- Believe me, imagining does create reality. Take me seriously. You will never know Jesus until you know the secret of imagining, for your imagination is He. If you really believe in God, believe in your own imagination, for it is the power of God and the wisdom of God. I tell you, there is only one power in the universe. We call it by the name of God or Jesus. But if you think of Jesus as someone on the outside, who lived 2,000 years ago, you will never know him. Nor will you ever know God, if you think of him as some impersonal force. God is a person because you are a person. He became you, as he became us all, that we may become as He is. Take my message to heart and apply it from now on. You can be the man you would like to be. Don’t start dreaming about it. Awake and think from it. Do not concern yourself about trying to meet the so-called “right” people. They are simply reflections of the activity you have placed within you. Change your thoughts and you will change the behavior of those who surround you for they are nothing more than yourself made visible.
- An imaginal act is an immediate objective fact. Functioning on low intensities as we are, an imaginal act is realized in a time process. And so every vision as it stands there I assume that I AM; but at the moment reason denies and my senses deny, but I assume that I AM. And if I assume it and it seems to me real and natural, when I break the spell I know I have planted it, and then it has its own appointed hour. Every vision has its own period of gestation, as we are told by the prophet: “It has its own appointed hour, it ripens, it will flower, if it seems slow then wait, it is sure, it will not be late.” If you see it clearly in your mind’s eye, if you were really in the image, it will become just as objective as this room is now . . and again I am speaking from experience. Sitting in my chair at home or reclining on a couch or in my bed, suddenly . . without my eyes being physically open . . I see a world that I would not see if I know where I am physically, and I can’t deny it. It’s just as real as you are. It’s objective, it is seemingly solidly real, and consciousness follows vision and I step into the world that I am observing. And stepping into my image it closes around me, and this world which is seemingly the only world I should know is shut out, and I am part of the world I contemplated, I am in it. I explore that world and it is just as solidly real as this world.
- Test yourself, and you will discover that your imaginal act was the cause of the response of the world relative to you.
- Everything in your world that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination. And this wonderful imagination of yours is Christ Jesus. Imagination is the actual habitation of every created thing. No matter what you see in the world, it springs from your imagination.
- But I do know that God’s law reflects all the way down to this world of Caesar. I do not know how long it takes for each egg to hatch in a nest, but I do know each one will hatch in its own time. And so it is with an assumption. If I desire to be wealthy, I may not know how long it will take me to reach the conviction that I possess great wealth, but when I feel wealth is mine I have conceived. Conception is my end. The length of time between my desire and its conception depends entirely upon my inner conviction that it is done. A horse takes twelve months, a cow nine months, a chicken twenty-one days, so there are intervals of time; but it comes down to the simple fact that the truth concerning every concept is known by the feeling of its certainty. When you know it, not a thing can disturb your knowingness!
- What is an idea to sleeping man, the unawakened imagination, is a fact to the awakened imagination, an objective fact, not an idea.
- If you will construct mentally a drama which implies that you have realized your objective, then close your eyes and drop your thoughts inward, centering your imagination all the while in the predetermined action and partake in that action, you will become a self-determined being.
- It is the highest wisdom to know that in the living universe there is no destiny other than that created out of imagination of man. There is no influence outside of the mind of man. Man creates himself out of his own imagination.
- If it is difficult to control the direction of your attention while in this state akin to sleep, you may find gazing fixedly into an object very helpful. Do not look at its surface, but rather into and beyond any plain object such as a wall, a carpet or any object which possesses depth. Arrange it to return as little reflection as possible. Imagine, then, that in this depth you are seeing and hearing what you want to see and hear until your attention is exclusively occupied by the imagined state. At the end of your meditation, when you awake from your controlled waking dream you feel as though you had returned from a great distance. The visible world which you had shut out returns to consciousness and, by its very presence, informs you that you have been self-deceived into believing that the object of your contemplation was real; but if you remain faithful to your vision this sustained mental attitude will give reality to your visions and they will become visible concrete facts in your world. Define your highest ideal and concentrate your attention upon this ideal until you identify yourself with it. Assume the feeling of being it . . the feeling that would be yours were you now embodying it in your world. This assumption, though now denied by your senses, “if persisted in” . . will become a fact in your world. You will know when you have succeeded in fixing the desired state in consciousness simply by looking mentally at the people you know. This is a wonderful check on yourself as your mental conversations are more revealing than your physical conversations are. If, in your mental conversations with others, you talk with them as you formerly did, then you have not changed your concept of self, for all changes of concepts of self result in a changed relationship to the world. Remember what was said earlier, “What you see when you look at something depends not so much on what is there as on the assumption you make when you look.” Therefore, the assumption of the wish fulfilled should make you see the world mentally as you would physically were your assumption a physical fact. The spiritual man speaks to the natural man through the language of desire. The key to progress in life and to the fulfillment of dreams lies in the ready obedience to the voice. Unhesitating obedience to its voice is an immediate assumption of the wish fulfilled. To desire a state is to have it. As Pascal said, “You would not have sought me had you not already found me.” Man, by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled and then living and acting on this conviction changes his future in harmony with his assumption. To “change his future” is the inalienable right of freedom loving individuals. There would be no progress in the world were it not for the divine discontent in man which urges him on to higher and higher levels of consciousness.
- Satan is the doubter. It is he who doubts the reality of your imaginal acts. If you can’t believe in the reality of your unseen imaginal act, you may turn to another and believe in him; but you are always imagining, for imagination is God, and imagination . . imagining . . is the power of the world. In the beginning you heard, but as your eyes see the result of your inner hearing you believe, and in the end everything taken from you will return one hundred-fold.