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Mankind, like Ancient Gaul, can be divided into three parts.

1st—Those who are still in a state of simple consciousness, living, acting and thinking as the animals do. Men and women in this class can be said to exist—nothing more.

2nd—Those in a state of self-consciousness. This comprises the great bulk of the higher races of mankind. They reason, they study, they work, they sorrow and enjoy. But they are forced to depend for all good things upon their own efforts and they are subject to all manner of circumstances and conditions beyond their control. Theirs is a state of struggle.

3rd—Those entering into or who have reached the intuitional or higher consciousness, that state which Jesus termed the Kingdom of Heaven within us.

Just as, in the childhood of the race, there was brought forth an Adam and Eve with such advanced receptual intellects that they presently developed conceptual ideas (i.e. named impressions and the ability to classify them, compare them and draw conclusions from them), so today are to be found here and there the advance guard of the Mental Age—men and women as far ahead of the ordinary conceptual intellect of their fellows as this is in advance of the simple consciousness of the animal.

You see, the animal recognizes only images. Each house is to him a new house, with its own associations of food or famine, of kindness or blows. He never generalizes, or draws conclusions by comparing one house with another. His is the simple or receptual consciousness.

Man, on the other hand, takes his recept or image of a house and tabs it. He names it a house and then classifies it according to its kind. In that way, he turns it from a mere image into an idea or concept. It is as though he were traveling on a railroad train and keeping a tally of every house he passed. To the animal, it would mean filling his mind with the pictures of a hundred or more houses. To a man, it would be merely a matter of jotting down in the tablets of his memory—“100 houses, 25 of the Colonial type, 15 Tudor style, etc.”

If his mind were too full of images, there would be no room in it to work out conclusions from those images, so man classifies those images into concepts or ideas, and thus increases his mental capacity a millionfold.

But now the time has come in his mental development when his mind is so full of concepts that a new short cut must be found. Here and there a few have already found this short cut and penetrated to the highest plane of consciousness—the intuitional or “Heaven” consciousness.

What is this higher consciousness? Bucke calls it the Cosmic Consciousness, and defines it as a consciousness of the world about us, a consciousness that does not have to stop and add concept to concept like a column of figures, but which can work out the answer immediately, intuitively, as a “lightning calculator” can work out a problem in mathematics, apparently without going through any of the intermediate stages of addition and subtraction, of labored reasoning from premise to conclusion.

You see, the conscious you is merely that aggregation of images and sensations and concepts known as the brain. But beyond and above this reasoning mind is your intuitive mind—the Soul of you—which is one cell in the great Oversoul of the Universe, God. It is the connecting link between God and you. It is part of Him. It shares in all His attributes, all His power and wisdom and riches. And at need it can draw upon the whole of these. How? In the same way that any cell of your body can draw upon the vitality of the whole body—by creating the need, by using what it has.

There is nothing mysterious about the way life works. It is all a logical growth. In the intellect, the young child first registers impressions, then it recognizes and tabs them, finally classifying them and using them as the basis for reasoning out ideas. By the use of impressions and images, the child can know the world it sees and feels. By concepts, it can construct in imagination the world it has not seen. Is this all? Is it the end?

“No!” answers Bucke in “Cosmic Consciousness.” “As life arose in a world without life; as simple consciousness came into existence where before was mere vitality without perception; as self-consciousness soared forth over land and sea; so shall the race of man which has been thus established make other steps and attain to a yet higher life than any heretofore experienced or even conceived.

“And let it be clearly understood that the new step is not merely an expansion of self-consciousness, but as distinct from it as that is from simple consciousness, or as is this last from mere vitality without any consciousness at all.”

But how shall we know this new sense? How recognize its coming? The signs are evident in every man and woman of high mentality. You have seen accountants who could write down a column of figures and give you the total without consciously adding one to another. You can recall instances when you have anticipated word for word what someone was about to say to you, when you have answered the telephone and known before he spoke who was at the other end of the wire, when you have met a stranger and formed a “snap judgment” of him which afterwards turned out to be marvelously correct. We call this intuition. It is the first stage of the Cosmic Consciousness. It is a perfectly logical step in the growth of the intellect.

In the jump from Simple Consciousness to Self-Consciousness, man combined groups of recepts or images into one concept or idea, just as we combine the three Roman numerals III into the one symbol 3. No longer did he have to hold in his mind each individual tree in a forest. He grouped them all together under one heading of trees, and called the group a forest.

Now he is advancing a step farther. Instead of having to first study each tree individually to learn the properties of that forest, he is getting that knowledge from the soul within him, which is part of the great Oversoul of the forest and of the Universe, and therefore knows all things. In other words, he is getting it intuitively.

That is the first step in reaching the Heaven consciousness—to cultivate your intuitions, to encourage them in every possible way. Your soul is a cell in the great God-body just as every cell in your body is part of you. And as part of the Oversoul of the Universe, it has access to all the knowledge of the Universe. But it needs exercise, it requires development.

When you want to develop any cell or set of cells in your body, what do you do? You exercise them, do you not? You use them to the limit of their abilities. Then what happens? They feel weak, exhausted. They become thin and emaciated. Why? Because you have broken up those cells, used the energy in them, and they have not yet had time to draw upon the blood stream for more. For the first few days or weeks that you continue that hard usage, they remain weak and nerveless. Again why? Because the amount of energy your “governor” is accustomed to apportioning those cells is not sufficient for such heavy work. But keep persevering, and what happens? Those cells not only harden until they are equal to any call you can make upon them, but they grow in size and power. They have put in a permanent order upon the “governor” for more life-giving energy, and as long as they can find use for it, that energy will keep coming to them.

That is the first thing you must do to grow in intuitive consciousness—cultivate what you have, use it on every possible occasion even though you seem to strain it beyond its powers at first. Listen for that still, small voice. And listen to it. “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee,” promised the Prophet of old, “saying—This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.”

What is the vision of the artist, the inspiration of the writer, the discovery of the chemist or inventor, but his intuitive consciousness at work? Ask almost any great author, and he will tell you that he does not work out his plots. They “come to him”—that’s all. “The key to successful methods,” says Thomas A. Edison, “comes right out of the air. A real new thing like a general idea, a beautiful melody, is pulled out of space—a fact which is inexplicable.”

Inexplicable—yes, from the viewpoint of the conceptual intellect—but quite understandable from the intuitive point of view.

So much for the first step. It is one possible to any man or woman of high intellect. When it involves a problem or a work of art or a story or a new discovery, it requires only filling the mind with all available concepts related to the desired result, then putting it up to the God in you to work out the answer.

The second step is the earnest desire for a higher consciousness. That sounds simple enough. Everybody would like to be able to learn without going through all the labor of adding percept to recept, making concepts of these and then figuring out the answers. So if the earnest desire is all that is needed, it ought to be easy.

Yet it is not. It is the hardest step of all. Why? Because the desire must be your dominant desire. It must not be merely a means to the end of obtaining riches or winning to high position.

All agree on this: This Heaven consciousness comes only as the result of a tremendous desire for spiritual truth, and a hunger and thirst after things of the spirit.

Perhaps that can be better understood when you remember how many ordinary people have had partial glimpses of it when almost at the point of death, or when coming out from under the influence of anaesthetics.

What, then, are the necessary conditions?

First, an understanding of the power latent in you, an understanding that, regardless of how much or how little education you have received, there is in you a power (call it the subconscious, or your soul, or your good genii or what you will) capable of contacting the Intelligence which directs and animates all of the universe.

Second, the earnest desire for spiritual growth. To possess this, a man need not be an ascetic, or give up his family or his business. In fact, he should be the better husband and father and business man for it. For the man of business today is no longer engaged in cheating his neighbor before the neighbor can cheat him. He is trying to serve, and to the extent that he succeeds in giving more and better service than others, he succeeds. Can you conceive of any finer preparation for the Heaven consciousness?

Third, the ability to thoroughly relax. As Boehme put it—“To cease from all thinking and willing and imaging. Your own ‘self-conscious’ hearing and witling and seeing hinder you from seeing and hearing God."

“When a new faculty appears in a race,” says Bucke, “it will be found in the very beginning in one individual of that race; later it will be found in a few individuals; after a further time, in a larger percentage of the members of the race; still later, in half the members; and so on until, after thousands of generations, an individual who misses having the faculty is regarded as a monstrosity.”

The Heaven consciousness, or Cosmic Consciousness as Bucke calls it, has reached the point of being found in many individuals. When a faculty reaches that point, it is susceptible of being acquired by all of the higher type of members of that race who have reached full maturity.

And it is never too late to develop this Intuitive Consciousness, for your mind never grows old. In his book, “The Age of Mental Virility,” Dr. Dorland points out that more than half of mankind’s greatest achievements were accomplished by men over 50 years old, and that more of these were done by men over 70 than by those under 30.

In tests made by Dr. Irving Lorge of Teachers College, Columbia University, it was found that while SPEED of learning might decline with years, the mental powers do not decline. When the speed penalty was eliminated, people of 50 and 60 made higher scores than those around 25. Dr. Lorge sums up his tests in these words:

“As far as mental ability is concerned, there need be no ‘retiring age.’ The probabilities are that the older a person becomes, the more valuable he becomes. He possesses the same mental power he had in his young manhood, plus his wealth of experience and knowledge of his particular job. These are things that no youngster, however brilliant, can pick up.”

You have an intuitive Consciousness, which has evidenced itself many a time in “Hunches,” and the like. Remains, then, only to develop it. Robert Louis Stevenson pointed the way when he told how he worked out the plot for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

“My Brownies! God bless them!” said Stevenson, “Who do one-half of my work for me when I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood do the rest for me as well when I am wide awake and foolishly suppose that I do it myself. I had long been wanting to write a book on man’s double being. For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort, and on the second night I dreamt the scene in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the window; and a scene, afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuer.”

You have had similar experiences. You know how, after you have studied a problem from all angles, it sometimes seems worse jumbled than when you started on it. Leave it then for a while—forget it—and when you go back to it, you find your thoughts clarified, the line of reasoning worked out, your problem solved for you. It is your little “Mental Brownies” who have done the work for you!

The flash of genius does not originate in your own brain. Through intense concentration you have established a circuit through your subconscious mind with the Universal, and it is from IT that the inspiration comes. All genius, all progress, is from the same source. It lies with you merely to learn how to establish this circuit at will so that you can call upon IT at need. It can be done.

“There are many ways of setting the Brownies to work,” says Dumont in “The Master Mind.” “Nearly everyone has had some experience, more or less, in the matter, although often it is produced almost unconsciously, and without purpose and intent. Perhaps the best way for the average person—or rather the majority of persons—to get the desired results is for one to get as clear an idea of what one really wants to know—as clear an idea or mental image of the question you wish answered. Then after rolling it around in your mind—mentally chewing it, as it were—giving it a high degree of voluntary attention, you can pass it on to your Subconscious Mentality with the mental command: ‘Attend to this for me—work out the answer!’ or some similar order. This command may be given silently, or else spoken aloud—either will do. Speak to the Subconscious Mentality—or its little workers—just as you would speak to persons in your employ, kindly but firmly. Talk to the little workers, and firmly command them to do your work. And then forget all about the matter—throw it off your conscious mind, and attend to your other tasks. Then in due time will come your answer—flashed into your consciousness—perhaps not until the very minute that you must decide upon the matter, or need the information. You may give your Brownies orders to report at such and such a time—just as you do when you tell them to awaken you at a certain time in the morning so as to catch the early train, or just as they remind you of the hour of your appointment, if you have them all well trained.”

Have you ever read the story by Richard Harding Davis of “The Man Who Could Not Lose?” In it the hero is intensely interested in racing. He has studied records and “dope” sheets until he knows the history of every horse backward and forward.

The day before the big race he is reclining in an easy chair, thinking of the morrow’s race, and he drops off to sleep with that thought on his mind. Naturally, his subconscious mind takes it up, with the result that he dreams the exact outcome of the race.

That was mere fiction, of course, but if races were run solely on the speed and stamina of the horses, it would be entirely possible to work out the results in just that way. Unfortunately, other factors frequently enter into every betting game.

But the idea behind Davis’ story is entirely right. The way to contact your subconscious mind, the way to get the help of the “Man Inside You” in working out any problem is:

First, fill your mind with every bit of information regarding that problem that you can lay your hands on.

Second, pick out a chair or lounge or bed where you can recline in perfect comfort, where you can forget your body entirely.

Third, let your mind dwell upon the problem for a moment, not worrying, not fretting, but placidly, and then turn it over to the “Man Inside You.” Say to him—“This is your problem. You Can do anything. You know the answer to everything. Work this out for me I” And utterly relax. Drop off to sleep, if you can. At least, drop into one of those half-sleepy, half-wakeful reveries that keep other thoughts from obtruding upon your consciousness. Do as Aladdin did—summon your Genie, give him your orders, then forget the matter, secure in the knowledge that he will attend to it for you. When you waken, you will have the answer!

“The smartest man in the world is the Man Inside,” said Dr. Frank Crane. “By the Man Inside I mean that Other Man within each one of us that does most of the things we give ourselves credit for doing.

“I say he is the smartest man in the world. I know he is infinitely more clever and resourceful than I am or than any other man is that I ever heard of. When I cut my finger it is he that calls up the little phagocytes to come and kill the septic germs that might get into the wound and cause blood poisoning. It is he that coagulates the blood, stops the gash, and weaves the new skin.

“I could not do that. I do not even know how he does it. He even does it for babies that know nothing at all; in fact, does it better for them than for me.

“When I practice on the piano I am simply getting the business of piano playing over from my conscious mind to my subconscious mind: in other words, I am handing the business over to the Man Inside.

“Most of our happiness, as well as our struggles and misery, comes from this Man Inside. If we train him in ways of contentment, adjustment and decision, he will go ahead of us like a well-trained servant and do for us easily most of the difficult tasks we have to perform.”

Read that last paragraph again. “Most of our happiness, as well as our struggles and misery, comes from this Man Inside.”

How, then, can we use him to bring us only the good things of life?

By BLESSING instead of ranting and cursing, by TRUSTING instead of fearing. Every man is what he is because of the dominating thoughts that he permits to occupy his mind and thus suggests to the Man Inside. Those thoughts that are mixed with some feeling of emotion, such as anger or fear or worry or love, magnetize that Man Inside and tend to drive him to such action as will attract to you similar or related thoughts and their logical reactions. All impulses of thought have a tendency to bring about their physical equivalent, simply because they set the Man Inside You to work trying to bring about the physical manifestations of your thought images. Jesus understood this when He said—“By their fruits shall ye know them.”

What, then is the answer?

1 Realize that your thoughts are the molds in which the Man Inside You forms your circumstances, that “As a man thinketh, so is he.”

2 Remember that there is nothing in all of God’s Universe which you need to fear. For God is Love, and you are one with God. So make friends with your problems. Don’t try to run away from them. Walk up to them, bring them into the open, and you will find that they are not obstacles, but stepping-stones to something better.

3 If you are worrying or fearful, stop it. Put your affairs into the hands of the God in You—and forget them! Remember that all things are possible with God, and all things are possible with you when you realize that you are one with Him. So look to God instead of to your difficulties. Look to the things you WANT—not to those you fear.

4 Forget the past. Remember—“Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation.” Look ahead to the great things that are before you—not backward at the regrets of the past. Look to what you want to see manifested. Think of each day as in itself a life, and say each morning—“I wake to do the work of a man.”

5 Bless all things, for under even the most unprepossessing exterior lies a kernel of good. Remember that “When Fortune means to man most good, she looks upon him with a threatening eye.”

In “Unity Weekly,” the story is told of a farmer who, when he plows a field, blesses every seed he puts into it, and visualizes the abundant harvest it will bring. His neighbors marvel at the size of his crops.

In another issue, they tell of a guest in a western hotel who was impressed by the atmosphere of joy and peace in the room she occupied. Living in it seemed to be an inspiration. She was so filled with the presence of good in it that she asked the maid who had occupied it before, to give it such a restful atmosphere. The maid told her it was not the occupant, but herself; that whenever she worked in a room she blessed it, and as she left it, she stood in the door for a moment affirming peace and restfulness for it and blessing for the one who would occupy it.

Arthur Guiterman has written a blessing for every home that each of us might well use:

“Bless the four corners of this house,

And be the Lintel blest;

And bless the hearth, and bless the board,

And bless each place of rest;

And bless the door that opens wide

To stranger, as to kin;

And bless each crystal windowpane

That lets the starlight in;

And bless the rooftree overhead,

And every sturdy wall;

The peace of God, the peace of man,

The peace of love, on all.”

Consecration

Laid on Thy altar, my Lord divine

Accept my gift this day for Jesus’ sake;

I have no jewels to adorn Thy shrine,

Nor any world-famed sacrifice to make.

But here I bring within my trembling hands

This will of mine—a thing that seemeth small

And only Thou, dear Lord, canst understand

How, when I yield Thee this, I yield mine all.

Hidden therein Thy searching eyes can see

Struggles of passion, visions of delight,

All that I love or am, or fain would be—

Deep loves, fond hope, and longing infinite.

It hath been wet with tears and dimmed with sighs:

Clinched in my grasp till beauty it hath none.

Now, from Thy footstool, where it vanquished lies.

The prayer ascendeth, O, may Thy will be done.

Take it, Oh, Father, ere my courage fail:

And merge it so in Thine own will that e’en

If in some desperate hour my cries prevail

And thou give back my gift, it may have been

So changed, so purified, so fair have grown,

So one with Thee, so filled with peace divine,

I may not know, or feel it as my own,

But gaining back my will, may find it Thine.

-AUTHOR UNKNOWN