Murray Course in Divine Science – Lesson 13 – Consciousness

Lesson XIII
CONSCIOUSNESS
Rev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.

Since the New Thought of God has reappeared, the word “consciousness” has come to have a new meaning.

Do you have a predominating passion? You have established a passion consciousness.

Are you sick or diseased? You have a sick or disease consciousness.

Are you unsuccessful? You have a failure consciousness.

Are you poor? You have a poverty consciousness.

What does this mean?

As to passion, if you have a predominating passion–gambling, drinking, clothes, lust, lying, scandal-mongering, whatever it may be, you have built up in your mind an intense desire to indulge the passion; you can see in all circumstances, in everything that passes across your line of vision, before anything else, an opportunity to gratify that passion. The possibility of its exercise fills every part of your mind, and all your sense, at all times. You have created a consciousness that saturates with its poison every particle of your being.

If you have a disease consciousness it is because you have created it through apprehension of sickness and disease. You are afraid that what you eat, breathe, touch or witness will make you ill. You are fearful of contracting disease–cancer, tuberculosis, blood infection, appendicitis, rheumatism, etc. Your main thought is occupied with disease and your imagination plays with it uncontrollably. And disease claims you for its own, since you are ever attracting it.

If you have a poverty consciousness it is because your absorbing thought has been fear of poverty. You are always envisioning dependency, charity and the poorhouse. You pinch and economize, save and scrimp, and think only of money-possession. Some of the richest men in the world have the poverty consciousness. With all their money they are always poor–always afraid to spend. Poverty has its iron grasp upon their consciousness and the possession of all the gold in the world can never liberate it.

It is the same way with failure to succeed. The man who is unsuccessful has the unsuccessful consciousness. He is beaten every time before he starts by the deplorable operation of his cherished thought that he hasn’t it in him to succeed, that he lacks the qualities of success. Such a man will read “Success” books and works on will-power and self-confidence and perhaps be spurred to some effort to succeed, but he has a consciousness that fights down every thought of success and he falls back into his settled belief that this age is too strong for him, that there is too much competition, that his talents are not adaptable to the times.

Our states of consciousness are built up from sense sources as a rule, and have grown upon us until they determine our character. We believe that we conceal them, but we deceive ourselves. We manifest them to whosoever desires to read them. Our associations, our language, our preferences, our predilections, our actions–all manifest them. We express our consciousness in our inclinations, our speech and our habits.

There are states of consciousness for the public mind: a war consciousness; a sport consciousness; a political consciousness, developed strongly during election campaigns. Some capital event is scheduled to take place, a public consciousness is formed about it and news of it is sought at every telegraph and telephone station throughout the land. What we know as “public opinion,” the power that moves the state, society and the world, is the holding of some dominating thought in definite form in public consciousness.

There is a religious consciousness, manifest at various times, such as the Crusades and the Reformation. At these periods the world was occupied mainly with religious thought. It supplanted all other subjects. Many people believe that we are now approaching a great period of religious consciousness. The recognition of the fact that man is spirit and not body, and that God reveals Himself to us not through an external medium but in the individual soul, is growing steadily. Psychology, Mental Science, Christian Science, New Thought, Divine Science, Spiritualism, Unity, Truth and Occultism are all furnishing new systems of thought that are producing a world consciousness. All genuine science and philosophy are drifting in that direction and all church organizations will eventually follow in their wake to save their membership and to preserve their existence. The world is ready for a new and constructive religious consciousness.

If you have followed these Lessons studiously, earnestly and sincerely, as we asked you to do in the beginning, you are undoubtedly at this time building up for yourself a new consciousness. Let us review what we have acquired to establish this consciousness:

1. We have learned new things about the human brain. These facts, now generally taught in the schools of brain science, were unknown fifty years ago.

2. We have learned new things about the mind. The discovery of the subconscious mind is a development of the past fifty years, although the occultists have known of it for thousands of years. Its control of the body is now understood and its study has created a new science.

3. We have begun to understand the influence of the mind over the body in terms that we are familiar with. This knowledge is influencing every advanced medical school in the world today–something that was laughed at when Hahnemann introduced homeopathy in the last century–reducing a dose of medicine 10,000 times on the theory that it wasn’t medicine that cured, but the idea of taking it.

4. We have learned of mental science and psychology–new developments of the study of the mind and how they are put into effect to insure health, happiness, success and prosperity. Psychology has been adopted by the businessmen of the world, as they have recognized the value of this science in handling men and developing new powers in salesmen and selling agencies.

5. We have shown the crudities of the Old Thought about God and have taught you what God is on a basis that unites rationalism and religion.

6. We have endeavored to interpret Jesus as the expounder of the great truths about mind and spirit, the unifier of God and Man, the healer of souls and bodies, the introducing power of the New Thought of the Divine in its relation to mankind, which Science today is beginning to confirm.

7. We have shown you the methods by which Jesus healed and his transference of the knowledge of these methods to his followers; how he opened up for us in spirit the secret of all knowledge.

8. We have explained the nature of the soul of man and of its relation to the body, to the external world and to the Creator, and the supremacy of spirit over matter.

9. We have shown the creative process of Spirit in the Supreme Being and in Man, both essentially the same, functioning in thought and expressing through the power of the word in form.

10. We have put before you the essentials of soul union with God, in which the creature and the Creator may commune, the one presenting his wants and the Other lending of His omnipotent power to meet them by substantiating them or converting them from their essence in thought to their externalization in form.

11. Withal we have outlined the chain of creation, if not link by link, at least logically, so that the imagination may bring the whole into harmonious form before the mental vision.

12. We have shown you your possibilities, human and spiritual; that the kingdom of heaven is within you; that there is nothing in all the universe to fear; that there are no limitations to the human soul; that we can become even as Jesus became, one with God; that this life is not a preparation for the next but is to be lived to its fullest now; that we can enter into the kingdom and have supernal powers immediately, and that we have but to will it to be renewed and transformed, lifted out of the much of matter and raised to the spiritual plane of love, joy, gladness, health, harmony, order, well-being and usefulness to our fellow men.

We have reinforced these Lessons with books and booklets in which the Truth is set forth in words of convincing power, and have evidenced to you the wonders and “signs following” resulting from the application of this Divine Science.

In all of this we have sought to create within you a new state of consciousness; one that will transform your mind and produce a new birth.

We ask you now to develop this consciousness so that it may grow ever deeper, more profound and absorbing. If you have dreamed of being of use in the world this revelation of the power to acquire a new state of consciousness will show you the way. We cannot create this consciousness for you. We can only feed it. No one can create it, under God, but yourself, and no one can tell what it will do for you except God, Who will work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Do not, as some unhappy people do, regard all of this as casual information. It is too vital for that. It is Truth itself as the greatest thinkers of the world have known it and as those inspired of God have taught.

Fill your consciousness with it, for it is divine–holding all that is lovely, harmonious and vitalizing. Go on from the level you have attained in these studies to higher flights. “Every man,” said a medieval writer, “has within him the making of a great saint,” which is to say that each of us can develop the divinity that is within us to the highest point attainable. You may do so. We pray that you may make the effort.

It is not by the use of the personal will alone that you can reach the heights, but by a union of your will with the Divine in a conscious effort to produce the highest results. It is not by the use of the subconscious mind alone that you will effect your desires but by the use of it as a bridge to span the breach between the finite and Infinite.

All of time for you has been unfolding for this one particular moment. All of the life you have lived so far culminates right now. The past is dead. The future is wrapped up in the present. The action of some moment of decision determines the direction of agencies that crystallize the decision of the now into the destiny of the future. To these Lessons you may have been Divinely directed. You are now in the way to begin. All things with God are in the now. A thing that you are to do tomorrow, or next week, or “later on,” is a negative. “Now” is the positive. “Now,” said the Psalmist, “I will begin.” He was an old man when he wrote those words, but he was not too old to begin, for he knew that he was beginning aright.

May it be that this shall be the beginning of the new consciousness on your part, if it is not already in process of creation, and that you never lose it, but continue developing it along the ever-upward spiral.

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PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
THE TEACHINGS OF TRUTH
“Nothing was different, yet this much I knew,
My soul stirred in its chrysalis of clay,
A strange peace filled me like a cup–I grew
Better, gladder and wiser on that day;
This dusty, worn-out world seemed made anew
Because God’s way had now become my way.”

Golden Grains

“He knows that power is in the soul, that he is weak only because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so, perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands erect, commands his limbs, works miracles.” (Emerson)

Denial and Affirmation
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
Nothing exists but God and His manifestations. God is the Source of all activity, all Wisdom, all Knowledge, all Substance. The Spirit of God is my Health and my Strength–the Love of God is my only Guide. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

Thought for the Silence
“My own life is identical with that of the In-Dwelling Spirit, which is now working through me to will and to do of Its own good pleasure; for this is Its intention; and my intention is to bring all my thoughts into harmony with it, so that whatsoever I think or do shall be dedicated to the glory of God–the All Good.”

Meditation for the Three-Minute Silence (Noon)
The Order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all Eternity, is expressing itself NOW as Perfect Health.

Thought for Each Morning When Going Out
God is my loving Father. His Kingdom is within me. I seek first His kingdom and its right way of thinking and all else is added to me.

Resolution for the Week
I resolve this week to cultivate to the highest the new consciousness that I have acquired in the study of Divine Science. My feet are now placed upon the Way and I shall ascend into the Mountain of High Vision.

Suggestions for the Silence
Always enter the Silence with the assurance that God searches the secret places of the heart and that He knows the words that are upon thy tongue, for before you can utter your word He hears you. “Be still, and know that I am God.” A new consciousness is born when God moves upon the face of the waters. “What is man that Thou art mindful of him or the son of man that Thou visited him?”

Read with this Lesson
“New Thoughts on Old Doctrines, pages 3-32. [Online at this website as Chapter 1 of that title.]
Reread “The Realm of Reality,” Chapter 2. [Online at this website]
“Astor Lectures,” pages 19-28. [Online at this website]

* * * * *
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection

Health

The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.

The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.

Prosperity
My God has supplied all my needs, according to His riches, by the Christ-Consciousness of Abundance in me.

That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.

Protection
The Lord is my Keeper. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. He that keepeth me neither slumbers nor sleeps. No harm shall come nigh my dwelling, for I live in God, in whom is no imperfection and no inharmony.

The Lord, the everlasting Truth Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Purity, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.

QUESTIONS
1. What word in New Thought has come to have a new meaning?

2. Give examples of forms of consciousness.

3. What is a public consciousness?

4. Have these Lessons aided you in building up for yourself a new consciousness?

5. Review what you have thus acquired to establish a new consciousness.

6. Can you reach the heights by your personal will alone?

7. What is the importance of the present moment?

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