Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
I’ve seen some discussions about New Thought on various forums throughout the internet. Some mistakenly describe New thought as simply Pantheistic. Pantheism is defined as “a doctrine that equates God with the forces and laws of the Universe. It equates God or the Universal Mind with all that is in the Universe.” There are some aspects of New Thought that can be described as Pantheistic. The belief that the Universe and everything in it is divine, or that everything is part of an all-encompassing divine entity, is one aspect of New Thought. Another is that there is no separation between the divine and the natural world; everything is considered to be interconnected and part of the same ultimate reality.
However, Pantheism does not go far enough to sufficienlty describe New Thought ideas. It defines God as supremely impersonal and does not consider the Mind or the Logo’s adequately. As Warren Felt Evans declared, New Thought is correctly defined by the term panlogism. Panlogisim can be described as “the doctrine that the Universe is a realization or act of the logos.” The Logos being the action of the Divine Mind or God. In New Thought, we take part in the Logos. We are made in the image of God, and our consciousness was designed to take a place in the continuous creation. New Thought is a form of pantheism created through panlogism. Panlogism being the primary driving force. God is the supreme loving entity in New Thought who is above all, in all, and through all.
In his study of the evolution of man, the famous author Thomson Jay Hudson points out that we can learn about God by studying ourselves. If we consider our part in the Logos and ourselves as children of God, this makes sense. Now, he takes 300 pages to set this statement up in the Divine Pedigree of Man and another book before that named The Law of Psychic Phenomena, so if you find this idea intriguing, I have linked to those books below. This is what Dr. Hudson has to say about our being the children of God:
“To sum up in a few words, we find in the subjective faculties of man, without a change in their essential nature, the embryotic representatives of all that the finite mind can conceive of the essential attributes of God, — the God of Christian faith. Thus: —
1. In the intellectual faculties (intuition, deduction, and memory), potential omniscience.
2. In its dynamic energy (telekinesis), potential omnipotence.
3. In the power of mental communion (telepathy), potential omnipresence.
4. In the natural emotions, potential universal altruism — infinite love.
I submit that there can be no higher conception of divine knowledge — nay, that there can exist no higher wisdom, than that which is indicated in the word ” omniscience; ” that there can exist no greater power than is described in the word ” omnipotence; ” that there can be no broader conception of the all-pervasiveness of that wisdom and that power than is implied in the word “omnipresence; ” and, finally, that the human mind can conceive of no quality or attribute of the divine personality of greater promise and potency than that implied in the words !’ infinite and universal love.”
Moreover, I submit that this is a conception of immanence without pantheism and personality without anthropomorphism. It does not presume either to ” limit” or ” measure ” the powers and attributes of God by setting up those of man as a standard of measurement. On the contrary, it simply shows that an analysis of the known powers of the human soul proves that the powers of God are illimitable, and hence immeasurable by finite minds. In other words, it is not that we can measure the powers of the divine mind or set up a standard of its limitations, but that we may know something of its essential qualities by an analysis of its emanations; just as we may, by spectrum analysis, know something of the qualities of light without presuming to reveal the extent or potency of solar influence.
This is all that man can know of God by a direct analysis of his own powers. But it is something. It is, indeed, much; for it is all that man needs to know concerning the character and attributes of the Great First Cause. Its value lies not more in its revelation of God to man than in its revelation of man to himself. It is not that it reveals human attributes in God, but that it discloses divine attributes in man, defines his place in nature, and reveals the character of his obligations to the Author of his being.”
Our heavenly Father loves us, and so he gave us free will to participate in creation through him. The first cause of everything in the physical world comes from a Mind. Your world is an expression of your thoughts and consciousness. Thoughts are things. Prayer and meditation work. Topics like the Law of Attraction, the Spirit of Opulence, and the power of Autosuggestion are based on the Logos and are as immutable as the laws of physics. Use them to your advantage! One cannot simply describe New Thought as pantheistic; that is only a part of it. Everything is God, but God is also infinitely intelligent. Panlogism describes the intelligence of the Supreme Infinite Entity we call God.
