CONDITIONS. LIFE is made up of a series of preparations to meet contingencies or events that are shadowed or promised to appear a little way beyond. To prepare for these, youth devotes years to study. The technic he must be master of, at least; and schools, colleges and universities furnish him with this equipment. He passes beyond their teaching to the so-called "School of Experience," and there he finds a wilderness of ideas, theories, thoughts, conclusions, confusions. He questions if he has provided himself with proper equipment. One may claim knowledge with bold statements, but when confronted with life's experiences, he often is forced to acknowledge it to be simply belief or theory. He himself is brought to confess that he, too, is only an experimenter like others in the mental arena of life. The path to the goal he would reach is made over a series of conditions. Some have a wonderful faculty that seems to bring these conditions about, others seem to be divinely led and deride individual 134 effort, ascribing their success solely to luck, or to the mysterious unknown called Providence. At this period of history in which you and I have the honor of living, a gleam of light has come, a revelation to humanity. It is not the voice of prophecy coming through some single human instrument to whom the light was brought. It is not a dogma or theory of some sect of worshipers of the God of intellect we have vainly sought so long. It is not a revelation born in the cloisters of superstition and fear. The gleam of light, the revelation, shines on humanity as a whole in these opening years of the twentieth century, because humanity has mentally developed so that it can receive the vibrations of truth which have filled the ethers of the air for ages. Prior to this age, along the line, some few have felt some of these vibrations, and have left records which required this age to interpret. In other words, man's condition-his mental condition-is such at this time that he can learn more of himself and his relations to the entire cosmos than at any previous period of history. All may not, and all will not embrace the opportunity offered; still, to some extent, all humanity will be influenced. To know how to attain the conditions that your highest good may come to you, is the problem of the age, is the purpose of right living, is the wish and desire of the noblest and the best. These conditions are to be reached through a victorious warfare, a warfare to be waged against the selves. If you are already receiving the vibrations of truth, you have linked yourself to the infinite energy of the universe; then, you have always God and yourself on your side; and, as an inspired writer has told us, God and one constitute a majority. Let me add, they constitute an invincible army, always on your side. What are the conditions, then, desired? Those that will enable you to bind and hold yourself, through vibrations, one with the infinite force of the universe. Some theorists (for we have many theorists in the philosophy of the advanced thought of today) may tell you that the way to produce conditions and to constantly hold them is an open and clear one, easy to follow and to keep. I have not found it so, neither have I found any one so completely master of the science that he always knew. However complete our knowledge may be in some lines of research, there are countless paths yet to be trod, countless experiments yet to be made. What I may pre sent to you on this, or any theme, as truth, will be conclusions, not deduced from theories, but arrived at by repeated practical tests. That my introduction be made complete before our next step, let us for a moment recall from our experiences some of the messages we have received through clairvoyants from our spirit friends or spirit guides. Whether entities bring the messages, or they come from infinite force through vibrations need not be here discussed. We are told of some advancement or joy in store for us that these forces are helping to bring; sometimes they are more forcible and say that they will bring it to us. In our anxiety we ask when, and are told as soon as we can be surrounded with the necessary or required conditions. Often we have asked what we could do to help to that end, and about the only intelligent reply or direction we receive is, "Be passive." May there not be a great philosophy in this reply? My subject, it will be noted, will carry me beyond the border-land of physical life, and first a few of what I understand to be truth's accepted axioms best be stated. The individual soul is firmly meshed in the physical entity, but the life principle of the soul is far-reaching and throbs through the potent power of the central force, or creative energy of the universe, call it Tao, Om, Being, God, what you will! The mind is the link, linking soul with the material, and soul with the immaterial universe, though behind it, and of itself a part, is the great unseen entity of Being. From mind emanates thought, born both of the material and immaterial. Thoughts produce conditions-mental conditions. As thoughts spring from mind, and mind is bound both to the material and immaterial universe, they are operated upon, not only by material surroundings, but by the eternal essence of life found in the spirit influence with which it is as directly connected, whether we recognize it or not, as with man's every-day self or conscious ness. In a general way, the philosopher tells us today that conditions are the outward manifestations of thought. To make them what we would, he tells us to think right thoughts. With this I am in complete harmony. The problem is, how to think and hold right thoughts. Few of us probably have ever gone into a careful analysis and discovered that our conscious self was the chief opposing factor to our ideal self. There is the evil to overcome, the skepticism of the conscious or unreal selfhood. Our ideal is our nobler, our real selfhood. Life's pur |