OUT OF THIS WORLD : Chapter 3 : POWER OF IMAGINATION

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” —John 8:32.

Men claim that a true judgment must conform to the external reality to which it relates. This means that if I, while imprisoned, suggest to myself that I am free and succeed in believing that I am free, it is true that I believe in my freedom; but it does not follow that I am free for I may be the victim of illusion. But, because of my own experiences, I have come to believe in so many strange things that I see little reason to doubt the truth of things that are beyond my experience.

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.

Instead of learning my craft in schools where attending courses and seminars is considered a substitute for self-acquired knowledge, my schooling was devoted almost exclusively to the power of imagination. I sat for hours imagining myself to be other than that which my reason and my senses dictated until the imagined states were vivid as reality—so vivid that passersby became but a part of my imagination and acted as I would have them. By the power of imagination my fantasy led theirs and dictated to them their behavior and the discourse they held together while I was identified with my imagined state. Man’s imagination is the man himself, and the world as imagination sees it is the real world, but it is our duty to imagine all that is lovely and of good report.

“The Lord seeth not as man seeth, for man looketh upon the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh upon the heart.” “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” In meditation, when the brain grows luminous, I find my imagination endowed with the magnetic power to attract to me whatsoever I desire. Desire is the power imagination uses to fashion life about me as I fashion it within myself. I first desire to see a certain person or scene, and then I look as though I were seeing that which I want to see, and the imagined state becomes objectively real. I desire to hear, and then I listen as though I were hearing, and the imagined voice speaks that which I dictate as though it had initiated the message. I could give you many examples to prove my arguments, to prove that these imagined states do become physical realities; but I know that my examples will awaken in all who have not met the like or who are not inclined towards my arguments, a most natural incredulity.

Nevertheless, experience has convinced me of the truth of the statement, “He calleth those things which be-not as though they were.”—Romans 4:17. For I have, in intense meditation, called things that were not seen as though they were, and the unseen not only became seen, but eventually became physical realities. By this method—first desiring and then imagining that we are experiencing that which we desire to experience—we can mold the future in harmony with our desire. But let us follow the advice of the prophet and think only the lovely and the good, for the imagination waits on us as indifferently and as swiftly when our nature is evil as when it is good. From us spring forth good and evil. “I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.” — Deuteronomy 30:15.

Desire and imagination are the enchanter’s wand of fable and they draw to themselves their own affinities. They break forth best when the mind is in a state akin to sleep. I have written with some care and detail the method I use to enter the dimensionally larger world, but I shall give one more formula for opening the door of the larger world.

“In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep calleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.” —Job 33:15,16.

In dream we are usually the servant of our vision rather than its master, but the internal fantasy of dream can be turned into an external reality. In dream, as in meditation, we slip from this world into a dimensionally larger world, and I know that the forms in dream are not flat two- dimensional images which modern psychologists believe them to be. They are substantial realities of the dimensionally larger world, and I can lay hold of them. I have discovered that, if I surprise myself dreaming, I can lay hold of any inanimate or stationary form of the dream (a chair, a table, a stairway, a tree) and command myself to awake. At the command to awake, while firmly holding on to the object of the dream, I am pulled through myself with the distinct feeling of awakening from dream. I awaken in another sphere holding the object of my dream, to find that I am no longer the servant of my vision but its master, for I am fully conscious and in control of the movements of my attention. It is in this fully conscious state, when we are in control of the direction of thought, that we call things that are not seen as though they were. In this state we call things by wishing and assuming the feeling of our wish fulfilled. Unlike the world of three dimensions where there is an interval between our assumption and its fulfillment, in the dimensionally larger world there is an immediate realization of our assumption. The external reality instantly mirrors our assumption. Here there is no need to wait four months till harvest. We look again as though we saw, and lo and behold, the fields are already white to harvest.

In this dimensionally larger world “Ye shall not need to fight: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you.” Chronicles 20:17. And because that greater world is slowly passing through our three-dimensional world, we can by the power of imagination mold our world in harmony with our desire. 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.

To those who believe that a true judgment must conform to the external reality to which it relates, this will be foolishness and a stumbling-block. But I preach and practice the fixing in consciousness of that which man desires to realize.

Experience convinces me that fixed attitudes of mind which do not conform to the external reality to which they relate and are therefore called imaginary—”things which are not”—will, nevertheless, “bring to nought things that are.” I do not wish to write a book of wonders, but rather to turn man’s mind back to the one and only reality that the ancient teachers worshiped as God. All that was said of God was in reality said of man’s consciousness so we may say, “That, according as it is written, He that glorify, let him glory in his own consciousness.”

No man needs help to direct him in the application of this law of consciousness. “I am” is the self-definition of the absolute.

The root out of which everything prows. “I am the vine.” What is your answer to the eternal question, “Who am I?” Your answer determines the part you play in the world’s drama. Your answer—that is, your concept of self—need not conform to the external reality to which it relates. This great truth is revealed in the statement, “Let the weak say, I am strong.” —Joel 3:10.

Look back over the good resolutions with which many past new years are encumbered. They lived a little while and then they died. Why? Because they were severed from their root. Assume that you are that which you want to be. Experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you already that which you want to be. Remain faithful to your assumption, so that you define yourself as that which you have assumed. Things have no life if they are severed from their roots, and our consciousness, our “I amness,” is the root of all that springs in our world. “If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”— John 8:24. That is, if I do not believe that I am already that which I desire to be, then I remain as I am and die in my present concept of self. There is no power, outside of the consciousness of man, to resurrect and make alive that which man desires to experience. That man who is accustomed to call up at will whatever images he pleases, will be, by virtue of the power of his imagination, master of his fate. “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” —John 11:25.’“Ye shall know

the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”