A.K. MOZUMDAR

Anthropologist Ruth Benedict said, "Religion is universally a technique for success." Although A.K. Mozumdar was fond of using religious terminology throughout his writings and lectures, his teachings could not realistically be classified as a "religion." Rather, they are personal techniques and mental practices that were designed to propel the practitioner down a path that would ultimately lead to a lifetime of increased happiness and complete mastery over all circumstances we encounter.

Marketing guru Joe Vitale's 2006 book, Life's Missing Instruction Manual: The Guidebook You Should Have Been Given at Birth, pulls a quote from A.K. Mozumdar that cuts to the core of Mozumdar's method of mastery. "Mind operates under its own conception of itself," Mozumdar said. After printing this quotation, Vitale wrote, "Better read that again. That statement was made by A.K. Mozumdar. I have no idea who he is or where he is. I read the line in the book Prosperity Plus by John Seaman Garns," Vitale continues. Dr. Garns was a close friend of Mozumdar's.

"What does the quote mean?" asks Vitale. "Whatever you choose to believe, will be the concept that runs your mind. What are you thinking right now, in response to reading the concept, ‘mind operates under its own conception of itself?' Whatever your answer, THAT is your current conception – and it is running your mind. Are you happy with what you are thinking?"

In other words, you are what you think — you are what you believe yourself to be. "Our concept is our life. We can change our life by changing our concept," Mozumdar wrote in 1914. "You can believe whatever you please to believe, and you can manifest the quality of that which you believe," Mozumdar explained in a later publication. "But nothing will surpass the belief that you are the believer of your beliefs and that you are a self-conscious expression of the Infinite."

This acceptance of who we are – "a self-conscious expression of the Infinite" – results in a "spiritual concept of life" that places all that we need within easy grasp, Mozumdar taught. His many books weave this beautiful tapestry over and over again, in one way and then another, so as to help the student grasp, incorporate and apply these ideas.

Along the way, however, Mozumdar uses some terminology that may need a bit of explanation for the new student. The "definitions" below are in no way to be considered complete but they will help the student resolve some questions when the terms are encountered. Most of Mozumdar's writing was done in the early decades of the twentieth century and he uses some language that is no longer "in style" or understood as it was back then.

With that introduction, here is a brief assist. Spend little time here – read this quickly then proceed to the teachings themselves. That is where the real insight is contained.

• GOD – Throughout Mozumdar's writings you will encounter religious terms over and over again. However, what he meant when using these words was quite different from the meaning attached to them by "traditional," "orthodox" religious teachers. For example, when Mozumdar said "God," he was not referring to some anthropomorphic deity off in his kingdom, guiding us and others like puppets on strings. That concept of "God" was classified by Mozumdar as a superstitious belief. "Modern science is destroying many of our superstitious beliefs, and at the same time it is also building our faith on a substantial and permanent basis," he wrote. Instead of a deity with form on a throne somewhere, God to Mozumdar was the universal "Creative Life" – that "mighty ocean of the Universal Life" from which all has emerged and remains inseparable from. Another term he used for this force is "Creative Principle." His clearest definition was in the early pages of The Triumphant Spirit: "So when you speak to your God – the All-Pervading Creative Life – imagine that He can hear and understand you like a person. It will bring your mind quickly in tune with the Universal Superconscious Principle. This Superconscious Principle is in you and about you. In other words, It is All-Pervading and Omnipresent. When you say that the Superconscious is in you, you really mean that It is in your mind, or consciousness." We are, in effect, part and parcel with this Creative Life Force that sustains all.

To Mozumdar there was no external personal God as is envisioned by followers of orthodox Christianity and many other religions. In answer to a conversational comment recorded in The Open Door to Heaven Mozumdar was quite emphatic about his view concerning the so-called "supernatural." A friend said to Mozumdar, "I thought you did not believe in the Supernatural." Mozumdar wrote that his response was, "I certainly do not. Every phenomenon that you see is produced by a natural law. When you cannot understand or explain a certain phenomenon, you may call it Supernatural."

As an alternative to a deity in the sky, Mozumdar proposed elsewhere that, "God is our Power to think or conceive God or deny God. In other words, it is the Power with which we conceive God or deny God. By the same token we may say, our Power to argue, reason, speculate, philosophize, think, move, act, is God." The process of thoroughly assimilating this relationship brings about a point of contact with the Universal Superconscious Principle ("God" or "The Animating Power back of your mind and body") and thereby imparts power and mastery to the student.

Writing in Today and Tomorrow, Mozumdar explained, "The New Messianic Message states that you need not search after God any more and adopt tedious methods and practices to contact and realize Him. The moment you turn your mind to the Power back of your mind and body, you contact your God. You usually limit this Power as your little, personal self. And yet, when you accept It as a universal significance, It becomes All-inclusive All. As human beings, we are the human manifestations of this Power. Therefore, it gives us the perrogative to personify It, because we are Its personified manifestations. When we converse with It in a personal significance, we simply converse with our All-inclusive Self."

Mozumdar was fascinated by science and made references often to the discoveries of physics in his attempt to explain truth to his students. In referring in The Commanding Life to the constant activity that exists at the atomic level he told students that "If you could feel the pulse of the universe, you would be surprised to find that it is alive. Every atom of its cosmic body is throbbing with life." Humans look at inorganic matter and see it as "dead" but Mozumdar taught that it was vibrant and "living," the manifestation of "an eternal, birthless and deathless Something."

He continues with another definition of this underlying animating Something. "That which makes a so-called dead thing alive — responsive to the bidding of the exact law — is none other than God. A name means little except as a convenient method of distinguishing one thing from another. God, Spirit, the Universal Life, and the Final Essence are terms indicating the same thing. It is the eternal, living and moving thing of the universe, and it makes our conscious, thinking, believing, and reasoning life possible. If without this Something we are dead, or as nothing, then who are we and what are we? The answer to that question almost frightens us, because we are habituated to thinking of ourselves in terms indicating isolation and mortality. That Something that makes us individual, living entities must be individualized in ourselves. Then how far removed can this self-conscious thinking and reasoning man be from that fundamental Something? Just as far removed as man thinks himself to be. Apart from that there is absolutely no separation."

• JESUS – Mozumdar had great regard for Jesus, not because he thought Jesus was a unique incarnation of the deity but because of his message. "Although not a Christian in the conventional and institutional sense," Mozumdar admitted, he professed possession of "a great reverence for Christ." He wrote elsewhere, "Jesus the Christ brought to the world a unifying religion, not only showing the hiding place of the Phantom God, but also revealing His Identity. He proclaimed that the hiding place is within you and that the Phantom God whom you are seeking is your very Life – the living and moving Power in you. We should all remember it was twenty centuries ago that a son of man made such a declaration." And again, "Christ came to teach us this — that when we make all our desires and aspirations harmonize with the Divine Plan, we fulfill our divine destiny. He came to teach us that the human expression is not an illusion, nor nature's accident, nor a chemical product, but that it is a vital reality, and that each man has come here to fulfill a specific mission. He did not come to teach us a set rule, nor a particular dogma nor ritual, but to realize the indwelling God and to follow His direction and will."

Mozumdar had a unique interpretation of the New Testament and the message of Jesus – which he called The Messianic World Message (Jesus being a "messiah" – a teacher of liberating Truth). Mozumdar's interpretation of this Message was a new spin on the old theme, so this man from India eventually called his collective teachings and his organization "The New Messianic World Message." Today, on this website, we revert mostly to the term originally used by Mozumdar when he began his teaching in America – "The Universal Message."

Mozumdar had great reverence for other religious teachers and especially referred often to those in the religion of his birth and initial upbringing – Hinduism. But he also held modern scientists in the same light and he eschewed blind fanaticism. "The religious fanaticism that we observe to this day is not due to one's positive realization of God, but to one's blind faith," he wrote. "You cannot reason with an obsessed person. By constantly dwelling upon the tenets of his faith, and injunctions of certain authorities, he has completely lost his rational perspective of life. To say that rationalism is not a religion does not help the matter. Most religions are founded upon human emotions and a strong appeal to peoples' prehistoric fears and superstitions...." And again, Mozumdar wrote that "all our dogmas, creeds and religious beliefs are merely child's play, and ... the Infinite Spirit is not at all interested in our little self-created doctrine of salvation." And again, "The farther away you get from your little, limited, mortal concept of life, the nearer you come to the heart of the universe."

• CHRIST – On one level, of course, "Christ" is often used by Mozumdar – and by all of us – as a synonym for "Jesus." But "Christ" has a much deeper, second meaning for Mozumdar and for all students of New Thought. "....None of us has an imperfect Christ within us, because Christ cannot be imperfect – He is the Eternal and Highest Illumined State of Consciousness. Christ becomes a part of your Inner Kingdom as you become conscious of His eternal presence in the All-Pervading God." So wrote Mozumdar in The Triumphant Spirit.

Mozumdar and other mystics have long proclaimed that we are each a "son of God." A big part of Mozumdar's Message is learning how to recognize this true nature within. Mozumdar's friend Ernest Holmes (founder of the Churches of Religious Science) wrote in his monumental book The Science of Mind, "This world forms and disintegrates, as the body does, but creation goes on forever. Therefore, the Eternal is forever begetting that which is the realization of Its own perfection. It is an eternal process; It is the Son of God, and the Son of God is Christ. Christ means the Universal Idea of Sonship, of which each is a member. That is why we are spoken of as members of that One Body; and why we are told to have the Mind in us ‘which was also in Christ Jesus.' Each partakes of the Christ nature, to the degree that the Christ is revealed through him and to that degree he becomes the Christ...."

The Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, published since 1931 by Unity School of Christianity, states that "Christ is the cosmic man, the grand man of the universe, demonstrated, developed, brought out, in every man. The birth of Christ in man is the bringing to consciousness of the spiritual idea of man – the Christ of God – through the quickening power of the word of Truth."

Mozumdar wrote, "We believe that Christ is a state of consciousness of every individual part in this concept life. It is the state of consciousness of unity with All God. Therefore, Christ comes to every individual according to his degree of realization of the Oneness of all lives. But when the world or the race at large expect a Messiah, a person with the Christed state of Consciousness comes. Such is the power of demand of the human hearts and such is the fulfillment of that demand."

In The Commanding Life Mozumdar elaborated further on the connection between "Jesus" and "Christ." "[A] sense of togetherness with the Universal Source gave Jesus such a sense of self-abnegation and freedom that it made him a cosmic man. A cosmic man is a manifestation of God Himself. In other words, he is God manifest as man. When a man knows himself for what he is in relation to the Universal Supreme Source, he becomes a cosmic man — he becomes Christed."

• SPIRIT and SOUL — Mozumdar wrote, "According to some authorities [humans are] composed of Spirit, soul, and body. What is Spirit? Your Power to think, move, and act is Spirit. What is your soul? Your mind — the instrument of awareness or self-consciousness by which you think, reason, discriminate, will, enjoy, and suffer — is your soul. The vehicle in which Spirit in its self-conscious state operates through the various faculties of mind, is the body."

• TRUTH — "Truth is that Power back of your mind and body which acts consciously and superconsciously through your mind. In other words, it is the motive power that enables you to think your thought consciously. It also enables you to think your thought superconsciously when your mind is perfectly attuned to the superconscious aspect of your life."

• EVOLUTION and SPIRITUAL UNFOLDMENT — "By imagining and believing in the higher things of life, you expand your mental horizon and come to realize that which you vision. That is called progress, or expansion of consciousness.... Everything that you are and that you manifest in your personal life is the result of the thoughts, things and conditions that you have mentally accepted."

Mozumdar, with his great love of science and his deep belief that all of life is spirit governed by scientific laws, would be thrilled with discoveries in just the past few years that confirm his beliefs. He would find agreement with this statement made by Gregg Braden in his fascinating 2007 book The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief: "From my perspective, we're incapable of anything other than a spiritual life. To put it another way, as beings of spirit, we're capable only of spiritual experiences. Regardless of what life may look like, I believe that each endeavor and all our paths are leading us to the same place. From that belief, the activities of every day can't be separate from our spiritual evolution - they are our spiritual evolution!

Braden's book summarizes (with documentation) some of the exciting discoveries of science that confirm Mozumdar's teachings over and over. Mozumdar would applaud four discoveries of science that Braden introduces as follows: (1) "There is a field of energy that connects all of creation. (2) This field plays the role of a container, a bridge, and a mirror for the beliefs within us. (3) The field is nonlocal and holographic. Every part of it is connected to every other, and each piece mirrors the whole on a smaller scale. (4) We communicate with the field through the language of emotion."

• RACE – In several places Mozumdar uses the word "race" as in "Message of the New Age to the New Race" and in the fourth paragraph of the section above on Christ. The word "race" in this context does not refer to ethnicity or skin color. Mozumdar's use of "race" in all instances is a synonym for "group" or "classification" of people – or for humanity in total (the "human race").

• GENDER – At the time A.K. Mozumdar was writing, it was customary to use the male gender in an inclusive way that implied a reference to both men and women. Nowadays it is more common to say "humankind," "humanity," "he and she" or something similar instead of referring to "man." Therefore, a statement of Mozumdar's such as, "As long as a person has the least bit of subconscious fear or anxiety with regard to his diseased condition, he cannot be free" does not apply only to males, but to all people. A.K. Mozumdar was not a chauvinist! As women were finally gaining the right to vote in the United States, Mozumdar wrote, "Not so very long ago women were treated like chattel slaves. They were denied every privilege that men enjoyed. Today, in all civilized communities, that iron-clad rule has been abolished. Who championed this noble cause? Not the church; not the priests and scribes and nobilities, but a few daring souls."

• CHURCH and ORGANIZED RELIGION — Although Mozumdar worked closely with many organized religious groups, he never officially united with any of them. Throughout the U.S. there were several organized centers of the New Messianic World Message, places where his students gathered to meditate and talk about the teachings. Mozumdar's books were usually for sale at these locations and some had "reading rooms" similar to those maintained by the Christian Science churches. But, mostly, Mozumdar's students got together in small groups in one another's homes. "The students of Truth... can disseminate the real teaching of the freedom of Christ without any definite organization," he spelled out in The Commanding Life. "They can form small groups here and there, and call themselves the children of God. This, too, will create a mass movement, but of a different kind — the kind that liberates and never binds."

However, after his death, these small groups fell apart — an illustration of how strong organizations can sometimes be necessary in order to keep a message alive. Students gravitated to denominations that proclaimed similar truths, such as Unity, Religious Science and Divine Science.

• SATAN – Mozumdar seldom mentioned the being in Christian dogma named the Devil or "Satan." When he did, he defined "Satan" as "a false belief," not as an actual entity personifying evil. In this respect he is in agreement with most other New Thought teachers.

Mozumdar's message is a joyous, positive one that leads to happiness and success. "The sooner we become free from the bondage of darkness and learn to operate Truth with a perfect understanding, the better it will be for all of us," he wrote. "The romantic thrill that we receive through the practical operation of Truth, nothing can surpass. Life without romance is dead. Romance without youth is impossible. The glorious, ever-new revelations of Christ keep us ever youthful in heart and soul. We never cease to experience a romantic thrill when we demonstrate God's Truth at every turn of the road."