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Man's Greatest PowerAN OUTLINE OF THE IMPERATOR'S OPENING ADDRESS TOTHE ROSICRUCIAN CONVENTION By The Convention Secretary [From The Rosicrucian Digest August 1933] On Sunday evening, July 16, at the opening session of the Convention, the Imperator made this brief address as one of the many features of the interesting program. The complete report of the Convention and all of the addresses, lectures, experiments, and other matters conducted at all the sessions will be reported in next month's issue of this magazine. MY Beloved Fraters and Sorors: I am extremely happy in being able, through the will of God and with the cooperation of the sublime Masters of the Universe, to be with you tonight and to sound the keynote, not only of this present Convention, but of our entire activities for the coming year. I have chosen as the thought for my brief talk the one great power possessed by man which is superior to every other power in the universe except those possessed by God. We hear a great deal in the present day, but probably no more than men and women have heard in every period of the history of civilization, about man's marvelous creative powers. About fifty miles north of us tonight is the great Golden Gate or entrance to the magnificent San Francisco Bay. We, who live so close to this Gate and thousands of persons throughout the world who live at distant points from it, but who are studying and watching the achievements of man, are enthusiastic about the latest and most modern attempt on the part of man to master worldly conditions. There at the Golden Gate man has planned to build a bridge. Men have dreamed about this bridge for several centuries, and for many years it has been planned and talked about. The very thought of it was a monument to man's insatiable desire to overcome limiting physical conditions. In fact, it is a monument to man's unconquerable spirit or perhaps to his conquering mastership. It represents the most stupendous piece of creative work ever undertaken by man. As we look at the plans and consider the great forces, elements, and conditions that must be overcome in building that bridge we feel like lifting our eyes in adoration to the very spirit of man's ability to dream. We will do homage to the builders and pay adoration to the engineers and architects who designed it. But in days gone by men and women paid the same adoration, the same respect to those who built the first wood and mud cabins on the banks of rivers, thereby creating the first towns and villages. Homage and adoration were paid to the first genius who dreamed about and then devised a cable of twisted fibers and wood that was suspended across a stream and enabled him to span the unconquered rapids. The genius of man's creative power seemed to have reached its zenith when the great pyramid of Gizeh was built. When man conquered the ocean with self-propelling boats and annihilated distance with self-propelling engines pulling passenger cars, it seemed as though man had outdone nature and reached the highest pinnacle of creative work. In paying tribute to the creative power of man we did not fail to pay tribute to the creative forces of the universe which man drew to himself and applied with systematic intelligence and efficiency. The first great power of the universe that man successfully brought within his control and direction was that of the heat and light of the sun. Man was led to the discovery of the possibilities of the sun's rays through the power he found in friction by which simple process he was enabled to produce and originate fire and light. Then man discovered the power that was resident in the weight of water and then that power that resulted from its movement. And from the combination of heat and water man was able to find the next of the world's greatest energies known as steam. And then came the power of electricity gathered from the invisible energies of the universe and accumulated in batteries or through frictional methods made dynamic and sent through wires over land and sea. One by one man has discovered other great universal forces and applied them, each force seemingly having potential possibilities of its own but always accompanied with certain limitations. What steam could do could not be accomplished by the use of electrical forces, while the possibilities of the electrical forces could not be equalled by those of steam. In the smallest atom man is discovering a power which is static and at the present time unapplied, that may be even greater than all of the energetic forces heretofore utilized. Man has looked upon his physical body as possessing great power and energy in itself. With development and training, the blow of the fist, the pull of the arm, the push of the body, constitute energies and powers that have enabled man to operate large pieces of machinery and with a lever move ponderable bodies. Man has devised ways and means whereby the small amount of power contained in the nerve energy of his physical system may be properly used to enlarge itself through mathematically devised equipment to accomplish marvelous things. Through the use of a saw, the swinging of an axe, the hitting of a hammer, or the pounding upon the anvil, man has created many of life's necessities and nearly all of life's luxuries. But each of these instruments and each application of man's physical energy has had its limitations beyond which the strongest man, the best trained man, and the most efficiently equipped worker could not go. There is one other power or energy possessed by man, however, that is greater than any of the physical ones that the strongest in brute strength has ever exerted or that the natural forces of the universe have ever made manifest. That supreme of all forces is the creative power of man's mind. If we will stop and think but a moment we will be impressed with the fact that the creative power of man's mind is the only power in the universe within the control of man that is wholly and completely unlimited. It is not bound in its physical applications by time or space, by fortitude or resistance. It is not bound in its directional application by any of the physical limitations of matter or by any of the dimensional qualities of matter. It is not bound by the traditions of the past, the possibilities of the present, or the feasibilities of the future. It is unlimited in its scope, increasingly dynamic through its use, and inexhaustible in its supply. It is more tangible to those who use it than any of the other forces of the universe. On the other hand, it is invisible and intangible in its processes. The creative power of man's mind needs no mechanical channels through which to disperse itself, needs no artificially created accumulators to hold it, and is available night and day in all places and for all purposes. While the physical eyes of man, and the greatest of his creations, can see but darkly and dimly through the material things of life, the creative power of his mind can enable him to see through the thickest walls, through the most opaque objects, through the densest of matter, through that which even the rays of the sun and the rays of electricity cannot penetrate. While man must be physically present in any place to exert the physical energy of his body, he can be distantly absent from an object which he wishes to affect by the power of his mind. While man can physically deal only with those things which he has created or is now creating, or with those things which already exist, the power of man's mind can deal with uncreated things in the physical world, for it can constantly create them in mental form and deal with them, though invisible and unseen to the physical eye. While man's physical creations must ever take into consideration the physical laws, such as that of weight, the push and pull of gravitation, the three dimensions of matter, and the chemical nature of things, man's creative power is unaffected by these laws and principles. Man's creative mind can do the impossible things as viewed by the physical senses. This marvelous power of mind can build a castle of stone and steel and suspend it in mid-air with stability and dependability. It can span the oceans in the twinkling of an eye, it can annihilate space and neutralize time. It can project itself through the most defiant and resistant creations of the physical world. It can foresee and precreate the things of tomorrow and the things of a century hence. It can wipe away instantly and without a moment's hesitation the false creations of the past and the things which man labored for years to construct. It can view a material thing and deny its existence and have it disappear from its inner sight. It can create beauty where beauty does not exist. It can paint with colors where no colors are seen. It can transmute metals and change one form into another. It can take the wealth of the world and bring it to the feet of the needy. It can cure disease. It can mend broken bones. It can restore lost limbs and raise the dead. It can solve every earthly problem, dissolve mountains into valleys, and raise valleys into high plateaus. It can neutralize trials and tribulations into joys and into paeans of happy song. It can turn hate into love and enmity into friendship, jealousy into adoration, and evil into good. And even greater than all of this, it can have a realization of God and see God and know God and live and love with God. Why, then, has man failed to become the conqueror of the world and the divine Master of the whole of his life? If man possessed this sublime and supreme of all powers, why is he then found in grief and sorrow, want and need? It is not because with some the power of the mind is wanting or that with the multitude it is not ever available, but only because man fails to give recognition to the power and apply it. Even here man himself can use the very power to overcome that which has kept him from its use. If it is but knowledge of the power and the way to apply it that is wanting in the life of man, then the power itself can be used to overcome these obstacles and to break away these barriers and to destroy these limitations. Whatever position man may be in in life, the creative power of his mind is available to him if he but calls upon it to help him remove the barriers that stand between him and its useful application. My message, therefore, to all of you at this time is a message that I would have go throughout the world to all mankind. Lift yourself up to the mastership that can be yours through the use of this magnificent power. Let the greatest of all forces in the universe serve you and do your bidding. As you think and create in your mind, so shall you build and accomplish and bring into realization. If to you there comes the belief that your mental creations cannot be transferred into actual realities, you can still use the creative power of mind to overcome this false belief and prove to yourself that what you will to be will become manifested. What the world needs today in this new cycle of advancing civilization is a new race and a new age of peoples who will create with the greatest of all creative powers the things that are supreme and are the most essential in the life of man. What man needs today, more than anything else, is self-mastership so that he may no longer be a dependent slave suffering under the limitations of his possessions and wanting the things that seem to be impossible of possession. Let the new urge in your lives be an urge of dominant control through unlimited creation and by the application of this unlimited power. Of all the creatures living and having their existence in the life of God, man alone possesses this greatest of creative powers. It cannot be that God has given to man this ability to mentally create, to mentally foresee and forebuild the things of tomorrow without having intended that these things should be realized in their fullest degree. If man has pinned his faith in the past to the material world and has believed that only those things which are created of matter and created through the forces or energies of nature are real and actual, it is no credit to him that he has thus wilfully limited his world of existence to mere physical form. It is time now that he should lift himself beyond the physical world and find that in the spiritual, mental world, in the etheric existence around him he can build and create, have, and enjoy the things that are beyond the physical and are more essential, more real and dependable than any that the atoms of nature or the electrons of spirit can create. It is time that man freed himself from the wholly fictitious, the truly unreasonable, the Cosmically unsound, and the wholly inadequate creations of the physical world. The most pleasant, the most satisfying, the most enjoyable and the most needful things of our physical existence are merely pleasures of the flesh. They are all sycophant in their appeals to the sensuous part of our natures. Man has ignored the fact that the only laughter that has ever given him real joy, the only happiness that has made him feel the sunshine of life, the only food that has ever satisfied a real hunger, the only wealth that has even given him any degree of relief from want has been that which appealed to the spirit and mind within him rather than to the flesh of his body. Why not, then, lift yourself above and beyond the continued satisfaction of physical wants while suffering the limitations of physical things and use the great power within for the purpose of creating in reality and turning into actuality the things that will bring real life, real happiness, and real mastership. Let your life from today henceforth be one of living realism through the creative power within you that knows no limitations and finds its source in the goodness of God's love. | ||
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