POWER OF IMAGE

The image power of the mind is imagination, but just what imagination is and where it comes from nobody seems to know. A famous surgeon is reputed to have remarked that he had sliced open many a brain without ever having seen a picture or found a thought. The imagination certainly is no more exclusive property of the brain than of an arm, a leg, or the stomach. Thinking is performed not by a part of the body or even the whole body but by the inhabitant within. It is that function which enables consciousness to know its surroundings and to know itself. Only one who thinks is able to say, “I”. Only one who can say, “I” is able to cast up pictures within his own being, known to no others.

The eternal striving knowledge and capacity, the most apparent thing about life, is resolved always by two principal elements of the strife—the knower and the thing to be known. By definition these appear to be separate, and we observe that a man ordinarily copes with the outer world by tabulating the manner in which it impinges upon his senses. A thing is so long and so wide and weighs so much and is so hard and a certain color. A name is given it, and as long as each subsequent time it is encountered it maintains the majority of its original characteristics, a man recognizes it for what it is and knows it when he sees it. If you ask him if it is near, he is able to answer instantly, simply by glancing around. If its presence produces some particular effect upon him, like fear or anger or love or tension, then the mere presence or absence of this object may be said to materially affect his life. In that case, his state of mind is not a matter of his own determination, but instead is the direct result of the object as he encounters it or avoids it in the outer-world.

INNER VISION

Life in animal and vegetable forms is purely a matter of reaction. There is first the organism, then there are the elements that intrude their presence upon it. The conflict thus engendered resolves itself in the process of evolution as each organism attempts to overcome the obstacles it meets, but this influence, through the lower stages of evolution, apparently comes only from outside and is the result of processes and forces beyond the control of the organism. Nature holds the world and life in an iron grip, and lower animal as well as vegetable life is led inexorably along a path it neither understands nor can avoid. A thing is the kind of thing it is through a creative process that appears to be outside it; existence itself, in any shape or form, appears to be beyond the power and scope of the individual being. We are born and we die, and nothing within our known powers or knowledge can aid or stop these events. And insofar as we live in response to the senses, we are automatons only, and the shape of our lives is predestined by the circumstances we encounter.

Imagination is the tool by which we may be delivered from our bondage. We can decide what we will think. We can decide to originate thought from some secret wellspring within rather than in response to the stimuli of the outer world. We can resolve that the images in our minds will no longer be products of the conditions we meet, but instead that our visualization will be the result of our inner resources and strength, in conformance with our goals and desires. Thus the quality of our consciousness will be tempered by our true motivations and we are freed at once of the trap of defeating our purposes through giving credence to every obstacle. The unalterable law is this: only that which takes root in mind can become a fact in the world. Thus the man whose consciousness is influenced only by the goals and purposes he has set within is delivered of all defeat and failure, for obstacles then are only temporary and have no effect upon his inner being. Only that which conforms to his inner vision is accepted home at last and allowed to take root in the plastic, creative medium of the Secret Self.