CHAPTER XVI.

THE NATURE AND RIGHT USE OF THE WILL.

MUCH of the efficiency of the will is lost by our not under standing its true nature and the best method of its use. The highest conception of an act of the will is that it is an inward divine impulse towards a good end or aim. Paul affirms that it is God who worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. (Phil. ii: 13.) The will is the innermost root of our life, and forever flows forth from the Divinity within us, the theocentric region of our spiritual being. This is also true of faith, which Paul also declares to be "the gift of God," or an emanation from Him. (Eph. ii: 8.) Hence, Jesus said to his disciples, "Have the faith of God." (Mark xi: 22, marginal reading.) Paul, in one of his Epistles, says that the life which he lived in the flesh, he lived by the faith of the Son of God (Gal. ii: 20), which is identical with the divine spirit of man and is in man. In another place he says, when it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, or no longer took counsel of the sensuous mind, as having a higher guidance within. (Gal. i 16.) The imagination is also, when used in distinction from the fancy, a divine spiritual power, and as a mode of thought, is one of the most subtle and potent forces in the universe. The fancy belongs to the psychical or animal soul region, which is the region of illusion and sensuous fallacies. But thought is a manifestation of God. It is a power that arises perpetually out of the One Life, and is never sundered from it. (II Cor. iii: 5.) The will, the

faith, the imagination, are the highest powers of the human mind, as they are an activity of the divine realm of our being -a stirring of deep divinity within us. If the end towards which these powers are directed is not a worthy one, we then, as it were, cut them loose from the Divinity in us, and they become only a spontaneous and perverted activity of the self-hood, or the selfish action of the animal soul. But there lies back of every virtuous and beneficent exercise of will, the life and tranquil omnipotence of the Deity. The Divine Mind is not sundered from our volitional activity, in our psychological effort to relieve pain and cure disease, any more than you can disconnect a ray of light from its central source. The will, and imagination, and faith are from God, and are God in man. Pythagoras taught his disciples that God is the Universal Mind diffused, as it were, through all things, and this mind, or intelligent life-principle, by virtue of its universal sameness, and that it is the inmost essence of all things, could be communicated from one object to another, and could be made to create all things by the individual will power of man. (Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 131.) This is strong language, but there is a profound truth in it which comes from a philosophy older than the enlightened sage of Samos. Marvellous things, and to the world miraculous things, have been done by the spirit, which is the divine and miraculous man. The inseparable connection of a wise and good man with God, was a spiritual verity better understood by the older philosophers than by modern scientists, who seem to have wholly lost sight of it. It was taught as an esoteric doctrine in their occult science and wisdom-religion. Of modern philosophers, no one appears to have apprehended this sublime truth with greater clearness than Johann Godfried Fichte. He says of the will of man: 66 Every virtuous resolution (and we may say the same of every benevolent healing intention) influences the Omnipotent Will (or Life), if I may be allowed to use such an expression, not

in consequence of a momentary approval, but of an everlasting law of his Being. With surprising clearness does the thought now come before my soul, which hitherto was surrounded with darkness, the thought that my will, as such merely, and of itself, can have any results (or consequences)." (Destination of Man, p. 110.) In another place he says: "The will is the effective cause, the living principle of the world of spirit, as motion is of the world of sense, I stand between two opposite worlds; the one visible, in which the act alone avails, the other invisible and incomprehensible, acted on only by the will. I am an effective force in both these worlds. My will embraces both. The will is in itself a constituent part of the transcendental world. By my free determination I change and set in motion something in this transcendental world, and my energy gives birth to an effect that is new, permanent, and imperishable." (Destination of Man, p. 98.)

In using the will with a healing intention upon ourselves, or in making a psychological impression upon another, it first acts in and upon the Universal Life-Principle, and by reaction upon the mind of the patient or upon our own, as the case may be. And in this way we meet with no obstruction and tendency to contradict, as we often do when we approach the patient from without and verbally address him. A true healing influence goes forth from our inward spirit, but this is only an individual manifestation and personified expression of the One Spirit which is in full accord with the human spirit. In the psychological method of treating disease, it is a fundamental doctrine in which we must become immovably grounded, that a voluntary activity of mind is the only power and causal agent in the universe., Mind and will are the first principle of motion. On this subject Bishop Berkeley truly says: "It is plain philosophers amuse themselves in vain when they inquire for any natural, efficient cause distinct from a mind or spirit." (Principles

of Human Knowledge, sec. 107.) In our effort to relieve suffering and cure disease by mental action, we may feel sure that we are acting from the realm of causation.

If we comprehend the principles laid down in what has been said above, as to the true nature of the will, and can appropriate them, we are prepared to receive instruction in the use of this spiritual power in its most intense and efficient form of action. It is to be observed that the will belongs to the Universal Life-Principle. It is not an active, but a passive or reactive potency. It is included in the department of the love or feeling, and in its highest form is the Chokma or Sophia of the Kabala, which in its correlations or descending degrees becomes the living force of the world. Thought or intelligence is the active or masculine potency, and the will the passive and feminine power. Thought speaks, and the will responds. In making a psychological impression, active thought or intelligence is the power, and the will of the patient is the responsive echo. The conception of the will as an active power, and a power capable of originating action of itself, has been a fundamental mistake in modern psychology, but one of which the ancient science of mind is free.

But the

Thought is the highest active principle in the universe, and the will is an equally potent reactive force. most intense form of its action in a psychological, curative effort, upon ourselves or others, is not when it is put forth as a command, but as a positive affirmation. It does not say, "Be thou so and so," but rather, "You will be well," and in its highest expression, "You are well." It is to be remembered that the will is strengthened by faith, which is the ground of all reality, and the basis of all possibility. (Mark ix: 23; xi: 24.) The will is guided and qualified by the imagination. When it goes forth in an affirmation, the will, faith, and imagination are combined into a unity. Men instinctively use this form of will, without being able

to give a reason for it. In the government of children in the school or family, when the child is directed to do a certain thing, and replies, "I will not," the parent or teacher says to him, "You will do it," rather than "I command you to do it." In military life we witness great numbers of men controlled by one despotic mind. The commanding general, in issuing his orders to his subordinates regulating the movements of a campaign or a battle, simply says to each of them, "You will do this or that," "You will move with your soldiers to yonder position," and it is done. In the first chapter of Genesis we have a sublime exhibition of the omnipotent, creative Thought, going forth as Will. It is not as in our common translation, "Let there be light, and there was light"; but, in the more eloquent simplicity of the original it is, "God said (or thought) Light is; and light was." It is only thought formulating itself in a positive affirmation. The more closely our finite minds imitate this divine form of expressing the will's potency, the more largely it will partake of God's omnipotence. This explains the reason of the influence of simple suggestion to one who is in the magnetic state. To say to a person, "You will be sick" or "You are sick," has an influence in making them so. To suggest to him "You are better" has more power to make him so than a thousand orders or commands. So to say to a wicked man that he is good, or will be so, has more reformative influence than all our commands or threats that we can utter. When the will goes forth in the form of a command, it throws the thing to be realized into the future; but when united with faith, and put forth as a positive affirmation, it views the thing to be done, the change to be effected, as a present reality, an accomplished fact. Hence Jesus said to the nobleman of Capernaum, "Thy son liveth"; and that very hour the fever left him. (Luke iv: 46-54.) To the invalid at the pool of Siloam he said: "Thou art made whole (or saved); sin no more, lest a