'' THE MOST APPARENT THING ABOUT LIFE''
IMAGINATION
The image power of the mind is imagination, but just what imagi- nation is and where it comes from nobody seems to know. A fa- mous 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 per- formed 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 pic- tures within his own being, known to no others.
The eternal striving knowledge and capacity, 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 main- tains 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 SENSE
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 under- stands 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 ori- ginate 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 defeat- ing our purposes through giving credence to every obstacle. The unalterable law is this: only that which takes root in mind can be- come a fact in the world. Thus the man whose consciousness is in- fluenced only by the goals and purposes he has set within is deli- vered of all defeat and failure, for obstacles then are only tem- porary 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.
SELF SECRECY
It is knowledge about and faith in this Secret Self that is the key to correct use of the imagination. No man lives in the dark when he learns where the light is. To understand the Secret Self is to free oneself from bondage to circumstance, to loose within a power compounded upon itself, to provide life with perfect working and perfect serenity. This entity within each of us, not the ego, not ex- perience, not time or circumstance or place or position, but con- sciousness only, the “I” divested of all accoutrements except pure sense of existence, this is the self that contains all power, whose essence is greater than the individual, greater than ten thousand in- dividuals, for it is the supporting structure upon which all things are built, the evolving self of the universe. It is not confined to the body, to a time or place or condition, but is in all times and places and conditions. It is infinite and eternal and only one, but being so as easily manifests as the finite and temporal and many. All are contained within it, yet each contains it all, for by its very nature all of it is everyplace at the same moment.
The Secret Self is timeless and eternal. It is the self of the universe and it is the self of each of us, the self of you. It was never born and it will never die. It enters into each of its creations and be- comes that creation. What is going on in life and the world and the universe is completely its working and the result of its secret pur- pose and undivulged goal. The nature of its being is mental; its es- sence is dynamic and creative. It is the eternal stuff that occupies all space and time and within which there is no dimension. It is all ends and middles and opposites and extremes, and it is infinitely creative. The myriad forms of life are but a tiny indication of its vast potential for plastic multiplicity out of its essential oneness.
Nil
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