Prentice Mulford - The Collected Works of Prentice Mulford

When you are ruled by the attraction of gravitation, or, in other words, the attraction of material things, it will tend to make your shoulders rounded he and stooping, your head bowed and your eye down- cast. Your heart will also in some way be literally bowed down through grief, or worry, or anger, or some form of immature thought or attraction coming of seen things or cruder forms of spirit. Every organ of the body will be similarly displaced and tend toward the earth. There is always between things and forms material and things and forms spiritual, an exact and literal correspondence. The shape of every man and woman's body, the expression of the face, their every gesture and mannerism to the crook of a finger, and their physical health, is an exact correspondence of their spiritual condition or, in other words, of the state of their minds. It is a duplication in seen matter and movement of what they are thinking in unseen matter.

As you are ruled more and more by the attraction of aspiration, the desire to be more and more of a God or Goddess, the determination to conquer all the evil within you, which is the only way to conquer any and all evil outside of you, your form will in accordance grow more upright, your eye will be more open and uplifted, your heart will be "lifted up," your cheeks will bloom with fresher colour, your blood will fill more and more with a finer and powerful element, giving to your limbs strength, vigour, suppleness and elasticity of movement. You are then filling more and more with the Elixir of Life, which is no myth but a spiritual reality and possibility.

Our race hitherto has been dominated by the attraction of physical things or seen element. It has said there is nothing in existence but what can be seen or felt of the outer inferior or coarser senses, and consequently there has been nothing else to us. A man may perish of thirst surrounded by springs of cool water, and if he know not of such springs there are none for him. Our condition has been analogous to that.

With the more perfected race of the future on this planet there will be no painful death of the body as at present. Every such painful death is the direct result of sin and transgression of the Law of Life. The ending of the body of the future will be the birth or development of a new physical body for which the old one shall serve as a shell or envelope until the new one is ripe and ready to come forth in a manner analogous to the development of the moth or butterfly from the cocoon. Such growths and transitions will take place at lesser and lesser intervals, until at last the spirit will grow to such power that it can will and attract to itself instantly out of surrounding elements a body to use so long as it pleases on this stratum of life This is the condition foreseen by Paul when he said, "O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" And again where he writes, "The last great enemy which shall be overcome is Death." We quote Paul, because no ancient teacher has more plainly foreshadowed these possibilities than he. Undoubtedly they were known to others both of the recorded and unrecorded human history of this planet which stretches back to periods far more remote than those inferred in the Mosaic creation.

These truths, these possibilities for avoiding decay, death and pain, and growing into and taking on a newer and newer body, and newer, fresher and more vigorous life, vitally affect us of today. We must not regard these statements as affecting only a coming race of people of some far distant future They affect us. They are possibilities for us. We have belonging to us the powers for bringing to us new rife and new bodies. If you are not told of these your powers how can you ever use them? You are then as a pauper having, unknown to yourself, a thousand dollar bank note sewed up in the lining of your ragged coat. This knowledge is for you the "pearl of great price." You cannot sell this pearl. You cannot trade it for that of your neighbour's. You cannot accumulate your neighbour's powers; you can only grow and use yours alone.

You wonder perhaps and say, "Can these truths, these marvels belong to our common-place age and time?" But ours is not a common-place, or prosaic age and time. It is only our lack of seeing clearly which may make our time seem common-place. We live surrounded by the same elements, and we are in possession of the same powers to greater or lesser extent, whereby the three young Jews passed unharmed through the fiery fumace--whereby the Prophet Daniel, through exercise of the superior force of human thought, quelled the ferocity of the lions in the den; whereby Paul shook off the serpent's venom; whereby the Man of Nazareth performed his wonderful works. "Was not this God's power?" you ask. Yes, the power of God or the Infinite and incomprehensible spirit of Eternal Good working in and through these His children, as the same power can work in and through us the more we call it to us, demand it, importune it and depend upon it. It is simply the power of the higher mind over the lower or cruder mind. All seen element, or as we call it matter, is expression of the lower or cruder mind. Rocks, hills, clouds, waves, trees, animals and men, are all varying expressions of the lower cruder mind. The power of mind over matter means the power of the higher mind over all these expressions of the lower mind.

The aspiration, the earnest prayer or demand to be better, to have more power, to become more refined, will bring more and more of the finer elements and forces; that is spirit to you. But the motive must be the natural heart-felt zealous wish to impart what you receive to others. You cannot call the fullness of this power to you if you intend living only for self. You may get it to a degree and accomplish much by it. Your demand if living only for self may bring to you houses, wealth and fame. But the demand based on the selfish motive will in the end bring only pain, disease and disappointment.

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NEW thought is new life. When an invention, a discovery first breaks on the inventor's mind, it fills him with joy. The blood in his veins surges with a fresher impetus. The author or poet is lifted into ecstasy of emotion by a new conception; I mean the relatively few creative authors and poets--not the many who, borrowing the fire of Genius, put it in their own lanterns and pass it off, often successfully as their own.

"A piece of good news," as we term it in a period of gloom, depression, discouragement; the possible realization of a hope, the removal of an ill or danger, is but a thought after all—is but the picture in the mind of the thing desired--is not the thing itself, yet how it brings strength to the whole body.

An entertaining spectacle, a drama so perfectly acted as to absorb all one's attention, an interview with one to whom we are strongly attracted, a pursuit, or exercise, or art, which interests and fascinates--all these are as food and nourishment, stimulation to the body, and in the absorbtion or excitement of the moment, hunger for material food may pass away or be forgotten.

So we do not live by bread alone. But our natures demand ever new and newer food of thought. The play so charming when first seen may become tiresome through repetition. The air so fascinating when first heard, becomes worn through familiarity. There may even be longed for, a change from the quality of the thought of the mind most attractive to us.

I mean for all these a change, but only for a time. The play, the opera, the artist may in time be seen again and with increase of pleasure, either from the influence of former association, or from new growths and shadings in the artist's rendering, or from new capacity in ourselves to see what we could not see before. Call, then, all new thought, and if you please new emotion, food--food as necessary to make the relatively perfect physical and mental man or woman as is the bread we eat. We desire ever fresh food; we similarly desire and need always new and fresh thought.