FOREWARD

You have now arrived at the last Lesson of the Course. Does this mean that Pelmanism is over and done with? It does not.

It means that you know it as a science and have begun to practice it as an art: the art of self-realization.

This concluding Lesson contains a survey of facts and principles; it contains also some new proposals for personal application.

What you have now to do is to use PELMAN principles in your life; and that means the building up of habits in accordance with the teaching with which you have become familiar.

Let us now survey it.

Pelmanism in Action

I. TWO WORLDS—EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL

A commonplace is not necessarily unimportant. Indeed, it is because of its importance that it has become a commonplace. The existence of two worlds, the world within and the world outside ourselves, though it may be staled by repetition, is not falsified by familiarity.

We are more apt to fall short of our life’s purpose because we are not faithful to what we know than because of the many gaps in our knowledge.

It is our manifest duty therefore, and greatly to our knowledge, to acquire, so far as we are able to, a knowledge of both worlds, and of the secret ways in which they interact.

You will remember that early in the Course we stated a few truths about the working of the mental machine, selecting those which were of value for the purposes of training. We made no attempt to provide an outline of psychology.

What we did was to give a glimpse of the dynamic functions of the mind in action, such as interest-power, concentration, will, etc. In this way the world within became more real to you, and you felt the force of our contention that the excellence seen in the impressive works of man was first an excellence in the mind.

How Ideas are Realized

St. Paul’s Cathedral and the London County Hall were primarily ideas. Then they came into existence as architects’ plans. Finally, the ideas were embodied in stone and marble.

An artist’s picture passes through various stages ere it is ready for the public view, and a poet’s poem is often a transition from thought to printed expression which involves planning and organizing as well as wide knowledge and fine feeling.

The main point, however, is that the idea always comes first.

Success Begins in the Mind

Now there are tens of thousands of men and women to-day who have the initial idea for accomplishing great things. They have vast opportunities before them; chances of success beyond their highest dreams. Why do so many of these people fail?

Simply because they have not realized that external success must first be internal success. Their ideas are insufficiently developed. Further, it is one thing to have a new idea; quite another thing to make it actual.

What is needed in so many instances is an increase of practical ability. There is no proper correspondence between the idea itself and the power to make it an objective reality.

Successful men in the sphere of action are characterized by this adjustment between the world within and the world without. They have better ideas than the average man because their abilities have had a better training, and they can devise ways and means for making those ideas "go."

Psychology and Civilization

All the impressive facts of civilization, its great buildings, its huge commercial interests, its science and its art, its literature and its inventions, have had their origin in the mind of man.

It follows, therefore, that to increase the values of civilization, we must increase the efficiency of our powers.

In the development of a nation the sum-total of the progress of the individuals who compose it is the most important factor. He who would advance, must begin the advance within. A high price is put on skilled thinking.

Besides, the one and only rule is to seek first the things that are first by nature; other things will be added. Therefore we now turn to those more intimate relationships out of which spring our inner conflicts.

Inner Conflicts

There are several kinds of conflict, but many of them imply a lack of adjustment between the facts of the world outside and the world of mind within.

Very often conflict is due to a feeling of inferiority. Sometimes a sense of the hardness of the conditions of existence occasions a despairing attitude.

Frequently, the feeling is one of an inequality which is brutally unfair, pressing heavily on the unequipped man and on those who are easily depressed. Whatever the origin, the feeling is undoubted. A conflict rages.

The "Complete" Life

Now one of the aims of PELMANISM is to abolish these inner conflicts, and open a way to freedom of action.

It sets to work to reconstruct the student’s mind by showing him how the mind operates.

It reveals the need of an aim to create and develop interest.

It demonstrates the fact that achievement is first mental and afterwards actual.

It offers valuable suggestions as to the living of a complete life.

If it is true, as Havelock Ellis has asserted, that we have mastered the powers of nature but over our own souls we have no mastery at all, it can only be because our treasure lies in some external fact rather than in some internal reality: for where our treasure is there will our heart be also. Of this more anon.

There is a saying to the effect that

Right thinking has been our aim all along; and by this time the student should feel himself adjusted to life—able to meet its demands cheerfully and confidently, and with an absence of that inward disturbance which militates against his success.

At any rate once more we will go over some of the ground already covered, in order to vitalize out first impression.

In this connection are the associated Lessons dealing with Self-Realization, Self-Expression and Personality, and the Use and Abuse of Reading.

Whatever success there is in the achievement of fame and wealth—and they are distinctions for which a sacrificial price is paid—the success of self-realization is one which is more easily, and often more naturally, attained.

The wealth is within, not so much without. Existence means a something, not a nothing. A new scale of values appears, and we are no longer measure achievement solely by material or social standards but by one that is personal.