Harvey Hardman
Making Your Self the Master
© Harvey Hardman
Denver, Colorado, 1935.
“The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” –Jesus.
[161] The foundation principle of Divine Science is the doctrine of the unity of the Whole–one Mind, one Power, one Life. The One manifests as the many, just as the body is one, but has many members. But each unit in the universal body is related to the Whole as effect to Cause. The One is in the many; the many in the One. Mind is the Source of all form, motion, effect, life, being, and therefore all things exist in, and because of, the Eternal One.
The primary error of the human mind, which is the father of all mistakes in thinking through to correct conclusions about life and religion, is the belief in duality, in two powers–good and evil, or God and devil. The only difference between dualism and polytheism is the difference in degree, and not in principle. The devil in Christian theology has all the power of a god, with none of his virtues. The devil is a creature of the human imagination. It is certain that God does not create evil. Evil is man-made. And if we believe in the reality of evil, it has the same power over us, as if it were truth. For our mental acceptances are translated into terms of experience.
An evil experience is not less distressing [162] merely because it is the result of believing a lie. If we believe in two gods, we believe a lie, and this results in darkness or error in all our thinking. We see the result of this almost universal error in the prevalence of misery, sin, poverty, injustice and unrighteousness in the world. The cure is to be found in religious monotheism–seeing and accepting one God. This is the single eye referred to in the text. If thine eye be single–seeing one God–thy whole world shall be full of light. If thine eye be double–seeing two gods–thy whole world shall be full of darkness. “Ye cannot serve two masters.”
Natural science is monotheistic, and so works in the light. The scientist is not afraid that some devil will come along and interfere with his work, or tempt him to violate the principles of mathematics, or ignore the laws of physics. His God is law, and as a general rule the scientist has very little use for the dogmas of religion, because religion ignores law, depending on “revelation.”
The certainties of science inspire us with hope that we shall at last establish upon an equally sound basis, the certainties of the spiritual life. It is because the human mind, when dealing with the religious elements of human experience, can reason from appearances instead of from principles, that the error of dualism [163] enters into the process. This results in a tendency to reverse the order of values in life. People regard things as of greater value than principles; conditions as of more importance than the power that creates them; effects as of greater significance than causes.
And yet, when confronted with the challenge of the ultimate meaning of life; when pressed for an answer as to what constitutes essential values, almost everyone admits the pre-eminence of mental, moral and spiritual elements. The reason is obvious. They are enduring while conditions and all external things pass away. In the midst of the changing sea of circumstance, the soul reaches out and longs for enduring certainties. And we are coming to see, more clearly than ever before, that they are only to be found in what we vaguely call the spiritual world. I say “vaguely” because most people still believe in two worlds, physical and spiritual; two gods, good and evil. But all things in nature come forth from an invisible source–the One Cause. And all experience in the world of a human personality comes forth from an invisible source–his mind. Mind is the only Actor in the universe, and what we call matter is simply one phase of the Infinite Mind in action.
The basis of religious certainties is our recognition of the omnipresence of law. Man [164] can do what he will with any law of nature, in the exact degree that he understands that law and the way to specialize it to particular ends and purposes. Thus, by understanding the law of water displacement, he can make iron float. This is not defiance of the law of gravity, but intelligent cooperation with it. In the same way, he can navigate an iron ship in the atmosphere. The immutability and perfect responsiveness of natural law to the intelligence and scientific knowledge of man is the basis of scientific certainties.
Man is always dealing with law. First, in the visible realm of nature; second, in the invisible realm of Mind or Spirit. When God responds to man with the dependable precision of law in nature, the act of response is as inherently spiritual as when He responds to thought, desire, love, imagination, by supplying the energy for these mental states. The Cause that lies back of all action is impersonal, and acts only as Law.
My experience is what happens to me when I deal with law. If I am ignorant of the laws of mental action, I may conjure up unhappy and tragic experiences. the Law takes no cognizance of my ignorance. It acts. If I get hurt in the process, that is just too bad. But the Law does not suffer; it is I who pay the price of my ignorance, in pain and trouble. [165] Thus I learn at last to cooperate with the Law, to work in harmony with it, and all is well. I also learn to specialize it to new and wonderful ends and purposes, just as engineers learned to specialize the law of electrical vibration in the ether of space, and produced the radio.
It is a stupendous thought to believe that by cooperating with the laws of the Universal Mind, we can get it to do things for us that we could not possibly do without that reciprocal action from the One Mind. We make electricity carry messages for us over wires and through the ether of space, with the speed of light. This is the response of Universal Mind in physics, and the whole process is based on knowledge of mechanics and the law of vibration. Is it not reasonable to believe that the Life and Intelligence of the universe will respond to us in ways just as wonderful on the higher plane of thought and desire, when we understand more truly the principle of mental vibration in Universal Mind?
We have experimental evidence of the most convincing kind in telepathy. We have a still greater volume of evidence in demonstrations of healing by the direct action of spiritual law, scientifically used. Our belief in duality is the big obstacle to progress in this field. We still cling subconsciously to the conception [166] of a personal God who is somehow apart from the universe of law.
When we finally realize completely that the exhaustless powers of Mind are available to us without limit in the degree that we understand the law of its reciprocal action or response to thought, will, and desire in the individual mind, we will begin to do things with that Power which, if we now stated them, would not only stagger the imagination, but would seem utterly incredible. But man is always doing the incredible in physics, because science is monotheistic, believes in one God–Law.
When metaphysics fully accepts that basis with regard to the action of Mind, equally astonishing results will be obtained, not in healing merely, but in the mastery of forces that will bring about a totally new type of civilization, in which misery and poverty and sickness will be as much out of place as an ox-drawn vehicle on the streets of a modern city.
Spiritual science and engineering is the next great field that awaits the triumphant march of the spirit of man. Little has been done in it so far, but enough has been done to command the interest and attention of some of the finest minds on the planet. Meanwhile, we study and experiment. We are thinking our way through the night of superstition, and belief in a dualistic universe, to the light of the truth that God is One, and that Law governs the All.
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