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--- right_thinking_nov37 [2026/04/14 16:00] – iam
+++ right_thinking_nov37 [2026/08/03 13:48] (current) – iam
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-====== The Inner Life 1937 ======
+====== The Inner Life ======
-== THE HERALD OF THE NEW AGE ==
+== THE HERALD OF THE NEW AGE | NOVEMBER 1937 ==
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-{{ rightthinking193711-1078.jpg |}}
+<WRAP centeralign>
+==== RIGHT THINKING ====
+</WRAP>
+<WRAP justify>
+PREVIOUSLY I pointed out that we obtained our greatest happiness by making others happy, and the only way we can do this is by true prayer, thinking rightly in a scientific manner.
+I also pointed out that the universal teaching in the world today is that if you think evil you get evil and if you think good you get good—but nothing is good except God and heaven.
+In order to think of God and heaven one must have some idea of what God and heaven are, and this is why the prophet Hosea says: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). If a man had not the slightest idea of what God and heaven were, how could he stop thinking evil and think of God, absolute Good? It would be impossible.
+The only power that evil has is the power that we allow it in our own thought by thinking evil. The thought and the thing are one. If we stop thinking evil, that is the end of the evil. It is easy to stop thinking evil with the conscious mind—go and read an interesting book. How can we stop thinking evil with the subconscious mind? There is only one method, by actively thinking of absolute good, namely God and heaven.
+The primary point in these lessons is to give the students a better idea of what God and heaven are. It is necessary also to teach something of the material world, for otherwise people might waste their time trying to find out details of the material world. As I shall point out later, there is no gain in a knowledge of the material world, even when it is cleaned up in a scientific way. Practically all details of the material world are details of hell, and it is not of the slightest use for you to know anything of the material world except to be able to point out to those you are helping that it is not of the slightest use for their knowing about the material world. What we want is knowledge of God and heaven, the world of reality.
+What, therefore, is the use of knowing anything about a material world that does not exist? If one spiritual being said to another spiritual being in heaven, which it could not do, “Isn’t it lucky that we are not in a world just the opposite of heaven and where there is sin, disease, limitation and death,” they would be talking of a suppositional opposite world, and that is what this material world is. It is only suppositional, that is to say, there is no reality in it, and it is exactly the opposite of heaven.
+In heaven we have one Mind, God, governing everything. Here in the material world we have the opposite, namely, mortal mind, or the devil, which governs; but fortunately, it is always gradually disappearing, ceasing its false sense of existence. In heaven we have nothing but good thoughts always followed by good. Here we have nothing but evil thoughts always followed by more or less evil. In heaven we have law and order, there is none here; in heaven we have cause and effect, none here; in heaven absolute justice, none here, until you learn how to pray, when you do have a measure of justice. In fact, everything is exactly the opposite, but it has no reality.
+Here, we should understand what reality means. There are certain words, God, Life, Truth, Substance, Existence, Being, Reality, that have all the same basic meaning, namely, permanence. As Herbert Spencer, one of our best definers of words, says, “What is real is permanent; what is not permanent is not real.” Sin, disease, and suffering are not permanent, therefore they are not real.
+St. Augustine, the founder of modern Christianity, taught this. Five times in his writings he mentions it, four times he argues it out as follows: that God made everything very good; evil is not very good, therefore God never made it. God made all things, therefore, evil is not real. This is absolutely logical if the premises are granted, namely, that God made all things.
+Later on, when I come to deal with the nature of God, I will give you proof that nothing was ever made that God did not make. He never made man and He never made man’s ideas. These always existed absolutely perfect, as part of His manifestation. You are now, and always will be, a perfect being, in a perfect world, governed by a perfect God. The only things that are created are the combinations of the ideas. The lovely ideas of art, literature, music, scenery, etc., that give us such wonderful happiness, even in this material world, are really a part of heaven, combinations of God’s ideas, shining through an imaginary mist of matter, and constituting the so-called material world.—F. L. Rawson.
+</WRAP>
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