Excerpts from

  Know Your Own Mind
by Harold Sherman




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HAROLD SHERMAN (1898-1987) was a renowned lecturer and author, and a recog­nized authority on the higher pow­ers of the mind, noted for his ability to help people help them­selves through right thinking.

It can safely be said that KNOW YOUR OWN MIND is Harold Sherman's most probing and help­ful book. It is for those who are seeking the last word in knowl­edge of Self. No one can read it without gaining tremendous ben­efit from it. It will be read again and again as a guide to personal power and achievement.

PREFACE

Words are crude vehicles of human concepts and ideas. But in our state of development, words must be used as best they can in an attempt to convey what is often sensed by the soul beyond the powers of ordinary expression.

It is to be hoped that you, the reader, who earnestly seek true knowledge of self, will open not only your mind but your heart to the concepts and ideas herein presented, putting aside preconceived beliefs and prejudices, thus permitting logic and intuition to sit in judgment.

Only in this manner can you escape the bondage of words, and experience the revelation of truth in your conscious-ness.

To begin to understand The Great Within, in which your soul resides, you must still the outer voice of Argu­mentation and learn to listen, as you read, to the inner voice of Wisdom, which will say to you again and again, as you awaken deep convictions within you, "This is true ... this is true!"

Proceed, therefore, with your mind receptive to pos­sibly new concepts. Prepare to act upon those which appeal as Truth. This is the only way to open the door to The Great Within and to keep it open.

Harold Sherman

Chapter 1

YOUR HIGHER POWERS OF PERCEPTION

Universal consciousness pervades everywhere and every­thing. There is no thing without consciousness. While we can ordinarily conceive of consciousness existing in ob­jects and beings, it is more difficult to regard the elements, themselves, as possessing consciousness. Not only does it indwell humans and animals, but vegetables, minerals and the four basic elements—earth, air, water and fire, as well. It functions on every level and is expressed through every object and being within the sensory limitations of that object or being at any given time. As evolutionary changes take place, bringing about a more sensitized condition of objects and beings, a greater and greater awareness of consciousness comes to exist within them.

It is today an established fact in physics that all ele­ments come originally from gases. Astronomers, observing the heavens within the range of Palomar's mighty tele­scope, have photographed incomprehensibly gigantic gas­eous clouds which they say are new galaxies of suns and planets in process of creation. To the eye of man, this stel­lar panorama would appear to be chaotic in nature, with­out intelligent design or purpose. But Science now knows that both design and purpose are present throughout the vast reaches of space; that universal consciousness is everywhere at work, at all times, and that no place exists where universal consciousness is not.

Consciousness is intelligence in action. Functioning on the subconscious level, it is constantly seeking new ways to express itself in form. Each environment is a challenge to consciousness to create and adapt forms capable of evolving in it. All life is, therefore, experimental, with myriads of species coming into existence and passing out again as consciousness moves on into new forms which leave the record of their existence in the Great Subcon­scious. A scientist has said that "the only thing permanent in the Universe, is change."

As consciousness evolves through form, it tends to indi­vidualize. In Man, all lower forms of life on this earth have been concreted. The experimental intelligence gained by consciousness in its expression through lower forms of life, long since discarded, is now a part of the human or­ganism. Man is inheritor of a body form designed by Uni­versal Intelligence for the indwelling of a state of aware­ness above and beyond that of any other creature on this planet.

There are, undoubtedly, other beings on other planets and in higher dimensions vastly superior to creature man. But there are conceivably no beings in the universe, hav­ing self-conscious identity, who hold greater promise for future development and unimagined attainment, not only here, but in the realms above, in the eternity of time to come.

When consciousness becomes conscious of itself, in any form, it takes on identity and senses, from that time on, the voice of God, the Great Intelligence, saying, "I am I" to it. Once this state of awareness has been reached, con­scious-ness has immortalized itself in form and that form becomes its pattern for eternal evolution and expression.

Self-conscious identification with God Consciousness is the goal of all creation. Every particle of consciousness is constantly seeking its affinity. This affinity is provided so that nothing in nature is without its balancing counterpart. There is a positive and negative charge in all things. The Universe, itself is electro-magnetic. Behind each electrical impulse is thought and behind thought is the God Con­sciousness from whence thought originates. God then, through His electro-magnetic circuit, is able to keep in constant communication with each particle and form and identity in His expanding creation, although much of it is still unconscious of Him and its origin in Him. This is because many elements of creation have not yet evolved to self-conscious levels and because God, the Great Intelli­gence, maintains absolute impersonality in relation to all parts of His creation, high or low.

There is a profound justice in such impersonality since it guarantees the exercise of free will for those beings attain-ing an awareness of the God Presence within them, and grants them the choice of personalizing God in their lives and consciousness by approaching closer and closer to Him in thought and feeling through higher and higher mental and spiritual development.

Primitive man conceived of God as a mighty Being, seated on a throne in the heavens, meting out the most horrendous punishment to sinning mortals. They felt that God was spying on their every thought and act, and were constrained to obey their interpretation of His laws through fear rather than love.

It is true that every thought and deed we have commit­ted is recorded in consciousness and continues to exist but God, as a Being, will not read these records. However, God's unchangeable laws are such that we can never escape the ultimate penalty of our own violation of these laws in any plane of our being—physical, mental, emo­tional or spiritual. We may think, for a time, that we have outwitted or eluded possible retribution in some form, for an unwise, dishonest or destructive thought or act, but so infallible is the functioning of the universal laws of cause and effect, they will most certainly exact their payment in kind, in due course. This is what is meant by the term so often used and so little understood—eternal justice. All life is governed by these laws which rule planets as well as men.

Once consciousness evolves to a self-conscious level in any form, such as man, the resultant identity must thereaf­ter assume personal responsibility for his thoughts and acts. He is now, in a very real sense, a son of God in the milking and, having become aware of the Father, whatever his concept of God In the beginning, he has made suffi­cient attunement to be held individually accountable by the laws governing his being.

When Man became conscious of a power greater than himself, a sense of personal accountability was born and Conscience came into existence. Since God is fundamen­tally Good, Man cannot be fundamentally bad. But Man, as a free will creature and creator, within certain limitations, of his own destiny, can so misuse and pervert his God-given creative powers that he can create evil and eventually destroy himself, with consequent loss of identity and re­turn to the Great Subconscious.

Today, as in all past times, God has not intervened to keep Man from warring against his fellow man. The God Consciousness never functions in this manner. All prayers for peace by the unchanged of heart, however well-inten­tioned, cannot and will never bring peace. If all or most men reached such a state of development that they be­came conscious of the God Presence within them, peace would instantly come to the world. But it is Man's job, not God's—to solve the problems of his own making here. He possesses, within his consciousness, all of the power and resources necessary to create a heaven on earth, if he so chooses. It has taken Man centuries to learn this one simple fact—and he has still not learned it.

He still chooses to achieve what he feels is right by force. He places reliance upon material weapons and pow­ers. He fills his mind with fears and hates and prejudices and doubts and suspicions, keeping himself under constant tension and turmoil. His religions support him in his atti­tudes. He professes to believe in his concept of God and calls upon God to help him destroy his enemies. He is, for the most part, totally unacquainted with the God Presence in his consciousness, for he reflects little or none of it in his life. This is the picture of Man on earth today, who is one step away from self-annihilation, when one step in the opposite direction, toward the God Consciousness within, could cast a great new light of hope over this small, dark planet.

Never before, in all earth history, has Man stood at such a crossroads. By awakening to a realization of the God Power within him, he can lift himself and all humani­ty with him, to a new level of consciousness which will awaken new senses for his better perception of the uni­verse about him, and for a better understanding of his fel­low humans. Man can never cope with the Great Without until he has learned to draw guidance, wisdom and protec­tion from the Great Within.

It is already half past eleven. In the half hour of relative time that Man has left, he must find himself in the God Consciousness.

World consciousness is, of course, Man's consciousness multiplied by every human being now existent on this planet. The dominant thought in this world consciousness at any given moment or period of time determines the conditions in the world. Identified with this current world consciousness is the vibratory influence of all past thoughts and feelings generated by human creatures in all past times. Since like attracts like, a war-like attitude on the part of millions of humans becomes attuned to similar thought forms still contained within the mental ether enve­lope which surrounds this earth. This partially explains why history seems to repeat itself with recurring cycles of wars and rumors of wars which are simply the externalization, at times, of mass thought.

What you, as an individual, think and feel is making its constructive or destructive contribution to the thought content of the world in which you live. Since what is in consciousness always seeks outer expression, the human race will never rise above wars and warring until it raises the level of its consciousness to the point that no future strife is possible.

Your physical body is the most sensitized instrument on earth. It may not function with the mechanical precision of a man-made machine, which automatically repeats a process, for your body is subject to growth and change and it has not even begun to approach its maximum of refinement and sensitivity. There is a constant interplay of forces within your physical organism from the moment it is conceived and your consciousness takes possession of it.

Its five physical senses are the channels through which your consciousness puts out "feelers" in an attempt to interpret what is happening in and about you. How you interpret what your mind senses through sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, and how you react emotionally to these interpretations determines, to a great degree, your attitude toward life and your capacity lo face life.

Up to recent times, few humans have learned to rely upon any higher sensory faculties within them. If they, inexplainably, became aware of some event and condition without the aid of any or all of their five physical senses, they usually attributed this occurrence to a happenstance and gave it little or no conscious reflection.

So prejudicial has been the general public attitude, so dictated by materialistic scientists and orthodox religion-ists. Few humans have dared confess illuminating experiences in consciousness to even their close relatives or friends.

For this reason scant attention or encouragement has been given by many to the possible development in them of an extended awareness in consciousness. And yet, the very fact that the persistent, spasmodic recurrence of what has long been termed "psychic phenomena" has taken place, time and again, in the lives of men and women of all ages and types and classes, provides undeniable evidence of the existence of these higher powers. Unhappily, a set mind creates its own mold and cannot move out of it un­less shattered by an inner or outer experience of such power that the established pattern of thinking is broken.

Today, the external pressures on the consciousness of each human are becoming so great that he must, eventual­ly, look within himself in search of some new strength or new wisdom to meet the soul-testing challenge of every day living. What is bad for the world can thus become good for the individual human if it can awaken in him the realization of the poverty of his own thinking and the sad and tragic fact that this failure to develop and utilize his God-given higher powers of mind is responsible for the desperately confused conditions which exist on earth.

If the history of the human race were to be written by a higher being possessing the discernment to evaluate Man, this point, it might contain this statement:

"This planet has been peopled with amazing little creatures almost totally blind to the existence within them of a God Consciousness. Thus far, these creatures have sought to function with their own limited con­sciousness and the awareness provided by their ex­tremely restricted physical senses. The progress they have attained has been at unspeakable cost in blood and sacrifice and suffering. Many times these creatures have drawn upon the God Power without realizing it and advanced because of it.

"But, today, these creatures have reached the limit of their material achievements without acceptance of the God Consciousness and its directing influence in their lives. They have reached the point where their own in­telligence is not sufficient, in itself, to cope with the world they have created and the forces they have un­leashed in it. They need, now, the wisdom which only their undeveloped and, as yet, largely unrecognized higher perceptions can bring to them."

Viewed impersonally, it will be of interest to see whether or not this experimental life form can or will let the indwelling God Consciousness work through it. If this crea­ture solves his present self-created crisis in this manner, it can be foreseen that he will then emerge into a new state of awareness which will lead him into a new world and liberate him forever from the unbridled urges of the animal nature within him.

It is, of course, profoundly difficult for Man to see him­self as he really is or could be, in true perspective. Few humans can assume an attitude of objective impersonality with respect to themselves, and they are so prejudiced in their own thinking that they are just as incapable of accurately appraising anyone else. Conflicting issues in con­sciousness of race and color and creed and temperament so becloud Man's judgment that he is unable to think free­ly or clearly upon problems confronting the human race as a whole. Because of this, his tendency is to attempt to force upon his fellow man what he feels would be good for him whether or not these measures are acceptable to those upon whom they would be imposed.

Such attitudes and actions only set up new resistances in human consciousness and drive Man further and further away from any possibility of genuine brotherhood and understanding. As a result, the reservoir of world con-scious­ness seethes with repressed hates and fears and resent­ments and lust for power and revenge, all of which must boil inevitably to the surface and externalize themselves in some cataclysmic release of human feelings unless this pent-up atomic disturbance in mass conscious-ness is spirit­ualized by a basic change in consciousness of the leaders of Mankind. Realistically, if this is too much to hope, then there is little or no hope for the future of humanity on this planet.

You need to know—everyone needs in know—that your physical instrument is actually a highly sensitized re­ceiver and transmitter of thought. Were this one great fact thoroughly recognized by all humans, it would startle them into the exercise of profound caution. Aware that their thoughts expressed in the form of fears and worries have an effect not only upon themselves but upon those nearest and dearest to them, they would seek to gain bet­ter emotional and thought control. Aware also, that it was possible for them to tune in on the wrong thinking of oth­ers, if their own thoughts were of a like nature, they would strive to elevate their thinking to lift them vibrationally above such destructive mental influences.

Normally, if Man is reasonably well-balanced physical­ly, emotionally and mentally, he is insulated in conscious­ness, except in unusually disturbed and intensified mo­ments, from the reception of thought impulses from the minds of others, known and unknown. But since the men­tal ether is filled with emotionally charged thought forms seeking their affinity in the minds of one or more humans, it is not to be wondered at that many men and women are tuning in and out of varying thought conditions in accordance with the nature and quality of their own thinking, at different moments each day and night.

Since consciousness is within and without all things and beings, it presses in upon every developed point of aware­ness like waters of the sea attempting to seep into every opening and crevice. You exist, in fact, in what might be termed a vast sea of consciousness, much of which is forever subconscious to you. But, in unguarded moments, some of this sea seeps into your own consciousness in the form of stray mental vagaries, impulses and ideas, often so foreign to your own nature as to cause you shock and wonderment at their fleeting existence within you.

You should realize that no thought ever dies. It may change its form through fusion with other thoughts of like character but it exists after emanation from your con­sciousness and continues an entitized existence of its own on the basis of what it is as created by you. This is the reason that an individual who has developed his extra sensory faculties can tune in and let himself be influenced by these thought forms which revolve in the mental ether about you or anything which has been connected with you. By inter­preting the effect of these thought forms upon him, such a sensitized individual can see in his mind's eye, or feel, the events and conditions of which these thought forms were once a part.

A troubled mind cannot find God—only more trouble. Your consciousness must be cleared of disturbances be­fore it can attract a new and better condition to you. Ev­erything that has come to you in this external life has come as a direct or indirect result of your thinking. You have attracted or repelled different experiences by positive or negative attitudes of mind.

It is impossible to think a thought without launching it upon the electro-magnetic ocean of consciousness. Each thought, inherently and inevitably seeks an externalization of itself. If you visualize a certain attainment involving other people, you create the thought form of this achieve­ment which then commences to attract magnetically, in ways incomprehen-sible to you, the resources and circumstances necessary to the materialization of what you have visualized in actual physical form and fact. If you change any feature or detail of your objective in mind, you auto­matically set in motion altered thought forms which ulti­mately bring about like changes in your finally realized attainment.

Because there must be a "meeting of the minds," like again attracting like, where two or more persons are in­volved in any association or enterprise, a modification of thoughts and desires usually takes place so that the objec­tive accomplished becomes the composite product of all might have developed in recognition and exercise of your every activity in the universe, however seemingly impor­tant or insignificant any activity may appear to be. Thought precedes every action of every form of life, every element, every particle in the cosmos.

It can be seen from this that we, as humans, have made, as yet, very little constructive use of thought. It is seldom that we have entertained thoughts of high inspiration and purpose. It is only infrequently that our thoughts have risen above the level of self interest and selfish desires. The consciousness that is you is made up of the thoughts which you have had concerning everything that has hap­pened to you. You have become aware of only that which you have experienced. The greater awareness which you might have developed in recognition and exercise of your higher powers of perception lies largely still dormant with­in you. It is this awareness which you and all members of the human race now need to enable you to see in the fu­ture something other than a tragic repetition of the past.

Your five physical senses can report only what has happ-ened or will happen again since they are restricted solely to contact with the world outside yourself. But these high­er senses were designed to help you see and apprehend and create new worlds not only here but hereafter as the consciousness that is you continues its evolutionary jour­ney through time and space, seeking some day, some­where, a self-conscious union with the God Consciousness.

To begin, now, to discover and develop your powers of higher perception should be your most consuming desire.

Your future happiness, your security, even your life may substantially depend upon what yon do with your mind in the next few years to come. Giving thought to the exten­sion of your awareness does not mean the development of telepathic powers, for instance, which may enable you to give parlor demonstrations to your friends. Even if you should find that you were capable of giving such a demonstration in lime to come, it would serve little con­structive purpose. Any honest failures on your part would be open to ridicule of skeptical, unsympathetic individuals which could easily have such a repercussion upon your consciousness as to impair your own sensitivity and inhibit it from serving you, quietly and effectively, for the protec­tion and guidance of yourself and loved ones.

Those humans who have developed to a high degree these extra sensory faculties hold a deep regard and re­spect for them and refuse the temptation to use these pow­ers in a frivolous or even commercial manner. A number have been willing to put these powers under test of scien­tific observers and to exercise them in cases of great human need when some extra sensory knowledge of an in­dividual, a locality or a condition was urgently required. But many of the so-called sensitives, aware of the world's scoffing attitude toward possession of such faculties, with­hold a knowledge of their possession from many of their closest friends and relatives. This attitude will probably prevail, for the most part, with a few exceptions, until wider acceptance of these higher sensory powers is shown by science, religion and the public.

When and if you decide to give attention to the devel­opment of your own higher powers of consciousness, you should be prepared to put forth a sustained, earnest effort. Your mind will react to your exercise of it like a muscle of your body. Flex your arms fifteen minutes a day, morning and evening, and you will have appreciably larger biceps within a few months' time. The same period of time devoted to the stimulation of your extra sensory perceptive fac­ulties will produce commensurate results.

If at first doubtful that these powers exist, you must ac­cept on faith that they really do. Otherwise, mystics and sensitives and experimenters the world over unanimously testify that these higher powers will not manifest. There is something about their operation which always demands confidence and faith. The mind, in a receptive state, is so suggestible that it will give no evidence of the existence of its higher powers if the individual is strongly skeptical and does not expect results.

It is a waste of time and effort to attempt to demon­strate these powers without any real feeling of conviction or inner urge so to do.

The God Consciousness does not compel you to make attunement with it. Nor are you under any compulsion at any time to learn to make use of extra sensory faculties. But they are there for you whenever you wish to activate them and they will reward your exercise of them by even­tually bringing to you a conscious awareness of your rela­tionship to the God Power within, and your ability to draw upon it for the help and guidance you have long needed but which you have denied yourself by dependence upon the testimony of your five physical senses alone.

You are on the threshold of a new and finer unfoldment of your own real self from the moment you decide to call upon your higher powers of perception to serve you in your daily life.

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