world and the material world.

In other words the whole spiritism thing on reincarnation was highly subjective.

According to theosophy, telepathy includes the projection of thought- forms" from one person to another. This projection involves the idea of etheric substance or force vibrating between human beings, as in wireless telegraphy.
My psychical state is always just my inner state, it does not travel.Your psychical state is just your inner state,it does not become an outer state. Granting the ability to read another's mind wittingly or unwittingly is intimately akin to the power known as clairvoyance or second sight. This power was originally attributed to persons in a mesmeric sleep by which they were supposed to discern objects concealed from sight or to see what happened at a distance. Mediums in a supposed trance were found to possess the same power. Some operators who experimented with mesmeric subjects found that they too had this power of interior vision, hence that the surrender to hypnosis or a trance was not necessary. Clairvoyance is in fact dependent on neither spirits nor exceptional mental states. It is simply perception at a distance when this inner seeing cannot be explained by reference to another mind, when not due to mere thought-transference. It may involve reading another's mind at a distance or the perceiving of distant events. It readily runs over into what we vaguely call the prophetical faculty or sixth sense. It may include visions, hence it readily leads to mysticism. But while some who are psychically inclined have the power to "see things" others merely feel or discern them without the seeing.

Dresser is just saying the power is within. So many misconceptions that fall away once you read Quimby and H. Dressers published works on Quimby. The REAL POWER has always been within.

Quimby’s mind did not lead him into the consideration of "auras" and "planes," besetting spirits and deterrent forces, because he was directly and steadily interested in the welfare of the sick. He did not dwell on or cultivate psychical power as such, because he was absorbed in using it for spiritual ends. His experience did not lead him into psychical bye-paths, because life was too full of opportunities to help people spiritually. Nevertheless, he was all the while using his own psychical powers or senses and growing in awareness of them. The views he adopted are deeply suggestive, because they indicate a straight way through the difficulties.

Do you want to test you psychic. Have a 3rd party write something and then place it in an envelope for you. Or go to the bank get 1 $100 or 2 $50’s and have the teller place them in an envelope. Then ask the psychic what the letter says or the serial number of the money.

I know someone who still won’t accept thought reading and goes to a psychic for info on relationships. This psychic has been married 7 times. I also know someone who still hasn’t removed her rings since her divorce so I suspect she’ll be alone for some time to come. You don’t have to write Dear Heloise or see a shrink to see that.

There is a lot of denial to come what with 2012 being much ado about nothing.

Perhaps a great goal for the upcoming year is to have an experience similar to Nona Brooks:

My whole being was completely flooded with a great light--
a light brighter than sunlight, brighter than any other light
I had ever seen!
It filled me!
It surrounded me!
I was conscious of nothing but that intense white light!

http://divinesciencechurch.org/dsfed//page3.php