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"Demand imperiously and persistently any quality of character in which you may be lacking, and you attract increase in such quality. Demand more patience or decision or judgment or courage or hopefulness or exactness, and you will increase in such qualities. These qualities are real elements. They belong to the subtler, and as yet unrecognized, chemistry of nature.

 

The man discouraged, hopeless and whining, has unconsciously demanded discouragement and hopelessness. So he gets it. This is his unconscious mental training to evil. Mind is 'magnetic,' because it attracts to itself whatever thought it fixes itself upon, or whatever it opens itself to. Allow yourself to fear, and you will fear more and more. Cease to resist the tendency to fear, make no effort to forget fear, and you open the door, and invite fear in; you then demand fear. Set your mind on the thought of courage, see yourself in mind or imagination as courageous, and you will become more courageous. You demand courage.

 

There is no limit in unseen nature to the supply of these spiritual qualities. In the words 'Ask, and ye shall receive,' the Christ implied that any mind could, through demanding, draw to itself all that is needed of any quality. Demand wisely, and we draw to us the best. Every second of wise demand bring an increase of power. Such increase is never lost to us. This is an effort for lasting gain, that we can use at any time."

Prentice Mulford
1834-1891
'Your Forces and How to Use Them'

 

Prentice Mulford was born in Sag Harbor, Long Island. Although he was one of the earliest pioneers of the New Thought teaching, he is still comparatively little known or read.

Prentice Mulford was described as the strangest of men. He envisioned the airplane and radio and prophesized mental telepathy and practiced it. At the age of 22, Prentice sailed to California.  Here he was a gold miner, cook, school teacher, lecturer and observer of human nature, but made his fortune not from gold but by his interesting and imaginative articles and books. 

In 1865 he became interested in mental and spiritual phenomena and lived in an old whaleboat cruising San Francisco Bay. After returning from a trip abroad, Prentice Mulford lived for the next 17 years as a hermit in the swamps of Passaic, New Jersey. It was there that he wrote some of his finest works on mental and spiritual laws dealing in the topic 'Thought Currents and How to Use Them.'

His essays embody a particular philosophy, and represent a peculiar phase of insight into the mystery which surrounds man. The essays were the work, as the insight was the gift, of a man who owed nothing to books, perhaps not much to what is ordinarily meant by observation, and everything or nearly everything to reflection nourished by contact with nature. To many his thoughts may seem but dreams; to others they are priceless truths.

Mulford was a wise teacher, which is apparent from his words: "In the spiritual life every person is his or her own discoverer, and you need not grieve if your discoveries are not believed in by others. It is your business to push on, find more and increase your own individual happiness."

To him is due the credit of having been a pioneer in the thought that is now influencing people throughout the world, and his influence is very apparent in the writings of all the teachers of the same school that have followed him.

In 1891, at the age of 57, Mulford decided to return to Sag Harbor where he passed away peacefully, without any apparent illness or pain, alone in his boat en route. After 30 years in an unmarked grave, Mulford's body was taken to Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor where a large stone was placed on his grave with these words: "Thoughts are Things".

 

Your Forces and How to Use Them (1907)
Treatise on the nature of soul and its attributes of Wisdom and Supreme Power. God; You Travel When you Sleep; The Art of Forgetting; How Thoughts are Born; The Law of Success; How to Keep Your Strength; The Art of Study; Profit and Loss in Associates; What are Spiritual Gifts; The Process of Re-Embodiment; Universal Nature.

Thoughts Are Things
Contents: Material mind vs. the spiritual mind; Who are our relations? Thought currents; One way to cultivate courage; Look forward; God in the trees; Some laws of health & beauty; Museum & menagerie horrors; The god in yourself; Healing & renewing force of spring; Immortality in the flesh; Attraction of aspiration; Accession of new thought.