The Law and The Promise Part 3

CHAPTER 8
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
"A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heav'n espy."
— George Herbert ["The Elixir"]
Objects, to be perceived, must first penetrate in some manner our brain; but we are not — because of this — interlocked with our environment. Although normal consciousness is focused on the senses and is usually restricted to them, it is possible for man to pass through his sense fixation into any imaginal structure which he conceives and so fully occupies it that it is more alive and more responsive than that on which his senses "stay his eye". If this were not true, man would be an automaton reflecting life, never affecting it. Man, who is all Imagination, is not tenant to the brain, but landlord; he need not rest content with the appearance of things; he can go beyond perceptual to conceptual awareness.
This ability, to pass through the mechanical reflective structure of the senses, is the most important discovery man can make. It reveals man as a center of imagining with powers of intervention which enable him to alter the course of observed events moving from success to success through a series of mental transformations in himself.
Attention, the spearhead of imagining, may be either attracted from without as his senses "stay his eye" or directed from within "if he pleases" and through the senses pass into the wish fulfilled.
To move from perceptual awareness, or things as they seem, to conceptual awareness, or things as they ought to be, we imagine as vivid and as life-like a representation as possible of what we would see, hear, and do, were we physically present, and physically experiencing things as they ought to be and imaginatively participate in that scene.
The following story tells of one who went "through the glass" and broke the chains that bound her.
"Two years ago I was taken to the hospital with a serious blood clot condition which apparently had affected the entire vascular system causing hardening of arteries and arthritis. A nerve in my head was damaged and my thyroid enlarged. Doctors could not agree on the cause of this condition, and all their treatments were completely ineffective. I was forced to give up my every enjoyable activity and remain in bed most of the time. My body, from hips to toes, felt as though it was encased and bound by tight wires, and I couldn't put my feet on the floor without wearing heavy hip-length elastic stockings.
"I knew something of your teaching and tried very hard to apply what I had heard, but as my condition grew worse and I could no longer attend any of your lectures, my despondency grew deeper. One day a friend sent me a postcard picturing the scene of a lovely beach by the ocean. The picture was so beautiful, I looked and looked at it and began to remember past summer days at the seashore with my parents. For a moment, the postcard picture seemed to become animated and flooding memories of myself running free on the beach filled my mind. I felt the impact of my bare feet against the hard wet sand; I felt the icy water running over my toes and heard the crash of waves breaking on shore. This imaginal activity was so satisfying to me as I lay in bed that I continued to imagine this wonderful scene, day after day, for about one week.
"One morning, I moved from my bed to a couch and had started to sit up when I was seized with such an excruciating pain my entire body became paralyzed. I could neither sit up nor lie down. This terrible pain lasted for more than a full minute, but when it stopped — I was free! It seemed as if all the wires binding my legs had been cut. One moment I was bound; the next moment I was free. Not by degrees, but instantly." ...V.H.
"We walk by faith, not by sight." — 2Cor. 5:7
When we walk by sight, we know our way by objects which our eyes see. When we walk by faith, we order our life by scenes and actions which only imagination sees.
Man perceives by the Eye of Imagination or by Sense. But two mental attitudes to perception are possible, the creative imaginative effort which meets with an imaginative response, or the unimaginative "staying of the eye" which merely reflects.
Man has within him the principle of life and the principle of death. One is the imagination building its imaginal structures out of the generous dreams of fancy. The other is the imagination building its imaginal structures from images reflected by the chill wind of fact. One creates. The other perpetuates. Man must adopt either the way of faith or the way of sight. To the extent that man builds from dreams of fancy, he is alive; and, therefore, the development of the faculty to pass through the reflective glass of the senses is an increase of life. It follows that restricting the imagination by "staying the eye" on the reflective glass of the senses is a reduction of life.
The specious surface of fact reflects rather than discloses, deflecting the "Eye of Imagination" from the truth that sets man free. "The Eye of Imagination”, if not deflected, looks on what ought to be there, not what is. However familiar the scene on which sight rests, the "Eye of Imagination" could gaze on one never before witnessed.
It is this "Eye of Imagination" and only this that can free us from the sense fixation of outer things which completely dominates our ordinary existence and keeps us looking on the reflective glass of facts.
It is possible to pass from thinking of to thinking from; but the crucial matter is thinking from, i.e., experiencing the state, for that experience means unification; whereas in thinking of there is always subject and object — the thinking individual and the thing thought of.
Self-abandonment. That is the secret. We have to abandon ourselves to the state, in our love for the state, and in so doing live the life of the state and no more our present state. Imagination seizes upon the life of the state and gives itself to the expression of the life of that state.
Faith plus Love is self-commission. We can't commit ourselves to what we do not love. "Never would you have made anything if you had not loved it." ["For you love all the things that are, and despise nothing which you have made: For never would you have made anything, if you hated it.", "Book of Wisdom" 11:24]. And to make the state alive, one must become it. "I live, yet not I, God lives in me: and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me." ["I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.", Galatians 2:20]
God loved man, His created, and became man in faith that this act of self-commission would transform the created into the creative.
We must be "imitators of God as dear children" and commit ourselves to what we love, as God Who loved us committed Himself to us. We must BE the state to experience the state.
The center of conscious imagining can be shifted and what are now mere wishes —imaginal activities keyed low — brought into penetrative focus and entered. Entrance commits us to the state. The possibilities of such shifting of the center of imagining are startling. The activities concerned are psychical throughout. The shifting of the center of imagining is not brought about by spatial travel but by a change in what we are aware of. The boundary of the world of sense is a subjective barrier. So long as the senses take notice, the Eye of Imagination is deflected from the truth. We do not get far unless we let go. This lady "let go" with immediate and miraculous results.
"Thank you for the 'golden key'. It has released my brother from the hospital, from pain and probable death, for he was facing a fourth major operation with little hope of recovery, I was very concerned and attempting to use what I had learned about my Imagination, I first asked myself what my brother truly desired: 'Does he want to continue in this body or does he desire to be free of it?' The question revolved itself over and over in my mind and suddenly I felt that he would like to continue remodeling his kitchen which he had been contemplating before his confinement in the hospital. I knew my question had been answered, so I began to imagine from that point.
"Attempting to 'see' my brother in the busy activity of remodeling, I suddenly found myself gripping the back of a kitchen chair I had used many times when 'something' happened, then suddenly I found myself standing beside my brother's bed in the hospital. This was the last place I would have wanted to be, physically or mentally, but there I was and my brother's hand reached up and clasped my hand tightly as I heard him say, 'I knew you would come, Jo'. It was a well hand I clasped, strong and sure, and the joy that filled and spilled over in my voice as I heard myself say, 'It's all better now. You know it'. My brother didn't answer, but I distinctly heard a voice say to me, 'Remember this moment'. I seemed to awake then, back in my own home.
"This took place the night after he had entered the hospital. The following day his wife telephoned me saying, 'It is unbelievable! The doctor can't account for it, Jo, but no operation is necessary. He's so improved that they have agreed to release him tomorrow.' The following Monday, my brother went back to his work and has been perfectly well since that day." ...J.S.
Not facts — but dreams of fancy shape our lives. She needed no compass to find her brother, nor tools to operate, only the "Eye of Imagination". In the world of sense we see what we have to see; in the world of Imagination we see what we want to see; And seeing it, we create it for the world of sense to see. We see the outer world automatically. Seeing what we want to see demands voluntary and conscious imaginative effort. Our future is our own imaginal activity in its creative march.
Common sense assures us that we are living in a solid and sensible world but this so seemingly solid world is — in reality — imaginal through and through.
The following story proves that it is possible for an individual to transfer the center of imagining to some greater or lesser degree to a distant area, and not only do so without moving physically, but to be visible to others who are present at that point in space-time. And, if this be a dream, then,
"Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?" [— Edgar Allan Poe]
"Seated in my living room in San Francisco, I imagined I was in my daughter's living room in London, England. I surrounded myself so completely with that room which I knew intimately, that I suddenly found myself actually standing in it. My daughter was standing by her fireplace, her face turned away from me. A moment later she turned and our eyes met. I saw such a startled, frightened expression on her face that I, too, became emotionally upset and immediately found myself back in my own living room in San Francisco.
"Five days later, I received an airmail letter from my daughter which had been written
on the day of my experiment with imaginal travel. In her letter she told me she had 'seen' me in her living room that day just as real as though I were actually standing there in the flesh. She confessed she had been very frightened and that before she could speak, I had vanished. The time of this 'visitation', as she gave it in her letter, was exactly the time I had begun the imaginative action allowing, of course, for the difference in time between the two points. She explained that she told her husband of this amazing experience and he insisted that she write to me immediately as he stated, 'Your mother must have died or is dying'. But I wasn't 'dead' or 'dying', but very much alive and very excited by this marvelous experience." ...M.L.J.
"Nothing can act but where it is: with all my heart; only where is it?"
— Thomas Carlyle
Man is All Imagination. Therefore, a man must be where he is in imagination, for his Imagination is himself. Imagination is active at and through any state that it is aware of. If we take shifting of awareness seriously, there are possibilities beyond belief.
The senses join man in forced and unholy wedlock to what, were he imaginatively awake, he would put asunder. We need not feed on sense-data. Shift the focus of awareness and see what happens. However little we move mentally, we should perceive the world under a slightly changed aspect. Awareness is usually moved about in space by movement of the physical organism but it need not be so restricted.
It can be moved by a change in what we are aware of.
Man is manifesting the power of Imagination whose limits he cannot define. To realize that the Real Self — Imagination — is not something enclosed within the spatial boundary of the body is most important. The foregoing; story proves, that when we meet a person in the flesh, that his Real Self need not be present in space where his body is. It also shows that sense-perception can be thrown into operation outside of the normal physical means, and that the sense-data produced is of the same kind as those which occur in normal perception. The idea in the mother's mind which started the whole process going was the very definite idea of being in the place where her daughter lived. And if the mother really were in that place, and if the daughter were present, then she would have to be perceptible to her daughter.
We can only hope to understand this experience in imaginal, and not in mechanical or materialistic terms. The mother imagined 'elsewhere' as being 'here'. London was just as 'here' to her daughter living 'there' as San Francisco was 'here' to the mother living 'there'.
It hardly ever crosses our minds that this world might be different in essence from what common sense tells us it so obviously is. Blake writes: "I question not my Corporeal or Vegatative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look thro' it and not with it."
This looking through the eye not only shifts consciousness to other parts of "this world" but to "other worlds" as well.
Astronomers must wish they knew more of this "looking through the eye"; this mental traveling that mystics practice so easily.
I travel'd thro' a Land of Men,
A Land of Men & Women too,
And heard & saw such dreadful things
As cold Earth wanderers never knew.
[— William Blake, 'The Mental Traveller']
Mental traveling has been practiced by awakened men and women since the earliest days. Paul states: "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows." 2Cor.12
Paul is telling us that he is that man and that he traveled by the power of imagination or Christ. In his next letter to the Corinthians, he writes: "Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?" [2Corinthians 13:5]. We need not be 'dead' in order to enjoy spiritual privileges. "Man is All Imagination and God is Man." [William Blake, from "Annotations to Berkeley"]. Test yourselves as this mother did.
Sir Arthur Eddington said that all we have a right to say of the external world is that it is a "shared experience". Things are more or less 'real' according to the extent to which they are capable of being shared with others or with ourselves at another time.
But there is no hard and fast line.
Accepting Eddington's definition of reality as "shared experience", the above story is as 'real' as the earth or a color for it was shared by both mother and daughter. The range of imagining is such that I must confess that I do not know what limits, if any, there are to its ability to create reality.
All these stories show us one thing — that an imaginal activity implying the wish fulfilled must start in the imagination apart from the evidence of the senses in that Journey that leads to the realization of desire.
CHAPTER 9
ENTER INTO
"If the Spectator would Enter into these Images in his Imagination, approaching them
on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought, if he could... make a Friend &
Companion of one of these Images of wonder, which always entreats him to leave
mortal things (as he must know) then would he arise from his Grave, then would he
meet the Lord in the Air & then he would be happy." — BLAKE
Imagination it seems will do nothing that we wish until we enter into the image of the wish fulfilled. Does not this entering into the image of the wish fulfilled resemble Blake's "Void outside of Existence which if enter'd into Englobes itself & becomes a Womb?" Is this not the true interpretation of the mythical story of Adam and Eve? Man and his emanation? Are not man's dreams of fancy his Emanation, his Eve in whom "He plants himself in all her Nerves, just as a Husbandman his mould; And she becomes his dwelling place and garden fruitful seventy fold?" [William Blake, "The Mental Traveller"]
The secret of creation is the secret of imagining — first, desiring and then assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled until the dream of fancy, 'the Void outside existence', is enter'd and 'englobes itself and becomes a womb, a dwelling place and garden fruitful seventy fold'. Note well that Blake urges us to enter into these images. This entering into the image makes it 'englobe itself and become a womb'. Man, by entering a state, impregnates it and causes it to create what the union implies. Blake tells us that these images are 'Shadowy to those who dwell not in them, mere possibilities; but to those who enter into them they seem the only substances...'
On my way to the West Coast, I stopped in Chicago to spend the day with friends. My host was recovering from a severe illness and his doctor advised him to move to a one-story house. Acting upon the doctor's advice, he had purchased a one-story house suited to his needs; but he now was confronted with the fact that there seemed to be no buyer for his large three-story home. When I arrived, he was very discouraged. In trying to explain the law of constructive imagining to my host and his wife, I told them the story of a very prominent New York woman who had come to see me concerning the rental of her apartment. She maintained a lovely city apartment and a country home, but it was absolutely essential that she rent her apartment if she and her family were to spend the summer at their country home.
In previous years, the apartment had been rented without any difficulty early in the spring, but at the time she came to see me, the season for summer sublets was seemingly over. Although the apartment had been in the hands of good real estate agents, no one had seemed interested in renting it. I told her what to do in her imagination. She did it and, in less than twenty-four hours, her apartment was rented.
I explained how she, by the constructive use of her imagination, had rented her apartment. At my suggestion, before she went to sleep that night in her apartment in the city, she imagined she was lying in her bed in her country home. In her imagination, she viewed the world from the country house rather than from the city apartment. She smelled the fresh country air. She made this so real that she actually drifted off to sleep feeling that she was in the country. That was on a Thursday night. At nine o'clock the following Saturday morning, she phoned me from her country home and told me that on Friday a highly desirable tenant, who met all of her requirements, not only rented her apartment, but rented it on the one condition that he could move in that very day.
I suggested to my friends that they build an imaginal structure as this woman had done, and that was to sleep, imagining they were physically present in their new home, feeling they had sold their old home. I explained to them the wide difference between thinking of the image of their new house, and thinking from the image of their new house. Thinking of it is a confession they are not in it; thinking from it is proof that they are in it.
Entering into the image would give substance to the image.
Their physical occupancy of the new house would follow automatically.
I explained that what the world looks like depends entirely on where man is when he makes his observation. And man, being "All Imagination”, must be where he is in imagination. This concept of causation disturbed them, for it smacked of magic or superstition, but they promised they would try it. I left that night for California and the following evening the conductor on the train in which I was traveling handed me a telegram. It read: "House sold midnight last". One week later, they wrote and told me that the very night I left Chicago they fell asleep physically in the old house but mentally in the new, viewing the world from the new home, imagining how things would "sound" if this were true.
They were awakened that very night from their sleep to be told the house was sold.
Not until the image is entered, until Eve is known, does the event burst upon the world. The wish fulfilled must be conceived in the imagination of man before the event can evolve out of what Blake calls 'the Void'.
This next story proves that by shifting the focus of her imagining, Mrs. M.F. entered physically into where she had persisted in being imaginatively.
"Soon after our marriage, my husband and I decided that our greatest joint desire was a year in Europe. This objective may seem reasonable to a lot of people, but to us — tied to a narrow sphere of limited finances — it seemed not only unreasonable, but completely ridiculous. Europe might as well have been another planet. But I had heard your teaching, so I persisted in falling asleep in England! Why England necessarily, I cannot tell, except that I had seen a current motion picture featuring the area around Buckingham Palace and had
promptly fallen in love with the scene. All I did in my imagination was to stand quietly outside the great iron gates and feel the cold metal bars gripped tightly in my hands as I viewed the Palace.
"For many, many nights I felt an intense joy at 'being' there and fell asleep in this happy state. Soon after, my husband met a stranger at a party who, within one month, was instrumental in securing a teaching fellowship for him at a great university. Imagine my excitement when I heard the university was in England! Tied to a narrow sphere? Within another month, we were crossing the Atlantic and our supposedly insurmountable difficulties melted as though they never existed. We had our year in Europe, one of the happiest years of my life." ...M.F.
What the world looks like depends entirely on where man is when he makes his observations. And man, being 'All Imagination,' must be where he is in imagination.
"The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner-stone." [Psalm 118:22]
That stone is Imagining. I acquaint you with this secret and leave you to Act or Re-act.
This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold:
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.
— George Herbert ["The Elixir"]
"My home is old but it is mine. I wanted the exterior painted and the interior redecorated, yet I had no money to accomplish either objective. You told us to 'live' as though our desire is already a reality, and this I began to do — imagining my old house with a brand-new coat of paint, new furnishings, new decoration and all the trimmings. I walked, in my imagination, through the newly decorated rooms. I walked around the outside admiring the fresh paint; and, at the end of my imaginal act, I handed the contractor a check for payment in full. I entered this imaginal scene faithfully as often as I could during the day and each night before I fell asleep.
"Within two weeks, I received a registered letter from Lloyd's of London, telling me I had inherited seven thousand dollars from a woman I had never met! I had known her brother slightly almost forty years before and had performed a small service fifteen years ago for the lady when this brother had died in our country, and she had written to me asking for particulars regarding his death which I was able to provide. I had not heard from her since that time.
"Now, here was the check for seven thousand dollars — more than enough to cover the cost of my house restoration, plus many, many other things I desired." ...E.C.A.
"He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all."
— Blake
Unless the individual imagines himself someone else, or somewhere else, the present conditions and circumstances of his life will continue in being and his problems recur, for all events renew themselves from his constant images. By him they were made; by him they continue in being; and by him they can cease to be.
The secret of causation is in the assembled imagery — but a word of warning — the assemblage must have meaning; it must imply something or it will not form the creative activity — The Word.
CHAPTER 10
THINGS WHICH DO NOT APPEAR
"...what is seen was made out of things which do not appear." — Heb. 11:3
"Human history, with its forms of governments, its revolutions, its wars, and in fact
the rise and fall of nations, could be written in terms of the rise and fall of ideas
implanted in the minds of men." — Herbert Hoover
"The secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which the
mystic aspires. Supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight lie in the far-off
solution of this mystery." — Douglas Fawcett
To refuse to recognize the creative power of man's invisible, imaginal activity, is too great to be argued with. Man, through his imaginal activity, literally "calls into existence the things that do not exist". By man's imaginal activity, all things are made, and without such activity, "was not anything made that was made".
Such causal activity could be defined as, an imaginal assemblage of images, which occurring, some physical event invariably takes place. It is for us to assemble the images of happy outcome and then keep from interfering. The event must not be forced but allowed to happen. If imagination is the only thing that acts, or is, in existing beings of men (as Blake believed), then we should never be certain that it was not some woman treading in the wine press who began that subtle change in men's minds.
This grandmother is daily treading the wine press for her little grand-daughter. She writes:
"This is one of those things that make my family and friends say, 'we just don't understand it'. Kim is two-and-a-half years old now. I took care of her for a month after she was born and did not see her again until a year ago, and then, only for two weeks. However, during this past year, every day I have taken her on my lap — in my imagination — and cuddled her and talked to her.
"In these imaginal acts, I go over all the wonderful things about Kim: 'God is growing through me; God is loving through me' etc. At first, I would get the response of a very young child. When I started 'God is growing through me' — she would reply, 'Me'. Now — as I start she completes the whole sentence. Another thing that has happened is, as the months have passed, as I take her — in my imagination — on my lap she has grown constantly larger and heavier.
"Kim hasn't even seen a picture of me in this past year. At the most, I could only be a name to her. Now, some time each day, her family tells me, she starts talking about me — to no one in particular — just talking. Sometimes it goes on for an hour; or she goes to the phone and pretends to call. In her monologue are such bits as: 'My Dee Dee loves me. My Dee Dee always comes to see me every day'.
"Even though I know what I have been doing in my imagination, it has caused me, too, 'to wonder much'." ...U.K.
All imaginative men and women are forever casting forth enchantments, and all passive men and women, who have no powerful imaginative lives, are continually passing under the spell of their power.
There is no form in nature, which is not produced by, and sustained by some imaginal activity. Therefore, any change in the imaginal activity must result in a corresponding change in form. To imagine a substitute-image for unwanted or defective content is to create it. If only we persist in our ideal imaginal activity and do not let lesser satisfactions suffice, ours shall be the victory.
"When I read in 'Seedtime and Harvest' the story of the school teacher who, through her imagination, in daily revision, transformed a delinquent pupil into a lovely girl, I decided to 'do' something about a young boy in my husband's school.
"To tell all the problems involved would take pages, for my husband has never had such a difficult child nor such a trying parent situation. The lad was too young to be expelled, yet the teachers refused to have him in their classes. To make matters worse, the mother and grandmother literally 'camped' on the school grounds making trouble for everyone.
"I wanted to help the boy, but, I also, wanted to help my husband. So, nightly, I constructed two scenes in my imagination: one, I 'saw' a perfectly normal, happy child; two, I 'heard' my husband say, 'I can't believe it, dear, but do you know "R." is acting like a normal boy, now, and it is heaven not having those two women around'.
"After two months of persisting in my imaginal play, night after night, my husband came home and said, 'It's like heaven around school' — not exactly the same words but close enough for me. The grandmother had become involved in something that took her out of town and the mother had to accompany her.
"At the same time a new teacher had welcomed the challenge of 'R.' and he was progressing wonderfully well into all I imagined for him." ...G.B.
It is useless to hold standards that we do not apply. Unlike Portia, who said: "I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching." [William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"]
G.B. followed her own teaching. It is fatally easy to make the acceptance of the imaginal faith a substitute for living by it.
"... He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound..." — Isaiah 61:1