The law of attraction was made widely popular by the book and video "The Secret." However, the video and book was really quite secretive when it came to practical application. In fact, many people were disappointed when they tried manifestation and it did not work like advertised. I must confess, I was one of those people. There is a reason of course, and it is that there is more to it than just declaring, believing, and affirming. William Walker Atkinson is a prolific writer, that more than anyone in modernity, has written about the spiritual nature of the material world. In fact, he wrote in depth about all that was covered in "The Secret" and added practical exercises that are found in his work called the Arcane Formulas.
William Walker Atkinson lived during both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was born in 1862 and died in 1932. In the last thirty years of his life, he wrote over 100 books on the ancient hermetic principles, mentalism, and the law of attraction. He studied the ancient writings from both the Hindu and Greek and Egyptian traditions. He wrote several of these books under pseudonyms, such as Theron Q. Dumont, Swami Bhakta Vishita, and it is widely believed that he was the Three Initiates of the Kybalion. In his early years he was a successful merchant and lawyer. His successful legal career ended when he had a physical and mental breakdown and he ended up recovering as a result of his venturing into the spiritual realms.
While it would be helpful to read the Kybalion and another of his works, The Arcane Teaching, the practical application for working the law of attraction is the "Arcane Formulas." In this article I want to focus on one of the seven principles taught in the Kybalion and how they are addressed in the Arcane Formulas. For anyone who doesn't know, arcane means secret or mysterious. The first one of the seven principles in the Kybalion is as follows. The ALL is mind, the universe is MENTAL. According to Atkinson, it is mentalism or mental alchemy that is responsible for the ability to manifest things in the material world and change circumstances. Atkinson is not alone in proclaiming this truth. The theory that the universe is mental and that thought energy is the creative source of the material world is shared by many, including most of the world religions. The Christian Logos, Hindu Brahman, Taoist Tao, Buddhist Samsara, Jewish Elohim, are all essentially conscious agents, that create the material world through conscious effort, whether thought or speaking.
Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist has written a book entitled "The Case Against Reality" based on the research that he and his team has done in cognitive science examining consciousness, its origin and its connection with the material world. The conclusions that the mathematics shows thus far is that the material world is an interface for conscious agents that has a reality similar to a computer program, a video game, or a holographic projection. This research leads toward the direction that the universe is, as Atkinson wrote about, mental.
When you add to this the teachings across the centuries that the mental universe is a reality the case becomes quite compelling indeed. In the late 1950's Aldous Huxley experimented with hallucinogens' that showed that there was a deeper reality behind the world we experience. In his little book, "The Door's of Perception" he posited that the human mind acts as a reducing valve to cut out unnecessary stimuli that would actually impede our ability to function day to day. It is interesting because in his research Donald Hoffman suggests a similar concept.
Now that the stage has been set for the probable fact of mentalism and a mental universe, We can move on to the "Arcane Formulas." The first and most important principle according to Atkinson is the establishment of "egohood." According to him, egohood is the ability to understand that one is a unique conscious agent in the field of consciousness or in other words, the mind of the all. His premise is that each of us are points of egoic consciousness within the large ego of the All or the mind at large. As a distinct point of consciousness in a field of consciousness we become creators. Egohood accepts the reality of the individual, I AM, for each of us. He presents a series of exercises that meant to develop this sense of egohood. It is from the sure knowledge of our egohood that we can begin to manifest our world and manifest changes within it for the positive. According to the "Arcane Formulas," without this first initial step of developing egohood, all the other steps such as concentration, visualization, and affirmation are futile at worst, and extremely limiting at best. In his view, the key to mental alchemy is a sense of egohood, grounded in the assurance that we are not corporeal first and foremost, but rather mental and spiritual.
Click this link for a free PDF copy of the Arcane Formulas
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