The Collected Works of Prentice Mulford - Prentice Mulford

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is the foundation of the art. In this it had its origin. From this it grew. A seeming accidental combination of light, shade, and color suggested to some mind ages ago the idea of so representing familiar things to the eye on a flat surface. From this was drawn the idea of perspective and of representing surface, round, flat, or indented, near or far; and every new pupil, teacher or no teacher, must begin where the first painter did, and tread in his footsteps. It is so in all art.

      The more free the mind is left to follow its own teaching, its intuition, the guidance of the spirit, the greater the inspiration. If it is put into rules made for it by others, there are produced only imitators and copyists. A rule laid down, with strict injunction to the pupil never to transgress it, is a shackle, a bar to advance in new territory of thought and investigation.

      The mood for study—that is, for finding out methods and remembering them—must be the mood of as perfect repose as you can attain. There must be no hurry, no excitement. If you grow too wild over a sudden success, a finding of something in your efforts you have long sought for, beware! or you will temporarily lose it. There must be no sudden startings of body or mind, nor impatience to hurry over any detail that is necessary. If a tool you are using breaks, or a chair is to be moved, or your pen needs cleaning, do it as though that was the only thing to be done for the day. Keep the body in as perfect a state of rest as possible. Be apathetic rather than strained or eager. When your body is in this state of repose, it is in the state best fitted to be used as the instrument of the mind, or spirit. It is then most ruled by your thought, your real self, your invisible self, your spirit.

      Because when body and mind are in this condition,—when you suspend all faculties save those concentrated on the work, or when your mind is in the receiving state,—your spirit can best work for you. It can then reach out and bring back the idea, the effect, the method, the conception and means of carrying out that conception; and the more quiet the body, and more tranquil the mind, the sooner will it teach how what you wish to do shall be done. In schooling yourself to this condition, you become more and more the medium through whom new ideas can be transmitted. You then connect yourself with the more exalted regions of mind or currents of thought, and receive of their knowledge and inspiration. Your mind is then the tranquil lake, the clear well, reflecting every thing above.

      You study every-day, often when you least think you are studying. You study as you walk the street in repose, and look into people’s faces, and are interested and amused by them. You are then learning more and more of the different varieties of human nature. Men and women then are books to you. You open and read them. You learn to recognize in an instant, by the look on people’s faces, how they feel and what are their dispositions. Involuntarily, you are classifying men and women, and putting them down in your mind according to their characters. One specimen so recognized serves as the type for one thousand, for a race. You set down this man as no gentleman, from the manner in which he looks at a lady. You see in this overdressed woman the low pride of mere money. You are studying human nature. Knowledge of human nature has a commercial value in dollars and cents. When you are accomplished in it, you may tell in five seconds whether you can trust a person or not. Trust in people is the corner-stone of all business success. Even thieves must trust to confederates in order successfully to accomplish a burglary.

      Napoleon the First accomplished his great successes through this intuitive, self-taught knowledge of men, and for what they were best adapted. Christ chose the twelve best fitted to receive his truths, and teach them to others, through the same intuition. Intuition means the inward teaching, and the inward teacher. This teacher resides in all of you. Give it free play, and demand also of the infinite Spirit wisdom, guidance, and suggestion, and it will grow into genius, and your genius. Genius recognizes diamonds in the rough, and the qualities for success in men and women, whether externally they be peer or peasant, cultured or uncultured, according to the worldly standard of learning. Genius may sometimes talk bad grammar, yet remove mountains, build cities, and put railway and telegraphic girdles around this planet. Culture may write and speak elegantly, yet not be able to remove a mole-hill. Culture often struggles and starves on ten dollars a week in an office, as the mere tool of an ungrammatical, uncultured, and inhuman genius, who makes his thousand to culture’s ten.

      The mood of repose, of unruffled and serene mind, is the mood in which all manner of discoveries are made, and ideas grasped or received. The eye on the lookout, ever strained and eager, does not at sea catch sight of the distant sail near as quickly as the one not looking for it. The name of the person temporarily escaped from memory rarely comes when we are “trying hard” to think of it. It is only when we cease trying to think, that the name comes to us.

      Indeed, this trying to think causes an unconscious straining of muscle. We try to work our brains. We send the blood to the head in this effort. All this is an obstacle to the spirit. We set its force at work the wrong way. It is made then to pile up obstacles, instead of taking them away. Because, the more quiet is kept all that belongs to the body, the more force is added to the spirit, to use whatever of its own its interior senses and functions it would, to bring us what we desire. Our spirits have their own, their peculiar senses, distinct and apart from the sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch of the body. They are finer, more powerful, more far-reaching. Your interior, or spiritual, sense of feeling can, when trained or brought out of its present dormancy, feel or communicate with the same sense of another person, whose body is in London or Pekin, and possibly is now doing so continually: for there may be a spirit whose body is now in London or Pekin, in closer alliance, relationship, and rapport with your own, than is any other spirit in the universe; and with such spirit you may now be in daily and hourly communication, through this interior and far-reaching sense which scorns the idea of distance as we interpret that word.

      The profit of not over-working or over-straining the body is proven all about us in the every-day affairs of life. The most successful man in business is he of the coolest head,—the self-contained man, who has intuitively learned to keep his body free from fatigue, so that his spirit can work. Yet that same man may not know he has a spirit, or rather a power and a sense, which goes out from his body, and brings him plans and schemes and crafty ideas for his world of getting and gaining. Because spiritual powers can be used for all manner of purposes, no other power is used. Spiritual law is worked in the interest of craft, as well as for higher motive. But the higher motive, when it comes to recognize this force, and use it intelligently, will always command the greater power, the keener thought, and the highest genius.

      Successful effort in every phase of life comes of the exercise of this power. It is “being led of the spirit.” If you have lost your way, you will find it much quicker by going very slowly, so keeping the spirit concentrated, instead of rushing the body about hither and thither, without aim or object. The experienced hunter puts himself in this frame of mind, and saunters through the woods; while the ignorant city boy, wild with excitement, rushes over miles of territory and sees no game. In both these cases, when the body is made to a degree apathetic, does a certain power, an unrecognized sense, go out and find for you your way. It finds the hunter his game. There is a great truth in being “led of the spirit;” and it applies to all grades of spirit, and consequent motive, be it high or low, kind or cruel, gentle or harsh.

      Sometimes you find yourself, without knowing why, in the self-contained, satisfied, contented mood of spirit. You are able to walk leisurely. You are in no hurry. No wild or unconquerable desire is upon you. You feel at peace with all the world. You have forgotten your enemies, your cares, your anxieties. It is then you most enjoy the woods, the skies, the passing crowd about you. It is then, when you are amused by them, that you most study them. You see peculiarities of person and manner which would escape you at other times. Your mind, quiet and undisturbed, is constantly receiving agreeable and vivid impressions. You wish such moods could last forever. So they can. This is the mood born of the concentrated spirit. Your spirit is then focussed to a state of rest; It is holding its strength in reserve, only expending enough to move your body.

      We are, when in this state, absorbing thought. To absorb thought is to absorb lasting power. But if, when in the act of such absorption, any thing annoys or hurries us, this power of absorbing thought is instantly destroyed. Our spirit ceases then to be the open hand receiving ideas. It becomes the clinched fist. It is then combative. It goes straight to whatever annoys or hurries it, and rages

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