Introduction
These chapters are from the book the “The Science Of Getting Rich” (now in the public domain), and which inspired Rhonda Byrne’s to write the book “The Secret”. “The Secret” was about the Law Of Attraction.
The Law of Attraction works all the time like the law of gravity. You could no more stop the Law Of Attraction than you could walk off a roof top and go up. By the Law Of Attraction you attract that which you are in harmony with. We transmit like a radio station based on our feelings and beliefs. Our feelings and beliefs are based on our thoughts. So thinking is the CAUSE of all our EFFECTS.
These chapters offer insights and practical advise to get into harmony with the good we seek.
Bob Proctor who happened to be in the movie version of “The Secret” often suggested to read 4 chapters from the Science Of Getting Rich, These are the chapters.
Chapter 4
The First Principle In The Science Of Getting Rich
THOUGHT is the only power which can produce tangible riches from the formless substance. The stuff from which all things are made is a substance which thinks, And a thought of form in this substance produces the form.
Original Substance moves according to its thoughts; every form and process you see in nature is the visible expression of a thought in Original Substance. As the Formless Stuff thinks of a form, it takes that form; as it thinks of motion, it makes that motion. That is the way all things were created. We live in a thought world, which is part of a thought universe. The thought of a moving Universe extended throughout Formless Substance, and the Thinking Stuff moving according to that thought, took the form of a system of planets, and maintains that form. Thinking substance takes the form of its thought, and moves according to the thought. Holding the idea of a circling system of suns and worlds, it takes the form of these bodies, and moves them as it thinks. Thinking the form of a slow-growing oak tree, it moves accordingly, and produces the tree, though centuries may be required to do the work. In creating, the Formless seems to move according to the lines of motion it has established; the thought of an oak tree does not cause the instant formation of a full grown tree, but it does start in motion the forces which will produce the tree, along established lines of growth.
Every thought of form, held in Thinking Substance, causes the creation of the form, but always, or at least generally, along lines of growth and action already established.
The thought of a house of a certain construction, if it were impressed upon Formless Substance, might not cause the instant formation of the house; but it would cause the turning of creative energies already working in trade and commerce into such channels as to result in the speedy building of that house. And if there were no existing channels through which the creative energies could work, then the house would be formed directly from Primal Substance, without waiting for the slow processes of the organic and inorganic world.
No thought of form can be impressed upon Original Substance without causing the creation of the form.
Man is a thinking center, and can originated thought. All the forms that man fashions with his hands must first exist in his thought; he cannot shape a thing until he has thought that thing.
And so far man has confined his efforts wholly to the work of his hands; he has applied manual labor to the world of forms, seeking to change or modify those already existing. He has never thought of trying to cause the creation of new forms by impressing his thoughts upon Formless Substance.
When man has a thought-form, he takes material from the forms of nature, and makes an image of the form which is in his mind. He has, so far, made little or no effort to co-operate with Formless Intelligence; to “work with the father”. He has not dreamed that he can “do what he seeth the Father doing”. Man reshapes and modifies existing forms by manual labor; he has given no attention to the question whether he may not produce things from Formless Substance by communicating his thoughts to it. We propose to prove that he may do so; to prove that any man or woman may do so, and to show how. As our first step, we must lay down three fundamental propositions.
First, we assert that there is one original formless stuff, or substance, from which all things are made. All the seemingly many elements are but different presentations of one element; all the many forms found in organic and inorganic nature are but different shapes, made from the same stuff. And this stuff is thinking stuff; a thought held in it produces the form of the thought. Thought, in thinking substance, produces shapes. Man is a thinking center, capable of original thought; if man can communicate his thought to original thinking substance, he can cause the creation, or formation, of the thing he thinks about. To summarize this:
There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.
A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.
Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon Formless Substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.
It may be asked if I can prove these statements; and without going into details, I answered that I can do so, both by logic and experience.
Reasoning back from the phenomena of form and thought, I come to one original thinking substance; and reasoning forward from this thinking substance, I come to man’s power to cause the formation of the thing he thinks about. And by experiment, I find the reasoning true; and this is my strongest proof.
If one man who reads this book gets rich by doing what it tells him to do, that is evidence in support of my claim; but if every man who does what it tells him to do gets rich, that is positive proof until someone goes through the process and fails. The theory is true until the process fails; and this process will not fail, for every man who does exactly what this book tells him to do will get rich.
I have said that men get rich by doing things in a Certain Way; and in order to do so, men must become able to think in a certain way.
A man’s way of doing things is the direct result of the way he thinks about things.
To do things in the way you want to do them, you will have to acquire the ability to think the way you want to think; this is the first step toward getting rich.
To think what you want to think is to think TRUTH, regardless of appearances.
Every man has the natural and inherent power to think what he wants to think, but it requires far more effort to do so then it does to think the thoughts which are suggested by appearances. To think according to appearance is easy; to think truth regardless of appearances is laborious, and requires the expenditure of more power than any other work man is called upon to perform.
There is no labor from which most people shrink as they do from that of sustained and consecutive thought; it is the hardest work in the world. This is especially true when truth is contrary to appearances. Every appearance in the visible world tends to produce a corresponding form in the mind which observes it; and this can only be prevented by holding the thought of the TRUTH.
To look upon the appearance of disease will produce the form of disease in your own mind, and ultimately in your body, unless you hold the thought of the truth, which is that there is no disease; it is only an appearance, and the reality is health.
To look upon the appearance of poverty will produce corresponding forms in your own mind, unless you hold to the truth that there is no poverty; there is only abundance.
To think health when surrounded by the appearance of disease, or to think riches when in the midst of appearances of poverty, requires power; but he who acquires this power becomes a MASTER-MIND. He can conquer fate; he can have what he wants.
This power can only be acquired by getting hold of the basic fact which is behind all appearances; and that fact is that there is one Thinking Substance, from which and by which all things are made.
Then we must grasp the truth that every thought held in this substance becomes a form, and that man can so impress his thoughts upon it as to cause them to take form and become visible things.
When we realize this, we lose all doubt and fear, for we know that we can create what we want to create; we can get what we want to have, and we can become what we want to be. As a first step toward getting rich, you must believe the three fundamental statements given previously in this chapter; and in order to emphasize them. I repeat them here:-
There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, and its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.
A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.
Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon Formless Substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.
You must lay aside all other concepts of the universe than this monastic one; and you must dwell upon this until it is fixed in your mind and has become your habitual thought. Read these Creed statements over and over again; fix every word upon your memory, and meditate upon them until you firmly believe what they say. If a doubt comes to you, cast it aside as a sin. Do not listen to arguments against this idea; do not go to churches or lectures where a contrary concept of things is taught or preached. Do not read magazines or books which teach a different idea; if you get mixed up in your faith, all your efforts will be in vain.
Do not ask why these things are true, nor speculate as to how they can be true; simply take them on trust.
The science of getting rich begins with the absolute acceptance of this faith.
Chapter 7
Gratitude
The illustrations given in the last chapter will have conveyed to the reader the fact that the first step toward getting rich is to convey the idea of your wants to the Formless Substance.
This is true, and you will see that in order to do so it becomes necessary to relate yourself to the Formless Intelligence in a harmonious way.
To secure this harmonious relation is a matter of such primary and vital importance that I shall give some space to its discussion here, and give you instructions which, if you will follow them, will be certain to bring you into perfect unity with the mind of God.
The whole process of mental adjustment and atonement can be summed up in one word, gratitude.
First, you believe that there is one Intelligent Substance, from which all things proceed; second, you believe that this substance gives you everything you desire; and third, you relate yourself to it by a feeling of deep and profound gratitude.
Many people who order their lives rightly in all other ways are kept in poverty by their lack of gratitude. Having received one gift from God, they cut the wires which connect them with Him by failing to make acknowledgement.
It is easy to understand that the nearer we live to the source of wealth, the more wealth we shall receive; and it is easy also to understand that the soul that is always grateful lives in closer touch with God than the one which never looks to him in thankful acknowledgement.
The more gratefully we fix our minds on the Supreme when good things come to us, the more good things we will receive, and the more rapidly they will come; and the reason simply is that the mental attitude of gratitude draws the mine into closer touch with the source from which the blessings come.
If it is a new thought to you that gratitude brings your whole mind into closer harmony with the creative energies of the universe, consider it well, and you will see that it is true. The good things you already have have come to you along the lines of obedience to certain laws. gratitude will lead your mind out along the ways by which things come; and will keep you in close harmony with creative thought and prevent you from falling into competitive thought.
Gratitude alone can keep you looking toward the All, and prevent you from falling into the error of thinking of the supply as limited; and to do that would be fatal to your hopes.
There is a Law of Gratitude, and it is absolutely necessary that you should observe the law, if you are to get the results you seek.
The law of gratitude is the natural principle that action and reaction are always equal, and in opposite directions.
The Grateful outreaching of your mind in thankful praise to the Supreme is a Liberation or expenditure of force; it cannot fail to reach that which it addressed, and the reaction is an instantaneous movement towards you.
“Draw nigh unto God, and He will draw nigh unto you”. That is a statement of psychological truth.
And if your gratitude is strong and constant, the reaction in the Formless Substance will be strong and continuous; the movement of the things you want will be always toward you. Notice the grateful attitude that Jesus took; how He always seemed to be saying, “I thank thee father that thou hearest me”. You cannot exercise much power without gratitude; for it is gratitude that keeps you connected with power.
But the value of gratitude does not consist solely in getting you more blessings in the future. Without gratitude you cannot long keep from dissatisfied thought regarding things as they are.
The Moment you permit your mind to dwell with dissatisfaction upon things as they are, you begin to lose ground. You fix your attention upon the common, the ordinary, the poor, and the squalid and mean; and your mind takes the form of these things. Then you will transmit these forms or mental images to the Formless, and the common, the poor, the squalid, and mean will come to you.
To permit your mind to dwell upon the inferior is to become inferior and to surround yourself with inferior things.
On the other hand, to fix your attention on the best is to surround yourself with the best, and to become the best.
The Creative Power within us makes us into the image of that to which we give our attention.
We are Thinking Substance, and thinking substance always takes the form of that which it thinks about.
The grateful mind is constantly fixed upon the best; therefore it tends to become the best; it takes the form or character of the best, and will receive the best.
Also, faith is born of gratitude. The grateful mind continually expects good things, and expectation becomes faith. The reaction of gratitude upon one’s own mind produces faith; and every outgoing wave of grateful thanksgiving increases faith. He who has no feeling of gratitude cannot long retain a living faith; and without a living faith; you cannot get rich by the creative method, as we shall see in the following chapters.
It is necessary, then, to cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you; and to give thanks continuously.
And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.
Do not waste time thinking or talking about the shortcomings or wrong actions of plutocrats or trust magnates. their organization of the world has made your opportunity; all you get really comes to you because of them.
Do not rage against corrupt politicians; if it were not for politicians we should fall into anarchy, and your opportunity would be greatly lessened.
God has worked a long time and very patiently to bring us up to where we are in industry and government, and he is going right on with his work. There is not the least doubt that he will do away with plutocrats, and trust magnates, captains of industry, and politicians as soon as they can be spared; but in the meantime, behold they are all very good. Remember that they are all helping to arrange the lines of transmission along which your riches will come to you, and be grateful to them all. This will bring you into harmonious relations with the good in everything, and the good and everything will move toward you.
Chapter 11
Acting In The Certain Way
THOUGHT is the creative power, or the impelling force which causes the creative power to act; thinking in a Certain Way will bring riches to you, but you must not rely upon thought alone, paying no attention to personal action. That is the rock upon which many otherwise scientific metaphysical thinkers meet shipwreck– the failure to connect thought with personal action.
We have not yet reached the stage of development, even supposing such a stage to be possible, in which man can create directly from Formless Substance without Nature’s processes or the work of human hands; man must not only think, but his personal actions must supplement his thought.
By thought you can cause the gold in the hearts of the mountains to be impelled toward you; but it will not mine itself, refine itself, coin itself into double eagles, and come rolling along the roads seeking its way into your pocket.
Under the compelling power of Supreme spirit, men’s affairs will be so ordered that someone will be led to mine the gold for you; other men’s business transactions will be so directed that the gold will be brought toward you, and you must so arrange your own business affairs that you may be able to receive it when it comes to you. Your thought makes all things, animate and inanimate, work to bring you what you want; but your personal activity must be such that you can rightly receive what you want when it reaches you. You are not to take it as charity, nor steal it; you must give every man more in use value than he gives you in cash value.
The scientific use of thought consists in forming a clear and distinct mental image of what you want; in holding fast to the purpose to get what you want; and in realizing with grateful faith that you do get what you want.
Do not try to ‘project’ your thoughts in any mysterious or occult way, with the idea of having it go out and do things for you; that is wasted effort, and will weaken your power to think with sanity.
The action of thought in getting rich is fully explained in the preceding chapters; your faith and purpose positively impress your vision upon Formless Substance, WHICH HAS THE SAME DESIRE FOR MORE LIFE THAT YOU HAVE; and this vision, received from you, sets all the creative forces at work in and through their regular channels of action, but directed towards you.
It is not your part to guide or supervise the creative process; all you have to do with that is to retain your vision, stick to your purpose, and maintain your faith and gratitude.
But you must act in a Certain Way, so that you can appropriate what is yours when it comes to you; so that you can meet the things you have in your picture, and put them in their proper places as they arrive.
You can really see the truth of this. When things reach you, they will be in the hands of other men, who will ask an equivalent for them.
And you can only get what is yours by giving the other man what is his.
Your pocketbook is not going to be transformed into a fortunatus purse, which shall always be full of money without effort on your part.
This is the crucial point in the science of getting rich; right here, where thought and personal action must be combined. There are very many people who, consciously or unconsciously, set the creative forces in action by the strength and persistence of their desires, but who remain poor because they do not provide for the reception of the thing they want when it comes.
By thought, the thing you want is brought to you; by action you receive it.
Whatever your action is to be, it is evident that you must act NOW. You cannot act in the past, and it is essential to the clearness of your mental vision that you dismiss the past from your mind. You cannot act in the future, the future is not here yet. And you cannot tell how you will want to act in any future contingency until that contingency has arrived.
Because you are not in the right business, or the right environment now, do not think that you must postpone action until you get into the right business or environment. And do not spend time in the present taking thought as to the best course in possible future emergencies; have faith in your ability to meet any emergency when it arrives.
If you act in the present with your mind on the future, your present action will be with a divided mind, and will not be effective.
Put your whole mind into present action..
Do not give your creative impulse to Original Substance, and then sit down and wait for results; if you do, you will never get them. Act now. There is never any time but now, and there never will be any time but now. If you are ever to begin to make ready for the reception of what you want, you must begin now.
And your action, whatever it is, must most likely be in your present business or employment, and must be upon the persons and things in your present environment.
You cannot act where you are not; you cannot act where you have been, and you cannot act where you are going to be; you can act only where you are.
Do not bother as to whether yesterday’s work was done well or ill done; do today’s work well.
Do not try to do tomorrow’s work now; there will be plenty of time to do that when you get to it.
Do not try, by occult or mystical means, to act on people or things that are out of your reach.
Do not wait for a change of environment, before you act; get a change of environment by action.
You can so act upon the environment in which you are now, as to cause yourself to be transferred to a better environment.
Hold with faith and purpose the vision of yourself in the better environment, but act upon your present environment with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.
Do not spend any time in daydreaming or castle building; hold to the one vision of what you want, and act NOW.
Do not cast about seeking some new thing to do, or some strange, unusual, or remarkable action to perform as a first step toward getting rich. It is probable that your actions, at least for some time to come, will be those you have been performing for some time past; but you are to begin now to perform these actions in the Certain Way, which will surely make you rich.
If you are engaged in some business, and feel that it is not the right one for you, do not wait until you get into the right business before you begin to act.
Do not feel discouraged, or sit down and lament because you are misplaced. No man was ever so misplaced, but that he could not find the right place, and no man ever became so involved in the wrong business, but that he could get into the right business.
Hold the vision of yourself in the right business, with the purpose to get into it, in the faith that you will get into it, and are getting into it; but ACT in your present business. Use your present business as the means of getting a better one, and use your present environment as the means of getting into a better one. Your vision of the right business, if held with faith in purpose, will cause the Supreme to move the right business toward you; and your action, if performed in the Certain Way, will cause you to move toward the business.
If you are an employee, or wage earner, and feel that you must change places in order to get what you want, do not ‘project’ your thought into space and rely upon it to get you another job. It will probably fail to do so.
Hold the vision of yourself in the job you want, while you ACT with faith and purpose on the job you have, and you will certainly get the job you want.
Your vision and faith will set the creative force in motion to bring it toward you, and your action will cause the forces in your own environment to move you toward the place you want. In closing this chapter, we will add another statement to our syllabus:
There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.
A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.
Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.
In order to do this, man must pass from the competitive to the creative mind; he must form a clear mental picture of the things he wants, and hold this picture in his thought with the fixed purpose to get what he wants, and the unwavering faith that he does get what he want, closing his mind to all that may tend to shake his purpose, dim his vision, or quench his faith.
That he may receive what he wants when it comes, man must act now upon the people and things in his present environment.
Chapter 14
The Impression Of Increase
WHETHER you change your vocation or not, your actions for the present must be those pertaining to the business in which you are now engaged.
You can get into the business you want by making constructive use of the business you are already established in; by doing your daily work in a Certain Way.
And in so far as your business consists in dealing with other men, whether personally or by letter, the key-thought of all your efforts must be to convey to their minds the impression of increase.
Increase is what all men and women are seeking; it is the urge of the Formless Intelligence within them, seeking fuller expression.
The desire for increase is inherent in all nature; it is the fundamental impulse of the universe. All human activities are based on the desire for increase; people are seeking more food, more clothes, better shelter, more luxury, more beauty, more knowledge, more pleasure- increase in something, more life.
Every living thing is under this necessity for continuous advancement; where increase of life ceases, dissolution and death set in it once.
Man instinctively knows this, and hence he is forever seeking more. This law of perpetual increase is set forth by Jesus in the parable of the talents; only those who gain more retain any; from him who hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
The normal desire for increased wealth is not evil or a reprehensible thing; it is simply the desire for more abundant life; it is aspiration.
And because it is the deepest Instinct of their natures, all men and women are attracted to him who can give them more of the means of life.
In following the Certain Way as described in the foregoing pages you’re getting continuous increase for yourself, and you are giving it to all with whom you deal.
You are a creative center, from which increase is given off to all.
Be sure of this, and convey assurance of the fact to every man, woman, and child with whom you come in contact. No matter how small the transaction, even if it being only the selling of a stick of candy to a little child, put into it the thought of increase, and make sure that the customer is impressed with the thought.
Convey the impression of advancement with everything you do, so that people shall receive the impression that you are an advancing man, and that you advance all who deal with you. Even to the people whom you meet in a social way, without any thought of business, and to whom you do not try to sell anything, give the thought of increase.
You can convey this impression by holding the unshakable faith that you, yourself, are in the Way Of Increase; and by letting this faith Inspire, fill, and permeate every action.
Do everything that you do in the firm conviction that you are an advancing personality, and that you are giving advancement to everybody.
Feel that you are getting rich, and that in so doing you are making others rich, and conferring benefits on all.
Do not boast or brag of your success, or talk about it unnecessarily; true faith is never boastful.
Wherever you find a boastful person, you find one who is secretly doubtful and afraid. Simply feel the faith, and let it work out in every transaction; let every act and tone and look express the quiet assurance that you are getting rich; that you are already rich. Words will not be necessary to communicate this feeling to others; they will feel the sense of increase when in your presence, and will be attracted to you again.
You must so impress others that they will feel that in associating with you they will get increase for themselves. See that you give them a use value greater than the cash value you are taking from them.
Take an honest pride in doing this, and let everybody know it; and you will have no lack of customers. People will go where they are given increase; and the Supreme, which desires increase in all, and which knows all, will move toward you men and women who have never heard of you. Your business will increase rapidly, and you will be surprised at the unexpected benefits which will come to you. You will be able from day-to-day to make larger combinations, secure greater advantages, and go on into a more congenial vocation if you desire to do so.
But in doing all this, you must never lose sight of your vision of what you want, or your faith and purpose to get what you want.
Let me here give you another word of caution in regard to motives.
Beware of the insidious temptation to seek for power over other men.
Nothing is so pleasant to the uninformed or partially developed mind as the exercise of power or dominion over others. The desire to rule for selfish gratification has been the curse of the world. For countless ages kings and lords have drenched the earth with blood in their battles to extend their dominions; this not to seek more life for all, but to get more power for themselves.
Today, the main motive in the business and industrial world is the same; men marshal their armies of dollars, and lay waste to the lives and hearts of millions in the same mad scramble for power over others. Commercial kings, like political kings, are inspired by the lust for power.
Jesus saw in this desire for mastery the moving impulse of that evil world he sought to overthrow. Read the 23rd chapter of Matthew, and see how he pictured the lust of the pharisees to be called master, to sit in the high places, to domineer over others, and to lay burdens on the backs of the less fortunate; and note how He compares this lust for dominion with the brotherly seeking for the common good to which He calls His disciples.
Look out for the temptation to seek for authority, to become a “master”, to be considered one who is above the common herd, to impress others by lavish display, and so on.
The mind that seeks for mastery over others is the competitive mind; and the competitive mind is not the creative one. In order to master your environment and your destiny, it is not at all necessary that you should rule over your fellow men and indeed, when you fall into the world’s struggle for the high places, you begin to be conquered by fate and environment, and your getting rich becomes a matter of chance and speculation.
Beware the competitive mind!! No better statement of the principle of creative action can be formulated than the favorite declaration of the late “Golden Rule” Jones of Toledo: “What I want for myself, I want for everybody”.
