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Mental Alchemy PDF

147 Pages·2015·0.797 MB·English
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MENTAL ALCHEMY by Ralph M. Lewis © 1978 and 2015 Supreme Grand Lodge Of The Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis. All Rights Reserved. This publication is for your personal, private use only, and may not be used for any commercial purpose. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, displayed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express and prior written permission of Supreme Grand Lodge Of The Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. For permission requests, please contact: Supreme Grand Lodge Of The Ancient And Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, Inc., Rosicrucian Park, 1342 Naglee Ave, San Jose, California 95191. The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book. DEDICATION To My Wife Whose encouragement and support in many ways made this work possible. R.M.L ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am greatly indebted in the preparation of this work to the splendid typing and organizing assistance of my secretaries, Alene Simonich, Anita Prater, and Michelle Ziebel. I also express appreciation of the proofreading and editing suggestions of Ruth Phelps. RALPH M. LEWIS April 1978 CONTENTS Introduction 1. Was There a Beginning? 2. Is God an Energy? 3. Body, Mind, Soul 4. Are Good and Evil Absolute? 5. Is Consciousness Universal? 6. What is Psychic Development? 7. Intuition, Idealism, and Illumination 8. Creativity—It’s Mystery and Mechanism 9. Applying Creativity to your Environment 10. The Nature of Value 11. What is Positive Thinking? 12. What is Self-Mastery? 13. Mysticism—A Way of Life 14. Suggestion to the Inner Self 15. What is Transcendental Meditation? 16. Willing Oneself to Relax 17. Interpreting Cosmic Guidance 18. Our Mission in Life 19. Cosmic Ethics 20. Mysteries of Psychic Phenomena 21. Reincarnation—Fact or Fancy? 22. Metaphysics and Science 23. What Constitutes Progress? 24. How Should We Regard Death? INTRODUCTION W HAT IS LIFE all about? What is the real, which of our thoughts are reality? Our minds ever go through a process of mental alchemy. Our experiences are constantly transmuting former ideas into new concepts. But which are the true guides in life, the former beliefs, traditional ideas, or the new conclusions we personally arrive at? In the final analysis our view of life, what we expect of it, is a personal construct. We have a better chance of shaping our existence into a happy state if we do not try to avoid the puzzling questions which life brings forth. How should we confront these mysteries of the self and its relation to all else which the self confronts? What we believe is as important a motivating factor in the course of our lives as what we know. In fact, many of the thoughts by which we shape our lives are abstract. They are what we believe but which have not yet been experienced and perhaps cannot be. What is presented in the following chapters are those ideas that in some form or manner eventually come to the attention of most everyone. The presentation may not have the reader’s acceptance but we hope it will cause him to think seriously about the so- called “mysteries of life.” Accepting just the traditional explanations often restricts thought and causes misconceptions leading to pitfalls of error and their adverse consequences. However, is the reliance which we place upon our beliefs always justified? Do we resort to beliefs as the substitution for knowledge? It behooves us to give thought, especially in this day and age, to the nature of belief. We should learn of any distinction that may exist between beliefs and points of knowledge. Why do we say, for example, “I believe in life after death,” instead of declaring, “I know.” In fact, why do we say that we believe anything rather than affirming our knowledge of it? Belief is an assumption of knowledge. Knowledge, in contrast to belief, is experience. Knowledge is empirically realized, that is, it is objectively perceived. If, for example, we hear a pattering noise on the windowpane, we may say, “I believe it is raining.” We say believe because we have not directly perceived the rain. Previous experience tells us that the noise we hear could be from other sources, so we say “believe.” We are thus assuming a knowledge.

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