POWER OF MIND

“It is computed,” wrote Jonathan Swift, “that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.” The resistance of the human mind to change is amazing, especially when it appears so obvious that life itself is nothing more than change. Multitudes of people, many of them very intelligent, argue that all cause is in the physical world and that mentality only observes. They seem determined to go down to their deaths with this frightfully erroneous view25 point, even though their own inner attitudes belie their stand, even though their slogans extol the power of mind over matter. On locker room doors and conference room walls the framed and placarded slogans emblazon their messages: “A quitter never wins. A winner never quits.” “A team that won’t be beat, can’t be beat.” “Put your heart in it. All else will follow.” “Make up your mind, and you make up the future.” But these verbal expositions to thoughtful vision are regarded as having precedence only in such matters as team effort, to bind together the group for a purpose, and their tremendous importance to individual creativeness is largely overlooked. From the inner vision all things are done—the bridge is built, the tower constructed, the oil well drilled, the motion picture made, the book written, the picture painted, music composed, outer space probed, secrets of the atom exposed.

 

There is absolutely no such thing as accomplishment unless it is preceded by a vision of that accomplishment. You simply can’t reach across the table and pick up a dish unless you first have the mental image. All things come to all people according to the pictures that form in their minds, and the effort that is expended in this world to escape fates that are inevitable is sufficient to construct a tower to the sun. No amount of movement, of physical energy expended, can prevail against a wrong mental image. Similarly, the possessor of the correct mental image is guided to perform the work to be done, effortlessly, almost nonchalantly. Most of the struggling and striving in the world is done by people who are trapped into unwanted circumstances through incorrect mental visualization, and the fact that they visualize the very thing that they profess to abhor is the contradictory situation that is filling our psychiatrists’ couches.