3M Company. - Greatest Mystery in the World

Dear reader you are now holding in your hands what can be your guide to a better life. Use your imagination and think of this book and its message as if it were a unique ladder constructed in heaven, one which will take you high above the failure and futility you have endured in the past until you eventually reach a new plateau filled with joy and pride and success.

The advice and guidance contained on each rung of this special heavenly ladder is certain to assist and guide you to reach for the next rung, and the next until you finally have the know-how and motivation to transform your life into all you have dreamed it could be.

At last at long last your life and your future are in your hands alone. You now possess the power, the knowledge, and the means to make all your tomorrows a special and unique heaven on earth.

You deserve a better way of life. At last your future is in your hands. Live it well!

a letter found among the effects of
Og Mandinos old friend Simon Potter

By Og Mandino:

THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD

THE GREATEST SALESMAN IN THE WORLD, PART II: THE END OF THE STORY

THE GREATEST MIRACLE IN THE WORLD

THE GREATEST SUCCESS IN THE WORLD

THE GREATEST SECRET IN THE WORLD

THE GIFT OF ACABAR (WITH BUDDY KAYE)

THE CHRIST COMMISSION

THE CHOICE

OG MANDINOS UNIVERSITY OF SUCCESS

MISSION: SUCCESS!

A BETTER WAY TO LIVE

THE RETURN OF THE RAGPICKER

A TREASURY OF SUCCESS UNLIMITED

U.S. IN A NUTSHELL

CYCLES

THE TWELFTH ANGEL

THE SPELLBINDERS GIFT

SECRETS FOR SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS

THE GREATEST MYSTERY IN THE WORLD

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Published by The Random House Publishing Group

A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright 1997 by Elizabeth L. Mandino

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Fawcett Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-97150

eISBN: 978-0-307-78475-9

v3.1

For my grandson
BENNETT LEWIS MANDINO
With love

Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are dampened, our drafts are checked, and we are making use of only a small part of our mental and physical resources.

William James

M emories. I can still hear his gentle but deep voice saying the words as if they had been spoken just this morning instead of so very long ago.

How our earth was created and hangs suspended in space or how our minds and bodies repeatedly perform their daily miraculous functions is most difficult to comprehend but the greatest mystery still confronting mankind is that despite all the tools that God provided, both mental and physical, so much of humanity continues to stumble along the rocky paths of failure and sorrow, poverty, and despair.

More than twenty years have passed since I first heard that wise declaration and yet I am certain that the sentence, despite its length, is being quoted to you verbatim. It was spoken by a wise old man, Simon Potter, whom I first met one snowy morning in the parking lot behind the building in north Chicago that housed the magazine I headed, Success Unlimited. He was feeding pigeons from a large brown paper bag as I slowly pulled into the lot and our initial brief greeting that morning was the beginning of a relationship that has affected my entire life.

Following that first meeting, in the mid-seventies, Simon and I soon became close friends. Very often, after a long and pressure-packed day of trying to run a national publication, with all of its challenges, I would walk wearily through the dingy parking lot, enter the old stone building across the street, climb the stairway to his second-story apartment, number 21, and visit with the old man before the long drive to my suburban home. His wise advice and counsel, always served with a glass of white sherry, often helped me to relax and see my problems in a more rational light, and Im certain that his loving thoughts and wisdom have often been reflected in my work and how Ive tried to deal with the world since those memorable days, long ago.

Simons tiny three-room apartment, clean and dust-free, had one distinguishing feature. Books! Books everywhere, not only crammed into several huge wooden bookcases but also piled tall and neat in columns against every available wall. The old gentleman proudly explained that they were his lifetime collection of hand of God books and in response to my puzzled expression he said that he truly believed that certain books were written with Gods hand resting lightly upon the authors so that the words inscribed on paper or parchment were being presented directly to us containing Gods principles, guidelines, and wise advice on how to lead a better life.

I am six feet tall but Simon was at least a head taller and although he was seventy-eight years old he also told me he was still a working man self-employed as a human ragpicker. He said that he spent most of his days and nights searching out people who had made a failure of their lives and found themselves on humanitys junk pile of misery and despair. Whenever he discovered such lost souls, and they were everywhere, he exclaimed, he would use his hand of God books to teach them how to regain their hope and self-esteem.

When Simon learned that I was not only an editor but had been fortunate enough to publish several books including a bestseller, The Greatest Salesman in the World, he told me that he had been working for years on writing a simple piece which contained short but powerful rules of life necessary for ones success. He admitted that he had used many of his hand of God books as his reference source and so he had been considering calling his finished work A Memorandum from God. He even dropped hints, during several of my visits, that perhaps I might consider using his small piece in one of my future books so that it would be read by far greater numbers than he could ever possibly reach.

As our friendship strengthened during the summer and fall of 1974, Simon began addressing me as Mister Og. In long discussions, where I did far more listening than talking, we covered a wide range of subjects from the benefits of good self-help books to the sorry state of our world. It was, by far, the most memorable time of my life and yet, for reasons I still do not understand, I never mentioned my relationship with Simon to anyone at the office nor did I ever say anything to my wife, Bette, about this giant who was gradually teaching me how to live a more fulfilling life.

Then, on a Monday morning I shall never forget, my world suddenly shifted. I had been away from the magazine for several weeks, promoting The Greatest Salesman in the World on a nationwide tour, and I arrived at my office very early in order to tackle the expected backlog of challenges. On my desk was a large brown envelope, addressed to me, with its postage stamps still uncanceled. Upon reading the words from an old ragpicker in the upper left-hand corner, I immediately dropped the package and raced out of the office. When I reached the parking lot I dashed between cars, crossed the street, and entered Simons old apartment building. I hurried up the stairs, ran down the hallway to his apartment, and began pounding on his door. Finally it was opened by a plump woman in a dingy robe with a small child in her arms. When I asked for Simon Potter she began closing the door. She said she didnt know any Simon Potter and in the four years she had lived in the apartment she had never seen the man I described to her.