The Voice Eternal E-Book

Thomas Parker Boyd

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 186

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The purpose of this book is to furnish a statement of the Spiritual philosophy of life with special reference to physical health. If any apology were needed for a new book it could be found in the fact that every marked advance in human welfare has had its literature, so that those who could not enjoy the instruction and enthusiasm of its leaders might at least be intelligently informed as to the underlying principles and methods of the advance movement. The multiplying of books in the new healing philosophy of truth which has taken so strong a place in modern religious ideas today is justified in the fact that the same truth from a new view point, or in differing phraseology, as it is projected through different personalities, gives it an acceptance and helpfulness to many which it could not otherwise have. No claim is made for the originality of any ideas here expressed. The substance of these chapters have been given in the author's lectures, to his classes, and to his patients until their helpfulness has been clearly demonstrated, and many urgent requests have been made to have them put into more permanent and available form.

Leseprobe

The Voice Eternal

A Spiritual Philosophy Of The Fine Art Of Being Well

Thomas Parker Boyd

Contents:

PREFACE

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

CHAPTER I. THE LIFE WITHIN.

CHAPTER II. THE SHINING PATHWAY.

CHAPTER III. THE GOOD MEDICINE

CHAPTER IV. "THE PRONOUN OF POWER."

CHAPTER V. THE MAST ON CRUTCHES.

CHAPTER VI. THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

CHAPTER VII. THE PARABLE OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE.

CHAPTER VIII. THE LAST THING IN THE WORLD.

CHAPTER IX. THE CHRIST WITHIN

CHAPTER X. THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF HEALTH.

CHAPTER XI. THE "WORD" FOR WELL-BEING.

CHAPTER XII. THE LAW OF SUGGESTION.

CHAPTER XIII. THE MATERIAL ACCESSORIES TO HEALTH.

CHAPTER XIV. A NEW GENERATION

CHAPTER XV. EMOTIONAL CHEMISTRY.

CHAPTER XVI. FORMULAS FOR SELF-HELP.

The Voice Eternal , T. P. Boyd

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Germany

ISBN: 9783849642273

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

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[email protected]

Cover Design: © MoonBloom - Fotolia.com

The Voice Eternal

PREFACE

THE purpose of this book is to furnish a statement of the Spiritual philosophy of life with special reference to physical health, as the author's book, "The How and Why of the Emmanuel Movement " was a study of the mental forces having to do with the same subject.

If any apology were needed for a new book it could be found in the fact that every marked advance in human welfare has had its literature, so that those who could not enjoy the instruction and enthusiasm of its leaders might at least be intelligently informed as to the underlying principles and methods of the advance movement. The multiplying of books in the new healing philosophy of truth which has taken so strong a place in modern religious ideas today is justified in the fact that the same truth from a new view point, or in differing phraseology, as it is projected through different personalities, gives it an acceptance and helpfulness to many which it could not otherwise have.

No claim is made for the originality of any ideas here expressed. The substance of these chapters have been given in the author's lectures, to his classes, and to his patients until their helpfulness has been clearly demonstrated, and many urgent requests have been made to have them put into more permanent and available form.

These chapters are sent forth in the hope that they may bring help to a steadily increasing company of people in the church who are drifting aw r ay in search of those material benefits upon which so little emphasis has been laid by the church that they have felt that the church no longer offers them the comforts so much needed, and which they feel they have a right to expect in this strenuous age of living. Also to the other class in the church whose loyalty to her who is the mother of us all which will not allow them to wander afield in search of the truth and help they need, and w r ho suffer needlessly because they cannot give up so much that is tried and true for that which is not tested by time. The purpose is to interpret the truth in the language of modern thought so that these good people may see that every blessing of the good God. both temporal and spiritual, is available right where they are without the necessity of forsaking the leadership of the trained ministers of religion for that of self-appointed vendors of vagaries, and without depriving themselves of the advice of trained physicians which they often need. Many of the medical profession are using more and more the agencies of mental and spiritual forces, and their contributions to the advance of a sound mental therapeutics is known to anyone who cares to know, although it is usually marked by a conservatism born probably of an instinctive distrust of illogical statement and unreasoning enthusiasm. If these purposes are served the author will feel amply repaid for the effort.

THOMAS PARKER BOYD. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, 1912.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

So hearty has been the reception accorded the first edition of this little volume, and so numerous have been the testimonials to its helpfulness in finding a rational and effective philosophy of life on a spiritual basis that it has been thoroughly revised, errors eliminated, incomplete statements finished, and considerable new matter added. I send it out in this more satisfactory form with the hope that its statements of the truth may be as helpful to others as they have been to me and to the many to whom I have taught them personally.

THE AUTHOR. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, 1914.

CHAPTER I. THE LIFE WITHIN.

LOVE of life is the primal impulse. And Self-preservation is the first law of nature. "As thyself" is the final test of man's noblest impulse love. The record of Earth's greatest example of altruism does not suppress the fact that it was "for the joy that was set before him" that "he endured the cross." Existence is sweet, and if we consent to its limitation in one sphere it is with the distinct understanding that it will have proportionally larger action in another sphere, for the abundant life is the ultimate goal toward which we move. This instinct for complete life is constitutional with us; we can no more deny it than we can deny ourselves. The pilgrim across the world of sense and sensation voices only one cry "life." And what is life? The answer varies according to one's experience of living. "

It is a vapour answers one. " It is the response to environment, “ says another. "It is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations," is the reply of a scientist. "It is to know God," is the response of still another. "It is the gratification of every impulse," "It is only good morning, good night, and good bye" are other answers. "Life is a mode of motion," says my scientific friend. And what is motion? "A manifestation of force." And what is force? "Active energy" and that? "The unseen potentiality that fills and constitutes all things an universal substance out of which all material things appear, and back into which they disappear as unseen elements of energy that defy analysis. Of this infinitely extended substance all things are made and by it they consist."

If one shall approach the question from the standpoint of physics he traces life back to molecules, thence to atoms, thence to electrons, and finally to ions, and lie has arrived in the realm of the invisible. By another method he finds that all material things are traceable to some eighty odd simple elements of matter, out of whose combinations all material forms have come. And today there is the groping of scientific thought after the hypothesis of a basic substance, so tenuous and ethereal as to be more akin to what we conceive as spirit than to what we know as matter. And this provisional hypothesis of the material scientist harmonizes with the statement of that ancient theologian and philosopher, Sfr Paul, who said, "The things which are seen were not made of things which do appear"; and furthermore, "The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." To this infinite substance acting with beneficent purpose and intelligent procedure, we attribute personality, and say, "of him are all things." "And that which hath been made was life in Him." (Jno. 1.3-4). Call it God, Infinite Substance, or mind, or spirit, it is the source and the goal of existence. We came from it. We return to it. In this excursion out from it we find set all the elements of a drama, ranging all the way from the comic to the tragic, according as we take life's shifting scenes too lightly or too seriously. It takes most people a lifetime to discover that, to our senses, things stand in inverse ratio to their reality and value. To our sense-perception, matter and its associated sensations of ease, pain, pleasure, etc., are the dominant things, while to mental and spiritual perceptions, mind with its attendant products of thought and truth are the supreme facts. Matter is changing and transient, but substance or spirit is unchanging and eternal.

And this Infinite substance, spirit, mind, life, the source and content of all things, is one. It exhibits itself in myriad forms, but be it star or stone, herb, bird, or man, it is one life, one substance. Just as the ocean whose substance fills, and whose heart-throb pulsates throughout every gulf, bay, cove, and strait, leaving each its individuality and relative importance, according to the volume of ocean it expresses, yet retaining its claim on each as part of the whole, so does this Infinite substance find form and expression in innumerable individual cases, each important according to the degree of the Infinite life finding expression, yet each a part of the one life. And these individual expressions of the Infinite life are grouped into the various orders of being by the fact that they follow a certain norm or type of expression called a law.

The measure of obedience to this law determines the place and importance of any order of being. For example, the living rock obeys one part of the law of expression, and it has inertia or rest. The worm obeys two or more laws and it adds motion and nutrition to its expression of life. The bird obeys three or more parts of the law and adds flight, and song, and vision, and maternal instincts, and nest making ; and the more complex the organism, the greater number of laws it can obey, the higher is the order of life, because the larger and richer is the expression and experience of the infinite life.

Now man, the most complex of all material organisms, can respond to more of these laws, and hence gives the most complete expression of the Infinite life, for above all the expressions of life found among the animal kind, he adds reason, judgment, imagination, faith, hope, love, and other attributes and qualities of the divine life unknown save in elemental forms to the lower orders of existence. It is the achievement of personal consciousness, and other marks of personality, capable of expressing these higher qualities rationally and intentionally which answers the question, "How much better is a man than a sheep?" It gives to each the immortality of the Infinite life, but clothes one with personal consciousness, while the other remains in cosmic consciousness. Now the power to express these moral qualities constitutes the image of the Creator within us,

and these moral and spiritual qualities are concrete expressions in us of the divine character which must otherwise remain a dreamy abstraction.

There is nothing in us that we did not receive from the Infinite source, "the Father of the spirits of all flesh." Nothing has been evolved in man, nor will be, that was not involved in the first living cell. Our entire equipment for expressing the divine life, together with "the power both to will and to do" is of that Infinite substance whose image we are. Yet because of the accident of time or place or condition of birth, the influence of heredity, or other causes, few of us express it in equal degree. We have to confess that one man manifests more of the divine life than another, because he furnishes, consciously or otherwise, a better channel through which the divine life may flow.

He has more avenues of expression, and is able to keep them open, and hence is a better medium through which the divine life may speak. Or to use a technical figure of commercial life, as the amperage and voltage one having reference to the volume and the other to the intensity of the electric current determine the action and results of that subtle force, so in a life of large endowment, of many gifts, of ten talents, the amperage is large, and the possibilities for expression of the divine life are great; but if the voltage is low, the sense of duty is blunted, the estimation of privilege is small, the aim of life is ignoble, then the dynamics of the will are inoperative and the results are small. If in another the amperage is small, the capacity limited, the gifts few, yet the voltage is high, sense of duty exalted, ideals noble, purposes inflexible, then the dynamics of the will enable him to blaze and burn his way through the world like a live wire of Omnipotence that he is.

Such accomplish more, manifest more of the divine life than the large amperage, but low voltage people. But does the ten-talent man, large amperage, have correspondingly high voltage, we shall find such an expression of the divine life as to brand him a genius, and write his name in the gallery of the immortals. In other words, the endowments of a man's life are things determined outside of himself. His native qualifications come into life with him, but the potency of his life for results is determined within himself. The development of his gifts to their utmost capacity, the cultivation of nobility of purpose, the concentration of his energies to the chosen tasks, in fact, all that means the mastery of self, and the mastery of the world forces about him, are contained in the sovereignty of his own will. With the amperage of life he has no concern, with its voltage he has everything to do.

He can do anything that he wants to do and believes that he can do, the very fact that he feels the impulse being the sure sign that the life within him inspires the desire, and at the same time promises the power of fulfillment. He can be anything he desires, for his desire is the longing of the Infinite life to find expression through him in that special way. He has only to call out the forces of the life within and set them to the task, knowing that " faithful is he that hath promised who also will do it." And herein lies the solution to the riddle of existence To take a part of the Infinite life, give it individuality by incarnating it in human flesh, multiplying and projecting it through human personality, polishing and refining it through the vicissitudes of material environment, until it comes to express so much of the Infinite character that to have seen it is to have seen God.

And it must be held as a cardinal principle that the capacity to express life is an expansive thing, as surely as the power to do so is a cumulative force. The red Indian believed that the power from the right arm of each killed and scalped victim passed into his own right arm. And he was right. Each conquest of an enemy, be it man, sin, disease, poverty, heredity, or ignorance, gives to the victor both capacity and power for greater achievement. The latent possibilities of divinity are in us awaiting the task of development. They are unlimited, so that a man knows not what he shall be, but if he accepts his task and does it, he shall be like God.

All Life is One. I am an expression of that one life. I am one with infinite life. Infinite life dwells in me and fills me with health, peace, and plenty.

CHAPTER II. THE SHINING PATHWAY.

LIFE is not stationary, nor can it be. " The living body is forever changing by the ceaseless vibrations of the life within. The mental powers are forever built up or depleted by the thoughts that flow from them, and the truth that is discovered by them, and that reacts upon them. The bronze figure that stands in the midst of the park fountain through whose uplifted fingers a stream of water rises until it breaks into a mist and falls to the pool below, is a picture of a human life through which the tides of the divine life with its truth and power move forever onward. They make no tarrying. Certain byproducts which go to make up character abide, and even character is a progressive and expansive thing.

The question of the maintenance and renewal of life brings into view three distinct methods. First, the life of the body is constantly renewed by the use of other material forms in which the divine energy is incorporated. Could we deny the body and claim fairly and successfully that all is mind, then it follows that we should be able to renew the body by purely mental agencies. But the most sanguine idealist cannot live more than forty days without eating, about five days without liquids, and about two minutes without breathing. He must eat God's material agencies in which he has stored up energy suited to the need at hand.

Second, the energy and activity of the mind must be renewed and maintained by feeding on the truth found everywhere, in the world about him and in the organized experiences of men. Third, his spirit must be renewed by the constant impartation of the life of God's spirit. Pie may indeed use forms and symbols to aid him in this immaterial activity, but he has within him a -kindred spirit which receives from the Father spirit constant renewal of spiritual energies. And there is no other way of life.

To build up and preserve his body man uses the material forms that are compounds of the infinite substance. In the using it yields up certain elements of life that keep the body living. The food he eats, the water he drinks, the air he breathes, all are yielding up their life to him. This is everywhere true, for the living rock yields up its life to the soil, the soil yields up its life to vegetation, vegetation in turn to the animal, and the animal yields up its life to man, and man yields up his life to and for his fellow, and this but illustrates the method by which the Infinite life ministers to man of its boundless store, and expresses itself in his body, mind, and spirit, disclosing a shining pathway up which man moves toward God. This general law of the surrender of incorporated energy in the lower forms of life for the renewal of the higher is God's way of glorifying sacrifice. It is a dying out into higher life.

The energy in the clod becomes beauty, fragrance, and fruitage in the flower. The life of the vegetable world becomes music and free movement, and vision in the bird. The energy of animal and vegetable life is carried up into consciousness, intelligence, and affection, in man. And to carry the principle farther, man's bodily energies serve his mental activities, and his mental forces are made to serve his spirit, which in turn carries its energies up to God clothed with personality and full God-consciousness.

That is to say that the mental and spiritual life are ministered after the same principle, for each man's thought and achievement, not only builds himself up, but helps to augment the power of achievement in other lives. Not only was man a thought before he was a thinker but he continues to have his growing mental life by feeding on the living truths which other men have discovered, and for which they have laid down their lives, and also on those which he discovers by responding to the vibrations of that Infinite life within him, and for which he is ready to lay down his life. All his emotions, finer feelings, aspirations, and longing, and tae more spiritual activities are responses "to the stimulus of the divine character finding expression in him.

We are now ready to quote, with the assurance of its meaning and truth, a saying of the apostle, "In God we live and move and have our being." Man lives out his life in the life of God, and he cannot live apart from him. He must eat God's bread, drink His water, breathe His air, think His thoughts, and express the qualities of His character. His life is inseparably bound up in the life of God, whose he is and whom he serves. His business in the world is to express the human life in the terms of God. To carry life up from crude animalism to complete spiritual supremacy, where it is a divine thing to live a human life so that men shall think of God. That is his task, although he may make sorry work of it. He may turn his divinity to diabolism, but lie can never successfully deny his birthright, nor permanently quench the flame of the divine life, for God cannot die, nor can these divine attributes be so stifled or eradicated that they will you rise again to struggle for mastery, and at last find perfect expression. We are living out our lives in the life of God.

Now the converse of the foregoing is also true. God lives out his life in the life of the world and all things therein, his highest expression being man. As the mountain is worn down by erosion until the granite becomes the soil of the valley, clothed with vegetation, radiant with color, fragrant with odors and golden with fruitage, so is the material expression of divinity moved up into its highest form, man, and on him and through him the divine life plays until his animalism, and crudities, and credulities, are smoothed out, and his human consciousness blooms out into God-consciousness, and the fruits of the living spirit in him are manifest.