...And The Highest You Shall Be

As many would expect, The Catalyst of Confidence manuscript is, as with most first drafts, very much different from the finalized version. Recently, while reviewing an original copy of the manuscript, I found something which caught my eye. A poem—first published in 1906 by James Allen as part of a now out of print book known as “From Poverty to Power”—was intended to be part of Lesson IV: Thought and Concentration, but during the early phases of editing, was omitted. Though it was cut from the final draft, I believe many people would nonetheless enjoy it. Hence, I have included it here:

Would you scale the highest heaven,

Would you pierce the lowest hell,—

Live in dreams of constant beauty,

Or in basest thinkings dwell.

For your thoughts are heaven above you,

And your thoughts are hell below;

Bliss is not, except in thinking,

Torment naught but thought can know.

Worlds would vanish but for thinking;

Glory is not but in dreams;

And the Drama of the ages

From the Thought Eternal streams.

Dignity and shame and sorrow,

Pain and anguish, love and hate

Are the maskings of the mighty

Pulsing Thought that governs Fate.

As the colors of the rainbow

Makes the one uncolored beam,

So the universal changes

Make the One Eternal Dream.

And the Dream is all within you,

And the dreamer waiteth long

For the Morning to awake him

To the living thought and strong.

That shall make the ideal real,

Make to vanish dreams of hell

In the highest, holiest heaven

Where the pure and perfect dwell.

Evil is the thought that thinks it;

Good, the thought that makes it so;

Light and darkness, sin and pureness

Likewise out of thinking grow.

Dwell in thought upon the Grandest,

And the Grandest you shall see;

Fix your mind upon the Highest,

And the Highest you shall be.

Many will notice, however, that the last two lines of the final stanza (Fix your mind upon the highest, And the highest you shall be.) were included on the back cover of the paperback edition. These words provide us with the essential meaning of the poem, as well as—in my estimation—The Catalyst of Confidence itself.

Perhaps this is why I couldn't scrap the entire poem after all.