PERSONAL POWER (Complete 12 Volume Edition). William Walker Atkinson

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СКАЧАТЬ “create” is to “bring into being; to cause, to produce.” Man may be said apparently to create in several ways, yet at the last he is found to be able to create in only one essential way; and that one essential way in which he can create is found to be the way in which the Ultimate Creative Power proceeds in its own creative work. It will be well for you to become convinced of the essential and elemental nature of your own Creative Power, in order that you may realize the majesty and dignity of the forces and energies which you call into play and operation in your own creative activities.

      First of all, you can create material objects by means of combining other material objects. Thus you bring into being houses, boats, railroads, shoes, and every other class of things which are manufactured or made from material things.

      Secondly, you can create material things by changing the arrangement of the constituent parts of other material things, as for instance, you create butter by means of churning cream, or you create ice by freezing water.

      Thirdly, you can create things by analysis or separation of the parts of other things, for instance, you create certain chemical substances by separating them from more complex substances of which they have formed a part; or you create a statue by cutting away the surrounding marble from about the form of the created thing.

      The above classification will be found roughly to include practically all the forms and phases of creation with which you are most familiar. But we have omitted from it its most essential element—that element which constitutes the spirit of all of your creative work, namely the element of Mental Creation. At the last, all of the above­mentioned forms of creation are discovered to be merely the objectification of the subjective Mental Creation.

      In the three forms of creation, above mentioned, you have merely employed the materials at hand, and formed new combinations with them. You brought none of these original materials into being. You merely found them in being and gave new objective forms to them. But how did you arrive at a knowledge of those forms which you afterward objectified? Here we come to the heart of the subject. The answer is: The forms of your creations, each, any, and all of them, existed in your mind before you objectified them. Your, creations, then, at the last, are seen to be Mental Creations in the sense that they were mentally designed and deliberately caused by you.

      Of course, if you merely threw the materials together without any design, then you cannot be said to have mentally created the new thing—in that case the latter was created, not by you, but by the forces of Nature. This, also, would be the case in the event that you discovered a chemical process “by accident” and without design, or where you unwittingly set into operation some of Nature’s forces, and thereby called into appearance certain new forms, arrangements, separations or combinations. But wherever and whenever you have deliberately employed your Creative Power toward definite ends, then your first step and stage has been that of Mental Creation.

      Everything that man has ever created, contrived, built, invented or manufactured has first been created in his mind as a Mental Image. The Brooklyn Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, and also the simplest mechanical construction, each and all existed in the minds of their inventors, architects and builders before they took on objective form. There can be no such thing as constructive or creative work by man without the antecedent mental creation by means of mental images. Therefore, in its essential and elemental nature, all human creation is Mental Creation.

      Philosophers have carried this idea up to the realm of metaphysics, and have asserted that we are compelled to think of the Supreme Creative Power as having first formed the mental image of the Universe before the form of the physical world could have come into being. More than this, they hold that the actual creation of the “materials” of the Universe must have been mental, because the material substance could not have been present until it was called into being by the mental forces—that, at the last, the material world is but a “materialization” of previously existing mental images or forms, and that the very work of the “materialization” was performed by mental powers and energies, for there were no material powers present and existent in the beginning.

      Edward Carpenter illustrates this idea in the following statement contained in one of his books: “There is now a disposition to posit the mental world as nearer the basis of existence than is the material world, and to look upon material phenomena rather as the outcome and expression of the mental. In observing our own thoughts and actions and bodily forms coming into existence, we seem to come upon something which we may call a law of Nature, just as much as gravitation or any other law—the law, namely, that within ourselves there is a continued movement outwards, from feeling toward thought, and then to action; from the inner to the outer, from the vague to the definite; from the emotional to the practical; from the world of dreams to the world of actual things and what we call reality.

      “We may fairly conclude that the same progress may be witnessed both in our waking thoughts and in our dreams—namely, a continual ebullition and birth going on within us, and an evolution out of the Mind­stuff of forms which are the expression and images of underlying feeling; that these forms, at first vague and undetermined in outline, rapidly gather definition and clearness and materiality, and press forward toward expression in the outer world. And we may fairly ask whether we are not here within our own minds witnessing what is really taking place everywhere and at all times—in other persons as well as in ourselves, and in the great Life which underlies and is the visible universe.

      “You may say that there is no evidence that man ever produces a particle of Matter out of himself; and I will admit that this is so. But there is plenty of evidence that he produces shapes and forms: and if he produces shapes and forms that is all we need. For, what Matter is in the abstract no one has the least experience and knowledge. All that we know is that the things we see are shapes and forms of what we call Matter. And if (as is possible and indeed probable) Matter is of the same stuff as Mind—only seen and invisaged from the opposite side—then the shapes and forms of the actual world are the shapes and forms of Mind, thus projected for us mutually to witness and to understand.”

      But we do not need to fall back upon metaphysical speculations in order to support our general contention that there is Mental Image back of every phase and form of Physical Creation. Throughout all Nature we may find striking instances and illustrations of the general principles that there is an “idea,” or “mental image or form,” present in all of Nature’s creative processes, from the formation of a crystal to the development of the forms of living creatures. The formation of a crystal; the development of the plant or tree from the seed; the evolution of the living form from the egg­cells; all of these reveal to us the fact that “idea” or “mental form” is immanent and involved in every process of birth and growth in Nature. This being perceived, we are justified in claiming that “All Creation is Mental Creation”—the materialization of a mental form, image, or idea.

      Throughout all Nature we may perceive the presence of an Inner Image or Form which serves as the framework or pattern upon which Nature materializes her objective forms. These ideal forms have attracted the attention of the philosophers, and they have sought to account for their presence. From the time of Plato down to the present, philosophers have speculated concerning the nature and evident presence of these ideal forms upon which Nature builds her material shapes and structures. In the above quotation from Carpenter you will note the reference to “the evolution out of Mind­stuff of forms which are the expressions and images of underlying feeling; these forms, at first vague and undetermined in outline, rapidly gather definition, and clearness, and materiality, and press forward toward expression in the outer world.”

      Paul Carus, a modern philosopher, also says: “All science consists in describing forms, and tracing their changes. All differences that we can scientifically comprehend are the forms of matter or energy. All that we can do or try to do is by molding and remolding things. Forms are the types of possible entities, and do not exist as such in the shape of material realities, but we cannot say that they are nonexistent, СКАЧАТЬ