Lessons in self-mastery

LESSONNO. 1
WAY TO PERSONAL POWER

THE PATH

The Secret Instruction in the Interpretation of the Ancient Wisdom, of the Great work of the Academy of Philosophical Operational and Future Science.

“O MAN! KNOW THYSELF, FOR IN THEE IS HIDDEN THE TREASURE OF

TREASURES.”—(From an Egyptian Tablet)

You are seriously entering upon this course of instruction. your secret path-way to the attainment of Supreme Power in your own life HERE AND NOW. This power is GOD. Through your new-found powers, which these teachings and lessons will impart to you, an utterly new and a greater’ and grander conception of the personality of the Almighty, of the Ever-Living God will take visible form in your mind and in your life.

GOD IS CREATIVE SPIRITUAL POWER

You will no longer belittle the Creative Power of God, in which is all Power, by picturing God in the dis­torted image of a severe autocrat, sitting somewhere above the clouds balefully watching a world of “sin­ners” who, after all, are but mental infants playing on the floor of the world, trying to spell G-O-D with the wrong blocks. Instead we shall teach you to picture God as Creative Power, Infinite Power so great, every-where so present, that it lives and breathes in the smallest atom of the Universe, both personal and imper­sonal.

GOD, in this glorious interpretation, is infinitely and eternally Creative. THE—ALL-OF EVERYTHING. Creative, God-Power pulsates this moment through your human body; .images in your human’ personality, dimly or clearly, for God IN you lives in your individual and conscious existence. You will feel sad use this tremendous DIVINE CREATIVE POWER as the curtain is raised which has shut it out of your conscious­ness.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK

Solomon, that ancient sage of The Misunderstood Book, the Bible, says of Man: “for as he thinketh in his heart (mind) You are now an Initiate in the class and you are receiving our Master Course of instruction because you desire power–the Power of Healing, the Power of Happiness, the Power of Success, the Power to attract Money, with its comforts and security. HERE AND NOW.

We teach you our certain and sure ways to materialize your desires. Nothing is denied to you that is human­ly possible. We teach scientific and secret ways of unfoldment, of Poise, of Power and of the attainment of your heart’s CHIEF DESIRE in this life, HERE AND NOW’, beginning TODAY. Circumstances may have clothed your life heretofore with the negative raiment of gunny-sacking, but we teach you how to discard these rags, and we show you how to clothe your life with the positive raiment of the Cloth of Gold.

ATTAINMENT CAN BE YOURS

Wondrous attainment of your every right desire can be yours when you learn to comply with the Dynamic Creative Law of God.

We teach you how to Visualize effectively, and so make your dreams come true. We teach you to prove the Truth of the words of the Christ, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide with you, ye shall ASK WHAT YE WILL, and it shall be done unto you.” (John 15:7) This is not a “religious” promise but simply a clear state­ment of one simple part of the Great Spiritual Law. We teach you HOW your part of the Great Spiritual Law. is but to understand.

We shall help you. to develop your mind into the great picture gallery of Imagination where, at your com­mand, thought-images can materialize into Riches, the only marketplace where you can trade poverty for Abundance. Can you con-trot your emotions now, so that through your desires those emotions become a dynamo of Power. and a pool of perfect peace? In these lessons we will give you the key to the emotions; how to harness and use them in attaining your desires.

If it is Personal Power that you desire, this masterly instruction will help you develop that subtle power which makes your magnetic forces vibrate in every word you speak. How often have you longed for that poise and-sureness which follows battles nobly fought and won? We shall plainly show you the way to all poise, to all cer­tainty, to all Victory.

IS HAPPINESS ONLY IN YOUR DREAMS?

Are you happy only in your dreams, and never in your waking hours? Then Happiness shall be your reward for your understanding and your following of the great Creative Spiritual Laws of God. As we unfold them to you in these confidential lessons. Does Success, ever beckoning, elude your grasp and vanish before your eyes? We teach you how to bring Success to your door, HERE AND NOW.

In “The Silence”: study—In The Silence: work—In The Silence: listen; and the voice of ETERNAL SPIR­IT shall be your guide, even though that voice comes to you in soundless whispers. like the fluttering of unseen wings.

“Let us work, therefore, my brethren, because the night cometh when no man shall labor. May the Light which is behind the Veil shine through you from your throne in the East upon the brothers and sisters of the American Bible Institute. and lead them unto that perfect DAY, when the glory of this world passes, and The Great Light shines across that splendid sea which surrounds the throne of God.”

THE PATHWAY TO PERSONAL POWER

LESSONONE

“The voice of My Higher Self said unto mine: “Let me enter the path of Darkness,’ peradventure there shall I find the sight. “I am the only being in an abyss of Darkness, from the abyss of Darkness came I forth ere my birth from the silence of a primal sleep.”

“And the Voice of Ages said unto my Soul, “I am He who formulates in Darkness, the Light that shineth in Darkness, yet the Darkness comprehendeth it not. Buried with that Light in a. mystical death, rising again in a mysterious resurrection, cleansed and purified through Him our elder, Brother of the Cross of the Rose, the White Light that shines from the Lily.”

YOUR MIND IS A UNIT OF THE UNIVERSAL GOD MIND

Your so-called ‘’human” mind is God-Mind personalized. You are a walking-, talking expression of the Infinite in individual form. Your God-Mind is now clothed with a physical body so that you can function amid a world of matter.

“Let us keep thy heart (mind) with all diligence; FOR OUT OF IT ARE THE ISSUES OF LIFE. (Prov. 4:23), and again, “As he thinketh in his heart (mind) SO IS HE “ (Prov. 23:7) lift and proclaim that inspired sage of old who completely compiled the book known as Proverbs.

Referring to the ancient wisdom of the Bible, you will find therein 741 separate references to the “Heart” and in 738 of these references the word “heart” is a figure of speech and can only be properly interpreted to mean the mind.

YOUR MIND IS THE THRONE OF YOUR DESTINY

YOU are MIND, and MIND is Divine. Your own mind is the master Power which molds and makes your life. Every day, with the tool of Thought, You are shaping what you CHOOSE, whether you know it or not. -With this marvelous tool, you bring forth from circumstances perhaps a thousand joys—or a thousand tears.

Perhaps the word “mind” to you is a general term, so let us define this term clearly, so that you will have an exact understanding of our meaning.

By Mind, we mean the intellect, the center of perception, comprehension, the source of all mental and phys­ical expression. It is the duty, of the Mind to know, to, Judge, to reason and to understand.

The ceaseless activities of your Mind are devoted to perception, emotion, memory, thought, concepts, wag­ing, and receiving and reacting to your sensory impressions.

TRANSFORMED BY RENEWING YOUR MIND

Because you deeply desire to transform sickness into abounding health, or to transform a life of poverty, sorrow and frustration into real Happiness and Success, or to trade destitution and limitations for Abundance and Freedom you have become a student of the American Bible Institute, and you are now studying this first lesson of the Secret Instruction in Attainment. Earnestly seek to understand this marvelous instruction and follow each exercise and each simple but secret ceremonial and TRUST IMPLICITY AND YOU WILL ATTAIN TO YOUR HEART’S DESIRE in due time, “if ye faint not”.

Please know and understand that there are no “trifles” and no idle statements in these occult lessons in attainment to your own God-given DIVINITY. Mentally repeat each sentence in your own words until each thought becomes YOUR thought. What to you may seem, trifle: will, prove tremendous in your attainment.

“And be not conformed (made like) to-this world; but BE YE TRANSFORMED BY THE RENEWING OF YOUR .MIND,” says Paul, in Romans 12:2. There in simple words is the first, the Great Secret of the Healing, the Riches and the Happiness you so greatly desire, given so long ago by Paul, that inspired Master Psychologists.

A SLAVE TO CIRCUMSTANCE

You have simply. been the unconscious slave “of circumstance.” Perhaps, unknowingly you have :become the servant of your surroundings or self-seeking persons who have become but human parasites, vampires sucking your life blood day-by-day, and diverting your efforts from accomplishments and success.

We shall train you to USE your hidden powers of Divine THOUGHT to develop and to express a radiant, a superior and a positive personality “by the renewing of your mind” and then in that glorious freedom you will never again be the slave of circumstance nor the servant of self-seekers.

Playing at “religion” or yielding yourself servant to the personal opinions, whims or ideas of others is now NOT for YOU—for now you are learning that LIFE is in the present tense and first person—THE HERE AND NOW OF DIVINE SELF-EXPRESSION.

The great and Divine Law of thought is that thought is like a magnet. Thought attracts to the thinker its own exact likeness, good or bad. positive or negative, health or sickness, poverty or riches, happiness or misery. Thought creates that likeness into material existence in all the things which make up the life of the thinker. Therefore, as is YOUR MIND, so IS your life, so are you.

YOUR MIRROR PICTURES YOUR THINKING

Here in is our first exercise—perhaps a startling object lesson. Just pause. in your study and go and stand before a mirror, a full length mirror if possible. Now, with seeing eyes, study the picture that is reflected back to you from that mirror.

Be perfectly frank and be perfectly fair with yourself in viewing that picture. Judge that picture as you would judge another person—a stranger, perhaps. Try to be impartial. You will realize that this is the picture which everyone else must see who looks at you.

Does your mirror reflect the sunshine of Success or the shadows of failure, Happiness or gloom, Health or sickness? Remember, you are looking at the product of your own thinking up to date. Your body first existed as a thought. Your whole being today shows forth in material form the thinking which You have done.

THE SHADOW OF THE UNSEEN

All material things are but the shadows of the unseen. The garments which clothe that form in your mirror are the garments which you thought into your—possession you selected those garments.

Each line upon your face, the smile or the frown, the smiling or the drooping lips, the magnetic gaze or that uncertain look in your eyes all reveal your own real habit-patterns of mind—your secret thoughts made visi­ble.

Each month, as you follow this priceless instruction, we shall ask you to give yourself the mirror test, and just as this system of Attainment of. Supreme Power is every day recreating the past failures of numberless men and women into solid and lasting Healing. Success and Abundance, so you, too, will be positively amazed as month by month, before your very eyes, you will see. your own life being transformed into the Health, the Happiness and the Success which you so greatly desire.

BEHOLD—THECATERPILLAR GROWS WINGS

Even the humble CATERPILLAR-fulfills God’s eternal law of the ever recurrent new birth. When the CATERPILLAR has finished his incarnation as an humble worm, the Voice of his destiny whispers to his mind, “Let me enter into the path of Darkness: peradventure there shall I find the Light.”

Then in the deep Darkness of the cocoon, in The Secret Place, IN THE SILENCE presently the new con­sciousness and the new and beautiful body-is conceived and burst’ forth into manifestation upon shimmering, silken wings. Remember, the caterpillar is not destroyed, he is absorbed, transformed into the glory and the beauty of the new body incarnate.

Neither will you be destroyed, but when you are attuned to the Creative LAW of God, you, too, will be absorbed, transformed into the glory and the beauty of the GOD-LIFE INCARNATE. We do mean HERE AND NOW—not in some nebulous “Heaven” after physical death.

“For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also am known” (I Cor. 13:12) says Apostle Paul, and each “then” in that quotation refers to THE ETERNAL NOW.

This same thought of Paul’s was well expressed by Annie Besant, when she wrote these words about mani­festing the Light Within: “All you have to do is to take the marble of the lower half and with the chisel of will and the hammer of thought, cut away the matter that prevents the beautiful within you from being seen; to let the God within you shine. out in glory and lighten the world in which you live.

DON’TADVERTISE YOURHEART’SDESIRE

Never divulge your Heart’s desire to any person outside the American Bible Institute. Of course, you may tell others that you are a member of this Fellow-ship, and you are at liberty to advise any of your friends who need help to con-tact us, but beyond that—NO discussion—Please!

Remember, your Heart’s Desire-will speak for itself when it clothes itself with material reality. Achievement needs no advertising. Accomplishments never lack press-agents.

IN THE SILENCE

IN THE SILENCE The Inner Circle opens wide the door of hope to every sincere man and woman who earnestly seek help in harmonizing the discords of of disease and sickness, of frustration and failure, of human frailty and mal adjustments.

“But, thou, when thou prayest enter into the closet, (alone) and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father, WHICH IS IN SECRET; ( in the invisible in the Silence); and thy Father, which seeth in secret, SHALL REWARD THEE OPENLY” (Matt. 6:8).

Your next lesson will take you, step by step, in easy, simple words, still deeper into an understanding of the Power behind the, Throne of your Destiny and win show you how to use another of the great and hidden forces that are all around you.

And now we bid you Godspeed with this closing thought. “Why no, should we fall asleep regretting this day or dreading the morrow, when we have AN ETERNALLY ABIDING SELF, quiescent, still instinct with exec­utiveness, easily waiting our firm insistence on its action in our behalf? (Lessons in High Mysticism)