[Pg 41]INWARDNESS OF ENVIRONMENT[Pg 42]
INWARDNESS OF ENVIRONMENT
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INWARDNESS OF ENVIRONMENT
Factors of Success or Failure
The aspect of the sense-perceptive process that deals with the relation of mind to environment is of greatest practical value.
Look at this subject for a moment and you will see that the world in which you live and work is a world of your own making. All the factors of success or failure are factors of your own choosing and creation.
If there is anything in the world you feel sure of, it is that you can depend uponthe "evidence of your own senses," eyes, ears, nose, etc. You rest serene in the conviction that your senses picture the world to you exactly as it is. It is a common saying that "Seeing is believing."
Should Seeing Be Believing?
Yet how can you be sure that any object in the external world is actually what your sense-perceptions report it to be?
You have learned that a countless number of physical agencies must intervene before your mind can receive an impression or message through any of the senses.
Under these conditions you cannot be sure that your impression of a green lamp-shade, for instance, comes through the same sort of etheric and cellular activitiesthat convey a picture of the same lamp-shade to the brain of another. If the physical agencies through which your sense-impressions of the lamp-shade filter are not identical with the agencies through which they pass to the other person's brain, then your mental picture and his mental picture cannot be the same. You can never be sure that what both you and another may describe as green may not create an entirely different impression in your mind from the impression it creates in his.
Other facts add to your uncertainty. Thus,the same stimulusacting ondifferent organsof sense will producedifferent sensations. A blow upon the eye will cause you to "see stars"; a similarblowupon the ear will cause you tohearan explosive sound. In other words, the vibratory effect of atouchon eye or ear is the same as that oflightorsoundvibrations.
Hearing the Lightning
The notion you may form of any object in the outer world depends solely upon what part of your brain happens to be connected with that particular nerve-end that receives an impression from the object.
Youseethe sun without being able tohearit because the only nerve-ends tuned to vibrate in harmony with the ether-waves set in action by the sun are nerve-ends that are connected with the brain center devoted to sight. "If," says Professor James, "we could splice the outer extremities of our optic nerves toour ears, and those of our auditory nerves to our eyes, we should hear the lightning and see the thunder, see the symphony and hear the conductor's movements."
Importance of the Mental Make-Up
In other words, the kind of impressions we receive from the world about us, the sort of mental pictures we form concerning it, in fact the character of the outer world, the nature of the environment in which our lives are cast—all these things depend for each one of us simply upon how he happens to be put together, simply upon his individual mental make-up.
There is another way of examining into the intervening agencies that influence our mental conception of the material world about us.
Unreality of "The Real"
Look at the table or any other familiar object in the room in which you are sitting. Has it ever occurred to you that this object may have no existence apart from your mental impression of it? Have you ever realized that no object ever has been or ever could be known to exist unless there was an individual mind present to note its existence?
If you have never given much thought to questions of this kind, you will be tempted to answer boldly that the table is obviously a reality, that you have a direct intuitive knowledge of it, and that you can at once assure yourself of its existence by looking at it or touching it. You will conceive your perception of the table as a sort of projectionof your mind comfortably enfolding the table within itself.
"Things" and their Mental Duplicates
But perception is obviously only a state of mind. Can it, then, go outside of the mind to meet the table or even "hover in midair like a bridge between the two"? If you perceive the table, must not your perception of it exist wholly within your own mind? If, then, the table has any existence outside of and apart from your perception of it, then the table and your mental image of the table are two separate and distinct things.
In other words, you are on the horns of a dilemma. If you insist that the table existsoutsideof your mind, you must admit that your knowledge of it is not direct, immediate and intuitive, butindirectand representative, because of intervening physical agencies, and that the only thing directly known is themental impressionof the table. On the other hand, if you insist that your knowledge of the table is direct, immediate and intuitive you must admit that the table is only a mental image, a mental reality, if it is any sort of reality at all, and that it has no existence outside of the mind.
Effect of Closing One's Eyes
You may easily convince yourself that the table you directly perceive can be nothing other than a mental picture. How? Simply close your eyes. It has now ceased to exist. What has ceased to exist? The external table of wood and glue and bolts? By no means. Simply its mental duplicate. And by alternatelyopening and closing your eyes, you can successively create and destroy this mental duplicate.
If Matter Were Annihilated
Clearly, then, the table of which you are directly and immediately conscious when your eyes are open is always thismental duplicate, this aggregate of color, form, size and touchimpressions; while the real table, the physical table, may be something other than the one of which you are directly aware. This other thing, this physical table, whatever it is, can never be directly known, if indeed it has any existence, a fact that many distinguished philosophers have had the courage to deny.
Imagine, then, for a moment that everything except mind should suddenly cease to exist, but that your sense-perceptions—thatis to say, your perception of sensory impressions—were to continue to follow one another as before. Would not the physical world be for you just exactly what it is today, and would you not have the same reasons for believing in its existence that you now have?
If Mind Were Annihilated
And, conversely, if the world of matter were to go on, but all mental images, all perception of sense-impressions, were to come to an end, would not all matter be annihilated for you when your perceptions ceased?
It is obvious that the world is not the same for all of us; but that it is for each one of us simply the world of his individual perceptions.
As Many Worlds as Minds
The whole subject of sense-impressions,sensation and perception may, therefore, be looked at from the standpoint of the mind as an active influence, as well as from the standpoint of outside objects as the exciting causes of sense-impressions.
[Pg 55]ESSENTIAL LAW OF PRACTICAL SELF-MASTERY[Pg 56]
ESSENTIAL LAW OF PRACTICAL SELF-MASTERY
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ESSENTIAL LAW OF PRACTICAL SELF-MASTERY
Option and Opportunity
External objects excite sensory impressions, but the perception of them is purely at the option of the mind.
This is of the greatest practical importance. Consider its consequences. It means that sense-impressions and your perception of them are two very different things. It means that sense-impressions may throng in upon you as they will. They are the work of external stimuli impressing themselves uponthe sensorium as upon a mechanical register. You are helpless to discriminate among them. You cannot accept some and exclude others. You are a perambulating dry plate upon which outside objects produce their images.
Prearranging Your Consciousness
But, and this is a vital distinction, perception is an act of the mind. It is initiated from within. It permits you to discriminate among sensations in the sense that you may dwell upon some and ignore others. It enables you to definitely select, if you will, the elements that shall make up the content of your consciousness.
Perception as an independent mental process thus enables you to predetermine what elements of passing sensory experience may be made the basis of yourconscious judgments and of your feelings and emotions.
How to Definitely Selects its Elements
Bear this in mind when you think of your environment and its supposed influence upon your life. Remember that your environment is no hard-and-fast thing, an aggregate of physical realities. Your environment, so far as it affects your judgment and your conduct, is made up, not of physical realities, but of mental pictures.
Your environment is within you.Get this conclusion clearly in your mind.
Hold fast to the point of view that,Environment, the environment that influences your conduct and your life, is not a chance massing of outward circumstances, but is the product of your own mind.
An Infallible Recipe for Self-Possession
Think what this means to you. It means that by deliberately selecting for attention only those sense-impressions, those elements of consciousness, that can serve your purpose, you can free yourself from all distractions and make peaceful progress in the midst of turmoil.
Using "Unseen Ear Protectors"
"In the busiest part of New York, a broker occupied a desk in a room with six other men who had many visitors constantly moving about and talking. The gentleman was at first so sensitive to disturbances that he accomplished almost nothing during business hours, and returned home every evening with a severe headache. One day a man of impressive personality and extremely calm demeanor entered the office, and noticingthe agitated broker, smilingly said: 'I see that you are disturbed by the noise made by your neighbors in the conduct of their affairs; pardon me if I leave with you an infallible recipe for peace in the midst of commotion:Hear only what you will to hear.' With this terse counsel he quietly bade the astonished listener adieu. After his visitor had departed, the nervous man felt unaccountably calm, and was constrained to meditate upon his friend's advice, and no sooner did he seek to put it into practical use than he learned for the first time that it was his rightful prerogative to use unseen ear protectors as well as to employ his ears. Six or seven weeks elapsed before he saw his mysterious visitor again, and by that timehe had so successfully practiced the simple though forceful injunction, that he had reached a point in self-control where the Babel of tongues about him no longer reached his consciousness."
How to Avoid Worry, Melancholy
Herein lies a remedy for worry, with its sleepless nights and kindred torments; for melancholy and despair, with their train of physical and financial disaster.
How? Simply by shutting off the flow of disagreeable thoughts and substituting others that are pleasant and refreshing.
You are master. You can change the setting of your mental stage from portentous gloom to sun-lit assurance. You can concentrate your thought upon the useful,the helpful and the cheerful, ignore the useless and annoying, and make your life a life of hope and joy, of promise and fulfilment.
Putting Circumstances Under Foot
You will not question the statement that what you do with your life is the combined result of heredity and environment. At the same time you doubtless possess a more or less hazy belief in the freedom of your own will.
The chances are that in any previous reflections on this subject you have magnified the influence of outside agencies and wondered just how a man could make himself the master rather than the victim of circumstances.
You now realize that your environment is an environment of thought, that your material universe is a thing your ownmaking, and that you can mold it as you will simply by the intelligent control of your own thinking.
Running Your Mental Factory
In Book I. you learned that—
I.All human achievement comes about through bodily activity.
II.All bodily activity is caused, controlled and directed by the mind.
In this volume you have added to these propositions a third, namely:
III.The mind is the instrument you must employ for the accomplishment of any purpose.
Acting on this third postulate, you have begun the consideration of primary mental operations with a view to evolving methods and devices for the scientificand systematic employment of the mind in the attainment of success. You have concluded your study of the first of the two fundamental processes of the mind, the Sense-Perceptive Process, and have learned to distinguish between seeing or hearing or feeling on the one hand and perceiving on the other.
Acquiring Mental Balance
Realizing this distinction and applying it to your daily life, you can at once set to work to acquire mental poise and practical self-mastery, the essence of personal efficiency.
There never has been a moment in all your life when sense-impressions were not pouring in upon you from every side, tending to disturb and annoy you and interfere with your concentration andprogress. Heretofore you have struggled blindly with these distracting influences, not knowing the elements with which you had to deal nor how to deal with them.
Dissipating Mental Specters
But the mask has been torn from the specter of distraction, and hereafter when irrelevant sights, sounds and other sensations threaten to interrupt your work, just stop a moment and consider. So far as you and your actual knowledge are concerned, nothing exists in substance and reality outside your mental picture of it. So far as you and your actual knowledge are concerned, all matter is simply thought, and you have never doubted your ability to dismiss a thought. It is for you, then, here and now, to decide whether you will harborsensory pictures that impede your progress and allow them to harass and dominate you and interfere with the achievement of your ambition, or whether you will ignore these intruders and thereby annihilate them.
How to Control Your Destiny
Success is a variable term. In the last analysis, it means simply getting the thing thatyouwant to have.
Whether you succeed or fail depends altogether upon your own attitude toward the external facts of life.
You have within you a living Force against which all the world is powerless. You have only to know it and to learn how to use it.
Learn the lesson of your own powers, the secret of controlling the selective and creative energy within you, and you canbring any project to the goal of accomplishment.
In the closing volumes of thisCoursewe shall instruct you in practical methods by which the selection of those elements of experience that are helpful may be made absolutely automatic.
Transcriber's Note:Some illustrations have been moved from their original positions, so as to be nearer to their corresponding text, or for ease of navigation around paragraphs.Duplicate chapter headers have been removed from the text version of this ebook and hidden in the HTML version.The word 'prearranging' appears both with and without a hyphen. This variance matches the original text.
Some illustrations have been moved from their original positions, so as to be nearer to their corresponding text, or for ease of navigation around paragraphs.
Duplicate chapter headers have been removed from the text version of this ebook and hidden in the HTML version.
The word 'prearranging' appears both with and without a hyphen. This variance matches the original text.