The Law: Imagining Creates Reality Ch 1 The Law And The Promise by Neville Goddard

Neville Goddard, the Law and the promise, 1961 it's going to be a good book right here and now. Go write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. Isaiah 38 I want to express my sincere appreciation to the hundreds of men and women who have written me telling me of their use of imagination to create a greater good for others as well as for themselves, that they may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, a faith which was loyal to the unseen reality of their imaginal acts. The limitation of space does not allow the publication of all the stories in this one volume. In the difficult task of selecting and organizing this material, Ruth messenger and Julene Brainerd have been of invaluable assistance. Neville Chapter 1 the Law Imagining creates Reality we could stop right there. Man is all imagination. God is man and exists in us and we in Him. The eternal body of man is the imagination that is God himself. Blake the purpose of this first portion of this book is to show through actual true stories how imagining creates reality. Science progresses by way of hypotheses tentatively tested and afterwards accepted or rejected according to the facts of experience. The claim that imagining creates reality needs no more consideration than is allowed by science. It proves itself in performance. The world in which we live is a world of imagination. In fact, life itself is an activity of imagining. For Blake, wrote Professor Morrison of the University of St. Andrews, the world originates in a divine activity identical with what we know ourselves as the activity of imagination, his task being to open the immortal eyes of man inward into the worlds of thought, into eternity, ever expanding in the bosom of God. The human imagination nothing appears or continues in being by a power of its own. Events happen because comparatively stable imaginal activities created them, and they continue in being only as long as they receive such support. The secret of imagining, writes Douglas Fawcett, is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which the mystic aspires. Supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight lie in the far off solution of this mystery. When man solves the mystery of imagining, he will have discovered the secret of causation. That is, imagining creates reality. Therefore, the man who is aware of what he is imagining knows what he is creating, realizes more and more that the drama of life is imaginal, not physical. All activity at bottom. All activity is at bottom imaginal. An awakened imagination works with a purpose. It creates and conserves the and conserves the desirable and transforms or destroys the undesirable divine imagining and human imagining are not two powers at all. Rather one. The valid distinction which exists between the seeming two lies not in the substance with which they operate, but in the degree of intensity of the operant power itself. Acting in high tension. An imaginal act is an immediate objective fact. Ki lo. Where we operate is keyed low. An imaginal act is realized in a time process. But whether imagination is keyed high or low key, it is the ultimate, essentially non objective reality from which objects are poured forth like sudden fancies. No object is independent of imagining on some level or levels. Everything in the world owes its character to imagination on one of its various levels. Objective reality, writes Fitch, is solely produced through imagination. Objects seem so independent of our perceptions of them that we incline to forget that they owe their origin to imagination. The world in which we live is a world of imagination. And man, through his imaginal activities, creates the realities and the circumstances of life. This he does either knowingly or unknowingly. Men pay too little attention to this priceless gift. The human imagination and a gift is practically non existent unless there is a conscious possession of it and a readiness to use it. All men possess the power to create reality. All men. You, me, her, him, them, us. We. All men possess the power to create reality. But this power sleeps as though dead when not consciously exercised. Which is the goal of what we are talking together for is to consciously exercise creating our own reality with conscious awareness, go after and follow our desire until the target is attained and brought into our experience. Men live in the very heart of creation. The the human imagination yet are no wiser for what takes place therein. The future will not be fundamentally different from the imaginal activities of man. Therefore, the individual who can summon at will whatever imaginal activity he pleases and to whom the visions of his imagination are as real as the forms of nature is the master of his fate, which is what we are doing together, becoming the masters of our fate. The future is the imaginal activity of man in its creative march. Imagining is the creative power not only of the poet, the artist, the actor, the orator, but of the scientist, the inventor, the merchant and the artisan. Its abuse in unrestrained, unlovely image making is obvious. Yes, very obvious. But its abuse in in undue repression breeds a sterility which robs man of actual wealth of experience. Imagining novel solutions to ever more complex problems is far more noble than to run from problems. Life is the continual solution of a continuously synthetic problem. Imagining creates events, the world created out of men's imagining comprises. Comprises unnumbered warring beliefs. Therefore, there can never be a perfectly stable or static state. Today's events are bound to disturb yesterday's established order. Imaginative men and women invariably unsettle a pre existing peace of mind. Do not bow before the dictate of facts and accept life on the basis of the world without. Do not bow before the dictate of facts and accept life on the basis of the world without. That's right there. That's the world without our consciousness and our thinking is in here. Do not bow before the dictate of facts out there and accept life on the basis of the world without. Do not assert the supremacy of your imaginal acts over facts and put all things in subjection to them. Your supremacy here making the impression, discovering and becoming the expression. Hold fast to your ideal in your imagination. Nothing can take it from you but your failure to persist in imagining the ideal realized. Your failure to persist in imagining the ideal. Your ideal realized. Imagine only such states that are of value or promise. Well, you could just repeat that sentence all day right now. Pause the. Pause the tape. Just replay. Just say that over and over and get that sentence right there. Imagine only such states that are of value or promise. Well, you must persist in that one sentence. If you're busy experiencing something not conducive to that, what is it that you've been imagining? Just listen, hear yourself put a tape recorder on and hear yourself talking on the phone to somebody. You'll hear right away. What's coming out of your words is coming out of your thoughts. What's coming out of your thoughts is what you've been. What you've been putting in there. You can change that recording. You can change what is happening by. Imagine only such states that are of value or promise. Well, that's your direction. You are in charge. If you leave it open to others. If you don't use your imagination and you don't go to make an impression for your desire, you. You let the out there, the world without fill in your subconscious impression because you're not using your imagination. He who does not use his imagination, it is used by others. If you're not using your imagination, someone else is. And that normally is. Out here they have plenty wares, there's plenty offerings. Plenty offerings to keep you busy. They're going to hit your subconscious. You're going to become objectified of what they want you to as a consumer, to purchase. You can change that cycle. You can direct your own desire to fulfillment. You can live the life of your dreams. Excuse me. To attempt to change circumstances out here before you change your imaginal activity in here is to struggle against the very nature of things. There can be no outer change until there is first unimaginal change. Everything you do unaccompanied by an imaginal change is but futile readjustment of surfaces. Imagining the wish fulfilled brings about a union with that state. During that union, you behave in keeping with your imaginal change. This shows you that an imaginal change will result in a change of behavior. However, your ordinary imaginal alterations as you pass from one state to another are not transformations because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse direction. But whenever one state grows so stable as to become your constant mood, your habitual attitude, then that habitual state defines your character and is a true transformation. How do you do it? Self abandonment. That is the secret. There it is. He's revealing a secret right there. First chapter, a couple pages in. You must abandon yourself mentally to your wish fulfilled in your love for that state and in so doing, live in the new state and no more in the old state. You can't commit yourself to what you do not love. So the secret of self commission is faith plus love. I was watching a Steve Jobs interview where you saw it yesterday. And he was describing that he, after his sickness, he decided and he got into abandoning everything he did not love doing. And he only was determined to focus only on that which he loved, loved what he was creating, loved what he was doing, loving in his family, post sickness, by the way. And he made a big point of that. And of course, you know from his intense work ethic that he was very, very focused in his work when he put his forth in. Put himself, you know, into it. And that focus is what we're talking about right here. Doing what you love. And what Steve describes is what he loved. You can't commit yourself to what you do not love. So the secret of self commission is faith plus love. Faith is believing what is unbelievable. Commit yourself to the feeling of the wish fulfilled in faith that this act of self commission will become a reality. And it must become a reality, because imagining creates reality. Nice. It must become a reality. Imagination is both conservative and transformative. It is conservative when it builds its world from images supplied by memory and the evidence of the senses. It is creatively transformative when it imagines things as they ought to be, building its world out of the generous dreams of fancy in the procession of images, the ones that take Precedence, naturally, are those of the senses. Nevertheless, a present sense impression is only an image. It does not differ in nature from. From a memory image or the image of a wish. What makes a present sense impression so objectively real is the individual's imagination functioning in in it and thinking from it. Whereas in a memory image or a wish, the individual's imagination is not functioning in it and thinking from it, but is functioning out of it and thinking of it. There is a difference. You can think of anything you're experiencing right now that you are in and of. And just use what you think and feel about that. Copy and paste to your desired event. If you have a test coming up, you know you've passed tests before. Use the feeling you had when you went into that old test that you passed. The one that you passed whenever, before you knew how you had confidence, you knew you would pass. You even saw that it was over already before you started the test. Use that confidence and copy that feeling and paste it on going into this new test. I know I've passed the test. It's done. I've passed it. Feel that same supreme confident feeling. This is how we use a feeling when we don't know what to bring it from. You copy and you paste it. If you would enter into the image of your imagination. Then would you know what it is to be creatively transformative? Then would you realize your wish, and then you would be happy. Every image can be embodied. Every image can be embodied. But unless you yourself enter the image and think from is incapable of birth. Therefore it is the height of folly to expect the wish to be realized by the mere passage of time. That which requires imaginative occupancy to produce its effect obviously cannot be effected. Without such occupancy. You cannot be in one image and not suffer the consequences of not being in another. Oh, boy. You cannot be in one image and not suffer the consequences of not being in another. Imagination is spiritual sensation. Let's go back. Let's put this picture on the board here. That which requires imagination. Excuse me, imaginative occupancy to produce its effect obviously cannot be effected. Without such occupancy, you cannot be in one image and not suffer the consequences of not being in another. Here's the present moment right here. This is your now. This is now. This is the supposed future which we know doesn't exist. It's only in your imagination where that exists. Here's the past which we know does not exist. Now, this sentence. You cannot be in one image and not suffer the consequences of not being in another. If you put your mind, which is only and has all this power in the now, into a place where that doesn't actually exist, and you focus your mind energy there. Memory this and memory that. What happened to me when I was little, what happened to me last week, what happened to me last month, last year, last decade, all of my life. If you're putting your mind into that bubble right there that actually does not exist, you cannot suffer the consequences of not being in this one. Because there are consequences. When you try to come home, you're going to suffer the consequences of your lack of occupation. The lights were on, but you weren't home. Nobody was home. Your mind was over here. People are looking at you, talking to you, and you're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But your mind is focused on some past event or a past situation you want to revise. It doesn't matter what it is. The same can be said of the future. When I get my degree, when I get my husband, when I get my wife, when I get the job, when I get the promotion, when I get the house, when I get the car, when I get. When I. When I. Someday I'll and wish I coulda. Someday I'll and wish I coulda. If your mind is absent from the present and put over here in someday aisle, or put over here and wish I coulda, you're not present. You're lacking the occupation of this. The sentence again. You cannot be in one image, let's say here, and not suffer the consequences of not being in another, the present. So be very mindful of how you're using your present moment. It's the only moment you have your power. It's right now, right here. I'm not talking about ignoring the concept of revision. Revision works wonderfully. That's a different point. Revision is a great tool, and we all are going to benefit amazingly by using it. But when you spend your focus of your energy not revising, but in the supposed future or supposed past, which do not exist in your now, you're absent in the present. Lights are on, but nobody's home. Imagination is spiritual sensation. Enter the image of the wish fulfilled, then give it sensory vividness and tones of reality by mentally acting as you would act were it a physical fact. Tones of reality, mentally acting as you would act were it a physical fact. Now, this is what I mean by spiritual sensation. Imagine that you are holding a rose in your hand. Smell it. Here's my rose. Smell it. Do you detect the odor of roses? Now I can't do it with a marker because I'm actually trying to smell the marker. But I can do it with a rose. In my imagination, I can create the sense of a rose. If the rose is not there, why is the fragrance in the air? Through spiritual sensation, that is, through imaginal sight, sound, scent, taste and touch, you can give it. You can give to the image sensory vividness. If you do this, all things will conspire to aid your harvesting. And upon reflection, you will see how subtle were the threads that led you to your goal. Very fascinating. Let's repeat this because it's very, very important, because it's all about getting to our goal of what we want to imagine lovingly for ourself. What is it I want in my experience? Do I want to be married? Do I want to be happily in love with my new spouse? Yes. Do I want to be wealthy? Do I want to be healthy? Yes. Yes. Yes. This is what I mean by spiritual sensation. Imagine that you are holding a rose in your hand. Smell it. Do you detect the odor of roses? If the rose is not there, why is the fragrance in the air? Through spiritual sensation, that is, through imaginal sight, sound, scent, taste and touch, you can give to the image sensory vividness. If you do this, all things will conspire to aid your harvesting. And upon reflection you will see how subtle were the threads that led to your goal. The bridge of incidents will happen right for you. You could never have devised the means which your imaginal activity employed to fulfill itself. You could never devise the means. The how Never be concerned the how his ways are past finding out. Never ever be concerned with how you will defeat everything you're doing. If you. If you ask any how question, you're just going to defeat the whole thing. If you're a person with a habit of reason, this is what could be the problem. If you're a person of a habit of reasoning skills, which are a natural skill set to use in a lot of functions, but not for this to try and figure out how things are going to happen. Or do I have the means to get married in Hawaii? Do I have the means to have the time off? Do I have the means to afford it? These are not the. They are not the fabric of what you should focus on. Your only intent is to focus on the end already. Being married, coming home from the honeymoon that's after and presupposes all of the experience which you're not involved with. Because that would be how. If you were involved with that you're Coming home after. If you long to escape from your present sense fixation, to transform your present life into a dream of what might well be, you need. But imagine that you are already what you want to be. And to feel the way you would expect to feel under such circumstances. Like the make believe of a child who is remaking the world after its own heart. Create your world out of pure dreams of fancy. Use your imagination. What is it you want to experience? Pure fancy. Pure dreams of fancy. Mentally enter into your dreams. Mentally do what you would actually do were it physically true. Mentally enter into your dream and mentally do what you would actually do were it physically true. What would you be doing? That's all you need. What you just did. What would you be doing? Mentally enter into your dream. Mentally do what you would actually do were it physically true. Nice. Then you'd celebrate. You'd high five. You'd hug. That wasn't so difficult. You just did it. You just did it. It's not new. You've been doing it all along. That's what. That's what got you to your current self concept is by imagining. You wouldn't be even listening to this if you weren't and didn't have the power to imagine yourself where you are right now. You will discover that dreams are realized not by the rich, but by the imaginative. Most powerful sentence. You will discover that dreams are realized not by the rich, but by the imaginative. Anybody who thinks that somebody else's skill to do this imagination lovingly for yourself or to manifest for yourself or to manifest your ex back or your new relationship. Anybody who thinks who someone else can do it. But I can't. No, it's not true one bit. You not only can do it, you have been doing it. That's exactly why you are in your exact position. You can imagine yourself into another position. One that is befitting of your dream image. Nothing stands between you and the fulfillment of your dreams. But facts. And facts are the creations of imagining. Facts are out here in the world. If you can change your imagining, you will change the facts. I tell you. Man and his past are one continuous structure. This structure contains all of the facts which have been conserved and still operate below the threshold of his surface mind. For him it is merely history. For him it seems unalterable. A dead and firmly fixed past. But for itself it is living. It is part of the living age. He cannot leave behind him the mistakes of the past. For nothing disappears. Everything that has been is still in existence. The past still exists and it gives and still gives its results. Man must go back in memory, seek for and destroy the causes of evil, however far back they lie. This is a very important part of this whole equation. Your past is created from your present. Your future is created from your present. Everything is coming out of your now. All experience is happening right here and right here only. But you have this concrete image of your past that you must deal with. You have this concrete, kind of an airy image of your potential future. But it's still the same level of this, because they're not here. If they're not here, These both are equal illusion. But this one here seems like it's full of anchors holding you back. You're giving away the power of your now to this thing that actually, literally doesn't exist. But for the sake of the sake of fixing this, we have to deal with the concept of the past through the art of revision. Because you're creating these events you think happened in your past. You're doing them dynamically in your now. This is more advanced, what I'm talking about right now. This is more of the advanced level. So we're going to bring him back to deal with the past on this level of introductory understanding. It's all coming out of your now. But it still doesn't mean that the past doesn't have validity as far as what its contents are and how you can deal with them effectively. And that's through the art of revision. That's why he says everything that has been is still in existence, because it's still coming from you dynamically out of your now. The past still exists, and it gives and still gives its results. Man must go back in memory, seek for and destroy the causes of evil. Remember, evil is a word that means missing the mark, causing you to miss the mark. Whatever the causes are in your past, we must go back, for we must go back, search in memory, seek for and destroy the causes of evil, however far back they lie. This going into the past and replaying a scene of the past in imagination as it ought to have been played the first time. I call revision. And revision results in repeal. There is nothing more effective than this. It is the best way to deal. Now, I took you down the advanced road in understanding that this is coming from your now. This is coming from your now. It behooves you to understand your now, obviously, because that's what creates these two places. And if there's experiences or events here in this bubble, you must. When you do revision, all you're doing is recreating your now perspective. Of this revision is just recreating. Because all you ever are is a being of creation. You're an engine of creation. You are an infinite engine of imaginative creation. Never ending. I am is always. I am is. You are. I am. This is just another form of creativity. Again, I'm going from the introductory concept and I'm taking it to advanced real fast. Then I'm snapping it back like a rubber band and get us back on the same page. That we are using revision to change our past. It's a dynamic concept that we're using our now to flexibly move about. It's very beneficial. Results in repeal. Changing your life means changing your past. The causes of any present evil are the unrevised scenes of the past. The past and the present form the whole structure of man. They are carrying all of its contents with it. Any alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present and future. I just said everything's now. Everything that you change changes both the past and the future because you change now. Once you change your thinking, you change everything that comes out of you. Everything's coming from you. Everything is you pushed out. Everyone is you pushed out. When you say you, it's me, myself and I. Everything is you pushed out means it's coming from you. You change the past. You're pointing at it, pointing at the future. You change one thing here about the past. You change this too. It's automatic because you're changing your imagination and your creativity. Repeating this small paragraph. Changing your life means changing your past. The causes of any present evil are the unrevised scenes of the past. Unrevised scenes of the past. The past and present form the whole structure of man. The past and present form the whole structure of man. Right here they are carrying all of its contents with it. Any alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present. Any alteration of content will result in a change in a alteration in the present and the future. When you change here, you change here and here. The past and the present form the whole structure of man. They are carrying all the contents with it. Any alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present and the future. Boom. Boom. Instant. Live nobly, so that mind can live nobly so that mind can store a past well worthy of recall should you fail to do so. Remember, the first act of correction or cure is always revise. Can't be stressed enough. Revision is magic. As I said before, Neville, he could have stopped talking after he gave all of his lectures on the subject of revision and after writing this book about revision right here, he didn't need to say another word. It was all we needed. It was really literally. It's like the crown jewel of Neville's materials. Revision. I think there's a lot of jewels. Excuse me. I know I just stepped on some toes, but man, oh man, revision is. Revision will free your mind. If the past is recreated into the present, so will the revised past be recreated into the present. Or else the claim, though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow is a lie. And it is no lie. The purpose of the story to story commentary that follows is to link up as briefly as possible the distinct but never disconnected themes of the fourteen chapters into which I have divided the first part of this book. It will serve, I hope, as a thread of coherent thought that binds the whole into proof of its claim. Imagining creates reality. To make such a claim is easily done. To prove it in the experience of others is far sterner to stir you to use the law constructively in your own life. That is the aim of this book. End of chapter one. Wow. Wow, wow. There are so many gems in this first chapter. What was your favorite? Which part did you like the most? Because there are some goodies in here. Oh my gosh. I really like my favorite. Live nobly so that you so that Live nobly so that mind can store a past worthy of recall should you fail to do so. Hey, no worries. I'm here for experience. Remember, the first act of correction or cure is always revise. First, live nobly so that mind can store a past well worthy of recall should you fail to do so. Let's say you didn't do that so far. Remember, the first act of correction or cure is always revise. Remember the movie Aliens and Cowboys when he says, God doesn't care who you were, he only cares who you are. It's a wonderful, wonderful quote. What a wonderful chapter. Oh my goodness. So many amazing things. And I am looking forward to all these chapters. So we've got 14 more to go. I believe it is, yes. 14 more chapters. What kind of wonders are we going to behold? We're going to see you in the next chapter.