CHAPTER 7

Correlation of Thought to External Things

There is nothing truer than that the quality of thought which we entertain correlates certain externals in the outside world. This is the Law from which there is no escape. And it is this Law, this correlation of the thought with its object, that from time immemorial has led the people to believe in special providence. A man believes he is led by providence in a certain direction; the direction is not of his own choosing, so far as his consciousness is concerned. But providence had nothing to do with it; there was that in the man, unrecognized by himself, which related him to some thing or some condition on the external plane, and under the Law of Correlation he went in that direction. Every thought a man can have relates him to some external thing and draws him in the direction of it. This fact—on the plane where the thoughts of men are fleeting and of no comparative importance—has too frail an effect upon external life to be noticeable. But when much thought has been given to one subject, the result cannot be other than observable. Thus, continued thought upon disease allies us with the external conditions related to disease; or, more correctly speaking, it creates the disease. Thought on the subject of sin allies us with (so-called) sins, and renders us self-accusing, and accusers of others; while the belief that there is no sin, that the sins of the people are only the mistakes of an unripe and ignorant race, destroys the accusing spirit within us, so that we see ourselves and others in a nobler light and thus bring in a condition of peace and harmony.

A belief in poverty not only burdens and oppresses us until it makes us mentally poor, but it allies us with poverty-stricken conditions. Thought not only allies us with certain external things that represent its own character, but when we have ascended from physical to mental (which is a result of the study of Mental Science) it becomes creative. This is a marvelous thing; but if I know anything in the world, I know it is true.

What! Can a person by holding certain thoughts create wealth? Yes he can. A man by holding certain thoughts—if he knows the Law that relates effect and cause on the mental plane—can actually create wealth by the character of the thoughts he entertains. This creation must, at this time, be supplemented by courageous action, intensified by creative thought and knowledge of self; but such action is only a part of the thought. This Law is easy to understand, if one will only take the pains to investigate it.

Now, I want to write something practical on this subject, and it seems hard to do, because the very people I most desire to reach are those who have less faith in the power of mind to control matter than any other class. It seems that they will not believe; and until they do interest themselves in this wonderful subject enough to investigate its underlying principles, I do not know how I can persuade them to believe. While I cannot now enter extensively into the truths of Mental Science, except the phases especially bearing upon poverty, yet I believe that many who read this little book will thereby discover the road to the truth.

There is an almost universal reaching out for money. This reaching out is from the acquisitive faculties only, and its operations are confined to the competitive realm of the business world. It is a purely external proceeding; its mode of action is not rooted in the knowledge of the inner life, with its finer, more just, and spirtualized wants. It is but an extension of animality into the realm of the human, and no power can lift it to the divine plane the race is now approaching.

For all lifting on this plane is the result of spiritual growth. It is doing just what Christ said we must do in order to be rich. It is first seeking the kingdom of heaven within, where alone it exists. After this kingdom is discovered, then all these things (external wealth) shall be added.

What is there within a man that can be called the kingdom of heaven? When I answer this question not one reader out of ten will believe me—so utterly bankrupt of knowledge of their own internal wealth are the great majority of people. But I shall answer it, nevertheless, and it will be answered truly.

Heaven exists within us in the faculties latent in the human brain, the superabundance of which no man has ever dreamed. The weakest man living has the powers of a god folded within his organization; and they will remain folded until he learns to believe in their existence, and then tries to develop them. Men generally are not introspective, and this is why they are not rich. They are poverty-stricken in their own opinions of themselves and their powers, and they put the stamp of their own belief on everything they come in contact with. If a day laborer, let us say, does but look within himself long enough to perceive that he has an intellect that can be made as great and far reaching as that of the man he serves for a pittance that keeps body and soul together; if he sees this, and attaches due importance to it, the mere fact of his seeing it, has, to a degree, loosened his bonds and brought him face to face with better conditions.

But there is wanted something more than the fact of knowing that he is, or may become, by recognition of self, his employer’s intellectual equal. There remains the fact that he needs also to know the Law and claim its provisions; namely, that his superior knowing relates him to a superior position. He must know this and trust it; for it is by holding this truth in faith and trust that he begins to ascend bodily. I would not be understood to advise blind bigotry. Far be it from my wish to incite unpleasant relations between employer and employee. Employers everywhere hail with delight the acquisition of employees who are not mere machines—they want brains in their business and are glad to pay for them. Cheap help is often the most expensive, in the sense of being the least profitable. As brain growth or development of thought power in the employee increases his value to the employer, and as the employee grows to the degree of strength where he is capable of doing for himself, there will be another not yet grown so strong to take his place.

The gradual recognition by a man of his own latent powers is the heaven within that is to be brought forward into the world and established in these conditions which correlate it. I have never taken a single step upward in the external world that was not the direct result of my recognition of some new power within my own brain. I have never sought wealth at all; I have simply sought to know myself. I have believed in my own greatness, and in your greatness equally. I have denied that man was a creeping worm of the dust. I have seen him as the seed germ of all attainment. I place no limitation upon his powers of progression. I scorn the word “impossible” as applied to what is in his power to be and to do. I think of his vast ability, and my own, with a jubilant feeling of surpassing triumph. I regard it as an assurance of present as well as prospective greatness, and a guarantee, eventually, of absolute mastery over all things and conditions which once mastered me. This frame of mind is well represented by the word “opulent.” And in the direct measure of the power I have in holding it up before my perception, just in that measure is my business successful. Let me lose sight of this opulence of mental seeing, and my business declines. The most faithful and critical observation of this thing for several years has demonstrated its truth to a certainty. From this fact I deduce the following literal truths:

A mental poor-house projects from itself the spirit of a visible poor-house, and this spirit expresses itself in visible externals correlated to its character.

A mental palace sends forth the spirit of a visible palace with results that correlate it. And the same may be said of sickness and sin, of health and goodness.

But how is it possible for the man who is out of work, and who sees his children in rags and crying for bread, to conform to the conditions required? How can he perceive opulence when nothing but squalor meets his eyes? How can he calm his soul and enter into it by introspection, there to discover the mental wealth that the world has denied him a right to since birth? He does not dream that he is anything but one of the lowest and most unfortunate of beings. He sees nothing within himself that yields him a single hope. What can such a man do?

He can do nothing but conform to the Law, either on its negative or positive plane. He can recognize his manhood and his rights, the dignity of human nature and the godlike character of his own undying intellect, and be thereby raised in the scale of being; or he can fail to do this and be crushed out of life. More work and more money will relieve his present need and furnish him with implements for prolonging his existence; but no amount of money will give him that inner opulence which is the sure foundation for unchanging wealth; that opulence which is the purse of Fortunatus, and which can never be exhausted. Mental wealth, which is the recognition of innate ability, is the only true root of external wealth. External wealth that has not this root is but a floating air plant. There is no dependence to be placed in it.

A great many Christian and Mental Scientists say to me: “Why, I treat myself for success and for money nearly all the time. I resolutely refrain from holding thoughts of poverty, and I keep mental pictures of opulence before me with unvarying zeal, yet I am always poor. How is it the rule will not work with me?” I answer such a one in this way. I say to him or her: It is quite obvious from your statement that you are not seeking the kingdom of heaven within, but the externals of it without. Seek it first within; give no thought to the externals at all; they will group themselves around the internal kingdom when you have found it. Treat yourself for a knowledge of truth; treat yourself for the wisdom that will disclose and develop within your own brain the source of all power, giving no heed to the external, and the external will manifest itself in wealth. It will manifest itself in the production of creative thought—thought which will seek expression in noble, courageous action. You will begin to trust the voice of aspiration, and are to follow where it bids you.

Many people think that to seek religion as it is taught by the creeds is to seek the kingdom within. But this is not so. Do the creeds teach the opulence of man’s innate capacity? Do they teach that the infinite spirit of strength and health and intelligence and beauty and power, which they call “God,” is in man? No; they teach just the opposite. They teach man that he is nothing and that any good that he may perceive in himself, is not of himself, but of an outside God. They teach him that he is the most poverty-stricken wretch in life, that he is destitute of all merit, that he deserves nothing. Of all the poor-houses ever created in the mental realm there are none so utterly poverty-stricken as that which the creeds have erected. Did Jesus, their Master, teach this way? No, he did not. He knew that opulence existed in infinite diffusion. He knew the Law by which man’s innate, mental opulence correlated him to the external opulence, and he taught it. Did He not say: “Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these?”

What did this mean? It meant that the lily from its inner source of opulence simply expressed itself on the external plane. It is a tremendous lesson. The lily not doubting its own beauty, simply holding true to its sense of the beautiful, which was innate in it, expressed itself.

What men express themselves? Very few. And why? Because they do not know themselves. And not knowing themselves, how can they worthily express themselves in noble and courageous action, which is but thought in execution? They express the beggars they think they are; and their expression of themselves is correlated to the shreds and patches that form the beggar’s surroundings.

For twenty years I have been telling men how rich they are. I have been looking at their undeveloped intellectual resources and searching them for new manifestations of genius ever since I can remember. I have seen them great and glorious, even when they looked upon themselves as pygmies. I have stood sponsor for the self-esteem of my friends and helped to develop that special bump, from a hole in the cranium to a decided protuberance. I was called “the liberator,” because I could see so much more in other people than they could see in themselves; and this power of seeing does liberate the latent faculty in its structure and start it on its endless road to all growth. My husband used to say that my judgment of people was “goggle-eyed.” I had a little daughter whose judgment was also “goggle-eyed.” She, too, “saw men as trees walking.” One day her father reprimanded her severely for her exaggerations—she had been playing with some urchins on the street, and had transformed them into angels. After her scolding she sat in her baby chair in a meditative mood, watching her father with an expression of motherly interest in her face, not unmixed with pity. She had been in a picture gallery a few days before, and had observed the unusual arrangement of the windows. Presently she lifted a dimpled cheek out of a dimpled hand, and said gently and encouragingly: “Papa, you’re the doodest old fing wot ever lived, but your head ain’t dot no sky-light in it.”

It was a fact. His head had no window that opened upward. He lived in the city of Moan, in the state of Groan. There was enough of natural opulence in him to have turned the desert of his surroundings into paradise; but he could not see it, and we who—from the nature of the case—had to look through his eyes were awfully impoverished by his mental seeing.