31.
The ancient teachers warned us not to judge from appearances because, said they, the truth need not conform to the external reality to which it relates.
They claimed that we bore false witness if we imagined evil against another, that no matter how real our belief appears to be, how truly it conforms to the external reality to which it relates, if it does not make free, the one of whom we hold the belief, it is untrue and therefore a false judgment.
We are called upon to deny the evidence of our senses and to imagine as true of our neighbor that which makes him free.
“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
To know the truth of our neighbor we must assume that he is already that which he desires to be. Any concept we hold of another that is short of his fulfilled desire, will not make him free and therefore cannot be the truth.
32.
Look as though you saw, listen as though you heard; stretch forth your imaginary hand as though you touched . . and your assumptions will harden into facts.
33.
Night after night, you should assume the feeling of being, having and witnessing that which you seek to be, possess and see manifested.
Never go to sleep feeling discouraged or dissatisfied.
Never sleep in the consciousness of failure.
Your subconscious, whose natural state is sleep, sees you as you believe yourself to be, and whether it be good, bad or indifferent, the subconscious will faithfully embody your belief.
As you feel, so do you impress her; and she, the perfect lover, gives form to these impressions and out pictures them as the children of her beloved.
“Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee,”
is the attitude of mind to adopt before dropping off to sleep. Disregard appearances and feel that things are as you wish them to be, for
“He calleth things that are not seen as though they were,
and the unseen becomes seen.”
To assume the feeling of satisfaction is to call conditions into being which will mirror satisfaction.
“Signs follow, they do not precede”.
Proof that you are will follow the consciousness that you are; it will not precede it.
You are an eternal dreamer dreaming non-eternal dreams. Your dreams take form as you assume the feeling of their reality. Do not limit yourself to the past. Knowing that nothing is impossible to consciousness, begin to imagine states beyond the experiences of the past.
Whatever the mind of man can imagine, man can realize.
34.
Experiments recently conducted by Merle Lawrence (Princeton) and Adelbert Ames (Dartmouth) in the latter’s psychology laboratory at Hanover, N.H., prove that 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.
Since what we believe to be the “real” physical world is actually only an “assumptive” world, it is not surprising that these experiments prove that what appears to be solid reality is actually the result of “expectations” or “assumptions”.
Your assumptions determine not only what you see, but also what you do, for they govern all your conscious and subconscious movements towards the fulfillment of themselves.
35.
All is yours.
Do not go seeking for that which you are.
Appropriate it, claim it, assume it.
Everything depends upon your concept of yourself. That which you do not claim as true of yourself cannot be realized by you. The promise is,
“Whosoever hath, to him it shall be given, and
he shall have more abundance; but whosoever
hath not, from him shall be taken away even
that which he seemeth to have.”
Hold fast, in your imagination, to all that is lovely and of good report, for the lovely and the good are essential in your life if it is to be worthwhile. Assume it. You do this by imagining that you already are what you want to be and already have what you want to have.
“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
Be still and know that you are that which you desire to be, and you will never have to search for it.
In spite of your appearance of freedom of action, you obey, as everything else does, the law of assumption. Whatever you may think of the question of free will, the truth is your experiences throughout your life are determined by your assumptions . . whether conscious or unconscious.
An assumption builds a bridge of incidents that lead inevitably to the fulfillment of itself.
Man believes the future to be the natural development of the past. But the law of assumption clearly shows that this is not the case. Your assumption places you psychologically where you are not physically; then your senses pull you back from where you were psychologically to where you are physically. It is these psychological forward motions that produce your physical forward motions in time. Precognition permeates all the scriptures of the world.