Description
If he does this there is nothing that can keep him from becoming established. It has nothing to do with personality, it is entirely within his own mind and never with anything else and so if people say to me, “How shall I get established in practice?” I say, “Begin to practice in your own mind and it will not be long before you will have patients.” Then they ask, “How are people to know about it?” I do not know how they know about it. How do we know we are alive? There isn’t anyone living who can tell us we are alive. There isn’t anyone who can tell us by what power we are able to stand up and speak. Science watches the process of that being neither science, religion nor philosophy can explain but has to accept on faith.
Do not feel that you have to know it all. The man who thinks he knows it all is a very unfortunate individual. If there could be anyone who knew it all, what a terrible position the universe would be in! It would mean that God would be exhausted or Cosmic Life would die of boredom. There isn’t any system of thought or any person who can know it all. Such an attitude stamps a person as being intellectually stupid. The practitioner, then, isn’t one who pretends to know it all. He isn’t one who thinks that all he has to do is to wave his wand. That is not the approach we make to this thing; in fact, that is the attitude that makes this movement odd in the eyes of intelligent people and we wish to avoid it for the sake of the movement and for the good it will do.
The thing we believe in is the most intensely intelligent of any philosophy the world has ever conceived because it is the effect of getting together all the best the world has ever known. The practitioner is one who is trying in his own mind to see that we are living in a Spiritual Universe, disregarding the material evidence which contradicts that assumption that the Spiritual Universe is in harmony that It is a Unity and is perfect. We know that it does not seem to be so. We know that wherever we look this thought is contradicted by appearance and we know that appearance and reality are, or may be, entirely different things. Consequently, the practitioner has a principle to demonstrate and that principle is the harmony of the universe, the unity of all good, the presence and susceptibility of a dynamic power and consciousness and creativeness which we call the Spirit ever available and ever present. The practitioner is one who in the midst of confusion is trying to sense Peace but when he is in a state of confusion he does not sense Peace and must begin to treat himself for this condition, as we have discussed over and over again.