Charge them that are rich in this present world, that they be not high-minded, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to communicate; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on the life which is life indeed.
— I Timothy 6:17-19.
THE PAST half century has been a time of unprecedented advancement in the world about us. Electricity and its myriad applications, telegraph, telephone, wireless, radio, electric light, phonograph, motion pictures, talking pictures, the inception of television; airplanes and dirigibles; palatial ocean liners, submarines, towering skyscrapers—these and a thousand other material discoveries, inventions, and developments have made us the richest people that has ever lived.
No amount of greater wealth can make us richer. Already we are producing more wealth than we know how to use. Our machines are working so fast and so efficiently that in many instances there is not enough, according to old standards, for men to do in order to earn a livelihood.
The world about us is out of balance with the world within us. As a whole we have grown materially far faster than we have grown mentally and spiritually. We have built a Frankenstein monster that overawes us and threatens to slay
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us. We have "demonstrated" more than we have learned how to use. We have demanded plenty and now we have it. The next thing that we must learn is what to do with it.
Skyscrapers have grown taller than the men who build them. Machines have grown more cunning than their operators.
The next great work of the world is to grow mentally and spiritually to a stature commensurate with its material growth.
Many scientists and thinkers say that we are approaching the close of an era of scientific achievement. That has been said many times mistakenly, to be sure. We all recall the story of the employee of the patent office at Washington who resigned his job because there was nothing more to invent—before the era of electric lights, radio, and talking pictures. But to go on endlessly at the rate of progress made in the last fifty years, without striking a mental and spiritual balance, would decrease rather than increase the possibilities of human happiness.
God has showered us with blessings. These blessings have poured through such minds as the world has seldom known before. One of the greatest was Edison, that kindly, benevolent genius who never led an army, never stirred up strife or contention, never set nation against nation or man against man, but instead brought light and joy and comfort and pleasures innumerable into the world to bless mankind. Surely Edison is a veritable symbol of every material good that the
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past half century has brought us. Many of the world's leaders say that it is doubtful if the next thousand years will produce another Edison. His passing seems quite definitely to close a cycle of blessings; blessings that, wonderful though they are, have in some instances blessed us far beyond our capacity to receive blessings.
The present period should be called not a period of depression—unless we refer to the depression that affects many minds, but rather a period of change and adjustment. We have gone as far as it is expedient for us to go in one direction of growth. We should now endeavor to balance that growth in other ways.
The steel that a magnet can hold is commensurate with the power of attraction in the magnet. Press as much steel against it as you choose, it will hold only as much as its own inner force is capable of attracting. So it is with man. To hold and master the blessings that crowd upon him from the outside world he must generate more inner power. He is already "loaded" from without up to and beyond his capacity.
Present world conditions are, considered relatively and temporally, serious [TruthUnity note: Ernest Wilson published this book in 1931, which was two years after the start of the Great Depression]. The statement that it is absurd for men to lack in a world of plenty does not alter the obvious fact that many men are suffering such lack. Urgent conditions demand drastic remedies. Much of this human suffering, needless though it be, must be met on its own plane. To tell a hungry, penniless man
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that if he had thought right he would not be in his deplorable state, or even that he can by right thinking and prayer get himself out of it, may not suffice to meet his most immediate need.
It is no more than our reasonable quota of service, no less than our honest duty, to help physically and materially as much as we can. But such help will not reach very far, necessary though it is. It alleviates but does not cure the situation. We must go farther.
The "depression" is used as an alibi for countless inefficiencies and human frailties. Many who claim that their present straitened circumstances are due to the depression merely have a new alibi. A few years ago it was something else. There are those who continually lose jobs, who always experience "hard luck." They, like the poor of whom Jesus spoke, are always with us. Theirs is a problem of consciousness. Others, habitually successful and prosperous, are withstanding the pressure of negative mass psychology, and are still successful and prosperous.
Still others, prosperous and successful heretofore, are for the first time in their lives facing a situation with which they do not know how to cope. Theirs is the problem of growth. Absorbed and contented in their prosperity, they have gone the way of the world, developing strong material muscles, and remaining weak and flabby of mind and spirit. They can build strength of mind and of spirit just as they built their financial strength or their physical strength. They
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built financial strength by wise and persistent use of material possessions, by service, by efficiency. They perhaps built their physical strength in a comparable way; by using what strength they had, fostering, exercising, nourishing it, through directed activity, discipline, right eating. But they can go only a certain distance in this manner before maintenance of their strength demands more of them. The present period marks that point for many.
All that we have developed materially has its good uses. We can whole-heartedly pronounce it good, for such it is; but we can only honestly say that it is good for us when we have mastered its use and brought it under the dominion of something in us of equal development.
So far we have not done a very good job of this. For instance, we let such a minor item on the material plane as the motor car bring us into subjection. We betray our inward weakness when we use it in ways that are hot for our good or the good of others: when we drive cars recklessly or carelessly, when we let our pride of possession overbalance our good judgment and permit ownership of them to engulf us in debt beyond reason, when we neglect to give them the care and attention that a good piece of machinery deserves, and when we ride in them to the neglect of physical exercise and bodily health.
We betray our weakness when we amass more of anything than we can use or more than contributes to our happiness and well-being; when
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we permit a machine to produce more of anything than is needed just because the machine can run twenty-four hours a day. We betray ourselves thus to greed, and the price that we pay is bitter. We betray ourselves when, with money and with leisure, we do not know how to make either contribute to our happiness, our culture, our serenity of mind and spirit.
Many men complain bitterly that machinery has robbed them of their work, and that the mechanism of the modern age is responsible for their difficulties. This is only partially true. Machinery may be the occasion of their trouble, but it is not the cause of it. The cause is that men have built their machines better than they have built themselves.
There is much work that machines can do better than man can do it; much work that is monotonous and back breaking. Every man should thank God that there are such machines, and the more the better. There is other work that no machine can do as well or as beautifully as men can do it. This work men should do.
As we grow in wisdom, learning some of the lessons of this present time, undoubtedly working hours will be shortened, so that every one may have gainful employment at living wages, and with ample leisure; but leisure itself is a baneful thing unless man learns how to use it well. Unless the machinist grows more than his machine, unless the builder grows more than what he builds, and unless the workman grows beyond
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his work, our progress will be imaginary rather than real. We shall have a resultant depression, both inwardly and in the world about us.
The increase of leisure time may well lead to a renaissance of the liberal arts. Men, employed but a few hours a day for material gain, may develop as skilled artisans, doing tasks of skill and beauty in their leisure hours. In working for the sheer love of their work and of beauty they are likely to be worth more to themselves and to the world than they are in their almost mechanical role of keeping the wheels of the world's needful work turning. Students will study music, not in the hope of earning the supposedly large salaries of opera stars, but because something within them demands musical expression, and because they want to sing well—and then we may have better opera singers! Men will carve fine woods for love of the pungent smell in their nostrils, the feel of the blade in the wood, the evocation of beauty, the satisfaction of self-expression; and once more we shall have lovelier furniture and lovelier homes. Work in metal, sculpturing, dancing, the drama, writing, oratory, travel, painting, ceramics, weaving, spinning, dyeing, working in reeds, these and many other useful and cultural occupations suggest themselves.
If the Utopian dream of a two-hour workday were suddenly to be realized, most of us would soon become bored and unhappy with the pleasures of golf and bridge and would not know what
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to do with ourselves. Bereft of our material toys, the pressure and demands of a materially commercial age, where should we be? In an alien world, lonely, unhappy, worse off than we are now, unless we developed those inner resources of the mental and spiritual man that alone can make the body rich.
This is our twofold task, then: to meet the immediate demands of necessity, and to plan for a larger life in new spheres of expression.
For the first task we need courage, vision, and a change of vocabulary. Three years ago while I was lecturing in Florida a gentleman of mature years called for an interview. His hair was white, his face was seamed with character lines that showed that he had lived much, that he had faced and conquered many problems. He told me that he had lost two large fortunes, that now for the third time in life he was starting all over again, at an age when most men think of retiring. He pulled out his pockets to show me how empty they were. As a beginning I tried to say what I thought was expected of me. "You have lost a great deal, haven't you?" I asked.
He squared his shoulders, and a fine light came into his eyes as he answered, "Young man, I want you to know that I haven't lost anything but money!"
Looking at him, I knew that he spoke truly. He had not lost his faith in himself or in mankind, or in a wealth of present opportunities such as had blessed him in the past. He had not lost his
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courage or his vision, or—what was perhaps most important of all—his willingness to face new and changing conditions and to adjust himself to them.
We need to have something of that spirit at the present time.
We should delete the word "depression" from our vocabulary. It is simply the symbol of a mental state of fear and worry. We should adopt the attitude of the Truth teacher who once was asked if she thought that there would be another World War. "If there is, it will not be by any power that my words lend to it," she said. If there is to be another depression in this time of change it should come of no power that we lend it by our words. There have always been changes in the past. Most of them, we can see, were for our good. There will be many before us, no doubt. By this time we should have learned not to fear changes, but to anticipate them, to study their favorable aspects, and so to adjust ourselves that they will be advantageous to us. To do this is our immediate task.
Before us lies a wealth of happiness and opportunity that is almost inconceivable to those who have not delved deeply into the resources of the inner life. The greatest riches that life can give, riches that nothing in the world about us can take away, are the riches of our own conscious being. To the strong, resolute, wise, and loving mind, the things of the world do obeisance.
The power to attract what we want, and to be free of it when it has served its purposes of
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good in our life; the power to want so wisely that we shall have no regrets over what our wanting calls forth from life's rich store; the power to call forth success out of seeming failure, abundance out of seeming lack, happiness out of misery —all these and more are at the command of every man who has found himself, and who, even more than that, has found his oneness with his Maker.
In that development of mental and spiritual powers which is the next great world purpose, as yet for the most part unknown and unsensed but heralded by many indications of the Father's love and blessing, the teachings of the Great Master will be studied and applied as never before. The Unity movement is dedicated to that work. All who contact its work in any way will receive a blessing, and it is the part of wisdom for them to use and to develop their understanding of its message, not only for themselves, but for the help that they can be to others.
PRINTED IN U.S.A. (4IC—U.700—11-31)
Preceding Entry: Adventures in Prosperity 113-120: Chapter Ten: There Is a Protecting Presence
