reasoning in order to remove the mystery of visualization and to put it upon a logical foundation. Naturally, each individual will do this in his own way. My only wish is to point out to you the smoothest way I know, which is the road on which Troward guides me. I feel sure you will conclude as I have, that the only mystery in connection with visualizing is the mystery of life taking form, governed by unchangeable and easily understood laws.
We all possess more power and greater possibilities than we realize, and visualizing is one of the greatest of these powers. It brings other possibilities to our observation. When we pause to think for a moment, we realize that for a cosmos to exist at all, it must be the outcome of a cosmic mind, which binds “all individual minds to a certain generic unities of action, thereby producing all things as realities and nothing as illusions.” If you will take this thought of Troward’s and meditate upon it without prejudice, you will surely realize that concrete material form is an absolute necessity of the creative process, also “that matter is not an illusion but a necessary channel through which life differentiates itself.”
If you consider matter in its right order as the polar opposite to Spirit, you will not find any antagonism between them. On the contrary, together they constitute one harmonious whole. And when you realize this you feel, in your practice of visualizing, that you are working from cause to effect, from beginning to finish. In reality your mental picture is the specialized working of the originating spirit.
One could talk for hours on purely scientific lines, showing, as Troward says, “that raw material for the formation of the solar systems is universally distributed throughout all space. Yet investigation shows that while the Heavens are studded with millions of suns, there are spaces that show no signs of cosmic activity. This being true, there must be something which started cosmic activity in certain places, while passing over others in which the raw material was equally available. At first thought one might attribute the development of cosmic energy to the etheric particles themselves. Upon investigation, however, we find this to be mathematically impossible in a medium which is equally distributed throughout space, for all its particles are in equilibrium, therefore no one particle possesses in itself a greater power of originating motion than the other.
Thus we find that the initial movement, though working in and through the particles of primary substance, is not the particles themselves. It is this something we mean when we speak of Spirit. The same power that brought universal substance into existence will bring your individual thought or mental picture into physical form. There is no difference of kind in the power. The only difference is a difference of scale. The power and the substance themselves are the same. Only in working out your mental picture it has transferred its creative energy from the universal to the scale of the particular, and is working in the same unfailing manner from its specific center, your mind.
Chapter 4 — Operation of Your Mental Picture
The operation of a large telephone system may be used as a simile. The main or head central subdivides itself into many branch centrals, every branch being in direct connection with its source and each individual branch recognizing the source of its existence, reports all things to its central head. Therefore, when assistance of any nature is required, new supplies, difficult repairs to be done or what not, the branch in need goes at once to its central head. It would not think of referring its difficulties (or its successes) to the main central of a telegraph system (though they belong to the same organization). These different branch centrals know that the only remedy for any difficulty must come from the central out of which they were projected.
If we, as individual branches of the Universal Mind, would refer our difficulties in the same confident manner to the source from which we were projected, and use the remedies that it has provided, we would realize what Jesus meant when he said, “Ask and ye shall receive.” Our every equipment would be met. Surely the Father must supply the child. The trunk of the tree cannot fail to provide for its branches.
Everything animate or inanimate is called into existence or outstandingness by a power which itself does not stand out. The power that creates the mental picture, the originating spirit substance of your pictured desire does not stand out. It projects the substance of itself that is a solidified counterpart of itself, while it remains invisible to the physical eye. Only those will ever appreciate the value of visualizing who are able to realize Paul’s meaning when he said “The worlds were formed by the word of God. Things which are seen are not made of things which do appear.”
There is nothing unusual or mysterious in the idea of your pictured desire coming into material evidence. It is the working of a universal natural Law. The world was projected by the self-contemplation of the Universal Mind, and this same action is taking place in its individualized branch which is the Mind of Man. Everything in the whole world has its beginning in mind and comes into existence in exactly the same manner from the hat on your head to the boots on your feet. All are projected thoughts, solidified.
Your personal advance in evolution depends upon your right use of the power of visualizing, and your use of it depends on whether you recognize that you, yourself, are a particular center through and in which the originating spirit is finding ever new expression for potentialities already existing within itself. This is evolution; this continual unfolding of existing though outwardly invisible things.
Your mental picture is the force of attraction that evolves and combines the originating substance into specific shape. Your picture is the combining and evolving powerhouse, so to speak, through which the originating Creative Spirit expressed itself. Its creative action is limitless, without beginning and without end, and always progressive and orderly. “It proceeds stage by stage, each stage being a necessary preparation for the one to follow.”
Now let us see if we can get an idea of the different stages by which the things in the world have come to be. Troward says, “If we can get at the working principle which is producing these results, we can very quickly and easily give it personal application. First, we find that the thought of originating life or Spirit about itself is its simple awareness of its own being and this produced a primary ether, a universal substance out of which everything in the world must grow.
Troward also tells us that “though this awareness of being is a necessary foundation for any further possibilities, it is not much to talk about.” It is the same with individualized spirit, which is yourself. Before you would entertain the idea of making a mental picture of your desire as being at all practical, you must have some idea of your being, of your “I am,” and just as soon as you are conscious of your “I-am-ness” you begin to wish to enjoy the freedom which this consciousness suggests. You want to do more and be more, and as you fulfill this desire within yourself, localized spirit begins conscious activities in you.
The thing you are most concerned with is the specific action of the creative spirit of life, universal mind specialized. The localized God-germ in you is your personality, your individuality, and since the joy of absolute freedom is the inherent nature of this God-germ, it is natural that it should endeavor to enjoy itself through its specific center. And as you grow in the comprehension that your being, your individuality, is God particularizing Himself, you naturally develop Divine tendencies.
You want to enjoy life and liberty. You want freedom in your affairs as well as in your consciousness, and it is natural that you should. Always with this progressive wish there is a faint thought-picture. As your wish and your recognition grow into an intense desire, this desire becomes a clear mental picture. For example, a young lady studying music wishes she had a piano in order to practice at home. She wants the piano so much that she can mentally see it in one of the rooms. She holds the picture of the piano and indulges in the mental reflection of the pleasure and advantage it will be to have the piano in the corner of the living room. One day she finds it there just as she had pictured it.
As you grow in understanding as to who you are, where you came from, and what the purpose of your being is, how you
