In this book we shall direct your attention to a very important phase or form of your Personal Power. Inasmuch as your Personal Power is a phase, form, aspect, or mode of the expression and manifestation of that POWER from which all Power directly or indirectly proceeds, it follows that the particular form of Power to which we are now proceeding to call your attention is one of the manifold manifestations and expressions of that All-Power of the universe.
The particular phase or form of Personal Power which constitutes the subject matter of the present book is that known as Perceptive Power—the power by means of which you perceive, discern, observe, distinguish, and know the things of the outside world by means of the senses and the mental processes employing the raw material furnished by the sensory apparatus. By means of Perceptive Power you see, hear, feel the impressions received from the outside world. By means of Perceptive Power you are able not only to know that outside things exist, but also to apprehend them by the intellect, to discern differences between them, and to distinguish one class of things from others.
Your “percepts,” i. e., the products of your Perception, furnish the elemental material from which all your concepts, notions, and ideas concerning things are derived, constituted, composed, or made up. Your percepts are the units with which memory, imagination, thought, reason, and judgment build their structures. All mental processes begin with Perception, and depend upon it for their material.
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Around and about you is a wonderful World of Things, infinite and inexhaustible in its contents. But within this world is a smaller and far more restricted world; a finite world consisting of the scattered items of material which you have abstracted from that outside world by means of your Perceptive Power. No matter how great may be that outside world, this inner world represents all that you have perceived and observed of that greater realm. The size, the extent, the limits of that inner world are determined entirely by the degree of Perceptive Power which you have employed in the task of building up this little mental kingdom within yourself. You are its creator, its ruler, its architect, its builder—the maker of its boundaries. It is as large or as small, as great or as insignificant, as you determine it to be—no more, no less.
All that you know, have ever known, or ever will know of the great outside world is comprised in that particular mirrored representation or reflection of portions of it which constitutes your individual World of Experience. By “Experience” is meant:
“The practical knowledge gained by observation or trial; the acquaintance acquired by personal observation or experiment.”
Your World of Experience is your world of actual perception, observation and experiment. Whatever the outside world may or may not be in itself, it is certain that all you know of it is that knowledge gained by your direct or indirect experience and observation of it. This knowledge is originally mirrored upon your mind by Perception—the rest is a matter of rational induction or deduction consisting of inference based upon this original material of experience and observation.
Your World of Experience is your inner world. It is located in your mentality—on the conscious or subconscious planes or fields of your mental being. It is your own—your very own. No other person may enter into it, or dwelt within its borders—it is sacred to yourself. It is different from the corresponding inner worlds of all other persons—no two persons possess identical Worlds of Experience.
You, Yourself, have created this unique World of Experience which is your very own. You, Yourself, are still creating it, and will continue to create it so long as you live. You create it with that wonderful tool or instrument which you call the Power of Perception that is, you so create its elementary materials which are then “worked up” and built up into more complex forms by the other faculties of your mind. You are the Creator of this World of Experience. If you are wise, you will perform your creative work so thoroughly and efficiently that in the end you will be justified in “looking upon it and calling it good.”
Careful analysis of your mental operations, experience, and consciousness will always reveal to you the important fact that you, Yourself, are always the beginning, always the centre, always the end of your World of Experience. From that point of beginning, from that central point, and toward that end, you have proceeded to the creation of your World of Experience. You build from the centre, outward; your horizon of experience constantly expands as your perceptive vision increases and takes in a greater area of the outside world. Through the glasses and tubes of the telescopes and the microscopes of the senses, you perceive and observe the things of the outside world, and represent them in your own World of Experience which abides within yourself; but it is you, Yourself, who are always at the observing end of these instruments.
We now invite you to consider the processes by means of which you have created this unique World of Experience—this inner world which is your very own.
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Plato well said that the Ego is “imprisoned in the body like an oyster in his shell.” You, Yourself, cannot get outside of this shell—at least while you are on this particular plane of existence. You cannot escape from its confining limits and thus secure immediate contact with the outside world and so acquire direct knowledge of its facts and events. On the contrary, you are entirely dependent upon certain channels of communication with that outside world for your reports from it; these reports are then converted by you into the finished material with which you create that mirrored world of representation—your World of Experience. If these channels of communication had never been opened to you, then you would never have been able to create your World of Experience—there would exist no such World of Experience for you. In such case, the fact of your own existence would constitute your only item of experience and knowledge—your oyster-shell would never have opened to admit an inflow of the waters in which it is immersed, and you would be unaware even that such waters existed.
All that you know, ever have known, or ever can know of the outside world becomes known to you by means of the reports furnished by the channels of communication with the outside world—the channels of the senses. While your higher mental faculties may select from these reports such as they choose; may examine, combine and arrange them in logical classification; may draw inferences from them so as to learn the unknown from the known; may store them in memory, and rearrange them in the form of mental pictures of the imagination; yet, at the last, you will find that in these reports of the senses you have your only possible “raw materials of knowledge.” Upon the strength, clearness, and truth of these reports, as well as upon their number and variety, depend the particular degree and character of knowledge and experience possible of acquirement by you.
The “I AM I,” which is Yourself, is constantly receiving a stream of messages and experiences from the outside world. It is well within the facts of the case to compare that “I AM I,” which is Yourself, to the managing editor of a great metropolitan newspaper, seated at his desk, receiving from all parts of the world a multitude of messages of all kinds which give him the news of the day from which he makes up the next issue of his paper. From this point of the compass, and from that one, pour in the messages—he receives them all.
Some of these messages he discards as nonessential and uninteresting; some he bids his assistants to abridge, discarding a portion while retaining the rest; some he accepts in their entirety; to others he adds previously received details; some are headlined by him in accordance with the traditional policy of his journal; others he bids his editorial helpers to employ as premises from which to draw inferences to be expressed in the editorial columns; others are condensed into brief items for the general summary of the news of the day. He is not actually in the outside world in which these events are happening—he remains seated at his desk, receiving the messages from that outside world—and from these messages he is creating and building up a mirrored world—a representative, symbolic world which takes form in the printed newspaper.
You are in a position very similar to that of this managing editor. You, Yourself,—the “I AM I” element of yourself—are safely sheltered in the inner chamber of your being. Your “I AM I” is not present in the outside world—it is present only at the centre of your consciousness, your inner world which is a mirrored representation of the world external to itself. All that your “I AM I” knows of that outer world it knows by reason of the sensory messages received from it.
This thought may never have occurred to you, but it is a fact that the only world you really know is this inner World of Experience which you have created for yourself from the reports received through the sense-channels from the actual outer world. If your senses are normal and acute, your inner World of Experience will represent the result of your possession of such sense-qualities; if your senses are deficient or lacking in any respect, or if they are dull and untrained, then your inner World of Experience will as truly represent such conditions.
You see, then, that your World of Experience is not a complete representation of the outside world at all; it only represents such portions of that outside world which, in the first place, have been reported to you by your sense-impressions; and, in the second place, only such portions of these reports which have actually been accepted by you in Perception—all the rest is lacking.
Your World of Experience, then, is merely a symbolic picture of certain aspects of the outside world which have been perceived by you and taken into your inner world—it is a work of art, rather than a work of Nature; and you are the artist who has created that work. Moreover, your World of Experience is not permanent; it is constantly receiving finishing touches, improvements, alterations, and modifications at your hands, resulting from new reports reaching you. You, as you grow and change, are working incessantly (and often involuntarily) at the task of creating your World of Experience.
It is a matter of the soundest philosophical and scientific teaching that you, Yourself, have created, are now creating, and so long as you live will continue to create this inner World of Experience which constitutes “the world” to you. You create this world from the “raw material” furnished by Sensation, accepted and interpreted by Perception; your processes of classification, inference, induction and deduction; and your creation of ideas, concepts, and mental images from these “worked up” materials. You, Yourself, and none other but Yourself, are the creator of this inner world which is “all the world” to you—the only world that you really know, at the last analysis. This is a statement of tremendous importance to you, if rightly understood; and you should not lightly pass it by—you should carefully consider and assimilate it.
If you have any doubts concerning the truth of the above statements, and should feel desirous of further proof of them, you will find such proof at hand and in abundance. You need go no further than to consider how different the same outside world appears to different individuals observing it from the same place, at the same time. Each individual will be found to have received messages from the same outside world, under the same outer circumstances, but under different inner conditions—and each individual will have formed a different conception of that same outside world.
The same outside world is present in each case, but the respective inner Worlds of Experience of the several individuals will be found to differ very materially from each other—no two will be exactly the same, and an almost incredible diversity and variety of perceptions have resulted. This fact of diversity and variety does not arise from any essential conditions of the outer world, you must remember; it is caused solely by the differences in the receiving instruments of Sensation, the degrees of power and training of the faculty of Perception, and by the use made of this material by the higher powers of the mind, on the part of the respective several individuals. The difference comes from within—not from without.
But here we wish to impress upon your mind a very important fact, namely, the fact that the powers of Perception, Observation and Attention—those powers which by their varying degrees of perfection cause the differences to which we have directed your attention—are capable of training, development and cultivation; they respond readily to the proper methods employed for such purposes, and pay large returns for the investment of time and patience bestowed upon such tasks. It is a mistake to imagine that such powers are possible only to those who are “born with it”; it is an error to regard them as akin to the shape of the nose which is born with one, and which never can be altered or improved or exchanged for another more in accord with one’s wishes. On the contrary, there are no mental powers which respond more readily to training, development and cultivation than do these very ones now under consideration by us.
By means of approved scientific methods, not only weak faculties of this class may be developed into strong ones— inefficient ones into efficient ones—but even those which are considered reasonably strong and efficient may be made still stronger and still more efficient. Very few persons have done more than merely to begin to employ the full inherent powers of these faculties. Most of us are content if we find ourselves in the class of “the average” in such respects; we little dream of the wonderful possibilities ahead of us in this direction.
Here and there, however, are found thoughtful persons who are advocating the employment of methods of cultivating these faculties in the young, as an important part of their education. These wise men and women very properly hold that such education would enable the child to learn by Observation and the scientific employment of the powers of Attention, far more effectively than by simply committing to memory the mass of “book knowledge” which constitutes so large a part of the average modern education.
That such training, development, and cultivation is well worthwhile to you will be apparent when you stop to consider that through these mental faculties in question you receive every constituent of your entire World of Experience; that from such raw materials you obtain the only possible basis for your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions. If you seek a life rich in experience, in knowledge, in effective action, and in the highest emotional feeling, you will do well to begin here at the stage of the acquirement of these “raw materials of knowledge,” which are also the raw materials of all conscious experience and its expression. These raw materials are the bricks, the stone, the timbers from which the structures of our World of Experience must be constructed. Moreover, they constitute also the ground upon which these structures are erected, the background, the scenery—the solid earth underfoot, and the blue skies above that World of Experience.
You are a creator of this world within—whether or not you desire to be. You are creating—you must create—a World of Experience of some kind or character, and some degree of efficiency and merit. You cannot avoid the task. This being so, can you escape the conviction that it is your duty toward yourself, toward your fellows, toward the POWER which brought you into being, to build that world as well, as effectively, as beautifully, and as magnificently as lies within you so to do? It has well been said that “By their works they shall be known.”
This World of Experience is one of the greatest of your “works”— it is the work upon which much of your other “works” depend.
Therefore, it is the standard and measure by which you are to be judged—by others as well as by yourself. By it you shall be “known”—see to it that you are “known” well and favorably.
Preview — First chapter