Increasing Life

You must get rid of the last ves­tige of the old idea that there is a deity whose will it is that you should be poor or whose pur­poses may be served by keep­ing you in poverty.

The intel­li­gent sub­stance which is all, and in all, and which lives in all and lives in you, is a con­sciously liv­ing sub­stance. Being a con­sciously liv­ing sub­stance, it must have the nature and inher­ent desire of every liv­ing intel­li­gence for increase of life. Every liv­ing thing must con­tin­u­ally seek for the enlarge­ment of its life, because life, in the mere act of liv­ing, must increase itself.

A seed, dropped into the ground, springs into activ­ity, and in the act of liv­ing pro­duces a hun­dred more seeds; life, by liv­ing, mul­ti­plies itself. It is for­ever becom­ing more. It must do so, if it con­tin­ues to be at all.

Intel­li­gence is under this same neces­sity for con­tin­u­ous increase. Every thought we think makes it nec­es­sary for us to think another thought; con­scious­ness is con­tin­u­ally expand­ing. Every fact we learn leads us to the learn­ing of another fact; knowl­edge is con­tin­u­ally increas­ing. Every tal­ent we cul­ti­vate brings to the mind the desire to cul­ti­vate another tal­ent; we are sub­ject to the urge of life, seek­ing expres­sion, which ever dri­ves us on to know more, to do more, and to be more.

In order to know more, do more, and be more we must have more. We must have things to use, for we learn, and do, and become only by using things. We must get rich so that we can live more.

The desire for riches is sim­ply the capac­ity for larger life seek­ing ful­fill­ment. Every desire is the effort of an unex­pressed pos­si­bil­ity to come into action. It is power seek­ing to man­i­fest which causes desire. That which makes you want more money is the same as that which makes the plant grow; it is life seek­ing fuller expression.

The one liv­ing sub­stance must be sub­ject to this inher­ent law of all life. It is per­me­ated with the desire to live more, and that is why it is under the neces­sity of cre­at­ing things. The one sub­stance desires to live more in and through you. There­fore it wants you to have all the things you can use.

It is the desire of God that you should get rich. He wants you to get rich because he can express him­self bet­ter through you if you have plenty of things to use in giv­ing him expres­sion. He can live more in you if you have unlim­ited com­mand of the means of life.

The uni­verse desires you to have every­thing you want to have.

Nature is friendly to your plans.

Every­thing is nat­u­rally for you.

Make up your mind that this is true.

It is essen­tial, how­ever, that your pur­pose should har­mo­nize with the pur­pose that is in all.

You must want real life, not mere plea­sure or sen­sual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Life is the per­for­mance of func­tion, and the indi­vid­ual really lives only when he per­forms every func­tion — phys­i­cal, men­tal, and spir­i­tual — of which he is capa­ble, with­out excess in any.

You do not want to get rich in order to live swin­ishly, for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of ani­mal desires. That is not life. But the per­for­mance of every phys­i­cal func­tion is a part of life, and no one lives com­pletely who denies the impulses of the body a nor­mal and health­ful expression.

You do not want to get rich solely to enjoy men­tal plea­sures, to get knowl­edge, to grat­ify ambi­tion, to out­shine oth­ers, to be famous. All these are a legit­i­mate part of life, but the per­son who lives for the plea­sures of the intel­lect alone will only have a par­tial life, and he will never be sat­is­fied with his lot.

You do not want to get rich solely for the good of oth­ers, to lose your­self for the sal­va­tion of mankind, to expe­ri­ence the joys of phil­an­thropy and sac­ri­fice. The joys of the soul are only a part of life, and they are no bet­ter or nobler than any other part.

You want to get rich in order that you may eat, drink, and be merry when it is time to do these things; in order that you may sur­round your­self with beau­ti­ful things, see dis­tant lands, feed your mind, and develop your intel­lect; in order that you may love oth­ers and do kind things, and be able to play a good part in help­ing the world to find truth.

But remem­ber that extreme altru­ism is no bet­ter and no nobler than extreme self­ish­ness; both are mistakes.

Get rid of the idea that God wants you to sac­ri­fice your­self for oth­ers and that you can secure his favor by doing so. God requires noth­ing of the kind.

What God wants is that you should make the most of your­self, for your­self, and for oth­ers. And you can help oth­ers more by mak­ing the most of your­self than in any other way.

You can make the most of your­self only by get­ting rich, so it is right and praise­wor­thy that you should give your first and best thought to the work of acquir­ing wealth.

Remem­ber, how­ever, that the desire of sub­stance is for all, and its move­ments must be for more life to all. It can­not be made to work for less life to any, because it is equally in all, seek­ing riches and life.

Intel­li­gent sub­stance will make things for you, but it will not take things away from some­one else and give them to you.

You must get rid of the thought of com­pe­ti­tion. You are to cre­ate, not to com­pete for what is already created.

You do not have to take any­thing away from anyone.

You do not have to drive sharp bargains.

You do not have to cheat or to take advan­tage. You do not need to let any­one work for you for less than he earns.

You do not have to covet the prop­erty of oth­ers or to look at it with wish­ful eyes. No one has any­thing of which you can­not have the like, and that with­out tak­ing what he has away from him.

You are to become a cre­ator, not a com­peti­tor. You are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other per­son whom you affect will have more than he has now.

I am aware that there are those who get a vast amount of money by pro­ceed­ing in direct oppo­si­tion to the state­ments in the para­graph above, and may add a word of expla­na­tion here. Indi­vid­u­als of that type who become very rich do so some­times purely by their extra­or­di­nary abil­ity on the plane of com-​​petition, and some­times they uncon­sciously relate them­selves to sub­stance in its great pur­poses and move­ments for the gen­eral upbuild­ing through indus­trial evolution.

Rock­e­feller, Carnegie, Mor­gan, et al., have been the uncon­scious agents of the supreme in the nec­es­sary work of sys­tem­atiz­ing and orga­niz­ing pro­duc­tive indus­try, and in the end their work will con­tribute immensely toward increased life for all. But their day is nearly over. They have orga­nized pro­duc­tion and will soon be suc­ceeded by the agents of the mul­ti­tude, who will orga­nize the machin­ery of distribution.

They are like the mon­ster rep­tiles of the pre­his­toric eras. They play a nec­es­sary part in the evo­lu­tion­ary process, but the same power which pro­duced them will dis­pose of them. And it is well to bear in mind that they have never been really rich; a record of the pri­vate lives of most of this class will show that they have really been most abject and wretched.

Riches secured on the com­pet­i­tive plane are never sat­is­fac­tory and per­ma­nent. They are yours to-​​day and another’s tomor­row. Remem­ber, if you are to become rich in a sci­en­tific and cer­tain way, you must rise entirely out of com­pet­i­tive thought. You must never think for a moment that the sup­ply is lim­ited. Just as soon as you begin to think that all the money is being “cor­nered” and con­trolled by oth­ers, and that you must exert your­self to get laws passed to stop this process, and so on — in that moment you drop into the com­pet­i­tive mind and your power to cause cre­ation is gone for the time being.

And what is worse, you will prob­a­bly arrest the cre­ative move­ments you have already begun.

KNOW that there are count­less mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of gold in the moun­tains of the earth, not yet brought to light. And know that if there were not, more would be cre­ated from think­ing sub­stance to sup­ply your needs.

KNOW that the money you need will come, even if it is nec­es­sary for a thou­sand men to be led to the dis­cov­ery of new gold mines tomorrow.

Never look at the vis­i­ble sup­ply. Look always at the lim­it­less riches in form­less sub­stance, and KNOW that they are com­ing to you as fast as you can receive and use them. Nobody, by cor­ner­ing the vis­i­ble sup­ply, can pre­vent you from get­ting what is yours.

So never allow your­self to think for an instant that all the best build­ing spots will be taken before you get ready to build your house, unless you hurry. Never worry about the trusts and com­bines, and get anx­ious for fear they will soon come to own the whole earth. Never get afraid that you will lose what you want because some other per­son “beats you to it.” That can­not pos­si­bly hap­pen. You are not seek­ing any­thing that is pos­sessed by any­body else; you are caus­ing what you want to be cre­ated from form­less sub­stance, and the sup­ply is with­out lim­its. Stick to the for­mu­lated statement:

There is a think­ing stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its orig­i­nal state, per­me­ates, pen­e­trates, and fills the inter­spaces of the universe.

A thought, in this sub­stance pro­duces the thing that is imaged by the thought.

A per­son can form things in his thought, and, by impress­ing his thought upon form­less sub­stance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.

About the Author

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