As A Man Thinketh

[Guest guest]

I have introduced these three cases merely as illustrative of the

truth that man is the causer (though m erely always unconsciously) of

the circumstances, and that, whilst aiming at a good end, he is

continually frustrating its accomplishment by encouraging thoughts

and desires which cannot possible harmonise with that end. Such cases

could be multiplied and varied almost indinitely, but this is not

necessary as the reader can, if he so resolves, trace the action of

the laws of thought in his own mind and life, and until this is done,

mere external facats cannot serve as ground of reasoning.

 

Circumstances, however, are so complicated, thought is so deeply

rooted. And the conditions of hapiness vary so vastly with

individuals, that a man's entire soul-condition (although it may be

known to himself) cannot be judged by another from the external

aspect of his life alone. A man may be honest in certain directins,

yet suffer privations; a man may be dishonest in certain directions,

yet acquire wealth; but the conclusion usually formed that the one

man fails because of his particular honesty, and that other prospers

because of his particular dis-honesty, is the result of a superficial

judgement, which assumes that the dishonest man is almost entirely

virtuous. In the light of a deeper knowledge and wider experience

such judgement is found to be erroneous. The dishonest man may have

some admirable virtues which the other does n ot possess; and the

honest man obnoxious vices which are absent in the other. The honest

man reaps the good results of his honest thoughts and acts; he also

brings upon himself the sufferings which his vices produce. The

dishonest man like-wise garners his won suffering and happiness.

 

It is pleasing to human vanity to believe that one suffers because of

one's virtue; but not until a man has extirpated very sickly, bitter,

and impure thought from his mind, and washed every sinful from his

soul, can he be in a position to know and declare that his sufferings

are the result, of his good and not of his bad qualities; and on the

way to, yet long before he has reached, that supreme perfection, he

will have found, working in his mind and life, the Great Law which is

absolutely just, and which cannot, therefore, give good for evil,

evil for good. Possessed of such knowledge, he will then know,

looking back upon his past ignorance and blindness that his life is

and always was, justly ordered and that all his past experiences good

and bad, were the equitable outworking of his evolving, yet unevolved

self.

 

Contd...