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النشر الإلكتروني

The soul of man is elastic, so much so that it reaches out and attaches itself wherever the thought leads. The man who had great possessions was sorrowful when he was told by Jesus that he must detach himself from them. His soul had become united to them, and was unwilling to be separated from them. So long as our souls are attached to anything external, we cannot enter into the consciousness of things spiritual.

The only real possessions are those of spiritual consciousness. If it were possible to make money a part of our soul, the accumulation of money would be all right, but money is material and when the soul becomes attached to it, spiritual development is impeded.

Suppose you get in the habit of living in the past and attaching yourself to the old thought forms. If you dwell on your former prosperity, and bewail present conditions, you send out your soul-forces to that which has no reality, and the result is depletion. You must get to the center, and believe in the plenty that is now and here pressing into your world as fast as you will let it.

The true attitude toward life is not to have the tender memories of the past build their thought-structures in the present, not to retrospect, but to introspect, to live within.

Lot's wife attached herself to the things of the past and was preserved in them. The Lord is warning those who are striving to think truth, to utterly forsake the past and cast it out of mind. If you talk about it, or think about it you are looking back, and you, in turn, become like that which you think.

If

you are following an ideal, stick to it. But first make your ideals in line with the Absolute.

Detach

yourself from all material ideals, and follow faithfully the "high calling in Christ Jesus."

This "high calling" is not attained by studying the life of Jesus of Nazareth and filling the mind with the details of his history as it occurred nineteen hundred years ago.

To apply the lessons of a great life, and forget the personality, is profitable. "It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profits nothing."

In these progressive days many sermons are being preached outside the churches. The despised playhouses are giving forth wonderful lessons of the powers and possibilities of man. "The things which are despised, hath God chosen, to bring to naught things that are." In the play, "The Dawn of a Tomorrow" the teachings of Practical Christianity are set forth in a telling way, and one who hears Glad plead for a "chanst" for her lover will not soon forget the lesson she teaches of optimism, and trust, and above all the readiness to let go of the past and make the very best of the present, trustful of the future. "Things ain't never so bad as we think they are" is her philosophy. Cold and hungry, having none of the comforts of life, she is thankful to be alive, and making the best of everything, brings her something better.

Remember that things are never so bad as you think. Don't let yourself be burdened with the idea that you are having a hard time. You do not want that kind of soul structure. Then do not build it. We are living in a new age, and something grander for man is continually unfolding. Put yourself in line with it and go forward.

This earth is going to be transformed through the understanding of the power of thought, and righteous use of that understanding. Old men will be rejuvenated, and young men will do away with all their dissipation, and live in spiritual understanding and satisfaction. This will give immortal youth and vigor. The wellspring of life will bubble up from within, and there will be no mortal thought to defile its waters. Men will know they live, and that they live in omnipresent energy. Their whole soul-force will go out in full free glad expression of life at every moment, and none of it will be wasted in vain regrets for the past. The present contains All Possibility. The past could contain no more.

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When the Superconscious or Christ Mind begins to shed its light in the soul, there is an awakening of faculties and forces throughout man's entire being. Packed away in the suppressed potencies within is knowledge gathered through aeons of experience in many forms. When this is quickened from above new and strange experiences come and a realm heretofore veiled by sense begins to appear in fitful flashes here and there. Conscious thought is but the bark on the great tree of life. Just beneath is a strange mixture of truth and error, good and evil, ignorance, mystery, wisdom and riches; all jumbled together in such illusive forms that the unwise are led away by the promise of quick and easy acquirement of occult lore.

This so called realm of the occult has more truth than error, and when in right relation to the Supreme Mind is an aid in soul development. But when it assumes knowledge and power independent of the Christ Mind, and sets up schools of philosophy and science, founded upon its partial perceptions, there is always confusion. The Christ Mind sheds its light from the brain in the top of the head, and it is connected directly with Divine Mind, while from every conscious center below that apex there is constantly going forth thought energies of mixed character. Chaos and darkness pervades this realm, and the only guiding star is the Christ.

It was this star the Wise Men saw in the east, and came in obedience to worship the Christ Child. When those wise in the astrology, and kindred subjects. of the Magian of the East, acknowledge that Christ is King and Supreme Ruler in consciousness, then they are in Divine Order and God will protect and guide them. But when the devotees of these half truths claim that Christ is but one of many great souls, who have incarnated to teach men, they do not bring their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the young child and his light does not shine before them.

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MEDICAL MIND HEALING

The doctors are adopting mind healing and calling "hypro-suggestions," and various other strange names. At its foundation it is the power of the mind over the body and its law will be found in Divine Mind. Here is what the New York Times says of Dr. Van Eeden:

Declaring that he had given up the practice of medicine because obsolete, that mental suggestion was the most effective cure for bodily ailments, and that but twelve drugs in the pharmacopoeia would even so much as aid cures, Dr. Frederick Van Eeden of Holland, widely known as a sociologist, expounded the virtues of hypno-suggestion before a large audience of men and women at the Hudson Theater today.

Dr. Van Eeden pointed out the dangers of the inexperienced experimenting with hypnosis, roundly rapped Christian Science extremists as fanatic, and declared that he was convinced that an invisible fluid passed from the fingers of the hypnotist into the brain of the subject.

"That words have a marvelous effect on the body," said the doctor, "is evident from the fact that a former English sea captain had been confined to his berth with gout for weeks. One day a sudden alarm of fire was given and the captain leaped from his berth as though nothing ailed him. His gout was cured by a single word. Medicine had failed for weeks.

"A preacher was about to deliver an address in a city infested with cholera. As he got up in the morning he felt that the disease had gripped him. But he determined to give the address at all hazards.

"He walked to the church, a mile away, fighting with the desire to give up to the malady, gave the speech, and sat down a well man. This is an example of what mind will do over maladies of the flesh.

"When doctors of medicine cannot diagnose a case, or do not know what to do for a patient, they give him bread pills, with careful instructions as to how many to

take. Usually they tell him that they have given him a very powerful drug. This is an admission that in extreme cases even physicians advocate mental healing.

"A famous London physician told me that when he felt ill he used to take two rhubarb pills and put them on the table by his side when he went to bed. He said the effect was just as good as though he had taken them.

"These are but examples of what suggestion will do for the body. The question is whether the cures are caused by imagination, will power, or emotion. Imagination seems the most probable.

"The old barbaric methods of treating ailments, such as kissing holy stones, drinking water from certain streams, and wearing amber beads around the neck, actually produced cures. Those who took them had faith, and the suggestion of disease was removed from their minds as soon as they took the cures. The real disease could not last with the suggestion of health against it.

"It is almost criminal to say that a person looks ill in that person's hearing, as a suggestion of sickness may materialized into actual illness. Patent medicine advertisements holding forth disease to the minds of the people are also a menace to health for the same reason."

"All persons are suggestible to a greater or less degree," Dr. Van Eeden asserted. "The brain, the heart, the pulse and the digestive organs may be influenced by suggestion. There is such a thing as mental healing. It is not a panacea for everything, but all troubles where pain can be taken away are open to suggestion."

Dr. Van Eeden said he gave up a literary vocation to study medicine that he might be of use to humanity. "By and by the doctors will see that they can't cure everything with chemicals," he added. "They must recognize the psychical as an element. They must use the power of the suggestion of sleep. Every mother knows, no matter how soundly she sleeps, she will wake at the cry of her child. The same way we can talk to grown people in

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