Imagination and Will

The Science of Mind, by Ernest Shurtleff Holmes [1926], at sacred-texts.com

IMAGINATION AND WILL

Coué announced a great truth when he said that imagination is superior to the will; but he did not explain the philosophy behind this truth. It is a fact that what he said is true, but we wish to analyze the fact and discover the reason back of it; for if anything is true there is always a reason for its being true.

Will is an assumption, pure and simple. We do not will to live; we live because we have life and cannot help living. The use of the will could not make us anything that we are not; for it is not possible to get out of a bag anything that the bag does not contain. We live because life is within us. Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when He said, "Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature?" ¹⁰⁵

We did not make Life and we cannot change It, but we can use It; and the use of Life is through the imagination; because

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this faculty has, at its roots, the very well-spring of life and action. Imagination carries with it feeling and conviction, which mean life and action; it awakens within us all the finer forces of nature and stirs into action latent powers which otherwise would never come to the surface.

At the very root of the whole matter we find that the Creative Power of the universe does not create through will, but through imagination, imaging, feeling, and knowing. To suppose that God must will things to happen would be to suppose that God had some opposing force to contend with.

Will power may be necessary in its place, but as a creative agency it is non-existent; it is not creative but directive; and used from this standpoint it is a wonderful force; whereas, used from any other angle, it becomes destructive and will mentally weary the one using it. To feel that we have to will things to happen casts doubt into the face of Creation and presupposes that Life is not Self-Existent and Self-Propelling.

Imagination taps the very roots of Being and utilizes the same Power that brought the worlds forth from Chaos. "The worlds were framed by the word of God." ¹⁰⁵ Imagination is the power of the word, while will is the directive agency, denoting the purpose for which the word is spoken.

Man reproduces the power to create and, in his own life, controls his destiny through the activity of his word. This word cannot be willed; but it can be imagined, or imaged forth, into expression.

Footnotes

286:105 Matt 6:27.

287:105 Heb. 11:3.