Slave Or Master? – Paul Twitchell

 

My Dearest One,

 

This is the beginning of another series of letters as promised over a long period and similar to those you received last year.

 

This concerns the psychology of imagination and all its aspects, for this is a subject close to my heart and useful in daily living on this earthly plane, as well as on those other planes on which we can live, including the other planets.

 

The subject will be divided into four parts as follows: (1) the creative imagination; (2) the techniques of using the creative imagination; (3) the finished kingdom, for all creation is or has been finished; and (4) the Word of God. It is possible that i will add a fifth partwhich will be on the subject of feeling, but from a long range viewpoint I believe that it will be mixed into the other four subjects enough that you won't have to have it as a special subject on its own.

 

However feeling is the strongest part of the imagination factor. It rates a greatness by itself which must not be overlooked, and by the very fact that it is enthusiasm (or feeling) that keeps most of us running our daily machines for work, pleasure, or happiness, it can be said that feeling is strongly considered the first of the aspects of imagination.

 

I am puzzled as to why the so called great philosophers – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others – have not discussed the use of imagination more in their works. None of the latter-day philosophers, nor even the scientists, have made full use of the study of imagination as one of the factors of life. However , if you look deeply enough into the life of any individual who has become successful in any given field – whether it be in the world of philosophy, religion, science, commerce, or education – the imagination was the basic factor which brought him recognition for his work.

 

The association of ideas is a habit factor in imagination. We imagine that we can while living within certain boundaries, thinking in categories and believing what might be determined for us by the other/outer senses. What we would be, must come from within – this has been proven so well by two great poets, first Blake, second Yeats. Both used the images within to form  their worlds, because they believed more in the inner images than the outer world. They were true to themselves – and this is one of the reasons why poets are much closer to truth than all others who work in this area.

 

A study of poets and their poetry will bring home this point. For as a matter of fact, no poet of any consequence has accepted the world around himself as having been made by anything other than man's own imagination. They know that imagination is the God – given faculty which man has inherited and that man must use this faculty or it will die of disuse. Man must seek truth through his imagination or he will never find it – what you imagine is truth, because you are making an effect. Remember the article i gave you on yin and yang? This is the basic use of imagination, for each man has the opportunity to use his imagination in two different manners : that of the positive and that of the negative; and of course, he will reap the reward of his imagination in the physical.

 

As i said in the beginning of this letter, man must use his imagination according to his habit, for habit will guide him in his picturization of a life for himself. This is the method used by Soul for placing the body It occupies in a particular position, be it in time, space, or circumstance.

 

The battle is fought within man himself for either the good, the indifferent, or poor use of this imaginitive faculty – but still the battle is fought, and it depends upon one's self control whether he is going to win or not. This is the story of Jesus Christ, who is the dramatic figure of the Gospels, and who represents the imagination which is killed by the slave owners but refuses to stay buried and rises again, to the heights of life. This is the story of the Bhagavad Gita, in which the main character, Arjuna, is told by Krishna, the Hindu Christ, that he must become the master of his imagination (in so many words) or he will lose the battle which he is about to be engaged in.

 

All scriptures take up the stroy of the imagination in a symbolic or allegorical form. It is the story of the creative imagination – and you can see this in the history of nations in the Biblical days. In those ruled by fear – by rulers who in their fear create an image of what will happen to themselves if they falter – the very Law of Imagination brings to them the thing which they have feared. Job is another good example, for when sitting in his own misery, he says " For the thing which i greatly feared is come upon me. " Wrong use of the imagination! Simple isn't it?

 

The simplicity of life boiled down to this imaginitive faculty. The reason that animals are generally wild and will attack is that their imaginitive faculty is built by habit, that they must fight to survive. However, if you train an animal's imagination to accept friendship, it has no fear of man. This brings us to the point of rule by fear – the rule of the dictator or the slave owners. In the case of the latter i'm only referring to those masters who try to hold us in bondage through economic or other modern chains. These slave masters hire advertising agencies to make us desire things – and what they are doing is simply creating a desire within us or training our imagination to want what their masters have hired them to seduce us to purchase.

 

This is food for thought, and i do not want you to think along these lines a great deal, for modern man is apt to be influenced too much by things which he sees advertised: he must eat in certain places, buy his clothes from certain stores, and live within a certain norm that is expected of him. He is a slave to the habits of his imagination – and who trains his imagination and feeling in that direction? Why the advertising agencies and the slave masters. Remember a statement which i once made that we are either the slave or the master? Which do you want to be?

 

Naturally the answer to this question depends on you! And if you are interested in self-mastery, there is nothing in this world that you can't have – and i mean that literally. This is why the masters can manifest money, things, and places immediately – why they can travel through space and time in or out of their bodies. Strong imagination!

 

More later, Paul 

From the book, Letters to Gail © 1990 Eckankar – Sri Paul Twitchell