In Tune with the Infinite rests on a single premise, worked out with unusual consistency: the life animating the universe and the life within each person are one, and the conditions of a human existence follow from how far this unity is consciously recognized. Health, serenity, influence, insight, and material sufficiency are not separate goals requiring separate techniques. They are expressions of one alignment, and the structure of the book reflects this. After establishing the metaphysical ground, Trine applies one principle in turn to body, emotion, mind, will, and circumstance. He then widens the frame to the religious traditions.
The book builds its case on the reader's own reason and insight. Trine writes as a teacher addressing a student, returning to the same truths from new angles so that repetition itself becomes instruction. His stated aim is to base nothing on the teachings of others, however inspired, and in chapter 10 he turns to look at what reason and insight have shown in the light of the world's great thinkers and inspired teachers. Throughout, he appeals to intuition and to the reader's own capacity to verify the teaching through experience. The prose carries the cadence of the late nineteenth century lecture hall and the devotional essay: warm, earnest, and given to long, rising periods.
The book suits those approaching New Thought for the first time, as it gathers ideas associated with Emerson, Swedenborg, and the mental healing movement into a clear and accessible form. It also serves students of comparative esotericism who wish to understand the vocabulary that later shaped much of twentieth century spiritual literature. Its universalist chapter offers an early statement of the perennialist sympathy that became common in later decades.
Several matters deserve attention. Health is the natural state of the body, and illness a departure from it, rooted in mental and emotional conditions. Trine holds that drugs and medicines can at most remove obstructions so that the life forces within may do the real healing, and he looks to a day when the physician will be a teacher who keeps people well. His account of prosperity is ethical as much as economic, bound to service and inner rightness rather than accumulation, and it differs in temper from later prosperity teaching. Finally, the book asks to be practiced rather than merely read. Its teachings are offered for testing in daily conduct and in quiet hours of receptive stillness.
Chapter by chapter
Trine holds that the cause of everything that enters a life lies within, and that whoever comes to know their own awakened interior powers can shape their life to match what they would have it be. He traces a golden thread that runs through every religion and through the lives of all prophets, seers, and sages, and insists that what they attained came about by law, so that what one has done, all may do. Thought is the building force: like builds like and like attracts like, and spiritualized thought works more subtly and powerfully. Everything takes form first in the unseen realm of cause before it appears in the seen realm of effect. Trine states his aim of setting out these laws so plainly that a child could grasp them, and he calls them a matter of positive knowledge rather than theory. He ends with the divine sequence: to come into harmony with the Divine will, and so to work in league with the higher laws, is the secret of all success.
- The cause of what enters your life lies within you, and awakened interior powers let you shape your life deliberately.
- A single golden thread of law runs through all the great religions and teachers, and what one has done, all may do.
- Thoughts are forces: like builds like and like attracts like, and spiritualized thought acts with greater power.
- The unseen is the realm of cause and the seen is the realm of effect, so the nature of the cause always determines the effect.
- Harmony with the Divine will brings a person into the divine sequence, which Trine calls the secret of all success.
Trine opens by showing that a person's point of view decides the whole character of a life: power or impotence, peace or pain, success or failure. The optimist and the pessimist are each right from where they stand. The optimist sees things whole and in their right relations, while the pessimist sees from a narrow, one-sided place. Each builds a world from within, and whatever heaven or hell a person makes for himself, he helps make for all mankind as well. Trine then turns to the roots of the words. Heaven means harmony, and hell comes from an old English word meaning to wall around or shut off. Harmony requires something to be in right relation with, and being shut off requires something to be separated from. With this he prepares the ground for the inquiry that follows.
- Point of view is the determining factor in a life, shaping its power, peace, and success.
- The optimist sees things in their entirety and right relations; the pessimist sees from a limited, one-sided view.
- Each person builds a heaven or a hell from within, hour by hour.
- What one makes for oneself, one helps to make for the whole world.
- Heaven means harmony, and hell means being walled off or separated.
- Both words point to something one may be in harmony with or shut off from.
Trine holds that the central fact of the universe is one Spirit of Infinite Life and Power. All things come from it, and it works through great immutable laws. Every individual quality of life, love, wisdom, peace and power must have an infinite source, and that source is what Trine calls God, though he says the name matters little. Because God fills all the universe and nothing lies outside Him, the life of man is one with the life of God in essence and differs only in degree. Trine reconciles two views held by illumined souls: that life comes by a divine inflow, and that God and man are one. He shows that both are true, using the image of a valley reservoir fed by an inexhaustible reservoir on the mountain side. From this he draws his conclusion. In the degree that a person opens to the divine inflow, that person takes on the God-powers, and so the only limits are those one sets oneself by not knowing oneself.
- Every finite quality, whether life, love, wisdom or power, points of necessity to an infinite source from which it continually comes.
- The Infinite works through immutable laws, and the maker of those laws is greater than the laws themselves.
- The life of God and the life of man are the same in essence and quality; they differ only in degree.
- The divine inflow and the oneness of God and man are not rival doctrines but one truth seen from two sides.
- In the degree that one opens to the divine inflow, one takes on the God-powers; the only limitations are self-imposed, born of not knowing oneself.
The central fact of human life, Trine holds, is coming into a conscious, vital realization of our oneness with the Infinite Life and opening ourselves fully to its divine inflow. Everything else follows from this. In the degree that we open ourselves, we pass from mere men into God-men, and the powers that moved the prophets and sages work through us. Trine shows this through the lotus pond of a friend. While its gate stands open, the pond blooms and overflows to bless the fields and all who come. Under a practical-minded renter the gate is shut and everything withers. Unlike the pond, we hold the gate ourselves, and we work it by thought. Thought is a living, creative force. The unseen is cause and the seen is effect, and by the law that like attracts like we draw to us, from both sides of life, conditions akin to our own thinking. Faith is earnest desire held to firm expectation. Will is thought focused, and it becomes supreme only when the human will is brought into harmony with the divine. God is immanent as well as transcendent, and as the mind connects soul life with physical life it receives the inner guidance of intuition. Listened to and obeyed, that guidance grows clearer until it is unerring.
- Recognizing our oneness with the Infinite Life, and opening to its inflow, is the root from which every other good follows.
- A life open to the divine inflow overflows and blesses others, and a closed life withers and harms those near it.
- We open or close ourselves to the divine inflow through thought, which Trine treats as a real, creative force.
- By the law that like attracts like, our dominant thoughts draw corresponding influences and conditions to us.
- One can hold the attitude of being closed to all things below and open to all things above until it becomes a habit.
- Faith is earnest desire watered by firm expectation, and doubt or fear cancels its power.
- The human will has limits, and it becomes supreme only when brought into harmony with the divine will.
- Intuition, the inner spiritual sense, grows clearer as it is recognized and obeyed, until its guidance is unerring.
Abounding health is the natural state of the body, Trine holds, because the Infinite Spirit of Life can admit of no disease, and whoever opens fully to its inflow shares in that wholeness. He begins with the law "As within, so without" and gathers evidence that fear, worry, anger and grief work directly on the body, from the poisoned milk of an angry mother to the chemistry of perspiration. Real healing is done by the life forces within. Drugs and medicines can at most clear obstructions, and a cure lasts only when the person who is ill stops violating the law that caused the illness. He gives a simple practice of realization: quietly holding the thought of oneness with the Infinite Life until a warming glow of healing is felt. He then widens the law to every circumstance. A draft is an occasion and not a cause, fear invites what it fears, and parents' anxious thoughts can weaken a child. Through the contrast of two elderly women, Trine shows that age and vigor are settled in the thought world. He looks ahead to a time when the physician will be a teacher who heals the mind, and when each person will be his own physician.
- Mental states and emotions have exact, traceable effects upon the body; illness follows thought as effect follows cause.
- The real healing process is the work of the life forces within; external remedies only remove obstructions.
- Realization of oneness with the Infinite Spirit does more than affirmation, and it works fastest when it is calm and expectant.
- Things such as a draft are occasions, not causes; their effect depends on the conditions and attitude they find within us.
- Fear and worry are too costly to entertain, because the mind ruled by fear opens the door to what it fears.
- Youth and vigor are kept by living them in thought, giving the body ordinary care but little anxious attention.
Love is the key to life, Trine holds, because every thought is a force that goes out and comes back carrying its own kind. When we see that all of us share one life drawn from the Infinite Spirit of Love, prejudice and hatred fall away, and we start to look for the God in each person and call it out. Ignorance lies at the root of selfishness, and selfishness at the root of all error and sin. Knowing this, the wise man meets wrongdoing with compassion and does not condemn. Love builds up the body and the countenance, and hatred, envy, and scorn eat away at it. These forces also gather strength from the minds they stir in other people. Trine sets the Persian, Buddhist, Chinese, and Hindu sages beside the Gospel to teach that hatred is overcome only by love, and that this is how an enemy is changed into a friend. The larger nature takes others in rather than shutting them out, and finds its own life by losing it in service. The truest service, as Peter showed the cripple at the temple gate, is to help a person help himself by waking him to the divine powers already in his own soul.
- Thoughts are forces: love returns as love, and hatred returns as hatred, often doing more harm to the sender than to the one it was aimed at.
- Selfishness grows from ignorance, so the fitting answer to error in another is compassion, not condemnation.
- Seeing the God in another helps to call it forth, while dwelling on someone's faults suggests those faults to him.
- Answering an enemy with love takes the sting out of his hatred and can turn him into a friend.
- The highest service is to wake a person to his oneness with the Infinite, so that he can help himself.
Trine holds that the highest wisdom comes to each soul directly from the Infinite Source, and that it comes in the degree that we open ourselves to it. Persons, institutions and books may serve as teachers, but they are never sources. The true guide is the inner voice of intuition, the voice of God speaking through the soul. It never prompts harm, and it grows clearer each time it is obeyed. Reason is not set aside but illumined. Intellectual pride, prejudice and fixed creeds close the door to truth. Trine shows this with the scientist whose pamphlet against ocean steam navigation crossed the Atlantic by steamship, and with the Eastern fable of the frog in the well. Under a great law, truth flows from all quarters to the one who is open to it and comes in its fullness from no source to the one who is closed. The true teacher makes the pupil his own interpreter. Trine then turns to sleep. The body rests while the soul stays active, and a mind given a direction before sleep can receive instruction, solutions and inspiration, as happened to a journalist friend who woke with her article fully written. The chapter ends with the waking hour as a receptive time that sets the pace for the day. Each morning is a fresh beginning, and life lived to its highest one hour at a time becomes in time its natural course.
- Go directly to the Infinite Source for wisdom. Treat persons, books and institutions as teachers, never as masters.
- Intuition followed promptly grows clearer and more certain. A prompting to harm another is never its voice.
- Intellectual pride and prejudice shut out truth, while openness to every source draws truth from all quarters.
- The true teacher leads others to become their own interpreters of truth.
- Thoughts held while falling asleep shape what the soul receives in the night. Peace, good-will and an expectant desire for light invite real guidance.
- The early morning is a receptive hour. Living to one's highest for a single hour, then the next, is the way character is built.
Peace cannot be found in the outer world, Trine holds. It comes only through realizing one's oneness with the Spirit of Infinite Peace, because peace is harmony. Seekers who travel the world in search of it fail because they look outside themselves. Those who find it within grow calm, fearless, and joyful, as Trine shows through a recovered invalid and a police officer who walks home so buoyant that his feet scarcely keep to the pavement. Such a person reads others truly and is no longer disappointed in them. Evil report and bereavement do not overthrow him, for he knows that death is only the falling away of the shell. Whoever has found his centre in the Infinite radiates peace and draws strength to himself by the law that like attracts like. Fear does the reverse: it opens the door to the very thing feared and ties a person to the weak and negative minds around him. Since the thought world is the world of cause, Trine urges the reader to plant the seed-thought "I can" and to let faith take the place of fear. The chapter ends in the restful assurance that what is one's own will find its way home.
- Peace is harmony with the Infinite, and it is found only within, never through outward pursuit.
- Fear opens the door to the very thing feared, while fearlessness brings a sense of protection that makes the protection complete.
- The one who has found his centre in the Infinite carries peace with him and gives it to others.
- Thoughts of strength build strength from within and attract it from without, and thoughts of weakness do the same with weakness.
- Everything visible has its cause in the thought world, so lasting change in outward conditions begins with a change of thought.
- Fear can be overcome by planting and tending the seed-thought that you can, until faith replaces it.
All true power comes from one source, and Trine holds that a person shows that power in the degree that he keeps conscious connection with the Infinite. What people call miracles are the work of higher laws that any soul can use once it recognizes its oneness with God. For this reason Trine says that environment and heredity can be mastered from within. He then urges the reader to keep his individuality and not give it over to custom and the "mush of concession", for a life centred in the Infinite becomes a law unto itself. He applies the principle to the painter, orator, singer, writer and minister. The dawn chorus of the forest and Sankey's unrehearsed singing of "The Ninety and Nine" show what comes through those who open themselves to the higher inspirations. To religious teachers he gives a call to preach the living Christ within instead of dead forms. He presents Jesus as the one who conquered first so that all may conquer afterward. The chapter ends with Trine's confidence that religion is not dying but only now being born, and with a hymn on the soul's divine birthright.
- Power belongs to the spiritual man, and it grows in direct proportion to his recognition of himself as spirit.
- Miracles are higher laws at work, open to anyone who comes into the same realization.
- Environment and inherited traits give way as one realizes the forces of mind and spirit within.
- Individuality, kept true to principle, is a person's greatest agent of power. Striving for effect is a sign of weakness.
- In every calling, first-rate work comes from joining the outer means of expression with the Power that works from within.
- Trine calls teachers to preach the living Christ within, a life every soul can attain here and now.
Trine holds that abundance is the natural law of the universe, and that whoever lives in conscious oneness with the Infinite Power becomes a magnet for whatever supply he truly needs. He dismisses the old link between godliness and poverty as a relic of ascetic thinking and sets out the law of prosperity in practical terms. When you meet adversity, refuse fear and complaint, picture the better condition you want, affirm it, expect it, and stay faithful to the work in front of you. He illustrates this with a young woman whose morning silence was followed by unexpected, generous work, and with a friend's advice to laugh in the arms of the bear while keeping an eye on the bull. Trine then turns to what wealth is really for. The man who piles up riches but never comes to know his own soul is a slave to his possessions and will leave this life destitute. We are only stewards. Hoarding brings loss, wise use brings renewed gain, and like a living tree shedding its old leaves, we have to let things go so that new supply can come through us to others.
- Prosperity follows the law that like attracts like: a mind that dwells on poverty keeps poverty, and a mind that dwells on prosperity sets the forces of supply moving.
- In adversity, give no time to complaint. Affirm and expect the better situation while doing the present work faithfully and well.
- Spiritual law does not mean folded hands. Trine asks the reader to take up the first opening that comes and treat it as a stepping-stone.
- Possessions are given to be used, not hoarded. We are stewards, accountable for how we use what is entrusted to us.
- Wealth beyond what can be used becomes a burden. The real riches are character, kindly deeds, and the soul's unfolded powers, which go with us.
- Letting go of the old, as a tree drops last year's leaves, makes room for a fresh supply and turns us into channels of good for others.
Trine holds that the greatness of every prophet, seer, sage, and saviour came from an entirely natural process: they consciously realized their oneness with the Infinite Life and opened themselves to its inflow. He has spoken so far from reason and insight alone, and here he tests his teaching against the world's inspired teachers. He reads the sayings of the Master (I and the Father are one, the kingdom of heaven is within you, the return of the prodigal) as calls to this conscious union, and from them he draws the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the higher truth of the oneness of all. He then finds the same truth in Manu, Athanasius, the Buddha, the mediaeval mystics, Swedenborg's divine influx, the Friends' inner light, and the seer of Concord. In the histories of David, Israel, Solomon, and Pharaoh he sees one law of cause and effect. God is no respecter of persons and has no chosen people, and no age of miracles stands apart from any other. Anyone who lives by the higher light may in turn become a saviour of others.
- Trine reads the Master's central sayings as one teaching: come into conscious realization of your oneness with the Father's life, and all else follows.
- Our truest relatives are those nearest to us in mind, soul, and spirit, not necessarily those joined to us by blood.
- The same truth of union with God runs through Hindu, Buddhist, Christian mystic, Swedenborgian, Quaker, and Emersonian thought.
- God creates men, not prophets. Those who recognize their true identity with the Source become prophets and seers.
- Miracles, prosperity, and calamity alike follow law; Pharaoh hardened his own heart and the plagues followed as effect follows cause.
- Each step Godward lifts all mankind, so every person may become one of the world's redeemers.
Trine holds that one truth runs like a golden thread through every religion: God is the Infinite Spirit of Life and Power, working in and through all. People quarrel over trifles that belong to the lower, changing self. They come together when a great truth stands before them, because that truth speaks to the permanent soul self. Seen this way, there can be no atheists, since what the atheist rejects is the angry, jealous God that men have imagined. Trine calls the sincere heretic a friend of true religion and names Christ one of the greatest heretics the world has known, a type of the universal, bound by no orthodoxy. All sacred books come from the same source, and each is inspired in the degree that its writers opened themselves to the Divine voice. The error lies not in honoring one's own scriptures but in failing to see that others are also inspired. Drawing on Persian, Buddhist, Chinese, Hindu, and Christian sayings, and on Tennyson's dream of an open-doored temple, Trine concludes that there is only one religion, the religion of the living God. Its test is adequacy for everyday life here and now, and religion in its true sense is the most joyous thing the soul can know.
- Differences between faiths belong to the personal and passing self. Agreement belongs to the soul, and it appears whenever a great truth is held in common.
- God revealed Himself not to one people, one place, or one age, but to every holy soul that opens to Him.
- What matters is not which form of religion one holds, but how faithfully one lives its vital principles.
- True worship needs only God and the human soul, and it can happen anywhere and at any time.
- The test of any religion is its adequacy for everyday life here and now, and one that fails it simply is not religion.
Trine teaches that the highest riches come through one simple act: opening mind and heart to the divine inflow and consciously realizing one's oneness with the Infinite Life and Power. When that is done, all else follows. He gives a practical method. Each day the reader withdraws into the silence and, in a receptive and expectant attitude, desires that this realization take possession of the soul. Then the reader carries it down from the mountain top into waking, working, and sleeping, until even the busy street becomes a place of unceasing prayer. Trine urges the reader to begin now, citing Goethe, the resolve of the young Gautama, and the young Jesus about his Father's business. He describes lives he has known that are guided in every detail and never lack supply, and he calls this the natural and normal life. He explains that all friction and fear come from being out of harmony with the divine order. Harmony with the Infinite brings harmony of body, mind, and spirit, the wise middle path, finer senses, and first-hand knowledge of higher truth. Such a life gives off an influence like the scent of the rose or the sandalwood carried out to sea. That influence blesses everyone it meets, and this is what it means to be in tune with the Infinite.
- The whole method rests on one word, open: the divine inflow waits like water behind a gate.
- Daily times of silence and receptive desire help at first, but the realization has to be carried into ordinary life until it becomes continual prayer.
- Setting one's face in the right direction and starting today counts for more than how quickly one travels.
- Suffering, fear, and perplexity come from being out of harmony with the divine order, and harmony with the Infinite brings harmony with oneself and with everything around.
- The fully harmonized life follows the middle path, refines the senses, and lets a person know truth directly instead of by hearsay.
- Each person sends out an influence that matches the inner life, and a soul made translucent to the Divine blesses all who come near.