Mind in Action | The Law of Cause and Effect

The Law of Mind in Action

I came across this book that’s helped me come to peace with thoughts like:

• Money is evil,
• You can’t be spiritual and be rich, and
• It’s better to suffer on earth than in eternity.

I can’t even blame these beliefs on my religious upbringing, really because I was taught the principle of the Law of Attraction with God starring as the Universe. Yet somehow, they still seeped in. Unfortunately, I think these beliefs are pervasive in our society as a whole.

I also know that “Money is the root of all evil,” is a proverb. So this book, with its approach to Universal Law from a biblical aspect has helped me to pull some of the pieces together. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has religious hangups regarding abundance and I intended to share some of the stuff from Law of Mind in Action.

I hadn’t intended to do it quite this way, but…

Today I opened it to find this introduction that was written 100 years ago today. It’s just too serendipitous! I have to just share it in its entirety. So here you go:

100 Year Old Book Explains How Religion and Universal Law Coincide

THERE is a law of healing so plain that even a child can understand it, so fundamental that the ablest mind has never yet thought through all the facts and phenomena of life that rest upon it. It is the purpose of this book to make this law plain.

The greatest power in the world is the power of our thought, for it is Creative Mind in action. Nothing exists that did not first exist in thought from the first sun that blazed only in the Mind of the Creator, to the last doll-dress fashioned by a childish hand. Science supports the fact that the first movement in nature can have come only from the application of an immaterial force or Will to the primary etheric particles otherwise in a perfect state of equilibrium. It must leave to metaphysics not only an explanation of the Will that moves but also the substance that is moved.

This, then, it is the province of this book to show with all that it entails. Since an act of Will is an act of mind, we concern ourselves with the activity of a Creative Mind. Again since Mind acts creatively, there is a way in which it acts. We must also, therefore, teach the way.

Jesus Taught “The Way” – Universal Law

It is to teach this way that the Bible was written, that Jesus lived and taught. This way has been known for many centuries but has always been taught in terms of the understanding of the day in which the teacher lived. The Great Metaphysician taught largely in parables and oriental figures of speech. But He taught “the Way” and his followers were called the People of the Way.

The “way” is the law and today the understanding of it as law enables us to put, in a few simple statements which all can understand, the principles of the law, which, if learned and used, will enable anyone to control the conditions of his body, mind, and environment. Anyone can learn how to use it. It is clear to us that it is natural to use the power of Mind and that the greatest happiness results from its exercise.

Mind is so constituted that it must act, it must express that which it feels itself to be. All nature points to the fact that wherever action ceases, death, or negation, begins. Mind is the very spirit of the life in nature and therefore is eternally active. Yet it is also infinite repose for it is that out of which all activity springs and by which it is sustained.

The Creative Mind Can Only Act Through Thought

In this book we are not dealing so much with that great potential of activity which we call being as with the law by which it acts. We are concerned not so much with the contemplation of the Life, Love, and Wisdom, which is God or Being, as with the way Spirit manifests.

We desire to know:

• How life becomes health,
• How love becomes happiness, and
• How wisdom becomes wealth.

As these are all qualities of mind, and in their pure state are undifferentiated into form, we realize that when they begin to pass out into individual expression, it must be by the process of thinking. That is the only way mind can act. So that the Creative process is simply Mind in action, or Mind thinking its Life, Love and Wisdom into form. Mind in action is always creative, but it is also thought. Thought acts in Mind to create.

Our Mind First Produces Thought then Reacts to it

Our mind first produces thought and then reacts to it to become that which it has thought. This is the whole law of creation. Mind creates what it thinks. The many forms pass out of the one Mind, but each form has a corresponding thought which produces and sustains it.

Mind in action is, therefore, also the law. We call it the law of cause and effect. Law is the principle on which mind works. For every primary cause is in the mind and the effect is simply the form which thought has taken. Thought is first cause, in any created series, and form is effect.

Thought acts upon mind to produce things.

Thought acts upon mind to produce things. Since things are made out of mind they are simply thought in form, but they maintain form and reality only so long as they are sustained by the thought.

The Law, therefore, may be defined as mind in action producing the many but of the one by the power of thought, and this book is written to furnish a daily meditation on the highest of all themes — man’s control of his own body, happiness, circumstances and environment by the thoughts which he thinks.

The knowledge and use of thought and the law of mind in action is the knowledge of which Jesus spoke when he said, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” May these pages free many to the glorious wisdom of Mind in Action.

Fenwicke L. Holmes. December 30, 1918.

The Law of Mind in Action is in the public domain. If you’d like, you can download your own copy.

For a daily ritual to put this principle to work in your life, check out Mental Alchemy.