The Power of Silence: An Interpretation of Life in its Relation to Health and Happiness

First published in 1898, The Power of Silence is Dresser's first book on improving one's life through understanding the work of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, the founder of the 19th-century "New Age" philosophy of New Thought. He explains the eternal principle that is Reality, the total of the universe, its own manifestation that is wholly Nature. Dresser then brings humans into this scheme and seeks to answer some of the largest questions in human existence, including the reason for suffering. Spiritual seekers will be inspired by Dresser's presentation of an orderly and eternal universe that is both rational and religiously inspired. American New Thought author HORATIO WILLIS DRESSER (1866-1954) wrote a number of books about mental health and spirituality including The Perfect Whole (1896) and In Search of a Soul (1897). Later in life, he left the New Thought movement and went to work at Harvard University, where he wrote about philosophy. Because of this abandonment of his earlier work, his writings are often forgotten today. Horatio W. Dresser was one of the most prolific writers of the New Thought Movement. His works and those of others in the New Thought Movement have seen a resurgance with the release of the bestselling book and film "The Secret" and the popularity of the Jerry and Esther Hicks Abraham Teachings. In The Power of Silence he writes:It is a revelation to many people who have sought to enter fully into the present to discover how largely their consciousness is ordinarily concerned with distant things. The attention is constantly turned here and there by thoughts that disturb one's repose. The past is regarded with regret, the future with fear and suspicion. Neglected duties occur to consciousness, and there is a sense of uncertainty in regard to what the mind ought to be engaged in. The thought occurs that perhaps one ought to be elsewhere, instead of taking time for a quiet meditation. One has set aside precisely half an hour for thought and one watches the clock lest one overstep the limit. The nervous, hurrying tide of our modern life pulses through all one's thinking, and not for one moment is the mind in repose.Consequently, if you really wish to profit by a half-hour's meditation make up your mind to put aside everything else. If duties occur to mind, decide when you will attend to them, and immediately dismiss them. When the past comes up laden with regret, leave it to bury its own dead. Tell the future that you will attend to it when it arrives. If part of your consciousness is flying north, part south and the rest up and down, call it in from all directions, as if you were drawing in an arm, gathering your forces unto yourself. Settle down reposefully upon your chair. Let the present little environment contain all there is of you. When the mind flies off again, bring it back. Yield yourself to the moment in full enjoyment. Disconnect from the rushing currents of modern thought, and become as moderate as if you were back in the old stage-coach days, before the era of record-breaking express trains and automobiles. Do not simply banish all thoughts from your mind, but whatever you think let your thoughts radiate, as it were, from the eternal present. Remember that you are a soul dwelling in eternity. Live in the thought of eternity for a while, and let the world of time rage on.