"No one can multiply himself by himself. He must first divide himself and give himself to the service of all, thus placing himself within all others through acts of thoughtfulness and service.

"The personal ego must be suppressed and replaced with the 'universal ego.' One must not be the part, one must be the whole. The 'I' must be forgotten. I had it. All men have it, and all pass through that stage.

"I once thought that greatness was the only thing worthwhile, but when I achieved it to some extent I found that I was not satisfied with it, because there was something beyond, so much higher, that all publicity and praise made me feel ashamed instead of proud, for I felt there was so much farther to go than I had gone. Early in life I found that to achieve greatness one had to go only one inch beyond mediocrity, but that one inch is so hard to go that only those who become aware of God in them can make the grade, for no one can achieve that one inch alone.

"When I arrived at the point where I received public acclaim I felt the most lowly, because I knew within myself that I had but begun to tap my inner resources. I knew that I had not yet achieved that one inch which would make of me a worthy messenger.
"To state it generally," explained Mr. Russell, "no expression of anything is that which it expresses. The play is not the playwright--the paint is not the picture, the words are not the poem, nor is the poem the poet. Likewise, in the bigger sense, Creation is not the Creator--Creation is but the thinking of the Creator, and even the thinking of the Creator is not the Creator--it is but His extension, His imaging, His expression of All-Knowledge, All-Power and All-Presence.

"In this same sense we think our bodies are our real selves. Instead of that, our bodies are but the product of our imagings. They are merely machines which operate and are motivated by the thought-waves which spring from our consciousness as water waves spring from the calm sea. That thought energy is focused in our brains just as the spot of light is focused by a lens to become a more brilliant spot of light, gathered together from a large area into a point until it is strong enough to burn. Well, you feel that consciousness or that universal intelligence of space itself because of that sensation focused in your body which deceives you into believing that your body is you. Well, it isn't. Your body is merely a machine made to express the thoughts that flow through you and nothing more. It is but an instrument for you to express your imagings just as a piano is an instrument for a musician to express his imagings. Just as the piano is not the musician so, likewise, your body is not you."

"You say that the thought which flows through you," I interrupted, "is itself never created; the thought belongs to the universe; it is only the form of the thought that is created?"

"Yes". he replied. "I can go back to the answer which Rodin gave to Lillian Russell when she asked him if it would be very difficult to learn to be a great sculptor. 'No, Madam,' he replied, 'it is not difficult. It is very simple. All you have to do is to buy a block of marble and knock off what you do not want.'"

Copyright by the University of Science and Philosophy

"No one can make a sale, write a book or invent anything without first having that deep reverence which makes him know and feel that he is merely an interpreter of the

thought-world, one who is creating a product of some kind to fit a purpose. If you always

look toward the visible product, you merely look toward the effects of cause. If you look reverently in the inward direction toward your inner self you will be amazed at what you will find. If you are alone long enough to get thoroughly acquainted with yourself, you will hear whisperings from the universal source of all consciousness which will inspire you. These are actual messages, actual revelations, telling you, guiding you, showing you the way to the Source of the thought-world into the world of what we call creation to produce through your interpretations the images which crowd your mind which you do not see. You will soon find yourself using the cosmic forces which you also cannot see, instead of working blindly in the dark.

"I learned to cross the threshold of my studio with reverence, as though I were entering a shrine set apart for me to become co-creator with the Universal Thinker of all things.

"I do not say as I enter my studio, 'I am a sculptor, I ought to be able to do that thing.' Instead of that I say, 'I am an interpreter who can think that thing within me which is worthy of being done.' When I get that feeling, that rhythm, that meter, that measure which comes to me as an inspiration, then I know that I can produce it, and nobody under Heaven can tell me that I cannot produce it.

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"Inspiration comes only to those who seek it with humility toward their own achievements and reverence toward the achievements of God. With love of your work, love of life and reverence for the universal force which gives you unlimited power for the asking, you may sit on the top of the world if you desire to sit there. Flashes of inspiration come only to those who plug in to the universe and become harmonious with its rhythms by communion with it. Inspiration and intuition is the language of Light through which men and God 'intercommunicate.' The universe does not bestow favors upon the few whom it seeks out as its interpreters. It is just the reverse. The universe gives to those who ask without favor. The electric plug which connects you is desire. Edison desired to be informed how to materialize his idea which gave us the electric light. Closely shut up within the temple of himself he got it a little at a time in flashes which gradually answered his appeal.

"Ask and you shall receive. You must, yourself, do the asking. In my philosophy is a passage which reads, "Mediocrity is self-inflicted. Genius is self-bestowed.'

"Many have asked if I could more specifically direct them how to kindle that spark of inner fire which illumines the way to one's self. That I cannot do. I can merely point the way and tell you of its existence. You must then find it for yourself. The only way you can find it is through being alone with your thoughts at sufficiently long intervals to give that inner voice within you a chance to cry out in distinguishable language to you, 'Here I am within you.' That is the silent voice, the voice of nature, which speaks to everyone who will listen.

"Lock yourself up in your room or go out in the woods where you can be alone. When you are alone the universe talks to you in flashes of inspiration. You will find that you will suddenly know things which you never knew before. All knowledge exists in the God-Mind and is extended into this electrical universe of creative expression through desire. Knowledge is yours for the asking. You have but to plug into it. You do not have to learn anything, in fact, all you have to do is recollect it, or recognize it, for you already have it as your inheritance."
In his inspired book, The Divine Iliad he states this principle in the following words:

As the dawn telleth the coming of the new day:

I turn my eyes to the morning and purge myself in the purity of the dawn.

My soul quickeneth with the beauty of the dawn.

Today is, and will be.

Yesterday was, and has been.

My yesterday is what I made it. I will to make it perfect.

I have the power to build the day or to rend the day.

The day will be of my making either perfect or imperfect, good or bad as I choose to live it in spirit or in flesh, on the mountain top or earthbound.

If I rend the day I build ten other days, mayhap ten times ten, to undo the rending.

If I build the day I will have lived the day to the glory of the One in the fulfillment of that part of His purpose which is mine to fulfill.

So that I may meet the day with knowledge to build the day I will look into my soul while it is yet dawn, before the morning breaketh.

These are the words with which I greet the day.

These are the words of the morning.

This is the spirit of the dawn.

To me the universe is an open book.

I need not to learn. I know.

I see the unseen from the mountain top.

I hear the music of the spheres.
I know the transcendent joy of creation.

Immortality is mine.

I will earn immortality.

I will bestow immortality.

Mine is the power to give immortality. I shall not deny that which shall give immortality to those who dwell in darkness and who reach out for the light.

I will reach out my hand into the darkness and lead him that asketh into the light.

I will keep my body charged with energy for the fulfillment of my purpose, in accord with that which is commanded of me.

The power of the dynamic universe is behind my thinking.

Power is mine to give by the wayside.

I will not deny to any man who asketh the power which is mine to give.

I have no limitations. Unlimited power is mine within that which is universal.

I will do today that which is of today and pay no heed to the tomorrow, nor waste regrets on that which was yesterday.

My day shall be filled to overflowing, yet shall I not haste the day; nor shall I waste the day.

Those things which I must do I shall desire to do.

Courtesy will be in my heart to give to all.

My joy will be in serving.

My power will be in thinking true.

My power will be in knowing.

My power will be in humility.

The taint of arrogance will I not know.
That which is I, will keep within the shadow of the beautiful temple of modesty, but my doings will I send forth into the light that all may see; therefore, must my doings be true.

Force will I meet with gentleness; impatience with patience.

Truth will guide my footsteps through tortuous paths and lead me to the glory of the day's golden evening.

I will sing the day through with a glad song, that the problems of the day shall be as chaff before the wind and that others may harken to my song and be quickened.

My countenance shall reflect the spirit within me, that all may see.

Blessed be the new day which descendeth upon me. I greet thee, O day. I cross thy threshold with joy and thanksgiving.

"Do you think," continued Mr. Russell, "that civilization advances because of things written in books? Not a bit of what is written in books ever got there until after the though of it happened in man's mind. He first had to collect it from space, or recollect it from its electrical pattern to which he had attuned himself. The book is but a record of what has already happened. It is history only, to bring others up to date by informing them. It is a means of thought transference only, and not a creative process until you have made it so by transformation within you.
"By meditation and communion with God and talking to Him, I mean not just sitting silently, in a prayerful attitude as though separate and apart from God, adopting a faith and belief state of mind, but actually becoming ONE WITH Him, desiring with Him as co-creator of all things, desiring without words, desiring dynamically with knowledge, not with blind faith and belief, but knowledge, that fruition will as surely follow that desire as that fruit will appear on the tree in its orderliness of law's workings as a result of desire in its seed.

"I believe that every man, no matter how humble, is manifesting God, as His messenger, therefore every man should be worthy of his messengership by manifesting his Source to the very best of his ability, whether he runs the elevator for an industry or as its president.

"I believe that every man can multiply his own ability by almost constant wordless REALIZATION of his unity with his Source. I have, myself, made that feeling so much a part of me that I actually feel myself to be an extension of the Source; that my works are not my own but interpretations of this Source. I believe that such constant realization keeps one so exalted with inspiration that one is thus insulated from the thousands of distractions which lead one away from his own design of life, and thus protects him from petty temptation, from disease, and from those man-harms which constantly come to those who are not thus One with God.

"I believe that such a constant realization enobles one automatically. One's stature is greater, one's step more elastic, one's aura more powerful; and it makes other people see that Light in one's eyes which attracts people to him who has it.

"I believe that when the Self of man thus walks and talks with God one as gradually ascends to the great heights and desires of his ambitions as the tree ascends from its seed, for each is working WITH the law and conversely the law is working with each.
"I believe that there is but ONE THINKER in the universe; that my thinking is His thinking, and that every man's thinking is an extension, through God, of every other man's thinking. I therefore think that the greater the exaltation and ecstasy of my thinking, the greater the standards of all man's thinking will be. Each man is thus empowered to uplift all men as each drop of water uplifts the entire ocean.

"An exemplification of my meaning may be found in the thinking of great composers, authors and artists who uplift the entirety of civilization to higher standards of culture by the extension of their thinking into the consciousness of other men.

"Civilization as a whole thus emerged from its jungle, and the heights to which it will arise is the responsibility of every man, even the most lowly of men.

Copyright by the University of Science and Philosophy

"And how make that transformation within you? A deep and genuine purpose. As I have said before, successful men of all ages have learned to multiply themselves by gathering thought-energy into a high potential and using it in the direction of the purpose intended. Let me use as an illustration the gathering together of the powder behind the bullet. The charge behind the bullet can either be used for the purpose intended or dissipated uselessly. The wise hunter sees to it that each element which contributes to the success of his hunt is right. He has given concentrative thought and preparation for days to ever detail upon which his success depends. You have to gather your energy together in the same manner, conserving it and insulating it from dissipation in every direction other than that of your purpose.

"There is no use for energy of any kind whatsoever unless there is a plan back of it. You cannot get creative value out of concentrated energy by letting it go back into the static condition from which you borrowed it, unless you have a plan for its use. Thinking is a dynamic state of motion which conceives patterns, forms and images in the formless universe of space. We create by thinking patterns or ideas which we call "conceptions." We then concentrate our dynamic thought-energy into materializing those forms.
"You can become a great creator or a little one as the intensity of your desire is little or great. If the engineer desires to take more energy from the unlimited universal supply he uses a thicker wire which will carry a heavier current. He can so multiply his power by taking more turns in his coil that he can lift tons with it or melt steel at the focusing point of high potential which he borrowed from the large area represented by multiplying the surface of each turn in the coil. When the electrical engineer thus multiplies power by constructing a solenoid coil to concentrate power at the center he does exactly what the genius thinker does who similarly concentrates his thought power to the static center of his consciousness to multiply his thought power.

"There are no limitations set by this electric universe upon any man's multiplication of power. Each man sets his own limitations in accordance with his own desire. He many be a thin wire which gathers little energy and carries a weak current, or he may be a heavy one. That is true of all energy borrowed from the universe by all of us. It is there in unlimited quantities, but the gauge of the kind of wire each of us is set by ourselves.

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"You will be amazed when I tell you that the compensating principle of balance which reloads you with new thought-energy after you have expended all in some creation lies in those very simple qualities of your consciousness which we know by the names of joy, happiness, enthusiasm, inspiration, intuition, effervescence, and by that climaxing word of all words, ecstasy. Think of it, how simple it is to know that the joy of an achievement recharges you with a balancing energy for the next achievement. If you have no joy or happiness in your work, finding it to be drudgery instead, you will fatigue from the devitalizing discharge of the energy which caused the achievement because of a reason which I will try to make clear to you later. As the years go by your mind becomes dull from its constant devitalizing draining of energy, and the body disintegrates prematurely. At the period which should begin an ascent of greater vitality you have become a walking dead man. This is utterly ridiculous for it is but the result of ignorance of man's knowledge of himself and his relation to this electric universe of unlimited energy which is his to command.

"The greater the joy within one's inner consciousness, the greater the force of the recharge of thought energy within one; and that is why I have climaxed my defining words with the word ecstatic. The ecstatic man is the most dynamic, the most silent and the most undemonstrative of all men.

"By ecstatic I mean that rare mental condition which makes an inspired man so supremely happy in his mental concentration that he is practically unaware of everything which goes on around him extraneous to his purpose, but is keenly and vitally aware of everything pertaining to his purpose.

"The great composers, sculptors, painters, inventors and planners of all time were in such an ecstatic condition during their intensive creating hours that the million petty trivialities which short-circuit the energy and waste the time of most men never found an opportunity for even entering their consciousness. From this high mental state of ecstasy down to the simple state of what we might call just happiness or enthusiasm, you can construct a thought-power pressure gauge in which you can see that pressure rise or fall.
"By ecstasy I mean inner joyousness, and by inner joyousness I mean those inspirational fires which burn within the consciousness of great genuises, fires which give to them an inconquerable vitality of spirit which breaks down all barriers as wheat bends before the wind.

"He who cultivates that quiet, unobtrusive ecstasy of inner joyousness can scale any heights and be a leader in his field, no matter what that field is. He who never finds it must be content to follow in the footsteps of those who do, and thus be self-condemned for life to obscurity. By inner joyousness I do not mean the visible surface joyousness of the hail-fellow-well-met with his cheerful smile and manners. I mean the almost hidden joyousness of deeply banked fires which need no dramatic expression to evidence their existence in work. This joyousness is that quiet, invisible boiling up of the inspired spirit of the great thinker. He may be sitting quietly in his room, alone with himself and the universe, or he may be in the company of other humans. There is no violent surface indication of the ecstasy which great thinkers alone enjoy. There is nothing dramatic about it, but there is some subtle light in the eye of the inspired one, or some even more subtle quiet emanation which surrounds the inspired thinker, which tells you that you are in the presence of one who has bridged the gap which separates the mundane world from the world of spirit.

"Those who are fortunate enough to kindle such fires of illumination within them are the ones who, like Edison, Farrady or Goodyear, give us a new kind of civilazation; who, like Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin or Tschaikowsky, interpret invisibe rhythms into visible ones; who, like Angelo, Rodin or Rembrandt, transpose their inner ecstasies to recotnizable forms and symbols; who, like Cass Gilbert, John Russell Pope or Andre Fouilhoux transform crude forms into frozen music; or who, like Paul Litchfield, Thomas Watson or Henry Ford, express their creative thinking in our world-transforming industries.
"That is the kind of joy I mean. A joy which very few know, and very few experience, because that joy only comes to the great thinkers.

"To those who do find that inner joyousness which comes from that miracle of discovery of the Self which is within every man, comes something also which is greater than success. To them comes the Life Triumphant. Let me define what I mean by that.

"The successful man is one who is considered to have made a success of his life according to modern standards which include the accumulation of money, properties and an honorable place in the world for notable achievement and financial worth. In other words, the successful man is generally conceived as being one who accumulates values which can be rated by Bradstreet's. But there is something still greater than all of that; there is the Life Triumphant which transcends all material success. The Life Triumphant is that which places what a man gives to the world in creative expression far ahead of that which he takes from it of the creations of others.

"And it should be every man's greatest ambition to be that kind of man. With that desire in the heart of every man there could be no greed or selfish unbalance, nor could there be exploitation of other men, or hatreds, or wars or fear of wars.

"The impregnation of that desire into New Age thinking will be the making of a new race of men which will mark the next stage of his journey from the jungle of his beginnings to a full awareness of the Light of God which awaits all mankind on the mountain top of its journey's end."

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These seem inspirational, but on the other hand they are neither practical nor philosophical. I guess it depends what he means by sucess and what he means by law. But he doesn't explore, expound, or examine any of these ideas (at least in these passages), so it doesn't look like he's really trying to make a philosophical argument. It looks more like he's trying to do the Mitch Albom or Chicken Soup for the Soul kind of thing.