THE SECRET SELF

It is knowledge about and faith in this Secret Self that is the key to correct use of the imagination. No man lives in the dark when he learns where the light is. To understand the Secret Self is to free oneself from bondage to circumstance, to loose within a power compounded upon itself, to provide life with perfect working and perfect serenity. This entity within each of us, not the ego, not experience, not time or circumstance or place or position, but consciousness only, the “I” divested of all accoutrements except pure sense of existence, this is the self that contains all power, whose essence is greater than the individual, greater than ten thousand individuals, for it is the supporting structure upon which all things are built, the evolving self of the universe. It is not confined to the body, to a time or place or condition, but is in all times and places and conditions. It is infinite and eternal and only one, but being so as easily manifests as the finite and temporal and many. All are contained within it, yet each contains it all, for by its very nature all of it is everyplace at the same moment. The Secret Self is timeless and eternal. It is the self of the universe and it is the self of each of us, the self of you. It was never born and it will never die. It enters into each of its creations and becomes that creation. What is going on in life and the world and the universe is completely its working and the result of its secret purpose and undivulged goal. The nature of its being is mental; its essence is dynamic and creative. It is the eternal stuff that occupies all space and time and within which there is no dimension. It is all ends and middles and opposites and extremes, and it is infinitely creative. The myriad forms of life are but a tiny indication of its vast potential for plastic multiplicity out of its essential oneness.

MENTAL ASCENDENCY

The Secret Self is within you. It is not visited upon a fortunate few and withheld from others, but is totally existent in the heart of each of us. Insofar as we are able to divorce ourselves from the world and the ego and sensual stimuli we will become increasingly aware of its existence within and consciously strive to identify ourselves with it. It is through this identification that the seeds of power are sown. One who is able to cast off the limitations of ego and improve the quality of his consciousness through disciplinary use of the imagination is able by means of direct identification to become one with the Secret Self and thus attain to a measure of its power for perfection. The potential for achieving this astounding goal lies within each of us. By means of inner mental ascendancy and pictorial definition a man may become one with the purposes of the Secret Self and thus become infallible in his works and his goals.

This is a pretty big capsule to swallow. Our materialistic society with its reverence for the products of science has excised three quarters of our mentality. We have concerned ourselves too much with the world, what it is, what is in it, how we can use it, and today we know little more of the origins and purposes of life than we did before men were able to read and write. It is difficult when we know something of the principles of the gasoline engine, the generation and transmission of electricity, the refining and tempering of steel, of electronic and radio transmission, to admit the possibility that something radically opposed to the viewpoint of science could have a foundation in fact. Science says, “The laws of nature are supreme, and man must learn to live with them in order to prosper.” Now comes this diametrically opposed theory, “Nature is subservient to mind, not the mind of man as we know it, but the Supreme Mind or Secret Self that lies behind life, and this Secret Self is within each of us. We can come to know it and to use it, and thus transcend the laws of nature and free ourselves from bondage to the senses and the material world.”