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The Power of Awareness Deluxe Edition

Includes two bonus lectures! (The Source, The Game of Life)

Neville Goddard

(19051972)

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Table of Contents

Chapter One - I AM Chapter Two - CONSCIOUSNESS Chapter Three - POWER OF ASSUMPTION Chapter Four - DESIRE Chapter Five - THE TRUTH THAT SETS YOU FREE Chapter Six - ATTENTION Chapter Seven - ATTITUDE Chapter Eight - RENUNCIATION Chapter Nine - PREPARING YOUR PLACE Chapter Ten - CREATION Chapter Eleven - INTERFERENCE Chapter Twelve - SUBJECTIVE CONTROL Chapter Thirteen - ACCEPTANCE Chapter Fourteen - THE EFFORTLESS WAY Chapter Fifteen - THE CROWN OF THE MYSTERIES Chapter Sixteen - PERSONAL IMPOTENCE Chapter Seventeen - ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE Chapter Eighteen - BE YE DOERS Chapter Nineteen - ESSENTIALS Chapter Twenty - RIGHTEOUSNESS Chapter Twenty One - FREE WILL Chapter Twenty Two - PERSISTENCE Chapter Twenty Three - CASE HISTORIES Chapter Twenty Four - FAILURE Chapter Twenty Five - FAITH Chapter Twenty Six - DESTINY Chapter Twenty Seven - REVERENCE THE SOURCE THE GAME OF LIFE



“Leave the mirror and change your face. Leave the world alone and change your conceptions of yourself.”

― Neville Goddard



Chapter One I AM

All things, when they are admitted, are made manifest by the light: for everythingthat is

made manifest is light. Ephesians 5:13

THE “LIGHT” is consciousness. Consciousness is one, manifesting in legions of forms

or levels of consciousness.

There is no one that is not all that is, for consciousness, though expressed in an infinite

series of levels, is not divisional. There is no real separation or gap in consciousness. I

AM cannot be divided. I may conceive myself to be a rich man, a poor man, a beggar

man or a thief, but the center of my being remains the same, regardless of the concept I

hold of myself. At the center of manifestation, there is only one I AM manifesting in

legions of forms or concepts of itself and “I am that I am”.

I AM is the selfdefinition of the absolute, the foundation on which everything rests. I

AM is the first causesubstance. I AM is the selfdefinition of God.

I AM hath sent me unto you. [Exodus 3:14]



I AM THAT I AM. [Exodus 3:14]

Be still and know that I AM God. [Psalm 46:10]

I AM is a feeling of permanent awareness. The very center of consciousness is the feeling

of I AM. I may forget who I am, where I am, what I am, but I cannot forget that I AM.

The awareness of being remains, regardless of the degree of forgetfulness of who, where

and what I am.

I AM is that which, amid unnumbered forms, is ever the same.

This great discovery of cause reveals that, good or bad, man is actually the arbiter of his

own fate, and that it is his concept of himself that determines the world in which he lives

[and his concept of himself is his reactions to life]. In other words, if you are

experiencing ill health, knowing the truth about cause, you cannot attribute the illness to

anything other than to the particular arrangement of the basic causesubstance, an

arrangement which [was produced by your reactions to life, and] is defined by your

concept “I am unwell”. This is why you are told “Let the weak man say, ‘I am strong’”

(Joel 3:10), for by his assumption, the causesubstance – I AM – is rearranged and must,

therefore, manifest that which its rearrangement affirms. This principle governs every

aspect of your life, be it social, financial, intellectual, or spiritual.



I AM is that reality to which, whatever happens, we must turn for an explanation of the

phenomena of life. It is I AM’s concept of itself that determines the form and scenery of

its existence.

Everything depends upon its attitude towards itself; that which it will not affirm as true of

itself cannot awaken in its world.

That is, your concept of yourself, such as “I am strong”, “I am secure”, “I am loved”,

determines the world in which you live. In other words, when you say, “I am a man, I am

a father, I am an American”, you are not defining different I AM’s; you are defining

different concepts or arrangements of the one causesubstance – the one I AM.

Even in the phenomena of nature, if the tree were articulate, it would say, “I am a tree, an

apple tree, a fruitful tree”.

When you know that consciousness is the one and only reality – conceiving itself to be

something good, bad or indifferent, and becoming that which it conceived itself to be –

you are free from the tyranny of second causes, free from the belief that there are causes

outside of your own mind that can affect your life.



In the state of consciousness of the individual is found the explanation of the phenomena

of life.

If man’s concept of himself were different, everything in his world would be different.

His concept of himself being what it is, everything in his world must be as it is.

Thus it is abundantly clear that there is only one I AM and you are that I AM.

And while I AM is infinite, you, by your concept of yourself, are displaying only a

limited aspect of the infinite I AM.

Build thee more stately mansions, O, my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy

lowvaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from

heaven with a dome more vast Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown

shell by life’s unresting sea!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., "The Chambered Nautilus"



Chapter Two CONSCIOUSNESS

IT IS only by a change of consciousness, by actually changing your concept of yourself,

that you can “build more stately mansions” – the manifestations of higher and higher

concepts.

(By manifesting is meant experiencing the results of these concepts in your world.)

It is of vital importance to understand clearly just what consciousness is.

The reason lies in the fact that consciousness is the one and only reality, it is the first and

only causesubstance of the phenomena of life.

Nothing has existence for man save through the consciousness he has of it.

Therefore, it is to consciousness you must turn, for it is the only foundation on which the

phenomena of life can be explained.

If we accept the idea of a first cause, it would follow that the evolution of that cause

could never result in anything foreign to itself. That is, if the first causesubstance is light,

all its evolutions, fruits and manifestations would remain light.



The first causesubstance being consciousness, all its evolutions, fruits and phenomena

must remain consciousness.

All that could be observed would be a higher or lower form or variation of the same

thing. In other words, if your consciousness is the only reality, it must also be the only

substance.

Consequently, what appears to you as circumstances, conditions and even material

objects is really only the product of your own consciousness.

Nature, then, as a thing or a complex of things external to your mind, must be rejected.

You and your environment cannot be regarded as existing separately. You and your

world are one.

Therefore, you must turn from the objective appearance of things to the subjective center

of things, your consciousness, if you truly desire to know the cause of the phenomena of

life, and how to use this knowledge to realize your fondest dreams.

In the midst of the apparent contradictions, antagonisms and contrasts of your life, there

is only one principle at work, only your consciousness operating.



Difference does not consist in variety of substance, but in variety of arrangement of the

same causesubstance, your consciousness.

The world moves with motiveless necessity. By this is meant that it has no motive of its

own, but is under the necessity of manifesting your concept, the arrangement of your

mind, and your mind is always arranged in the image of all you believe and consent to as

true.

The rich man, poor man, beggar man or thief are not different minds, but different

arrangements of the same mind, in the same sense that a piece of steel, when magnetized,

differs not in substance from its demagnetized state, but in the arrangement and order of

its molecules. A single electron revolving in a specified orbit constitutes the unit of

magnetism. When a piece of steel or anything else is demagnetized, the revolving

electrons have not stopped. Therefore, the magnetism has not gone out of existence.

There is only a rearrangement of the particles, so that they produce no outside or

perceptible effect. When particles are arranged at random, mixed up in all directions, the

substance is said to be demagnetized; but when particles are marshaled in ranks so that a

number of them face in one direction, the substance is a magnet. Magnetism is not

generated; it is displayed.



Health, wealth, beauty and genius are not created; they are only manifested by the

arrangement of your mind – that is, by your concept of yourself [and your concept of

yourself is all that you accept and consent to as true. What you consent to can only be

discovered by an uncritical observation of your reactions to life. Your reactions reveal

where you live psychologically; and where you live psychologically determines how you

live here in the outer visible world].

The importance of this in your daily life should be immediately apparent.

The basic nature of the primal cause is consciousness.

Therefore, the ultimate substance of all things is consciousness.



Chapter Three POWER OF ASSUMPTION

MAN’S CHIEF delusion is his conviction that there are causes other than his own state of

consciousness.

All that befalls a man – all that is done by him, all that comes from him – happens as a

result of his state of consciousness.

A man’s consciousness is all that he thinks and desires and loves, all that he believes is

true and consents to. That is why a change of consciousness is necessary before you can

change your outer world.

Rain falls as a result of a change in the temperature in the higher regions of the

atmosphere, so, in like manner, a change of circumstance happens as a result of a change

in your state of consciousness.

Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. [Romans 12:2]

To be transformed, the whole basis of your thoughts must change. But your thoughts

cannot change unless you have new ideas, for you think from your ideas.



All transformation begins with an intense, burning desire to be transformed.

The first step in the “renewing of the mind” is desire.

You must want to be different [and intend to be] before you can begin to change yourself.

Then you must make your future dream a present fact. You do this by assuming the

feeling of your wish fulfilled. By desiring to be other than what you are, you can create

an ideal of the person you want to be and assume that you are already that person. If this

assumption is persisted in until it becomes your dominant feeling, the attainment of your

ideal is inevitable.

The ideal you hope to achieve is always ready for an incarnation, but unless you yourself

offer it human parentage, it is incapable of birth.

Therefore, your attitude should be one in which having desired to express a higher state –

you alone accept the task of incarnating this new and greater value of yourself.

In giving birth to your ideal, you must bear in mind that the methods of mental and

spiritual knowledge are entirely different.

This is a point that is truly understood by probably not more than one person in a million.



You know a thing mentally by looking at it from the outside, by comparing it with other

things, by analyzing it and defining it [by thinking of it]; whereas you can know a thing

spiritually only by becoming it [only by thinking from it].

You must be the thing itself and not merely talk about it or look at it.

You must be like the moth in search of his idol, the flame, who spurred with true desire,

plunging at once into the sacred fire, folded his wings within, till he became one color

and one substance with the flame.

He only knew the flame who in it burned,

and only he could tell who ne’er to tell returned.

["Bird Parliament", by Farid udDin Attar, tr. by Edward FitzGerald (1889), apud

William Ralph Inge, "Faith: Personal Religion and the Life of Devotion"]

Just as the moth in his desire to know the flame was willing to destroy himself, so must

you in becoming a new person be willing to die to your present self.

You must be conscious of being healthy if you are to know what health is. You must be

conscious of being secure if you are to know what security is.



Therefore, to incarnate a new and greater value of yourself, you must assume that you

already are what you want to be and then live by faith in this assumption – which is not

yet incarnate in the body of your life – in confidence that this new value or state of

consciousness will become incarnated through your absolute fidelity to the assumption

that you are that which you desire to be.

This is what wholeness means, what integrity means. They mean submission of the whole

self to the feeling of the wish fulfilled in certainty that that new state of consciousness is

the renewing of mind which transforms.

There is no order in Nature corresponding to this willing submission of the self to the

ideal beyond the self.

Therefore, it is the height of folly to expect the incarnation of a new and greater concept

of self to come about by natural evolutionary process.

That which requires a state of consciousness to produce its effect obviously cannot be

effected without such a state of consciousness, and in your ability to assume the feeling

of a greater life, to assume a new concept of yourself, you possess what the rest of Nature

does not possess – imagination – the instrument by which you create your world.



Your imagination is the instrument, the means, whereby your redemption from slavery,

sickness, and poverty is effected.

If you refuse to assume the responsibility of the incarnation of a new and higher concept

of yourself, then you reject the means, the only means, whereby your redemption – that

is, the attainment of your ideal – can be effected.

Imagination is the only redemptive power in the universe.

However, your nature is such that it is optional to you whether you remain in your

present concept of yourself (a hungry being longing for freedom, health, and security) or

choose to become the instrument of your own redemption, imagining yourself as that

which you want to be, and thereby satisfying your hunger and redeeming yourself.

O, be strong then, and brave, pure, patient and true; The work that is yours let no

other hand do. For the strength for all need is faithfully given From the fountain

within you.

–The Kingdom of Heaven.



Chapter Four DESIRE

THE CHANGES which take place in your life as a result of your changed concept of

yourself always appear to the unenlightened to be the result, not of a change of your

consciousness, but of chance, outer cause, or coincidence.

However, the only fate governing your life is the fate determined by your own concepts,

your own assumptions; for an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into

fact.

The ideal you seek and hope to attain will not manifest itself, will not be realized by you

until you have imagined that you are already that ideal.

There is no escape for you except by a radical psychological transformation of yourself,

except by your assumption of the feeling of your wish fulfilled.

Therefore, make results or accomplishments the crucial test of your ability to use your

imagination.

Everything depends on your attitude towards yourself.



That which you will not affirm as true of yourself can never be realized by you, for that

attitude alone is the necessary condition by which you realize your goal.

All transformation is based upon suggestion, and this can work only where you lay

yourself completely open to an influence. You must abandon yourself to your ideal as a

woman abandons herself to love, for complete abandonment of self to it is the way to

union with your ideal.

You must assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled until your assumption has all the

sensory vividness of reality.

You must imagine that you are already experiencing what you desire. That is, you must

assume the feeling of the fulfillment of your desire until you are possessed by it and this

feeling crowds all other ideas out of your consciousness.

The man who is not prepared for the conscious plunge into the assumption of the wish

fulfilled in the faith that it is the only way to the realization of his dream is not yet ready

to live consciously by the law of assumption, although there is no doubt that he does live

by the law of assumption unconsciously.



But for you, who accept this principle and are ready to live by consciously assuming that

your wish is already fulfilled, the adventure of life begins.

To reach a higher level of being, you must assume a higher concept of yourself.

If you will not imagine yourself as other than what you are, then you remain as you are,

for if ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins. [John 8:24]

If you do not believe that you are He (the person you want to be), then you remain as you

are.

Through the faithful systematic cultivation of the feeling of the wish fulfilled, desire

becomes the promise of its own fulfillment.

The assumption of the feeling of the wish fulfilled makes the future dream a present fact.



Chapter Five THE TRUTH THAT SETS YOU FREE

THE DRAMA of life is a psychological one, in which all the conditions, circumstances

and events of your life are brought to pass by your assumptions.

Since your life is determined by your assumptions, you are forced to recognize the fact

that you are either a slave to your assumptions or their master.

To become the master of your assumptions is the key to undreamedof freedom and

happiness.

You can attain this mastery by deliberate conscious control of your imagination. You

determine your assumptions in this way:

Form a mental image, a picture of the state desired, of the person you want to be.

Concentrate your attention upon the feeling that you are already that person. First,

visualize the picture in your consciousness. Then feel yourself to be in that state as

though it actually formed your surrounding world. By your imagination that which was a

mere mental image is changed into a seemingly solid reality.



The great secret is a controlled imagination and a wellsustained attention firmly and

repeatedly focused on the object to be accomplished. It cannot be emphasized too much

that, by creating an ideal within your mental sphere, by assuming that you are already

that ideal, you identify yourself with it and thereby transform yourself into its image

[thinking FROM the ideal instead OF thinking of the ideal. Every state is already there as

"mere possibilities" as long as we think OF them, but as overpoweringly real when we

think FROM them].

This was called by the ancient teachers “Subjection to the will of God” or “Resting in the

Lord”, and the only true test of “Resting in the Lord” is that all who do rest are inevitably

transformed into the image of that in which they rest [thinking FROM the wish fulfilled].

You become according to your resigned will, and your resigned will is your concept of

yourself and all that you consent to and accept as true.

You, assuming the feeling of your wish fulfilled and continuing therein, take upon

yourself the results of that state; not assuming the feeling of your wish fulfilled, you are

ever free of the results.

When you understand the redemptive function of imagination, you hold in your hands the

key to the solution of all your problems.



Every phase of your life is made by the exercise of your imagination. Determined

imagination alone is the means of your progress, of the fulfilling of your dreams. It is the

beginning and end of all creating.

The great secret is a controlled imagination and a wellsustained attention firmly and

repeatedly focused on the feeling of the wish fulfilled until it fills the mind and crowds all

other ideas out of consciousness.

What greater gifts could be given you than to be told the Truth that will set you free [John

8:32]

The Truth that sets you free is that you can experience in imagination what you desire to

experience in reality, and by maintaining this experience in imagination, your desire will

become an actuality.

You are limited only by your uncontrolled imagination and lack of attention to the feeling

of your wish fulfilled.

When the imagination is not controlled and the attention not steadied on the feeling of the

wish fulfilled, then no amount of prayer or piety or invocation will produce the desired

effect.



When you can call up at will whatsoever image you please, when the forms of your

imagination are as vivid to you as the forms of nature, you are master of your fate. [You

must stop spending your thoughts, your time and your money. Everything in life must be

an investment.*]

Visions of beauty and splendor, Forms of a longlost race, Sounds and faces and

voices, From the fourth dimension of space – And on through the universe

boundless, Our thoughts go lightning shod – Some call it imagination, And others

call it God.

Dr. George W. Carey, "The New Name"



Chapter Six ATTENTION

A doubleminded man is unstable in all his ways. [James 1:8]

ATTENTION IS forceful in proportion to the narrowness of its focus, that is, when it is

obsessed with a single idea or sensation. It is steadied and powerfully focused only by

such an adjustment of the mind as permits you to see one thing only, for you steady the

attention and increase its power by confining it. The desire which realizes itself is always

a desire upon which attention is exclusively concentrated, for an idea is endowed with

power only in proportion to the degree of attention fixed on it. Concentrated observation

is the attentive attitude directed from1 some specific end. The attentive attitude involves

selection, for when you pay attention, it signifies that you have decided to focus your

attention on one object or state rather than on another.

Therefore, when you know what you want, you must deliberately focus your attention on

the feeling of your wish fulfilled until that feeling fills the mind and crowds all other

ideas out of consciousness.



The power of attention is the measure of your inner force.

Concentrated observation of one thing shuts out other things and causes them to

disappear.

The great secret of success is to focus the attention on the feeling of the wish fulfilled

without permitting any distraction. All progress depends upon an increase of attention.

The ideas which impel you to action are those which dominate the consciousness, those

which possess the attention. [The idea which excludes all others from the field of

attention discharges in action.]

This one thing I do, forgetting those things that are behind, I press toward the mark.

[Approx., Philippians 3:13,14]

This means you, this one thing you can do, “forgetting those things that are behind”. You

can press toward the mark of filling your mind with the feeling of the wish fulfilled.



To the unenlightened man, this will seem to be all fantasy, yet all progress comes from

those who do not take the accepted view, nor accept the world as it is. As was stated

heretofore, if you can imagine what you please, and if the forms of your thought are as

vivid as the forms of nature, you are, by virtue of the power of your imagination, master

of your fate.

Your imagination is you yourself, and the world as your imagination sees it is the real

world. When you set out to master the movements of attention, which must be done if

you would successfully alter the course of observed events, it is then you realize how

little control you exercise over your imagination and how much it is dominated by

sensory impressions and by a drifting on the tides of idle moods.

To aid in mastering the control of your attention, practice this exercise:

Night after night, just before you drift off to sleep, strive to hold your attention on the

activities of the day in reverse order. Focus your attention on the last thing you did, that

is, getting in to bed, and then move it backward in time over the events until you reach

the first event of the day, getting out of bed. This is no easy exercise, but just as specific

exercises greatly help in developing specific muscles, this will greatly help in developing

the “muscle” of your attention.



Your attention must be developed, controlled, and concentrated in order to change your

concept of yourself successfully and thereby change your future.

Imagination is able to do anything, but only according to the internal direction of your

attention.

If you persist night after night, sooner or later you will awaken in yourself a centre of

power and become conscious of your greater self, the real you.

Attention is developed by repeated exercise or habit.

Through habit, an action becomes easier, and so, in course of time, gives rise to a facility

or faculty, which can then be put to higher uses.

When you attain control of the internal direction of your attention, you will no longer

stand in shallow water, but will launch out into the deep of life.

You will walk in the assumption of the wish fulfilled as on a foundation more solid even

than earth.



Chapter Seven ATTITUDE

EXPERIMENTS RECENTLY conducted by Merle Lawrence (Princeton) and Adelbert

Ames (Dartmouth) in the latter’s psychology laboratory at Hanover, N.H., prove that

what you see when you look at something depends not so much on what is there as on the

assumption you make when you look. Since what we believe to be the “real” physical

world is actually only an “assumptive” world, it is not surprising that these experiments

prove that what appears to be solid reality is actually the result of “expectations” or

“assumptions”. Your assumptions determine not only what you see, but also what you do,

for they govern all your conscious and subconscious movements towards the fulfillment

of themselves.

Over a century ago, this truth was stated by Emerson as follows: As the world was plastic

and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it.

To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt themselves to it as they may, but in

proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and

takes his signet and form.



Your assumption is the hand of God moulding the firmament into the image of that which

you assume.The assumption of the wish fulfilled is the high tide which lifts you easily off

the bar of the senses where you have so long lain stranded. It lifts the mind into prophecy

in the full right sense of the word; and if you have that controlled imagination and

absorbed attention which it is possible to attain, you may be sure that all your assumption

implies will come to pass.

When William Blake wrote, What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, he

was only repeating the eternal truth, there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him that

esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. [Romans 14:14]

Because there is nothing unclean of itself (or clean of itself), you should assume the best

and think only of that which is lovely and of good report [Philippians 4:8].



It is not superior insight, but ignorance of this law of assumption, if you read into the

greatness of men some littleness with which you may be familiar – or into some situation

or circumstance an unfavorable conviction. Your particular relationship to another

influences your assumption with respect to that other and makes you see in him that

which you do see. If you can change your opinion of another, then what you now believe

of him cannot be absolutely true but is only relatively true. The following is an actual

case history illustrating how the law of assumption works:

One day, a costume designer described to me her difficulties in working with a prominent

theatrical producer. She was convinced that he unjustly criticized and rejected her best

work and that often he was deliberately rude and unfair to her.

Upon hearing her story, I explained that if she found the other rude and unfair, it was a

sure sign that she, herself, was wanting and that it was not the producer, but herself that

was in need of a new attitude.



I told her that the power of this law of assumption and its practical application could be

discovered only through experience, and that only by assuming that the situation was

already what she wanted it to be could she prove that she could bring about the change

desired. Her employer was merely bearing witness, telling her by his behavior what her

concept of him was.

I suggested that it was quite probable that she was carrying on conversations with him in

her mind which were filled with criticism and recriminations. There was no doubt but

that she was mentally arguing with the producer, for others only echo that which we

whisper to them in secret. I asked her if it was not true that she talked to him mentally,

and, if so, what those conversations were like.



She confessed that every morning on her way to the theatre she told him just what she

thought of him in a way she would never have dared address him in person. The intensity

and force of her mental arguments with him automatically established his behavior

towards her. She began to realize that all of us carry on mental conversations, but,

unfortunately, on most occasions, these conversations are argumentative… that we have

only to observe the passerby on the street to prove this assertion… that so many people

are mentally engrossed in conversation and few appear to be happy about it, but the very

intensity of their feeling must lead them quickly to the unpleasant incident they

themselves have mentally created and therefore must now encounter. When she realized

what she had been doing, she agreed to change her attitude and to live this law faithfully

by assuming that her job was highly satisfactory and her relationship with the producer

was a very happy one. To do this, she agreed that, before going to sleep at night, on her

way to work, and at other intervals during the day, she would imagine that he had

congratulated her on her fine designs and that she, in turn, had thanked him for his praise

and kindness. To her great delight, she soon discovered for herself that her own attitude

was the cause of all that befell her. The behavior of her employer miraculously reversed

itself. His attitude, echoing as it had always done, that which she had assumed, now

reflected her changed concept of him. What she did was by the power of her imagination.

Her persistent assumption influenced his behavior and determined his attitude toward her.

With the passport of desire on the wings of a controlled imagination, she traveled into the



future of her own predetermined experience.

Thus we see it is not facts, but that which we create in our imagination, which shapes our

lives, for most of the conflicts of the day are due to the want of a little imagination to cast

the beam out of our own eye. It is the exact and literalminded who live in a fictitious

world. As this designer, by her controlled imagination, started the subtle change in her

employer’s mind, so can we, by the control of our own imagination and wisely directed

feeling, solve our problems. By the intensity of her imagination and feeling, the designer

cast a kind of enchantment on her producer’s mind and caused him to think that his

generous praise originated with him. Often our most elaborate and original thoughts are

determined by another.

We should never be certain that it was not some woman treading in the winepress

who began that subtle change in men’s mind, or that the passion 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



Chapter Eight RENUNCIATION

There is no coal of character so dead that it will not glow and flame if but slightly turned.

Resist not evil.

Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. [Matthew 5:39]

THERE IS a great difference between resisting evil and renouncing it. When you resist

evil, you give it your attention; you continue to make it real. When you renounce evil,

you take your attention from it and give your attention to what you want. Now is the time

to control your imagination and

Give beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might

be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He might be glorified.

[Approx., Isaiah 61:3]



You give beauty for ashes when you concentrate your attention on things as you would

like them to be rather than on things as they are. You give joy for mourning when you

maintain a joyous attitude regardless of unfavorable circumstances. You give praise for

the spirit of heaviness when you maintain a confident attitude instead of succumbing to

despondency.

In this quotation, the Bible uses the word tree as a synonym for man. You become a tree

of righteousness when the above mental states are a permanent part of your

consciousness. You are a planting of the Lord when all your thoughts are true thoughts.

He is “I AM” as described in Chapter One. “I AM” is glorified when your highest

concept of yourself is manifested.

When you have discovered your own controlled imagination to be your saviour, your

attitude will be completely altered without any diminution of religious feeling, and you

will say of your controlled imagination,

“Behold this vine. I found it a wild tree, whose wanton strength had swollen into

irregular twigs. But I pruned the plant and it grew temperate in its vain expense

of useless leaves, and knotted as you see into these clean full clusters to repay the

hand that wisely wounded it.” Robert Southey, "Thalaba the Destroyer"



By vine is meant your imagination, which, in its uncontrolled state, expends its energy in

useless or destructive thoughts and feelings. But you, just as the vine is pruned by cutting

away its useless branches and roots, prune your imagination by withdrawing your

attention from all unlovely and destructive ideas and concentrating on the ideal you wish

to attain. The happier, more noble life you will experience will be the result of wisely

pruning your own imagination.

“Yes, be pruned of all unlovely thoughts and feelings, that you may think truly, and thy

thoughts shall the world’s famine feed; Speak truly, and each word of thine shall be a

fruitful seed; Live truly, and thy life shall be a great and noble creed.” Horatio Bonar,

"Hymns of Faith and Hope"



Chapter Nine PREPARING YOUR PLACE

And all mine are thine, and thine are mine. [John 17:10]

Thrust in thy sickle, and reap; for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the

earth is ripe. [Revelation 14:15]

ALL IS yours. Do not go seeking for that which you are. Appropriate it, claim it, assume

it. Everything depends upon your concept of yourself. That which you do not claim as

true of yourself cannot be realized by you.

The promise is, Whosoever hath, to him it shall be given, and he shall have more

abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he

seemeth to have. [Approx., Matthew 25:29; Luke 8:18]

Hold fast, in your imagination, to all that is lovely and of good report, for the lovely and

the good are essential in your life if it is to be worthwhile. Assume it. You do this by

imagining that you already are what you want to be – and already have what you want to

have.

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. [Proverbs 23:7]



Be still and know that you are that which you desire to be, and you will never have to

search for it. In spite of your appearance of freedom of action, you obey, as everything

else does, the law of assumption. Whatever you may think of the question of free will, the

truth is your experiences throughout your life are determined by your assumptions –

whether conscious or unconscious. An assumption builds a bridge of incidents that lead

inevitably to the fulfillment of itself. Man believes the future to be the natural

development of the past. But the law of assumption clearly shows that this is not the case.

Your assumption places you psychologically where you are not physically; then your

senses pull you back from where you were psychologically to where you are physically.

It is these psychological forward motions that produce your physical forward motions in

time. Precognition permeates all the scriptures of the world.

In my Father’s house are many mansions; If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to

prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and

receive you unto myself: that where I am, there ye may be also… And now I have told

you before it came to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe. [John 14:2,3;

29]



The “I” in this quotation is your imagination, which goes into the future, into one of the

many mansions. Mansion is the state desired… telling of an event before it occurs

physically is simply feeling yourself into the state desired until it has the tone of reality.

You go and prepare a place for yourself by imagining yourself into the feeling of your

wish fulfilled.

Then, you speed from this state of the wish fulfilled – where you have not been

physically – back to where you were physically a moment ago. Then, with an irresistible

forward movement, you move forward across a series of events to the physical realization

of your wish, that where you have been in imagination, there you will be in the flesh also.

Unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. [Ecclesiastes 1:7]



Chapter Ten CREATION

I am God, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times, things that are

not yet done. [Isaiah 46:9, 10]

CREATION IS finished. Creativeness is only a deeper receptiveness, for the entire

contents of all time and all space, while experienced in a time sequence, actually coexist

in an infinite and eternal now. In other words, all that you ever have been or ever will be

– in fact, all that mankind ever was or ever will be – exists now.



This is what is meant by creation, and the statement that creation is finished means

nothing is ever to be created, it is only to be manifested. What is called creativeness is

only becoming aware of what already is. You simply become aware of increasing

portions of that which already exists. The fact that you can never be anything that you are

not already or experience anything not already existing explains the experience of having

an acute feeling of having heard before what is being said, or having met before the

person being met for the first time, or having seen before a place or thing being seen for

the first time. The whole of creation exists in you, and it is your destiny to become

increasingly aware of its infinite wonders and to experience ever greater and grander

portions of it. If creation is finished, and all events are taking place now, the question that

springs naturally to the mind is “what determines your time track?”

That is, what determines the events which you encounter?

And the answer is your concept of yourself.



Concepts determine the route that attention follows. Here is a good test to prove this fact.

Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and observe the route that your attention

follows. You will observe that as long as you remain faithful to your assumption, so long

will your attention be confronted with images clearly related to that assumption. For

example; if you assume that you have a wonderful business, you will notice how in your

imagination, your attention is focused on incident after incident relating to that

assumption.

Friends congratulate you, tell you how lucky you are. Others are envious and critical.

From there, your attention goes to larger offices, bigger bank balances, and many other

similarly related events. Persistence in this assumption will result in actually experiencing

in fact that which you assumed. The same is true regarding any concept.

If your concept of yourself is that you are a failure, you would encounter in your

imagination a whole series of incidents in conformance to that concept. Thus it is clearly

seen how you, by your concept of yourself, determine your present, that is, the particular

portion of creation which you now experience, and your future, that is, the particular

portion of creation which you will experience.

Chapter Eleven INTERFERENCE



YOU ARE free to choose the concept you will accept of yourself.

Therefore, you possess the power of intervention, the power which enables you to alter

the course of your future. The process of rising from your present concept to a higher

concept of yourself is the means of all true progress. The higher concept is waiting for

you to incarnate it in the world of experience.

Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,

according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory. [Ephesians 3:20]

Him, that is able to do more than you can ask or think, is your imagination, and the power

that worketh in us is your attention. Understanding imagination to be HIM that is able to

do all that you ask, and attention to be the power by which you create your world, you

can now build your ideal world. Imagine yourself to be the ideal you dream of and desire.

Remain attentive to this imagined state, and as fast as you completely feel that you are

already this ideal it will manifest itself as reality in your world.

He was in the world, and the world was made by Him and the world knew Him not. [John

1:10]



The mystery hid from the ages; Christ in you, the hope of glory. [Approx., Colossians

1:26,27]

The “He” in the first of these quotations is your imagination. As previously explained,

there is only one substance. This substance is consciousness. It is your imagination which

forms this substance into concepts, which concepts are then manifested as conditions,

circumstances, and physical objects. Thus imagination made your world.

This supreme truth, with but few exceptions, man is not conscious of.

The mystery, Christ in you, referred to in the second quotation, is your imagination, by

which your world is molded. The hope of glory is your awareness of the ability to rise

perpetually to higher levels. Christ is not to be found in history, nor in external forms.

You find Christ only when you become aware of the fact that your imagination is the

only redemptive power. When this is discovered, the “towers of dogma will have heard

the trumpets of Truth, and, like the walls of Jericho, crumble to dust”.



Chapter Twelve SUBJECTIVE CONTROL

YOUR IMAGINATION is able to do all that you ask in proportion to the degree of your

attention. All progress, all fulfillment of desire depend upon the control and concentration

of your attention. Attention may be either attracted from without or directed from within.

Attention is attracted from without when you are consciously occupied with the external

impressions of the immediate present. The very lines of this page are attracting your

attention from without.

Your attention is directed from within when you deliberately choose what you will be

preoccupied with mentally. It is obvious that, in the objective world, your attention is not

only attracted by, but is constantly directed to external impressions. But, your control in

the subjective state is almost nonexistent, for in this state, attention is usually the servant

and not the master – the passenger and not the navigator – of your world.



There is an enormous difference between attention directed objectively and attention

directed subjectively, and the capacity to change your future depends on the latter. When

you are able to control the movements of your attention in the subjective world, you can

modify or alter your life as you please. But this control cannot be achieved if you allow

your attention to be attracted constantly from without. Each day, set yourself the task of

deliberately withdrawing your attention from the objective world and of focusing it

subjectively.

In other words, concentrate on those thoughts or moods which you deliberately

determine. Then those things that now restrict you will fade and drop away. The day you

achieve control of the movements of your attention in the subjective world, you are

master of your fate. You will no longer accept the dominance of outside conditions or

circumstances. You will not accept life on the basis of the world without. Having

achieved control of the movements of your attention, and having discovered the mystery

hid from the ages, that Christ in you is your imagination, you will assert the supremacy of

imagination and put all things in subjection to it.



Chapter Thirteen ACCEPTANCE

“Man’s Perceptions are not bounded by organs of Perception: he perceives more than

sense (though ever so acute) can discover.” William Blake

HOWEVER MUCH you seem to be living in a material world, you are actually living in

a world of imagination. The outer, physical events of life are the fruit of forgotten

blossomtimes – results of previous and usually forgotten states of consciousness. They

are the ends running true to ofttimes forgotten imaginative origins. Whenever you

become completely absorbed in an emotional state, you are at that moment assuming the

feeling of the state fulfilled. If persisted in, whatsoever you are intensely emotional about,

you will experience in your world. These periods of absorption, of concentrated attention,

are the beginnings of the things you harvest.



It is in such moments that you are exercising your creative power – the only creative

power there is. At the end of these periods, or moments of absorption, you speed from

these imaginative states (where you have not been physically) to where you were

physically an instant ago. In these periods, the imagined state is so real that, when you

return to the objective world and find that it is not the same as the imagined state, it is an

actual shock. You have seen something in imagination with such vividness that you now

wonder whether the evidence of your senses can now be believed, and, like Keats, you

ask,

was it a vision or a waking dream?

Fled is that music… Do I wake or sleep?



This shock reverses your time sense. By this is meant that instead of your experience

resulting from your past, it now becomes the result of being in imagination where you

have not yet been physically. In effect, this moves you across a bridge of incident to the

physical realization of your imagined state. The man who at will can assume whatever

state he pleases has found the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. The keys are desire,

imagination, and a steadily focused attention on the feeling of the wish fulfilled. To such

a man, any undesirable objective fact is no longer a reality and the ardent wish no longer

a dream.

Prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of

heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

[Malachi 3:10]

The windows of heaven may not be opened and the treasures seized by a strong will, but

they open of themselves and present their treasures as a free gift – a gift that comes when

absorption reaches such a degree that it results in a feeling of complete acceptance. The

passage from your present state to the feeling of your wish fulfilled is not across a gap.

There is continuity between the socalled real and unreal.



To cross from one state to the other, you simply extend your feelers, trust your touch and

enter fully into the spirit of what you are doing.

Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. [Zecharian 4:6]

Assume the spirit, the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and you will have opened the

windows to receive the blessing. To assume a state is to get into the spirit of it. Your

triumphs will be a surprise only to those who did not know your hidden passage from the

state of longing to the assumption of the wish fulfilled. The Lord of hosts will not

respond to your wish until you have assumed the feeling of already being what you want

to be, for acceptance is the channel of His action.

Acceptance is the Lord of hosts in action.



Chapter Fourteen THE EFFORTLESS WAY

THE PRINCIPLE of “Least Action” governs everything in physics, from the path of a

planet to the path of a pulse of light. Least Action is the minimum of energy, multiplied

by the minimum of time. Therefore, in moving from your present state to the state

desired, you must use the minimum of energy and take the shortest possible time.

Your journey from one state of consciousness to another is a psychological one, so, to

make the journey, you must employ the psychological equivalent of “Least Action” and

the psychological equivalent is mere assumption. The day you fully realize the power of

assumption, you discover that it works in complete conformity with this principle. It

works by means of attention, minus effort. Thus, with least action, through an

assumption, you hurry without haste and reach your goal without effort. Because creation

is finished, what you desire already exists. It is excluded from view because you can see

only the contents of your own consciousness. It is the function of an assumption to call

back the excluded view and restore full vision. It is not the world, but your assumptions

that change. An assumption brings the invisible into sight. It is nothing more nor less than

seeing with the eye of God, i.e., imagination.



For the Lord seeth not as a man seeth, for man looketh on the outward appearance, but

the Lord looketh on the heart. [1Samuel 16:7]

The heart is the primary organ of sense, hence the first cause of experience. When you

look “on the heart”, you are looking at your assumptions: assumptions determine your

experience. Watch your assumption with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

Assumptions have the power of objective realization. Every event in the visible world is

the result of an assumption or idea in the unseen world. The present moment is

allimportant, for it is only in the present moment that our assumptions can be controlled.

The future must become the present in your mind if you would wisely operate the law of

assumption. The future becomes the present when you imagine that you already are what

you will be when your assumption is fulfilled.

Be still (least action) and know that you are that which you desire to be.

The end of longing should be Being.

Translate your dream into Being. Perpetual construction of future states without the

consciousness of already being them, that is, picturing your desire without actually

assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled, is the fallacy and mirage of mankind.



It is simply futile daydreaming.



Chapter Fifteen THE CROWN OF THE

MYSTERIES

THE ASSUMPTION of the wish fulfilled is the ship that carries you over the unknown

seas to the fulfillment of your dream.

The assumption is everything; realization is subconscious and effortless.

Assume a virtue if you have it not. [William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"]

Act on the assumption that you already possess that which you sought.

Blessed is she that believed; for there shall be a performance of those things which were

told her from the Lord. [Luke 1:45]

As the Immaculate Conception is the foundation of the Christian mysteries, so the

Assumption is their crown. Psychologically, the Immaculate Conception means the birth

of an idea in your own consciousness, unaided by another.



For instance, when you have a specific wish or hunger or longing, it is an immaculate

conception in the sense that no physical person or thing plants it in your mind. It is

selfconceived. Every man is the Mary of the Immaculate Conception and birth to his

idea must give.

The Assumption is the crown of the mysteries because it is the highest use of

consciousness.

When in imagination you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you are mentally lifted

up to a higher level.

When, through your persistence, this assumption becomes actual fact, you automatically

find yourself on a higher level (that is, you have achieved your desire) in your objective

world.

Your assumption guides all your conscious and subconscious movements towards its

suggested end so inevitably that it actually dictates the events.

The drama of life is a psychological one and the whole of it is written and produced by

your assumptions.



Learn the art of assumption, for only in this way can you create your own happiness.



Chapter Sixteen PERSONAL IMPOTENCE

SELFSURRENDER IS essential, and by that is meant the confession of personal

impotence.

I can of mine own self do nothing. [John 5:30]

Since creation is finished, it is impossible to force anything into being. The example of

magnetism previously given is a good illustration. You cannot make magnetism; it can

only be displayed. You cannot make the law of magnetism. If you want to build a

magnet, you can do so only by conforming to the law of magnetism. In other words, you

surrender yourself, or yield to the law.

In like manner, when you use the faculty of assumption, you are conforming to a law just

as real as the law governing magnetism. You can neither create nor change the law of

assumption. It is in this respect that you are impotent. You can only yield or conform, and

since all of your experiences are the result of your assumptions (consciously or

unconsciously), the value of consciously using the power of assumption surely must be

obvious. Willingly identify yourself with that which you most desire, knowing that it will

find expression through you.



Yield to the feeling of the wish fulfilled and be consumed as its victim, then rise as the

prophet of the law of assumption.

Chapter Seventeen ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE

IT IS of great significance that the truth of the principles outlined in this book have been

proven time and again by the personal experiences of the Author. Throughout the past

twentyfive years, he has applied these principles and proved them successful in

innumerable instances. He attributes to an unwavering assumption of his wish already

being fulfilled every success that he has achieved.

He was confident that, by these fixed assumptions, his desires were predestined to be

fulfilled. Time and again, he assumed the feeling of his wish fulfilled and continued in

his assumption until that which he desired was completely realized.

Live your life in a sublime spirit of confidence and determination; disregard appearances,

conditions, in fact all evidence of your senses that deny the fulfillment of your desire.

Rest in the assumption that you are already what you want to be, for, in that determined

assumption, you and your Infinite Being are merged in creative unity, and with your

Infinite Being (God) all things are possible. God never fails.



For who can stay His hand or say unto Him, What doest thou? [Daniel 4:35]

Through the mastery of your assumptions, you are in very truth enabled to master life.

It is thus that the ladder of life is ascended: thus the ideal is realized. The clue to the real

purpose of life is to surrender yourself to your ideal with such awareness of its reality that

you begin to live the life of the ideal and no longer your own life as it was prior to this

surrender.

He calleth things that are not seen as though they were, and the unseen becomes seen.

[Approx., Romans 4:17]

Each assumption has its corresponding world. If you are truly observant, you will notice

the power of your assumptions to change circumstances which appear wholly immutable.

You, by your conscious assumptions, determine the nature of the world in which you

live. Ignore the present state and assume the wish fulfilled. Claim it; it will respond. The

law of assumption is the means by which the fulfillment of your desires may be realized.

Every moment of your life, consciously or unconsciously, you are assuming a feeling.

You can no more avoid assuming a feeling than you can avoid eating and drinking.



All you can do is control the nature of your assumptions.

Thus it is clearly seen that the control of your assumption is the key you now hold to an

ever expanding, happier, more noble life.



Chapter Eighteen BE YE DOERS

Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a

hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a

glass and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But

whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continue therein, he being not a

forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. [James

1:2225]

THE WORD in this quotation means idea, concept, or desire. You deceive yourself by

“hearing only” when you expect your desire to be fulfilled through mere wishful

thinking. Your desire is what you want to be, and looking at yourself “in a glass” is

seeing yourself in imagination as that person. Forgetting “what manner of man” you are

is failing to persist in your assumption. The “perfect law of liberty” is the law which

makes possible liberation from limitation, that is, the law of assumption. To continue in

the perfect law of liberty is to persist in the assumption that your desire is already

fulfilled. You are not a “forgetful hearer” when you keep the feeling of your wish

fulfilled constantly alive in your consciousness.



This makes you a “doer of the work”, and you are blessed in your deed by the inevitable

realization of your desire. You must be doers of the law of assumption, for without

application, the most profound understanding will not produce any desired result.

Frequent reiteration and repetition of important basic truths runs through these pages.

Where the law of assumption is concerned – the law that sets man free – this is a good

thing. It should be made clear again and again even at the risk of repetition. The real

truthseeker will welcome this aid in concentrating his attention upon the law which sets

him free.

The parable of the Master’s condemnation of the servant who neglected to use the talent

given him [Matthew 25:1430] is clear and unmistakable.

Having discovered within yourself the key to the Treasure House, you should be like the

good servant who, by wise use, multiplied by many times the talents entrusted to him.

The talent entrusted to you is the power to consciously determine your assumption. The

talent not used, like the limb not exercised, withers and finally atrophies. What you must

strive after is being. In order to do, it is necessary to be. The end of yearning is to be.



Your concept of yourself can only be driven out of consciousness by another concept of

yourself. By creating an ideal in your mind, you can identify yourself with it until you

become one and the same with the ideal, thereby transforming yourself into it. The

dynamic prevails over the static; the active over the passive. One who is a doer is

magnetic and therefore infinitely more creative than any who merely hear. Be among the

doers.

Chapter Nineteen ESSENTIALS

THE ESSENTIAL points in the successful use of the law of assumption are these: First,

and above all, yearning; longing; intense, burning desire.

With all your heart you must want to be different from what you are. Intense, burning

desire [combined with intention to make good] is the mainspring of action, the beginning

of all successful ventures. In every great passion [which achieves its objective], desire is

concentrated [and intentioned. You must first desire and then intend to succeed].



As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. [Psalm

42:1]

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.

[Matthew 5:6]

Here, the soul is interpreted as the sum total of all you believe, think, feel, and accept as

true; in other words, your present level of awareness, God, I AM [the power of

awareness], the source and fulfillment of all desires [understood psychologically, I am an

infinite series of levels of awareness and I am what I am according to where I am in the

series]. This quotation describes how your present level of awareness longs to transcend

itself. Righteousness is the consciousness of already being what you want to be.

Second, cultivate physical immobility, a physical incapacity not unlike the state described

by Keats in his “Ode to a Nightingale”: A drowsy numbness pains my senses, as though

of hemlock I had drunk. It is a state akin to sleep, but one in which you are still in control

of the direction of attention. You must learn to induce this state at will, but experience

has taught that it is more easily induced after a substantial meal, or when you wake in the

morning feeling very loath to arise.



Then you are naturally disposed to enter this state. The value of physical immobility

shows itself in the accumulation of mental force which absolute stillness brings with it. It

increases your power of concentration.

Be still and know that I am God. [Psalm 46:10]

In fact, the greater energies of the mind seldom break forth save when the body is stilled

and the door of the senses closed to the objective world. The third and last thing to do is

to experience in your imagination what you would experience in reality had you achieved

your goal. [You must gain it in imagination first, for imagination is the very door to the

reality of that which you seek. But use imagination masterfully and not as an onlooker

thinking of the end, but as a partaker thinking from the end.]

Imagine that you possess a quality or something you desire which hitherto has not been

yours.

Surrender yourself completely to this feeling until your whole being is possessed by it.

This state differs from reverie in this respect: it is the result of a controlled imagination

and a steadied, concentrated attention, whereas reverie is the result of an uncontrolled

imagination – usually just a daydream.



In the controlled state, a minimum of effort suffices to keep your consciousness filled

with the feeling of the wish fulfilled. The physical and mental immobility of this state is a

powerful aid to voluntary attention and a major factor of minimum effort.

The application of these three points:

1. Desire

2. Physical immobility

3. The assumption of the wish already fulfilled

is the way to atonement or union with your objective. [The first point is thinking of the

end, with intention to realize it. The third point is thinking from the end with the feeling

of accomplishment. The secret of thinking from the end is to enjoy being it. The minute

you make it pleasurable and imagine that you are it, you start thinking from the end.]



One of the most prevalent misunderstandings is that this law works only for those having

a devout or a religious objective. This is a fallacy. It works just as impersonally as the

law of electricity works. It can be used for greedy, selfish purposes as well as noble ones.

But it should always be borne in mind that ignoble thoughts and actions inevitably result

in unhappy consequences.



Chapter Twenty RIGHTEOUSNESS

IN THE preceding chapter, righteousness was defined as the consciousness of already

being what you want to be. This is the true psychological meaning and obviously does

not refer to adherence to moral codes, civil law or religious precepts. You cannot attach

too much importance to being righteous. In fact, the entire Bible is permeated with

admonition and exhortations on this subject.

Break off thy sins by righteousness. [Daniel 4:27]

My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not reproach me so

long as I live. [Job 27:6]

My righteousness shall answer for me in time to come. [Genesis 30:33]

Very often the words sin and righteousness are used in the same quotation. This is a

logical contrast of opposites and becomes enormously significant in the light of the

psychological meaning of righteousness and the psychological meaning of sin.

Sin means to miss the mark. Not to attain your desire, not to be the person you want to be

is sinning. Righteousness is the consciousness of already being what you want to be.



It is a changeless educative law that effects must follow causes. Only by righteousness

can you be saved from sinning. There is a widespread misunderstanding as to what it

means to be “saved from sin”.

The following example will suffice to demonstrate this misunderstanding and to establish

the truth. A person living in abject poverty may believe that by means of some religious

or philosophical activity he can be “saved from sin” and his life improved as a result.

If, however, he continues to live in the same state of poverty, it is obvious that what he

believed was not the truth, and, in fact, he was not “saved”. On the other hand, he can be

saved by righteousness.

The successful use of the law of assumption would have the inevitable result of an actual

change in his life. He would no longer live in poverty. He would no longer miss the mark.

He would be saved from sin.

Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye

shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. [Matthew 5:20]



Scribes and Pharisees means those who are influenced and governed by the outer

appearances the rules and customs of the society in which they live, the vain desire to be

thought well of by other men. Unless this state of mind is exceeded, your life will be one

of limitation – of failure to attain your desires – of missing the mark – of sin. This

righteousness is exceeded by true righteousness, which is always the consciousness of

already being that which you want to be.

One of the greatest pitfalls in attempting to use the law of assumption is focusing your

attention on things, on a new home, a better job, a bigger bank balance.

This is not the righteousness without which you “die in your sins” [John 8:24].

Righteousness is not the thing itself; it is the consciousness, the feeling of already being

the person you want to be, of already having the thing you desire.

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be

added unto you. [Matthew 6:33]

The kingdom (entire creation) of God (your I AM) is within you.

Righteousness is the awareness that you already possess it all.



Chapter Twenty One FREE WILL

THE QUESTION is often asked, “What should be done between the assumption of the

wish fulfilled and its realization?”

Nothing. It is a delusion that, other than assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you

can do anything to aid the realization of your desire. You think that you can do

something, you want to do something; but actually you can do nothing. The illusion of

the free will to do is but ignorance of the law of assumption upon which all action is

based. Everything happens automatically. All that befalls you, all that is done by you –

happens.

Your assumptions, conscious or unconscious, direct all thought and action to their

fulfillment. To understand the law of assumption, to be convinced of its truth, means

getting rid of all the illusions about free will to act. Free will actually means freedom to

select any idea you desire.



By assuming the idea already to be a fact, it is converted into reality. Beyond that, free

will ends, and everything happens in harmony with the concept assumed.

I can of Mine Own Self do nothing…because I seek not Mine Own Will,but the Will of

the Father which hath sent Me. [John 5:30]

In this quotation, the Father obviously refers to God. In an earlier chapter, God is defined

as I AM. Since creation is finished, the Father is never in a position of saying “I will be”.

In other words, everything exists, and the infinite I AM consciousness can speak only in

the present tense.

Not My Will, but Thine be done. [Luke 22:42]

“I will be” is a confession that “I am not”. The Father’s Will is always “I AM”.

Until you realize that YOU are the Father (there is only one I AM, and your infinite self

is that I AM), your will is always “I will be”.

In the law of assumption, your consciousness of being is the Father’s will. The mere wish

without this consciousness is the “my will”. This great quotation, so little understood, is a

perfect statement of the law of assumption.



It is impossible to do anything. You must be in order to do.

If you had a different concept of yourself, everything would be different.

You are what you are, so everything is as it is.

The events which you observe are determined by the concept you have of yourself.

If you change your concept of yourself, the events ahead of you in time are altered, but,

thus altered, they form again a deterministic sequence starting from the moment of this

changed concept. You are a being with powers of intervention, which enable you, by a

change of consciousness, to alter the course of observed events – in fact, to change your

future.

Deny the evidence of the senses, and assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

Inasmuch as your assumption is creative and forms an atmosphere, your assumption, if it

be a noble one, increases your assurance and helps you to reach a higher level of being.

If, on the other hand, your assumption be an unlovely one, it hinders you and makes your

downward way swifter. Just as the lovely assumptions create a harmonious atmosphere,

so the hard and bitter feelings create a hard and bitter atmosphere.



Whatsoever things are pure, just, lovely, of good report, think on these things. [Approx.,

Philippians 4:8]

This means to make your assumptions the highest, noblest, happiest concepts. There is no

better time to start than now. The present moment is always the most opportune in which

to eliminate all unlovely assumptions and to concentrate only on the good.

As well as yourself, claim for others their Divine inheritance.

See only their good and the good in them. Stir the highest in others to confidence and

selfassertion by your sincere assumption of their good, and you will be their prophet and

their healer, for an inevitable fulfillment awaits all sustained assumptions.

You win by assumption what you can never win by force.

An assumption is a certain motion of consciousness. This motion, like all motion,

exercises an influence on the surrounding substance causing it to take the shape of, echo,

and reflect the assumption. A change of fortune is a new direction and outlook, merely a

change in arrangement of the same mind substance – consciousness.



If you would change your life, you must begin at the very source with your own basic

concept of self.

Outer change, becoming part of organizations, political bodies, religious bodies, is not

enough. The cause goes deeper. The essential change must take place in yourself, in your

own concept of self.

You must assume that you are what you want to be and continue therein, for the reality of

your assumption has its being in complete independence of objective fact and will clothe

itself in flesh if you persist in the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

When you know that assumptions, if persisted in, harden into facts, then events which

seem to the uninitiated mere accidents will be understood by you to be the logical and

inevitable effects of your assumption.

The important thing to bear in mind is that you have infinite free will in choosing your

assumptions, but no power to determine conditions and events.

You can create nothing, but your assumption determines what portion of creation you

will experience.





Chapter Twenty Two PERSISTENCE

And He said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at

midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his

journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? And he from within shall

answer and say, Trouble me not; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in

bed; I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him,

because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many

as he needeth. And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;

knock, and it shall be opened unto you. [Luke 11:59]

THERE ARE three principal characters in this quotation, you and the two friends

mentioned.

The first friend is a desired state of consciousness.

The second friend is a desire seeking fulfillment.

Three is the symbol of wholeness, completion.

Loaves symbolize substance.



The shut door symbolizes the senses which separate the seen from the unseen.

Children in bed means ideas that are dormant.

Inability to rise means a desired state of consciousness cannot rise to you, you must rise

to it.

Importunity means demanding persistency, a kind of brazen impudence.

Ask, seek, and knock mean assuming the consciousness of already having what you

desire.

Thus the scriptures tell you that you must persist in rising to (assuming) the

consciousness of your wish already being fulfilled. The promise is definite that if you are

shameless in your impudence in assuming that you already have that which your senses

deny, it shall be given unto you – your desire shall be attained.

The Bible teaches the necessity of persistence by the use of many stories. When Jacob

sought a blessing from the Angel with whom he wrestled, he said,

I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. [Genesis 32:26]



When the Shunammite sought the help of Elisha, she said,

As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee, and he arose and followed

her. [2Kings 4:30]

The same idea is expressed in another passage:

And he spake a parable unto them that men ought always to pray, and not to faint; saying,

There was in a city a Judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man and there was a

widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And

he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God,

nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest she weary

me by her continual coming. [Luke 18:15]

The basic truth underlying each of these stories is that desire springs from the awareness

of ultimate attainment and that persistence in maintaining the consciousness of the desire

already being fulfilled results in its fulfillment. It is not enough to feel yourself into the

state of the answered prayer; you must persist in that state. That is the reason for the

injunction

Man ought always to pray and not to faint. [Luke 18:1]



Here, to pray means to give thanks for already having what you desire.

Only persistency in the assumption of the wish fulfilled can cause those subtle changes in

your mind which result in the desired change in your life. It matters not whether they be

“Angels”, “Elisha”, or “reluctant judges”; all must respond in harmony with your

persistent assumption.

When it appears that people other than yourself in your world do not act toward you as

you would like, it is not due to reluctance on their part, but a lack of persistence in your

assumption of your life already being as you want it to be.

Your assumption, to be effective, cannot be a single isolated act; it must be a maintained

attitude of the wish fulfilled.

[And that maintained attitude that gets you there, so that you think from your wish

fulfilled instead of thinking about your wish, is aided by assuming the feeling of the wish

fulfilled frequently. It is the frequency, not the length of time, that makes it natural. That

to which you constantly return constitutes your truest self. Frequent occupancy of the

feeling of the wish fulfilled is the secret of success.]





Chapter Twenty Three CASE HISTORIES

IT WILL be extremely helpful at this point to cite a number of specific examples of the

successful application of this law. Actual case histories are given. In each of these, the

problem is clearly defined and the way imagination was used to attain the required state

of consciousness is fully described. In each of these instances, the author of this book was

either personally concerned or was told the facts by the person involved.

Case One

This is a story with every detail of which I am personally familiar. In the spring of 1943,

a recently drafted soldier was stationed in a large army camp in Louisiana. He was

intensely eager to get out of the army, but only in an entirely honorable way. The only

way he could do this was to apply for a discharge. The application then required the

approval of his commanding officer to become effective. Based on army regulations, the

decision of the commanding officer was final and could not be appealed. The soldier,

following all the necessary procedure, applied for a discharge. Within four hours, this

application was returned – marked “disapproved”. Convinced he could not appeal the

decision to any higher authority, military or civilian, he turned within to his own

consciousness, determined to rely on the law of assumption.



The soldier realized that his consciousness was the only reality, that his particular state of

consciousness determined the events he would encounter. That night, in the interval

between getting into bed and falling asleep, he concentrated on consciously using the law

of assumption. In imagination, he felt himself to be in his own apartment in New York

City. He visualized his apartment, that is, in his mind’s eye he actually saw his own

apartment, mentally picturing each one of the familiar rooms with all the furnishings

vividly real. With this picture clearly visualized, and lying flat on his back, he completely

relaxed physically. In this way, he induced a state bordering on sleep, at the same time

retaining control of the direction of his attention. When his body was completely

immobilized, he assumed that he was in his own room and felt himself to be lying in his

own bed – a very different feeling from that of lying on an army cot.

In imagination, he rose from the bed, walked from room to room, touching various pieces

of furniture. He then went to the window and, with his hands resting on the sill, looked

out on the street on which his apartment faced. So vivid was all this in his imagination

that he saw in detail the pavement, the railings, the trees and the familiar red brick of the

building on the opposite side of the street. He then returned to his bed and felt himself

drifting off to sleep.



He knew that it was most important in the successful use of this law that at the actual

point of falling asleep, his consciousness be filled with the assumption that he was

already what he wanted to be. All that he did in imagination was based on the assumption

that he was no longer in the army. Night after night, the soldier enacted this drama. Night

after night, in imagination, he felt himself, honorably discharged, back in his home,

seeing all the familiar surroundings and falling asleep in his own bed. This continued for

eight nights.

For eight days, his objective experience continued to be directly opposite to his subjective

experience in consciousness each night, before going to sleep. On the ninth day, orders

came through from Battalion headquarters for the soldier to fill out a new application for

his discharge. Shortly after this was done, he was ordered to report to the Colonel’s

office. During the discussion, the Colonel asked him if he was still desirous of getting out

of the army.

Upon receiving an affirmative reply, the Colonel said that he personally disagreed, and

while he had strong objections to approving of the discharge, he had decided to overlook

these objections and to approve it. Within a few hours, the application was approved and

the soldier, now a civilian, was on a train bound for home.



Case Two

This is a striking story of an extremely successful businessman demonstrating the power

of imagination and the law of assumption. I know this family intimately, and all the

details were told to me by the son described herein. The story begins when he was twenty

years old.

He was next to the oldest in a large family of nine brothers and one sister. The father was

one of the partners in a small merchandising business. In his eighteenth year, the brother

referred to in this story left the country in which they lived and traveled two thousand

miles to enter college and complete his education. Shortly after his first year in college,

he was called home because of a tragic event in connection with his father’s business.

Through the machinations of his associates, the father was not only forced out of his

business, but was the object of false accusations impugning his character and integrity.



At the same time, he was deprived of his rightful share in the equity of the business. The

result was he found himself largely discredited and almost penniless. It was under these

circumstances that the son was called home from college. He returned, his heart filled

with one great resolution.

He was determined that he would become outstandingly successful in business. The first

thing he and his father did was to use the little money they had to start their own

business. They rented a small store on a side street not far from the large business of

which the father had been one of the principal owners. There they started a business bent

upon real service to the community. It was shortly thereafter that the son, with instinctive

awareness that it was bound to work, deliberately used imagination to attain an almost

fantastic objective.

Every day, on the way to and from work, he passed the building of his father’s former

business – the biggest business of its kind in the country. It was one of the largest

buildings, with the most prominent location in the heart of the city. On the outside of the

building was a huge sign on which the name of the firm was painted in large bold letters.



Day after day, as he passed by, a great dream took shape in the son’s mind. He thought of

how wonderful it would be if it was his family that had this great building – his family

that owned and operated this great business.

One day, as he stood gazing at the building, in his imagination, he saw a completely

different name on the huge sign across the entrance. Now the large letters spelled out his

family name (in these case histories actual names are not used; for the sake of clarity, in

this story we will use hypothetical names and assume that the son’s family name was

Lordard).

Where the sign read F. N. Moth & Co., in imagination, he actually saw the name, letter

by letter, N. Lordard & Sons. He remained looking at the sign with his eyes wide open,

imagining that it read N. Lordard & Sons. Twice a day, week after week, month after

month, for two years, he saw his family name over the front of that building. He was

convinced that if he felt strongly enough that a thing was true, it was bound to be the

case, and by seeing in imagination his family name on the sign – which implied that they

owned the business – he became convinced that one day they would own it.



During this period, he told only one person what he was doing. He confided in his

mother, who with loving concern tried to discourage him in order to protect him from

what might be a great disappointment. Despite this, he persisted day after day. Two years

later, the large company failed and the coveted building was up for sale.

On the day of the sale, he seemed no nearer ownership than he had been two years before

when he began to apply the law of assumption. During this period, they had worked hard,

and their customers had implicit confidence in them. However, they had not earned

anything like the amount of money required for the purchase of the property. Nor did

they have any source from which they could borrow the necessary capital. Making even

more remote their chance of getting it was the fact that this was regarded as the most

desirable property in the city and a number of wealthy business people were prepared to

buy it. On the actual day of the sale, to their complete surprise, a man, almost a total

stranger, came into their shop and offered to buy the property for them. (Due to some

unusual conditions involved in this transaction, the son’s family could not even make a

bid for the property.)



They thought the man was joking. However, this was not the case. The man explained

that he had watched them for some time, admired their ability, believed in their integrity,

and that supplying the capital for them to go into business on a large scale was an

extremely sound investment for him. That very day the property was theirs. What the son

had persisted in seeing in his imagination was now a reality. The hunch of the stranger

was more than justified. Today, this family owns not only the particular business referred

to, but owns many of the largest industries in the country in which they live.

The son, seeing his family name over the entrance of this great building, long before it

was actually there, was using exactly the technique that produces results. By assuming

the feeling that he already had what he desired – by making this a vivid reality in his

imagination, by determined persistence, regardless of appearance or circumstance –, he

inevitably caused his dream to become a reality.

Case Three

This is the story of a very unexpected result of an interview with a lady who came to

consult me.



One afternoon, a young grandmother, a businesswoman in New York, came to see me.

She brought along her nineyearold grandson, who was visiting her from his home in

Pennsylvania. In response to her questions, I explained the law of assumption, describing

in detail the procedure to be followed in attaining an objective. The boy sat quietly,

apparently absorbed in a small toy truck, while I explained to the grandmother the

method of assuming the state of consciousness that would be hers were her desire already

fulfilled.

I told her the story of the soldier in camp, who, each night, fell asleep, imagining himself

to be in his own bed in his own home.

When the boy and his grandmother were leaving, he looked up at me with great

excitement and said, “I know what I want and, now, I know how to get it”. Surprised, I

asked him what it was he wanted; he told me he had his heart set on a puppy.

To this, the grandmother vigorously protested, telling the boy that it had been made clear

repeatedly that he could not have a dog under any circumstances… that his father and

mother would not allow it, that the boy was too young to care for it properly, and

furthermore, the father had a deep dislike for dogs – he actually hated to have one around.



All these were arguments the boy, passionately desirous of having a dog, refused to

understand. “Now I know what to do”, he said. “Every night, just as I am going off to

sleep, I am going to pretend that I have a dog and we are going for a walk”. “No”, said

the grandmother, “that is not what Mr. Neville means. This was not meant for you. You

cannot have a dog”.

Approximately six weeks later, the grandmother told me what was to her an astonishing

story. The boy’s desire to own a dog was so intense that he had absorbed all that I had

told his grandmother of how to attain one’s desire – and he believed implicitly that at last

he knew how to get a dog.

Putting this belief into practice, for many nights, the boy imagined a dog was lying in his

bed beside him. In imagination, he petted the dog, actually feeling its fur. Things like

playing with the dog and taking it for a walk filled his mind.

Within a few weeks, it happened. A newspaper in the city in which the boy lived

organized a special program in connection with Kindness to Animals Week. All

schoolchildren were requested to write an essay on “Why I Would Like to Own a Dog”.



After entries from all the schools were submitted and judged, the winner of the contest

was announced. The very same boy who weeks before in my apartment in New York had

told me “Now I know how to get a dog” was the winner. In an elaborate ceremony, which

was publicized with stories and pictures in the newspaper, the boy was awarded a

beautiful collie puppy.

In relating this story, the grandmother told me that if the boy had been given the money

with which to buy a dog, the parents would have refused to do so and would have used it

to buy a bond for the boy or put it in the savings bank for him. Furthermore, if someone

had made the boy a gift of a dog, they would have refused it or given it away.

But the dramatic manner in which they boy got the dog, the way he won the citywide

contest, the stories and pictures in the newspaper, the pride of achievement and joy of the

boy himself all combined to bring about a change of heart in the parents, and they found

themselves doing that which they never conceived possible – they allowed him to keep

the dog.

All this the grandmother explained to me, and she concluded by saying that there was one

particular kind of dog on which the boy had set his heart. It was a collie.

Case Four



This was told by the aunt in the story to the entire audience at the conclusion of one of

my lectures. During the question period following my lecture on the law of assumption, a

lady who had attended many lectures and had had personal consultation with me on a

number of occasions, rose and asked permission to tell a story illustrating how she had

successfully used the law. She said that upon returning home from the lecture the week

before, she had found her niece distressed and terribly upset. The husband of the niece,

who was an officer in the Army Air Force stationed in Atlantic City, had just been

ordered, along with the rest of his unit, to active duty in Europe. She tearfully told her

aunt that the reason she was upset was that she had been hoping her husband would be

assigned to Florida as an Instructor.

They both loved Florida and were anxious to be stationed there and not to be separated.

Upon hearing this story, the aunt stated that there was only one thing to do and that was

to apply immediately the law of assumption. “Let’s actualize it”, she said. “If you were

actually in Florida,what would you do? You would feel the warm breeze. You would

smell the salt air. You would feel your toes sinking down into the sand. Well, let’s do all

that right now”.



They took off their shoes and, turning out the lights, in imagination, they felt themselves

actually in Florida, feeling the warm breeze, smelling the sea air, pushing their toes into

the sand.

Fortyeight hours later, the husband received a change of orders. His new instructions

were to report immediately to Florida as an Air Force Instructor. Five days later, his wife

was on a train to join him. While the aunt, in order to help her niece to attain her desire,

joined in with the niece in assuming the state of consciousness required, she did not go to

Florida. That was not her desire. On the other hand, that was the intense longing of the

niece.

Case Five

This case is especially interesting because of the short interval of time between the

application of this law of assumption and its visible manifestation.

A very prominent woman came to me in deep concern. She maintained a lovely city

apartment and a large country home; but because the many demands made upon her were

greater than her modest income, it was absolutely essential that she rent her apartment if

she and her family were to spend the summer at their country home.



In previous years, the apartment had been rented without difficulty early in the spring, but

the day she came to me, the rental season for summer sublets was over. The apartment

had been in the hands of the best real estate agents for months, but no one had been

interested even in coming to see it.

When she had described her predicament, I explained how the law of assumption could

be brought to bear on solving her problem. I suggested that, by imagining the apartment

had been rented by a person desiring immediate occupancy and by assuming that this was

the case, her apartment actually would be rented. In order to create the necessary feeling

of naturalness – the feeling that it was already a fact that her apartment was rented – I

suggested that she drift off into sleep that very night, imagining herself, not in her

apartment, but in whatever place she would sleep were the apartment suddenly rented.

She quickly grasped the idea and said that in such a situation she would sleep in her

country home, even though it was not yet opened for the summer.

This interview took place on Thursday. At nine o’clock the following Saturday morning,

she phoned me from her home in the country – excited and happy.



She told me that on Thursday night she had fallen asleep actually imagining and feeling

that she was sleeping in her other bed in her country home many miles away from the

city apartment she was occupying. On Friday, the very next day, a highly desirable

tenant, one who met all her requirements as a responsible person, not only rented the

apartment, but rented it on the condition that he could move in that very day.

Case Six

Only the most complete and intense use of the law of assumption could have produced

such results in this extreme situation. Four years ago, a friend of our family asked that I

talk with his twentyeightyearold son, who was not expected to live. He was suffering

from a rare heart disease. This disease resulted in a disintegration of the organ. Long and

costly medical care had been of no avail.

Doctors held out no hope for recovery. For a long time, the son had been confined to his

bed. His body had shrunk to almost a skeleton, and he could talk and breathe only with

great difficulty. His wife and two small children were home when I called, and his wife

was present throughout our discussion.



I started by telling him that there was only one solution to any problem, and that solution

was a change of attitude. Since talking exhausted him, I asked him to nod in agreement if

he understood clearly what I said. This he agreed to do.

I described the facts underlying the law of consciousness – in fact that consciousness was

the only reality. I told him that the way to change any condition was to change his state of

consciousness concerning it. As a specific aid in helping him to assume the feeling of

already being well, I suggested that in imagination, he see the doctor’s face expressing

incredulous amazement in finding him recovered, contrary to all reason, from the last

stages of an incurable disease, that he see him double checking in his examination and

hear him saying over and over, “It’s a miracle – it’s a miracle”.

He not only understood all this clearly, but he believed it implicitly. He promised that he

would faithfully follow this procedure. His wife, who had been listening intently, assured

me that she, too, would diligently use the law of assumption and her imagination in the

same way as her husband. The following day I sailed for New York – all this taking place

during a winter vacation in the tropics.



Several months later, I received a letter saying the son had made a miraculous recovery.

On my next visit, I met him in person. He was in perfect health, actively engaged in

business and thoroughly enjoying the many social activities of his friends and family.

He told me that from the day I left, he never had any doubt that “it” would work. He

described how he had faithfully followed the suggestion I had made to him and day after

day had lived completely in the assumption of already being well and strong.

Now, four years after his recovery, he is convinced that the only reason he is here today

is due to his successful use of the law of assumption.

Case Seven

This story illustrates the successful use of the law by a New York business executive.



In the fall of 1950, an executive of one of New York’s prominent banks discussed with

me a serious problem with which he was confronted. He told me that the outlook for his

personal progress and advancement was very dim. Having reached middle age and

feeling that a marked improvement in position and income was justified, he had “talked it

out” with his superiors. They frankly told him that any major improvement was

impossible and intimated that if he was dissatisfied, he could seek another job. This, of

course, only increased his uneasiness.

In our talk, he explained that he had no great desire for really big money, but that he had

to have a substantial income in order to maintain his home comfortably and to provide for

the education of his children in good preparatory schools and colleges. This he found

impossible on his present income. The refusal of the bank to assure him of any

advancement in the near future resulted in a feeling of discontent and an intense desire to

secure a better position with considerably more money.



He confided in me that the kind of job he would like better than anything in the world

was one in which he managed the investment funds of a large institution such as a

foundation or great university. In explaining the law of assumption, I stated that his

present situation was only a manifestation of his concept of himself and declared that if

he wanted to change the circumstances in which he found himself, he could do so by

changing his concept of himself. In order to bring about this change of consciousness,

and thereby a change in his situation, I asked him to follow this procedure every night

just before he fell asleep:

In imagination, he was to feel he was retiring at the end of one of the most important and

successful days of his life. He was to imagine that he had actually closed a deal that very

day to join the kind of organization he yearned to be with and in exactly the capacity he

wanted.

I suggested to him that if he succeeded in completely filling his mind with this feeling, he

would experience a definite sense of relief. In this mood, his uneasiness and discontent

would be a thing of the past. He would feel the contentment that comes with the

fulfillment of desire. I wound up by assuring him that if he did this faithfully, he would

inevitably get the kind of position he wanted.



This was the first week of December. Night after night, without exception, he followed

this procedure. Early in February, a director of one of the wealthiest foundations in the

world asked this executive if he would be interested in joining the foundation in an

executive capacity handling investments. After some brief discussion, he accepted.

Today, at a substantially higher income and with the assurance of steady progress, this

man is in a position far exceeding all that he had hoped for.

Case Eight

The man and wife in this story have attended my lectures for a number of years. It is an

interesting illustration of the conscious use of this law by two people concentrating on the

same objective at one time.

This man and wife were an exceptionally devoted couple. Their life was completely

happy and entirely free from any problems or frustrations.



For some time, they had planned to move into a larger apartment. The more they thought

about it, the more they realized that what they had their hearts set on was a beautiful

penthouse. In discussing it together, the husband explained that he wanted one with a

huge window looking out on a magnificent view. The wife said she would like to have

one side of the walls mirrored from top to bottom. They both wanted to have a

woodburning fireplace. It was a “must” that the apartment be in New York City.

For months, they had searched for just such an apartment in vain. In fact, the situation in

the city was such that the securing of any kind of apartment was almost an impossibility.

They were so scarce that not only were there waiting lists for them, but all sorts of special

deals including premiums, the buying of furniture etc. were involved.

New apartments were being leased long before they were completed, many being rented

from the blueprints of the building.

Early in the spring, after months of fruitless seeking, they finally located one which they

seriously considered. It was a penthouse apartment in a building just being completed on

upper Fifth Avenue facing Central Park. It had one serious drawback.



Being a new building, it was not subject to rent control, and the couple felt the yearly

rental was exorbitant. In fact, it was several thousand dollars a year more than they had

considered paying.

During the spring months of March and April, they continued looking at various

penthouses throughout the city, but they always came back to this one.

Finally, they decided to increase the amount they would pay substantially and made a

proposition which the agent for the building agreed to forward to the owners for

consideration.

It was at this point, without discussing it with each other, each determined to apply the

law of assumption. It was not until later that each learned what the other had done.

Night after night, they both fell asleep in imagination in the apartment they were

considering. The husband, lying with his eyes closed, would imagine that his bedroom

windows were overlooking the park. He would imagine going to the window the first

thing in the morning and enjoying the view. He felt himself sitting on the terrace

overlooking the park, having cocktails with his wife and friends, all thoroughly enjoying

it. He filled his mind with actually feeling himself in the penthouse and on the terrace.

During all this time, unknown to him, his wife was doing the same thing.



Several weeks went by without any decision on the part of the owners, but they continued

to imagine as they fell asleep each night that they were actually sleeping in the penthouse.

One day, to their complete surprise, one of the employees in the apartment building in

which they lived told them that the penthouse there was vacant. They were astonished,

because theirs was one of the most desirable buildings in the city with a perfect location

right on Central Park. They knew there was a long waiting list of people trying to get an

apartment in their building. The fact that a penthouse had unexpectedly become available

was kept quiet by the management because they were not in a position to consider any

applicants for it. Upon learning that it was vacant, this couple immediately made a

request that it be rented to them, only to be told that this was impossible. The fact was

that not only were there several people on a waiting list for a penthouse in the building,

but it was actually promised to one family. Despite this, the couple had a series of

meetings with the management, at the conclusion of which the apartment was theirs.



The building being subject to rent control, their rental was just about what they had

planned to pay when they first started looking for a penthouse. The location, the

apartment itself, and the large terrace surrounding it on the South, West, and North was

beyond all their expectations – and in the living room, on one side, is a giant window 15

feet by 8 feet with a magnificent view of Central Park; one wall is mirrored from floor to

ceiling, and there is a woodburning fireplace.



Chapter Twenty Four FAILURE

THIS BOOK would not be complete without some discussion of failure in the attempted

use of the law of assumption. It is entirely possible that you either have had or will have a

number of failures in this respect – many of them in really important matters. If, having

read this book, having a thorough knowledge of the application and working of the law of

assumption, you faithfully apply it in an effort to attain some intense desire and fail, what

is the reason? If, to the question “Did you persist enough?”, you can answer “Yes” – and

still the attainment of your desire was not realized, what is the reason for failure?



The answer to this is the most important factor in the successful use of the law of

assumption. The time it takes your assumption to become fact, your desire to be fulfilled,

is directly proportionate to the naturalness of your feeling of already being what you want

to be – of already having what you desire. The fact that it does not feel natural to you to

be what you imagine yourself to be is the secret of your failure. Regardless of your

desire, regardless of how faithfully and intelligently you follow the law, if you do not feel

natural about what you want to be, you will not be it. If it does not feel natural to you to

get a better job, you will not get a better job. The whole principle is vividly expressed by

the Bible phrase “you die in your sins” [John 8:24] – you do not transcend from your

present level to the state desired.

How can this feeling of naturalness be achieved?

The secret lies in one word – imagination. For example, this is a very simple illustration:

assume that you are securely chained to a large heavy iron bench. You could not possibly

run, in fact you could not even walk. In these circumstances, it would not be natural for

you to run. You could not even feel that it was natural for you to run. But you could

easily imagine yourself running. In that instant, while your consciousness is filled with

your imagined running, you have forgotten that you are bound. In imagination, your

running was completely natural.



The essential feeling of naturalness can be achieved by persistently filling your

consciousness with imagination – imagining yourself being what you want to be or

having what you desire. Progress can spring only from your imagination, from your

desire to transcend your present level. What you truly and literally must feel is that with

your imagination, all things are possible.

You must realize that changes are not caused by caprice, but by a change of

consciousness. You may fail to achieve or sustain the particular state of consciousness

necessary to produce the effect you desire. But, once you know that consciousness is the

only reality and is the sole creator of your particular world and have burnt this truth into

your whole being, then you know that success or failure is entirely in your own hands.

Whether or not you are disciplined enough to sustain the required state of consciousness

in specific instances has no bearing on the truth of the law itself – that an assumption, if

persisted in, will harden into fact.



The certainty of the truth of this law must remain despite great disappointment and

tragedy – even when you “see the light of life go out and all the world go on as though it

were still day”. You must not believe that because your assumption failed to materialize,

the truth that assumptions do materialize is a lie. If your assumptions are not fulfilled, it is

because of some error or weakness in your consciousness. However, these errors and

weaknesses can be overcome. Therefore, press on to the attainment of ever higher levels

by feeling that you already are the person you want to be. And remember that the time it

takes your assumption to become reality is proportionate to the naturalness of being it.

“Man surrounds himself with the true image of himself. Every spirit builds itself a

house and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world a heaven. Know then

that the world exists for you. For you the phenomenon is perfect. What we are,

that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can

do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth. Caesar called his house, Rome; you

perhaps call yours a cobbler’s trade; a hundred acres of land, or a scholar’s

garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs,

though without fine name. Build therefore your own world. As fast as you conform

your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportion.”

Emerson



Chapter Twenty Five FAITH

A miracle is the name given, by those who have no faith, to the works of faith. Faith is

the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. [Hebrews 11:1]

THE VERY reason for the law of assumption is contained in this quotation. If there were

not a deepseated awareness that that which you hope for had substance and was possible

of attainment, it would be impossible to assume the consciousness of being or having it.

It is the fact that creation is finished and everything exists that stirs you to hope –and

hope, in turn, implies expectation, and without expectation of success it would be

impossible to use consciously the law of assumption. “Evidence” is a sign of actuality.



Thus, this quotation means that faith is the awareness of the reality of that which you

assume, [a conviction of the reality of things which you do not see, the mental perception

of the reality of the invisible].

Consequently, it is obvious that a lack of faith means disbelief in the existence of that

which you desire.

Inasmuch as that which you experience is the faithful reproduction of your state of

consciousness, lack of faith will mean perpetual failure in any conscious use of the law of

assumption. In all the ages of history, faith has played a major role. It permeates all the

great religions of the world, it is woven all through mythology, and yet today it is almost

universally misunderstood.

Contrary to popular opinion, the efficacy of faith is not due to the work of any outside

agency. It is from first to last an activity of your own consciousness. The Bible is full of

many statements about faith, of the true meaning of which few are aware. Here are some

typical examples:

Unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not

profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. [Hebrews 4:2]



In this quotation, the “us” and “them” make clear that all of us hear the gospel.

“Gospel” means “good news”. Very obviously, good news for you would be that you had

attained your desire. This is always being “preached” to you by your infinite self. To hear

that which you desire does exist and you need only to accept it in consciousness is good

news. Not “mixing with faith” means to deny the reality of that which you desire. Hence

there is no “profit” (attainment) possible.

O, faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? [Matthew 17:17]

The meaning of “faithless” has been made clear. “Perverse” means turned the wrong

way, in other words, the consciousness of not being what you want to be. To be faithless,

that is, to disbelieve in the reality of that which you assume, is to be perverse.

“How long shall I be with you” means that the fulfillment of your desire is predicated

upon your change to the right state of consciousness. It is just as though that which you

desire is telling you that it will not be yours until you turn from being faithless and

perverse to righteousness. As already stated, righteousness is the consciousness of

already being what you want to be.



By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing

Him Who is invisible. [Hebrews 11:27]

“Egypt” means darkness, belief in many gods (causes). The “king” symbolizes the power

of outside conditions or circumstances. “He” is your concept of yourself as already being

what you want to be. “Enduring as seeing Him Who is invisible” means persisting in the

assumption that your desire is already fulfilled. Thus, this quotation means that, by

persisting in the assumption that you already are the person you want to be, you rise

above all doubt, fear, and belief in the power of outside conditions or circumstances; and

your world inevitably conforms to your assumption.

The dictionary definitions of faith,

“the ascent of the mind or understanding to the truth” – “unwavering adherence to

principle”,

are so pertinent that they might well have been written with the law of assumption in

mind.

Faith does not question – Faith knows.





Chapter Twenty Six DESTINY

YOUR DESTINY is that which you must inevitably experience. Really it is an infinite

number of individual destinies, each of which when attained is the starting place for a

new destiny.

Since life is infinite, the concept of an ultimate destiny is inconceivable. When we

understand that consciousness is the only reality, we know that it is the only creator. This

means that your consciousness is the creator of your destiny. The fact is, you are creating

your destiny every moment, whether you know it or not. Much that is good and even

wonderful has come into your life without your having any inkling that you were the

creator of it.

However, the understanding of the causes of your experience, and the knowledge that

you are the sole creator of the contents of your life, both good and bad, not only make

you a much keener observer of all phenomena, but through the awareness of the power of

your own consciousness, intensify your appreciation of the richness and grandeur of life.



Regardless of occasional experiences to the contrary, it is your destiny to rise to higher

and higher states of consciousness, and to bring into manifestation more and more of

creation’s infinite wonders. Actually, you are destined to reach the point where you

realize that, through your own desire, you can consciously create your successive

destinies.

The study of this book, with its detailed exposition of consciousness and the operation of

the law of assumption, is the master key to the conscious attainment of your highest

destiny.

This very day start your new life. Approach every experience in a new frame of mind –

with a new state of consciousness.

Assume the noblest and the best for yourself in every respect and continue therein.

Make believe – great wonders are possible.



Chapter Twenty Seven REVERENCE

Never wouldst Thou have made anything if Thou hadst not loved it. [Wisdom 11:24]

IN ALL creation, in all eternity, in all the realms of your infinite being, the most

wonderful fact is that which is stressed in the first chapter of this book. You are God.

You are the “I AM that I AM”. You are consciousness. You are the creator. This is the

mystery, this is the great secret known by the seers, prophets, and mystics throughout the

ages.

This is the truth that you can never know intellectually.

Who is this you? That it is you, John Jones or Mary Smith, is absurd. It is the

consciousness which knows that you are John Jones or Mary Smith. It is your greater

self, your deeper self, your infinite being. Call it what you will. The important thing is

that it is within you, it is you, it is your world. It is this fact that underlies the immutable

law of assumption. It is upon this fact that your very existence is built. It is this fact that

is the foundation of every chapter of this book. No, you cannot know this intellectually,

you cannot debate it, you cannot substantiate it.



You can only feel it.

You can only be aware of it.

Becoming aware of it, one great emotion permeates your being. You live with a perpetual

feeling of reverence. The knowledge that your creator is the very self of yourself and

never would have made you had he not loved you must fill your heart with devotion, yes,

with adoration.

One knowing glimpse of the world about you at any single instant of time is sufficient to

fill you with profound awe and a feeling of worship.

It is when your feeling of reverence is most intense that you are closest to God, and when

you are closest to God, your life is richest.

Our deepest feelings are precisely those we are least able to express, and even in the act

of adoration, silence is our highest praise.



THE SOURCE

Man is seeking the source, the cause, of the phenomena of life. In his search, he grows

and outgrows his many concepts of God until he finds the one God he can never outgrow,

and therefore can never lose. That is the God which he finds in a first person, present

tense experience.



Here is a true story that verges on this truth. While a friend was shaving, his little girl

watched, and questioning him, asked: "Where does God really live?" and he absent

mindedly answered: "In the well." Laughing at his silly answer, the little girl ran to tell

her mother. At breakfast that morning when his wife asked why he had made such a

statement, he could not answer, but later that day he remembered. When he was a small

boy in Poland, a band of gypsies passed by and stopped at the well in his parent's

courtyard. One in particular held his attention. He was a giant of a man, with a

shortcropped red beard. As the little boy watched, the man drew the wooden bucket of

water from the well. His posture and great hands made the bucket appear as though it

weighed no more than a teacup, and as he drank, the water trickled down his beard and

onto his chest. When the man was finished, he untied a multicolored silk scarf and

mopping his face, he wiped his beard; and leaning over, he looked deep into the well for

what seemed to the child a very long time.



Curious, the little boy tried to climb the well's side to see what was inside. Seeing him,

the man smiled, picked the small boy up, and said: "Do you know where God lives?"

Shaking his head no, the man held him over the well, and said: "Look." In the stillness of

that water the boy saw his own reflection and said: "That's me!" and the man replied:

"Ah, now you know where God lives."

This concept is nearer to the truth of God than ninetynine percent of the people hold.

Here was a socalled ignorant gypsy, traveling from town to town, who knew where God

lived and turned to no other. Seeing the well, he knew there would be water. Owned, yes,

by the one who lived in the manor, but they would not stop him from using "his" water.

Having no desire to accumulate things, this giant of a man taught this little boy a

marvelous lesson for all of us to remember. When you see your reflection, whether in a

mirror or in the surface of a pool, you are looking into the face of God.

Now, the first verse of Genesis and the first verse of John are equated. Genesis begins:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and John tells us: "In the

beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."



In Hebrew and other Semitic languages, the words for "head" and "beginning" have the

same root. Achaia, one of the great scholars of the first century and a friend and close

companion of Paul, translated the ancient manuscript of Hebrew into Greek. In his

translation he used the word "head" in place of "beginning". His manuscript reads: "In the

head God created the heavens and the earth." This Hebrew word "rosh" is defined in

Strong's Concordance as "the top; the highest part; the beginning; the head; the chief

cornerstone." So, it is in the head that God created the heavens and the earth.

Blake, claiming that his great poem "Jerusalem" was dictated from on high, stated: "All

that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination of which this

world of mortality is but a shadow."

Blake meant us to take that statement literally. All that you are conscious of is within

you. Where else could it be? Looking out, and seeing this world as mechanical and not

spiritual, causes you to remain lost in your search, for the world is your minor. You are

its source. Everything you perceive is within, for it is in the head that God created the

heavens and the earth.



I am not speaking of your mortal head. It is only a symbol, a reflection of your immortal

one. The day will come when your mortal head will return to dust, but there is a head that

survives this one. A head capable of instantly restoring and clothing you in a mortal

frame just like your present one only young to find yourself in a terrestrial world just

like this. That is the head in which God sleeps. It is there that the pattern is buried. And it

is in that head that the pattern man unfolds to reveal you as the source.

Man finds it difficult to believe he is the cause of all life, yet I say there is no other. Look

into the eye of your friend or enemy and you will see only yourself. You will see

Jacob, the apple (little man) of God's eye. Imagination (God) is forever seeing himself

reflected in the world, just as you, looking into the eye of another, see your reflected self.

So the little boy looked into the well, and upon seeing his reflection said: "It's me," and

the wise man replied: "Ah, now you know who God is."

Man can be told over and over again that he is not going to find God as another, but he

cannot believe it until that pattern buried in the head unfolds. Then and only then will he

know beyond all doubt who God is.



I know who the Lord is, for I stood in his presence. I saw his form and conversed with

him as man to man. His appearance was the likeness and similitude of love, and when we

embraced I was incorporated into that one body of love.

If God is the beginning of the universal humanity, and I am one with the body of God,

and one with the spirit of God, then I am God; therefore, I saw in advance what I really

look like. Divine appearance, wearing the likeness of love, questioned me and I had no

other answer than love. What could be greater than what I was looking at? So when he

incorporated me into his body of love, he incorporated me into universal humanity.

Having seen the face of radiant love, and being incorporated into the body of love, I

cannot lose my God. I have found him to be my own wonderful human imagination, and

cannot outgrow him. I cannot go elsewhere and I cannot lose this God. He is my God

forever and forever, and he is my very self!



Having revealed himself to me, he and I became one in a first person, singular, present

tense experience. Then everything said of the pattern man we call Jesus, unfolded in me;

and I now say, without embarrassment or any bowing of the head, I am He. As long as I

continue to wear my frail little body of flesh and blood I cannot claim my heavenly

inheritance, but I know it will be instantly mine when I leave this body for the last time.

There is conferred upon the Risen Christ, in the experience of men, the divine name of

Lord. When Philip said: "O Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied," the Risen

Christ replied: "I have been so long with you and yet you do not know me? He who has

seen me, has seen the Father." This experience takes place after the resurrection, for the

divine name of Lord is placed upon the Risen Christ.



This story is told as though a man of flesh and blood is speaking, but it is not. Scripture is

completely supernatural. The discovery of God is supernatural, for he reveals himself

only to the one who has the experience. And when you tell it, those who hear either

believe your story or they disbelieve it. If someone has a concept of God as a little

physical man, that concept must be outgrown; and man must grow and grow before he

can comprehend what you are saying. So maybe those who hear your words can't take it,

but do not despair; continue to tell it and maybe one percent of those present will grasp it.

It doesn't matter how many can hear with understanding, you offer it anyway.

Dwell upon this change in meaning. It is not in the beginning of time and space, but in

the head that the word was and is with God, for the word is God. It was in the head that

God created the heavens and the earth, so where else would you go to find anything?

In the September 7, 1957 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, Harold H. Martin wrote an

article entitled, "The Amazing Kennedys." In it he said: "Kennedy admirers look forward

confidently to the day that they will see Jack in the White House, Bobby in the Cabinet as

Attorney General, and Teddy as a senator from Massachusetts."



Here is a family who dared to break one of the most frightful barriers which ever existed

in our country concerning the White House to be a Catholic! My friend David always

used the word, "WASP", (meaning White AngloSaxon Protestant), claiming that if you

were not a WASP you could not seek the highest office in our land. Well, Kennedy was

white, AngloSaxon, and Catholic. His entire family were ardent Catholics, yet they

broke that barrier. Why? Because imagining creates reality.

Back in 1957, the imaginal acts of Kennedy admirers were printed for all to see. They did

not say that Bobby would have a cabinet post, but specified what post! Or that Teddy

would be a senator, but from which state he would represent and it all came to pass. If it

did not last, that is not the point; it came to pass! And because of the assassinations, their

imaginal acts will remain indelibly impressed upon the history of our country. Lincoln, as

well as those who are not important as presidents, live longer in the minds of men when

they are assassinated. So here we find that ardent admirers, determining what they

admired, persisted, and it came to pass. Why? Because the whole thing is within!



Can you conceive of a desire and be fervent about it? Can you want the grace of God

with the same intensity as the psalmist who said: "As the hart panteth after the water

brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Here is a little deer (for that is what the

hart is) knowing that wild beasts prey upon every animal drinking there, desires water

with such intensity he is willing to brave anything to get to that little pool. If you could

become that thirsty for God, you would find him in yourself, in a first person, present

tense experience, for you will never find him in any other way.

When I found him I was thrilled beyond measure. Having been taught God was another, I

had formed a mental concept of him that comforted me and allowed me to pray to

someone other than myself. But when I found him, I found him in myself, as myself!

Then I knew I could not pray to another; I must turn within and appropriate, for

everything is contained within my own wonderful human imagination!

Achaia's translation was really a fantastic gift to man. But unable to believe it men

chose another definition, and now all translations read: "In the beginning"; yet it could

have been; "In the head God created the heavens and the earth, for in the head is the

Word, and the Word is with God and the Word is God."



Now, if by God all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was

made, and you are confronted with a frightening problem did God not make it alive for

you? And can he not unmake anything he made? So if, by your admiration for a certain

family, you see them exactly as you want to see them, and believe to the degree that you

print your projection in an international magazine, and it comes to pass in three years

have you not found the source, the cause of life?

This brings me to a point. A lady recently asked what was wrong with her, because

knowing in the depth of her soul that she was right when confronted with another

opinion, she remains quiet, unable to voice her opposition.

In the Book of John, he tells an incredible story, saying: "I am God the Father. When you

see me, you see the Father. Do you not know that I am in the Father and the Father in

me?" Making one fantastic statement after the other, he adds: "I have told you before it

takes place, so that when it does take place you will believe that I am he." For we are

told: "Unless you believe that I am he, you die in your sins." (John 1314)



John emphasizes over and over again that you must believe you are the one you would

like to be, or you will never become it. Rather, you will remain what you believe yourself

to be right now. Your belief is always externalizing itself on the screen of space. It has to,

for it is in you and not out there.

When your belief becomes a fact and appears solidly real on the outside, it is because it is

supported by you on the inside. The day you cease to believe in it, it will fade, for

everything must be built on the foundation of belief. I believe I am a success. I will

remain a success only to the extent that I continue to believe I am. The day I stop

believing, failure enters and success fades.

You must believe you are in a certain state. You cannot forget it if you want to

externalize that state. You may drop it after reaching a certain point, but if you want to

keep it alive, you must do it within yourself; for nothing comes into being unsupported by

an imaginal act, and nothing remains unless supported by that act. The day imaginal

support is withdrawn the thing begins to vanish, and ceases to be in your world. This is

true for a marriage, a friendship, or a business. If you know what you want, give it to

yourself, for there is only one source of causation. That source is God. He is the dreamer

in you who will awaken from this wonderful dream of life; and when he does, you will

realize you have been dreaming all along.



Many great poets have tried to tell this, but man cannot comprehend that the poet in

touch with a deeper layer of his own being was awakened and recorded his experiences,

until it happens in the individual. The dreamer in you is God. It is he who is the source,

the cause of your life. Dream fervently! Dream with intensity! Use the recorded

techniques such as, "Come close, my son that I may feel you." You can, by a spiritual

sensation, persuade yourself that you are experiencing something physically.

I know a lady in New York City who as a combination seamstress and designer was

not earning much, and wanted not only to have a better income, but to do more designing

than sewing. When she discussed this with me and told me the amount of money she

wanted to make, I urged her not to limit herself asking: "Would you like to supervise

those who do the sewing, as well as doing the designing?" And when she told me she

would love that, I urged her to write down the amount of money she would like to make,

deduct her taxes, and determine the balance.



Figuring it out to the penny and believing she would be paid in cash, this lady felt the

envelope containing the bills and coins she would receive. Shaking the envelope, she

heard the change rattle. Then she tore off the end of the envelope and let the money fall

on the table, pulled out the bills and smelled them. (Do you know you can smell money?

It has an odor of its very own, like nothing else). Then this lady counted the money, down

to the very penny.

The next day, while in her room at a hotel on 34th street, her telephone rang and she was

advised that a gentleman was downstairs and wanted to see her. She had never met this

man before, but knew his reputation, and certainly never dreamed of him calling her. But

she met him in the lobby, where they discussed business on the terms that she would be

more and more the designer and less and less the seamstress. She then named the salary

that we had discussed, and when he agreed, she promised to start working for him the

following Monday. One week later, when she opened her envelope, she counted her

money out to the very penny she had imagined only a week before. Now, how can you

call that coincidence? She was eager to make a change and believing she played the

part of Isaac.



Isaac was blind. He could not see, but he could feel. Knowing one son was covered with

hair while the other had none, Isaac desired the one he could touch with feeling. When

Jacob approached, clothed in hair, Isaac said: "Although your voice sounds like Jacob,

you feel like Esau." Then, basing his conviction upon feeling rather than sound, Isaac

gave his son Jacob the right of birth. And when Esau returned to discover that his brother

had deceived his father, Isaac said: "I have given him your blessing and I cannot take it

back."

This lady gave her blessing to a better job and more money. Clothing it in tones of

reality, she felt its existence and gave it the right to be born. This she did on Friday, and

the very next day the new state came into being.



I urge you not to despair. If you have tried and tried to imagine, yet failed, don't give up,

try to be more intense. Try to be more believing concerning the reality of your imaginal

act. Man, believing in the mechanism of the universe, finds it difficult to see it as

imaginal, but it is. Tell the story of the Kennedys to the average man and he will say: so

what? He cannot see that story as confirmation of the fact that imagining creates reality.

You could tell him a hundred such stories, but steeped in believing that this world is

mechanical and must be moved on the outside man finds it difficult to understand that

the world will reshuffle itself to reflect any change that takes place in the individual. But

the change takes place in the imagination, not in the world!

Dwell upon the fact that it is in the head that God created the heavens and the earth.

Knowing where the head is, you will know where the source is. Then you will know

where God is, for he is in the head.



Look in the mirror and see God! Look at anything that reflects your face, and you are

seeing God. Then one day when you stand in His presence you will know him. Called the

Universal Humanity, because He takes one after the other into his one body, when you

see that body, you see love! You commune as man to man, embrace, and become one

with the risen Christ, even though it will take 30 years for confirmation to appear. But the

joy that is in store for you when the time is fulfilled and scripture erupts, is well worth the

wait, for you will experience all that is said of Jesus Christ even to God's Son calling

you father.

Scripture really means what it says, for it is David who claims the Lord called him his

son (Psalms 2) and it is you who will declare: "I have found David. He cried to me, 'Thou

art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.' " (Psalms 89) David is buried in

the head, where God created everything in the heavens and the earth. It is in the head that

God is buried and it is from the head that his fatherhood is revealed.



How else would you ever know you were God the Father, unless his son revealed it to

you? This experience is in store for everyone. I know, for I am not theorizing or

speculating, but telling you exactly what I have experienced. It was David who made me

conscious of being God the Father. I know you are, too; but only when David reveals

himself to you, will you find the God you cannot lose or outgrow. Where did I awaken?

Was it not in my head? From what area of my body did I emerge? Was it not from my

head? And how could Christ emerge from one in whom he is not present? If he did not

now exist in me, he could not emerge from me. And if he ascended in me, he had to first

have descended in me. He descended like a bolt of lightening and ascended in the same

manner; for in the beginning God placed himself in the head, and it is in that head that I

am dreaming the dream of life. Everything is contained within the head of man. The

explosion took place and my son stood before me in my head. It was my head which

became luminous as the heavens became transparent. The dove descended on my finger,

but kissed my head. Here was the Holy Spirit smothering my head with affection in

confirmation of the work God had done, and of which he was well pleased.

Now I must tell it and tell it and continue to tell it, knowing that some will accept my

words while others will not. But they will one day, when they have outgrown the gods of

their own making; for we all grow and outgrow, grow and outgrow.



So when you read scripture always bear in mind the completely supernatural characters

recorded there. See it as a drama that takes place not out there, but in the depth of your

own soul.

Try to become as fervent of something for yourself as the Kennedy admirers were for

him. Become as intense for self or a friend as they were for the family. Nothing was more

impossible in our political setup than to be a Catholic and still aspire to the White House;

but they did it and he got it and you can, too.

No matter what it is you desire, remember: nothing is impossible. What is now proved

was once only imagined, so begin by imagining a state and persuading yourself that you

are in it. Blake said: "The ancients believed that if you are selfpersuaded, it was so.

There was a time in Imagination when a firm persuasion removed mountains." You can

remove the seemingly mountainous obstacles which confront you by simply ignoring

them and assuming the end. And if you have to go over the mountain, you will, or the

mountain will be removed. Whatever is necessary to be removed for you to fulfill what

you have assumed, will be done for you as long as you remain faithful to yourself, the

source of all life. Now let us go into the silence.





THE GAME OF LIFE

The game of life, like every game, is played within the framework of certain rules, and

any violation of those rules carries a penalty. You and I are playing this game from

morning to night, and should therefore learn its rules in order to play it well.

Ecclesiastes gives us this rule: "Even in your thought do not curse the king, or in your

bed chamber curse the rich, for a bird will carry your voice or some winged creature tell

the matter." And Mark gives us another, as: "Whatever you desire, believe that you have

received it and you will." If you must believe you have received your desire in order to

attain it, then you must start your game by believing it is finished. You must feel yourself

into and partaking of your goal. And you must persist in that feeling in order to achieve

it.

Now, another rule is said in this manner: "Cast your bread upon the water and you will

find it after many days." In other words, do not be concerned as to how it is going to

happen just do it. This statement hasn't a thing to do with doing good as the world

defines the word. Jesus was a carpenter. The word means one who produces from seed

as a flower, a tree, the earth.



The prophecy of the Old Testament is the seed which a carpenter called Jesus brings to

birth. He comes not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them.

The word, 'bread' in the statement: "Cast your bread upon the waters," means to devour;

to consume. Water is a euphemism for semen, that living water which carries the sperm

of man. The creative act is psychological, not physical; yet the intentions are the same.

You must cast your bread upon the waters with passion! You must be consumed with the

desire and literally on fire with love for its possession, for an intense imaginal act will

always draw unto itself its own affinity.

Winston Churchill departed this world a very successful man; however, during his life he

had many failures. Then one day he made this discovery, which changed his life. These

are his words: "The mood decides the fortunes of people, rather than the fortunes decide

the mood."

Let me put it this way: The game of life is won by those who compare their thoughts and

feelings within to what appears on the outside. And the game is lost by those who do not

recognize this law. Being consumed by anger, they see no change in their world. But if

they would change their mood, their circumstances would change. Then they would

recognize the law behind their world.



There are those who are depressed all day long and remain that way all of their life. I

remember back in New York City, when I would see certain people walking in my

direction I would want to cross the street, because I did not want to hear their depressing

stories. They would spend hours telling about their wife or husband, their children or

grandchildren, and each story geared to depression. Never changing their mood, their

world never changed. Seeing no change, they would not recognize a law between the

inner world they maintain and the outer world of response.

But if you apply this law you can predict your future. Feel a new mood rise within you.

Sustain it and soon you will meet people who embody this new state. Even inanimate

objects are under the sway of these affinities. In a certain mood I have gone to my library

and removed a book I have not touched in years. And when I casually open it, I find

confirmation of my mood. A table, though remaining the same, will be seen differently

based upon your momentary mood, for everything reflects it. It is your mood which

decides your fortune, not your fortune that decides your mood. People feeling poor attract

poverty, not knowing that if they felt rich they would attract wealth.



In the Book of Proverbs, it is said: "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord." Now, the

lamp of the Lord is the light of the world. We contain that light; and nature the genie is

our slave, fashioning the world as our mood dictates. By nature I mean all of humanity

the animal, plant, and mineral world. In fact, everything that appears on the outside is a

slave of this lamp. Fashioned from within, this slave will fashion your world to reflect

your thoughts; and no power can stop their fulfillment.

Become aware of what you are thinking, and you will recognize a law between your

mood and your surrounding circumstances. Then you will predict with certainty, because

you know certain events being in harmony with your mood must appear. Everything

whether a living being or an inanimate object such as a book must appear to bear

witness to your mood.

Now, in order to play the game of life, you must know what you want to replace what

you have. When you know what it is, you must assume the feeling that you have it.

Although your reason and senses will deny its existence, persistence will cause your

assumption to harden into fact and objectify itself upon your screen of space. Play the

game this way. You may think it doesn't work, but that's because you have not tried it.

You may believe the idea is stupid, but I tell you: the mood decides your fortune. Believe

me, for I have proved this principle over and over again in my life.



It was Winston Churchill who galvanized the Western world by putting his words into

practice. In spite of the horrors and bombing in London, Mr. Churchill sustained the

mood of victory, and even in the darkest days he would not waver. Knowing the mood

would externalize itself around the world, he sustained the mood while his opponents,

not knowing the law, put their trust in armies and machinery of war.

Mr. Churchill's wonderful statement, recorded in the "New York Times," has proved

itself to me. By simply catching the mood I have changed the circumstances of my life.

Now I teach others how to do it. I invite you to ask yourself how you would feel if your

desire was now fulfilled. Toy with the thought. Play with it a while and the mood will

come upon you. Keep that mood by playing with the senses it evokes, and watch your

world change to match your new mood.

Let me tell you of a lady I know who, in her middle sixties, had nothing when she put this

principle into practice. Every morning as she soaked in the tub prior to going to her $75 a

week job, she would say to herself: "Something wonderful is happening to me now." She

kept playing upon the mood, toying with the feeling that something wonderful was

happening. That very week she received her first breakthrough.



For thirtyodd years this lady had attended the opera, concerts, and Broadway shows,

with an intimate friend. Every night they dined in some fabulous restaurant, but he had

told her many times he would never give her any money. But he suddenly had a change

of heart and signed over a one hundred thousand dollar trust fund to her, to be spent

immediately as she so desired.

A short time later, she began to apply the law to a greater degree and he again set up

another one hundred thousand dollar fund for her. Now, this lady whose rent is $165 per

month can't spend the income she receives from a two hundred thousand dollar fund,

plus her social security; but she isn't satisfied and wants more!

The old gentleman has a little hardening of the brain now and they have parted company.

And, because he refuses to see her, she curses him, though we are warned: "Even in your

thoughts do not curse the king, or in your bed chamber do not curse the rich, for a bird of

the air will carry your voice, or some winged creature tell the matter." This lady calls me

every week to tell me she is overcoming the cursing. I hope so, because other things can

come into her world if she continues to do so.



The law has its positive as well as its negative side. I am not here to judge how you use

the law, but leave you to practice it as you will. If you are in the habit of thinking

negatively, you are not going to sustain the thought that you are all you want to be. You

may hold it for a few seconds, and if it does not prove itself instantly you may deny it.

But in order to play the game of life you must know the rules and apply them. And

remember: as in every game, there are rules whose violation causes failure. You cannot

deceive yourself, for God is not mocked; as you sow, so shall you reap.

In the world you may get away with a violation that the referee did not see; but you

cannot get away from the observer in you, for he and you are one. If you know what you

did, then he knows, for your awareness and the father of your world are one. You cannot

deceive yourself. You cannot mock yourself. God is going to record your every violation

and mold your world in harmony with your feelings.

Let me now share a letter I received from a friend. In it he said: "Last Monday night a

friend asked me for help, so that night I spent a half hour imagining I heard the words he

would say if his desire were realized. Just before I awoke the next morning, the friend's

wife appeared in my dream and thanked me for my help.



"Then Tuesday evening, while enjoying some music in my living room, my friend

appeared in reverie. Speaking with authority, power, and joy, he used the identical words

I heard when I imagined him confirming the fulfillment of his desire, and I felt the thrill

of completion."

It is my hope that confirmation will come in the immediate present, and my friend will

hear the man tell him in person of the fulfillment of that imaginal act which was set on

fire by his friend. Now, in another part of his letter, my friend said: "In a dream I entered

a hotel lobby, registered at the desk, and asked to be called at 7:00 o'clock the next

morning. As I watched, the man marked a bold seven over my name on the card; then I

awoke."

This is a marvelous vision, as seven is the numerical value for spiritual perfection. It also

has much to do with gestation and incubation. In the insect and animal world, I am told,

that 280 days is a multiple of seven. We know that a hen's egg, if properly incubated,

takes 21 days again a multiple of seven. Here we find birth has multiples of seven, but

in his case it is incubation of spiritual perfection.

Another lady wrote, saying: "I saw myself lying in bed, ghastly pale as though dead.

Suddenly a giant of a man rose out of my body."



Let me tell you the story of a wonderful artist, who was also a mystic. His name was

George Russell, but you know him best as A.E. He said: "I will tell this vision, but where

it happened I will not say. It was a vast hall with the columns made of living opal as

though the colors of dawn and evening had blended into something alive.

Between the columns were thrones upon which firecrested kings were seated. One wore

a crest of the dragon, another, plumes of fire. In the center a dark body was stretched out

on the floor as though in a deep trance. At the far end of the hall, on a throne higher than

the others, sat a being with the sun's glory shining behind him.

As I watched, two crested kings rose, and stretching their hands over the body on the

floor, sparks of light came out of them. Suddenly a figure as tall, as majestic as these

firecrested kings rose out of that dark body. Looking around, he recognized his kin and

raised his hand in salutation. Then they leaped from their thrones, raised their hands in

the same wonderful greeting and like brothers walked toward the end and disappeared

into the sun."



Each vision is a foreshadowing of what will take place. A.E. perceived him as coming

from another, while this lady saw him as coming from her own being. They are both

adumbrations of a wonderful event which will take place in everyone; for that crested

king, who is the Son of God, is housed in all.

It does not matter whether the body be that of a woman or a man, or what the pigment of

the skin may be; within each one of us is the Son of God, who radiating his glory and

bearing the express image of his person is the great lamp of the Lord. And one day this

majestic being will rise out of your garment of death, and you will enter the land of life.

But while we are here, let us learn the rules of the game of life and play it. Life itself is

caused by the assemblage of mental states, which occurring creates that which the

assemblage implies. My friend mentally heard the words he would hear if his desire for

his friend were fulfilled. Its assemblage, occurring within him, created the event to be

played out in the game of life.



After you have assembled your mental state and allowed it to occur within you, you do

not have to repeat the act. You cast your bread upon the water the moment you felt relief.

Although you do not have a physical expression in a sexual manner, relief is possible;

and of all the pleasures of the world, relief is the most keenly felt. When someone you

dearly love is late, you anxiously await that key in the door. And when you hear their

voice, your relief is keenly felt. That is the same kind of relief you will have when you

have imagined correctly.

If you find it necessary to recreate the act every day, you are not casting your bread upon

the water. You may imagine over and over again, but you are only going to impregnate

once; and if you reach the point of relief, your bread has been cast upon the water to

return, perhaps in the matter of an hour. I have had the phone ring minutes after I have

imagined it to hear confirmation that it has happened. Sometimes it has taken days,

weeks, or months; but I do not repeat the action once I have done it and felt the feeling of

relief, for I know there is nothing more I need to do.



Learn to consciously play this game of life, for you are unconsciously playing it every

day. I am sure the millions who are on relief feel the government owes them a living; but

there is no government, only we who pay taxes. The government has no money and can

only give what it takes from our pockets. Those on relief are complaining, claiming they

are not getting enough out of our pockets, and that mood persists throughout their day.

Their mood never varies, so they see no change and recognize no law between the mood

they are sustaining and the outer world they dislike. If they were told that their mood was

causing the phenomena of their life, they would deny it. No one wants to feel that he is

solely responsible for the conditions of his life, yet there is no other cause. God is the

only cause and he is man's own wonderful human imagination.

When I speak of imagination I am referring to God in you, of which there are two sides:

imagining and contacting. Contacts are what imagining is all about. When you imagine,

you contact a feeling, and the feeling you imagine, you create. You are the same God

who created the world and all within it, but while you are clothed in a garment of flesh

and blood your power is keyed low.



I do hope you understand the rules to the game of life; and because there is a positive as

well as a negative rule I urge you not to curse anyone. Ecclesiastes used the words 'king'

and 'rich' because they are the ones most often envied. A person need not be a

millionaire, however, to be envied. He could simply be a little bit better off than another.

Someone could live in a better neighborhood, pay more rent, maybe even go to a better

restaurant, or buy better clothes, to be envied. So we are warned not to curse the king or

the rich in our thoughts, for they cannot be concealed, as all thoughts are completely one;

and by a law divine they mingle in one another's being.

Awareness seems to be scattered, as everyone on the outside is aware. But no one needs

ask another to aid in the change of his world if he changes it on the inside. If another is

necessary to bring about the change, he will with or without his consent. You do not

have to single out the individual to play the part in bringing about the change you have

imagined. He will play his part if necessary because we all intermingle. All you have to

do is stand at the end, from within.



I remember visiting my family in Barbados, when I was told I could not leave the island

for seven months; but I wanted to leave on the next boat out. To me, being on that boat

was my end; so while sitting on a chair in my parent's home I entered the boat in my

imagination and viewed the island as I was departing. I did not know how I would get on

it, but a week later when the boat left the island I was there. This I know from experience.

In your desire to go anywhere you must first go there in your imagination, and even those

who may deny your request will aid you when the time is right. I got out of the army that

way. Knowing I wanted to be honorably discharged and in my apartment in New York

City, I slept as though it had already happened and I was already there. Then my captain

who had previously disallowed my discharge had a change of heart and aided in my

release. Anyone can do it. This game is easy to play and can be lots of fun in the doing.

Think of an object you would like to hold. Think of a place you would desire to be. Then

find an object in that room and feel it until it takes on sensory vividness.



Don't make it a lamp, but that lamp; not a table, but that table. Sit in that chair until you

feel the chair around you. View the room from that chair and you are there, for you are all

imagination and must be wherever you are in your imagination. Now, cast your bread

upon the water by feeling the relief of being there, and let your genie who is your slave

build a bridge of incident over which you will cross to sit in that chair, hold that lamp,

and touch that table.

In Genesis, the story is told of Isaac who was unable to see, but capable of feeling

calling to his son, Jacob, saying: "Come close my son that I may feel you. Your voice

sounds like my son Jacob, but you feel like Esau." At that moment Jacob the imaginary,

purely subjective state possessed the qualities of Esau, the objective world. So Isaac

gave the imaginary state the right to be born.

As Isaac, you can sit quietly and with your imaginary hands you can feel the difference

between a tennis ball, a baseball, a football, and a golf ball. If they are nothing (because

they are subjective and not objectively real to you at the moment) then you could not

discriminate between them. But, if you can feel the difference between these socalled

unrealities, then they must be real, although not yet made objective to your senses. The

moment you give them reality in your mind's eye, they will become real in your world.



Try it just for fun. Take an object and thank the being within you for the gift. Then thank

the one on the outside, for within and without are vicarious, as is life; for by observing an

odor, a look, or a feeling within, you will discover you are life itself.

Yes, life is a game. Paul calls it a race, saying: "I have finished the race, I have fought the

good fight and I have kept the faith." I call it a game. Both are competitive; but the

opposition is with self and not with another, for there is no other. Do not try to get even

with another. Grant him the right to use the same law to achieve his goal, even though it

may be similar to yours. The knowledge you share will never rob you. Simply determine

your goal. Feel you have achieved it and cast your bread upon the water. Then drop it and

let the game of life be fulfilled in your world. Now let us go into the silence.





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