The Nature of Man’s Being

Man became an individual the day he discovered he could think, plan, and execute. Before that he had been an Instinctive Man, possessed of an Inner Something, or Life, which is God in Man, or the idea of God working through Man, for the substance of God is all that is.

But man is an individual, using all his powers to build up a great “civilization,” felt there was something missing — something greater than what he could see or could manifest. He was unhappy, sick, lonely, and afraid; most of his endeavors failed, either soon or ultimately. Death crowned his life and work, he thought; he felt he had lost.

Thinking man asked the great question, “Why?”, and his cry appeared to go forth into an empty nothingness. But the Instinctive Voice answered, “Man, know thyself.” and Man’s response to that voice led him to discovery of Mind and later the Light of Christ.

Man previously had believed it was the brain which thinks and when death stilled the brain, man would cease to think. Then, Man came to know that the brain merely is the organ used for thinking while one is on the earthly plane, and using the vehicle which is the human body. The brain, like all parts of the body, is used by the thinker and doer within each of us, unseen but quite obviously existent.

Since no part of the body can function without the thinker, it follows that no part of the body can be sick without the thinker, with the exception of the motor nerves and the automatic functions of the organs, which functional direction comes from the soul.

When man discovered the Mind, he began to understand memory as “the storehouse of all his conscious thoughts,” and that led him further to discovery of the subconscious or unconscious mind, which is the state of memory; and the conscious mind, the one he uses all the time in his Self-conscious state.

Next came the discovery that it’s the subconscious mind or soul that keeps the body going by acting on the thoughts of the conscious mind. So, it follows, a strong conscious thought will cause the subconscious mind to do what that conscious thought directs.

Out of this came the greatest discovery of all:

“God made me perfect, but He also made me an individual, which means that I can do with myself as I will. Each one of the organs of my body represents a perfect idea and form. I can will to make my body uncomfortable or to keep it perfect.”

Each mental attitude could be traced to its physical correspondent: thoughts of peace produced a peaceful condition; thoughts of fear produced a disturbed condition; confidence made him strong, while fear made him weak.

Man thus discovered the Law of Mind, which is no more mysterious than the law of electricity and which operates with unexceptional infallibility. The Law of Mind works like this:

Always think of your body as being perfect, and you will always feel healthy. If your body appears to be sick and you are actually suffering, turn away from the sick body, go back into Mind and think anew of the body as being perfect, saying “I am perfect, no matter what the appearance may be.”

The Law of Mind works also on sickness which one really doesn’t recognize as disease: nervousness, for example, a product of certain combinations of thought developed in the subconscious or unconscious mind. These subconscious ailments would disappear as one kept expressing the knowledge that he was perfect.

Then came the discovery that one could heal not only himself (by thinking of himself as physically perfect) but he could heal others by the same process, even if they were some distance away.

Did that mean that he could fling his own thought from his mind into the mind and body of another, sometimes over vast distances? No; it meant that there is a Common Mind through which one’s thoughts operate: What one thinks of as his own individual subjective mind is only the personal use he makes of the Universal Mind, or the Law of God.

(Scoffers may ponder the demonstrations by thought readers — usually called “mind readers”— the scientific proof of extra-sensory perception: ESP; but real ESP is more than mind reading.)

Everybody admits that he can be affected adversely by the negative thoughts of people around him: thoughts of discouragement by those around us make us feel discouraged. (Remember wartime admonitions by hard-bitten political and military leaders that “defeatism is contagious”). Why then would not the positive thoughts of others act beneficially upon us?

To guard against the negative thoughts of others, one must learn to build around oneself a mental wall, called “Divine Protection” which cannot be breached unless one chooses to let it be. This is the shell of your atmosphere and determines what shall come through it.

What if one does not believe any of this?

Since the process is mental, but there is spirit, he cannot be healed knowingly, but he can be healed. You don’t need another’s permission to heal. God does the healing, not you. The healing vibration does go through you. Also, God determines whether the healing takes place and how. You direct the focus, not what you think needs to be done. Only God knows what needs to be done, so be careful not to limit His work! Those being healed don’t need to be aware of your participation. For non-believers that may be a better way to heal. Anyway, you don’t need the recognition. But that must not deter believers from healing themselves openly, and others who believe. So doing, they wait for the rest of the world to catch up, and they set a good example of the Christ Jesus.

This law works on the body of man. It also works on the conditions and affairs of Man. It can, for example, change the conditions of poverty and failure into conditions of material sufficiency and success.

Yes, one can control his affairs by right thinking. Adverse conditions were never intended to be; they resulted from Man’s misuse of his power, from his incorrect thinking. It is within the power of every man to change his environment completely and heal his body completely. Whether or not he will do this depends entirely upon his own conviction and his own determination, and the accepting the teachings of Jesus.

Something cannot come from nothing; something must come from something, for there is no such thing as nothing.

Man is something, and the something from which he comes is GOD.

Man has a three-fold nature — conscious mind, subconscious mind, or mental law, and third, body. God is three-fold: God as Self-Knowing Spirit; God as Law, or the way in which the Spirit works; and God as Body, or the manifestation of Spirit: God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, God the Son.

At the same time, there is Unity — the One Unseen Cause, the One First Cause, the One God.

1. There is the great Creator, for in unity in the Creator, the One Unseen Cause, the Word that He, His whole being, responded to.
2. There is the One First Cause, the Word the Creator gave to Jesus.
3. There is the One God the Creator.

You can also see Him as

1. God as Self-Knowing Spirit or that which expresses His Personality.
2. God as the manifesting Word or Law expressing in dense matter or the way in which the Spirit works, or the Holy Spirit.
3. God the Son or the great Christos.

Man, the threefold Nature:

1. Conscious Mind which is really a part of God.
2. Subconscious Mind or recollections of Soul or Mental Laws.
3. Body — that which manifests your actions and thinking, for you are its Master, or are you.

At the beginning of human thought, Man believed in many gods, but these were just the attributes of one God, and Man believed in many devils, or evil powers. As thought progressed, Man came to believe in only one God, but also in one devil. That was the theory of duality; and duality presupposes a universe divided against itself, the kind of universe that could not possibly hold together.

Duality is a cause of untold unhappiness, teaching as it does that the devil has as much power to curse as God has to bless, that there is damnation of souls, that there can be a God of vengeance and hate. The Father knows no evil.

The truth is, as recognized by the great teachers and philosophers of all the ages, that there is One Power, One God, who has told us, through the lips of those great teachers, that we are Divine Beings, made in the image of perfection and with an endless destiny.

Creation is a continuous process, infinite and eternal, a process which always was and always will be.

The Universe is alive with action and power, with energy and life — “world without end”…”the same yesterday, today and forever” — the Word in resounding glory.

 

Read Transcript of Father Paul’s Lesson on The Law, Parts 2 & 3