Lesson Nine

Imagination

1. The teachings about the things of Spirit are said to be mystical. We have thought them so because we have not come into consciousness of the many faculties necessary to comprehend Spirit. Victor Hugo said: "There are no occult or hidden truths; everything is luminous with mind." So we find in the study of Truth that what is called mysterious and occult is simply a range of facts that man has not yet explored. When he expands his mind and takes in a larger horizon, he sees the interrelation of a multitude of hitherto unknown laws which, from his former viewpoint, seemed mysterious.

2. Mind manifests through faculties; if mind is to comprehend increasingly, there must be an increase of these avenues. That man has latent possibilities goes without argument; that there is a limit to the ability of the mind is unthinkable. What a man imagines he can do, that he can do. The doing is a question of adopting the right way. To allow the imagination to drift in daydreams never brings anything to pass. Ideas must be worked up into living, breathing, thinking things. Man can compress his vagrant ideas into visibility as the chemist liquefies and makes visible the invisible atmosphere; but to do this he must, like the chemist, have the necessary machinery.

3. Physiology says that, in order to think, man