The Canon / Pillars / New Thought
Pillars · 1897
In Tune with the Infinite
New ThoughtIn Tune with the Infinite teaches that there is one infinite Life, or Spirit, and that health, peace, power, and plenty flow to whoever consciously aligns with it. Its central claim is that wellbeing is a matter of living in harmonious relation to an ever-present source rather than a struggle won by technique.
Steeped in Transcendentalism, the book argues through warm, devotional reflection, casting the spiritual life as attunement, like an instrument brought into pitch with its source. Its governing image, tuning oneself to the infinite, frames prosperity and peace as natural consequences of harmony rather than effort.
It became the most popular single book of the New Thought movement, carrying its message to a mass and mainstream readership and shaping later figures such as Ernest Holmes and Norman Vincent Peale. Its language of alignment with abundance anticipates the modern manifestation tradition.
In its words
Within yourself lies the cause of whatever enters into your life. To come into the full realization of your own awakened interior powers, is to be able to condition your life in exact accord with what you would have it.
In our very laboratory experiments we are demonstrating the great fact that thoughts are forces. They have form, and quality, and substance, and power, and we are beginning to find that there is what we may term a science of thought.
The optimist, by his superior wisdom and insight, is making his own heaven, and in the degree that he makes his own heaven is he helping to make one for all the world beside.
Practices it teaches
Holding the Thought of Perfect Health — Trine's realization of bodily wholeness
Trine's health practice is not crude "say you're well." It is to hold, and make real, the thought of perfect health as a corollary of oneness: since the Infinite Life "can from its very nature admit of no disease,"…
Realizing Prosperity — Trine's oneness with the Spirit of Infinite Plenty
Trine extends his oneness-realization to supply: behind all material form is "the Spirit of Infinite Plenty," and "he who lives in the realization of his oneness with this Infinite Power becomes a magnet to attract…
Outflowing Love and Service — Trine's harmony through goodwill
Trine treats love not as sentiment but as a practical method of attunement: deliberately holding an attitude of love toward all, continually sending it out, and letting it express as "kindly service" — by which one…
Conscious Realization of Oneness — Trine's coming into vital union with the Infinite Life
This is the master practice beneath everything else Trine teaches — the one he calls "the great central fact in human life." It is not a technique so much as a deliberate, repeated act of realizing (making real to…
The Receptive Silence — Trine's quiet of the interior self
Trine's contemplative posture: going "into the quiet of your own interior self" — with a mind at peace and a heart going out in love — and resting there, open, while the Infinite Life is felt to flow in.
Lineage
The author
Ralph Waldo TrineIn Tune with the Infinite — alignment with infinite life and supply
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Key terms
Kindred books