The Law and The Promise Part 2

CHAPTER 5
SUBTLE THREADS
"...all you behold; tho' it appears Without, it is Within; In your Imagination, of
which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow." — Blake
Nothing appears or continues in being by a power of its own. Events happen because comparatively stable imaginal activities created them, and they continue in being by virtue of the support they receive from such imaginal activities. The part which imagining the wish fulfilled plays in consciously creating circumstances is obvious in this series of stories.
You will see how the telling of one story of the successful use of imagination can serve as a spur and a challenge to others to "try" it and "see".
One night a gentleman rose in my audience. He said that he had no question to ask but would like to tell me something. This was his story:
When he came out of the Armed Forces after World War II he got a job that gave him take-home pay of $25.00 a week. After ten years he was making $600.00 a month. At that time he bought my book "Awakened Imagination" and read the chapter "The Pruning Shears of Revision."
Through the daily practice of "Revision”, as set forth there, he was able to tell my audience two years later that his income was equal to that of the President of the United States.
In my audience sat a man who, by his confession, was broke. He had read the same book, but he suddenly realized he had done nothing with the use of his imagination to solve his financial problem.
He decided he would try to imagine himself as the winner of the 5-10 pool at Caliente Race Track. In his words: "In this pool, one attempts to pick winners in the fifth through the tenth races. So this is what I did: In my imagination I stood, sorting my tickets and feeling as I did so, that I had each of the six winners. I enacted this scene over and over in my imagination, until I actually felt 'goose pimples'. Then I 'saw' the cashier giving me a large sum of money which I placed beneath my imaginary shirt.
This was my entire imaginal drama; and for three weeks, night after night, I enacted this scene and fell asleep in the action.
"After three weeks I traveled physically to the Caliente Race Track, and on that day every detail of my imaginative play was actually realized. The only change in the scene was that the cashier gave me a check for a total of $84,000.00 instead of currency." ...T.K.
After my lecture the night this story was told, a man in the audience asked me if I thought it possible for him to duplicate T.K.'s experience. I told him he must decide the circumstances of his imaginal scene himself but that whatever scene he chose, he must create a drama he could make natural to himself and imagine the end intently with all the feeling he could muster; he must not labor for the means to the end but live imaginatively in the feeling of the wish fulfilled.
One month later he showed me a check for $16,000.00 which he had won in another 5-10 pool at the same Caliente Race Track the previous day.
This man had a sequel to his most interesting duplication of T.K.'s good fortune. His first win took care of his immediate financial difficulties although he wanted more money for future family security. Also, and more important to him, he wanted to prove that this had not been an "accident". He reasoned that if his good luck could happen a second time in succession, the so-called "law of percentages" would give way to proof for him that his imaginal structures were actually producing this miraculous "reality". And so he dared to put his imagination to a second test. He continues:
"I wanted a sizeable bank account and this, to me, meant 'seeing' a large balance on my bank statements. Therefore, in my imagination I enacted a scene which took me into two banks. In each bank I would 'see' an appreciative smile meant for me from the bank manager as I walked into his establishment and I would 'hear' the teller's cordial greeting. I would ask to see my statement. In one bank I 'saw' a balance of $10,000.00. In the other bank I 'saw' a balance of $15,000.00.
"My imaginal scene did not end there. Immediately after seeing my bank balances I would turn my attention to my horse racing system which, through a progression of ten steps, would bring my winnings to $11,533.00 with a starting capital of $200.00.
"I would divide the winnings into twelve piles on my desk. Counting the money in my imaginary hands I would put $1,000.00 in each of eleven piles and the remaining five-hundred thirty-three dollars in the last pile. My 'imaginative accounting' would amount to $36,533.00 including my bank balances.
"I enacted this entire imaginative scene each morning, afternoon and night for less than one month, and, on March second, I went to the Caliente track again. I made out my tickets, but strangely enough and not knowing why I did so, I duplicated six more tickets exactly like the six already made out but in the tenth selection I made a 'mistake' and copied two tickets twice. As the winners came in, I held two of them — each paying $16,423.50. I also had six consolation tickets, each paying $656.80. The combined total amounted to $36,788.00. My imaginary accounting one month before had totaled $36,533.00. Two points of interest, most profound to me, were that by seeming accident I
had marked two winning tickets identically and also, that at the end of the ninth race (which was one of the major winners) the trainer attempted to 'scratch' the horse, but the Stewards denied the trainer's request." ...A.J.F.
How subtle were the threads that led to his goal? Results must testify to our imagining or we really are not imagining the end at all. A.J.F. faithfully imagined the end, and all things conspired to aid his harvesting. His "mistake" in copying a winning ticket twice, and the Steward's refusal to allow the trainer's request were events created by the imaginal drama to move the plan of things forward to its goal.
"Chance”, wrote Belfort Bax, "may be defined as that element in the reality change —that is, in the flowing synthesis of events — which is irreducible to law or the causal category."
To live wisely we must be aware of our imaginal activities or, at any rate, of the end which they are tending. We must see to it that it is the end we desire. Wise imagining identifies itself only with such activities that are of value or promise well. However much man seems to be dealing with a material world, he is actually living in a world of imagination. When he discovers that it is not the physical world of facts but imaginal activities which shape his life, then the physical world will no longer be the reality, and the world of imagination no longer the dream.
"Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend."
[Christina Georgina Rossetti, "Uphill"]
CHAPTER 6
VISIONARY FANCY
"The Nature of Visionary Fancy, or Imagination, is very little known, & the External
nature & permanence of its ever Existent Images is consider'd as less permanent than
the things of Vegetative & Generative Nature; yet the Oak dies as well as the Lettuce,
but Its Eternal image & Individuality never dies, but renews by its seed; just so the
Imaginative Image returns by the seed of Contemplative Thought." — Blake
The images of our imagination are the realities of which any physical manifestation is only the shadow. If we are faithful to vision, the image will create for itself the only physical manifestation of itself it has a right to make. We speak of the "reality" of a thing when we mean its material substance. That is exactly what an imaginist means by its "unreality" or shadow.
Imagining is spiritual sensation. Enter into the feeling of your wish fulfilled. Through spiritual sensation — through your use of imaginal sight, sound, scent, taste and touch — you will give to your image the sensory vividness necessary to produce that image in your outer or shadow world.
Here is the story of one who was faithful to his vision. F.B. being a true imaginist, remembered what he had heard in his imagination. Thus he writes:
"A friend who knows my passionate fondness for opera tried to get Kirsten Flagstad's complete recording of Tristan and Isolde for me at Christmas. In over a dozen record stores he was told the same thing: 'RCA Victor is not reissuing this recording and there have been no copies available since June. On December 27th, I determined to prove your principle again by getting the album I desired so intensely. Lying down in my living room, I mentally walked into a record shop I patronize and asked the one salesman whose face and voice I could recall, 'Do you have Flagstad's complete Isolde?' He replied, 'Yes, I have.'
"That ended the scene and I repeated it until it was 'real' to me.
"Late that afternoon, I went to that record shop to physically enact the scene. Not one detail supplied by the senses had encouraged me to believe I could walk out of that shop with those records. I had been told last September by the same salesman in the same shop the same story my friend had received there before Christmas.
Approaching the salesman I had seen in imagination that morning, I said, 'Do you have Flagstad's complete Isolde?' He replied, 'No, we haven't.' Without saying anything audible to him, I said inwardly, 'That's not what I heard you say!'
"As I turned to leave the shop, I noticed on a top shelf what I thought to be an
advertisement of this set of records and remarked to the salesman, 'If you don't have the merchandise, you shouldn't advertise it.' 'That's right', he replied, and as he reached up to take it down, discovered it to be a complete album, with all five records! The scene wasn't played exactly as I had constructed it, but the result confirmed what my imagined scene implied. How can I thank you?" ...F.B.
After reading F.B.'s letter, we must agree with Anthony Eden that "An assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact." F.B.'s fancy, fusing with the sense-field of the record shop, enriched aspects of it and made them 'his' — what he perceived.
Our future is our imagining in its creative march. F.B. used his imagination for a conscious purpose representing life as he desired it to be and thereby affecting life instead of merely reflecting it. So sure was he that his imaginal drama was the reality — and the physical act but a shadow — that when the salesman said "No, we haven't", F.B. mentally said, "That's not what I heard you say!" He not only remembered what he had heard, but he was still remembering it. Imagining the wish fulfilled is the seeking that finds, the asking that receives, the knocking to which is opened. He saw and heard what he desired to see and hear; and would not take "No, we haven't" for an answer.
The imaginist dreams while awake. He is not the servant of his Vision, but the master of the direction of his attention. Imaginative constancy controls perception of events in space-time. Unfortunately, most men are...
"Ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy..."
[Percy Bysshe Shelley, "To the Moon"]
Mrs. G.R., too, had imaginatively heard what she wanted to physically hear and knew the outer world must confirm it. This is her story:
"Some time ago we advertised our home for sale which was necessary for us to buy a larger property on which we had placed a deposit. Several people would have bought our home immediately but we were obliged to explain that we could not close any deal until we learned whether or not our offer for the property we wanted had been accepted. At this time, a broker called and literally begged us to allow him to show our home to a client of his who was eager for this location and would be glad to pay even more than we were asking. We explained our situation to the broker and to his client; they both stated they did not mind waiting for our deal to be consummated.
"The broker asked us to sign a paper which he said was not binding in any way but would give him first chance at the sale if our other deal went through. We signed the paper and later learned that in California Real Estate law nothing could have been more binding. A few days later our deal for the new property fell through so we notified this broker and his verbal response was, 'Well, just forget it'. Two weeks later he filed suit against us for fifteen hundred dollars commission. Trial date was set and we asked for a jury trial.
"Our attorney assured us he would do all he could, but that the law on this particular point was so stringent that he could not see any possibility of our winning the case.
"When time for the trial arrived, my husband was in the hospital and could not appear with me in our defense. I had no witnesses; but the broker brought three attorneys and a number of witnesses into court against us. Our attorney now told me we had not the slightest chance to win.
"I turned to my imagination, and this is what I did. Completely disregarding all that had been said by attorneys, witnesses and the judge who seemed to favor the plaintiff, I thought only of the words I wanted to hear. In my imagination, I listened intently and heard the foreman of the jury say, 'We find the defendant not guilty'. I listened until I knew it was true. I closed my mind's ear to everything said in that courtroom and heard only those words, 'We find the defendant not guilty!' The jury deliberated from noon recess until four-thirty that afternoon, and all during those hours I sat in the courtroom and heard those words over and over in my imagination. When the jurors returned, the Judge asked the foreman to stand and give their verdict. The foreman stood up and said, 'We find the defendant NOT guilty'." ...Mrs. G.R.
"If there were dreams to sell
What would you buy?"
[Thomas Lovell Beddoes, "Dream-Pedlary"]
Would you not buy your wish fulfilled? Your dreams are without price and without money. By locking up the jury in her imagination — hearing only what she wanted to hear, she called the jury to unanimity on her behalf. Imagining being the reality of all that exists, with it the lady achieved her wish fulfilled.
Hebbel's statement that "the poet creates from contemplation" is true of imaginists as well. They know how to utilize their video-audio hallucinations to create reality.
Nothing is so fatal as conformity. We must not allow ourselves to be girt about by the ringed fixity of fact. Change the image, and thereby change the fact. R.O. employed the art of seeing and feeling to create her vision in imagination.
"A year ago I took my children to Europe leaving my furnished apartment in the care of my maid. When we returned a few months later to the United States, I found my maid and all my furniture gone. The apartment superintendent stated that the maid had had my furniture moved 'by my request'. There was nothing I could do at the moment, so I took my children and moved into a hotel. I, of course, reported the incident to the police and, also, brought in private detectives on the case. Both organizations investigated every moving company and every storage warehouse in New York City, but to no avail. There seemed to be absolutely no trace of my furniture, nor of my maid.
"Having exhausted all outside sources, I remembered your teaching and decided I would try using my imagination in this matter. So, while seated in my hotel room, I closed my eyes and imagined myself in my own apartment, sitting in my favorite chair and surrounded by all of my personal furnishings. I looked across the living room at the piano on which I kept pictures of my children. I would continue to stare at my piano until the entire room became vividly real to me. I could see my children's pictures and actually feel the upholstery of the chair in which, in my imagination, I sat.
"The next day, as I came out of my bank, I turned to walk in the direction of my vacant apartment instead of toward my hotel. When I reached the corner, I discovered my 'mistake' and was just about to turn back when my attention was drawn to a very familiar pair of ankles. Yes, the ankles belonged to my maid. I walked up to her and took hold of her arm. She was quite frightened, but I assured her all I wanted from her was my furniture. I called a taxi and she took me to the place in which her friends had stored my furnishings. In one day, my imagination had found what an entire big city police force and private investigators could not find in weeks." ...R.O.
This lady knew of the secret of imagining before she called in the police, but imagining — in spite of its importance — was forgotten owing to attention being fixed on facts. However, what reason failed to find by force, imagining found without effort. Nothing merely goes on — including the sense of loss — without its imaginal support. By imagining that she was seated in her own chair, in her own living room, surrounded by all of her own furnishings, she withdrew the imaginal support she had given to her sense of loss; and by this imaginal change she recovered her lost furniture and re-established her home.
Your imagination is most creative when you imagine things as you desire them to be, building a new experience out of a dream of fancy. To build such a dream of fancy in her imagination, F.G. brought to play all of her senses — sight, sound, touch, smell — even taste. This is her story:
"Since childhood, I have dreamed of visiting far-away places. The West Indies, particularly, fired my fancy, and I would revel in the feeling of actually being there. Dreams are wonderfully inexpensive and as an adult I continued to dream my dreams, for I had no money or time to make them 'come true'. Last year I was taken to the hospital in need of surgery. I had heard your teaching and, while recuperating, had decided to intensify my favorite daydream while I had time on my hands. I actually wrote to the Alcoa Steamship Line asking for free travel folders and pored over them, hour after hour, choosing the ship and the stateroom and the seven ports I desired most to see. I would close my eyes and, in my imagination, would walk up the gangplank of that ship and feel the movement of water as the great liner pushed its way into free ocean. I heard the thud of waves breaking against the sides of the ship, felt the steaming warmth of a tropical sun on my face and smelled and tasted salt in the air as we all sailed through blue waters.
"For one solid week, confined to a hospital bed, I lived the free and happy experience of actually being on that ship. Then, the day before my release from the hospital, I tucked the colored folders away and forgot them. Two months later, I received a telegram from an advertising agency telling me I had won a contest. I remembered having deposited a contest coupon some months before in a neighborhood supermarket but had completely forgotten the act. I had won first prize and — wonder of wonders — it entitled me to a Caribbean cruise sponsored by the Alcoa Steamship Line. But the wonder didn't stop there. The very stateroom I had imaginatively lived in and moved about in while confined to a hospital bed had been assigned to me. And to make an unbelievable story even more unbelievable, I sailed on the one ship I had chosen — which stopped in not one, but all of the seven ports I had desired to visit!" ...F.G.
"To travel is the privilege, not of the rich but of the imaginative."
CHAPTER 7
MOODS
"This is an age in which the mood decides the fortunes of people rather than the
fortunes decide the mood." — Sir Winston Churchill
Men regard their moods far too much as effects and not sufficiently as causes. Moods are imaginal activities without which no creation is possible. We say that we are happy because we have achieved our goal; we do not realize that the process works equally well in the reverse direction — that we shall achieve our goal because we have assumed the happy feeling of the wish fulfilled.
Moods are not only the result of the conditions of our life; they are also the causes of those conditions. In "The Psychology of Emotions”, Professor Ribot writes, "An idea which is only an idea produces nothing and does nothing; it only acts if it is felt, if it is accompanied by an effective state, if it awakens tendencies, that is to say, motor elements."
The lady in the following story so successfully felt the feeling of her wish fulfilled, she made her mood the character of the night — frozen in a delightful dream.
"Most of us read and love fairy stories, but we all know that stories of improbable riches and good fortune are for the delight of the very young. But are they? I want to tell you of something unbelievably wonderful that happened to me through the power of my imagination — and I am not 'young' in years. We live in an age which believes in neither fable nor magic, and yet everything I could possibly want in my wildest day-dreams was given to me by the simple use of what you teach — that 'imagining creates reality' and that 'feeling' is the secret of imagining.
"At the time this wonderful thing happened to me I was out of a job and had no family to fall back upon for support. I needed just about everything. To find a decent job I needed a car to look for it, and though I had a car, it was so worn out it was ready to fall apart. I was behind in my rent; I had no proper clothes to seek a job; and today it's no fun for a woman of fifty-five to apply for a job of any kind. My bank account was almost depleted and there was no friend to whom I could turn.
"But I had been attending your lectures for almost a year and my desperation forced me to put my imagination to the test. Indeed, I had nothing to lose. It was natural for me, I suppose, to begin by imagining myself having everything I needed. But I needed so many things and in such short order that I found myself exhausted when I finally got through the list, and by that time I was so nervous I could not sleep. One lecture night I heard you tell of an artist who captured the 'feeling', or 'word', as you called it, of 'isn't it wonderful!' in his personal experience.
"I began to apply this idea to my case. Instead of thinking of and imagining every article I needed, I tried to capture the 'feeling' that something wonderful was happening to me — not tomorrow, not next week — but right now. I would say over and over to myself as I fell asleep, 'Isn't it wonderful! Something marvelous is happening to me now!' And as I fell asleep I would feel the way I would expect to feel under such circumstances.
"I repeated that imaginary action and feeling for two months, night after night, and one day in early October I met a casual friend I hadn't seen for months who informed me he was about to leave on a trip to New York. I had lived in New York many years ago and we talked of the city a few moments and then parted. I completely forgot the incident. One month later, to the day, this man called at my apartment and simply handed me a Certified Check in my name for twenty-five hundred dollars. After I got over the initial shock of seeing my name on a check for so much money, the story that unfolded seemed to me like a dream. It concerned a friend I had not seen nor heard from in more than twenty-five years. This friend of my past, I now learned, had become extremely wealthy in those twenty-five years. Our mutual acquaintance who had brought the check to me had met him quite by accident during the trip to New York last month. During their conversation they spoke of me, and for reasons I was not to know (for to this day I have not heard from him personally and have never attempted to contact him) this old friend decided to share a portion of his great wealth with me.
"For the next two years, from the office of his attorney, I received monthly checks so generous in amount they not only covered every necessary requirement of daily living, but left much over for all the lovely things of life: a car, clothes, a spacious apartment — and best of all, no need to earn my daily bread.
"This past month I received a letter and some legal papers to be signed which provide the continuation of this monthly income for the rest of my natural life!" ...T.K.
"If the fool would persist in his folly
He would become wise." — William Blake
Sir Winston calls on us to act on the assumption that we already possess that which we sought, to "assume a virtue”, if we have it not. Is this not the secret of "miracles"? Thus the man with palsy was told to rise, to take up his bed and walk — to mentally act as if he were healed; and when the actions of his imagination corresponded with the actions which he would physically perform were he healed — he was healed.
"This is a story about which some may say, 'it would have happened anyway', but those who read it carefully will find room to wonder. It begins one year ago as I left Los Angeles to visit my daughter in San Francisco. Instead of the happy-natured individual she had always been, I found her in deep distress. Not knowing the cause of her anguish and
not wishing to ask, I waited until she told me that she was in great financial trouble and must have three thousand dollars immediately. I am not a poor woman but I didn't have much cash I could put my hands on that quickly. Knowing my daughter, I knew she would not have accepted it anyway. I offered to borrow the money for her, but she refused and instead asked me to help her in 'my way'... she meant using my imagination, for I had often told her of your teaching and some of my words must have struck home.
"I immediately agreed on this plan with the provision that she would help me help her. We decided on an imaginal scene we could both practice that involved 'seeing' money coming to her from everywhere. We felt money was flooding toward her from every corner, until she was in the middle of a 'sea' of money, but we did this always with the feeling of 'Joy' for anyone concerned and we had no thought of means, only happiness for all.
"The idea seemed to catch fire with her, and I know she was responsible for what happened a few days later. She was certainly transformed back to the happy, confident mood that was natural to her, though there was no evidence of any real money coming in at the time. I left to return home in the East.
"When I arrived home I called my mother (a lovely young lady of ninety-one) who immediately asked me to come and see her. I wanted a day's rest but she couldn't wait; it had to be now. Of course I went, and after greeting me, she handed me a check for three thousand dollars made out to my daughter! Before I could speak, she handed me three additional checks totaling fifteen hundred dollars made in favor of my daughter's children. Her reason? She explained that she had suddenly decided the day before to give what she had in cash to those she loved while she was still 'here' to know of their happiness in receiving it!
"It would have happened anyway? No — not like this. Not within days of my daughter's frantic need, and then her sudden transformation to a mood of joy. I know that her imaginal act caused this wonderful change — bringing not only great joy to the receiver but to the giver as well."
"P.S. ...I almost forgot to add that among the checks so lavishly given, was one for me too, for three thousand dollars!" ...M.B.
The boundless opportunities opened by recognizing the shift of the focus of imagining is beyond measure. There are no boundaries. The drama of life is an imaginal activity in which we bring to pass by our moods rather than by our physical acts. Moods so ably guide all towards that which they affirm, they may be said to create the circumstances of life and dictate the events. The mood of the wish fulfilled is the high tide which lifts us easily off the bar of the senses where we usually lie stranded. If we are aware of the mood and know this secret of imagining, we may announce that all that our mood affirms will come to pass.
The following story is by a mother who succeeded in sustaining a seemingly "playful" mood with startling results.
"Surely you've heard the 'old wives' tale about warts: That, if a wart is bought, it will disappear? I've known this story from childhood but not until I heard your lectures did I realize the truth hidden in the old tale. My boy, a lad of ten, had many large ugly warts on his legs causing an irritation which had plagued him for years. I decided that my sudden 'insight' could be used to his advantage. A boy has a lot of faith in his mother as a rule so I asked him if he would like to be rid of his warts. He quickly said, 'Yes', but he did not want to go to a doctor. I asked him to play a little game with me, that I would pay him a sum of money for each wart. This suited him fine; he said — 'he didn't see how he could lose!' We arrived at a fair price, he thought, and then I said, 'Now, I'm paying you good money for those warts; they no longer belong to you. You never keep property belonging to someone else so you can no longer keep those warts. They will disappear. It may take a day, two days or a month; but remember that I've bought them and they belong to me.'
"My son was delighted with our game and the results sound like something read in old musty books on magic. But, believe me, within ten days the warts began to fade, and, at the end of one month every wart on his body had completely disappeared!
"There is a sequel to this story for I've bought warts from many people. They, too, thought it great fun and accepted my five, seven or ten cents a wart. In each case the wart disappeared — but really — only one person believes me when I tell him his Imagination, alone, took away the warts. That one person is my young son." ...J.R.
Man imagining himself into a mood takes on himself the results of the mood. If he does not imagine himself into the mood, he is ever free of the result. The great Irish mystic, A.E., wrote in "The Candle of Vision": "I became aware of a swift echo or response to my own moods in circumstance which had seemed hitherto immutable in its indifference... I could prophesy from the uprising of new moods in myself that I, without search, would soon meet people of a certain character, and so I met them. Even inanimate things were under the sway of these affinities."
But man need not wait for the uprising of new moods in himself; he can create happy moods at will.