Two major principles from Napoleon Hill's philosophy: The Mastermind Principle and Applied Faith.
First of all, the first premise is that the Mastermind Principle is the medium through which one may procure the full benefits of the experience, the training, the education, and the specialized knowledge and influence of others as completely as if their minds were in reality, one's own. Isn't that a marvelous thing to contemplate? That whatever it is that you lack in education or in knowledge or influence, you can always obtain it through somebody who has it.
The exchange of favours. The exchange of knowledge is one of the greatest exchanges in the world.
It's a very nice thing to engage in business where the exchange of money makes you a profit. But I would a whole lot rather exchange ideas with somebody, give a man an idea that he didn't have before, and receive in return one that I didn't have, and I would do it. And an exchange of money.
You, of course, know that Thomas Edison was perhaps the greatest inventor the world has ever known. He was dealing all the time with many of the sciences, and yet he knew nothing at all about any of the sciences. You'd say it would be impossible for a man to succeed in any undertaking unless he were educated in that field.
I was astounded when I first talked to Andrew Carnegie, to hear him say that he personally didn't know anything about the making or the marketing of steel.
And I was so astounded at that statement. I said, "Well, Mr. Carnegie, just what is your part in this job here? What do you play?"
"Well," he said, "I tell you the part that I play. My job is to keep the members of my Mastermind alive, working in a state of perfect harmony."
And I said, "Is that all you have to do?"
He said, "Well, have you ever tried to get any two people to agree on anything for three minutes in, in, in succession in your life?"
I said, "Well, I don't know that I have."
"Well," you said, "you try it some day to see just what kind of a job it is to get people to work together in the spirit of harmony."
This is one of the greatest of human achievements.
And then Mr. Carnegie would go on to break down his mastermind group, to describe each one individually, to tell what part he played. One was his metallurgist. One was his chief chemist. One was his plant works manager and one was his legal advisor. One was a chief of his financial staff. And so on. Down the line, there were over 20 of those men working together whose combined education, experience and knowledge constituted all. There was no one about the making and the marketing of steel at that time, and Mr. Carnegie said it was necessary for him to know about it. He had men all around him who did understand the making and the marketing of steel, and that was his job to keep them working in perfect harmony.
And the second premise, an active alliance of two or more minds in a spirit of perfect harmony for the attainment of the common objective, stimulates each individual mind to a higher degree of courage than that which is ordinarily experienced, and prepares the way for that state of mind.
A state. You know, when driving an automobile, every so often the battery runs down and you have to do something about. You come out to the morning, you step on the starter, nothing happens. I know people who get out of bed every morning and do the same thing. Nothing happens except they feel badly. They want to put on their shoes. They don't want to get dressed or even eat breakfast. Well, then they need a well. What do they need? And need the battery, of course. And they have a storage for doing it. So my own thing, if a man gets up in the morning feeling like that, and if he can have a little talk with his wife, for instance, and she's a good co-ordinator and he helps to charge his batteries, the chances are when he come home that night, he will come home with all of these rabbit skins. And he went out again.
The third premise, a mastermind alliance properly conducted leads each man in the alliance to move with enthusiasm, personal initiative, imagination and courage, to a degree far above that which the individual experiences when moving without such a alliance.
In my own early beginning I had a Mastermind Alliance of three people. I had an alliance with Mr. Carnegie and with my stepmother, and we three people, nursed this philosophy through the stages, when everybody else was laughing at me and making fun of me, for undertaking to serve the richest man in the world for 20 years without any compensation.
And there was a whole lot of logic to what they were saying, because at that time, I wasn't getting very much compensation out of it in the way of money. At least.
There came a time, however, when the laughing was on the other side of the face. But that took a long time and there was plenty of blood and tears shed. I'll assure you, before I got to the point at which I could lay back or let people laugh at me. But the relationship between three people, my stepmother and myself, enabled me to upset all of this malice that was gnawing at me by my relatives, my friends, and everybody who knew what I was engaged in.
Now, there are times, you know, when if you undertake anything above mediocrity, you're going to meet with opposition. You're going to meet with people who are trying to poke fun at you, and most of it will be quite close to you. So some of them, perhaps your own relatives, you need some source to which you can turn when you're going to aim above mediocrity to get your batteries charged, and to keep them charged so that you won't quit. And the going is hard, and so you won't pay any attention. When somebody criticize you.
You know, criticism falls off my back, just like a water off a duck's back. Or more of the mud like a bullet of the rhinoceros' hide. Because I. I'm absolutely immune, absolutely immune to all forms of criticism.
Whether it's friendly or unfriendly. Makes no difference to me whatsoever. I just mean immune to it, that's all.
And I became immune because of by a relationship with certain people through whom I built up an immunity under my mastermind alliance. If it had not been for the relationship with my stepmother and Mr. Carnegie, I wouldn't be standing here talking to you folks tonight. You wouldn't be. Here are students of this philosophy, and this philosophy would be spread all over the world, helping millions of people, because I had a million opportunities to quit.
At least a million opportunities. And every one of them looked very alluring. And almost sometimes it seemed as if I were stupid. If I didn't quit.
But this marvelous relationship, I could always go back to Mr. Carnegie. I could always run into my stepmother, and we'd sit down and have a little chat and she'd say, "Stand by your guns. You'll come out on top. I know you will."
She once said, at a time when I didn't have two nickels to rub together, as my enemies were saying.
She once said that you are going to be the richest member of the Hill family, far anyway, I know it. I can see it in the future.
Well, if you would take all of my riches and put them together, I suspect that I have more riches and all of my relatives put together for three generations back on both sides of the house.
That's true. And my stepmother could see that. You can see what I was doing. It was bound to make me rich. Now, my aim had to have references alone to monetary riches. I have a reference to those higher and broader riches that you will find when you get to where you can render service to so many people.
And the fourth premise, to be effective most Mastermind alliances must be active. It must be active. You can't just form alliance with somebody and say, no, that's it. We've got it. I'm lined up with this person, that person, the other person. We've got to make your mind about it amongst you. Absolutely nothing until you become active.
Every member of the alliance has got to step right in there and then start pitching mentally. They're actually physically, financially, every way that this is it. But they must engage in the pursuit of a definite purpose that they must move with perfect harmony.
Do you know the difference between perfect harmony and ordinary harmony?
How many of you have ever had a relationship, a perfect harmony with anybody?
I'll tell you the truth. I suspect that I have had harmonious relationships with about as many people, maybe more people, than any person living today. Beyond any question of it. And but I want to tell you that perfect harmony in relationship is about the rarest thing in the world.
And I think I could count on the fingers of my hand, all of the people that I now know with whom I have a relationship of perfect harmony. I have a speaking acquaintance, a very nice, polite speaker, acquainted with a lot of people. But that's not perfect harmony. I have a working alliance with a lot of people. That's not harmony. Perfect harmony.
Perfect harmony consists only when your relationship to the other fellow is such that if he wanted everything you have, you would willingly turn it over to him.
Now it takes a lot of unselfishness to put yourself of that premium. Mr. Carnegie stressed time and time again the importance of this relationship of perfect harmony because, he said, if you don't have perfect harmony in mastermind alliance, it's not a mastermind alliance. That really is just a it's just cooperation, a coordination of effort.
Without this factor of harmony, the alliance may be nothing more than ordinary cooperation or friendly coordination of effort. The mastermind gives one full access to the spiritual powers of the other members of the Alliance. I want you to underscore that part of it in your notes.
The Mastermind gives one full access to the spiritual powers of the other members of his alliance. I'm not talking about just the powers or the financial power, but the spiritual power, the feeling you have when you begin to establish permanency in your mastermind. The relationship is going to be one about outstanding and pleasant experiences of your entire life.
When, when when you're engaged in the Mastermind activity, I will tell you that you have so much faith. You know that you can do anything that you start out to do. You have no doubt. You have no fear. You have no limitations.
And that's a marvelous frame of mind to be in.
And the sixth premise is that it is a matter of established record that all individual success is based upon any kind of achievement, above mediocrity already through the Mastermind Principle and not by individual effort alone.
Just imagine how little you could accomplish if you didn't have the cooperation of other people. If you're in a profession. Oh, you're a dentist or a lawyer or a doctor or a minister, or anybody in the profession. And suppose that you didn't understand how to convert each one of your clients or patients into a salesman for yourself.
Imagine how long would it take to build up a client dealer following.
The outstanding professional man understand how to make a salesman out of every person that they serve. And they do it all by indirection. They don't go about it directly. They do it by going the extra mile, by going out of their way to be of unusual service. But they do make salesman out of all of their clients.
Emotions are the result of personal power and personal power of sufficient proportions to enable one to rise above mediocrity is not possible without the application of the Mastermind Principle.
Now, during the first term of Franklin Roosevelt in the White House, I had the privilege of working with him as a confidential advisor, and it was I who laid out the skeleton of the propaganda plan that took the words business depression off of the headlines of the papers, and substituted in their stead business recovery.
Those of you who remember what happened on that Black Sunday when we had a meeting down at the White House, when the banks were closed the following Monday morning. Remember how what a stampede there was in this country, people who were lined up in front of the banks all over the country to throw out their deposits. They were scared to death. They had lost confidence in their country, in their banks, in themselves and everybody else.
Suppose they still had some confidence in God but didn't feel much either.
It was a scary time. I'll tell you. And we sat down there and worked up a skeleton of a plan, a procedure that created one of the most outstanding, applications of a Mastermind that this nation has ever seen. And I doubt that any nation on earth has ever had the equal of it, because it's only a matter of weeks until we had taken all that fear out of people.
It was only a matter of days until a salesman on the road who had run out of funds, who couldn't get money, were laughing about it. Not in any way scared about it. My own funds were closed up. I had no money. No, none at all. I had it up. Yes, I did.
It's funny, I got very smart when I pulled up. I was coming in. I ran down to the bank, got $1,000 bill. Well, I might just as well ahead. Over $0.10. Nobody could change it. It wasn't worth a nickel. Not a nickel. But I wasn't scared because everybody else who was able to. That is it.
But something had to be done about them. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a great leader. He had great imagination. He had great courage.
And here's what we did. First of all, we got both houses of Congress working in harmony with the president, the first time in the history of this nation that both houses of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, got behind the president and forgot about what their political base ought to be.
In other words, there were no Democrats. There were no Republicans. They were just Americans down there backing the president. Everything he needed to just stop that stampede of fear.
I had never seen anything that equaled in my life. I never hoped to see it again. I wish I could, but I don't hope to because there was a great emergency on them and something had to be done. About the second, the majority of the newspaper publishers over there, everything that we set up, the newspapers published it. They gave marvelous things.
And then the radio station operators, they gave us marvelous help, despite their political beliefs and the churches. All in all, that was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in this country. Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, and all of the rest pulling together as Americans. I love the time of the wonderful time. A wonderful God.
What a wonderful thing it was. They all got behind the president. Every one of them made some sort of a contribution toward reestablishing faith in the people of this country.
But during these, hectic days, I want to tell you that there wasn't any doubt in the minds of the majority of the people. I didn't come in contact with anybody who didn't think that Mr. Roosevelt was the only man, the finest man, that could possibly have handled that chaotic condition.
And, don't get me wrong, politically, I'm just talking about a great man who did a great job at a time when it needed to be done. And he did it because he had a Mastermind Alliance, America, up there that was unbeatable.
Now let's take up, pick up the different kinds of Mastermind Alliances you may have. First of all, there are alliances for purely social or personal reasons, consisting of one's relatives, friends and religious advisors. While all material gain is solved.
The most important of this type is the Mastermind Alliance which may exist between a man and his wife.
I couldn't emphasize if I had, if I were brilliant, if I had the great magnetic powers. I couldn't overemphasize the importance to you who were married of going to work immediately, and re-dedicating that marriage to a mastermind alliance based upon this lesson learned.
It'll bring joy into your life that you never dreamed of. It'll bring success into your life that you never dreamed of. It'll bring health into your life that you never dreamed of. It's a perfectly marvelous thing when the real mastermind alliance exists between a man and his wife.
I don't know of anything that equals it.
But then there are alliances for business or a professional advancement, consisting of individuals who have a personal motive of a material or a financial nature connected with the object of their alliances.
But I imagine that the majority of you who are in this class will be forming your first Mastermind Alliances for purely economic or financial purposes, and that's perfectly legitimate. That's one of the reasons why you're taking this course.
You ought to improve your your economic and financial condition. And, you should start in immediately now to, to form a Mastermind Alliance for that purpose.
And if you're confined to begin with, one person, that's all right. Start off with one and then look around until the two of you select the latter. But now you can select the two of you. When you go to select the third party, be sure that the one and the second one that you already selected is either kosher.
You understand that that's important. And then when they go to select the fourth, the three of you then will place on the fourth. Then you'll go over the matter very carefully before you making the member of the alliance. And then when you go to select the fifth, the four of you will select with it.
You see, in the Mastermind Alliance, there's no such thing as one person dominating except in this respect that generally speaking, one person is the leader.
He's the coordinator and the leader, but he alone undertakes to dominate his associates because the very moment you start to dominate anybody, you find resistance and rebellion.
Even though it's not open rebellion, it's true, it's abandoned nevertheless. And in the mastermind alliance, it must be one continuous spirit of perfect harmony where you move and act as if you were only one mind.
The American system of free enterprise is another example of efficiency through the Mastermind Principle. This system is the envy of the world because it has raised the standard of living, of the American people to an all time high level, and that despite the fact that there's not perfect harmony.
But there is motive. There is motive in the American system, a free enterprise to inspire every individual to do his best. There is a motive that, and incidentally, more and more industry and business is coming to understand that if they can go a step further and instead of just having cooperation or coordination of effort between management and the workers, that they can have the Mastermind Principle by showing the management problems, by sharing the profits, by sharing everything.
And wherever I have been successful in influencing any business, do it up. That follows. The business has made more money than it ever made before, and the employees a bit of receive more wages and everybody's happy.
General instructions for the forming and the maintenance of a Mastermind Alliance.
First: Adopt a definite purpose as an objective to be attained by the Alliance, choosing individual members whose education, experience, and influence are such as to make them of the greatest value in achieving the purpose.
A lot of times I'll ask my students, what is the most favourable number for a mastermind group, and how do you go about selecting the, the right sort of people for you? Make your mind effort and your attitude. If I could give you that. Here's what the procedure is exactly the same as if you were starting into a business and you were choosing employees.
What kind of an employee would you choose and learn how to get work in.
Marvel, if I see this sparks flying. Wonderful, wonderful.
Integrity, dependability at the top of the list. If a person is not dependable, I don't want any part of him in a business transaction. No part of him, no matter how clever he may be, no matter how well-educated he may be, the more educated he is, the more dangerous he may be. If he's not dependable and if he's not loyal. I would say the same thing.
If an individual is not loyal to those to whom he owes loyalty, then to me he has no character whatsoever, and I want no part of him.
Dependability and loyalty. And then after that comes the ability to do the job.
Ability. Notice where I place ability down. Third place I'm not interested in a man's ability until I find out whether he's dependable or whether he is loyal.
And then what would you say came after that? In my category in my book rule.
Number four Positive Mental Attitude (PMA). If a man has a negative mental attitude. I did it, of course, but he is a negative, a wet blanket around you. Why, you could pay him to stay away and then be ahead of the game.
And number five, what would that be like?
Going the extra mile? That is right. And number six, getting that. What would you say that is Faith.
Applied Faith. Now let me tell you when you find people that come up to all of those six things, I will tell you, you really found somebody. You were in the presence of royalty.
Some businesses, if you were running a peanut centre, you maybe need only one person, but you running a chain of peanuts and you might need 100 persons.
And then, as to the qualifications of a mastermind, I like the first of all, pick those six points that I gave you a measure of the qualifications. There are the qualifications for your master. You want that there must be dependability. There must be loyalty. There must be ability. Must be a Positive Mental Attitude. You must be willing to go the extra mile and Applied Faith. Well, there you are.
If you want to know what the qualities qualifications of your man. Come on. That ladder. There it is. And don't settle for anything less. If you find a man that has five of those qualities and doesn't have all six of them, you better be wired in before you start because they're all essential in the mastermind relationship.
You can check very carefully and see that that's true. You couldn't have perfect harmony unless you were working with somebody who checked 100% on all of those six points. You just couldn't have a mastermind alliance. You might have a working arrangement like so many people do, but it wouldn't be. It wouldn't embrace all of the potential values of the mastermind.
Next, determine what appropriate benefit each member may receive in return for his cooperation in this alliance. And remember, ladies and gentlemen, nobody ever does anything for nothing.
No, they never do. You see, when you, give love to somebody, you don't get anything out of that. You don't do that for nothing. Well, let me tell you something.
You get plenty out of it because you've had the privilege of loving is a great privilege. And even though the love is not returned, you still have had the benefit of that state of mind known as love. You've enjoyed the development and growth as a result of it.
No, there's no such thing as something for nothing. Nobody works without a company, some sort of a compensation.
There are very many different forms of compensation, so don't expect that you're about to find out. I go to your field, help you make a fortune. He'll help you do anything unless they are equally participating in the benefit that come out of that may come out life. Well, there's the criterion by which you go. They must approximately each individual must approximately benefit equally with yourself.
Whether it's a monetary benefit or a a happiness or a peace of mind benefit, social benefit or whatever it happens to be.
Never ask anybody to do anything if you want to be sure of is doing it, unless you give him an adequate motive for doing.
If I went down to the bank among the very $10,000, what would be an adequate motive for the bank lending me that money in the area of hatred? He'll do it all. Under the heading of, desire for financial aid. You definitely respect the working. Well, they'd want a bank to be delighted to allow me as much money as I can take away. If I give them three for one security collateral. Collateral. I want collateral. They want the profit on that loan. That's what they're in business for.
Now, there are other, transactions now, based upon the monetary motive, which is well known. Man, that's the girl of his choice to marry him. What's the motive there, love?
Sometimes. No, theoretically, love is like animal magnetism. Good money.
Well, it means interesting. But out of all the people sitting at every loan and have a different thing, a different idea or definition as to what the motive is, when a man to be a girl of his choice to marry him, and she accepts it, why does she accepting love for him?
I want to tell you that when. When my father brought my stepmother home, he was just a farmer. And he never had had on a white shirt or a tie. He wouldn't. That he was afraid of white shirts and ties or blue cotton shirts.
And my stepmother was a college woman. She was well-educated, and they were as different as the North Pole and the South Pole. And I wondered all of my life, until one day, just how he happened to be able to sell himself to a girl.
She cleaned them up and put a white shirt on and made it look like somebody. But nevertheless, it took her quite a little while to do it.
And, she finally got him into the money and he became an outstanding man. And I at that point, I said to her, well, how in the world did my father I remember what he looked like and what he talked about. He he, Deuce the Queen's English because I seen him becoming that my duty and all that sort of thing.
I said, "How in the world did you. Did he ever sell himself? What was the name of it?"
He said, "Well, I'll tell you."
"First of all, I recognized that he had good blood in his veins of the head possibility. So I believed that I could bring them on." And she did bring them up.
Mrs. Henry Ford and Mrs. Thomas Edison are two of the.
If you had a definite major purpose, knew exactly what you wanted to do, had a Mastermind Alliance of people that could help you do it, and then had the sufficient faith to keep you going, while you did it. Don't you see? That would be about all you would need. Why, then, do we need the 14 additional principles? Do you suppose?
Well, I'll tell you what. We need 14 additional principles to, to induce you to make use of these three, you need personal initiative. You need the imagination. You need enthusiasm.
In other words, this philosophy is something like baking a cake. When you go to bake a cake, you don't put in just one ingredient. You put in a pinch of this, the pinch of that, a dash of the other thing. And, then you put it in the stove and bake it, and he took out all of those ingredients. You wouldn't have, the same kind of a cake.
And it's the same way with this philosophy. You can't leave out any one of these 17 principles would be just like taking a link out of a chain. You wouldn't have a chain anymore. You'd have two parts of a chain and not a whole cake.
And these other 14 principles are supporting principles, all these three.
Faith is a state of mind that has been called the mainspring of the soul, through which one's aims, desires, plans, and purposes may be translated into the physical or financial equivalent.
And here are the fundamentals of Faith. Now, when you speak of Applied Faith, ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about something vastly different from just mere belief.
Applied faith involves action that's the acting part of faith. And without action, faith is nothing but just daydreaming. And there are a lot of people, you know, who believe in things, but they don't do anything about them.
They are engaging only in daydreaming. Applied faith is, active. They know the fundamentals of faith are, first of all, definiteness of purpose, supported by a personal initiative, an action, action, action. The more action, the better. That means continuous action, not only on your part, but on the part of those that, may be cooperating with you. Or maybe make your mind allies of yours.
And a positive mind free from all negatives, such as fear and the hatred. Jealousy and greed is essential. Mental attitude determines the effectiveness of the mental attitude. Did you know that is a fact?
The frame of mind that you are in when you go to pray determines the, what happens as a result of that prayer. There's no two ways about that. You can test it themselves to find out. I have no doubt you have.
I have no doubt that you have had the experiences I have had of, sending out prayers that didn't produce anything but a negative result.
How many of you have had that experience? Oh, come on now, be modest. Do you suppose there ever was anybody that didn't have that experience at one time or another?
I will tell you that when you go to prayer, unless you have absolute faith that whatever you are going after that you're going to acquire that you can see it in advance in your possession before you start asking for it. The chances are that the effect of your prayer is going to be negative.
And that it may ask your Mastermind Alliance with one or more people who radiate courage based on faith and are suited mentally and spiritually to one's needs in carrying out a given purpose. I'm talking to you now about the elements, or the constituent parts, or the premises that go into the business of Applied Faith.
And an active recognition of the fact that every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent benefit. And temporary defeat is not failure until it has been accepted as a fact.
Do you know where the majority of people fall down in connection with their application of their faith? It's when they're defeated and they accept that defeat as being something they can't do anything about.
Instead of, beginning immediately to search for that kind of an equivalent benefit that in every defeat they begin, they become moody and broody. They become discouraged. They, build up, inferiority complexes instead of, reversing that order and using that to defeat as nothing more than temporary and, making another effort,
And next the habit of affirming one's major purpose in the form of a prayer at least once daily.
Well, the subconscious mind only knows what you tell it and what you allow other people does, or what you allow the circumstances of life to do. And it doesn't know the difference between a lie and the truth. It doesn't know the difference between a penny and $1 million. It accept the things that you send over, and if you send over a predominating thoughts on poverty and ill health and failure, that's exactly what you'll get.
No matter how much faith that you may have later on, you find out that the subconscious responds to the mental attitude that you're maintaining during the day, and it's necessary for you to affirm over and over again the objects that you are going to attain, and not until you educate your subconscious mind to attract automatically to you the things that are related to what you are aiming to attain in life.
You'll find that your mind is like an electromagnet, and once you charge it with a clear picture of what you want, it will attract to you from the highways and byways the things that you need to carry out that purpose.
And that recognition of the existence of infinite intelligence that gives order the list of the entire universe that the individual you that is, is a minute expression of this intelligence. And as such, you, the individual, your mind has no limitations except those accepted or set up in your own mind.
Your mind has no limitations whatsoever except those that you allow to be established there, or that you deliberately set up in your own mind, or accept.
Now, that's a pretty broad statement, isn't it? But the the achievements of men, like Mr. Edison and Mr. Ford and Mr. Carnegie and Napoleon Hill, if you please, certainly, definitely supports the idea that there is no limitation except that which you set up in their own mind.
And if I had ever wavered for one second from the time that I started to Mr. Carnegie, up until the time I gave this philosophy to the world, if I had wavered one second in my belief that I would do it, I would never have done it.
How did I happen to do it? Do you have any idea what was the what claim? The strongest part and what I've achieved. It wasn't my brilliance. It was my outstanding intelligence. I have no more brilliancy than the average person. The no more intelligence. The average person.
But there was something in there that was responsible for having a great, great crowd having you the faith.
In other words, I believed I could do it and I never stopped believing it. The harder the going was, the more I believed I would do it.
And I want to tell you that if you can take that attitude toward yourself, if you can throw yourself over on that, on the side of yourself, so to speak, when you're overtaken by adversity, when people are get if you can do that, if you can stand by and not also look over against yourself, then you're using Applied Faith and you've got to do that.
Do you know there testing times for people? Have you ever thought of that? Nobody is permitted to attain high state in life and stay there without being tested...
And one of the most astounding things that I found in my research was that the man of great achievement in all walks of life, back down through the ages, where a great only in proportion as they had been defeated, and as they had met with opposition.
Now that's an astounding thing. It couldn't have been a coincidence that every one of these outstanding men was great in proportion, exactly as he had been small, and as he had been opposed, and as he had had to struggle.
I used to tell of my early struggles to tell him some of my defeats. My business management got open about it, so it wasn't a good idea. I still think it's a good idea. I think it's a fine idea because if you only knew the amount of major defeats I meet with and still get my head above water and still have to deliver this philosophy, you'd say that if Hill could do it. I can do it too.
And that was the only reason, of course, that I ever spoke of it.
The habit of affirming one's definite, major purpose in the form of a prayer at least daily, and the recognition of the infinite intelligence. I don't mind what terms you use. You can call it God, or you call it Jehovah, or you can call it Buddha, or you can call it Muhammad. Anything you want to do, no matter what you call it, we're all talking about one. The first call there is a two. First call this. There's only one. There couldn't be two. There's one First Cause it's responsible for this great universe we're living in. For you and for me and for everything that's in the universe.
I call it infinite intelligence, because I have students of all faiths and all religions all over the world as my students. And the infinite intelligence happens to be a sort of a neutral, in-between term that nobody can object to, nobody at all.
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