CHAPTER FIVE
FURTHER ON THE SUBJECT OF THOUGHTS
“I will do things no-one in the past has dared to do, I will think new thoughts, bring new things into being”
-Leonardo Da Vinci
The earth is largely made up of water as you are and there has been a groundbreaking work of a pioneer Japanese researcher whose astonishing discovery about water, documented photographically, changed most of what people didn‘t know... and led to a new consciousness of Earth‘s most precious resource. What has put Dr. Emoto at the forefront of the study of water is his proof that thoughts and feelings affect physical reality.
By producing different focused intentions through written and spoken words and music and literally presenting it to the same water samples, the water appears to "change expression". Essentially, Dr Emoto captured the water‘s 'expressions‘. He developed a technique using a very powerful microscope in a very cold room along with high-speed photography newly formed crystals of frozen water samples. Not all water samples crystallize however. Water samples from extremely polluted rivers seem to express the 'state‘ the water is in.
Dr Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. He found that water from clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors.
The implications of this research create a new awareness of how you can positively impact the earth and your own personal health. Dr Emoto further explores his revolutionary research. Since humans and the earth are composed of water, his message is one of personal health, global environment renewal, and a practical plan for peace that starts with each person.
The magnificent power of your thoughts cannot be covered in one or two chapters and neither will a book tell all that there is to know on this subject. But it is my intention in this chapter to help you elevate your thinking to another level because everything that‘s happening around you entirely depends upon your thoughts. A child is meant to stay in each grade for one year and go on to the next grade the following year, not only because the chairs of the first grade are too small for a grown up but because the child is expected to develop in intellect and knowledge and for that reason the higher the grade, the more challenging it will be.
The human mind was not designed to have an original state or capacity, it is not like a rubber that it expands and goes back to where it was before.
The mind expands and it does not go back to where it was before. But when your mind takes a new state, so does your life. Thus a self made millionaire that looses his wealth is more likely to be wealthy again in a very short period of time, Donald Trump proved it, it‘s because he had developed what is called "wealth consciousness". We made the statement "pity for the man that inherits a million dollars and is not a millionaire" to bring this fact to your attention. The essence of life is growth. Don‘t be lazy to use your mind because that‘s the only instrument you have at your disposal to influence the infinite power of your subconscious mind. If you can‘t use your mind then you can‘t succeed in this lifetime. The path to success, riches and happiness is in your thinking.
Imagination is the talking of the soul with the Universe.
A person may not be formally educated but he will succeed if he makes it a point to educate himself. Formal education will make you a living but self education will make you a fortune says Earl Shoaff. This is not a call to condemn formal education, but a call to use it for personal development. But incase you don‘t have formal education, you can still succeed. Formal education doesn‘t guarantee success, self education does. Research has shown that people who dropped out of college or high school and made it to the Forbes top 400 will be on average $200 million ahead of those who did complete their studies. I repeat; this is not to say that one should not get a formal education rather to say that you should use your formal education as an advantage to self educate yourself because there‘s nothing worse than having piles of papers confirming your intellect but being stupid.
More than a hundred years ago a book was written and the writer wrote that "man had a desire to see the moon on a closer range and created a telescope", fifty years later another author wrote "man had a desire to go to the moon and he found a way to land on the moon" and today as I‘m writing this, scientists are looking for ways to send men to spend their lives in the moon. Mark my words; a hundred years from now someone will be reading this book and will smile at the progress that mankind has made over the centuries, going to the moon will be like traveling overseas on a cruise ship, traveling to overseas will be a walk in the park and a real vacation will be a trip to the moon and out of space, in that generation all formal education will contain a study that teaches students to use their imagination like never before, to be poor will make no sense and everybody will be as rich as they wish to be as the immortal Christ said:
“All things are possible for those who believe”
In that era all people will understand what Albert Einstein meant when he said:
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create”.
Knowledge and wisdom are two different things. Formal education gives you knowledge but what you do with that knowledge (self education) is wisdom. Tiger Woods, the highest paid athlete in the world, refused to study at Stanford University in order to become a professional golfer and he currently makes over $100 million a year. Mark Zuckerberg, one of the youngest billionaire and the founder of Facebook, world famous social network, quit studying and founded the company in Palo Alto. Steve Jobs did not attend university, but he founded the richest companies as Apple and Pixon. Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world and in 1973 he entered Havard University and after two years dropped out and with his childhood friend founded Microsoft. What you should understand is that success in life has no relationship with your degree unless you think it does... it‘s all in your mind.
What is most important is that you take your formal education, mend it together with self education and apply them both in order to attract the success you seek. While you‘re at school, make sure that you get the information, what you think about it is what will determine your success in life. What‘s most important is that you have the knowledge because success in life comes from many different channels and if yours is to come through an employer then you should put yourself on a perfect position to get the employment.
THOUGHTS AND AMBITION
Having magnified the importance of formal education, I think we‘d be remiss if we didn‘t take a moment to celebrate some of the amazing achievements from those people who had virtually no formal education at all.
Michael Faraday- A gentleman who worked in a London book shop, with virtually no formal education revolutionized human understanding of electricity, and a whole lot more. If you‘re using anything powered by electricity, if you know anything about magnetism, if you‘ve ever used a Bunsen burner or if you‘re a big fan of benzene and clathrate hydrate of chlorine, then you owe some respect to Mr Faraday. Michael Faraday was a genuine experimental genius and is considered one of the most influential scientists of all time and he never had any formal education.
He was born into a poor family in industrial London, so he never had any money to pay for a proper school. Instead at age 14 he took an apprenticeship at the local book-binder for seven years. While he was there, he started to read some of the books that he was binding. Having read up on a bunch of science stuff and finding himself fascinated with it, he asked London‘s best scientist, Humphrey Davy, for an assistant job. Humphrey declined but Faraday did get that job the next year, and then things began to happen.
In a short period of time, Faraday invented the electric motor, the electric generator, the Bunsen burner, electrolytic and electroplating. He discovered electro-magnetic induction, he discovered benzene, he figured out the shape of magnetic fields, discovered metallic nano particles and something complicated about chlorine. Basically, the man became a science machine Today his legacy lives on as one of the best scientists the world has ever seen, despite never been taught science in his life. Besides, no-one could really teach him much science because he discovered most of it.
Humphrey Davey, the world famous chemist who turned down his initial job application, was once asked, "what was your greatest discovery?" he replied, "Michael Faraday"
William Herschel- He dreamt about outer space, but in his day-to-day life found himself about as far from the stars as one can get. He was a talented musician and by his late 20s, was taking prominent jobs in the exiting world of professional organ playing, and all the professional organ groupies that presumably came with that kind of gig. Though being seriously interested in all things extra-terrestrial, he didn‘t have a telescope.
Obviously, the most sensible solution was to spend 16 hours a day grinding up mirrors and lenses to make his own. Just for humor and to fill the underdog shape of William‘s story, I‘d say that this happened after a rich, popular scientist made fun of him for not having a telescope.
According to his journal, he "began to look at the planets and stars" as opposed to, you know, using the telescope to spy on naked bathing neighbors. A few years later, after some casual, mind-numbing intense searching of the sky, he found something really interesting. Not a woman of course! As he searched the sky, he found something that didn‘t quite fit as a star or a comet. After sending off his observations to a Russian professional he realized he‘d discovered a planet. Uranus to be exact. Herschel decided to name the planet the "Georgian Star" after King George III, because although being only an amateur astronomer, he was also clueless at these things. The name didn‘t catch on, but somehow "Uranus" did.
Srinivasa Ramanujan- The guy who taught himself math, and turned out to be one of the greatest math geniuses to come along in the last few centuries. Ramanujan was insanely good at math, and it wasn‘t due to any education, either, he was entirely self taught. His parents gave him a math textbook on advanced trigonometry when he was around the age of 12. He decided to learn the hell out of that book, and because advanced trigonometry was so easy for him, he derived his own sophisticated theorems all by himself. He did go to college later, but failed out of school because it was too hard to focus on classes about art history and fungus biology when he was inventing new math in his spare time.
Still living in object poverty, he started sending his theorems off to various important math people, some in India and some in England. Almost every time his work was dismissed as a hoax, or returned without comment, presumably unread. Other times the mathematicians on the receiving end had no idea what they were looking at, because these were equations no human had ever seen before.
Finally, when a professor at Cambridge University saw the theorems, he recognized the work of a genius and invited Ramanujan to England, but he refused "to go to a foreign land", despite Professor Hardy offering possibly his only chance at recognition. But he eventually came around and took the offer and today, his formulas have found uses in everything from string theory to crystallography.
Hardy said that his mathematical genius was comparable to men like Isaac Newton and Archimedes. Yeah, that‘s going back more than 2,000 years to find somebody in his class. If he hadn‘t died at the young age of 32, he probably would have been the sort of household name around all mathematicians.
Gregor Mendel- An uneducated monk who discovered how genetics work. Yes, genetics. It can be used to detect rare diseases in people, it can give people an excuse for obesity and it can be used to create a breed of super-monsters with the body of a crocodile and the head of a chimpanzee-probably. So maybe you‘d expect it to have been discovered by some super-scientist with a team of a hundred super-scientist assistants. They previously mentioned how the modern theory of genetics was dismissed as rubbish at the time it was discovered. The reason is that the guy who did the discovering had nothing in the way of a resume.
You can already hear an expert of the science field of that time say; "Wait a minute, who‘s that guy out there saying he‘s discovered the very building blocks of life? Does he even own a white lab coat?". Meet Gregor Mendel, monk extraordinaire from Czech Republic, he couldn‘t afford to go to college.
Maybe in his mind he figured that joining the monastery was at least 90% similar to being in a fraternity, he joined up with the Augustian monastery at Brunn. When he was gardening he noticed some interesting things about his pea plants; namely that certain traits such as color, pea size and a few other things were passed down from pea plant to baby pea plant. A couple of experiments and a "scientist hard at work" and he‘d accidentally walked into the discovery of modern genetics. And without exegerating: Mendel‘s experiments and results are the basis for everything people know about DNA and inheritance today.
And as I said, no one believed him at first, he was just a monk with a penchant for gardens. His work went unnoticed for decades. It wasn‘t until many years later that Mendel‘s works were rediscovered.
It happened because a couple of other scientists were confused by the results of their own similar experiments and couldn‘t make sense of any of it. Supposedly, Hugo de Vries only finally came to grips with his findings once he‘d read Mendel‘s work-the work of a simple gardener and bookkeeper, written nearly 50 years earlier.
And just for the curious, here‘s a list of some of the most powerful men in history who were poorly educated but incredibly successful. Of course they are not the only ones but they‘re just a few among the many.
1. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER- Billionaire. Before becoming possibly the richest man in history by far (taking inflation into account). John Rocker feller was the lowly son of a dodgy con artist and high-school student in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. Although he had some education, by the time he was sixteen, Rocker feller decided it was time to shirk school and begin a career, with the goal of earning $100,000 in his lifetime.
It‘s pretty safe to say that he accomplished that mission and over. Rocker feller made his mark in the oil industry, starting Standard Oil and ultimately creating a monopoly on the entire industry. By 1902, Rocker feller was worth $200 million, and before his death he would amass a fortune of more than one billion dollars.
2. HORACE GREELEY- Journalist and Congressman. Unless you‘re a big fan of journalism history, there‘s a pretty solid chance you‘ve never heard of Horace Greeley, except maybe a fleeting mention here or there. Born in New Hampshire in the early nineteenth century, Greeley would go on to become one of the most influential newspaper men in American history. He also became a Congressman and one of the founding members of the Republican Party.
Greely did this all without any formal education to speak of. By the age of fifteen, he had already left home to take an apprenticeship with a printer in Vermont. By the time he was twenty he had moved to New York City and begun working for The New York Tribune. It was his work with the Tribune that made him famous, and he would actually go on to help found a town in Colorado that bears his name. To this very day, he is thought of as one of the most influential journalists in history.
3. JOHN GLENN- Astronaut. During the tense space race of the 1950s and 1960s, one man emerged as the face of the American attempt to beat the Soviets into space and, ultimately, to the moon. That man was John Glenn: he became a war hero and one of the most famous astronauts in history, despite being a college dropout Glenn attended Muskingum College, where he studied science, but when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor he dropped out in order to fight in World War 2.
4. STEVE JOBS- Apple Co-Founder. There have been many great thinkers of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, and some of them have done incredible things without ever having finished college. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg spring to mind. But perhaps the most influential technological mind of the past century has been Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple.
Jobs and Wozniak created the first successful personal computers, and over the years helped introduce numerous revolutionary products such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. And Jobs did this after attending college for only six months.
5. MARK TWAIT- Author and wit. Arguably the most beloved American writer and humorist, Mark Twain gained fame after creating the classic characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. In fact, his adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered by many to be "the greatest American novel". Not so bad for a guy who had only a minimal formal education, and who was already in the midst of an apprenticeship at the age of eleven.
When Twait was eighteen, he worked as a printer in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, while spending his evenings in the public libraries. That‘s as close as to a formal education as Twait would come, as he read everything he could get his hands on before becoming, of all things, a steamboat pilot. He continued working in that capacity until the Civil War broke out, and after a brief stint in the Confederate army, he began to travel across the country, writing all the while.
6. HENRY FORD- Industrialist and Entrepreneur. In the history of the world, few people have embodied the notion of the self-made man more than Henry Ford, the man who is best remembered for almost single- handedly creating the world‘s automobile industry. Ford had a limited formal education, having been born on a farm outside of Detroit, when he worked with a father who believed his son would someday take to running the farm himself.
Instead, Ford left home at the age of seventeen and became an apprentice with a machinist in Detroit, a career path he would ultimately take to another level on his way to becoming a wildly rich and really successful industrialist. Despite having next to no real education, Ford created the mechanized assembly line, and it wasn‘t long before Detroit gained the nickname of the Motor City because of his incredible work.
7. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE- Poet and playwright. Now one of the most famous names in history, William Shakespeare produced some of the best- loved works the world has ever known, from Romeo and Juliet to Macbeth. But not much is known about Shakespeare‘s early life; in fact, there are not even any records that suggest he ever received much by way of a formal education.
Scholars have suggested that he may have attended the King‘s New School, but they also believe, based on some of his writings that he did not attend school past the age of thirteen. It‘s pretty astonishing that a man credited with inventing more than 1700 words was, by all accounts, a middle school drop out.
8. WINSTON CHURCHILL- Statesman and War Leader. One of the most towering political figures of the twentieth century, a famous wit and, frankly, a quote machine- Winston Churchill was born into aristocracy. It should therefore come as no surprise that he rose through the ranks to eventually lead the United Kingdom to victory during World War 2. What probably does come as a surprise- or at least would, if he wasn‘t included in a list with this title, is that he achieved this with a limited education.
Churchill, coming from such a good family, was given access to the best education available. That didn‘t mean he was any good at it, of course. Churchill found education difficult and did very poorly in school, often being punished for his dismal academic record. His military service was also hindered by his poor performance. He had to apply three times to the Royal Military College, and was only accepted after applying for the Calvary rather than infantry because the grade requirements were lower and it didn‘t involve math.
9. ABRAHAM LINCOLN- US President. Perhaps the most popular US president in history, and a guy who, contrary to popular belief, did not fight vampires. Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth man to lead the USA. He guided the nation through perhaps its most troubling time. But the man who made the Gettysburg Address and effectively ended slavery in the USA, though not through his crippled Emancipation Proclamation- was not even well educated.
Honest Abe was more or less entirely self educated, though at an early age he actually had a reputation of being lazy. This did not stop him from starting down a career in politics in his early twenties, and being admitted to the bar after teaching himself the law in his free time. It seems that Lincoln was a political prodigy. And if the stories about him are true, he basically pulled this off through reading by candlelight in his little wood cabin.
10. ALBERT EINSTEIN- Physicist. Yes: the man whose name now equates "genius"; who published more than 300 scientific papers; the man behind E=MC2; the man who came up with the theory of relativity and the man who won a noble prize-was in fact a high school dropout. He attempted to get into university, but initially failed the entrance exams.
Einstein eventually made it into college and earned a degree, of course, because men of his staggering intellect always find a way in the end.
So. Yeah, stay in school. And if you don‘t, you‘d better be really good at teaching yourself things and a giant in personality and of course... a genius (which you already are).
You my friend have all you need to succeed in life and become great, you‘re secretly a genius and you don‘t even know it. Your brain is your biggest asset and if you use it, nothing will be impossible.
You have considerable amount of unused capacity and potentiality that you have left untapped and consequently not turned to your advantage, I know this for sure, I‘ve been watching you for a while. You can do, be and have all those things that people will say it‘s impossible for you to do or have.
Impossible is nothing compared to what you can become. Your potential is unlimited, all you need to do is go as far as your vision will take you and when you get there, you‘ll realize that you haven‘t even begun the journey.
As an unemployed young man, he used to look at a very expensive watch and in his heart he would think "that watch belongs to someone very important" but in his mind he would see the watch in his hand, in fact in his words he thought calling it a watch was a massive understatement. He called it a timepiece and for him he believed it to be practically the key to contentment. A 24 karat and 48 diamonds around the face screamed all the more: "I belong to someone very important". He had never seen a watch like that in his entire life, he loved it so much that he constantly saw it in his hand through the eyes of his imagination and even dreamed of it at times, but he couldn‘t afford it, not even close.
When he got his first job the watch had been long forgotten and he now lived in a different town but something happened. It was the company‘s tradition to hold a national conference every year and reward their best top ten workers. He was among the top ten that were to receive their gifts of appreciation for their outstanding service that year. He was handed a check and a small portably wrapped box, when he opened the box he couldn‘t believe his eyes. It was a 24 karats and 48 diamonds watch, the same watch he had wished to have for himself years earlier. The price of the watch represented his ten months income.
At the stoplights he couldn‘t stop stroking his ear with his right hand and letting everybody see just how important he was... the watch proved it! By having a burning desire to own the watch, he had set the Universal laws in motion years ago.
Here is another young man of 27 years in age who had spent the past five years of his life trying to raise his plumbing and cleaning business. He always got odd and weird jobs for all this period. He was a hard worker, sincere and a man of prayer. His life was a 'mess‘ in his words and he thought that life was unfair and unjust, everybody that knew how sincere and hardworking this young man was also thought life was being unfair.
Nobody seemed to understand why he wasn‘t breaking through or succeeding in life but I knew that he had to change his thinking if he were to change his life. The man had all it takes to succeed but he always blamed the economy, he thought that the taxes were too high, he thought that the politicians and the businessmen had monopolized all the opportunities, he said they were corrupt and ruthless. He thought if the economy would change then his life would also change.
One day he stumbled upon a book in the author‘s desk, the kind of book that you don‘t want people finding out about before the right time. The kind of book that has a title that excites anyone who lays their eyes on. It was a manuscript of the first part of the book you‘re now reading. The author sat back in his arm- chair with a cheerful heart and watched him closely since he knew that this particular young man hated reading, to the author‘s surprise this young man couldn‘t put the manuscript down. The insights of the book stimulated his desire to learn more on the subject and by the time he was done reading the first chapter, the smile on his face was radiant and the author knew that he had grasped the secret that has been rocking the lives of those that knew it.
Putting down the manuscript he said, "I need to read more books, will you let me borrow some of yours?" the gentleman I‘m talking about is now generating a six figure income a month and he‘s well on his way to greater things.
He stopped blaming the economy, politicians and the government. Nothing changed but he changed his thinking. The economy is still the same, the government is still under the same leaders and the same businesses that he blamed for monopolizing the industries are still there. But now he‘s fairly getting rich.
What changed? He did!
He shared with the author that everybody that knew him was talking about how much he‘s changed, and yeah he did. He had stopped thinking that success was something to be pursued and he began working on himself because he now understood that success was something you attract by the person you become.
Yes he continued working hard on his business but he worked harder on himself. He began setting goals and creating his ideal lifestyle in his mind because he no longer thought imagination was a waste of time. He now knew that this system was revealed only to the fortunate few, people like you... my friend.