1921 Health-the Everlasting Reality O nothing else touching his life can the aphorism "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he" be more fittingly applied than to a man's health. Health can be established only by thinking health, just as disease is established by thinking disease. Just as you must think success, expect it, visualize it, make your mind a huge success magnet to attract it if you are to attain it, so if you want to be healthy, you must think health, you must expect it, you must visualize it, you must attract it by making your mind a huge health magnet to attract more health, abundant health. As long as physical defects, weaknesses, or diseased conditions exist in the imagination, as long as the mind is filled with visions of ill health the body must correspond, because our bodies are but an extension of our thoughts, our minds objectified. Health is based upon the ideal of the body's perfection and the absolute denial of disease, the denial of everything but the ideal condition; upon the idea that only that which is good for us can be real in the highest sense of the word; that all physical discords are only the absence of harmony, not the reality of our being, the truth of us. Health is the everlasting reality, disease is the absence of reality. It is only seeming. In proportion to the physician's ability to suggest perfect soundness of body to his patient, to visualize him as physically perfect; in proportion to his power to see and to impress upon the mind of his patient the image of the ideal, instead of that of the diseased, discordant, suffering individual, will he be able to help him. TH TH EDITOR'S NOTE HOMAS L. MASSON, the author of this article, is the Managing Editor of LIFE. While Mr. Masson has made a national reputation as a humorist and is, perhaps, the most prolific producer of jokes in the world, he is also a keen philosopher and sees the serious side of life from a practical angle. You will enjoy his article because it is the work of a man who is alive to the philosophy of success. Mr. Masson holds that every man is his own Sisyphus. Now, Sisyphus was the crafty and avaricious king of Corinth which city his father, Eolus, founded. Sisyphus was condemned in Hades forever to roll to the top of a steep hill a huge stone which constantly rolled back again, making his task incessant. HE thing known as "The World" is the kind of a thing that most men hang around their necks, and it goes bobbing around them, as they walk along, getting very much in their way, and causing them considerable inconvenience and pain. It appears to be fastened to them so insecurely, that they cannot keep it from thus bobbing about, yet all attempts to get rid of it are unavailing. And so they stumble on, cursing their luck, and wondering why they were ever fastened to such an unpleasant obstacle. They keep trying over and over again to tame it, to get it into some orderly manner of procedure, but it is always surprising them, knocking them down with the back impact and they never seem to get the best of it. Some of them, indeed, endeavor to go so fast that the world drags on after them-for a time. But it always catches up, and swings them off their feet. They resemble in this respect the ancient Sisyphus, who was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill, but no sooner did he get it up, than it rolled down and he had to begin all over again. We are always beginning all over again with our individual worlds, and never quite get over the top of the hill. The world of course, is the thing that a man makes himself, as he goes along. It is a small you will stop and think that this must be so. world at first, but it gradually gets bigger. It gets more interesting for a lot of folks, while at the same time it gets more burdensome. Some of them succeed in smoothing it off a bit, so that its edges are not quite so jagged. Some of them learn, by very hard practice, to cajole it a little, to dodge it a little, to keep it a little under control. But the effort is very likely to exhaust them in the end. The singular part about all this is that they think there is only one world that they are pulling along. But in fact, there are as many worlds as there are people. Each one of us is carrying along a world of his own. "This is your world and my world" you are apt to say, but it isn't at all. My world is mine and yours is yours, but there is no big world for all, there is only one world apiece for each one of us. If a moment you will see The world you think that you share in common with others, is only your world after all. When you go out, your world goes out, and all the other worlds that others are carrying along are just their individual worlds. To realize that, to feel it, is to begin to get somewhere. FOR you immediately begin to get somewhere, when you see that you alone are responsible for your particular world, and that nobody else has anything to do with it. This is rather a large thought I'll admit, and will raise immediate objections from everybody. If you doubt that I am right, all you need do is to question any two men you meet about this curious world that you think is all one. You will find that each one of them differs from the other about what it is. They may seem to agree in some particulars, but press them hard, and you will see that the world of one is not the world of the other. Why all the others that we see about us are only parts of our world. You are entirely alone, if you did but know it. The subtle and illusive thing that makes you feel you are surrounded by others, is only the reaction you experience from contact with your own thoughts. And your own thoughts are the result of your own sensations, and your sensations certainly belong to you. You say that these sensations are produced by something outside of you. And you term that reality. On the contrary, it is unreality. The one thing that we are searching for all the time is reality, and that is the one thing that we never seem to achieve. You earn a thousand dollars, go to the bank and get the money, place it firmly in your hand and you say that is reality. You exchange it for clothes and food, and you then say that is reality. And the clothes and the food disappear and then where is your reality? It now lies somewhere in the heart of the next thousand dollars. And you go through the same thing over again. You. This world of yours is constantly getting in your way and trying to make you believe that reality is something else. AND ND, considering human beings just as they are (or as we think they are), they divide themselves into two groups, each one of which has some of the characteristic qualities of the other. The first group is materialistic: that is, it comprises the vast mass of human beings who regard everything they see and touch as being quite real, and who try to get as much out of it as they go along as they can. Some of them apparently succeed remarkably well. They break off great wads of money, and seem to have everything pretty much their own way. The only trouble with them is that they are never satisfied, because in each instance the thing they banked on as being real, they discovered when they got it, wasn't real at all. And then they begin all over again rolling their boulder up the hill like our old ALF the giant's strength HALF is in the conviction that he is a giant. The strength of a muscle is enhanced a hundredfold by the will-power. The same muscle, when removed from the giant's arm, when divorced from the force of the mighty will, can sustain but a fraction of the weight it did a moment before it was disconnected. So the thing that you want to deal with is always You. And a voice breaks in right here and says: "Dear me, I couldn't do that. It wouldn't be safe. If I should think about myself all the time, I should get introspective, and morbid and would be no use to anybody." And so the great majority of people never break through the barriers of You, because they are afraid. That is why one sees so many playing cards, and going to the movies and doing almost anything to get away from themselves because they are afraid of that YOU. Now, let us consider, for a brief moment, what the philosophers term the objective world. The objective world is the thing we are all of us up against. And we are up against it hard. If you haven't believed so far anything I have written, you will all agree to that. ("Hear, hear!" you say.) friend, Sisyphus. The other and much smaller group are the human beings who begin to suspect, quite early in the game, that things are not so real as they seem, and this leads them to question themselves. Pretty soon they are likely to discover that they get more satisfaction from giving up rather than from grabbing everything in sight. It is always a hard matter to give upat first-but after a while these people perceive that the very act of giving up brings in on them, from wholly unexpected sources, a lot of things that they never even asked for and didn't know they wanted them until they came. Thus we see an old man of this group who has apparently nothing; yet everybody comes to him for advice. And when he opens his mouth, everybody listens. The instinctive homage of the great mass of unthinking people is always given to the great moral leader. Think that over. You have tried to change them; but the harder you tried, the more impossible they seemed to get. At Furthermore, you have a sneaking, humiliating feeling that you are being blamed for them. This only makes you feel worse. You have done your best to get rid of them, but they are working against you, are stronger than you are. times you are able to forget them temporarily, by sheer exhaustion. Then the thought of them comes over you once more, you wriggle and squirm, and during these dark moments you feel like—well, making an end of it. The worst of it is that you can talk to nobody about it. You have tried, and have always failed. Your closest friend, during these shameful moments of confidence, goes back on you. You see he isn't interested. He dismisses your confession. with mock solemnity. Or he tells you that you are not well. You ought to go away. You don't exercise enough. You need rest. It's your liver. Then-if you have any sporting blood in you, as most of us have-you get mad. You may not show it outwardly, but your back is up against the wall, and you curse aloud, like Job. And then you feel better-for a time. First, you must remember that it takes time to accomplish anything that is worth while. The man who endures to the end is the man who wins. Why did the Allies whip Germany? Do you remember that message of Joffre, in which he said that the Germans were getting into Paris? Do you recall that despairing utterance of Haig, when he said that they simply couldn't hold out any longer? Have you ever sent such a message back of your lines? Sure you have. The first rule then, is patience. The next rule is never to think of what is going to happen. Lincoln said he got through with the Civil War by taking only one thing at a time -as it came up. It takes practice to do this. And practice takes time, and time means patience. The third rule is, perhaps, the most important. Always face the condition as it presses upon you and face the details of it one by one, as they strike upon your consciousness. Don't think about them, don't dwell upon them. Just face them. Make no effort to overcome them. It is you that must change, and not they. And face them mentally. Look at them, steadily, and mentally. Don't move forward. Be passive. But hold on. You will be astonished at the power that will gradually come to you. If you are afraid of a thing, always look at it mentally. It will begin to recede of its own accord. That is because it isn't real. You are the only reality, and nothing can touch you if you look at it calmly and steadily. Beginning with the February Number a New and THE NEW SUCCESS "Who's Who in the World" Being a Monthly Record and Editorial Comment on the People Who Are Responsible for the Current Events that Are Making History, and Their Achievements. Keep in Touch with This Department Monthly and You Will Be in Touch with all that Is Important in the World. It Will Be Illustrated with Fine Photographs. Also in February: "Famous People I Have Tried to Interview for THE NEW SUCCESS," by John T. Drayton, European Correspondent. 1921 What Thought Force Has Done H AVE you, who are beating against the iron bars of poverty, ever stopped to think what marvelous things the Creator has everywhere provided for us, His children? Just imagine the entire universe, the great cosmic ocean of creative intelligence, packed with all the riches, all the glorious things, the magnificent possibilities the human mind can conceive, and then try to picture what it would mean to you and to all who are complaining of lack and want if by some magic they could call out of this universal supply of creative intelligence anything which would match their desires, their heart longings. Imagine this vast universe, this ocean of creative energy, packed with possibilities from which human beings could draw everything which the wildest imagination could conceive, everything they desire in life, everything they need for comfort and convenience, even luxuries also cities, railroads, telegraphs and all sorts of wonderful inventions and discoveries. Every discovery, every invention, every improvement, every facility, every home, every building, every city, every railroad, every ship, everything that man has created for our use and benefit he has fashioned out of this vast invisible cosmic ocean of intelligence by thought force. Everything we use, everything we have, every achievement of man is preceded by a mental vision, a plan. Everything man has accomplished on this earth is a result of a desire, has been preceded by a mental picture of it. Everything he has produced on this plane of existence has been drawn out of this invisible ocean of divine intelligence by his thought force. His imagination first pictured the thing he wanted to do; he kept visualizing this mental conception, never stopped thinking, creating, until his efforts to match his visions with their realities drew to him the thing on which he had concentrated. |