WHAT THIS BOOK TEACHES
This book brings to a close that portion of MASTERY OF SELF, which deals with the art of Success-Magnetism.
Acquiring magnetism is a constructive effort. It is a building process. You are rearing a structure. You rise, from the foundation, through successive stories to the culminating peak. The most pleasing, notable structures men build from granite and steel and wood, tower like a Woolworth Building or a Rheims Cathedral—higher and higher, until they finally reach a gold- tipped crown or spire, high in the sunlit sky.
And so, in rearing your invisible shrine of personal Success- magnetism, we now come to the topmost peak of the structure. This book gives you the crowning inspirations, tipped and topped with the final "Golden Laws of Magnetism in all Applied Life."
Master these lessons in the magnetism of success, and you will go forth upon the highways and by-ways of life, endowed with a kingly confidence in your ability to win a measure of success achieved by few.
But remember—(should discouragement seek to dog your steps)— every great structure requires the process of time. "The giant trees of California were once puny saplings. The slow lapse of time has drawn nature into their mighty hearts." Just as surely as the absorption of natural forces built the giant redwoods, just as surely can you draw upon nature for GIANT POWERS.
The Fire.
In ancient myth, Prometheus
Filched fire from the altars of the gods
To warm the world,
Incurring Jove's dread wrath
And endless torment.
Lo, mind,—inflamed by the vision:
Of victim and the torturing bird,
Of black vindictiveness and suffering Will,
Rived forever, yet for aye supreme,—
Heroizes the deed and soul
And wreaks on canvas and in drama high
Its passionate admiration.
Now, too, in palace and hut confronted,
In battleship and iron steed defying space,
In flaring furnace of the smelted ore,
In haunts of coal and steam below the whirling wheels,
Life laughs and sings and thunders
An oratorio merging all the powers of harmony,
And hails the high-born Thief,
As giver of ethereal fire.
The atomic thrill waits also the clear call
To lift dull bodies till the joy of flesh
Becomes a common luxury;—
To vibrate rhythmically swift
Through all the responsive cells of thought
Till a man might solemnly hold
All things are possible on the bursting earth;—
To energize the mystic self
With consciousness of life deific
Till the whole world, jubilant, should flame
With its glory, actual, concrete, the one sure Truth
Of a rock-girt globe, or a sun-filled space.
—THE AUTHOR.
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH LESSON—The Four Pyramids.
This equation's writ
In every scene:
The end shall fit—
As extremes to mean—
Whatever's forerunner to it.
—THE AUTHOR.
PRINCIPLE—The best use of self demands that it be understood.
Our ideal specimen of human nature is the whole man at his best.
The etheric life demands (a) the vibrations native to the body in health—(Physical Magnetism)—(b) the vibrations induced by the active mind, (c) the vibrations intensified by controlled emotional states, (d) the regulative vibrations of psychic righteousness or honor—(Psychic Magnetism). In this scheme nothing is inferior, but all elements are appointed to be subordinate to the last. These vibrations should run through the whole etheric activity a binding thread of force.
We are now to study the four pyramids of the etheric life. The purpose is four-fold. If you will put yourself into this lesson as you have, presumably, put yourself into the preceding twenty-six lessons, you will discover—
Firstly—Magnetic CONCENTRATION;
Secondly—The RELATION of the DIVISIONS of self to the WHOLE self;
Thirdly—A better UNDERSTANDING of your personality;
Fourthly—The supreme importance of PSYCHIC RIGHTEOUSNESS.
It is altogether probable that the majority of people live almost wholly in the physical pyramids of existence.
Properly speaking, the illustration on page 422 is a single pyramid rather than four pyramids. It is composed of four triangular walls, each of which is called a pyramid for convenience and represents a certain phase of your nature. The great pyramidal I AM is complete only as all sides of your selfhood are fully built up. You are LOOKING DOWN from the "I AM."