The Law of Assumption

The great mystic William Blake wrote almost two hundred years ago, "What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be."

"What you see when you look at something depends not so much on what is there as on the assumption you make when you look. What you believe to be the real physical world is actually only an assumptive world."

Men believe in the reality of the external world because they do not know how to focus and condense their powers to penetrate its thin crust. To remove the veil of the senses, we do not employ great effort; the objective world vanishes as we turn our attention from it.

Each man must find the means best suited to his nature to control his attention and concentrate it on the desired state. I find for myself the best state to be one of meditation, a relaxed state akin to sleep.

Define your highest ideal and concentrate your attention upon this ideal until you identify yourself with it. Assume the feeling of being it — the feeling that would be yours were you now embodying it in your world.

You will know when you have succeeded in fixing the desired state in consciousness simply by looking mentally at the people you know. If, in your mental conversations with others, you talk with them as you formerly did, then you have not changed your concept of self.

Man, by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled and then living and acting on this conviction, changes his future in harmony with his assumption.