Quote of the day

You can either be attentive to the limitations and feed these and make them mountains, or you can be attentive to your desires; but to become attentive you must assume you are already that which you wanted to be.

-Neville

Quote of the day

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

-Arthur Schopenhauer

The Gospel of Wealth

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO CARNEGIE
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Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth" (1889)
History of the American Working Classes
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Andrew Carnegie's 1889 essay, "Wealth, " argued for a broad social and cultural role for fellow
industrialists. It later became famous under the name, "The Gospel of Wealth."




We accept and welcome... as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves great
inequality of environment, the concentration of business --industrial and commercial-- in the hands
of a few, and the law of competition between these as being not only beneficial but essential for
the future progress of the race. Having accepted these, it follows that there must be great scope
for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the manufacturer who has to conduct
affairs upon a great scale. That this talent for organization and management is rare among men is
proved by the fact that it invariably secures for its possessor enormous rewards, no matter where
or under what laws or conditions. The experienced in affairs always rate the man whose services
can be obtained as a partner as not only the first consideration but such as to render the question
of his capital scarcely worth considering, for such men soon create capital; while, without the
special talent required, capital soon takes wings.

Such men become interested in firms or corporations using millions; and estimating only simple
interest to be made upon the capital invested, it is inevitable that their income must exceed their
expenditures and that they must accumulate wealth. Nor is there any middle ground which such
men can occupy, because the great manufacturing or commercial concern which does not earn at
least interest upon its capital soon becomes bankrupt. It must either go forward or fall behind: to
stand still is impossible. It is a condition essential for its successful operation that it should be thus
far profitable, and even that, in addition to interest on capital, it should make profit. It is a law, as
certain as any of the others named, that men possessed of this peculiar talent for affairs, under the
free play of economic forces, must, of necessity, soon be in receipt of more revenue than can be
judiciously expended upon themselves; and this law is as beneficial for the race as the others.

Objections to the foundations upon which society is based are not in order because the
condition of the race is better with these than it has been with any others which have been tried. of
the effect of any new substitutes proposed, we cannot be sure. The socialist or anarchist who
seeks to overturn present conditions is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which
civilization itself rests, for civilization took its start from the day that the capable, industrious
workman said to his incompetent and lazy fellow, "If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap," and
thus ended primitive Communism by separating the drones from the bees. One who studies this
subject will soon be brought face to face with the conclusion that upon the sacredness of property
civilization itself depends - the right of the laborer to his $100 in the savings bank, and equally the
legal right of the millionaire to his millions.

To those who propose to substitute Communism for this intense individualism the answer,
therefore, is: The race has tried that. All progress from that barbarous day to the present time has
resulted from its displacement. Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of
wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it. But even if we admit for a
moment that it might be better for the race to discard its present foundation, individualism - that it
is a nobler ideal that man should labor, not for himself alone but in and for a brotherhood of his
fellows and share with them all in common, realizing Swedenborg's idea of heaven, where, as he
says, the angels derive their happiness, not from laboring for self but for each other - even admit
all this, and a sufficient answer is: This is not evolution, but revolution.

It necessitates the changing of human nature itself - a work of aeons, even if it were good to
change it, which we cannot know. It is not practicable in our day or in our age. Even if desirable
theoretically, it belongs to another and long-succeeding sociological stratum. Our duty is with
what is practicable now; with the next step possible in our day and generation. It is criminal to
waste our energies in endeavoring to uproot, when all we can profitably or possibly accomplish is
to bend the universal tree of humanity a little in the direction most favorable to the production of
good fruit under existing circumstances.

We might as well urge the destruction of the highest existing type of man because he failed to
reach our ideal as to favor the destruction of individualism, private property, the law of
accumulation of wealth, and the law of competition; for these are the highest results of human
experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit. Unequally or unjustly,
perhaps, as these laws sometimes operate, and imperfect as they appear to the idealist, they are,
nevertheless, like the highest type of man, the best and most valuable of all that humanity has yet
accomplished.

We start, then, with a condition of affairs under which the best interests of the race are
promoted, but which inevitably gives wealth to the few. Thus far, accepting conditions as they
exist, the situation can be surveyed and pronounced good. The question then arises - and, if the
foregoing be correct, it is the only question with which we have to deal - What is the proper mode
of administering wealth after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown it into the
hands of the few? And it is of this great question that I believe I offer the true solution. It will be
understood that fortunes are here spoken of not moderate sums saved by many years of effort, the
returns from which are required for the comfortable maintenance and education of families. This is
not wealth but only competence, which it should be the aim of all to acquire.

There are but three modes in which surplus wealth can be disposed of It can be left to the
families of the decedents; or it can be bequeathed for public purposes; or, finally, it can be
administered during their lives by its possessors. Under the first and second modes most of the
wealth of the world that has reached the few has hitherto been applied. Let us in turn consider
each of these modes.

The first is the most injudicious. In monarchical countries, the estates and the greatest portion
of the wealth are left to the first son that the vanity of the parent may be gratified by the thought
that his name and title are to descend to succeeding generations unimpaired. The condition of this
class in Europe today teaches the futility of such hopes or ambitions. The successors have become
impoverished through their follies or from the fall in the value of land. Even in Great Britain the
strict law of entail has been found inadequate to maintain the status of an hereditary class. Its soil
is rapidly passing into the hands of the stranger. Under republican institutions the division of
property among the children is much fairer, but the question which forces itself upon thoughtful
men in all lands is: Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from
affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well
for the children that they should be so burdened. Neither is it well for the state. Beyond providing
for the wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate allowances indeed, if
any, for the sons, men may well hesitate, for it is no longer questionable that great sums
bequeathed oftener work more for the injury than for the good of the recipients. Wise men will
soon conclude that, for the best interests of the members of their families and of the state, such
bequests are an improper use of their means. It is not suggested that men who have failed to
educate their sons to earn a livelihood shall cast them adrift in poverty. lf any man has seen fit to
rear his sons with a view to their living idle lives, or, what is highly commendable, has instilled in
them the sentiment that they are in a position to labor for public ends without reference to
pecuniary considerations, then, of course, the duty of the parent is to see that such are provided
for in moderation. There are instances of millionaires' sons unspoiled by wealth, who, being rich,
still perform great services in the community. Such are the very salt of the earth, as valuable as,
unfortunately, they are rare; still it is not the exception but the rule that men must regard, and,
looking at the usual result of enormous sums conferred upon legatees, the thoughtful man must
shortly say, “would as soon leave to my son a curse as the almighty dollar," and admit to himself
that it is not the welfare of the children but family pride which inspires these enormous legacies.

As to the second mode, that of leaving wealth at death for public uses, it may be said that this is
only a means for the disposal of wealth, provided a man is content to wait until he is dead before
it becomes of much good in the world. Knowledge of the results of legacies bequeathed is not
calculated to inspire the brightest hopes of much posthumous good being accomplished. The
cases are not few in which the real object sought by the testator is not attained, nor are they few
in which his real wishes are thwarted. In many cases the bequests are so used as to become only
monuments of his folly.

It is well to remember that it requires the exercise of not less ability than that which acquired
the wealth to use it so as to be really beneficial to the community. Besides this, it may fairly be
said that no man is to be extolled for doing what he cannot help doing, nor is he to be thanked by
the community to which he only leaves wealth at death. Men who leave vast sums in this way may
fairly be thought men who would not have left it at all had they been able to take it with them.
The memories of such cannot be held in grateful remembrance, for there is no grace in their gifts.
It is not to be wondered at that such bequests seem so generally to lack the blessing.
The growing disposition to tax more and more heavily large estates left at death is a cheering
indication of the growth of a salutary change in public opinion. The state of Pennsylvania now
takes subject to some exceptions--one -tenth of the property left by its citizens. The budget
presented in the British Parliament the other day proposes to increase the death duties; and, most
significant of all, the new tax is to be a graduated one. of all forms of taxation, this seems the
wisest. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public
ends would work good to the community, should be made to feel that the community, in the form
of the state, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavily at death the
state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life.

It is desirable that nations should go much further in this direction. Indeed, it is difficult to set
bounds to the share of a rich man's estate which should go at his death to the public through the
agency of the state, and by all means such taxes should be graduated, beginning at nothing upon
moderate sums to dependents and increasing rapidly as the amounts swell, until, of the
millionaire's hoard as of Shylock's, at least
- - - The other half
Comes to the privy coffer of the state.

This policy would work powerfully to induce the rich man to attend to the administration of
wealth during his life, which is the end that society should always have in view, as being that by
far most fruitful for the people. Nor need it be feared that this policy would sap the root of
enterprise and render men less anxious to accumulate, for to the class whose ambition it is to
leave great fortunes and be talked about after their death, it will attract even more attention, and,
indeed, be a somewhat nobler ambition to have enormous sums paid over to the state from their
fortunes.

There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortunes; but in this we have the true
antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the
poor--a reign of harmony--another ideal, differing, indeed, from that of the Communist in
requiring only the further evolution of existing conditions, not the total overthrow of our
civilization. It is founded upon the present most intense individualism, and the race is prepared to
put it in practice by degrees whenever it pleases. Under its sway we shall have an ideal state in
which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense the property of the many,
because administered for the common good; and this wealth, passing through the hands of the
few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been
distributed in small sums to the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see this and
to agree that great sums gathered by some of their fellow citizens and spent for public purposes,
from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to them than if scattered
among them through the course of many years in trifling amounts.

Poor and restricted are our opportunities in this life; narrow our horizon; our best work most
imperfect; but rich men should be thankful for one inestimable boon. They have it in their power
during their lives to busy themselves in organizing benefactions from which the masses of their
fellows will derive lasting advantage, and thus dignity their own lives. The highest life is probably
to be reached, not by such imitation of the life of Christ as Count Tolstoi gives us but, while
animated by Christ's spirit, by recognizing the changed conditions of this age and adopting modes
of expressing this spirit suitable to the changed conditions under which we live; still laboring for
the good of our fellows, which was the essence of his life and teaching, but laboring in a different
manner.

This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: first, to set an example of modest,
unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate
wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which
come to him simply as trust funds which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a
matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce
the most beneficial results for the community - the sum of wealth thus becoming the mere agent
and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and
ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves....

In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves;
to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who
desire to rise the aids by which they may rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the
individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare
cases, seldom require assistance. The really valuable men of the race never do, except in cases of
accident or sudden change. Everyone has, of course, cases of individuals brought to his own
knowledge where temporary assistance can do genuine good, and these he will not overlook. But
the amount which can be wisely given by the individual for individuals is necessarily limited by his
lack of knowledge of the circumstances connected with each. He is the only true reformer who is
as careful and as anxious not to aid the unworthy as he is to aid the worthy, and, perhaps, even
more so, for in almsgiving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving
virtue....

Thus is the problem of rich and poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left flee;
the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee
for the poor; entrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community,
but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself. The
best minds will thus have reached a stage in the development of the race in which it is clearly seen
that there is no mode of disposing of surplus wealth creditable to thoughtful and earnest men into
whose hands it flows save by using it year by year for the general good.

This day already dawns. But a little while, and although, without incurring the pity of their
fellows, men may die sharers in great business enterprises from which their capital cannot be or
has not been withdrawn, and is left chiefly at death for public uses, yet the man who dies leaving
behind him millions of available wealth, which was his to administer during life, will pass away
“unwept, unhonored, and unsung," no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot
take with him. of such as these the public verdict will then be: ~~The man who dies thus rich dies
disgraced."

Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which is destined some
day to solve the problem of the rich and the poor, and to bring “Peace on earth, among men
goodwill."

Words To Live By - Thoughts To Ponder

The Success Networks
A Compendium of Words to Live By,
Thoughts to Ponder and Ideas to Share

By Michael E. Angier

I’ve been collecting quotations and inspirational poems and
stories for over 25 years. Words well written, deeds well done
and lives well lived have always inspired me.
Many of the following messages have been previously published in
Success Strategies and we share them again in the hopes they will have as
much meaning for you as they have to so many others.
Some of these writings are old and may have been attributed to
different people. We’ve done the best we can to properly source them.
If you know for sure that they are not properly attributed, please let us
know.
Feel free to share this collection with others.
—Michael E. Angier

To see thousands of inspiring quotations,
visit http://www. SuccessNet.org/library.htm


Copyright © MM
Success Networks International, Inc. and Michael E. Angier
This document may be reprinted and shared as long as it is not altered in any way
and contains all contact and copyright information. It may not be sold.
Success Networks International
Phone 802.862.0812 w Fax 425.988.7300
E-mail: success@successnet.org
Michael Angier is the founder and president of Success Networks International,
publishers of Success Strategies, Insight and Success Digest. Success Net is an association
committed to helping people be more knowledgeable, productive and effective. Their
mission is to inform, inspire and empower people to be their best—personally and
professionally. Free membership, subscriptions, books and SuccessMark™ Cards
are available at http://www.SuccessNet.org


Good Enough
My child, beware of “good enough,”
It isn’t made of sterling stuff;
It’s something anyone can do;
It marks the many from the few.
The flaw which may escape the eye
And temporarily get by
Shall weaken underneath the strain
And wreck the ship, the car or plane.
With “good enough,” the car breaks down,
And one falls short of high renown.
My child, remember and be wise,
In “good enough,” disaster lies.
With “good enough,” the failures rest
And lose the one who gives the best.
Who stops at “good enough” shall find
Success has left them far behind.
For this is true of you and your stuff—
Only the best is “good enough.”
—author unknown


Our Deepest Fear
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond
measure.
It is our Light, not our darkness, that most
frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small does
not serve the World.
There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so
that other people won’t feel unsure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God
that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
As we let our own Light shine; we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear; our
presence automatically liberates others.
—Marianne Williamson


Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in
silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare
yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be
greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your
plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the
changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world
is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons
strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for
in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress
yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a
wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a
right to be here. And whether or not is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding
as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever
your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your
soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be
careful. Strive to be happy.
—Max Ehrmann, 1927


Who Am I?
I am your constant companion.
I am your greatest helper or your heaviest burden.
I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.
I am completely at your command.
Half the things you do, you might just as well turn over to me,
And I will be able to do them quickly and correctly.
I am easily managed; you must merely be firm with me.
Show me exactly how you want something done,
And after a few lessons I will do it automatically.
I am the servant of all great men
And, alas, of all failures as well.
Those who are great, I have made great.
Those who are failures, I have made failures.
I am not a machine, though
I work with all the precision of a machine
Plus the intelligence of a man.
You may run me for profit, or run me for ruin;
It makes no difference to me.
Take me, train me, be firm with me
And I will put the world at your feet.
Be easy with me, and I will destroy you.
Who am I?
I am habit!
—author unknown


The Man in the Glass
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn’t your father or mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
You may be like Jack Horner and chisel a plum
And think you’re a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.
He’s the fellow to please—never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear to the end.
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.
—author unknown
The use of the male gender is acknowledged.
We chose not to alter the poem to make it politically correct.
Thanks for letting it be.


Attitudes
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude
on life.
Attitude, to me, is more important than the past, than
education, than money, than circumstances, than failures,
than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It
is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It
will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable
thing is we have a choice every day regarding the
attitude we will embrace for that day.
We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact
that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the
inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one
string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced
that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to
it.
And so it is with you . . . we are in charge of our
Attitudes.”
—Charles Swindoll



Don’t Quit
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low, and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns.
And many a person turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor’s cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far.
So stick in the fight when you’re hardest hit,
It’s when things seem worse,
That you must not quit.
—author unknown


Live Each Day to the Fullest
Live each day to the fullest. Get the most from each hour,
each day, and each age of your life. Then you can look forward
with confidence and back without regrets. Be yourself, but be
your best self. Dare to be different and to follow your star. And
don’t be afraid to be happy. Enjoy what is beautiful. Love with
all your heart and soul. Believe that those whom you love, love
you. Forget what you have done for your friends, and
remember what they have done for you. Disregard what the
world owes you, and concentrate on what you owe the world.
When you are faced with a decision, make that decision as
wisely as possible—then forget it. The moment of absolute certainty
never arrives. Above all, remember that God helps those
who help themselves. Act as if everything depended on you and
pray as if everything depended on God.
—author unknown


Excellence
Excellence is never an accident. It is achieved in an organization or institution
only as a result of an unrelenting and vigorous insistence on the
highest standards of performance. It requires an unswerving expectancy of
quality from the staff and volunteers.
Excellence is contagious. It infects and affects everyone in the organization.
It charts the direction of a program. It establishes the criteria for planning.
It provides zest and vitality to the organization. Once achieved, excellence
has a talent for permeating every aspect of the life of the organization.
Excellence demands commitment and a tenacious dedication from the
leadership of the organization. Once it is accepted and expected, it must be
nourished and continually reviewed and renewed. It is a never-ending process
of learning and growing. It requires a spirit of motivation and boundless energy.
It is always the result of a creatively conceived and precisely planned effort.
Excellence inspires; it electrifies. It potentializes every phase of the organization’s
life. It unleashes an impact which influences every program,
every activity, every committee, every staff person. To instill it in an organization
is difficult; to sustain it, even more so. It demands imagination and
vigor. But most of all, it requires from the leadership a constant state of selfdiscovery
and discipline.
Excellence is an organization’s life-line. It is the most compelling answer
to apathy and inertia. It energizes a stimulating and pulsating force.
Once it becomes the expected standard of performance, it develops a fiercely
driving and motivating philosophy of operation. Excellence is a state of mind
put into action. It is a road-map to success. When a climate of excellence exists,
all things—staff work, volunteer leadership, finances, program—come
easier.
Excellence in an organization is important—because it is everything.
—author unknown

The Touch of the Master’s Hand
’Twas battered and scarred and the auctioneer thought it barely worth his while
To spend much time with the old violin, but he held it up with a smile:
“What am I bidden, good folks,” he cried, “Who’ll start the bidding for me?”
“A dollar? A dollar”; then, “Two! Only two? Two dollars, who’ll make it three?
Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice; going for three-” But no,
From the room, far back, a gray-haired man came forward and picked up
the bow;
Then, wiping the dust from the old violin, and tightening the loose strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet as a caroling angel sings.
The music ceased, and the auctioneer, with a voice that was quiet and low,
Said: “What am I bid for the old violin?”
And he held it up with the bow.
“A thousand dollars, and who’ll make it two? Two thousand!
And who’ll make it three?
Three thousand, once, three thousand, twice, and going, and gone,” said he.
The people cheered, but some of them cried, “‘We do not quite understand.
What changed its worth?” Swift came the reply: “‘The touch of a master’s hand.”
And many a man with life out of tune, and battered and scarred with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd, much like the old violin.
A “mess of potage,” a glass of wine; a game—and he travels on.
He is “going” once, and “going” twice, he’s “going” and almost “gone.”
But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd never can quite understand
The worth of a soul and the change that’s wrought
By the touch of the Master’s hand.
—Myra Brooks Welch


Story of a Failure
Mother died, ’18
Lost job, ’32
Defeated for legislature, ’32
Failed in business, ’33
Elected to legislature, ’34
Sweetheart died, ’35
Suffered nervous breakdown, ’36
Marriage proposal rejected, ’37
Defeated for speaker of the house, ’38
Married, ’42
Defeated for nomination to Congress, ’43
Elected to Congress, ’46
Lost renomination, ’48
Rejected for land officer, ’49
Son died, ’50
Defeated for Senate, ’54
Defeated for nomination for vice president, ’56
Defeated for Senate again, ’58
But in 1860, at the age of 51, Abraham
Lincoln was elected president of the United States



Emerson and Thoreau on Success
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent
people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of
honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate
beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a
bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed
social condition; to know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will
meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will
put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new,
universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves
around and within him; or old laws will be expanded
and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he
will live with a license of a higher order of beings.”
—Henry David Thoreau


The Uncommon Man
I do not choose to be a common man.
It is my right to be uncommon—if I can.
I seek opportunity, not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled
and dulled by having the state look after
me. I want to take the calculated risk, to
dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole.
I prefer the challenges of life to a guaranteed
existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the
stale calm of Utopia.
I will not trade freedom for beneficence,
nor dignity for a handout. It is my heritage
to think and to act for myself, enjoy the
benefit of my creations, and to face the
world boldly and say, "With God's help, this
I have done."
—author unknown


Anything Is Possible
If there was ever a time to dare,
to make a difference, to embark on
something worth doing, IT IS
NOW.
Not for any grand cause, necessarily
. . .
but for something that tugs at your
heart, something that's your inspiration,
something that's your dream.
You owe it to yourself to make
your days here count.
HAVE FUN, DIG DEEP,
STRETCH.
DREAM BIG.
Know, though, that things worth
doing seldom come easy.
There will be good days. And there
will be bad days.
There will be times when you want
to turn around, pack it up,
and call it quits.
Those times tell you that you are
pushing yourself, that you are not
afraid to learn by trying.
PERSIST.
Because with an idea, determination,
and the right tools, you can
do great things.
Let your instincts, your intellect,
and your heart, guide you.
TRUST.
Believe in the incredible power of
the human mind.
Of doing something that makes a
difference.
Of working hard.
Of laughing and hoping.
Of lazy afternoons.
Of lasting friends.
Of all the things that will cross
your path this year.
The start of something new brings
the hope of something great,
Anything is Possible.
—author unknown


Changing The World
When I was a young man, I wanted to change the
world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I
tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't
change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I
couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to
change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can
change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago
I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on
my family. My family and I could have made an impact
on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation
and I could indeed have changed the world.
—unknown monk, 1100A.D.

The Victor
If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you like to win but think you can’t,
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will.
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win the prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But sooner or later, the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.
—C.W. Longenecker

Happiness
We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married,
have a baby, then another. Then we’re frustrated that the kids
aren’t old enough and we’ll be more content when they are. After
that, we’re frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We will
certainly be happy when they’re out of that stage. We tell ourselves
that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act
together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation,
when we retire. The truth is, there’s no better time to be happy
than right now. If not now, when?
Your life will always be filled with challenges. It’s best to admit
this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. One of my favorite
quotes comes from Alfred D. Souza. He said, “For a long time it
had seemed to me that life was about to begin—real life. But there
was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten
through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a
debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me
that these obstacles were my life.” This perspective has helped me
to see that there is no way to happiness.
Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment that you have
and treasure it more because you shared it with someone special,
special enough to spend your time . . . and remember that time
waits for no one. So, stop waiting. There’s no better time than
right now to be happy.
—author unknown

How Do You Live Your Dash?
I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on her
tombstone
From the beginning . . . to the end
He noted that first came her date of
birth
And spoke the following date with
tears,
But he said what mattered most
of all
Was the dash between the years.
(1934-1998)
For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth . . .
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we
own;
The cars. . . the house . . . the cash,
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.
So think about this long and hard,
Are there things you’d like to
change?
For you never know how much time
is left,
That can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough
To consider what’s true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel
And be less quick to anger,
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we’ve never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect,
And more often wear a smile . . .
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.
So, when your eulogy’s being read
With your life’s actions to rehash
. . .
Would you be proud of the things
they say
About how you spent your dash?
—author unknown

What It Takes To Be Number One
Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win
once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the
time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and
that’s first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don’t
ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game
for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in
anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.
Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he’s got to play from the
ground up—from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to
play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s OK. You’ve got to be smart to be
number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play with your
heart, with every fiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot
of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second.
Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization—
an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same.
The object is to win—to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I
don’t think it is.
It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games
draw the most competitive men. That’s why they are there—to compete. To know
the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly,
squarely, by the rules—but to win.
And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run,
deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something
in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head-tohead
combat.
I don’t say these things because I believe in the “brute” nature of man or that
men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human
decency. But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour—his greatest fulfillment to
all he holds dear—is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause
and he’s exhausted on the field of battle—victorious.
—Vince Lombardi

The Integrity Of A Smile
It costs nothing, but creates much.
It enriches those who receive without
impoverishing those who give.
It happens in a flash, and the memory of
it sometimes lasts forever.
None are so rich they can get along without
it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits.
It creates happiness in the home, fosters goodwill
in a business, and is the countersign of friends.
It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged,
sunshine to the sad, and nature's best antidote
for trouble.
Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen,
for it is something that is no earthly good to anyone
until it is given away.
And if in the course of the day some of your friends
should be too tired to give you a smile, why don't
you give them one of yours?
For nobody needs a smile so much as those who have
none left to give!
—author unknown

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the full clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
—William Ernest Henley

No Easy Road
If you're looking for the easy road
You might be wasting your time.
To reach the most meaningful goals in life
You've got steep hills to climb.
If you're looking for the lazy way
One thing that you will find,
Is that success will never come
Without some daily grind.
If you're looking for some easy wealth
Look somewhere else instead,
Within yourself for energy
To earn your daily bread.
The path to greatness you can't tread
Without some heavy load;
So work your hardest - and your best -
There is no easy road.
—author unknown

Promise Yourself
To be so strong that nothing can disturb
your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity
to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is
something special in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and
make your optimism come true.
To think only the best, to work only for the
best, and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success
of others as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on
to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and
give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact
to the world, not in loud words but great deeds.
To live in faith that the whole world is on your side
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.
—author unknown

Risk
To laugh
Is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep
Is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another
Is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings
Is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before the crowd
Is to risk loss.
To love
Is to risk not being loved in return.
To live
Is to risk dying.
To hope
Is to risk in despair.
To try at all
Is to risk failure,
But risk we must
Because the greatest hazard in life
Is to risk nothing.
—author unknown

Take Time
Take time to work—
It is the price of success.
Take time to think—
It is the source of power.
Take time play—
It is the secret of perpetual youth.
Take time to read—
It is the fountain of wisdom.
Take time to be friendly—
It is the road to happiness.
Take time to love and to be loved—
It is nourishment for the soul.
Take time to share—
It is too short a life to be selfish.
Take time to laugh—
It is the music of the heart.
Take time to dream—
It is hitching your wagon to a star.
—author unknown

The Best Within You
In the name of the best within you, do not
sacrifice this world to those who are at its worst.
In the name of the values that keep you alive, do
not let your vision of man be distorted by the
ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who
have never achieved his title. Do not lose your
knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright
posture, an intransigent mind and a step that
travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go
out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless
swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the
not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in
your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life
you deserved, but have never been able to reach.
Check your road and the nature of your battle.
The world you desired can be won, it exists,
it is real, it's yours.
—Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

This Day
Today is a new day. Fresh, unspoiled and full of promise.
Whatever has happened whether it be a hundred years ago or
last evening has no influence upon this day. The present
knows nothing of the past. The slate is wiped clean and I am
free to write upon it whatsoever I choose.
This is my day. No person has ever lived as I live, felt as I
feel, thought as I think or loved as I love. No one ever will. I
am a unique creation with rare and special combinations of
skills, talents, creativity and features.
Just as we feel great anticipation and expectancy at the
beginning of a new year, I can feel the same with the beginning
of a new day. Every day is a new beginning and I will
treasure it as such.
This day can never be reclaimed. It is an irreplaceable
jewel in the crown of my Sacred Life.
Today, I am a new man.
I begin a new day—yea, a new life.
—author unknown

The Impossible Dream
To dream the impossible dream
to fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow the star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right without question or pause
To be willing to pass into hell for a heavenly cause
And know if I'll only be true to the glorious quest
That my heart lies peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered in scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow the star
No matter how hopeless,
no matter how far
To fight for the right without question or pause
And to dream the impossible dream
—Don Quiote
from Man of La Mancha

The Truth About Failure
Failure doesn't mean you are a failure . . . it does mean you
haven't succeeded yet.
Failure doesn't mean you have accomplished nothing . . . it
does mean you have learned something.
Failure doesn't mean you have been a fool . . . it does mean
you had a lot of faith.
Failure doesn't mean you have been disgraced . . . it does
mean you were willing to try.
Failure doesn't mean you don't have it . . . it does mean
you have to do something in a different way.
Failure doesn't mean you are inferior . . . it does mean you
are not perfect.
Failure doesn't mean you've wasted your life . . . it does
mean you've a reason to start afresh.
Failure doesn't mean you should give up . . . it does mean
you should try harder.
Failure doesn't mean you'll never make it . . . it does mean
it will take a little longer.
Failure doesn't mean God has abandoned you . . . it does
mean God has a better idea!
—Robert Schuller,
Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do

What I Lived For
I went to the woods because I wanted
to live deliberately, to front only the essentials
of life, and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach, and not, when I came to
die, discover that I had not lived. I did not
wish to live what was not life, living is so
dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation,
unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to
live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put
to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad
swath and shave close, to drive life into a
corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms,
and, if it proved to be mean, why then to
get the whole and genuine meanness of it,
and publish its meanness to the world; or if
it were sublime, to know it by experience
and be able to give a true account of it in
my next excursion.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Tomorrow
He was going to be all that a mortal should be
Tomorrow. No one should be kinder or braver than
he Tomorrow. A friend who was troubled and weary
he knew, Who'd be glad of a lift and who needed it,
too; On him he would call and see what he could do
Tomorrow.
Each morning he stacked up the letters he'd write
Tomorrow. And thought of the folks he would fill
with delight Tomorrow. It was too bad, indeed, he
was busy today, And hadn't a minute to stop on his
way; More time he would have to give others, he'd
say, Tomorrow.
The greatest of workers this man would have
been Tomorrow. The world would have known him,
had he ever seen Tomorrow. But the fact is he died
and he faded from view. And all that he left here
when living was through Was a mountain of things
he intended to do Tomorrow.
—Edgar Guest

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Wayne Dyer Quotes

A mind at peace, a mind centered and not focused on harming others, is stronger than any physical force in the universe.
Wayne Dyer

Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.
Wayne Dyer

Anything you really want, you can attain, if you really go after it.
Wayne Dyer

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice.
Wayne Dyer

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.
Wayne Dyer

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.
Wayne Dyer

Deficiency motivation doesn't work. It will lead to a life-long pursuit of try to fix me. Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.
Wayne Dyer

Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.
Wayne Dyer

Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you.
Wayne Dyer

Everything is perfect in the universe - even your desire to improve it.
Wayne Dyer

Everything you are against weakens you. Everything you are for empowers you.
Wayne Dyer

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.
Wayne Dyer

Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.
Wayne Dyer

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.
Wayne Dyer

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.
Wayne Dyer

I think and that is all that I am.
Wayne Dyer

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.
Wayne Dyer

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
Wayne Dyer

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.
Wayne Dyer

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there's nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.
Wayne Dyer

It's never crowded along the extra mile.
Wayne Dyer

Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.
Wayne Dyer

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.
Wayne Dyer

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.
Wayne Dyer

Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.
Wayne Dyer

Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.
Wayne Dyer

Miracles come in moments. Be ready and willing.
Wayne Dyer

Only the insecure strive for security.
Wayne Dyer

Our intention creates our reality.
Wayne Dyer

Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.
Wayne Dyer

People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get the most.
Wayne Dyer

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.
Wayne Dyer

Relationships based on obligation lack dignity.
Wayne Dyer

Self-worth comes from one thing - thinking that you are worthy.
Wayne Dyer

Simply put, you believer that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.
Wayne Dyer

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
Wayne Dyer

Successful people make money. It's not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.
Wayne Dyer

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.
Wayne Dyer

The fact that you are willing to say, "I do not understand, and it is fine," is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.
Wayne Dyer

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about.
Wayne Dyer

The last suit that you wear, you don't need any pockets.
Wayne Dyer

There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there's only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.
Wayne Dyer

There is no way to prosperity, prosperity is the way.
Wayne Dyer

There's nothing wrong with anger provided you use it constructively.
Wayne Dyer

Transformation literally means going beyond your form.
Wayne Dyer

We are Divine enough to ask and we are important enough to receive.
Wayne Dyer

What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside of you.
Wayne Dyer

What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.
Wayne Dyer

When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.
Wayne Dyer

When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way.
Wayne Dyer

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.
Wayne Dyer

When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out - because that's what's inside. When you are squeezed, what comes out is what is inside.
Wayne Dyer

You are doomed to make choices. This is life's greatest paradox.
Wayne Dyer

You are important enough to ask and you are blessed enough to receive back.
Wayne Dyer

You can never get enough of what you don't want.
Wayne Dyer

You can't choose up sides on a round world.
Wayne Dyer

You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.
Wayne Dyer

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with.
Wayne Dyer

You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, 'I release the need for this in my life'.
Wayne Dyer

You'll see it when you believe it.
Wayne Dyer

Your children will see what you're all about by what you live rather than what you say.
Wayne Dyer

Jesse Duplantis quote

There must be a vision of something bigger than today. Today is already here, so you need to look for Tomorrow, If your memories are Bigger than your dreams your in trouble. If you live in the past, then the past never see the future. The poorest person in the world is not the one without a nickel, its the one without a Dream. Im constantly Dreaming, constantly Believing, Because what you Dream, will come to pass

-Jesse Duplantis

The Law and The Promise Part 1

The Law and The Promise
G. & J. PUBLISHING CO.
Los Angeles, California. 1961
Neville Goddard
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..
The Law and The Promise
by Neville Goddard
And now, go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. — ISAIAH 30:8
I want to express my sincere appreciation to the hundreds of men and women who have written me, telling me of their use of imagination to create a greater good for others as well as for themselves; that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith.
A faith which was loyal to the unseen reality of their imaginal acts.
The limitation of space does not allow the publication of all the stories in this one volume. In the difficult task of selecting and organizing this material, Ruth Messenger and Juleene Brainard have been of invaluable assistance.
— NEVILLE
The Law and The Promise
by Neville Goddard
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter
1 - THE LAW: Imagining Creates Reality ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 4
Chapter
2 - DWELL THEREIN ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 8
Chapter
3 - TURN THE WHEEL BACKWARD ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 14
Chapter
4 - THERE IS NO FICTION ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 20
Chapter
5 - SUBTLE THREADS ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 26
Chapter
6 - VISIONARY FANCY ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 29
Chapter
7 - MOODS ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 34
Chapter
8 - THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 38
Chapter
9 - ENTER INTO ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 44
Chapter
10 - THINGS WHICH DO NOT APPEAR ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 48
Chapter
11 - THE POTTER ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 50
Chapter
12 - ATTITUDES ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 55
Chapter
13 - ALL TRIVIA ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 59
Chapter
14 - THE CREATIVE MOMENT ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 63
Chapter
15 - THE PROMISE: Four Mystical Experiences ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 67
CHAPTER 1
"THE LAW"
IMAGINING CREATES REALITY
"Man is all Imagination. God is Man and exists in us and we in Him... The Eternal
Body of Man is the Imagination, that is, God, Himself" — Blake
The purpose of the first portion of this book is to show, through actual true stories, how imagining creates reality. Science progresses by way of hypotheses tentatively tested and afterwards accepted or rejected according to the facts of experience. The claim that imagining creates reality needs no more consideration than is allowed by science. It proves itself in performance.
The world in which we live is a world of imagination. In fact, life itself is an activity of imagining; "For Blake”, wrote Professor Morrison of the University of St. Andrews, "the world originates in a divine activity identical with what we know ourselves as the activity of imagination", his task being "to open the immortal eyes of man inward into the worlds of thought, into eternity, ever expanding in the bosom of God, the Human Imagination."
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 only as long as they receive such support. "The secret of imagining", writes Douglas Fawcett, "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."
When man solves the mystery of imagining, he will have discovered the secret of causation, and that is: Imagining creates reality. Therefore, the man who is aware of what he is imagining knows what he is creating; realizes more and more that the drama of life is imaginal — not physical. All activity is at bottom imaginal. An awakened Imagination works with a purpose. It creates and conserves the desirable, and transforms or destroys the undesirable.
Divine imagining and human imagining are not two powers at all, rather one. The valid distinction which exists between the seeming two lies not in the substance with which they operate but in the degree of intensity of the operant power itself. Acting at high tension, an imaginal act is an immediate objective fact. Keyed low, an imaginal act is realized in a time process. But whether imagination is keyed high or low, it is the "ultimate, essentially non-objective Reality from which objects are poured forth like sudden fancies". No object is independent of imagining on some level or levels.
Everything in the world owes its character to imagination on one of its various levels.
"Objective reality", writes Fichte, "is solely produced through imagination". Objects seem so independent of our perception of them that we incline to forget that they owe their origin to imagination. The world in which we live is a world of imagination, and man — through his imaginal activities — creates the realities and the circumstances of life; this he does either knowingly or unknowingly.
Men pay too little attention to this priceless gift — The Human Imagination — and a gift is practically nonexistent unless there is a conscious possession of it and a readiness to use it. All men possess the power to create reality, but this power sleeps as though dead, when not consciously exercised. Men live in the very heart of creation — The Human Imagination — yet are no wiser for what takes place therein.
The future will not be fundamentally different from the imaginal activities of man; therefore, the individual who can summon at will whatever imaginal activity he pleases and to whom the visions of his imagination are as real as the forms of nature, is master of his fate.
The future is the imaginal activity of man in its creative march. Imagining is the creative power not only of the poet, the artist, the actor and orator, but of the scientist, the inventor, the merchant and the artisan. Its abuse in unrestrained unlovely image-making is obvious; but its abuse in undue repression breeds a sterility which robs man of actual wealth of experience. Imagining novel solutions to ever more complex problems is far more noble than to run from problems. Life is the continual solution of a continuously synthetic problem.
Imagining creates events. The world, created out of men's imagining, comprises un-numbered warring beliefs; therefore, there can never be a perfectly stable or static state. Today's events are bound to disturb yesterday's established order. Imaginative men and women invariably unsettle a pre-existing peace of mind.
Do not bow before the dictate of facts and accept life on the basis of the world without. Assert the supremacy of your Imaginal acts over facts and put all things in subjection to them. Hold fast to your ideal in your imagination. Nothing can take it from you but your failure to persist in imagining the ideal realized. Imagine only such states that are of value or promise well.
To attempt to change circumstances before you change your imaginal activity, is to struggle against the very nature of things. There can be no outer change until there is first an imaginal change. Everything you do, unaccompanied by an imaginal change, is but futile readjustment of surfaces. Imagining the wish fulfilled brings about a union with that state, and during that union you behave in keeping with your imaginal change. This shows you that an imaginal change will result in a change of behavior.
However, your ordinary imaginal alterations as you pass from one state to another are not transformations because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse direction. But whenever one state grows so stable as to become your constant mood, your habitual attitude, then that habitual state defines your character and is a true transformation.
How do you do it? Self-abandonment! That is the secret. You must abandon yourself mentally to your wish fulfilled in your love for that state, and in so doing, live in the new state and no more in the old state. You can't commit yourself to what you do not love, so the secret of self-commission is faith — plus love. Faith is believing what is unbelievable. Commit yourself to the feeling of the wish fulfilled, in faith that this act of self-commission will become a reality. And it must become a reality because imagining creates reality.
Imagination is both conservative and transformative. It is conservative when it builds its world from images supplied by memory and the evidence of the senses. It is creatively transformative when it imagines things as they ought to be, building its world out of the generous dreams of fancy. In the procession of images, the ones that take precedence — naturally — are those of the senses. Nevertheless, a present sense impression is only an image. It does not differ in nature from a memory image or the image of a wish. What makes a present sense impression so objectively real is the individual's imagination functioning in it and thinking from it; whereas, in a memory image or a wish, the individual's imagination is not functioning in it and thinking from it, but is functioning out of it and thinking of it.
If you would enter into the image in your imagination, then would you know what it is to be creatively transformative: then would you realize your wish; and then you would be happy. Every image can be embodied. But unless you, yourself, enter the image and think from it, it is incapable of birth. Therefore, it is the height of folly to expect the wish to be realized by the mere passage of time. That which requires imaginative occupancy to produce its effect, obviously cannot be effected without such occupancy. You cannot be in one image and not suffer the consequences of not being in another.
Imagination is spiritual sensation. Enter the image of the wish fulfilled, then give it sensory vividness and tones of reality by mentally acting as you would act were it a physical fact. Now, this is what I mean by spiritual sensation. Imagine that you are holding a rose in your hand. Smell it. Do you detect the odor of roses? Well, if the rose is not there, why is its fragrance in the air? Through spiritual sensation — that is — through imaginal sight, sound, scent, taste and touch, you can give to the image sensory vividness. If you do this, all things will conspire to aid your harvesting and upon reflection you will see how subtle were the threads that led to your goal. You could never have devised the means which your imaginal activity employed to fulfill itself.
If you long to escape from your present sense fixation, to transform your present life into a dream of what might well be, you need but imagine that you are already what you want to be and to feel the way you would expect to feel under such circumstances. Like the make-believe of a child who is remaking the world after its own heart, create your world out of pure dreams of fancy. Mentally enter into your dream; mentally do what you would actually do, were it physically true. You will discover that dreams are realized not by the rich, but by the imaginative. Nothing stands between you and the fulfillment of your dreams but facts — and facts are the creations of imagining. If you change your imagining, you will change the facts.
Man and his past are one continuous structure. This structure contains all of the facts which have been conserved and still operate below the threshold of his surface mind. For him it is merely history. For him it seems unalterable — a dead and firmly fixed past. But for itself, it is living — it is part of the living age. He cannot leave behind him the mistakes of the past, for nothing disappears. Everything that has been is still in existence. The past still exists, and it gives — and still gives — its results. Man must go back in memory, seek for and destroy the causes of evil, however far back they lie. This going into the past and replaying a scene of the past in imagination as it ought to have been played the first time, I call revision — and revision results in repeal.
Changing your life means changing the past. The causes of any present evil are the unrevised scenes of the past. The past and the present form the whole structure of man; they are carrying all of its contents with it. Any alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present and future.
Live nobly — so that mind can store a past well worthy of recall. Should you fail to do so, remember, the first act of correction or cure is always — "revise." If the past is recreated into the present, so will the revised past be recreated into the present, or else the claim... though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow... is a lie. And it is no lie.
The purpose of the story-to-story Commentary that follows is to link up as briefly as possible the distinct but never disconnected themes of the fourteen chapters into which I have divided the first part of this book. It will serve, I hope, as a thread of coherent thought that binds the whole into proof of its claim! Imagining Creates Reality.
To make such a claim is easily done. To prove it in the experience of others is far sterner. To stir you to use the "Law" constructively in your own life — that is the aim of this book.
CHAPTER 2
"DWELL THEREIN"
"My God, I heard this day, that none doth build a stately habitation, but he that
means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, or can be, than is
Man, to whose creation all things are in decay?" — George Herbert
I wish it were true of man's noble dreams, but unfortunately — perpetual construction, deferred occupancy — is the common fault of man. Why "build a stately habitation", unless you intend to "dwell therein"? Why build a dream house and not "dwell therein"?
This is the secret of those who lie in bed awake while they dream things true. They know how to live in their dream until, in fact, they do just that. Man, through the medium of a controlled, waking dream, can predetermine his future. That imaginal activity, of living in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, leads man across a bridge of incident to the fulfillment of the dream. If we live in the dream — thinking from it, and not of it — then the creative power of imagining will answer our adventurous fancy, and the wish fulfilled will break in upon us and take us unawares.
Man is all imagination; therefore, man must be where he is in imagination, for his imagination is himself. To realize that imagination is not something tied to the senses or enclosed within the spatial boundary of the body is most important. Although man moves about in space by movement of his physical body, he need not be so restricted. He can move by a change in what he is aware of. However real the scene on which sight rests, man can gaze on one never before witnessed. He can always remove the mountain if it upsets his concept of what life ought to be. This ability to mentally move from things as they are to things as they ought to be, is one of the most important discoveries that 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 of nature, of others, and himself.
For many years a doctor and his wife "dreamed" about their "stately habitation”, but not until they imaginatively lived in it, did they manifest it. Here is their story:
"Some fifteen years ago, Mrs. M. and I purchased a lot on which we built a two-story building housing our office and living area. We left ample space on the lot for an apartment building — if and when our finances would permit. All those years we were busy paying off our mortgage, and at the end of that time had no money for the additional building we still desired so much. It was true that we had an ample savings account which meant security for our business, but to use any part of it for a new building would be to jeopardize that security.
"But now your teaching awakened a new concept, boldly telling us we could have what we most desired through the controlled use of our imagination and that realizing a desire was made more convincing 'without money'. We decided to put it to a test to forget about 'money' and concentrate our attention on the thing we desired most in this world — the new apartment building.
"With this principle in mind, we mentally constructed the new building as we wanted it, actually drawing physical plans so we could better formulate our mental picture of the completed structure. Never forgetting to think from the end (in our case, the completed, occupied building), we took many imaginative trips through our apartment house, renting the units to imaginary tenants, examining in detail every room and enjoying the feeling of pride as friends offered congratulations on the unique planning. We brought into our imaginal scene one friend in particular (I shall call her Mrs. X), a lady we had not seen for some time as she had 'given us up' socially, believing us a bit peculiar in our new way of thinking. In our imaginal scene, we took her through the building and asked how she liked it. Hearing her voice distinctly, we had her reply, 'Doctor, I think it is beautiful'.
"One day, while talking together of our building, my wife mentioned a contractor who had constructed several apartment houses in our neighborhood. We knew of him only by the name that appeared on signs adjacent to buildings under construction. But realizing that if we were living in the end, we would not be looking for a contractor, we promptly forgot this angle. Continuing these periods of daily imagining for several weeks, we both felt we were now 'fused' with our desire and had successfully been living in the end.
"One day a stranger entered our office and identified himself as the contractor whose name my wife had mentioned weeks before. In an apologetic manner, he said, 'I don't know why I stopped here. I normally don't go to see people, but rather, people come to see me'. He explained that he passed our office often and had wondered why there wasn't an apartment building on the corner lot. We assured him we would like very much to have such a building there but that we had no money to put into the project, not even the few hundred dollars it would take for plans.
"Our negative response did not faze him and seemingly compelled, he began to figure and devise ways and means to carry out the job, unasked and unencouraged by us. Forgetting the incident, we were quite startled when a few days later this man called, informing us that plans were completed and that the proposed building would cost us thirty thousand dollars! We thanked him politely and did absolutely nothing. We knew we had been 'living imaginatively in the end' of a completed building and that Imagination would assemble that building perfectly without any 'outside' assistance from us. So, we were not surprised when the contractor called again the next day to say he had found a set of blueprints in his files that fitted our needs perfectly with few alterations. This, we were informed, would save us the architect's fee for new plans. We thanked him again and still did nothing.
"Logical thinkers would insist that such negative response from prospective customers would completely end the matter. Instead, two days later, the contractor again called with the news that he had located a finance company willing to cover the necessary loan with the exception of a few thousand dollars. It sounds incredible, but we still did nothing. For — remember — to us this building was completed and rented, and in our imagination we had not put one penny into its construction.
"The balance of this tale reads like a sequel to 'Alice In Wonderland', for the contractor came to our office the next day and said, as though presenting us with a gift, 'You people are going to have that new building anyway. I've decided to finance the balance of the loan myself. If this is agreeable, I'll have my lawyer draw up the papers, and you can pay me back out of net profits from rentals'.
"This time we did do something! We signed the papers, and construction began immediately. Most of the apartment units were rented before final completion, and all but one occupied the day of completion. We were so thrilled by the seemingly miraculous events of the past few months that for a while we didn't understand this seeming 'flaw' in our imaginal picture. But knowing what we had already accomplished through the power of imagining, we immediately conceived another imaginal scene and in it, this time, instead of showing the party through the unit and hearing the words 'we'll take it', we ourselves in imagination visited tenants who had already moved in that apartment. We allowed them to show us through the rooms and heard their pleased and satisfied comments. Three days later that apartment was rented.
"Our original imaginary drama had objectified itself in every detail save one, and that one became a reality when, one month later, our friend, Mrs. X, surprised us with a long overdue visit, expressing her desire to see our new building. Gladly we took her through, and at the end of the tour heard her speak the line we had heard in our imagination so many weeks before, as with emphasis on each word, she said, 'Doctor, I think it is beautiful'.
"Our dream of fifteen years was realized. And we know, now, that it could have been realized any time within those fifteen years if we had known the secret of imagining and how to 'live in the end' of desire. But now it was realized — our one big desire was objectified. And we did not put one penny of our own money into it." — Dr. M.
Through the medium of a dream — a controlled, waking dream — the Doctor and his wife created reality. They learned how to live in their dream house as, in fact, now they do. Although help seemingly came from without, the course of events was ultimately determined by the imaginal activity of the Doctor and his wife. The participants were drawn into their imaginal drama because it was dramatically necessary that they should be. Their imaginal structure demanded it.
"All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle."
[— Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Love's Philosophy"]
The following story illustrates the way in which a lady prepared her "stately habitation" by imaginatively sleeping in it — or "dwelling therein".
"A few months ago, my husband decided to place our home on the market. The main object for the move which we had discussed many times was to find a home large enough for the two of us, my mother and my aunt, in addition to ten cats, three dogs and one parakeet. Believe it or not, the contemplated move was my husband's idea as he loved my mother and aunt and said I was at their house most of the time anyway, so 'why not live together and pay one tax bill?' I liked the idea tremendously, but I knew that this new home would have to be something very special in size, location and arrangement, as I insisted on privacy for all concerned.
"So at the moment I was undecided whether to sell our present home or not, but I didn't argue, as I knew quite well from past experience with imagining that our house would never sell until I stopped 'sleeping' in it. Two months and four or five real-estate brokers later, my husband had 'given up' on the sale of our house and so had the brokers. At this point, I had convinced myself I now wanted the change, so for four nights, in my imagination, I went to sleep in the kind of home I would like to own. On the fifth day, my husband had an appointment at a friend's home and while there, met a stranger who 'just happened' to be looking for a house in the hills. He was, of course, brought swiftly back to see our house which he walked through once and said, 'I'll buy it'. This didn't make us very popular with the brokers, but that was all right with me, as I was happy to keep the broker's commission in the family! We moved within ten days and stayed with my mother while looking for our new home.
"We listed our requirements with every agent on the Sunset Strip only (because I wouldn't move out of the area) and each one of them without exception informed us we were both mad. It was entirely impossible, they said, to find an older home of English style with two separate living rooms, separate apartments, a library, and built on a flat knoll with enough ground space to fence for large dogs — and located in one particular area. When we told them the price we would pay for this house they just looked sad.
"I said that wasn't all we wanted. We wanted wood paneling all through the house, a huge fireplace, a magnificent view and seclusion — no close neighbors, please. At this point the lady agent would giggle and remind me that there was no such house, but if there were, they would realize five times what we were willing to pay. But I knew there was such a house — because my imagination had been sleeping in it, and if I am my imagination, then I had been sleeping in it.
"By the second week we had exhausted five real estate offices, and the gentleman in the sixth office was looking a little wild when one of his partners who had not spoken until then said, 'Why don't you show them the place up King’s Road?' A third partner in the office laughed sourly and said, 'That property isn't even listed. And besides — the old lady would throw you off the property. She's got two acres up there and you know she wouldn't split.'
"Well, I didn't know what she wouldn't split, but my interest had been aroused by the street name for I liked that particular area best of all. So I asked why not just take a look anyway, for laughs. As we drove up the street and turned off onto a private road, we approached a large two-story house built of redwood and brick, English in appearance, surrounded by tall trees and sitting alone and aloof on its own knoll, viewing the city below from all of its many windows. I felt a peculiar excitement as we walked to the front door and were greeted by a lovely woman who graciously asked us in.
"I do not think I breathed for the next minute or two, for I had walked into the most exquisite room I had ever seen. The solid redwood walls and the brick of a great fireplace rose to a height of twenty-eight feet terminating in an arched ceiling joined together by huge redwood beams. The room was straight out of Dickens, and I could almost hear Christmas carolers singing on the balcony of the upstairs dining room which looked out over the living room. A great cathedral window gave a view of sky, mountains and city far below, and the beautiful old redwood walls glowed in the sunlight. We were shown through a spacious apartment on the lower floor with connecting library, separate entrance and separate patio. Two staircases led upward to a long hall opening into two separated bedrooms and baths, and at the end of the hall was — yes — a second living room, opening out onto a second patio screened by trees and redwood fencing.
"Built on two acres of beautifully landscaped grounds, I began to understand what the agent had meant by saying, 'she wouldn't split' for on one acre stood a large swimming pool and pool house completely separated from the main house but undoubtedly belonging to it. It did, indeed, seem to be an impossible situation as we did not want two acres of highly taxable property plus a swimming pool a block away from the house.
"Before we left, I walked through that magnificent living room, once more going up the stairs to the dining room balcony. I turned, and looking down saw my husband standing by the fireplace, pipe in hand, with an expression of perfect satisfaction on his face. I placed my hands on the balcony railing and watched him for a moment.
"When we were back in the real estate office, the three agents were ready to close for the day, but my husband detained them saying, 'Let's make her an offer anyway. Maybe she will split the property. What can we lose?' One agent left the office without a word. Another said, 'The idea is ridiculous'. The agent we had originally talked to said, 'Forget it. It's a pipe dream'. My husband is not easily annoyed but when he is, there is no more
stubborn creature on earth. He was now annoyed. He sat down, slammed his hand on a desk and roared, 'It's your business to submit offers, isn't it?' They agreed that this was so and finally promised to submit our offer on the property.
"We left, and that night — in my imagination — I stood on that dining room balcony and looked down at my husband standing by the fireplace. He looked up at me and said, 'Well, honey, how do you like our new home?' I said, 'I love it'. I continued to see that beautiful room and my husband in it and 'felt' the balcony railing gripped in my hands until I fell asleep.
"The next day, as we were having dinner in my mother's house, the telephone rang and the agent, in an unbelieving voice, informed me that we had just purchased a house. The owner had split the property right down the middle, giving us the house and the acre it stood on for the price we offered." ...J.R.B.
"... dreamers often lie in bed awake, while they do dream things true."
[approx., William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"]
One must adopt either the way of imagination or the way of sense. No compromise or neutrality is possible. "He who is not for me is against me" [Matthew 12:30, Luke 11:23]. When man finally identifies himself with his Imagination rather than his senses, he has at long last discovered the core of reality.
I have often been warned by self-styled "realists" that man will never realize his dream by simply imagining that it is already here. Yet, man can realize his dream by simply imagining that it is already here. That is exactly what this collection of stories proves; if only men were prepared to live imaginatively in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, advancing confidently in their controlled waking-dream, then the power of imagining would answer their adventurous fancy and the wish fulfilled would break in upon them and take them unawares.
Nothing is more continuously wonderful than the things that happen every day to the man with imagination sufficiently awake to realize their wonder. Observe your imaginal activities. Imagine better than the best you know, and create a better world for yourself and others. Live as though the wish had come, even though it is yet to come, and you will shorten the period of waiting. The world is imaginal, not mechanistic. Imaginal acts — not blind fate — determine the course of history.
CHAPTER 3
TURN THE WHEEL BACKWARD
"Oh, let your strong imagination turn the great wheel backward, until Troy unburn."
[— (Sir) John Collings Squire, "The Birds"]
"All life is, throughout the ages, nothing but the continuing solution of a continuous
synthetic problem." — H. G. Wells
The perfectly stable or static state is always unattainable. The end attained objectively always realizes more than the end the individual originally had in view. This, in turn, creates a new situation of inner conflict, needing novel solutions to force man along the path of creative evolution. "His touch is infinite and lends a yonder to all ends." [George Meredith, "Hymn to Colour"]
Today's events are bound to disturb yesterday's established order. The creatively active imagination invariably unsettles a pre-existing peace of mind.
The question may arise as to how, by representing others to ourselves as better than they really were, or mentally rewriting a letter to make it conform to our wish, or by revising the scene of an accident, the interview with the employer, and so on — could change what seems to be the unalterable facts of the past, but remember my claims for imagining: Imagining Creates Reality. What it makes, it can unmake. It is not only conservative, building a life from images supplied by memory — it is also creatively transformative, altering a theme already in being.
The parable of the unjust steward gives the answer to this question. We can alter our world by means of a certain "illegal" imaginal practice, by means of a mental falsification of the facts — that is, by means of a certain intentional imaginal alteration of that which we have experienced. All this is done in one's own imagination. This is a form of falsehood which not only is not condemned, but is actually approved in the gospel teaching. By means of such a falsehood, a man destroys the causes of evil and acquires friends and on the strength of this revision proves, judging by the high praise the unjust steward received from his master, that he is deserving of confidence.
Because imagining creates reality, we can carry revision to the extreme and revise a scene that would be otherwise unforgivable. We learn to distinguish between man — who is all imagination — and those states into which he may enter. An unjust steward, looking at another's distress, will represent the other to himself as he ought to be seen. Were he, himself, in need — he would enter his dream in his imagination and imagine what he would see and how things would seem and how people would act — 'after these things should be'.
Then, in this state he would fall asleep, feeling the way he would expect to feel, under such circumstances.
Would that all the Lord's people were unjust stewards — mentally falsifying the facts of life to deliver individuals forevermore. For the imaginal change goes forward, until at length the altered pattern is realized on the heights of attainment. Our future is our imaginal activity in its creative march. Imagine better than the best you know.
To revise the past is to re-construct it with new content. Man should daily relive the day as he wished he had lived it, revising the scenes to make them conform to his ideals. For instance, suppose today's mail brought disappointing news. Revise the letter. Mentally rewrite it and make it conform to the news you wish you had received. Then, in imagination, read the revised letter over and over again and this will arouse the feeling of naturalness; and imaginal acts become facts as soon as we feel natural in the act. This is the essence of revision and revision results in repeal.
This is exactly what F.B. did:
"Late in July I wrote to a real estate agent of my desire to sell a piece of land which had been a financial burden to me. His negative reply listed all the reasons why sales were at a standstill in that area, and he forecast a bleak period of waiting until after the first of the year.
"I received his letter on a Tuesday, and — in my imagination — I rewrote it with words indicating that the agent was eager to take my listing. I read this revised letter over and over, and I extended my imaginal drama using your theme of the Four Mighty Ones of our Imagination — from your book 'Seedtime and Harvest' — the Producer, the Author, the Director and the Actor.
"In my imaginal scene as Producer, I suggested the theme, 'The lot is sold for a profit. As the Author, I wrote this simple scene which, to me, implied fulfillment: Standing in the real estate office, I extended my hand to the agent and said, 'Thank you, sir', and he replied, 'It was a pleasure doing business with you'. As Director, I rehearsed myself as Actor until that scene was vividly real and I felt the relief which would be mine if the burden were really lifted.
"Three days later, the agent I had originally written phoned me saying he had a deposit for my lot at the price I had specified. I signed the papers in his office the next day, extended my hand and said, 'Thank you, sir'. The agent replied, 'It was a pleasure doing business with you'.
"Five days after I had constructed and enacted an imaginal scene, it became a physical reality and was played word for word just as I had heard it in my imagination. The feeling of relief and joy came — not so much from selling the property — but from the incontrovertible proof that my imagined drama worked." ...F.B.
If the thing accomplished were all, how futile! But F.B. discovered a power within himself that can consciously create circumstances.
By mentally falsifying the facts of life, man moves from passive reaction to active creation; this breaks the wheel of recurrence and builds a cumulatively enlarging future. If man does not always create in the full sense of the word, it is because he is not faithful to his vision, or else he thinks of what he wants rather than from his wish fulfilled.
Man is such an extraordinary synthesis, partly tied by his senses, and partly free to dream that his internal conflicts are perennial. The state of conflict in the individual is expressed in society.
Life is a romantic adventure. To live creatively, imagining novel solutions to ever more complex problems is far nobler than to restrain or kill out desire. All that is desired can be imagined into existence.
"Wouldst thou be in a Dream, and yet not sleep?" [John Bunyan, "The Pilgrim's Progress"]. Try to revise your day every night before falling asleep. Try to visualize clearly and enter into the revised scene which would be the imaginal solution of your problem. The revised imaginal structure may have a great influence on others, but that is not your concern. The "other" influenced in the following story is profoundly grateful for that influence. L.S.E. writes:
"Last August, while on a 'blind date' I met the man I wanted to marry. This happens sometimes, and it happened to me. He was everything I had ever thought of as desirable in a husband. Two days after this enchanted evening, it was necessary for me to change my place of residence because of my work, and that same week the mutual friend who had introduced me to this man, moved away from the city. I realized that the man I had met probably did not know of my new address, and frankly, I was not sure he knew my name.
"After your last lecture, I spoke to you of this situation. Although I had plenty of other 'dates' I could not forget this one man. Your lecture was based on revising our day; and after speaking to you, I determined to revise my day, every day. Before going to sleep that night, I felt I was in a different bed, in my own home, as a married woman — and not as a single working girl, sharing an apartment with three other girls. I twisted an imaginary wedding band on my imaginary left hand, saying over and over to myself, 'This is wonderful! I really am Mrs. J.E.!' and I fell asleep in what was — a moment before — a waking dream.
"I repeated this imaginary scene for one month, night after night. The first week in October he 'found' me. On our second date, I knew my dreams were rightly placed. Your teaching tells us to live in the end of our desire until that desire becomes 'fact' so although I did not know how he felt toward me, I continued, night after night, living in the feeling of my dream realized.
"The results? In November he proposed. In January we announced our engagement; and the following May we were married. The loveliest part of it all, however, is that I am happier than I ever dreamed possible; and I know in my heart, he is too." ...Mrs. J.E.
By using her imagination radically, instead of conservatively — by building her world out of pure dreams of fancy —, rather than using images supplied by memory, she brought about the fulfillment of her dream. Common sense would have used images supplied by her memory, and thereby perpetuated the fact of lack in her life. Imagination created what she desired out of a dream of fancy. Everyone must live wholly on the level of imagination, and it must be consciously and deliberately undertaken.
"...Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cool reason over comprehends."
[William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"]
If our time of revision be well spent, we need not worry about results — our fondest hopes will be realized.
"Art thou real, Earth? Am I? In whose dream do we exist?..."
[approx., Frank Kendon, "The Time Piece"]
There is no inevitable permanence in anything. Both past and present continue to exist only because they are sustained by "Imagining" on some level or other; and a radical transformation of life is always possible by man revising the undesirable part of it.
In his letter, Mr. R.S. questions this subject of influence:
"During your current series of lectures, trouble developed with collections on one of my Trust Deeds. The security, a house and lot, was neglected and run down. The owners were apparently spending their money in bars while their two little girls, aged nine and eleven, were noticeably uncared for. However, forgetting appearances, I began to revise the situation. In my imagination I drove my wife past the property and said to her, 'Isn't the yard beautiful? It's so neat and well cared for. Those people really show their love for their home. This is one Trust Deed we will never have to worry about'. I would 'see' the house and lot as I wanted to see it — a place so lovely, it gave me a warm glow of pleasure. Every time the thought of this property came to me, I repeated my imaginal scene.
"After I had been practicing this revision for some time, the woman who lived in the house had an automobile accident; while she was in the hospital her husband disappeared. The children were cared for by neighbors; and I was tempted to visit the mother in the hospital to reassure her of assistance, if necessary. But how could I, when my imaginary scene implied that she and her family were happy, successful and obviously contented? So I did nothing but my daily revision. A short while after leaving the hospital, the woman and her two daughters disappeared also. Payments were sent in on the property and a few months later she reappeared with a wedding certificate and a new husband. At this writing, all payments are right up to date. The two little girls are obviously happy and well cared for, and a room has been added to the property by the owners giving our Trust Deed additional security.
"It was mighty nice to solve my problem without threats, unkind words, eviction, or worry about the little girls; but was there something in my imagining that sent that woman to the hospital?" ...R.S.
Any imaginal activity acquiring intensity through our concentrated attention to clarity of the end desired tends to overflow into regions beyond where we are; but we must leave it to take care of such imaginal activity itself. It is marvelously resourceful in adapting and adjusting means to realize itself. Once we think in terms of influence rather than of clarity of the end desired, the effort of imagination becomes an effort of will and the great art of imagining is perverted into tyranny.
The buried past usually lies deeper than our surface mind can plumb. But fortunately, for this lady, she remembered and proved that the "made" past can also be "unmade" through revision.
"For thirty-nine years I had suffered from a weak back. The pain would increase and decrease but would never leave completely. The condition had progressed to the point where I used medical treatment almost constantly; the doctor would put the hip right for the moment but the pain simply would not go away. One night I heard you speak of revision and wondered to myself if a condition of almost forty years could be revised. I had remembered that at the age of three or four years I had fallen backward from a very high swing and had been quite ill at that time because of a serious hip injury. From that time on I had never been completely free from pain and had paid many a dollar to alleviate the condition, to no avail.
"This year, during the month of August, the pain had become more intense and one night I decided to test myself and attempt to revise that 'ancient' accident which had been the cause of so much distress in pain and costly medical fees most of my adult life. Many nights passed before I could 'feel' myself back to the age of childhood play. But I succeeded. One night I actually 'felt' myself on that swing feeling the rush of wind as the swing rose higher and higher. As the swing slowed down, I jumped forward landing solidly and easily on my feet. In the imaginal action I ran to my mother and insisted that she come watch what I could do. I did it again, jumping down from the swing and landing safely on my two feet. I repeated this imaginal act over and over until I fell asleep in the doing of it.
"Within two days the pain in my back and hip began to recede and within two months pain no longer existed for me. A condition that had plagued me for more than thirty-nine years, that had cost a small fortune in attempted cure — was no more." …L.H.
It is to the pruning shears of revision that we owe our prime fruit. Man and his past are one continuous structure. This structure contains all of the past which has been conserved and still operates below the threshold of his senses to influence the present and the future
of his life. The whole is carrying all of its contents with it; any alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present and the future. The first act of correction or cure is always "Revise." If the past can be recreated into the present, so can the revised past. And thus the Revised Past appears within the very heart of her present life; not Fate but a revised past brought her good fortune.
Make results and accomplishment the crucial test of true imagination and your confidence in the power of imagination to create reality will grow gradually from your experiments with revision confronted by experience. Only by this process of experiment can you realize the potential power of your awakened and controlled imagination.
"How much do you owe my master?" He said, "A hundred measures of oil". And he said to him, "Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty!" [Luke 16:5,6]. This parable of the unjust steward urges us to mentally falsify the facts of life, to alter a theme already in being. By means of such imaginative falsehoods, a man "acquires friends". As each day falls, mentally revise the facts of life and make them conform to events well worthy of recall; tomorrow will take up the altered pattern and go forward until at length it is realized on the heights of attainment.
The reader will find it worthwhile to follow these clues — imaginal construction of scenes implying the wish fulfilled, and imaginative participation in these scenes until tones of reality are reached. We are dealing with the secret of imagining, in which man is seen awakening into a world completely subject to his imaginative power.
Man can understand recurrence of events well enough (the building of a world from images supplied by memory) — things remaining as they are. This gives him a sense of security in the stability of things. However, the presence within him of a power which awakens and becomes what it wills, radically changing its form, its environment and the circumstances of life, inspires in him a feeling of insecurity, a dreadful fear of the future.
Now, "it is high time to awake out of sleep" [Romans 13:11] and put an end to all the unlovely creations of sleeping Man.
Revise each day.
"Let your strong imagination turn the great wheel backward until Troy unburn."
[— (Sir) John Collings Squire, "The Birds"]
CHAPTER 4
THERE IS NO FICTION
"The distinction between what is real and what is imaginary is not one that can be
finally maintained... all existing things are, in an intelligible sense, imaginary."
— John S. MacKenzie
There is no fiction. If an imaginal activity can produce a physical effect, our physical world must be essentially imaginal. To prove this would require merely that we observe our imaginal activities and watch to see whether or not they produce corresponding external effects. If they do, then we must conclude that there is no fiction. Today's imaginal drama — fiction — becomes tomorrow's fact.
If we had this wider view of causation — that causation is mental, not physical — that our mental states are causative of physical effects, then we would realize our responsibility as a creator and imagine only the best imaginable.
Fable enacted as a sort of stage-play in the mind is what causes the physical facts of life. Man believes that reality resides in the solid objects he sees around him, that it is in this world that the drama of life originates, that events spring suddenly into existence, created moment by moment out of antecedent physical facts. But causation does not lie in the external world o£ facts. The drama of life originates in the imagination of man. The real act of becoming takes place within man's imagination and not without.
The following stories could define "causation" as the assemblage of mental states, which occurring, creates that which the assemblage implies.
The foreword from Walter Lord's "A Night To Remember" illustrates my claim, "Imagining Creates Reality."
"In 1898, a struggling author, named Morgan Robertson, concocted a novel about a fabulous Atlantic liner, far larger than any that had ever been built. Robertson loaded his ship with rich and complacent people and then wrecked it one cold April night on an iceberg. This somehow showed the futility of everything, and in fact, the book was called 'FUTILITY' when it appeared that year, published by the firm of M. F. Mansfield.
"Fourteen years later, a British shipping company, named the White Star Line, built a steamer remarkably like the one in Robertson's novel. The new liner was 66,000 tons displacement; Robertson's was 70,000 tons.
"The real ship was 882.5 feet long; the fictional one was 800 feet. Both could carry about 3,000 people, and both had enough lifeboats for only a fraction of this number.
But, then this didn't seem to matter because both were labelled 'unshakable!'
"On April 19, 1912, the real ship left Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York. Her cargo included a priceless copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and a list of passengers collectively worth $250 million dollars. On her way over, she, too, struck an iceberg and went down on a cold April night.
"Robertson called his ship the Titan; the White Star Line called its ship the Titanic."
Had Morgan Robertson known that Imagining Creates Reality, that today's fiction is tomorrow's fact, would he have written the novel Futility? "In the moment of the tragic catastrophe”, writes Schopenhauer, "the conviction becomes more distinct to us than ever that life is a bad dream from which we have to awake." And the bad dream is caused by the imaginal activity of sleeping humanity.
Imaginal activities may be remote from their manifestation and unobserved events are only appearance. Causation as seen in this tragedy is elsewhere in space-time. Far off from the scene of action, invisible to all, was Robertson's imaginal activity, like a scientist in a control-room directing his guided missile through Space-Time.
Who paints a picture, writes a play or book
Which others read while he's asleep in bed
O' the other side of the world — when they o'erlook
His page the sleeper might as well be dead;
What knows he of his distant unfelt life?
What knows he of the thoughts his thoughts are raising,
The life his life is giving, or the strife
Concerning him — some cavilling, some praising?
Yet which is most alive, he who's asleep
Or his quick spirit in some other place,
Or score of other places, that doth keep
Attention fixed and sleep from others chase?
Which is the "he" — the "he" that sleeps, or "he"
That his own "he" can neither feel nor see?
— Samuel Butler
Imaginative writers communicate not their vision of the world but their attitudes which result in their vision. Just a short while before Katherine Mansfield died, she said to her friend Orage:
"There are in life as many aspects as attitudes toward it; and aspects change with attitudes... Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change in attitude... Perception of a new pattern is what I call a creative attitude towards life."
"Prophets”, wrote Blake, "in the modern sense of the word, have never existed. Jonah was no prophet in the modern sense, for his prophesy of Nineveh failed. Every honest man is a prophet; he utters his opinion both of private & public matters. Thus: If you go on So, the result is So. He never says, such a thing shall happen let you do what you will. A Prophet is a Seer, not an Arbitrary Dictator." The function of the Prophet is not to tell us what is inevitable, but to tell us what can be built up out of persistent imaginal activities.
The future is determined by the imaginal activities of humanity, activities in their creative march, activities which can be seen in "Your dreams and the visions of your head as you lay in bed". "Would that all the Lord's people were prophets" [Numbers 11:29] in the true sense of the word like this dancer who now, from the summit of his realized ideal, sights yet higher peaks that are to be scaled. After you have read this story you will understand why he is so confident that he can predetermine any materialistic future he desires and why he is equally sure that others give reality to what were otherwise a mere figment of his imagination, that there exists and can exist nothing outside imagining on some level or other. Nothing continues in being save what imagining supports.
"...The mind can make Substance, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh..." [Lord G. Byron]
"As my story begins at the age of nineteen I was a mildly successful dancing teacher and continued in this static state for almost five years. At the end of this time I met a young lady who talked me into attending your lectures. My thought, upon hearing you say 'Imagining creates reality', was that the entire idea was ridiculous. However, I decided to accept your challenge and disprove your thesis. I bought your book 'Out of This World' and read it many times. Still unconvinced, I set myself a rather ambitious goal. My present position was as an instructor with the Arthur Murray Dance Studio and my goal was to own a franchise and be boss of an Arthur Murray studio myself!
"This seemed the most unlikely thing in the world as franchises were extremely difficult to secure, but on top of this fact, I was completely without the necessary funds to begin such an operation. Nevertheless. I assumed the feeling of my wish fulfilled as night after night, in my imagination, I went to sleep managing my own studio. Three weeks later a friend called me from Reno, Nevada. He had the Murray Studio there and said it was too much for him to cope with alone. He offered me a partnership and I was delighted; so delighted, in fact, that I hastened to Reno on borrowed money and promptly forgot all about you and your story of Imagination!
"My partner and I worked hard and were very successful, but after a year I was still not satisfied, I wanted more. I began thinking of ways and means to get another studio. All my efforts failed. One night as I retired, I was restless and decided to read. As I looked through my collection of books I noticed your slender volume, 'Out of This World'. I thought of the 'silly nonsense' I had gone through one year ago before getting my own studio. GETTING MY OWN STUDIO! The words in my mind electrified me! I reread the book that night and later, in my imagination, I heard my superior praise the good job we had done in Reno and suggest we acquire a second studio as he had a second location ready for us if we desired to expand. I re-enacted this imaginal scene nightly without fail. Three weeks from the first night of my imaginal drama, it materialized — almost word for word. My partner accepted the new studio in Bakersfield and I had the Reno Studio alone. Now I was convinced of the truth of your teaching and never again will I forget.
"Now I wanted to share this wonderful knowledge — of imaginal power with my staff. I tried to tell them of the marvels they could accomplish, but I was unable to reach many although one fantastic incident resulted from my efforts to tell this story. A young teacher told me he believed my story but said it would have probably happened anyway in time. He insisted the entire theory was nonsense but stated that if I could tell him something of an incredible nature that would actually happen and which he could witness — then he would believe. I accepted his challenge and conceived a truly fantastic test.
"The Reno Studio is the most insignificant in the entire Murray system because of the small population count in the city itself. There are over three hundred Murray Studios in the country with much larger populations, therefore providing greater possibilities to draw from. So, my test was this. I told the teacher that within the next three months, at the time of a national dance convention, the little Reno Studio would be the foremost topic of conversation at that convention. He calmly stated this was quite impossible.
"That night when I retired, I felt myself standing before a tremendous audience. I was speaking on 'Creative Imagining' and felt the nervousness of being before such a vast audience; but I also felt the wonderful sensation of audience acceptance. I heard the roar of applause and as I left the stage, I saw Mr. Murray, himself come forward and shake my hand. I re-enacted this entire drama night after night. It began to take on the 'tones of reality' and I knew I had done it again!
"My imaginal drama materialized down to the last detail.
"My little Reno Studio was the 'talk' of the convention and I did appear on that stage just as I had done in my imagination. But even after this unbelievable but actual happening, the young teacher who threw me the challenge remained unconvinced. He said it had all happened too naturally! And he was sure it would have happened anyway!
"I did not mind his attitude because his challenge had given me another opportunity to prove, at least to myself, that Imagining does Create Reality. From that time on, I continued with my ambition to own the 'largest Arthur Murray Dance Studio in the world'! Night after night, in my imagination, I heard myself accepting a studio franchise for a great city. Within three weeks Mr. Murray called me and offered a studio in a city of one and a half million people! It is now my goal to make my studio the greatest and biggest in the entire system. And, of course, 'I know it will be done — through my Imagination'!" ...E.O.L., Jr.
"Imagining”, writes Douglas Fawcett, "may be hard to grasp, being 'quicksilver-like' it vanishes into each of its metamorphoses and thereby displays its transformative magic." We must look beyond the physical fact for the imagining which has caused it. For one year E.O.L., Jr. lost himself in his metamorphosis but fortunately he remembered "the silly nonsense" he had gone through before getting his own studio... and re-read the book.
Imaginal acts on the human level need a certain interval of time to develop but imaginal acts, whether committed to print or locked in the bosom of a hermit, will realize themselves in time.
Test yourself, if only out of curiosity. You will discover the "Prophet" is your own imagining and you will know "there is no fiction".
"We should never be certain that it was not some woman treading in the wine-press who began that subtle change in men's mind... or that the passion, because of which so many countries were given to the sword, did not begin in the mind of some shepherd boy, lighting up his eyes for a moment before it ran upon its way." — William Butler Yeats
There is no fiction. Imagining fulfills itself in what our lives become. "And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe." [John 14:29]
The Greeks were right: "The Gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!" [Acts 14:11]. But they have fallen asleep and do not realize the might they wield by their imaginal activities.
"Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass
Their pleasure in a long immortal dream." [John Keats]
E.B., an author, is fully aware that "today's fiction can become tomorrow's fact". In this letter, she writes:
"One Spring, I completed a novelette, sold it and forgot it. Not until many long months later did I sit down and nervously compare some 'facts' in my fiction with some 'facts' in my life! Please read a brief outline of my created story. Then compare it with my personal experience.
"The heroine of my story took a vacation trip to Vermont. To the small city of Stowe, Vermont, to be exact. When she reached her destination she was faced with such unpleasant behavior on the part of her companion that she either had to continue her lifetime pattern of allowing another's selfish demand dominate her or to break that pattern and leave. She broke it and returned to New York. When she returned (and the story continues) events took shape in a proposal of marriage which she happily accepted.
"For my part of this tale... as small events evolved... I began to remember the dictates of my own pen and in significant relationship. This is what happened to me! I received an invitation from a friend offering me a vacation at her summer place in Vermont. I accepted and was not startled, at first, when I learned her 'summer place' was in the city of Stowe. When I arrived, I found my hostess in such a highly nervous state I realized I was faced with either a wretched summer or the choice of 'walking out' on her. Never before in my life had I been strong enough to ignore what I thought were the claims of duty and friendship — but this time I did and without ceremony returned to New York. A few days after I returned to my home, I, too, received a proposal of marriage. But at this point fact and fiction parted. I refused the offer! I know, Neville, there is no such thing as fiction." ...E.B.
"Forgetful is green earth, the gods alone remember everlastingly... by their great memories the gods are known."
Ends run true to their imaginal origins — we reap the fruit of forgotten blossom-time. In life the events do not come up always where we have strewn the seed; so that we may not recognize our own harvest. Events are the emergence of a hidden imaginal activity. Man is free to imagine whatever he desires. This is why, despite all fatalists and misguided prophets of doom, all awakened men know that they are free. They know that they are creating reality. Is there a scriptural passage to support this claim?
Yes:
"And it came to pass, as he interpreted to us, so it was." [Genesis 41:13]
W. B. Yeats must have discovered that "there is no fiction", for after describing some of his experiences in the conscious use of imagination, he writes: "If all who have described events like this have not dreamed, we should rewrite our histories for all men, certainly all imaginative men, must be forever casting forth enchantments, glamours, illusions; and all men, especially tranquil men, who have no powerful egotistic life must be continually passing under their power. Our most elaborate thoughts, elaborate purposes, precise emotions, are often as I think, not really ours, but have on a sudden come up, as it were, out of hell or down out of heaven..." ["Ideas of Good and Evil"]
"There is no fiction."
Imagine better than the best you know.