Chapter VI
THE CONSTRUCTIVE POWER OF IMAGINATION
W. John Murray
Mental
Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.
[128] In this
chapter we shall deal with that which the popular mind regards as a
sort of thinking in the clouds, or such a form of mental abstraction as
indulges in the unprofitable practice of building "castles in the air."
Imagination has been confounded with fancy, even by those who ought to
have known better. We speak of men of imagination as visionary, meaning
by the word, impractical. We do not realize that where there is no
vision (imagination) the people perish.
Imagination is
the art and the science of visioning possibilities where, to the
so-called practical mind, there are no possibilities. It is from
visioning, or acts of imagination, that continents have been
discovered, Niagaras [129] have been spanned, and the waters thereof
gathered together to propel the wheels of industry, and to furnish
light to numbers of cities and millions of people. Imagination sees without
eyes, that which the so-called practical mind cannot see with
eyes. It is the prophecy of that which has not yet come to pass, but
which must come to pass if the tendency of an idea is to actualize
itself.
Beethoven did
not fancy his symphonies as some men fancy they would like to
accomplish great and worthy things, but who never do. He imagined the
beauty and harmony of a multitude of tones to produce certain musical
effects, and formed these into such groups as would correspond with his
mental pictures of color and emotion. It was thus that Beethoven's
symphonies became externalized in that form of beauty which millions
have heard with delight, but which Beethoven himself never heard,
unless it was with the inner ear.
Edison did not
fancy that invisible electricity [130] could be made visible in terms
of a light more luminous than any light which had appeared before, save
the light of the sun. He imagined a medium through which this
intangible, invisible light substance might be converted into that
which humanity was demanding. Always humanity's needs call forth their
men of genius to supply them: that is, the Source has always in
readiness a channel through which to express itself, and in this case
Edison was the medium. This does not imply, necessarily, that God is a
respecter of persons; it simply means that the Universal always
responds most quickly to that individual who is nearest in
consciousness, and that person is the one who has spent most time in
contemplating the working of universal law, whether it be in mechanics
or metaphysics.
To imagine, and
not merely to fancy, the possibility of aerial navigation, or submarine
travel, is to take such steps as are necessary to make the ideal real;
and the airship or submarine is the subsequent appearance [131] but not
the real thing. The submarine or the airship could be destroyed, but
the real thing, which is the image in mind, or the pattern from which
these things or appearances have taken their rise, will remain and
still serve the purpose for reconstruction. Napoleon said, "Imagination
rules the world." His greatest victories were won as the result of his
imagination. He saw just where to concentrate his strongest points of
attack, and then gathered his forces together at that point. He also
pictured or imagined just what his enemies would naturally be inclined
to do, and, forewarned by imagination, he forestalled them.
Proud science
does not realize under what great obligation it is to imagination. The
astronomer imagines the existence of certain clusters of stars long
before he constructs the instruments by means of which to observe or
photograph them. An astronomer without imagination would be like an
observatory without a telescope.
I think it is
Fichte who says: "Imagination [132] is the formative power of the
body." If it is true that desire precedes function, and function
precedes organization, then it is for us to understand that method of
creation, or externalization, which is common to God and man alike.
First thought, then the building of the organ of thought, or the brain;
then the objective organization of that upon which thought centers
itself. If man (the soul) is the image of God, an idea in the mind of
God, may it not be that the body of man, with all its peculiarities of
formation and malformation, as well as sensation, is the image or
conception which man entertains of himself? If this is so, may it not
be that imagination, or the image-making faculty, is back of all
integration or disintegration, as the case may be? In other words, is
Spencer right when he says:
"For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make"?
It is very
important for us to know the great part that imagination plays in the
[133] cause and cure of disease. An imaginary disease is not something
that should justify us in being unsympathetic with the person suffering
from it, as we are so often tempted to be; nor is it something at which
materialistic physicians should scoff. To the sufferer, it is very
real, and no amount of ridicule is going to heal it. Nothing but the
substitution of a new image will suffice to eradicate from the chamber
of imagery the mental picture or image of disease which the sufferer is
superimposing upon his body. How to substitute an idea of health for a
thought of disease, is the secret which a new and true psychology has
come to teach. Of this we shall speak later; what we wish to do now is
to emphasize the fact that imagination is that faculty of the mind
which conceives an idea, and then leaves it to the will to execute; as
when the architect conceives a plan and then leaves it to the
draughtsman to outline and fill in, and the contractor to construct.
We learn in
physical science that inertia is [134] a property, and a necessary
condition of matter. This includes the body of man, as it includes the
body of the world, or what we call physical nature. Matter is not
self-acting, but is always acted upon, whether it be by what we call
nature in the case of the material world of material phenomena, or in
the case of thought upon the human body. What we call changes in the
material world are such things as take place according to nature's
processes, and, in like manner, the changes which take place in the
human body are effects which follow mental changes from the negative to
the positive, or vice versa.
One day we
shall learn that the same power which enables the potter to transform
clay into vases, will enable us to transform, through imagination,
sorrow into joy, weakness into strength, failure into success, fear
into faith, and limitation into abundance.
Imagination is
only a mode of thought, and its power is only an illustration of the
power of Thought.
Chapter
7
Mental Medicine
Table
of Contents
(Formerly at Northwoods Divine
Science Resource Center)
