Gates Notes
Bill Ritchie's reading notes from Donald Gates' biography on his father's life work,
Elmer Gates and the Art of Mind-Using

At the left is the original selection from the Summer 2000 notebook in which I planned to create an Elmer Gates Calendar, based on the reading notes below. At the right is the stamp version.

The original, at left, is in the collection of Clare Livingston, Seattle. Another page (not shown) is owned by Daniel Lowery, also in Seattle.

1. To rule yourself (that is, to rule your Person by your Self), is greater than to rule the world. (P. 60)

2. Interruptions waste a half to two hours daily-estimated as 180-730 hours annually, or 36-146 working days of five hours. In an active life of 50 years, this loss of 5-20 years could be enough to change a lifework from great success to partial success or even to failure. (P. 65)

3. Observations upon himself and many others showed that the mind could not do continuously, month to month, first class productive, originative, or creative work for much longer than five hours, and then only when health and strength were at their highest and no energy was used for other kinds of work. (P. 66)

4. A greater number of persons, he believed, for the world's sake should take up lines of research and give their lives to them, and should value their time too much to allow it to be wasted by such hindrances so easily avoided. (P. 67)

5. From his point of view the place in which Gates worked (he once named it the phrontisterion!--Greek for "think-shop") was not merely the small space within his laboratory walls or studio, it was unlimited space filled with worlds; the Cosmos itself was his think-shop. Although he could not change the Cosmos, he could make himself more freely subject to its influences. (P. 68)

6. I had a slowly forming conviction that the MIND which I called my own is in reality but a functional portion of a universal process, part of a cosmical activity-a little twig on the great tree of life. P. 70

7. Within this vast domain of infinite room there occurs forever the great Drama of The Cosmic Process whose separate acts and scenes are marked off by larger and smaller periodicities. (P. 71)

8. A growth, whether a crystal, a plant, or a reputation, is the outcome of multitudinous influences (each of which is the sum of many smaller good influences). Success is a function of the organism, locality, time, and other factors. A person, being a functional part of the larger organism, and of the social life around him, may occasionally become conscious of the trend of events--a condition of prevision, or perhaps intuition. (P. 74)

9. Out of this improved scientific method I am developing an art of scientific method and the application to research has inaugurated a new method of research and of education into whose care and guidance I would like to leave the world. (P. 77)

10. We need to study his highest and most important kind of mental activities while engaged in doing them. . . . and hence I shall make a laboratory study of scientific method in persons (geniuses) while they are making and demonstrating and teaching and applying knowledge. (P. 78)

11. "I think he is doing more for education and research than any man in the world has ever done and his discoveries will revolutionize philosophy." - Major John Wesley Powell (P. 79)

12. If you live long enough you will see that my lines of thought and research will be recognized as a Light set on a Hill, bright enough to drive most of the Darkness out of all the mental dungeons of the world. P 79

13. He studied a "little Latin and less Greek"-just enough to translate slowly and use them in coining new words, his chief practical interest. (P. 82)

14. It was later learned informally, during the war when spies were masquerading under Gates' name, that a government investigation rated him ace-high in physics and chemistry. (P. 83)

15. To you, your mind is the most momentous fact in the universe, the greatest thing which infinite space contains and must ever remain to you the most wonderful. Your mind is to you the Gateway, and Original Thinking the Golden Key to the universe, for what never enters your consciousness can never be for you. (P. 87)

16. His former tutor, Dr. Armstrong, who heard the first announcement of this law, said, "You can now quit work and retire; you have done your part for human welfare. All you need to do is to publish this one law and the method of applying it." (P. 113)

17. He cited as an example shooting at a target with bow and arrow: the process was repeated in close succession until he located the feelings accompanying that conation as a whole, including the feeling of the whole bodily attitude, every muscular strain, and every mental operation. (P119)

18. That no one may conclude that I believe these new ideas came out of nowhere and from nothingness, let me emphatically say that I know them to be the result of inferences from data already in my mind, or generalizations and new combinations thereof and better understandings and insights, and esthesic appreciations and appraisements of their useful applications. (P. 121)

19. But how does it happen that when the same data are taught to a number of students there is only an occasional one who gets original ideas? It does not follow that because a student has studied a science he will make discoveries and inventions in it. Why not? That is just the point I was trying to discover. (P. 121)

20. He regretted deeply that more was not known about the mind and its relation to the body. He was "tired of theories," so he studied the subject with the aid of the art of mind-using. He attained the insight that led to the new method of research and plan of the animal experiments in brain-building. (P. 128)

21. These experiments showed that mind is causatively connected with the organism, that the experiences of consciousness embody themselves as organic structures, that the individual can by conscious processing be given more brains and more mind. (P. 131)

22. Here surely we come upon a most impressive fact; namely, that by constant repetition of a given stimulus we can effect a permanent anatomical change in our brain stuff, which will add a specific and remarkable cerebral function to that Place which it never had before. . . . Another important conclusion is that we can make our brains, so far as special mental functions or aptitudes are concerned, if only we have the wills strong enough to take the trouble. (P. 133)

23. It is not mere physical activity of the bodily organs: it is the mental activity of discriminating between the touches, pressures, muscular feelings, tints, shades and hues, and other stimuli that produces the increase in structural elements of the cortex and the rest of the body. Gates found that when a person had attained a certain capacity, or limit, in discriminating, after several times repeating that limit during a practice period and waiting a day, he could improve his performance and could discriminate a smaller difference. (P. 134)

24. Gates was also impressed by his conclusion that cells are the psychologic as well as the anatomic units of an organism. His experiments demonstrated that cells are alive because they can feel stimuli and adapt acts to ends; since only mind has this property, cells, then, have minds and are alive because of it. (P. 135)

25. More mind is the goal of evolution. To get more mind and learn how to use it seems to be the fundamental opportunity and duty and purpose of life. To get less and less mind and to gradually lose the power to use it is the direct opposite of all hope and aspiration. (P. 137

26. The main value of these discoveries lies in their application to an education that will fit the student for an actual life of usefulness and happiness, Gates emphasized. (P. 138)

27. A group of mentators among whom a division of labor has taken place may, if they represent the leading minds of the world, hope to arrive at something like a true philosophy or a synthetic science, but that philosophy win extend no further than the taxonomic range of actual knowledge. (P. 139)

28. Later Dr. William T. Harris, editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy and later U.S. Commissioner of Education, wrote to Gates: "I have a great interest in your labors and great faith in your powers to discover and demonstrate valuable facts and principles in physiological-psychology. We now have the beginnings of a scientific art of research and may expect psychology to increase in importance." (P. 141)

29. When he concluded that he had achieved the beginning of a systematic formulation of an art of using the mind, he was so filled with the joy of discovery that his enthusiasm almost constantly led to overwork, and several times he nearly broke down through not heeding hygiene and physiology and his own psychologic teachings. (P. 156)

30. He did not then know about the work of Wilhelm Wundt in psychology. He later considered, it have diverted his mind from its own lines of originality. In re-traveling the paths of others there is not so much likelihood of discovering as when the mind strikes out in entirely new directions. (P. 157)

31. He saw that cooperative mentation was different from research that consists in a number of persons working together on a problem: that a number of minds could be organically and psychologically interactive and new ideative results of any one could be constantly unified by the mentative data process to be immediately available to others. (P. 159)

32. Invention was always a recreation and somewhat of a passion. He enjoyed making mechanical contrivances in inventive problems in much the same way as many enjoy athletic or other sports. (P. 159)

33. He considered it far more important "to discover how to train 100 successful inventors than to make 100 or 1000 inventions." (P. 160)

34. He realized that one phase of work naturally arising out of the art of discovery was the establishment of an institution devoted solely to original research for the avowed purpose of discovering truth for its own sake and of disseminating and teaching it. Such an institution would require a body of mentators trained in the Mind Art, and another department to test practically and apply inventively the discoveries to practical life. "This institutional work in connection with the sciences will represent the concrete result of my studies"-so he said then, and he never gave up this goal. (P. 160)

35. He made another psychologic discovery of deepest significance: that a disapproval (intellective, esthetic, emotive, moral, religious) with reference to the plans, motives, or acts bearing upon any line of original thinking, any qualms of conscience or judgment or taste (justified or not), amounted to an inhibitive dirigation that diminished or prevented further original results. (P. 222)

36. Gates found he was getting experiences so uniquely personal that any serious attempt to explain them to others was useless. . . . He therefore continued his study of the action of mind on body by conventional methods that could be more readily verified by others. (P. 223)

37. It is far more important to teach the art of making inventors than to make any given number of inventions. P. 143

38. I desire some greater truth than usually revealed, with greater power to attract and convince, and should relate more positively to the needs and aspirations and hourly uses of mankind. P. 164

39. Let me ope the portals of the tomb wherein the human mind is buried in a deathlike sleep-let me resurrect the crucified hopes of the world-let me see them transfigured in embodied realities . . .. P. 165

40. I want to get people to help in organizing cooperative research, in collecting the sum of inductive knowledge, and in creating an institution devoted to study that force or thing which is more important than all others; and what do you suppose that is? P. 176

41. I do not want to criticize anything. I shall not attack the imperfections of the past or prejudices of the present. It shall be the province of the institution which I hope to create to teach truth only. P. 181

42. A spiritualist friend says the Millennium will be caused by spirits controlling mediums. P 183.

43. The time will come when knowledge will rule and create these affections and passions; and this is one of the ends for which my institution must be created. P. 185.

44. It is obviously of more importance to learn how best to utilize that which creates all science than to achieve any given discoveries. It is far more important to teach the art of making inventors than to make any given number of inventions. (P. 143)

45. I hurried night and day for over 33 years in order that I might find and demonstrate the fundamental method of social progress, which I from the first have known to consist of the mental methods of discovering, validating, learning, and applying knowledge to industry and character. Of what else could it consist? (P. 144)

46. His motto became: "Get more mind and learn how best to use it in discovering and applying truth to the betterment of life and its environment." (P. 144)

47. Most important, the body must be trained to create just a little more daily energy than was required for the largest amount of work ever done in a day. On days when less was done, nearly all the surplus should be used in sportive exercise or amusements to maintain the habit of creating the daily maximum. (P. 145)

48. He observed, for the first time in the history of education it became possible, by means of this training, to use the intellective processes separately. So far as he knew, such a use had never even been "dreamed of." (P. 147)

49. There was produced an unusual degree of originality for him, and an increased productiveness and augmented ability in that line of knowledge and skill. He noted with amazement and delight that this practice created in him the conditions and capacities of genius within that domain. (P. 148)

50. He considered that a complete "laboratory-museum" of that science was required. In its absence he visited shops, museums, and laboratories so that by systematic observation and experiment he could, so far as possible, repeat the sensations, images, concepts, and ideas of that science to place its actual knowledge vividly in mind, without admixture of theories, speculations, and hypotheses. (P 151)

51. "O let me think the thoughts that thunder down the ages, peal after peal, reverberating from race to race; let me do this glorious thing, but O how much better to let me teach people how to attain this knowledge, art, and power for themselves. This is the pay I have sought, the joy I have most craved, the boon I have worked and prayed for. Let me ope the portals of the tomb wherein the human mind is buried in a deathlike sleep-let me resurrect the crucified hopes of the world--let me see them transfigured in embodied realities ascending to the heaven of success. O I crave a thought, direction, suggestion to solve my riddle; let it be the greatest truth which the world dare at this time receive. I still await a 'something'-I desire a knowledge which will enable me to judge when I do get the real, THE, thing, for which I have so long studied and waited." (P. 166)

52. Originality is obviously the most potent source of human progress. To embody the discoveries of one creative mind thousands must labor and learn. (P. 174)

53. So strongly do I feel this that my life has risen to a different plane of exaltation; in addition to the extreme intellectual and emotive efforts which I have made I must make great moral effort, not merely in the normalization of emotions, but in modification of plans and motives with reference to complete justice, truthfulness, and particularly to needs of the human race or rather, all evolving life. (P. 174)

54. If necessary to success, when the discovery comes I will deliver it so no one will know it came from me, and so it will contribute no reward . . . (P. 174-75)

55. I would not have anyone follow me: that would be the greatest wrong I could teach . . .. (P. 177)

56. To be well born is what the present generation owes to the coming one. Its fate is so largely in our hands; its wars, diseases, can be increased or diminished as we will by regulating the intellectual and moral disposition of our descendants. (P. 179)

57. Systematization of the whole content of my mind and its extension to all the sciences seems to be a necessary next step; yet I am satisfied it will take 10-20 years. (P. 180)

58. If I can produce a book (of course I mean a series of discoveries) so important that it will sooner or later reach a majority of people, it may by simple advice and rules enable them to attain more easily those things they realize of prime importance; to get them to depend more and more on actual knowledge and less and less on theories and beliefs. (P. 180)

59. Unmistakable are the evidences that the world is awaiting, needing, some synthesis of the sciences with the finer intuitive and so-called occult experiences that are slowly coming to the front, and some synthesis that will make religion a science and science religious. (P. 181)

60. Only when motives are free from any desire to own the Institution can true success come. I am glad I have resolved to build the Institution and when free from debt and it contains facilities needed for cooperative mentation, to bequeath it totally to such mentators. (P. 182)

61. Natural truth is more magical and wonderful than all fabled enchantments; knowledge is more weird and transcendently interesting than all the mysteries of occultism. (P. 184)

62. There must be a way out, and this introspective poise is the secret method of discovering it. (P. 184)

63. In most people the strongest motive-some personal affection, passion, or interest-rules. The time will come when knowledge will rule and create these affections and passions; and this is one of the ends for which my institution must be created. (P. 185)

64. One of the fundamental factors in creation of a genius is a great emotional nature, out of which must come an overpowering desire which masters all adverse circumstances and will accept nothing but the results aimed at. (P. 187)

65. By self-examination, long continued and impartially applied, I could at last learn what was needed to satisfy my ambitions, and discover what I needed now and proceed to get it. Hence this writing about my hopes and fears put before me the real object of my life, put me in harmony with myself, and thoughts which were really sincere began to be formed. (P. 188)

66. I must be introspectively led to my wife; I think I could not trust love alone. (P. 189)

67. I want to teach something more than knowledge, that will make people do; give them more mind and skill in using it. (P. 195)

68. Let the voice that is uttering in me cry out to the minds of those who in the near future would turn progress and peace into riot and vandalism. (P. 196)

69. Gates' first lecture, on "Psychology as Science and Art," aroused the great popular interest in self-improvement and individual psychology that is still prevalent today, and overnight made him a public figure. P. 200

70. "Prove your faith by your work, Elmer Gates, and you will be the greatest benefactor of the age." (Kate Field, Columnist) P. 201.

71. Of the seven elements of success is the aid and confidence of friends. As far as I have been able to judge, no success involving public consideration can come except through the intermediation of friends. (P. 209)

72. A brain is like a plant: if it is allowed full and natural growth it will bear its largest normal fruitage; but if either mind or plant is forced into unnatural channels, or forced to function in a given way at unnatural periodicities of its life for that kind of functioning, the normal unfolding will be obstructed. (P. 213)

73. For the pupil the one greatest question is, not what discoveries or money can I make out of a science, but how can I achieve the greatest results by my mentation. Not the science but the mind is the standpoint. (P. 213)

74. By writing beliefs, guesses, and opinions daily the mind will soon settle into fixed grooves and upon subjects which please most and from which it gets best results, which will continue until the mentation changes. (P. 214)

75. It is not necessary to personify this process to grasp that this love-process is going on of its own powers and tendencies like the growth of a plant, and we do well when we do not obstruct it. We do better if we cooperate. (P. 217)

76. Science is definitely ascertained and systematic knowledge gained by exact observation and correct thinking. Art is scientific knowledge systematically applied to some desired end, including technical skill. Not only may there be to every science a corresponding art, but every science contributes to a number of different arts. . . . Art thus has a wider meaning than usual, including all the results of human efforts that are not science. (P. 220)

77. Just as there is an art of working with metals or metallurgy, so there is an art of working with the mind, or psychurgy, which was the name Elmer Gates finally adopted for the Mind Art, or mentative art. (P. 220)

78. Psychurgy offers incomparable inducements to the study of the fine and industrial arts as well as trades and professions. (P. 223)

79. "Gates is affable and cordial, gave me unstintingly of his time and attention, and spoke freely of everything. He seems to me to have made a mistake in not publishing sooner," wrote Dr. Herman T. Lukens. His friends, Professor McGee and Major Powell, as well as others, said that by not publishing as he went along he was cheated of the help of his contemporaries. (P. 229)

80. Certain it is that much has been eliminated that would have been prematurely published under the keen enthusiasm of an earlier age, and much has been added. Besides, the mentative art has now been practically tested by over ten years' application. My only regret is that I have not the time to give this presentation a literary garb. (P. 230)

81. One of the most interesting phenomena of an introspective study of his mind, Gates then observed, was that as soon as anyone acquired a financial interest in one of his inventions, he no longer had any interest in either its mechanical improvement or its commercial development. This attitude he could not reason out of his mind; he could force himself to act, but spontaneous interest was gone. (P. 236-7)

82. The conscience-event comes into consciousness with an overpowering awe that leaves the mind totally submissive and profoundly reposeful. They are moments when one's career is shaped; generally not many in a lifetime; some never have them. (P. 239)

83. one can enter a higher moral career many times. No matter how high, there is always one step higher; or how useful, another way to be more useful; or how much knowledge, always just as much more to know. If one definitely seeks the higher steps in moral growth and social career he can get them ad infinitum. (P. 239)

84. We try only to the extent we have interest in things, hence effort arises out of esthesias; emotive mentation will rule the world. Make an inventory of plans and purposes and motives and submit them one by one to the Awareness. (P. 240)

86. Many times during the day I must seek my loved ones, even for a moment, and in the evening when the day's serious effort is done, I do not know how I could continue to work if it were not for the domestic and social relations in my own happy home with wife, children, relatives, and friends. (P. 241)

87. His idea of a great institution had expanded into a plan for cooperatively organizing the world's scientific investigators, inventors, and teachers according to psychurgic methods. To carry out this plan some business method was needed in keeping with the principles of psychurgy, and it must be discovered and applied before he could hope to get sufficient money to start. (P. 242)

88. To organize the world's leading minds cooperatively, with science for their Bible and psychurgy for their method, required that commerce and industry be an integral and functional part. How, remained for him to discover. (P. 242)

89. When he tried to apply this art to business, there was no corresponding science whose data could be thus classified. Some new form had to be found; psychurgy had to discover how to apply itself to business mentation. His systematic approach included all possible expedients and accessories, even an assistant, or "mentor." (P. 242)

90. This [psychurgy] requires the cooperation of all peoples because no one race or class possesses all human knowledge. Minds must be excerpted as well as books, and it involves a great amount of labor, observation, and experiment--too great for any one country or class. The immediate application of science will vary according to people and community. (P. 244)

91. [Psychurgy] will take more labor and money than the Suez and Panama Canals but will be far more important; it will cost less than the great wars and will not require the sacrifice of lives, and results will be a victory for peace and progress that will do more for civilization than any former achievement. (P. 244)

92. He was face to face with the main problem of his "very difficult career": how to handle his inventions, and those of prospective pupils, as an integral part of the work and at the same time of the world movement; how to support them upon an ethical business plan with equal gain to all; and subsidiary to these, how to get out of debt. (P. 248)

93. He had never obtained emotive approval to publish, and saw that he would not until the book contained the business method as self-executing.(P. 249)

94. On October 13, 1903, he entered in his "Introspective Diary": "What are my immediate problems, opportunities, duties, difficulties? Let me study myself impartially, look the world squarely in the face. Let me stand remote and from a point of view one hundred years hence, judge myself. "As I look back upon this present I say, Gates, the immediate blinds you, in a whirl of dust of details, worried by momentary trivialities. You should steadfastly fix your attention only on the one great work of your life."(P. 249)

95. He remarked about his writing that all evidences of enthusiasm and feeling should not be expunged, as is common in scientific literature; the emotional standpoint is often at least as important as the intellectual. If the reader is to be persuaded to act out his convictions, his whole nature must be aroused. (P. 250)

96. Gates marveled at the elaborate and well-tested techniques for business in use throughout the world. Amazing were the many methods and means for detecting dishonesty and speculation "so one feels ashamed that the race to which he belongs has to be so systematically and carefully watched to keep it from stealing, as if barbarians not to be trusted." (P. 252)

97. What is business for anyhow when sciences are being discovered and arts improved? (P. 253)

98. Except for a few extempore attempts at cooperative ventures started without scientific study, Gates felt safe to assert, no business had been founded for its primary purpose of obtaining maximum benefit to producer and consumer. (P. 252)

99. He noticed that their expressed principles and their intended actions when they thought money could be made were generally very different. He thus acquired valuable knowledge about businessmen's motives. P. 252

100. They [business people] cannot believe that any one can find highest satisfaction and completest self-expression in a devotion to pure science or in researches for the sake of the future; they cannot understand the all-impelling inward urge which DRIVES the mind of a discoverer ever on and on. P. 253

101. To get a motive, a clearly defined purpose with its inducement of desires, hopes, ambitions, dominant in the attention and conduct is the road to success. (P. 256)

102. I have always believed that genius is not so much a superior mental capacity as a superior method of looking at things. It spends much time in completely understanding fundamentals and dwells on them for days and days, while talent learns by heart the statement of some authority in a few hours. (P. 258)

103. These ideas, you will find, are necessary units in a synthesis of thought or action towards which your mind is progressing. Besides, how will you classify your mentative data if you don't record them? (P. 258)

104. Some way must be devised to keep the Awareness at its job of governing the mind, and the mentative diary does it daily. But it takes a few years of faithful record to make a start. (P. 259)

105. Do not fail to record every idea and tendency and event," he continued; "you will forget it if you don't. These ideas, you will find, are necessary units in a synthesis of thought or action towards which your mind is progressing. (P. 259)

106. The record should not be made in the evening when tired, but always at the time when the charm or despair of the theme is uppermost. (P. 259)

107. He sold an option until June on welding inventions. The deal came as an opportunity he did not seek. Such deals, he noted, came easily, while those he sought came with difficulty. He was almost inclined to quit trying so hard and let things go as events and opportunities let them. (P. 260)

108. No adult is ever so severe and correct a critic as a child is of the delinquencies of a parent. (P. 263)

109. Tomorrow is Elmer's birthday-nine years old. I will give him two Japanese fairy-tale books to show how an untrue story may teach a lesson; how a false creed may teach a truth; and finally, how much better to teach the same truth by true stories. (P. 264)

110. The mind largely represents that which is not. For thousands of centuries all the viewpoints of the mind have been falsified by illusions, delusions, beliefs, myths, traditions, theories; every conception of life and death, self, Cosmos, stars and animals, of emotion and duty has been misshaped by guesses and lies, and under all this the mind has acquired hereditary habits and the brain has inherited structures that are abnormal-insane! (P. 265)

111. In some way, which I cannot now describe, this discovery of the inherited abnormality of mind is the most important thing I have ever written. (P. 265)

112. It is appalling to contemplate that 95 percent of the mental content for ages and ages has been utterly false. (P. 265)

113. No money coming in or in sight. Various agents not heard from or have failed. Have a pay order to write an article on 'What Is Matter?' for a syndicate of Sunday magazines. I am at the darkest hours financially. Is it the darkness before dawn? (P. 266)

114. I do not want charge of a great business enterprise, but simply to be free from debt, live simply, complete my message, experiment and invent a little, make an exhibit of my work for purposes still mainly to be determined. That last phrase is the point, mark it! P. 270

115. There is something in me slumbering, waiting the time I shall one day suddenly find the place where my powers will be tried and used to my utmost. (P. 272)

116. Not as a dead thing resurrected out of a tomb does the Present arise out of the Past, but as a child born out of its mother, inheriting her nature and tendencies. P. 279

117. Ordinarily it is understood that "original investigation" is carried on for discovering something new and that more data (facts, laws, principles) will thereby be added to science and more technique to art; that these data are then taken by the "original" thinkers and systematized and generalized and interpreted, and that the creative "imagination" recombines them and erects a new superstructure. (P. 281)

118. His associates often assured him that he could think out more new and true ideas about a subject in a shorter time than anyone about whom they had ever heard--not random ideas, but ideas that formed a system of knowledge data upon a subject, the most difficult kind of thinking. (P. 282)

119. No one who has witnessed the experiments in brain-building and dirigation, or practiced the art of mentation, or seen the experiments on cellular mentation, will for a moment doubt that the secret for the cure of disease and attainment of health is to be found in the study of the effects of forces and mental activities upon the minds of cells in the animal body. Hence this paper may be considered a first statement of a scientific and fundamental law of cure--to be hereafter elaborated and rendered more definite by a series of most interesting experimental researches. (Pp. 291-292)

120. Now I do truly believe in these discoveries and inventions as a dawning of a new era in music. I desire that they do not make their first appearance as a mere moneymaking enterprise but under high artistic auspices, clothed in the majesty of their high ideals. I would like the world first to hear the soul-entrancing tones and harmonies and melodies of the new music from the biggest and most expensive and complete exhibition instrument; hear it in a music hall built for the purpose, in a music-loving city whose emotionally-ready people have the artistic instincts to appreciate it, and perhaps also to see its profound religious meanings. (P. 296)

121. He also invented the important method of making pure tones. He was unable to find in any musical instrument a single note that did not contain at least two overtones that were mutually discordant; and when these overtones were prevented, a tone was produced of extraordinary beauty and inward "grip" -- "the tone that will be heard around the world and make all listeners happier."  (P. 296)

122. These musical discoveries have given me great joy--and they will bring nothing but joy and beauty to the world. They open a new era in the history of music. (P. 298)

123. He considered his main contribution to the science and art of music, as to all departments, the application of the arts of discovery, validation, invention, and doing creative work, which comprise what he named heurotechny. (P. 298)

124. All his life he kept a careful diary, but from 1894 to 1908 he gave it much more attention, keeping the "Introspective Diary" in order to have a full record of both inner and outer series of events so that he might study his life as a whole-as one individual among a society of individuals, one of the creatures of the Cosmos. (P. 300)

125. He recorded the exact dates and places and conditions under which he attained hundreds of new and true ideas. He made a number of important discoveries about the nature and tendencies of his own character, abilities, and limitations, some being of general application. (P. 301)

126. Perhaps the fundamental idea was the study of those factors that were outside and underneath all his plans, so that he could catch, if possible, a glimpse of their trend. Humanity is part of a greater Cosmic Process in whose current it passively drifts. (P. 301)

127. "Whether it be a reversion to phylogenctic instincts or a growth towards something to which the human race is just attaining, I know not; but this I know, that this practice tends to strengthen my religious nature," he wrote. (P. 302)

128. For psychurgy, and especially for cognostics, he devised an entirely new set of terms. He began by giving a separate name and symbol to each distinct kind of conscious state and each process of states (some several hundred), and to each kind of mental operation he gave a sign. (P. 303)

129. The mentator must be free to allow the day's mentation to upset all previous plans without regret, even if incurring financial or social losses. Best alethic mentation can never come to one who is not free and eager to have all his plans and years of labor upset by the next day's insight. (P. 311)

130. Gates decided early not to divulge the details of his introspective discoveries, except to pupils who could repeat his experiments and had the character to use them only for the highest scientific, moral, and ethical purposes. (P. 315)

131. Even if the reader could not cross the "bridge," he would know it was there. "It is not too much to claim for this line of research," Gates ventured, "that it has opened up to the mind an entirely new domain of human experience and disclosed a new kind of human faculty; but to the truth of these claims the pupil's own experience must attest." (P. 315)

132. The whole system adapts itself to that kind of work; this one faculty becomes habitually active with others recessive or non-active, constituting a mentative dominancy-the most important, efficient, and potent result of psychurgy. . . . Such a dominancy is the secret of genius; it holds the scepter of originality; it is the pioneer of pioneers! (P. 322)

133. The stone that the builders had rejected became the chief cornerstone of the temple. P. 324

134. The four branches of the Highest Introspection completed the bridge to validation, but the bridge had yet to be crossed and the new territory explored by further experience in studying Consciousness, or rather in observing Consciousness studying itself. (P. 330)

135. (Quote Steinmetz) Some day people will learn that material things do not bring happiness and are of little use in making men and women creative and powerful. P. 333

136. Whitman says the more he sees of the shows of the world, the older his experience, the more sure he feels that the real something is yet to be known. So feel I. P. 334

137. I have done my most difficult experimenting, my most extensive and elaborate lines of research; and it is in this domain of my own consciousness that I have discovered a new continent and brought the first scientific report. (P. 335)

138. The feeling and intuition that a great new mental domain awaits discovery often appears in the writings of Elmer Gates: "A whole new and unexpected world . . ." he wrote in 1899. (P. 335)

139. First and foremost is health, sanity, superabundant energy, oxygen, unaltered circulation, recuperation, rest, sleep, normal activity--else Consciousness cannot be vigorous and clear. What else? (P. 336)

140. Next to discovering a truth is to point out its need and the way to find it. Not on inspiration or genius need we depend for these discoveries, but on an art of conceptuating, ideating, and thinking. (P. 338)

141. This laboratory in my inner world was irresistibly attractive. To the world studied by this inner laboratory there are Three Gates: the New, Newer, and Newest Introspection. The First Gates admit into The Realm, the Second to its Capital City, the Third to the Court. P. 339

142. I beheld the Dawn of The New Cycle. And in that supreme moment I was a thousand times repaid for every sacrifice and effort during the twenty well-filled years since my twelfth. I knew from that moment on all the rest of my life would be devoted to the study of mind and environment from the cognostic standpoint and by cognostically rectified methods. (P. 339)

143. "Had I done as most discoverers, I would have stopped with the first step and spent the rest of my life writing about it. I saw so many further wonders opening before my enraptured vision that I had not the time to develop and publish that one step. (P. 345)

144. "In every cognitive mental state was found, like a jewel in its matrix, a Consciousness-state (cept) through which my Consciousness could peep into the Cosmos of Consciousness." (P. 346)

145. To my Awareness I am as objective as a tree, to my mind Consciousness is as cosmic as chemistry or gravity; between Awareness and Consciousness is the mind, built by Consciousness and viewed by Awareness. (P. 349)

146. How marvelous that we carry with us every moment a witness that remembers every motive and secret wish and thought and act and yet does not in any way prohibit these unless trained and asked to do so! This training, and even the idea of it, is my discovery and contribution to morals and ethics. (P. 350)

147. We do not bow to some external authority: our authority is our own immanent nature-not the Light Within (that is merely a cognistic tool). (P. 353-354)

148. It was my first insight into the esthesic pyramid, or psychotaxis of esthesias. I can now state that the greatest discovery will relate not merely to Consciousness but to the art of increasing, augmenting, and prolonging its happy states, which are the sole objects of all efforts. (P. 354)

149. Original in scope and content, a culminating contribution of his cognostic and cognistic study, he wrote of it, "Someone, somewhere, a hundred years from now will understand it." (P. 358)

150. Although over a third of a century has elapsed since my mind saw the first glow of the gray dawn, over fifteen years since it turned red, seven years since the horizon began to grow white, and nearly three years since the full and direct rays of the Light shone upon me--not yet (1910) has the ineffable joy of that occasion ceased to make my heart beat fuller and faster. (P. 359)

151. So it is when a Pupil is first thrust into Cognosis land: the mind only slowly awakens to the wonder of the new experience; there is a dazed realization that something momentous has happened, but only after several years of life in the new order does he begin to realize some phases of it concretely. (P. 360)

152. There is found in every living thing a vast kingdom of Consciousness states just as real as the plants and animals in which they reside, and they constitute the most important factor in living things. (P. 362)

153. The beneficent and successful using of mind is not prevented if we happen not to know the ultimate nature of Consciousness any more than the using of electricity was prevented when we knew less about its nature than now. A definition of electricity in terms of the phenomena and uniformities (laws) it presents to observation has proved sufficient for a high technical and commercial development. (P. 363)

154. The end of his quest for certainty led Elmer Gates into the countless "new beginnings" of the new and startling Cosmos of Consciousness! (P. 366)

155. He had come to believe that no one would ever make a success of his inventions by direct attempts to freeze him out of legitimate rights, or by clever legal arrangement to secure his real assets. He had grown indifferent to such attempts. On the contrary all those to whom he had from time to time donated inventional ideas to help their development or assist some phase of World Work had inevitably profited. (P. 369)

156. Not until a man realizes he has actual help for the human race does he know with what inexorable urgings and love he will be impelled into his mission. (P. 370)

157. He distinguished two broad classes of minds influential in modem affairs, the report continued: the religio-philosophical and mystical; and the technically practical and scientific. (P. 372)

158. Gates understood his mind well enough to know it would never handle the financial problem, except in a temporary manner, unless it could be induced to take up the problem psychurgically and make discoveries. His mind must become dominant on finances, but first it must get interested, and that was the difficulty. (P. 376)

159. The task, then, was to establish a practical, or conative, dominancy of livelihood and business. But his mind was to reach it deviously through other important dominancies: one in paideutics (teaching), and one in sophics (philosophy and religion). (P. 376)

160. His first intentional teaching leading to the paideutic dominancy was begun sometime before May 1909, during a peripatetic walk over the new Rock Creek Bridge with two prospective students: his sister-in-law and secretary, Pearlie, and her friend Marian Lee Patterson . . . (P. 376)

161. He now felt eligible to work along these broader lines, and by doing so many new and important insights were opened up to him, thereby establishing him in the Twelve Years' work well toward a permanent solution of all his problems. (P. 379)

162. The world is engaged in a conative struggles conatus and a conation; and parallel is a series of geophysical developments. Man himself does not comprise all this: all other living creatures are concerned, as well as all geophysical and astronomical changes.

163. All social units and every kind of human and organic activity, studied in relation to each other and to all else going on, is the world's conative problem. (P. 381)

164. The New Telurgy for doing the practical things of everyday life-he concluded. Out of this will arise the New Sociurgy, which extends its scope beyond the limits of any one race, beyond humanity, beyond even the limits of animal and plant life, to the whole earth and all that is going on in the air, water, and on land. (382)

165. Cognosis is the basis of kinship between creatures, the one and only factor that explicates life. There is one Process going on in the world: it is the growing earth, and we are not the whole thing. (P. 383)

166. Experience is measured not by years but by accumulated and validated facts applied by systematic reflection to a purpose. P. 384)

167. If the masses do not see for themselves that every datum in our modern knowledge has been toilsomely worked out by a few honest and earnest thinkers, without direct help from Bibles and spirits, they will not be prepared to approach the methods by which, alone, true progress may be made. (P. 385)

168. Perhaps I might find myself on the highest viewpoint, basking for a supreme hour in the radiant splendor of a morning that is always dawning in these world-scanning altitudes; stand for an hour or a year and get a more extensive survey of the paths by which my beloved pupils, with higher powers and wider scope than mine, may stand regnantly efficient on higher levels than I have been able to occupy. (P. 386)

169. He found that a systematic re-arrangement of familiar data and re-functioning for teaching would set up a dominancy on that subject; and that there was no better way to start one than by teaching the subject. (P.386)

170. It made him nervous "to sit and see his mind bringing forth another brood of mental children" when prudence required it make a living. (P. 387)

171. "Happiness does not consist in owning this or that valuable or beautiful thing, or in having this or that friendship or love; it does not consist in wealth or fame--it comes primarily from the use you make of these things as means for fulfilling your predilective place in the part of the world to which you belong; in doing your organic part of the work of the World-Process by means of these things. That they make you happy is a normal incident of that use." (P. 389)

172. "Hardly have I the serenity to hold my pen while I write these words, so deeply am I always aroused when I approach the subject of this Immanent Self-the most alluring of the Insights." (P. 389)

173. He now had the formula for discovering and creating new esthesias and new intellections and new urgations. "Truly, if this is carried out," he wrote enthusiastically, "psychurgy will outclass all the wonders of the ancient and modern world." (P. 395)

174. Gates wrote many times of the World Worker; his lifework was dominated by that point of view. In his treatise on Selves, Persons, and Cosms he described some attributes of this World Work and of World Workers in detail. Some of his thoughts on this subject were, generally speaking, that the whole earth and all that lives in it is a functioning unit, and as a historically progressive development it may be best understood with its parts organically related and reciprocally interactive. (P. 395)

175. A person whose genius or other predilection is contributory to the development of any science, art, philosophy or religion as a lifework, having accepted his mission in trust and administering it for the world's weal and his own happiness--he is a World Worker. (P. 396)

176. He expected a special message for and to Womanhood-Manhood to develop, and in some not yet determined way it would arrive at a special work for woman. A few women must grasp the new meanings and "keep the vestal fires of the World Work burning until the whole of Womanhood is enlightened," then seek for more light for the next step. (P. 397)

177. World crisis was not war, he foresaw--though it might be a consequence--but a greater danger: the world's greatest danger as he saw it was the rule of pseudognosis, or false knowledge. (P. 398)

178. "I am firmly convinced that the problem of attainment of personal conscious continuity of identity after death can be solved by the method into which I have entered." (P. 400)

179. He came closer to the real problem when he began to realize that a man's predilective work should be the source of his livelihood, for only thus would he avoid wasting time from his work. He had never known how to apply the art of discovery to business. (P. 402)

180. For actual urgative results he must use a psychotaxis of Impulses-to-do, Leadings, Achieved Results, Incentives, Purposes, Opportunities, Assumed Obligations, and Insights relating to his predilections and genius-capacities, sophically alethifying these data and applying other psychurgic practices. (P. 402)

181. He felt Consciousness as an ever-present witness, knowingly watching him. (P. 404)

182. "As I would adjust myself to promote the welfare of my children so I would adjust my vocation to promote the good of my community and my own growth." (P. 405)

184. Industry, commerce, livelihood, and business have been in all ages by far the most potent factor in civilization, and will continue for a long time to be the major part of the world's activity. A favorable impression made by honorable business transactions will lead to personal relationships that will open the mind to other matters of common interest; if these are based on exact knowledge and honest interest, the rest will be easy. (P. 408)

185. In heurotechnical business method Gates foresaw not only the self-support of the work but the method of propaganda and further organization. This organization of pupils was to be the key to solution of the world's economic problem. (P. 408)

186. In late 1913 he even put away his manuscript of the Twelve Volumes, hoping to transfer his enthusiasm to business. (P. 416)

187. So long had he been lured by a deep love of this kind of life and dreams of the more glorious future implied by his discoveries that he had to train himself to create this secondary dominancy. (P. 416)

188. His best thinking convinced him he should start a con amore laboratory with freedom to do as he pleased, giving a closer relation between his achieved results, abilities, and immediate opportunities. (P. 416)

189. Gates realized that his inventions would give such formidable war power that any particular nation or alliance would have the overwhelming superiority to enforce peace. He saw this as a world opportunity, whose misuse would be deplorable and whose wise use a blessing. (P. 419)

190. The War for Peace program of Elmer Gates related to matters he recognized as more vital than the abolition of war, though that was one of the first goals. More serious was the problem of the relation of the many to the few, of the lower and average to the higher and unique few (of any kind or class). (P. 419)

191. To meet these old and new conditions something more is required than warfare, and that something, he was convinced by its record, was heurotechny, the art of creating the new. (p. 420)

192. The logic is inexorable that for this reason a scientific art of discovering, inventing, and creating, applied by selected and trained minds, is the only route to a solution and effective handling of these problems. (P. 420)

193. To an ever greater extent as the years roll along each person will thus be doing what he is best fitted to do and which the world most needs; and that is as near utopia as the government of the world need expect until we humans develop into a higher species. (P. 421)

194. Uncompromising truthfulness, justice, and kindness . . . are only facets of the real and larger jewel, the effulgence of which I see irradiating our moral darkness and the warmth of which I sometimes feel. (P. 422)

195. The true inward ruler of each person is the power to do, immediately and completely, as well as he knows how to do and can do. P. 423)

196. The Will to Live which, like a monster immanent in the world, dreams on from age to age in its nightmare of life-forms, incarnating themselves in endless fantastic varieties. The only apparent aim of this subconscious life is merely to continue to live, developing an intellect as an aid, striving to live whether it be pleasant or painful-just to live! (P. 223)

197. Knowledge is the eyes of faith, for faith is blind. (P. 426)

198. . . . Heurotechny will become the main labor and work and ideal of the coming cycle. (P. 428)

199. The work of his fourteenth year now found its greatest application in the discoveries of his fifty-fourth year! (P. 428)

200. Gates also saw that in physics there was a great looseness of terminology and lack of philosophical insight. Energy, force, mass, and similar terms were inadequately conceived, with overlapping meanings. They should be redefined from the sophic standpoint, with their disparateness considered. Accumulating concepts and ideas and insights, and naming each separately, would form the mentative synopsis to advance knowledge most efficiently along that line; and this was the fundamental heurotechnic method. (P. 428)

201. The self must make use of all that is other than self; self-reliance has no purpose other than self-expression. Gates' Directive Principle, as opposed to the principle of laissez-faire, aimed to run things, not for the good of the Cosmic Process or the mosquito or housefly, but for the good of man. (P. 429)

202. Self-expression is the self-development of the person (body and mind) and periperson (his apt term for one's interacting and organized environment); it involves a special training of the abilities and genius-capacities and organized effort for taking advantage of opportunities. (P. 430)

203. "I am not an antagonist of prayer. I cannot say I am an unbeliever in it. I simply want to know the truth. I imbibed the prayer instinct with my mother's milk, had it inculcated by my father's daily and sincere example, and had it presented in a more convincing aspect by my earliest teacher (Virginia) as the Light Within." (P. 431)

204. It may be that a premonition of coming success leads me to want it so eagerly that I involuntarily feel like asking for it, and if so the 'answer' to prayer would be only the natural fulfillment of a foresight. (P. 431)

205. The cognitive mind seeks light, desires it, and thereby those processes (cognitive and ultracognitive) are set to work that get the light. Discovery is always a step into the unknown. (P. 432)

206. He saw in the almost universal instinct for prayer a dim foregleam of a truth, that the recording and classifying and uttering of one's main desires and aims tended to intensify them and render them dominant. P. 432

207. An aim, like an idea, is never clearly before the mind until it has been several times stated as completely and perspicuously as possible. (P. 432)

208. "There are times of greatest poise and peace, especially in the morning hours, when I often stand on the Awareness Bridge between the subjective and the Inmost . . . I get more closely in touch with its nature and feel the thrill of its endeavor." (P. 433)

209. Not incentives, but validated knowledge must cause the deed. (P. 434)

210. If a man does as well as he knows and can, he is moral, ethical, and religious, but if he does not do so, he rejects his only guidance and that is the only possible sin. (P. 434)

211. The time will come when the animal in us will be subdued; when phylogenetic obsessions will be exercised; when validated knowledge and evaluated incentives and tested arts will govern the world. Man will someday cease to tell lies or deceive or steal; he will be completely kind and gentle; do as well as he knows and can; and be free from disease and crime and poverty. Love will be glorified, and man will live long and happily. (P. 434)

212. Mind is the earth's greatest natural resource. (P. 435)

213. Freedom from worries and better control of his stampeding emotions were necessary; unless greater serenity was attained, he realized, his life could be shortened. (P. 435)

214. Artistic people everywhere will be glad he found means and time to write his delightfully useful and original treatise on poetry, completed in July 1917. (P. 436)

215. His book . . . involved not merely the art of writing and appreciating poetry but more essentially the art of concretely living it-of using its more superb glimpses and more intense thrills obtained during exaltations that lifted the mind to a higher plane. These were models and ideals to be striven for until attained in every phase of life. (P. 437)

216. "Do highest moments of greatest minds during most sensitive and exalted moods have no use except as pleasant reading?" P. 437

217. Moments of exalted insight and emotion are to be perpetuated and lived, to become the GUIDE-BOARDS to the Highway of Progress, and as the practice of Synthetic Poetry it is to become the religion of science. (P. 437)

218. Much of the meaning, [of his original treatise on poetry] Gates cautioned, would be gained only from a practice of his book by one who mastered and lived it--a unique doctrine for a book on poetry. (P. 437)

219. His prolonged psychologic studies led Gates to results foreshadowing a civilization replete with realizations of beauty and joy based on a new and grander esthetic; and progress in other domains of science made him believe that the grandest poetry was yet to come. (P. 438)

220. These studies also caused him to recognize that the pragmatic criterion--usefulness in fulfilling a purpose--was applicable to feeling. For instance, his appreciation of poetry and art had changed both with his age and need. Use was therefore the test of art. (P. 438)

221. He considered a poem the first step of the mind toward some scientific discovery or philosophical insight that was just about to dawn. . . . Something larger than the individuality of the artist guides the chisel, directs the brush, and inspires the pen. (P. 439)

222. Gates considered this book on poetry an unfinished sketch, an outline he would not have time to complete . . .. He hoped that some psychurgic pupil "warmed with the Promethean Fire" would carry out the principles and methods and more perfectly expound and apply them. The synthetic poetry would be a monumental work, requiring many assistants. (P. 440)

223. . . . If his mental process took place ten times more rapidly than otherwise, he could live ten times as much. If a one hundred years could be lived, would that not equal a thousand years? he speculated optimistically. How he wished he could! (P. 443)

224. He might have taken better care of his health, had less time wasted by the curious, paid more attention to livelihood, and saved much worry and time. (P. 444)

225. He wrote of genius that it had extraordinary powers of doing work and of persistence at it, generally keeping closely to its task until death, neglecting all else for the sake of completing its work in time. (P. 444)

226. "It is altogether probable that my life will end by my being a victim to my complete absorption in this work, to the neglect of everyday details." (P. 444)

227. We are as a nation making a careless use of our libraries and literature in general. It is a responsible task to write or read a book. (P. 447)

228. "Let justice shape my motives, thoughts and deeds; let truth alone be regnant in my speech; and let universal love my conduct guide. So let me live my life-so let me die." (P. 449)

229.  "I feel I will be able to do this if I get over financial worries and have the great stimulation of being engaged in the installation of a Demonstrative Exhibit of the improved and greatly extended scientific method . . ." (P. 452)

230. The Great Person sees the future as the present, the present as a vestibule to things on their way. (P. 454)

231. The earth is at our disposal, and Mind is its greatest natural resource. (P. 486)

232. The destruction of interest in knowledge by teaching what is not knowledge, by loading the mind with the 95 percent content that is not true by wrong methods of teaching, by trying to understand the whole of the Cosmos from a study of a part, and by divorcing the curriculum from vocation, are a few of the more conspicuous criticisms of our educational system. P. 487

233. To teach what you believe you know, without having it scientifically validated, is neither kind, just, nor right. P. 493

234. In this age of mounting clamor for public and government support of research, it is refreshing to note that this plan is not only one of self-development but of self-support as well. In no other way can the investigator retain that absolute freedom of thought and action that the best scientific and creative work demands. P. 497.

235. If a real teacher of the new order were to come and try to establish the new standards and customs at once, he would be imprisoned or killed. P. 498

236. The individual no longer follows or obeys. He creates and dominates; it is even his own person and periperson that he creates and dominates! P. 503

237. Great Minds are the living springs that give birth to the rills that water the wide averages of humanity. Great Minds are the peaks of the mountain ranges that are the continental backbone of the world; they are the climaxes in the great drama of human history-their sayings are the main lines of its text. P. 509.

238. A World Worker has chosen a serious vocation-the most serious, onerous, and difficult-but it is also the most satisfactory and joyous because it is fundamentally normal. P. 529