Sydney Banks first described what he meant by the Three Principles in 1973. Some of the quotes from him can sum up more succinctly how he felt about the world:
“If the only thing that people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.”
“If we can forgive everyone, regardless of what he or she may have done, we nourish the soul and allow our whole being to feel good. To hold a grudge against anyone is like carrying the devil on your shoulders. It is our willingness to forgive and forget that casts away such a burden and brings light into our hearts, freeing us from many ill feelings against our fellow human beings.”
“Love is a mind free of all negativity.”
The Three Principles are Mind, Thought and Consciousness.
The Universal Mind is described as the creative life force which determines how people function on a psychological level.
Thought is simply considered ‘the nature of thought’, how people think.
Consciousness is how we use our five senses to change our thoughts into our life experiences.
The application of Three Principles into everyday life is to encourage focus on health rather than illness. If we can attain inner mental health and sustain it, we can approach everyday issues in a more balanced way just through recognising our thought patterns.
When you have a shift in consciousness, when you see it is not WHAT you are thinking but that you just got caught up in thinking in a certain way, in seeing the world in a certain way, which had a certain set of problems attached to it, then with a shift into new thought, you see it completely differently.
Information does not create transformation, but insight does.
Sydney Banks (1931 - 2009) was an ordinary working man who experienced a sudden and profound spiritual enlightenment in 1973. He subsequently shared his insights about who and what we are as human beings and went on to expand his theory on the Three Principles of Universal Mind, Thought and Consciousness.
“An important thing to realise is that Universal Mind and personal mind are not two minds thinking differently, but two ways of using the same mind.”