The Prosperity Bible

What is success? To be successful in anything is to have the ability and power to do the thing we want to do when and where we want to do it, or to have what we want, when we want it and as long as we want it.

Success is a thing which we can build for just as surely and as scientifically as the architect plans and builds the skyscraper or the engineer the wonderful tunnels and bridges of modern times.

The Laws which make for success are just as natural—although less generally understood—as are the laws which the architect and engineer use in their work.

A New York paper, in a recent editorial on “Declaring War on Poverty,” among other things said, “Why then, does not the war begin? There is no reason—save the lack of organization for such a crusade. The men who want to abolish poverty, who know that it can be abolished and are able to abolish it, have not yet found a common standard around which to recruit their forces.”

No, and they never will find a “common standard” until they learn the great truth that everything begins and ends in consciousness—in the thought world, the imagination, for that is where man does all his imaging—and that until the individual gets rid of a poverty consciousness, a poverty image, he will never be free permanently from a poverty environment.

Within each life lies the causes of whatever enters into it. Man is building his own world every moment of his life. He creates from with-in the energy which attracts from with-out. The thoughts he thinks are his own private property and they generate the power with which he builds from with-in and attracts from with-out. Like builds like and like attracts like. Man must first have “castles in the air” before he can have castles on the ground.

It is true that the man who is kept busy at good wages and given a pleasant and comfortable environment has the external things and conditions which will help him create a consciousness or image of abundance, but until he has established the fixed habit of thinking constructively, he will not continue to stay out of a poverty-stricken environment indefinitely.

Was the giving of a pleasant and comfortable environment to man and providing him with continuous employment an insurance against poverty the solution would be simple, easy and sure of quick accomplishment.

But we know that such a remedy has never effected a permanent cure; that something more than employment and environment is necessary. We know many men who have started out in life with everything their hearts could wish in both of these things, but the day came when their employment was gone and their environment poverty stricken.

We have called it “bad luck,” or rather the want of “good luck” heretofore, but it is neither. In the past we have been of the belief that success along any line was largely a matter of chance, or luck, but we know better to-day. We know that there is no such thing as either chance or luck, good or bad, in the universe.

“Good luck” is simply the effect of constructive and harmonious causes we have unconsciously set in motion sometime previous to its occurrence, while “bad luck” is the effect of destructive and inharmonious causes we have just as unconsciously set in motion and which we have not yet learned how to antidote or displace.

To-day we know that success is the consciousness of the abundance of supply and the recognition of our oneness with it. We may believe in the truth of this but until we know it beyond any question of a doubt it is impossible to materialize the belief at all times and under all circumstances.

We know that the things we have called luck, accident, chance, etc., simply seem so on the surface—on the external side of life—because we have only looked for their causes on the objective side; but when we look back of the external and go deeply into the energy which produced them we learn that all these so-called accidents, chance, luck, are the natural effects of natural Laws; that these Laws are as simple and easily understood as is the law that one and one makes two.

Before a spade is stuck into the ground in excavating for one of our immense sky-scrapers the building has been entirely finished, even to the last coat of paint on the walls, in the consciousness—the thought world, the imagination—of the architect.

Before even one screw, nut, or bolt was made for the engines which generate the power on our ocean greyhounds the entire engine was completed in the consciousness—the thought world, the imagination—of the engineer who drafted the plans.

Both architect and engineer built “castles in the air” first, before their “air castles” could be materialized in objective form.

The engine which generates the steam does not know for what purpose the energy is to be used, and the masses have no greater knowledge of the use to which they will put the energy they create than does the engine; they work as unconsciously and as ignorantly of the effects of the energy they generate as does the engine.

Man, however, can become a conscious creator while the engine cannot, and in the consciousness or knowledge of this power does man have the advantage. When he neglects to develop or does not use his power, the effect is as disastrous to him as to the engine, for when the engine lies idle any length of time it rusts, becomes useless and fit only for the scrap pile. So with man, for when he fails to use his faculties and power they become atrophied from disuse and he too soon rusts out and becomes only fit for the scrap pile. On the other hand when man does develop and use his power the effect becomes more beneficial to him than to the engine.

MAN POSSESSES WITHIN HIMSELF ALL THE CREATIVE POWER OF THE UNIVERSE. This is a most stupendous statement, one which the masses cannot understand nor comprehend fully in their present state of consciousness, but each life may develop itself to where it not only understands but knows this truth. The only difference between persons is in the amount of this creative power each life expresses harmoniously.

There is absolutely nothing we have ever had in the past, have now, or ever will have, but what we have created for ourselves. Most of us have done the larger part of our work of creating unconsciously and ignorantly, and we have not stopped to see, study, and understand the relationship between the use we made of this energy and the things it has created for us. It has been so much easier to blame the disastrous effects to chance, accident, or luck.

On the objective plane we have learned that a sharp knife, drawn across the hand, cuts it; but what we have not yet learned is that when we think vicious thoughts of any kind—fear, worry, anger, hatred, resentment, resistance, impatience, intolerance, condemnation, criticism, envy, jealousy, etc.—such thoughts generate an energy which causes us to relate with the things on the objective plane, both in the physical body and its environment, that we do not want. It is this relationship of effect to cause which we must learn before we can begin to permanently abolish poverty or anything else we do not want.

Now do not understand that it is impossible to abolish poverty temporarily, or even for a lifetime in some lives, without either a knowledge or application of this truth, for such is not the case.

Some few lives—few as compared with the multitude of persons living at any time—may concentrate their entire creative power on the subject of money and amass great wealth and hold it too during their life in any incarnation and still think all these vicious thoughts and manifest them objectively, but “Be not deceived, for God—the great Universal Law—is not mocked, and whatsoever a man soweth that also shall he reap,” and in the incarnations yet to come for such a life will it reap the effects of the energy it has created, either in poverty, sickness, or misery of some kind.

The object of these lessons is to teach how to create and attract success to us permanently—not temporarily; how to get what we want, get it when we want it, and keep it as long as we want it. When we know this Law, and it becomes such a fixed habit in our lives that we live it as unconsciously as we are now living, live it because we have developed such a consciousness that we do not know how to live any other way, there will be no need for “declaring war on poverty,” disease, or misery, for we will then cease to generate the energy which relates us with these things.

Every moment of our lives, with every breath we draw, we are creating something. There has never been a second of time, all along down the ages past and gone, in which we have not created something for ourselves.

We are to-day, in body and environment, the effects of these creations of our past. We want to know this now. We also want to know that we will continue to create ourselves and our environment all down the future ages yet to come, not only here in this world but also in all the worlds through which we have yet to evolve in our return to our Source.

With this understanding thoroughly fixed in our consciousness let us learn how we may create consciously for success, and attract it to us under such Laws as will make it permanent in our lives.