Chapter 6

To Know That All is Well

Although The Way of the Master seems to be a wonderful way, it should unquestionably be the natural and normal life for every man. Life would not be so complex if we did not so persistently make it so. To resolve absolutely to cut loose from fear, which inhibits the higher power within us, which clouds our vision, which neutralises our efforts, and brings desolation and ruin to many a life, would mark the beginning of a new life for many.

To live in this higher consciousness, to enthrone faith and hope and courage, is to give way to a positive creative type of thought that clarifies the way, strengthens the spirit, and that all the time is working out the thing, the desired end, along the lines that we are going.

Thought is a force, and its invariable law is that like creates like, and that the life always and invariably follows the thought. As we think, we become, and the glory of life is that it is given to each to be the master of his thought.

Faith is of this type of thought — this positive building type of thought. Belief, in the sense that the Master so often used the word, is of this same type of thought, and the basis of his saying — If thou canst but believe, all things are possible to him that believes. To live in this higher consciousness where the thought is always under the guidance of the spirit, and then to go about one’s work each day, knowing that all is well, projects not only a power but a happiness into life, which is a part of The Way.

An earlier prophet glimpsed somewhat the truth that the Master realised and revealed so completely when he said: ‘And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.’

Emerson, speaking our Western language, said: ‘Man is not only the inlet but he may become the outlet of all there is in God.’ In saying this he was in substantial agreement with the prophet, and with the Master.

Yes, there is a reality, a directing power that will not fail us, if we will but trust ourselves to it, if we will do our part. It is through the channel of the mind that we must do our part, in both an active and a receptive form.

Said that great industrialist, Henry Ford, who, sensitively organised, has a contact with something somewhere which the ordinary man doesn’t have and which to my mind accounts for his ability to see ahead of the other fellow and to project things on a large scale: ‘We are central stations with myriads of entities going and coming all the time with messages. Thus no one is alone, no one is helpless. All the material and insight that exists is available for those who send for it and can use it. The more you use the more you have. One of the cardinal rules of life is use. If you want more of anything, use what you have.’

Our conversation had been about the inner powers and forces, and I then made bold to put to him the question: ‘You feel, do you, that if thought is a force — as we must recognise it is — there is such a thing as cultivating it in some way, so that we may use it more effectively than we ordinarily do — say, by way of some definite direction of it, by concentration?’

His answer was: ‘Intensify your thought and you set up attraction. Concentrate on a job, and you attract all the things necessary to accomplish it. You attract the things you give a great deal of thought to. I have had to quit many jobs and wait because I haven’t spent enough thought on them. I have had to wait for certain things to come around. . . . You attract what you need by putting a lot of thought on it, then all the necessary elements or entities come round where you can use them. A thing will build itself up if you keep your thought on it. Thoughts are materials.’

It is interesting, almost amazing and truly gratifying, to find by talking with them how large is the number of men of affairs, big affairs along one line or another, who are alive to these truths, who are studying them and pursuing them, who are interested in the laws of these inner powers and forces of life, and who are using them in their lives.

Many of them are men, moreover, who, recognising their universality, and their universality as the common denominator in human life, are using their means and their abilities for the common good. It gives one great hope for the future. It makes one feel that there will come a balance to the more mechanistic conception of life — the saving power in this our so-called machine age.

They are realising that these bigger and more real things in life, the things of the mind and the spirit, together with the realisation of the oneness of all life, pay, after all, the larger dividends, and bring the real and abiding pleasures and satisfactions in life.

May I digress for a moment to mention an occurrence which suggests itself here? Some years ago it was my pleasure to stay in Michigan for a little visit with a friend who when he died some time later left a fortune of many million dollars. Inheriting nothing but a good mind and a good native ability, he had made a modest fortune. His health broke and he lost it all. After the restoration of his health several years before my visit, he had commenced again to build a fortune that he started on his kitchen stove.

He was a man of rare vision and patience. Tall and of splendid physique when I knew him, he told me he was but skin and bones, as the saying goes, when he started his way back to health again. Exhausting the skill of doctors and specialists and sanatoriums, even in the summer weather he was encased in three suits of underclothing and an overcoat, moving here and there in his wheel-chair.

One day in conversing with a friend, he was told of a little woman in the same city who had accomplished some remarkable things in the realm of healing. He was seized with a strong conviction, and had himself wheeled to her little cottage. Describing his condition, and his futile efforts in regaining his health, he told her that he had come to stay with her. ‘But,’ she protested, ‘l have no room for you. I can’t take you.’ ‘That’s all right,’ he replied, ‘but I am here, and I am here to stay., Seeing his determination, she found a way. To explain the situation he said to me:

‘I realised in the presence of this little woman that she had something that I, with my business and executive ability, had not got. He then set forth in a graphic way how at the very first treatment he could feel the quickening and the warming of his blood as in a vitalised form it coursed through his system. He became interested in the things she knew. This interest grew, and he began to make a careful study of the inner powers and forces of life, which he pursued with increasing ardour as the years passed. He was practically healed, he said, when he left the little cottage, and he left it with a far greater knowledge of life than when he was wheeled into it.

He then began to make a study of foods, an intensive study; for he felt that the preservation of health, which is the chief value in life, was dependent to a very great extent upon the food we eat. The blood stream is the very fountain of life, of the bodily life, externalising in the body always of its kind; and the right elements in food must be supplied to manufacture a vital and healthy type of blood.

He became convinced that what is the matter with the great proportion of people with whom something is the matter is defective eating, primarily the eating of too much denatured food, as well as unwise combinations of food, and in many cases over-eating, with under-exercise. This, combined with his own recent experience of the influence of the mind and the spirit on the body, gave him a knowledge of health that he had never had before, and enabled him eventually to be of great help in this realm to many people.

But getting back to the primary purpose of relating this anecdote: My friend had purchased some acres of ground adjoining his factories on which he had built a number of very attractive cottages, each with an adequate parcel of ground. These he sold to his workers at practically the cost of construction on liberal terms of payment. A little beyond them, he had built a simple cottage for himself — and for quiet. When the cares of the growing business and his contact with people began to get him away from his bearings, he would go there sometimes for a couple of days at a time, to be entirely alone, for rest, for thought, for meditation, and recreation. He recalled how necessary he found this in order to preserve the right balance in life, to keep himself up to par, that he might the more fully enjoy life.

It is an interesting bit of human experience, and it carries a lesson for all. Life is more than food and drink, more than business, more than money. Business and money are a means ta an end, like riches, but never an end in themselves.

And before leaving the matter — the little woman! She had sat at the feet of the Master, and she believed his Word. With a natural interest, and evidently with an unusual aptitude in herself, she was impressed with his acts of healing. She heard him repeat so many times, ‘Believest thou that I can do this thing?’ and the answer being always in the affirmative, she heard him, ‘According to thy faith be it unto thee: Be thou whole.’

She then realised that to heal, or to be of help in the healing of another, it is necessary, through the genuineness and the power of one’s own life, to instil a confidence in that other sufficient to arouse his subconscious mind to such a degree of activity that a subtle force is engendered, which produces the healing.

With so much physical suffering in the world, so many distraught minds and nerves, and so many ill bodies, there are many who have wondered, many who still wonder, why the Church has so completely forgotten or even repudiated the example and indeed the direct command of the Master. After instructing his disciples and apostles and demonstrating to them, he commissioned them, as they went out to spread his gospel and his message, also to render a healing service — ‘He sent them to preach the Kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.’

But on second thoughts, and when we know the history of what transpired later on, why this occurred becomes clear, and will be considered more fully later. It was a part, and a very important part, in the life of the little congregations that began to take form here and there, wherever his disciples went. The Master was always keenly alive to every form of human need, and we cannot help believing from the meagre accounts of his life we have, that he intentionally made the alleviation of human suffering, which took so many forms in his day, a very real portion of his ministry.

There are individuals, and there are various groups, at whose hands it is finding a revival, and in some cases a very significant and vital revival, among his followers of today, in our own and in many other countries.