The Word Magazine (1904-1917)

The Word was an American magazine with a worldwide circulation dedicated to the brotherhood of humanity. It was published by Harold W. Percival from 1904 to 1917. Over the years Harold W. Percival wrote some 43 editorials.

1904

"Our Message" editorial, 1904

Harold W. Percival. "Our Message," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, October, 1904. p. 1-2

• In the future, man will act justly and will love his brother as himself, not because he longs for reward, or fears hell fire, or the laws of man; but because he will know that he is a part of his fellow, that he and his fellow are parts of a whole, and that whole is the One: that he cannot hurt another without hurting himself.
  • p. 2

• This is the Message we would bring: the strength to free the mind from ignorance, prejudice, and deceit; the Courage to seek the truth in every form; the Love to bear each other’s burdens; the Peace that comes to a freed mind, an Opened Heart; and the Consciousness of an undying life.
  • p. 2

"Brotherhood" editorial, 1904

Harold W. Percival. "Brotherhood," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, November, 1904. p. 1-3

• No words will describe this consciousness. The world becomes illuminated. A consciousness of the Universal Self awakens in that one. He is a Brother. He is twice-born; he is a twice-born one.
  • p. 2

• As the cry of the infant awakens in the mother a new life, so also to the quickened man is a new life opened. In the noise of the marketplace, in the stillness of the moonless desert, or when alone in deep meditation, he hears the cry of the Great Orphan, Humanity.

This call opens to him a new life, new duties, new responsibilities. As the child to its mother so is humanity to him. He hears its cry and feels his life go out. Nothing will satisfy him except a life given up to the good of humanity. He wishes to provide for it as a father, to nourish it as a mother, to defend it as a brother.

• p. 2-3

• The neophyte, through many lives of aspiration and yearning for spiritual light, at last reaches the moment when the light breaks in. He comes to this goal after many days on earth, after many lives in all phases, conditions, circumstances, with many peoples, in many countries, during many cycles. When he has gone through all, he understands the traits and sympathies, the joys and fears, the ambitions and aspirations of his fellow men -- who are his other selves.
  • p. 3

• Man has not yet come into full consciousness of brotherhood, but he may at least theorize about it, and begin to put his theories into practice.
  • p. 3; Last line

"Christ" editorial, 1904

Harold W. Percival. "Christ," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, December, 1904. p. 1-4

• There is another, an Invisible Sun, of which our sun is but the symbol. No man can look on the Invisible Sun and remain mortal. By this light the consciousness of the material is transmuted into the consciousness of the spiritual. This is the Christ, who saves from ignorance and death him who primarily accepts and finally realizes the Light.
  • p. 3

• We are not, as we fancy, living in a world of reality. We are asleep in a world of shadows.
  • p. 4

• Every human being is a messenger, a son of the Invisible Sun, a Savior of the world through whom the Christ principle is shining, to the extent that he understands and realizes the ever-living consciousness within. From one who is conscious of this Consciousness we may have the true Christmas gift--if this is what we seek. The Christmas Presence is the entrance leading to the undying eternal life. This Presence may come while we are still in shadow-land. It will awaken the sleeper from his dreams and enable him to be unafraid of the surrounding shadows. Knowing the shadows to be shadows, he is not afraid when they would seem to enfold and overwhelm him.
  • p. 4; Last line

1905

"Cycles" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Cycles," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, January, 1905. p. 1-3

• For the mind the purpose of life is to acquire a knowledge of its relation to the universe…
  • p. 2

• Through thought in the mind the soul came into the world, through thought the soul became bound to the world, through thought the soul becomes freed.
  • p. 3

• The brain is the workshop of the body, the thoughts which are fashioned from this workshop pass into space to return after a longer or shorter while to their creator. As the thoughts created affect the minds of men of a nature like unto the thought, so they return to their creator to react on him as they had acted on others.
  • p. 3

• Thoughts of hatred, selfishness and the like, compel their creator to go through like experiences and bind him to the world.
  • p. 3

• Thoughts of unselfishness, compassion, and aspiration, act on the minds of others and, returning to their creator, free him from the bonds of recurring births.
  • p. 3

• This knowledge can only come to the man who becomes as "wise as a serpent and as harmless as a dove."
  • p. 3 ; Last line

"Glamour" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Glamour," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 5, February, 1905. p. 1-3

• THE soul is an eternal pilgrim, from the eternal past, and beyond, into the immortal future.
  • p. 1

• Desiring to detain the soul in her domains, nature has provided for her immortal guest many varied vestures which she has cleverly woven together into one body.
  • p. 1

• It is through this body that nature is enabled to throw her glamour over the soul and to dull the understanding. The senses are the magic wands which nature wields.
  • p. 1

• How naturally the soul is beguiled. How readily ensnared. How innocently it is enchanted. How easily a web of unrealities is spun about it. Nature well knows how to hold her guest.
  • p. 1

• When one toy ceases to amuse, another is cunningly proposed by which the soul is led ever deeper into the meshes of life. It continues to be amused, occupied and entertained in a continual round of change, and forgets the dignity and power of its presence and the simplicity of its being.
  • p. 1

• It tempers itself and becomes immune against the magic of the wands.
  • p. 1

• The talisman of the soul which will break the spell of the enchantress is the realization that wherever or under whatever condition, It is permanent, changeless; immortal, hence that It can neither be bound, be injured, nor destroyed.
  • p. 2

• The wresting of the wands from nature brings to the soul two other wands: the knowledge of the relation of all things, and the knowledge that all things are One.
  • p. 2

• The ordinary human life is a series of shocks from infancy to old age. By each shock the veil of glamour is pierced and riven. For a moment the truth is seen. But it cannot be endured. The mist again closes in. And strange, these shocks are at the same time made bearable by the very pains and delights that produce them.
  • p. 2-3

"Food" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Food," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 6, March, 1905. p. 1-3

• Food is an occult essence. It may not appear so to the men of our times, but in the future man will see and appreciate this fact and discover a food which will change his body into one of a higher order. The reason why he fails to do it now is because he does not control his appetites, does not serve his fellow-men, and does not see the deity reflected in himself.
  • p.2

• The universe is food.
  • p.2

"Consciousness" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Consciousness," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 7, April, 1905. p. 1-4

• Of all subjects, consciousness is the most sublime and important
  • p. 1

• there has lived no one however great who has solved the final mystery of consciousness.
  • p. 2

• The universe is embodied consciousness.
  • p. 2

• The purpose of evolution is the transformation of matter until it finally becomes consciousness.
  • p. 2

• Through continued effort each of us will at last reach the golgotha of suffering and be crucified between the matter of the turbulent underworld and the glories of the over-world. From this crucifixion he will arise a new being, resurrected in consciousness from the individual self-conscious mind, to the I-am-Thou-and-Thou-art-I soul of collective humanity.
  • p.4

"Motion" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Motion," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 8, May, 1905. p. 1-4

• The purpose of motion is to raise substance to consciousness.
  • p. 1

"Substance" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Substance," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 9, June, 1905. p. 1-2

• Consciousness is in no way different in a lump of clay than in a saviour of the world.
  • p. 2

"Breath" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Breath," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 10, July, 1905. p. 1-4

• All physical disease is due to over or under oxygenation of the blood.
  • p. 3

"Life" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Life," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 11, August, 1905. p. 1-3

• Our earth is like a hollow and spherical sponge in a current of the ocean of life. We live on the skin of this sponge.
  • p. 2

"Form" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Form," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 12, September, 1905. p. 1-4

• Forms do not exist for the purpose of ensnaring and deluding the mind, although forms do ensnare and delude the mind. It is really the mind itself that deludes itself and allows itself to be deluded with form, and the mind must continue in delusion until it shall see through forms and the purpose of forms.
  • p. 3

• There are two Paths: the Path of Form and the Path of Consciousness. These are the only paths. Only one can be chosen. No one can travel both. All must choose in time, none can refuse. The choice is as natural as growth. It is decided by one's underlying motive in life. The path chosen, the traveller worships as he travels.
  • p. 3

• The larger form absorbs the smaller, be the forms physical or spiritual, and worship hastens the process. The concrete forms which are worshipped by human minds give place to worship of ideal forms. The smaller gods are absorbed by larger gods and these by a greater god, but gods and the god of gods must, at the close of the eternities, be resolved into homogeneous substance.
  • p. 3

• When one can remain steadily, fearlessly, and without anxiety in the point of alone-ness, there is this mystery: the point of alone-ness expands and becomes the all-one-ness of Consciousness.
  • p. 3

• Entering the life-stream of the world, wrapping itself in grosser and denser matter, sinking into the senses and drugged into forgetfulness by the emotions, the mind is encircled, hemmed in, bound down and held a prisoner by form.
  • p. 4

• Through form the senses have grown into seeming realities, have forged about the mind invisible cords of the emotions that are stronger than bands of steel, but so delicately have they been fashioned that they seem akin to all that is dear in life, to life itself.
  • p. 4

• Form is now God …Who dares renounce allegiance to the God? Who knows and dares and wills, can dethrone the false god, and use it to diviner ends; unshackle the captive; claim his divine inheritance; and begin the path that leads to the All-one-ness of Consciousness.
  • p. 4

"Sex" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Sex," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 1, October, 1905. p. 1-5

• The bodies of the first great period had somewhat the appearance of crystal spheres and were less material than sunlight. Within the crystal sphere was the ideal of the future man. The beings of this race were sufficient in themselves. They did not die, nor will they ever cease to be so long as the universe shall last, for they represent the ideal forms after which all forms have been and will be built.
  • p. 2

• The duty to the world is that two beings of opposite sex should blend into one being to produce a perfect type, which type would include both father and mother within itself.
  • p. 4

"Desire" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Desire," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 2, November, 1905. p. 1-3

• When the mind first begins to incarnate it is terrified and repelled by the animality of desire.
  • p. 1

• Desire is an octopus deep-seated in the organs of sex… with blind selfishness of the vampire it draws out the forces of the very body through which its hunger is appeased, and leaves the personality a burnt out cinder on the dustheap of the world.
  • p. 2

"Thought" editorial, 1905

Harold W. Percival. "Thought," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 3, December, 1905. p. 1-5

• No thought can be killed at once as is sometimes erroneously believed…But if it is refused sustenance each time that it returns it will gradually lose power and will finally fade away.
  • p. 2

• Man is the victim of his thoughts, who pursue him throughout life.
  • p. 4

• Man thinks and nature responds by marshalling his thoughts in a continuous procession while he looks on with wondering gaze, unmindful of the cause.
  • p. 5

1906

"Individuality" editorial, 1906

Harold W. Percival. "Individuality," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 4, January, 1906. p. 1-5

• Thought is karma.
  • p. 2

• As the spider's world is limited to the web of its own spinning, so a man's world is limited to the thoughts of his own weaving.
  • p. 3

• He lives in his own universe, the confines of which he builds. And what he believes to be realities are the thought pictures with which he fills it. As the web may be swept away and the spider remains to build another, so in each life the individuality causes to be built for itself a new universe, though most often the personality knows it not.
  • p. 3

• The personality is a form, a costume, a mask, in which the individuality appears and takes its part in the divine tragedy-drama-comedy of the ages now being again played on the stage of the world.
  • p. 4

• The personality is an animal which the individuality, the traveller of the ages, has bred for service and which if nourished, guided and controlled, will carry its rider through desert plains and jungle growths, across dangerous places, through the wilderness of the world to the land of safety and peace.
  • p. 4

• Here the alchemist magician consumates the great work, the mystery of the ages - of changing an animal into a man and a man into a god.
  • p. 4

• These are the voices of the personality, and the one which speaks the loudest will usually prevail. But when the heart asks humbly for the truth, that instant a single voice is heard so gentle that it stills dispute. This is the voice of one's inner god - the higher mind, the individuality.
  • p. 5

"Soul" editorial, 1906

Harold W. Percival. "Soul," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 5, February, 1906. p. 1-5

• At certain moments in the lives of an individual there wells up from within a conscious expansion of consciousness… In a breath, in a flash, in an instant of time, time ceases and this interior world opens out from within. More brilliant than myriad suns it opens in a blaze of light which does not blind or burn. ...he has seen the light, he has felt the power, he has heard the voice.
  • p. 4

• Thus he lives to help others; and so while living, acting, and loving in silence, he overcomes life by thought, form by knowledge, sex by wisdom, desire by will, and, gaining wisdom, he gives up himself in the sacrifice of love and passes from his own life into the life of all humanity.
  • p. 4-5

• After first seeing the light and feeling the power and hearing the voice, one will not at once pass into the realm of soul. He will live many lives on earth, and in each life will walk silently and unknown over the path of forms until his selfless action shall cause the realm of soul again to open out from within when he will again receive the selfless love, the living power, and the silent wisdom. Then he will follow the deathless ones who have travelled before on the deathless path of Consciousness.
  • p. 5

"The Zodiac" editorial, 1906

Harold W. Percival. "The Zodiac," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 1, April, 1906. p. 1-97

• Man was circular before he came into the physical world.
  • p. 1

• It shows that the progenitors of early humanity have watched the development of early humanity during all the races and their cycles, until finally some have descended and taken up their abode in the dwellings provided.
  • p. 61

• Capricorn is the sign of individuality, having attained which the human fulfills his obligations to others and becomes a god.
  • p. 64

• The physical world is the arena or stage on which is played the tragedy-comedy or drama of the soul as it battles with the elemental forces and powers of nature through its physical body.
  • p. 79

• That one who brings on miscarriage or abortion is in turn made the victim of like treatment when his or her time to incarnate comes.
  • p. 85

1907

"Birth-Death-Death-Birth" editorial, 1907

Harold W. Percival. "Birth-Death-Death-Birth," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, May, 1907. p. 1-97

• It is well that we cannot solve the mystery. To do so might destroy our shadowland before we can live in the light. Yet we may get an idea of the truth by making use of analogy. We may apprehend "Whither we go?" by taking a glance along the perspective of "Whence we come?"
  • p. 1

• After asking the twin questions, "Whence and Whither?" and "How do I come?" and "How do I go?" there comes the soul-awakening question, "Who am I?" When the soul has earnestly asked itself this question, it will never again be content until it knows.
  • p. 1

• The visible world stands between two eternities as a great theatre in eternity. The immaterial and the invisible here become material and visible, the intangible and formless take on a tangible form, and the Infinite here appears to be finite as it enters into the play of life.
  • p. 2

• The paste, the paint, the costume, the footlights and the play cause the soul to forget its being in eternity, and it is immersed in the littleness of the play.
  • p. 2

• Each soul lives in a distinct world of its own, and of its own making, which it relates to or identifies with itself. The soul builds a physical body within and around a portion of itself for a sojourn and experience in the physical world. When the sojourn is at an end it dissipates the physical body by the process called death and decay.
  • p. 3

• This was the way when wisdom ruled humanity. Then child birth was attended by no labor pains, and the beings in the world knew of those who were to enter. It is not so now.
  • p. 4

• But the invisible germ, although out of its place in the world of the soul, is not cut off from the world of the soul.
  • p. 4

• For every part of the body of man there is a corresponding force and entity in nature, which is the body of God, and the beings who take part in the building of the body are bound to that part which they have built and must respond to the nature of the function which that part is commanded by the incarnated ego to perform.
  • p. 5

• Each part of the body is a talisman to attract or guard against the powers of nature. As the talisman is used the powers will respond. Man is verily the microcosm who may call upon the macrocosm according to his knowledge or faith, his image-making and will.
  • p. 5

• The explorer into the new world of immortality must not be less courageous than the adventurer into new fields who risks his life and spends his substance and endures mental and bodily hardship and privation and failure, in the hope of discovery.
  • p. 7

• What was done in the early ages of humanity may be done again in our age. Through all apparent confusion runs a harmonious purpose. Humanity had to become involved in materiality that it might gain strength and wisdom and power by overcoming matter and raising it to a higher degree in the scale of perfection. Humanity is now on the upward evolutionary arc of the cycle, and some may, some must rise to the plane of the immortals if the race is to progress.
  • p. 8

• It was easier for humanity to become involved into matter and held in bondage than it is to gain freedom from that bondage, because bondage comes by natural descent, but freedom is gained only through self-conscious effort.
  • p. 8

• He who is informed concerning the law of spiritual development and birth, even though he be willing to comply with all requirements, should not rush madly on when wise men stop to ponder.
  • p. 9

• The requirements for immortality are a sound mind in a healthy and adult body, with the idea of immortality as the motive in a life of unselfishness and of living for the good of all.
  • p. 9

• The immaculate conception is attended by a great spiritual illumination; then the inner worlds are opened to the spiritual vision, and man not only sees but is impressed with the knowledge of those worlds. Then follows a long period during which this spiritual body is developed through its physical matrix, just as the foetus was developed in the womb. But whereas, during the foetal development the mother feels only and merely senses vague influences, the one who is thus creating a spiritual body knows of all of the universal processes which are represented and called upon in the fashioning of this immortal body. Just as at the time of the physical birth the breath entered the physical body, so now the divine breath, the holy pneuma, enters the spiritual immortal body so created. Immortality is thus attained.
  • p. 10

"I in the Senses" editorial, 1907

Harold W. Percival. "I in the Senses," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 4, July, 1907. p. 1-9

• What is conscious without the senses is I. THE ZODIAC.
  • p. 1

• We create ideals which are based on sensuous perceptions. The ideals become idols and we idolators.
  • p. 1

• "I" will awake from his stupor and will arise and throw off the chains of the senses. He will end his term of slavery and claim his divine rights. By the light which he radiates he will dispel the powers of darkness and dissipate the glamour of the senses which had blinded and lulled him into forgetfulness of his divine origin.
  • p. 1-2

• There are seven forces, with their corresponding vehicles, seven elements.
  • p. 2

• The elements are involuted into bodies and become the senses of the organized body.
  • p. 2

• These elements with their forces are entities, they are not chaotic nothings. They are brought together and unite to produce the body of man with its senses. The senses in the animal are governed and controlled by their corresponding elements, but in man the "I" offers resistance to the entire control by the elements.
  • p. 3

• The signs of the zodiac represent so many great classes or orders. At the head of each class or order is an intelligence too sacred to make more than mention of to us. From each such great intelligence there gradually proceed in orderly procession all the forces and elements which make up man's body, and each such has its correspondence in the body of man as stated.
  • p. 7

• Losses, poverty, pain, sickness, sorrow, trouble of all kinds, throw the I back on itself and away from their opposites which attract and delude the I. When the I is strong enough it begins to argue with itself about itself. Then it is possible for it to learn the meaning and the real use of the senses. It then learns that it is not of this world, that it is a messenger with a mission in this world. That before it can give its message and perform its mission it must become acquainted with the senses as they really are, and use them as they should be used instead of being deluded and controlled by them.
  • p. 8

• One who is afraid of death and the process of dying should not engage in this practice. He should learn somewhat the nature of death and of his mental processes before thus going in search of I.
  • p. 9

"Personality" editorial, 1907

Harold W. Percival. "Personality," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 5, August, 1907. p. 1-14

• The first great race is presented by the sign cancer. The beings of that race were breaths. They had no such forms as have our present humanity. They were crystal-like spheres of breath.
  • p. 3

• This first root-race did not die as did the races which followed; it was and is the ideal race for those to follow.
  • p. 3

• The forms absorbed life as the plants do and gave birth to themselves by passing through a metamorphosis analogous to that of the butterfly.
  • p. 4

• Up to this period, physical humanity was without individual mind. The forms were human in shape, but in all other respects they were animals.
  • p. 4

• The human animals into whom mind had thus incarnated, attempted to control the Minds, even as a wild steed might attempt to run away with its rider. But the minds who had incarnated were well experienced, and, being old warriors, they brought the human animal into subjection and educated it until it became a self-conscious entity,
  • p. 6

• Unlike the first class of minds, this second class was unable to control the animal, and so the animal controlled it. At first the Minds who thus partially incarnated, were able to distinguish between themselves and the human animal into which they had incarnated, but gradually they lost this discriminative power, and while incarnate they were unable to distinguish between themselves and the animal.
  • p. 6

• The fact is that all the early races are not merely things of the distant past, they are actualities of the very present.
  • p. 7

• The entity of the third race, the form entity, may be known as distinct from the physical body by the feeling of one's form within the body and similar to the feeling of the hand in a glove as being distinct from the glove, although being the instrument by which the glove is made to move.
  • p. 8

• The desire principle is readily distinguished from the others. It is that which surges as passion, and lusts after objects and gratification with the tyranny of unreasoning force.
  • p. 9

• Uniting with all these entities, or principles, yet distinct from them, is the thought entity.
  • p. 9

• There is a third period which is the exception in the life of the personality. It is that period which sometimes comes in a moment of intense aspiration toward the divine. This period is marked as if by a flash of light which illuminates the mind and brings with it a sense or prescience of immortality. Then the personality realizes its frailties and its weaknesses and is conscious of the fact that it is not the real I. But this knowledge brings with it the power of humility, which is the strength as of a child whom no one will injure. Its sense of impermanence is supplanted by the conscious presence of its true ego, the real I.
  • p. 10

• Not one of the races or principles, in itself, is evil or bad. The evil lies in allowing the lower principles to control the mind. Each one of the principles is necessary to the development of man, and as such it is good.
  • p. 13

• Constantly restraining its faults, improving its faculties, and aspiring to conscious knowledge of its divine self, the personality discovers the great mystery-that to save itself it must lose itself. And becoming illuminated from its father in heaven, it loses itself from the world of its limitations and finiteness, and finds itself at last in the immortal world.
  • p. 14

"Veil of Isis" editorial, 1907

Harold W. Percival. "Veil of Isis," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 1, October, 1907. p. 1-9

• In addition to the glamour of the senses, money-power, politics, and priestcraft are withholding from the people the knowledge of Isis to-day even as in the days of Egypt.
  • p. 2

• Isis, our immaculate mother, nature, space, wove her beautiful veil that through it all things might be called into existence and given being. Isis began in her immaterial worlds to weave and as she wove she threw the texture of her veil, more delicate than sunlight, about the divinities. Continuing through the heavier worlds, the veil was woven accordingly until it reached down and enfolded the mortals and our world.
  • p. 2

• Then all beings looked and saw from the part of the veil in which they were, the beauty of Isis through the texture of her veil. Then there were found within the veil love and immortality, the eternal and inseparable couple, they to whom the highest gods bow low in reverent worship.
  • p. 2-3

• Isis, pure and undefiled, is homogeneous primordial substance throughout boundless, infinite space. Sex is the veil of Isis which gives visibility to matter though it clouds the vision of beings.
  • p. 3

• According to the laws by which our world is ruled all beings who come into the world do so by sanction of Isis. She weaves for them the veil which they must wear during their sojourn here. The veil of Isis, sex, is spun out and woven by the fates, whom the ancients called the Daughters of Necessity.
  • p. 4
• Souls take the veil of Isis because without it they cannot complete the cycle of their journey through the worlds of forms; but having taken the veil, they become so enmeshed in its folds that they cannot see as the purpose of its weaving, anything other than social or sensual pleasures which it gives.
  • p. 4

• It is not to be wondered at that the human mind is so impressed by the thought of sex. It has taken long ages to mould matter into its present forms, and the mind who has had to do with the various changes of the forms of matter must necessarily be impressed by them.
  • p. 5

• Man… feels at last that there is some mysterious purpose working through and within the veil which he is wearing. He may often attempt to catch glimpses of the presence and the mystery which he feels.
  • p. 6

• The veil cannot be torn away, it must be worn away. By looking steadily through it it fades away and allows the union of the knower with the known.
  • p. 7

• The veil of Isis is draped over high and spiritual as well as the lowly and sensual worlds. It begins at the sign of Gemini, substance, the homogeneous primordial element, there securely fastened, and passes downward in its sweep. Isis on her high plane no mortal eye can see, as mortal eyes can never pierce the realm beyond the manifested; but when a soul has passed through all seven stages, it then, from the viewpoint of aquarius, soul, perceives Isis as she is at gemini, immaculate, pure, innocent.
  • p. 8

"Sleep" editorial, 1907

Harold W. Percival. "Sleep," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 2, November, 1907. p. 1-15

• That which connects us from day to day is the form of the body, on which are impressed the memories of the previous day. So that after sleep we find these pictures or memories awaiting us on the threshold of life, and recognizing them as our own we continue our picture building.
  • p. 2

• Sleep is darkness. In man, sleep, or darkness, is that function of the mind which extends its influence to the other functions and faculties and prevents their conscious action.
  • p. 4

• In sleep the conscious principle of man may be quiescent and enveloped in dark ignorance or else may be acting on a plane superior to sensuous life.
  • p. 4

• As soon as the conscious principle of man has removed from the physical plane, the magnetic currents of the earth and surrounding influences begin their work of repair of the tissues and parts of the body.
  • p. 5

• Usually, well adjusted bodies are polarized so that the head should point to the north, and the feet to the south, but experience has shown that people, equally as healthy, have slept best with the head pointing in any of the other three directions.
  • p. 6

• But the best way and the easiest is to have confidence in one's ability to sleep and to throw off disturbing influences; by this confidence and with kindly feeling in the heart sleep follows shortly.
  • p. 7

• The cause of this is that inasmuch as the guardian of the body, the conscious principle, has retired and its active organs remain at rest, the coordinating conscious principle of the form of the body takes charge and protects the body against the many dangers to which it is exposed during sleep.
  • p. 8

• Lying awake in bed is seldom beneficial and often quite harmful. The best time for sleep, however, is the eight hours from ten in the evening to six in the morning.
  • p. 8

• Sleeplessness and insomnia are unsanitary
  • p. 9

• A dream is only the removal of the conscious principle from functioning through the outer physical organs on the physical plane to its function through the inner organs on the psychic plane. The process and passage may be observed by the conscious principle when the mind has learned how to dissociate itself from the organs and senses of the body.
  • p. 9

• We get many benefits from sleep, but there are also dangers.
  • p. 12

• If one passes through this unmanifested state after he retires, he is refreshed on awakening because it is in this deep sleep state, if it is passed through in an orderly manner, that he comes in contact with the higher attributes and faculties of the soul and receives instruction through them, which enables him to take up the work on the coming day with renewed strength and cheerfulness, and which he executes with discrimination and firmness.
  • p. 13

• In this state the linga sharira (astral-body), which is the design or form body, is the body which is used and through which the dream is experienced.
  • p. 14

• He who would benefit from sleep which benefit will react on his entire life would do well to reserve from fifteen minutes to an hour for meditation before retiring. To the business man it may seem a waste of time to take an hour for meditation; to sit still for even fifteen minutes would be an extravagance. Yet the same man would think fifteen minutes or an hour at the theatre too short a time to allow him an evening's entertainment.
  • p. 15

"Consciousness Through Knowledge" editorial, 1907-1908

Harold W. Percival. "Consciousness Through Knowledge," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 3, December, 1907. p. 1-44

December 1907

• By wondering what it all means, he manifests the possibility of his entering into a realization of another world within the physical world. But the task is made difficult by his not knowing how to begin.
  • p. 3

• As it continues to experience, the mind learns the lessons which the pains and pleasures of the world teach through its physical body, and learning these it begins to learn to identify itself as apart from the body.
  • p. 3

• The one element of fire is not that laya center which allows the passage of the visible into the invisible
  • p. 5

• In our physical world are focused the forces and elements of the four worlds, and it is our privilege to come into the knowledge and use of these if we will. Of itself, the physical world is a crumbling shell, a colorless shadow, if it is seen or perceived in itself, as it is seen after pain and sorrow and misery and desolation have withdrawn the glamour of the senses and compelled the mind to see the emptiness of the world. This comes when the mind has sought and exhausted their opposites. These gone, and nothing to take their place, the world loses all color and beauty and becomes a bleak, arid desert. When the mind comes to this state, where all color has gone out of life and life itself seems to be to no purpose other than to produce misery, death soon follows unless some event occurs which will throw the mind back on itself or awaken it to some feeling of sympathy, or to show it some purpose in thus suffering. When this does occur, the life is changed from that of former habits, and according to the new light which has come to it, it interprets the world and itself. Then that which was without color takes on new colors and life begins over again. Everything and all things in the world have a different meaning than formerly. There is a fullness in that which before seemed empty. The future seems to hold new prospects and ideals appear which lead unto new and higher fields of thought and purpose.
  • p. 6

1908

January 1908

• The first requirement therefore for one who desires to enter into the world of real knowledge must be the development of a whole and healthy body. This is a duty which he owes to the physical world.
  • p. 11

• The duty to the country requires that the benefits of the best experiences of a man shall be given to his country.
  • p. 11

• The atomic spirit-matter of life has no form of itself, as it is the primordial element and force which enters into the composition of all things.
  • p. 14

• The thought world is the world in which the man of thought wanders when speculating on abstruse problems or seeks to know or speculate upon the mystery of life and the causes of phenomena.
  • p. 15

February 1908

• Our senses do not perceive spiritual things, yet there is a medium of communication between the spiritual world of mind and the world of the senses . Symbols are the means of communication; and symbols can be perceived by the senses. Although symbols can be perceived through the senses, the senses cannot understand nor interpret them.
  • p. 16

• Before what is called the creation of the world there existed what religions call God. Philosophers and sages speak of it in different terms. Some have called it the Over-soul, others the Demiurgus, and others have called it the Universal Mind. Any name will do.
  • p. 17

• Those minds or crystal spheres whose duty it was to incarnate, evolved within themselves the ideal pattern of a set of other bodies which were to be formed, by which and into which they should incarnate a portion of themselves.
  • p. 18

• It is not our purpose to describe here the formation of the world and the development of the forms thereon. Suffice it to say that at the proper stage of development of this earth world , it became the duty of the minds as crystal spheres to carry on its and their development on it. Within and from each of the crystal spheres or breath, different bodies were developed of varying density and form until at last the physical body was produced such as we now have it.
  • p. 18

• It has taken ages for the mind to develop a physical body such as we have today. The physical body is to be the instrument through which man becomes a God.
  • p. 19

• At the present stage all the spheres in the crystal sphere of the individual mind are concerned with the physical body, for the form and the organs of the physical body are the means by which the mind plies the task of its and their development. The spheres are all powerful on their own planes, but to control the physical body they must labor.
  • p. 20

• The brain, a thinking machine, hitherto used by the mind to minister to the senses, or by the mind suffered to be a mere sponge or sieve through which the thoughts of others passed in and out, is changed and stimulated.
  • p. 22

March, 1908.

• He must learn to distinguish himself from all that enters into the constitution of his physical body. To many this is not an easy task, but for one who is ready for the work, nature will provide the means.
  • p. 24

• Knowledge is attained by means of a series of illusions and delusions and the becoming freed from them. In each of the worlds through which man passes he is deluded by the spirit of that world and lives in its illusions; from these he awakens only to pass through an analogous process in the world next beyond.
  • p. 24

• Many worlds must be passed through, many illusions and delusions perceived and lived through, before that conscious something which man calls himself, I-am-I, shall find itself in its native world and learn to know itself and that world in a fuller degree than it now knows itself in this physical world.
  • p. 24

• The power of thought distinguishes man from the lower worlds and, by thought, he must work with himself for others.
  • p. 25

• But now, having outgrown the senses, he has reached a similar plane, but opposite to the one he left in infancy; as he had grown into the reality of the world so he now growing out of it.
  • p. 26

• When the mind asks itself who and what it is, and the unreality of the world and the limitations of its physical senses dawn on it, then it becomes its own teacher.
  • p. 27

• By his own conscious light, man will learn to see the different lights of the worlds. Then the physical senses will take on a different meaning than that of their unreality.
  • p. 27

• Having become conscious that he is a conscious light, he can never cease to exist as such
  • p. 28

April, 1908

• As a conscious light, man then lights up and makes clear everything which he will shine through. Eternity is on all sides; here appear no limitations. Time itself is only the matter with which he works. He fears neither death nor failure, but time, as matter, he must work with.
  • p. 29

• It is comparatively easy for man to so raise the matter of his physical body, as well as his astral and life bodies, once he is conscious of himself as a conscious light.
  • p. 30

• Desire is a restless principle which attempts to draw all forms of life to itself and consume them.
  • p. 32

• Therefore, another world, farther progressed in evolution, must be brought to the assistance of matter in order that matter may progress beyond the state of blind desire-matter in animal bodies.
  • p. 32

• He sees that all forms of the world are shadows quickly passing; that the world itself is only a shadow-land in which beings come and go like ghosts of the night, apparently unconscious of their coming and of their going; as phantoms, the forms move to and from in shadow-land, the physical world. Then he hears the joyous laugh and the cry of pain which add to the discord of this unreality in the physical shadow-land. From shadow-land, man, as a conscious light, learns of the unreliability and emptiness of form
  • p. 33

• As man controls the turbulent unruly monster of desire, it acts on the desire in other forms in the world, and instead of stimulating them to anger, or lust, as before, it has the opposite effect.
  • p. 34

• But when he is conscious of himself as that steady and conscious light, he compels the thoughts to be orderly in their movements and thus brings them into conformity and harmony with the order and plan of the crystal sphere of the mind.
  • p. 35

May 1908

• Man, the mind, is the same in nature and essence as God, the Universal Mind, or Intelligence. He is this consciously or unconsciously, either in part or in perfection.
  • p. 36

• The mind then begins a course of reasoning as to the causes of phenomena; it discovers that it must proceed from universals to particulars, from cause to effect, instead of from effect to cause; that it must have an idea of the plan of a thing if it is to know where any particular part of that thing belongs. All difficulties are overcome by continued effort.
  • p. 38

• As it went out into the world through the senses to gather information and experience of the world, so now, when it would enter its own world, the mental world, it has to struggle to become acquainted with the ideas of that world.
  • p. 38

• It must leave the senses behind. This it finds difficult to do. Like the young bird which leaves its nest, it must depend upon its wings for flight.
  • p. 39

• The mind could not enter the world of knowledge by thought, for thought is the boundary and limit of the mental world, whereas the world of knowledge passes boundless through all the lower worlds.
  • p. 40

• Omnipotence is felt; all things are possible. The mind is immortal, a God among Gods. Now, surely man as a self-conscious light has reached the fullness of his strength and power and has attained the fullness of perfection; further progress seems impossible.
  • p. 41

• He may wrap himself around with power and live in the world of his own creation to such a degree that all other things may become entirely absent. To such an extent may this be carried that he may remain conscious only of his being in his world throughout the eternities.
  • p. 42

• The duty of thought is to bring the spiritual world into the physical and raise the physical into the spiritual, to transform animal bodies into human beings and to transmute the human into an immortal.
  • p. 43

• Invulnerable love and power is born within one who knows.
  • p. 44

"Psychic Tendencies and Development" editorial, 1908

Harold W. Percival. "Psychic Tendencies and Development," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 3, June, 1908. p. 1-7

• It is now the fashion for people to be psychic: to see, smell and hear strange things, and to feel creepy and spooky.
  • p. 1

• This cycle is causing the physical organism of man to become more susceptible to the influences from the invisible worlds which surround and permeate our physical world, although these worlds are as they were before the organism of man was so responsive to them.
  • p. 2
• But the psychic tendency in our civilization, if turned in the right direction and controlled, will assist us in building up a civilization greater and grander and nobler than any of the past. On the other hand, psychic tendencies may hasten our destruction and bring our history to a close by insane desire for money, by the love of luxury, or by sensual gratification and worship of the dead.
  • p. 4

• The influences which affect the psychic come from the visible and invisible worlds. Through our visible world there are constantly playing and interacting the forces and powers of the invisible worlds.
  • p. 4

• To make faculties which are new, useful, their uses must be understood and care applied, until the new faculties are known and brought under the control of the reasoning being. Reason should never be abandoned.
  • p. 5

• Those not born psychics may develop a psychic organism and become psychics by giving up their will and becoming negative and giving way to all influences which they feel, or by a weakening and breaking down of the resisting powers of the animal body through a vegetarian diet.
  • p. 5

• The astral molecular body of form of the present life is the sum total and result of one's thoughts in the preceding life-in the same sense that in the present life one's desires and thoughts are building for his next life the astral molecular form body, on and according to which his physical matter will be moulded.
  • p. 6

• The mental psychic nature (leo-sagittary), is to be developed by mental practices, such as the forming of mental pictures, by giving mental forms to mental colors, and by controlling all the functions of the mind through meditation.
  • p. 7

• The development of the spiritual psychic nature (cancer-capricorn) is brought about by the control of the functions of the mind when one is able to identify himself in the spiritual world of knowledge, in which all the other phases of the psychic nature are comprehended.
  • p. 7

"Doubt" editorial, 1908

Harold W. Percival. "Doubt," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 4, June, 1908. p. 1-8

• Doubt comes from duo, two, in which is involved the idea of duality concerning any thing, and extending infinitely through all things.
  • p. 1

• Doubt is only known to us when it is a mental operation, but the idea of doubt is present in all grades of matter, from the beginning of manifestation to the full and complete attainment of knowledge.
  • p. 1

• Doubt is deep-seated in the mind, is in fact synonymous with one of the functions of the mind: that function or attribute of the mind which is known as darkness, sleep.
  • p. 2

• Unfamiliarity of the mind with its body allows the element of doubt in the mind to dominate its action and to interfere with the control of the body.
  • p. 3

• They are overcome in the psychic world and astral form body only to the degree that they were met with and overcome in the physical.
  • p. 4

• The mind which does contemplate itself as a mind acting in the mental world, which is distinct from the physical world, is always assailed by doubt.
  • p. 5

• Doubt is an occult sin. This occult sin of doubt is the doubt in one's spiritual being. The penalty of this doubt is spiritual blindness and inability to see spiritual truths in anything even when they are pointed out.
  • p. 6

• To slink back into indecisive doubt after one's action has proven wrong, though it was believed to be right at that time, is a setback to the mind and prevents growth. One should recognize his mistake, acknowledge it and correct it by continuing to act. His mistake should benefit him by enabling him to see through it.
  • p. 7

• One will learn to decide and act and will solve the mystery of right action by a firm faith and belief that he is in essence one with the Universal Mind or God, through his individuality, the human higher or divine mind, and that his real conscious being comes from that source and will illuminate his thought.
  • p. 8

"Karma" editorial, 1908

Harold W. Percival. "Karma," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 5, August, 1908. p. 1-91

• There is no deviation from nor exception to the absolute law of karma.
  • p. 2

• Karma is the wonderful, beautiful and harmonious law which prevails throughout the worlds.
  • p. 4

• In the memory of the ego of humanity, the thoughts and actions of all of the individual units of humanity are retained, and it is according to this memory that the plan for the new world system is determined. This is the karma of the new humanity.
  • p. 7

• The penalty of the original sin of the Sons of Universal Mind who would not reincarnate and procreate is, that they are now dominated by that which they refused to govern. When they could govern they would not, and now that they would govern they cannot.
  • p. 8

• There are intelligences who act as the general agents of the law of karma in its action through the worlds. These intelligences are by different religious systems called: lipika, kabiri, cosmocratores and archangels.
  • p. 9

• The mental world is the world in which man really lives and from which his karma is generated.
  • p. 11

• Life in the body has a double purpose: it is a nursery for baby egos and a school for the more advanced.
  • p. 13

• This may be done by using the money which was questionably amassed, for the benefit of others and thereby atoning in such measure as may be for the misdeeds in the acquirement of the wealth.
  • p. 20

• The family and race in which the body is being formed is determined by the ego about to incarnate who is able to select the race and who, according to past associations and inclinations, is able to decide upon and bring about the influences and conditions which will affect the body during its formation and to provide it with such tendencies as are the result of its past actions and which fit the necessities of the present. Some egos are too dull and heavy from ignorance and indolence to bring about the conditions in which their physical body should be born and to convey the tendencies and inclinations, but they may be aware of the preparation of the physical body according to the psychic model and form by others. This work is done for them and continued until they are strong enough to do it for themselves.
  • p. 22

• A man and his wife should be pure in their bodies and minds and should have the thoughts, ambitions and aspirations which they desire to see expressed in their child. Such thoughts or desires of the parents, together with the fitness of their bodies, attract an ego about to incarnate whose karma requires or entitles him to such accommodation. This is decided before pregnancy. But when the mother finds that she is in such condition the contract has been made between the egos of the parents and the ego who will incarnate, and such contract must be fulfilled and must not be broken by abortion.
  • p. 24

• During this period it is possible for her to walk with God. When this is done she fulfills her mission.
  • p. 25

• The artistic temperament, if allowed to express itself then, would make the psychic nature more susceptible to the influence of drugs and alcohol and would encourage drunkenness and result in breakdowns and ruin the psychic body by opening it to every vagabond of the astral world. Not to allow the artistic development in such case would only defer this development and permit the child to better resist the demon of intoxication.
  • p. 29

• It will poison the practitioner and patient with the spirit of unlawful greed; unlawful because money represents and is controlled by the spirit of the earth which is selfish, whereas the power to heal comes from the spirit of life, which is to give. These are opposites and cannot be joined.
  • p. 38

• In the individual politician who has fooled them, they have reflected a picture of themselves, magnified or reduced in parts, but nevertheless reflecting their own meanness, duplicity, and selfishness. They get but what they deserve.
  • p. 41

• The party spirit or spirit of politics is a definite psychic entity….The spirit of patriotism is the presiding entity of a nation, of a continent.
  • p. 42

• The psychic karma of a nation determines the government of the nation.
  • p. 42

• Pessimism is the inevitable result of all attempts to use thought as the means for the gratification of desire. Pessimism is fully developed when the psychic body is satiated and the mind sees the futility of all effort to obtain happiness through desire.
  • p. 45

• Pessimism is altogether driven out when one is able to feel himself in the hearts of others and others in his own heart. By endeavoring to feel the relationship of all beings, he discovers that all things are not running on to ultimate doom, but that there is a bright and glorious future for every living soul.
  • p. 45

• Karma is thought….Man is circumscribed, held in and limited by his own thoughts. No one can be raised except by his own thought. No one can be lowered except by his own thought.
  • p. 46

• By his thought, man is a creator or destroyer. He is a destroyer when he changes higher into lower forms; he is a builder and creator when he changes lower into higher forms, brings light into darkness and changes darkness into light.
  • p. 47

• But like that of all beings, its period of existence must come to an end. Once a thought is born and has reached its full growth on the mental plane it will there exist, until what it stands for is shown to be untrue by a mind which gives birth to the thought which takes the place of the one discredited. The one discredited then ceases to exist as an active entity, though its skeleton is kept in the world of thought, much the same as relics or antiques are kept in the world's museums.
  • p. 48

• One who has a feeling of hatred for any person or thing liberates the force of hatred.
  • p. 49

• It is because of the lies of the units of humanity that humanity as a whole and the units themselves must endure the suffering and the unhappiness in the world.
  • p. 50

• The karma of a liar is a perpetual mental torment, which torment is eased while he is deceiving himself and others, but the torment is accentuated on the return of his lies to him.
  • p. 50

• If one would know true mental karma, he must stop lying. One cannot see his own or the mental operations of another clearly while he continues to obscure his own and the minds of others. Man's happiness increases with the love of truth for its own sake; his unhappiness disappears as he refuses to lie.
  • p. 51

• This fourth class is broadly divided into two groups. Those who seek knowledge of a purely intellectual nature, and those who seek spiritual knowledge. Those who seek knowledge of the intellect arrive at spiritual truth after long processes of intellectual search. Those who seek spiritual knowledge in itself, see into the nature of things without long processes of reasoning and then use their intellect in applying the spiritual truth according to the needs of the time.
  • p. 55-56

• The social inclinations of the fourth class are not for the conventions of society, but rather for the companionship of those who have knowledge.
  • p. 56

• The philosophy of the individual of the fourth class is to find his real work in life and how to perform his duties in relation to that work.
  • p. 57

• The karma of a genius who uses his genius so that other minds may see that which he has seen, and so as to bring the light of genius into the world and to further his own insight into the world, is, that he will attain to a development of all his faculties and the knowledge of himself. .
  • p. 59

• From the number of books written on philosophy, religion, arts and sciences, it might seem that if thoughts are things, and books the representatives of thoughts, the world of thought must be crowded. However, the world of thought is traveled by human thought on a small portion, and which borders on the psychic and physical worlds. There are highways and beaten roads as well as the paths where here and there some independent thinker has made a trail between the beaten roads, which, as he continued, became more distinct and extended, and as he completed his system of thought the trail became a road and could be traveled at any time by himself and other thinkers. The schools of thought we know of represent these highways and paths in the world of thought.
  • p. 60

• A feature of the mental karma of a person who allows his mind to be drugged into a belief which opposes his reason, is that he is unhappy and restless.
  • p. 63

• The demander of opulence forms the picture of what he wishes, uses the ammunition of his desire, and the object of his desire comes to him. But some one has to supply his demands.
  • p. 65

• It is not wise for one who would enter the mental world of thought to long or wish for any object which has to do with his personality. The only thing which he may long for wisely and without any ill effects to anyone is to be divinely illuminated as to how best to act. But then his longing ceases for he grows upward and expands naturally.
  • p. 66

• The duty of everyone interested in religion, in philosophy and in the sciences, is to sanction only such doctrines as he believes true, and to give no word of approval to those he believes to be false. If each is true to this duty, the welfare of the future will be assured.
  • p. 73

• All results with their consequences are caused by the doing or the not doing of what one knows to be right. He who knows what is right yet acts not accordingly, creates karma which will cause suffering. He who knows what is right and does it, creates spiritual enjoyment, called blessedness.
  • p. 74

• He who acts what he knows to be right, will see and know more clearly how to act and will provide the means by which all actions and results of actions become clear to him. He who acts against what he knows to be right, will become confused, and still more confused, in the measure in which he refuses to act what he knows, until he will become spiritually blind; that is to say, he will not be able to distinguish between true and false, right and wrong.
  • p. 75

• Will is free…. When he is free from all limitations, and only then, can he use the will in its full and free sense. He becomes free as he acts with the will rather than in using it.
  • p. 76

• Two ideas are present in the individual mind of man beginning with its first emanation from the Deity, or God, or the Universal Mind. One of these is the idea of sex, the other the idea of power. They are the two opposites of duality, the one attribute inherent in homogeneous substance. In the earliest stages of the mind, these exist in idea only. They become active in degree as the mind develops gross veils and coverings for itself. Not until after the mind had developed a human animal body did the ideas of sex and power become manifest, active, and did they fully dominate the individual incarnated portion of the mind.
  • p. 78

• It is quite in keeping with divinity and nature that these two ideas should be expressed. It would be contrary to nature and divinity to repress or suppress the expression of these two ideas. To stop the expression and development of sex and of power, were it possible, would annihilate and reduce all the manifested universe into a state of negation.
  • p. 79

• We may fancy the utter loneliness and dejection of that being, in finding that with the too earnest effort to embrace that which had called forth its affection and hopes and vague ideals, it had disappeared, and had left in its place only shattered bits of glass. Does this seem fancy? Yet it is not far from what is experienced by most people in life.
  • p. 80

• Those who go to a foreign country are of four classes: some go with the object of making it their home and spending the remainder of their days there; some go as traders; some as travelers on a tour of discovery and instruction; and some are sent with a special mission from their own country.
  • p. 85

• a. The mind who incarnates into a body of sex with the determination of living its days here is mostly one who has in previous periods of evolution not incarnated as man and is now here in the present evolution for the purpose of learning the ways of the world.
  • p. 85

1909

"Mirrors" editorial, 1909

Harold W. Percival. "Mirrors," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 2, May, 1909. p. 1-12

• The two-surfaced mirror suggests the astral world, which can be viewed from two sides only: that which is past and that which is present. The three-surfaced mirror represents the mental world which may be looked at and comprehended from three sides: past, present and future. The all-surfaced mirror stands for the spiritual world which is approached and known from any and every side and in which past, present and future merge into eternal being.
  • p. 2

• The one surface is a plane; two surfaces are an angle; three surfaces form a prism; the all-surface, a crystal sphere.
  • p. 2

• The physical world stops the process of involution and turns that which is involving back on the line of evolution
  • p. 3

• All that comes to us in the world is but the reflection of what we have done to or in the world.
  • p. 3

• He would not only be able to see the reflections of his body in his mind, but he may be able to connect and see the relation of all things which occur to him, with his present life, and he will know then that no thing does occur but that which is related in some way to his present life, as a reflection from the actions of past lives, or those of other days in this life.
  • p. 5

• Human beings are so many types or phases of the nature of man which is mirrored forth in the multitude of the reflections of the sides or different aspects of humanity. Humanity is a man, male-female, who is not seen, who does not see itself except by its two-sided reflections, called man and woman.
  • p. 6

• The spiritual world may be spoken of as one, grand, complete, universal mirror. As a mirror it may be compared to one, infinite atmosphere. The material of which it is composed is primal breath-matter, which is light. .
  • p. 10

• By Consciousness the mind-mirror as an intelligent being may, by reflecting on Consciousness, through itself, become at one with Absolute Consciousness.
  • p. 11

• Wherever man goes, there he projects or reflects from himself, the images which flit through his mind. So hamlets, villages or great governments are built up, all of the architectural structures, sculpture, paintings, music, all designs, clothing, tapestry, houses, temples and huts, the daily papers, the magazines, or books, legends, myths and religions, all are the putting into evidence in this world, by means of the mirrors of man, those things which exist as pictures or ideals in his mind.
  • p. 12

"Adepts, Masters and Mahatmas" editorial, 1909-1910

Harold W. Percival. "Adepts, Masters and Mahatmas," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 4, July, 1909. p. 1-130

July 1909

• Each world has its own beings who are conscious of their being in the particular world to which they belong and in which they live.
  • p. 3

• He comes again into the physical and will so continue to come life after life until he shall establish for himself a body or bodies other than physical, in which he may live consciously in or out of the physical.
  • p. 5

• • p. 5
• The adept as such is a body of desire acting in a form apart from the physical.
  • p. 6

• A master is one who has related and balanced the sex nature of the physical body, who has overcome his desires and the matter of the form world, and who controls and directs the matter of the life world on the plane of leo-sagittary ( - ) from his position and by the power of thought, sagittary ( ). has mastered the physical appetites, the force of desire, who has control of the currents of life…
  • p. 6

• A mahatma is an individualized mind free from the necessity of further contact with any of the worlds lower than the spiritual breath world.
  • p. 7

• A mahatma differs from the adept and the master in that the adept must still reincarnate because he is still making karma, and a master must reincarnate because, although he is no longer making karma he is working out that which he has already made, but the mahatma, having ceased to make karma and having worked out all karma, is entirely freed from any necessity to reincarnate.
  • p. 7

August 1909

• A mahatma as an agent of the universal law does not himself go to the people of the world to communicate universal laws and principles of right action, but sends an emissary to advise or remind the people of the laws under which they live.
  • p. 9

• The records of the becoming of a mahatma are not physical, and physical men, while they are only physical, cannot examine such records.
  • p. 10

• At this important juncture in the history of the race the mahatmas have offered to mankind such rules and principles of life as will solve their vexed problems.
  • p. 11

• Apollonius of Tyana was an adept.
  • p. 12

• Pythagoras of Samos was a master.
  • p. 12

• Gautama of Kapilavastu was a mahatma.
  • p. 13

• An adept, master or mahatma gives to a people a philosophy or a religion which that people is most ready to receive.
  • p. 13

• Adepts, masters and mahatmas may and do have physical bodies
  • p. 15

• The universe is a great machine. It is composed of certain parts, each of which performs a function in the general economy of action. In order that this huge machine be kept running and in repair it must have competent machinists and engineers, able and skillful chemists, intelligent scribes and exact mathematicians.
  • p. 16

September 1909

• There are geographical centers on the earth's surface which have served as the stages on which the drama-comedy-tragedy of life has been enacted again and again.
  • p. 18

• Adepts, masters and mahatmas select their habitations, with respect to the progress of man, along this path of civilization.
  • p. 19

• Positions of importance on the earth, such as those where cities stood or stand, where rivers rolled or now flow, where volcanoes lie dormant or are active, and such places as are selected by adepts, masters and mahatmas as abodes are centers where invisible worlds and cosmic forces contact, enter or pass through or out of the earth. These points are physical centers which offer conditions under which cosmic influences may be more easily contacted.
  • p. 20

• No one should believe in their existence until life itself will present to him such facts and conditions as will allow him to say with reason that he feels and sees a necessity for the existence of such intelligences.
  • p. 22

• One is able to find an adept, or the adept will find him, when he has developed within himself somewhat of the nature of an adept, which is controlled desire.
  • p. 22

• One will be able to meet or prove a master to be such when he is able to dream consciously and intelligently in his waking moments and while still conscious in his physical body.
  • p. 23

• The knowledge body is that by which things are known. It is not the process of reasoning, which leads to knowledge, it is knowledge itself. That body of knowledge which is perfect and not obliged to go through reasoning processes and reincarnations is or corresponds to a mahatma body.
  • p. 24

• There is a cyclic law according to which adepts, masters and mahatmas appear successively to take part in the affairs of the world and as regularly as the coming of the seasons in their order.
  • p. 25

• Adepts, masters and mahatmas carry on their work with the world in groups, each in turn being assisted in the general work by the others.
  • p. 25

October 1909

• The elements or constituents of all things which appear physically are held suspended in the atmosphere of the earth.
  • p. 28

• The mind works its way through the mental world by its power to think.
  • p. 30

• The schools of the mental world are conducted according to a just system of learning which is older than the world.
  • p. 30

• A master is always ready to teach whenever men are ready to learn. In this way, in the mental world, mankind receives indirect teaching from the masters. Direct teaching from a master, as between teacher and pupil, is given when man has proven himself worthy to receive direct instruction.
  • p. 30

• Masters are above dislikes, though they have their preferences. Their preferences are, like those of the adept, for those of their kind and for that for which they are working.
  • p. 31

• A mahatma has no likes or dislikes.
  • p. 31

• The greater the intelligence, the more simple and plain his dress,
  • p. 32

• No physical body of whatever kind or grade can exist without sleep.
  • p. 33

• Sleep is the withdrawal of the mind from the body and the turning on of the magnetic influence.
  • p. 33

• A mahatma is immortally conscious; that is to say, he maintains a continuous conscious existence through all changes and conditions throughout the entire period of evolution in which he acts, until he should some time decide to pass, or should at the end of the evolution pass, into that state known as nirvana.
  • p. 33-34

November 1909

• The purpose of organization among adepts is to perfect their bodies, to direct desire and to control the forces of the unseen psychic world.
  • p. 35

• The fifth race of humanity is the hierarchy here called adepts
  • p. 36

• The brotherhood of humanity is made up of those in every race who think and act for humanity as a whole rather than for any group or degree or school or hierarchy.
  • p. 37

• A master might, in his physical body, move among lions, tigers and venomous reptiles without harm to his body.
  • p. 38

• There are two types of adepts, masters and mahatmas: those who act for themselves, separately and selfishly, and those who act for humanity as a whole.
  • p. 41

• The purpose of a mahatma who remains in contact with the world is to govern a race of men or mankind as a whole, to control the minds of men, to direct their action, prescribe laws and to have the worship and adoration of mankind.
  • p. 42

• Man should not fear to believe in one or many gods and their creeds, but he should be careful in entrusting himself to a religion, teaching or god, who requires unreasoning faith with absolute devotion. There comes a time in the life of each when religions no longer teach him, but merely show the record of what he has passed through and has outgrown
  • p. 43

December 1909

• One who is addicted to the use of intoxicating liquors disqualifies himself by such use, because alcohol is an enemy to the mind. The spirit of alcohol is not of our evolution. It is of a different evolution.
  • p. 45

• The confirmed christian scientist is unfit and useless as a disciple, (adepts) In the school of the senses the disciples are instructed in the development of their psychic faculties, such as clairvoyance and clairaudience, in the development of the psychic or desire body and how to live apart from the physical and act in the desire world;
  • p. 46

• One should study well his motive in wishing to be a disciple. If his motive is not prompted by the love of service to his fellow men, as much as for his own advancement, it will be better for him to postpone his attempt until such time as he can feel himself in the hearts of others and feel mankind in his own heart.
  • p. 48

• The self appointed disciple should not attempt to kill or weaken desire, the beast in his keeping; he should care for and have as strong an animal as he can, that he may complete his journey. His business is to control the animal and compel it to carry him where he wills.
  • p. 49

• Western races are meat eating races.
  • p. 50

• As a man about to begin a long journey takes with him only what is necessary on the journey and leaves other things behind, so a self appointed disciple attaches himself to that only which is necessary to his work and leaves other things alone.
  • p. 51

• The aspirant must not allow money or the possession of it to be an attraction to him. If he feels that he is wealthy and has power and is of importance because he has much money and power, or if he feels poor and of no account because he has little or none, his belief will prevent further progress.
  • p. 52

• When he has learned so to live and act independently of his physical body he will be an adept.
  • p. 55

• The rules require that a disciple shall not violate the laws of the country in which he lives.
  • p. 55

• In relation to family, the disciple shall fulfil his duties to parents, wife and children. If a separation from wife or children should take place it shall be upon the request and act of wife or children; separation must not be provoked by the disciple.
  • p. 56

• As to care and treatment of body, it is required that that food shall be eaten which is best for the health and strength of the body, and that the body shall be kept clean, nourished and cared for, and be given the exercise, rest and sleep found necessary to the maintenance of bodily health.
  • p. 56

• Should a disciple feel anger or jealousy he must search out its source and transmute it. He interferes with his own and the progress of his class by allowing any ill-feeling toward his fellow disciples to exist.
  • p. 57

1910

January 1910 (adepts)

• The disciple is shown the servants and workers of and in these different elements, with the forces acting through them, though he is not as disciple brought into the presence of the rulers of the elements.
  • p. 58

• Besides these four elements, he is shown the fifth, in which he will be born as an adept at the completion of his development.
  • p. 59

• In a community such as before described as that of the early race of physical man who are preserved in their natural purity, the disciple sees physical humanity as they were before the class of sensual minds had incarnated among them. This stock was preserved in order that mankind might be carried in its physical line unbroken from the time of the inception of the physical until the time of its passing from fourth race physical humanity into fifth race and sixth race and seventh race humanity, or through physical, psychic, mental and spiritual stages; humans, adepts, masters and mahatmas.
  • p. 60

• His senses bear evidence, but the test of these is made by reason.
  • p. 62

• There is no age limit for the aspirant to discipleship in the school of the masters. One may appoint himself a disciple when very old. He may not become an accepted and entered disciple in that life, but his step will bring him nearer to the point of discipleship in a succeeding life.
  • p. 62

• The self appointed disciple is usually one concerning himself with obscure things, asking himself or others questions not generally thought about. He may be interested in subjects of mystery to the senses or in mental problems and processes.
  • p. 62

February 1910 masters

• IN turning the mind from the senses to the subjects which the senses represent, one may clearly distinguish the difference between the school of the adepts, and the school of the masters.
  • p. 63

• He may continue to dream, but the subjects of which he dreams are considered instead of the dream; he may cease to dream, but the subjects of dreams will then take the place of the dreams and be present in his thought as dreams were to his astral vision.
  • p. 64

• His thought is referred to the subjects of his senses instead of to the objects which the senses seek.
  • p. 64

• His meditations do not then begin with nor center upon the senses nor the objects of sense for themselves. He tries to begin his meditation with thoughts in themselves (abstract thoughts), not with the senses.
  • p. 65

• The aspirant who by his thought causes others to act according to his thought, who cures bodily ills, causes bodily harm, or by his thought directs the thought and actions of others, thereby ends his progress on the road to discipleship,
  • p. 66

• The aspirant who obtains money by thought… will not become a disciple
  • p. 66

• At some unexpected moment during his meditations there is a quickening of his thoughts; the circulations of his body cease; his senses are stilled; they offer no resistance or attraction to the mind which acts through them.
  • p. 67

• He may be unnoticed by men, but he is not unnoticed by the masters.
  • p. 68

• He continues to think of himself in the mental world; thus he controls desire by his thoughts.
  • p. 69

• When he is able to live without longing for and without regrets at leaving the world, when he appreciates that time is in eternity, and that eternity is through time, and that he may live in eternity while in time, and if his turn of life has not been passed, he is aware that the period of outer action is ended and the period of inner action begins.
  • p. 70

• A body which seemed aged may be restored to the freshness and vigor of manhood.
  • p. 70

March 1910

• The head of the physical is the heart of the new body and it lives throughout the physical body.
  • p. 71

• He must now learn to live consciously in and operate from the heaven world of man in order to become a master.
  • p. 72

• He now learns that at the time of becoming a disciple and during the moment or period of that calm ecstasy, there entered into the inner chambers of his brain a seed or germ of light which was really the cause of the quickening of his thoughts and the stilling of his body, and that at that time he had conceived of a new life and that from that conception is to be developed and born intelligently into the mental world the body which will make of him a master, the master body.
  • p. 73

• For each sense every man has a corresponding mental faculty, but only a disciple will know how to distinguish between the faculty and the sense and how to use his mental faculties independently of the senses.
  • p. 74

• It is made plain to the disciple that his particular faculty through which he will become from a disciple in the school of the masters, a master, is the motive faculty. By the motive faculty he will declare himself. Of all things motives are the most important.
  • p. 77

• The focus faculty gathers, adjusts, relates and centralizes things. By means of the focus faculty duality becomes unity.
  • p. 78

April 1910

• The disciple finds that that thought into which all other thoughts had blended and by which he had found himself as disciple, and had known himself to be an accepted disciple in the school of the masters, was in fact the opening up of and ability to use his focus faculty consciously; that he had, after his long and continued efforts, been able to bring together his wandering thoughts which had been attracted by and were operating through his senses, was due to the use of his focus faculty; that by the focus faculty he had collected and centered those thoughts and so quieted the activities of the mind as to allow the light faculty to inform him where he was and of his entrance into the mental world.
  • p. 70

• It seems to him as though he is coming into great knowledge and that he will enter all realms in the different worlds by the use of his focus faculty. It seems to him that he is able to know everything and answer any question by using his focus faculty, and all the faculties seem to be at his disposal and ready for his use, when operated from his focus faculty,
  • p. 79

• The body and all the elements of the body are changed during one inbreathing and outbreathing.
  • p. 80

• Between these swings of the physical and magnetic breath there is a moment of balance; at this moment of balance all objects or things become known to the disciple by the use of his focus faculty.
  • p. 80

• He knows that it was by the focus faculty that he knew himself to be in another world than the world of the senses,
  • p. 81

• From his body of sex, he trains the range of his focus faculty to find the mental world.
  • p. 82

• The experience of being conscious without the senses gives the disciple great strength and power, but it also ushers him into a period of unutterable gloom. This gloom is caused by the awakening into action of the dark faculty as it had never before acted.
  • p. 83

• It acts directly and in a way most likely to overcome and prevent the disciple from crossing through its realm of death into the mental world of immortal life.
  • p. 84

• But that old evil, the dark faculty, seldom attacks the disciple in the way he expects to be met, if he does expect. It has innumerable wiles and subtle ways of attacking and opposing the disciple. There are only two means which it can employ, and it invariably uses the second only if the first has failed.
  • p. 84

May 1910

• The disciple in the school of the masters now enters his death period.
  • p. 86
• He treads the earth, but it has the unsubstantiality of a shadow.
  • p. 86

• The disciple is in the coils of the ancient serpent of the world against which human strength is as weakness.
  • p. 87

• But he is fearless until he discovers that they are his own creations. Then fear comes. He sickens in despair.
  • p. 88

• He finds or has shown to him that that with which he has struggled is the uncontrolled and blind desire of his human kind and that by subduing desires he aids and stimulates mankind to so act with theirs.
  • p. 89

• As his time of birth approaches, the one thought which he knows is ever present with him. His focus faculty is fixed in this one thought. All things seem to blend into this thought and this one thought which he knows is through all things. He becomes more conscious of this one thought; lives in it, and while his physical body will perform its functions naturally his whole concern is in his one thought which he knows. A calm joy and peace are within him. Harmony is about him and he quickens according to his thought.
  • p. 90

• Though there are beings who live consciously and throughout time in the heaven world, yet mortal men resting in this heaven world do not know these beings, and during their stay they are unaware of the presence of masters, unless the thought of masters had been part of their ideals in physical life.
  • p. 91

• The sun shines, birds sing, the waters pour forth their melody of joy, and manifested nature greets the master as her creator and preserver.
  • p. 92

June, 1910

• …he perceives the thing which was the cause of all past hardships and heart stifling gloom, and above which he has risen, but from which he is not quite separated. That thing is the old elusive, formless darkness of desire, from which and out of which came myriad forms and formless dread. That formless thing is at last formed.
  • p. 93

• He has outgrown physical life, though he remains still in it; he has conquered death, though he may still have to take on bodies which will die.
• To live and act in the astral world also, he must call into action his sphinx body, his desire body, which now sleeps. He calls; he speaks the word of power. It arises from its rest and stands beside his physical body.
  • p. 94

• To man acting in the physical world, it seems strange, if not impossible, that he should have three bodies or be developed into three bodies, which may act separately from and independent of each other. To man in his present state it is impossible; yet, as man, he has these three as principles or potential bodies which are now blended and undeveloped, and without either of which he would not be man.
  • p. 94

July 1910

• A master knows a man by his motive. When a man's motive is right he assists him in his thoughts toward the attainment of his ideal, and though men may say that they are promoted by right motives and have unselfish ideals, they cannot know because they do not know their motives and, therefore, cannot judge their ideals.
  • p. 105

• Masters are engaged with the ideals and the thoughts of men, as parents are with the play of their little ones. Like the prudent mother or kind father who look on at the play of their little ones and listen patiently to their dreams, so the masters look on at the little ones in the nursery, and in the school of life.
  • p. 106

• Birth of a Mahatma The master knows the way, and knows how to enter the spiritual world.
  • p. 107

• He who has entered and knows eternity is the eternity. He knows that he was and is ever and always I-am. All things are present in this knowledge. As I-am knows itself, limitless light abounds, and though there are no eyes to see it, the light knows itself. I-am knows itself as light, and light is I-am. If the mahatma wills to be throughout eternity only as he knows himself, I-am, as being, he shuts out from his light the manifested worlds, and remains I-am, his light, the light throughout the eternity. In the ancient eastern philosophies, this state is spoken of as entrance into nirvana.
  • p. 108

• A mahatma knows before he thinks, and thought is used only as the working out and applying of knowledge.
  • p. 109

• The I-am faculty acting under the influence of the time faculty spins and weaves out of matter webs and conditions and environments for the mind through the manifested worlds in, under and according to which it acts. …According to the inactivity of the time faculty, the I-am faculty is unable to recall its relation to any period or event and is unable to see itself as existing in the past or the future. The time faculty must be present in all mental activities and operations of men.
  • p. 111

• The image faculty is the matrix in which matter is held and given outline and form.
  • p. 112

• Acted on by the focus faculty the image faculty may reproduce any form that has existed anywhere. By the focus faculty acting on the image faculty the mind is able to magnify infinitely the minutest forms, and reduce those of greatest magnitude to the infinitely small. In the absence of the focus faculty, the image faculty cannot show to the mind any distinct objects or forms, nor can it give mental perspective to figures.
  • p. 113

• when the dark faculty does not act at all, time disappears into eternity and all is a day of negative bliss, because there would be no shade or contrast to the light which would then prevail and the mind would make no calculations.
  • p. 114

• By means of the motive faculty, the mind causes all action and the results of action; and starts action of the other faculties. The motive faculty is the cause of their acting and determines their power. By the motive faculty, the mind decides upon its ideals and what its attainment shall be.
  • p. 115

• By the motive faculty acting on the I-am faculty, the mind decides of what it will become conscious, and by being conscious what it will become, determines what the quality of its reflective powers will be and what it will reflect.
  • p. 116

• Through the focus faculty the I-am faculty gives power. The I-am faculty acting through the focus faculty speaks itself out of, through and into each of the worlds.
  • p. 117

August 1910

• The faculties are trained by mental processes and not by the senses or their organs. The senses should not be keyed up as by gazing fixedly with the eyes closed, or by straining the ear to hear. The senses should be relaxed, not keyed up.
  • p. 120

• Seeking balance, justice, duality and unity is the mental attitude or condition in which one should be for the exercise of the focus faculty, and with this attitude he should bend all his faculties to know that which he values above all things. The subject which is taken must, however, not be anything connected with the senses or possible to be reached by sensuous perception. As he advances in his practice his mind will become clearer, the mental fog will be removed and he will be illuminated on the subject of his search.
  • p. 121

• There are no great things for one to do who would be a disciple, but there are many little things to do which are of the greatest importance. The little things are so simple that they are not seen by those who look about to do great things. But no great thing can be done by the disciple except by nurture of the small.
  • p. 122

• One must be his own physician and he must find it. It may have been long unnoticed, but it can be found in the heart. It may take a long search to find it, but when it is found and used, the results will repay the effort.
  • p. 123

September 1910

• WITH the subject of cleanliness, one learns about the subject of food. One who would enter the school of the masters must learn what are his needs of food, and what the kind and quantity which should be taken.
  • p. 124

• As a man's body is made up of the food he eats, so a man's mind is made up of the words and the thoughts which he thinks. One who would be a disciple of the masters needs simple food of plain words and wholesome thoughts.
  • p. 125

• The means by which one may make himself mature and fit for thought is, first, to procure and apply the cleansing simple to the heart, and at the same time to study words. Words mean little to ordinary man. They mean much to those who know the power of thought.
  • p. 126

• Much of the confusion will cease as people think less about many things and try to think more about fewer things.
  • p. 127

• An adept body is developed in the abdominal region and passes through the abdominal wall. A master body is carried in the heart and ascends through the breath. The mahatma body is carried in the head and is born through the roof of the skull. The physical body is born into the physical world. The adept body is born into the astral world. The master body is born into the mental world. The mahatma body is born into the spiritual world.
  • p. 127

• Those to whom this seems shocking cannot be blamed. It is strange.
  • p. 128
• As he cleans his heart with honesty, and will not lie, his heart becomes a womb, and in purity of thought he conceives in his heart a thought; he conceives the master thought; that is the immaculate conception. At an immaculate conception the heart becomes a womb and has the functions of a womb.
  • p. 128

• Adepts, masters and mahatmas may be taken as subjects of thought and they will be of benefit to the thinker and his race.
  • p. 129

• The world has been informed about adepts, masters and mahatmas. They will not press their presence upon men, but will wait until men can live and grow into it. And men will live and grow into it.
  • p. 130

• Two worlds seek entrance or recognition into the mind of man. Mankind is now deciding which of the worlds it will prefer: the astral world of the senses or the mental world of the mind. Man is unfit to enter either, but he will learn to enter one. He cannot enter both.
  • p. 130

"Atmospheres" editorial, 1910

Harold W. Percival. "Atmospheres," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 1, October, 1910. p. 1-12

• Physical man in his atmosphere is like a fetus enveloped in its amnion and chorion in process of development within its larger atmosphere, the womb. About three quarters of the nourishment by which his body is maintained is taken through his breath. His breath is not merely a quantity of gas which flows into his lungs.
  • p. 2

• Circulating through the astral form body and surrounding the physical, the psychic atmosphere has as one of its features that subtle influence spoken of as personal magnetism.
  • p. 3

• The mind moving in its mental atmosphere does not sense, and is not subject to sensation of any kind. Only when it acts through and in connection with the psychic atmosphere and the physical body is it susceptible to and experiences sensation.
  • p. 4

• Those of equally or nearly equal positive mental atmospheres are likely to antagonize and oppose each other if their ideals differ.
  • p. 5

• The incarnated portion of the mind does not long contemplate the spiritual man when the spiritual atmosphere makes its presence known, because the spiritual atmosphere is so unattached to and different from the psychic atmosphere that it produces an awe, a calm, a power and a presence, too strange to be contemplated by the human mind without dread or trepidation. So that when the spiritual atmosphere makes itself known by its presence, the mind is too fearful to be still and to know it.
  • p. 6

• If the mind of one is well trained and has his psychic nature well under control, it will be able to influence the mind and control the psychic atmosphere of the other. But if neither mind dominates its own psychic atmosphere, the strongest of the two psychic atmospheres will influence and dominate the psychic and mental atmospheres of the other.
  • p. 7

• If one's mental atmosphere has been connected with that of another, physical nearness is not necessary for him to affect that other's mental atmosphere. By his thought, one connects his mental atmosphere with the mental atmosphere of another. Through the mental atmosphere thought may be induced in or suggested to another.
  • p. 8

• This mechanical interpretation of the spiritual power imparted will shut out from his mind the light of his spiritual atmosphere.
  • p. 9

• The physical atmosphere is affected by physical action, the psychic atmosphere by desire, the mental atmosphere by thought, and the spiritual atmosphere by the faith in what one knows.
  • p. 11

"Hell" editorial, 1910

Harold W. Percival. "Hell," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 2, November, 1910. p. 1-12

• There is something in man which is called conscience. Conscience tells man when not to do wrong. If man disobeys conscience, he does wrong. When he does wrong he suffers.
  • p. 3

• To each man and woman will at sometime be proven the existence of that something which is expressed by the word hell. Life in the physical world will prove it to everyone.
  • p. 4

• The devil of one's own personal hell is one's overmastering and ruling desire. The devils' angels, or the little devils, are the lesser appetites, passions, vices and lusts which obey and serve their chief desire, the devil.
  • p. 5

• Whether or not he knows it, every thinking man living in the physical world is in hell.
  • p. 6

• Continued growth and development of the mind inevitably causes it to engage in the great struggle with the devil, the struggle with sex, and after that, final subjection of the devil by the overcoming of the desire for power.
  • p. 6

• The picture hells do exist only for the one who had painted them.
  • p. 8

• The mind accuses the devil and the devil accuses the mind. The mind commands the devil to go, and the devil refuses.
  • p. 9

• The mind will be subject to hell until it develops and adjusts its faculties, replaces ignorance by knowledge and attains mastery over itself.
  • p. 10

• Each mind will in some one physical life engage in its fight for freedom. It may not come out victorious in that life, but the knowledge gained through its experience of the fight will add to its strength and make it more fit for the final struggle. With continued effort there will be inevitably a final fight and it will win in that fight.
  • p. 11

• As long as the mind can suffer hell it is not fit to be immortal.
  • p. 12

"Heaven" editorial, 1910

Harold W. Percival. "Heaven," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 3, December, 1910. p. 1-19

• The mind is a foreigner from a happy realm, the mental world, where sorrow, strife and sickness are unknown.
  • p. 3

• To enter heaven, one must think of and do that which makes heaven.
  • p. 4

• The sense or senses which are concerned with the flesh have no part or place in heaven. Then what kind of senses are these heavenly senses? They are senses made by the mind temporarily and for the occasion, and do not last.
  • p. 5

• The heaven which man inhabits after death is in man's own mental atmosphere.
  • p. 7

• Each mind may participate in the heaven of another mind or with all other minds to the degree that their ideals are the same and to the degree that their thoughts are in tune, similarly as men on earth of kindred ideals are drawn together and enjoy mental association through thought.
  • p. 8

• THE mind must learn to know heaven on earth and to transform the earth into heaven.
  • p. 12

• The earth is in heaven and heaven is around and upon the earth, and mankind must and will be made aware of it. But they cannot know of it or know this to be true until they open their eyes to the light of heaven.
  • p. 15

• The man who will do right, whether his friends frown, his foes ridicule and taunt, or whether he is observed or remains unnoticed, will reach heaven and it will open for him.
  • p. 16

• A philosopher of materialism does not know the strength of that sympathy which is known to one who has entered heaven while on earth and who speaks from out his heaven
  • p. 17

• The best and most effective and the only way of bringing this new order of life into the life of present humanity is for man to begin and do this silently with himself, and so to take up the burden of one more cripple from the world. He who does this will be the greatest world conqueror, the noblest benefactor and the most charitable humanitarian of his time.
  • p. 18

• The thought which will bring heaven to earth is free from all that has to do with personality.
  • p. 19

1911

"Friendship" editorial, 1911

Harold W. Percival. "Friendship," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 5, February, 1911. p. 1-12

• Like honor, generosity, justice, sincerity, truthfulness and other virtues in frequent and indiscriminate use by the unmindful, friendship is spoken of and assurances of friendship are proffered and acknowledged everywhere; but, like the other virtues, and, although it is felt in some degree by all men, it is a bond and state most rare.
  • p. 1

• True friendship is in the unselfish motive which causes the thinking and the acting for another's good, without self interest
  • p. 3

• Friendships begin through gratitude. Gratitude is not the mere thankfulness which a beneficiary feels toward his benefactor. It is not the thanks given to cold charity for alms, nor is it the feeling miscalled gratitude felt or shown by an inferior for what his superior has bestowed upon him. Gratitude is one of the noblest of the virtues and is a god-like attribute. Gratitude is an awakening of the mind to some good thing said or done, and the unselfish and free out-going of the heart toward the one who did it. Gratitude levels all castes or positions
  • p. 5

• Should things arise which interrupt or appear to break the friendship, such as going to a distant place, or such as disagreements arising, or should communication cease, still, the friendship, though seemingly broken, is not at an end. Though neither should see the other before death, the friendship, having begun, is not yet at an end. When those minds reincarnate in the next or some future life, they will meet again and their friendship will be renewed.
  • p. 5

• Friendship is essentially a relationship of mind
  • p. 6

• Acquaintances may be chosen, but friendships arrange themselves. Friends will be drawn together as naturally as magnet attracts iron.
  • p. 9

• Friendship requires the strength to stand alone if need be.
  • p. 9

• Within the universal mind there is the divine plan, that each mind shall learn its own divinity, and the divinity of other minds, and finally shall know the unity of all.
  • p. 12

"Shadows" editorial, 1911

Harold W. Percival. "Shadows," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 13, No. 1, April, 1911. p. 1-19

• A shadow is not merely the absence of the light in the outline of the object which intercepts it. A shadow is a thing in itself.
  • p. 2

• Gloom follows and is a companion of a shadow, because a shadow obscures and shuts out the light from that on which it falls and gloom rests on that on which the light is obscured.
  • p. 4

• A very sensitive person may feel something of the influence of the invisible shade and the apparently visible shadow even though he may not know the causes which produces it or the law by which it was produced. The light which causes the shadow carries with it some of the finer essences of the body and directs the magnetism of that body to the object on which the shadow falls.
  • p. 5

• At an eclipse of the sun, the earth is in the moon's shadow.
  • p. 6

• If he can perceive the astral or design body of his physical structure, he will see the interior condition of his physical body, which physical body is the visible and outward expression of the invisible and interior condition. When he looks at his shadow he, sees the interior condition of his body as plainly as he would see the expression on his face by looking into a mirror. Whereas in the mirror he sees by reflection and sees the parts reversed from right to left, his shadow is seen by projection or emanation and there is a sameness of the position.
  • p. 7

• When one's shadow is projected by the light and is seen, it will show the condition of the health of the body. If the shadow increases in strength it will show a corresponding health and strength of body.
  • p. 8

• There are many varieties and degrees of physical bodies, but all are only shadows.
  • p. 10

• All physical appearances are shadows
  • p. 10

• To stop the pain and remain unbroken, man should not chase shadows nor flee from them; he must remain in and learn of them, until he finds that which is permanent in his world of changing shadows.
  • p. 11

• Shadows in the astral world are projections of copies of the forms of things in that world. The forms of the astral world are projections or shadows-not copies---of thoughts in the mental world. Thoughts in the mental world are emanations from the minds in that world. The thoughts or emanations in the mental world are projections by the light of the spiritual world, of the types of the spiritual world through the minds acting in the mental world. The physical objects in the physical world are the shadows of the forms in the astral world. The forms of the astral world are the shadows of thoughts in the mental world. The thoughts and ideals of the mental world are the shadows of the types or ideas in the spiritual world.
  • p. 13

• Light in each of the lower worlds has its origin in the spiritual world.
  • p. 13

• He identifies himself with his shadows, not knowing that he does it. So he lives in this physical world of shadows and sleeps carelessly on or moves restlessly and frets on through the night of his troubled sleep; he dreams of shadows and dreams his shadows into existence, and believes that shadows are realities. Man's fears and troubles must continue while he believes shadows to be realities. He quiets fear and ceases to trouble when he awakes to reality and knows shadows to be shadows.
  • p. 14

• Man sees shadows only when he looks away from the light. He who looks at the light sees no shadows. When looking steadily at a shadow for the light in the shadow, the shadow disappears as the light is seen. An acquaintance with shadows means familiarity with the worlds. A study of shadows is a beginning of wisdom.
  • p. 15

• So will be projected into this physical world by thought the shadow of forms of ideals now but dimly perceived.
  • p. 17

• All astral shadows act directly on and affect the senses. All mental shadows act on and influence the mind. Passion, anger, lust, malice, fear, greed, slothfulness, laziness and sensuality which move the senses to action, and particularly such which stimulate the senses without any visible cause, are the shadows of astral forces and forms which affect the astral form body, and this moves and acts through its physical shadow. Vanity, pride, gloom, despondency, selfishness, are shadows thrown on the incarnated mind from the thoughts in the mental world.
  • p. 18

• He will learn that every shadow may be dispelled by turning to reason and by looking at the light. He will know that when he invokes and looks at the light, the light will dispel the shadow and cause it to disappear. So when come the shadows which cause moods of despondency, gloom and pessimism to obscure the mind, he may by consulting his reason and turning to the light in aspiration see through the shadows.
  • p. 19

"Flying" editorial, 1911

Harold W. Percival. "Flying," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 13, No. 6, September, 1911. p. 1-16

• In moments of reverie, of deep thought, of ecstasy, man, the mind, knows that he can fly. …Then he looks at his heavy body and stays on earth.
  • p. 2

• Man has the Power to overcome gravitation and raise his physical body and take aerial flights in it, as surely as in his thought he can fly to distant parts of earth.
  • p. 5

• Why will a cat or a mule walk along the brink of precipice...They have no dread of falling, because they do not and cannot picture themselves falling. Because they do not imagine or form a picture of a fall, there is not the slightest likelihood that they will.
  • p. 8

• Under certain conditions the raising of his body from the earth may be accomplished by singing or chanting certain simple sounds. The reason that certain singing or chanting may so affect the physical body is that sound has an immediate effect on the molecular structure of every physical body. When the thought of lightness is intent on the raising of the body and the necessary sounds are produced, they affect the molecular structure from within and without, and, given the proper rhythm and timbre, it will respond to the thought of lightness, which will cause the body to rise in the air.
  • p. 9

• The motive force of flight moves a body along a horizontal plane.
  • p. 10

• These exercises and this feeling attunes the molecular form body within and throughout the physical matter of his body to the motive force of flight.
  • p. 12

• Man, if he ever had it, has long lost the power to induce the motive force of flight. But for man it is possible to attain all things.
  • p. 15

• Who can say when this will be done? It may not be until centuries hence, or it may be tomorrow. It is within the reach of man. Let him who will, fly.
  • p. 16

"Hope and Fear" editorial, 1911

Harold W. Percival. "Hope and Fear," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 2, November, 1911. p. 1-3

• "I, Hope, was begotten and named by Thought, your father, and nurtured by Desire, Queen of the Underworld, and ruler of the middle regions of the universe. But though I was thus called into being by our immortal parent, I am pre-existent, parentless, and eternal as the great father of all.
  • p. 1

• Desire awoke in the gods. Each saw in Hope naught but the object of his awakened desire.
  • p. 2

• "Do not shun Fear; she is but a shadow. If you will learn of her she cannot harm you. When you have passed through and banished Fear, you will have redeemed yourselves, found me, and we shall return to Heaven. Follow me, and let Reason guide you. "
  • p. 3

• Driven by fear and wandering through dark worlds, the immortals came down to earth in early times and took up their abode with and disappeared among the mortal men. And Hope came with them. Long since, they have forgotten who they are and cannot, except through Hope, remember whence they came.
  • p. 3

• Driven on by Fear, immortals walk the earth in forgetfulness, but Hope is with them. Some day, in the light which is found by purity of life, they will dispel Fear, find Hope, and will know themselves and Heaven.
  • p. 3

"Wishing" editorial, 1911 -1912

Harold W. Percival. "Wishing," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 3, December, 1911. p. 1-15

• Wishing is generally recognized to be idle indulgence, and many suppose that wishes are not followed by the things wished for and have little effect on their lives. But these are erroneous conceptions.
  • p. 4

• Those who have had some experience with the worldly and bodily wishes and find them to be evanescent and unreliable even when obtained, wish to be temperate, to be self-restrained, to be virtuous and wise. When one's wishing turns to such subjects, he stops wishing and tries to acquire these by doing what he thinks will develop virtue and bring wisdom.
  • p. 5

• The wisher with a method usually proceeds according to the new-thoughting scheme, which is, to state his wish and to call upon and demand of his law of opulence its fulfillment. His plea is that there is in the universe an abundance of everything for all, and that it is his right to callout from the abundance that portion for which he wishes and to which he now lays claim.
  • p. 6

• Wishing is a phase of this delusion, and when wishing is followed by practical results it is likely to be more dangerous than speculating in stocks and other ways of betting and gambling.
  • p. 8

• The same law applies to the desires and the emotional nature. He who wishes others to give him their affection and to gratify his desires, but gives little affection in return and has little consideration for their benefit, will lose their affection, and be shunned.
  • p. 9

• The ardent wisher always pays a price for every wish he gets.
  • p. 12

• The thing or condition for which one wishes is seldom if ever what he expected it would be, or if he gets just what he wanted it will bring unexpected difficulties or sorrow, or the getting of the wish will change conditions that the wisher does not wish changed, or it will lead or require him to do what he does not wish to do. In every case the getting of a wish brings with it or causes some disappointment or undesirable thing or condition, which was not bargained for at the time of wishing.
  • p. 12

• Wishing has become a habit with man.
  • p. 13

• When the energy of the mind or thinking principle is turned upon itself and is intent upon discovering its own nature and power, it is not led away and deceived by desire in the whirl of the senses.
  • p. 15

"Living and Living Forever" editorial, 1912

Harold W. Percival. "Living and Living Forever," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 5, February, 1912. p. 1-43

• Life is an invisible and immeasurable ocean, within or out of the depths of which are born all things.
  • p. 1

• Seldom is there one among men who grows out of his embryol state and who is living in contact with the ocean of life.
  • p. 2

• Men do not live naturally as animals, nor do they live as divine beings with intelligence.
  • p. 4

• He must understand that yielding to the bodily appetites and tendencies, causes pain and disease and decay, that pain and disease and decay can be checked by a control of the appetites and bodily desires, that it is better to control the desires than to give way to them.
  • p. 12

• If the way does not seem plain no one should attempt to follow it. His own judgment is asked of each one desiring immortal life; no other authority is given nor required.
  • p. 13

• He will see father, mother, husband, wife, children, relatives grow up and age and die like flowers that live for a day. Lives of mortals to him will appear as flashes, and pass into the night of time.
  • p. 14

• Man may arrest change and stop the conflict of these opposites by contemplating and becoming aware of and relating himself to the sameness or oneness of the unmanifested side of himself as an intelligent ultimate unit.
  • p. 18

• Living forever is not living for the enjoyment of delights.
  • p. 19

• It is time for men to be conscious that they are borne on by the torrent of life, and in a little while are engulfed by death. It is time to choose not to be so engulfed, but to use the torrent to be borne on safely, and to live forever.
  • p. 20

• The process of living forever is approached by thinking of living forever, and begins with the conception of the thought of living forever.
  • p. 21

• When he awakens to what living forever is, he will not be in doubt about what he should do; he will know the process and see his way.
  • p. 21-22

• The cells when hungry draw, pull, influence the mind towards the things which are of their nature.
  • p. 23

• A distinction should be made between what the body wants and what the body needs. The body's wants are what were its old desires, which were then sanctioned and gratified by the mind and which were impressed on the cells and reproduced by them in other cells. The body's needs are what the new and healthy cells require for their capacity to store the life force.
  • p. 24

• If this point is passed no solid food will be needed.
  • p. 25

• Gradually the cellular physical body becomes weaker in comparison with the molecular model body, as that becomes stronger and more evident to the senses.
  • p. 28

• As the molecular body becomes stronger and firmer new sensations are experienced. It seems as though with a slight effort the bands could be severed which bind to earth, and as though the veil which separates the physical form from other worlds could be removed. This must not be allowed. All that should be experienced by the molecular body must be experienced within the physical cell body. If other worlds are to be perceived, they must be perceived through the physical body.
  • p. 29

• The time required to accomplish all this depends upon the strength of character of the one engaging in the work, and upon the motive which prompts the undertaking. It may be done within the generation in which it is begun, or centuries may elapse before the work is finished.
  • p. 30

• The heart must not be set on anything in the world or of the world. Business, society and official life must be given up. These can be given up only when they are no longer duties.
  • p. 31

• The emotions must not be given free reign. They must be restrained.
  • p. 32

• Meditation is the conscious state in which man learns to know and knows himself as well as any thing in any of the worlds, that he may have imperishable being and freedom.
  • p. 32

• There is a fourth order or kind of meditation which has to do with the mind in its ultimate state as mind in the spiritual world of knowledge. It will not be necessary to outline this fourth meditation, as it will be discovered and known by the meditator as he progresses in meditation of the third or mental world.
  • p. 34

• In the organization called man, there is the germ of all of which it is possible for him to know or to become in any of the worlds manifested or unmanifested or in the cosmos as a whole.
  • p. 35

• Not all of the faculties of the mind are incarnate.
  • p. 36

• To find itself, the mind must not dissipate its light; it must conserve its light. To conserve its light it must not allow the light to run through the senses.
  • p. 37

• As man or the conscious light becomes steadier and is being centered in the body, its radiance through and around the body attracts stray creatures of the dark and inimical things, as well as those to which it has given being.
  • p. 38

• To bring the breath to a mutual point between its coming and going, where there is a true balance, the mind or thinking principle should not be turned or focussed on breathing.
  • p. 40

• In meditation the mind's light is not turned on a subject.
  • p. 41

"Christmas Light" editorial, 1912

Harold W. Percival. "Christmas Light," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 16, No. 3, December, 1912. p. 1-3

• Thinking man looks on, and in it sees symboled life's tragedy-and the forecast of his own. He sees the uselessness of effort in the endless round of life and death, and sadness falls over him.
  • p. 1

• Nature gives birth to man, then compels him to commit offences which she repays with hardship and death.
  • p. 2

• Ever must you, poor actor, hidden from yourself and others, in the costumes of your part, come on the stage and play, until you have paid and received pay for each deed in the parts you play, until you have served your time and earned freedom from the play.
  • p. 3

• Man will learn to see, if he will look into the light; he will learn to hear, if he will listen for the true; he will have the power to articulate speech, when he sees and hears. When man sees and hears and speaks with the harmlessness of power, his light will not fail and will let him know immortality.
  • p. 3

"Intoxications" editorial, 1912

Harold W. Percival. "Intoxications," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 16, No. 4, Jan, 1913. p. 1-19

• The spirit which acts through narcotics dwells at the threshold of the senses. It will not allow the conscious principle in man to pass beyond its realm, or to know its secrets and mystery, until he has proved himself immune to the seductions of the senses and has learned to control them.
  • p. 7

• The astral form body is the center toward which all intoxicating psychic influences move.
  • p. 12

• The astral form body is a magnet by which the cells making up the physical body are held in place.
  • p. 12

• The focus faculty, the faculty of the mind incarnate, seeks each of the four in turn, under its many forms in the physical world, then turns from each to seek them in the other worlds.
  • p. 13

• Then there is yet the glamour of the mind within, after the mind has lost interest in the world and the things of the world and is taken up with its own processes and workings only.
  • p. 16

• As one wants mirrors not for the sake of mirrors but because he may be gratified when he looks into them, so he wants near him those whom he thinks he loves, because of the sentiment or sensation in him which they arouse or reflect. When one looks steadily in his light within, he finds there that which is or was reflected in the form without. When he finds this he is cured of his love intoxication for the form without. Its glamour is dispelled.
  • p. 17

• When this love is known, the thoughts of love should again be summoned within the light; then the will should be to find the identity of self in each of the thoughts; and then it is known that the self in each is the same as in one's own self; that in love is the relation of sameness within each of the selves.
  • p. 17-18

• One who thus knows the secret of the relation of love has unlimited capacity to love. Love intoxications have no power. His love is in the self in all beings.
  • p. 18

1913

"Imagination" editorial, 1913

Harold W. Percival. "Imagination," editorial in The Word Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 2, May, 1913. p. 1-8

• Imagination will continue to sway destinies. It will carry some up into the heights and others into the depths. It may make or unmake men.
  • p. 1

• Time and place have much to do with the dreamer who wishes things would happen and waits for opportunities and moods, but the imaginor creates opportunities, drives moods from him, makes things happen. With him, imagination works at any time and in any place.
  • p. 2

• Desiring is the process of the turbulent, strong, attracting and unintelligent portion of the mind, demanding expression and satisfaction through the senses.
  • p. 3

• Inborn tendencies and motive in life will decide from which sources imagination draws.
  • p. 4

• Inability to know his subject of thought is not failure. Each effort is an aid in the end.
  • p. 5

• Those who have imaginative power are more intense and susceptible to the impressions of life than those who have little imaginative power. To the imaginator, friends, acquaintances, people, are active characters, who continue to live their parts in his imagination when he is alone.
  • p. 6

• Imaginative people chafe when law is restraint to innovation. They would adopt new measures and try new forms.
  • p. 7

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