Making Your Dreams Come True

A LECTURE GIVEN IN THE ROSICRUCIAN AUDITORIUM
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

By H. Spencer Lewis, Ph.D., F.R.C.

[From The Rosicrucian Digest June 1932]

WHEN approaching this subject of making your dreams come true, we must realize, in the first place, that there are two kinds of dreams with which many of us are familiar. I am not quite sure which is the most mysterious--night dreams or the so-called day dreams. I do not know if it has ever been determined that animals lower in the scale of evolution of man can have day dreams. That is, whether they can build up in their imagination things that do not exist. However, we know that man can do this. We know also, that he can turn ethereal, dreamy things, into concrete form. Now, that is something which is not commonly admitted, and I have no doubt but what persons in the audience will challenge my statement. They will say, "That is all bunkum; that is all talk."

There are, undoubtedly, some learned, wise men in this city, business men, or, perhaps, men who are trained as doctors and lawyers, who will also challenge my statement. On the other hand, there are men and women in the audience who have tested our work, and thousands and thousands of men and women throughout the

United States

and Europe who are connected with our work, and some who are not, who are daily proving it to be true.

You now have, therefore, the opinion of those who doubt and of those who have proven it. I have a way to prove it to you, too, if you are one of the conscientious persons who has an open mind, who will say to yourself, "There is some evidence on both sides." You can do yourself no harm by performing a test. If it fails, after two or three trials, you perhaps have reason for your doubts, but even two or three failures would not be sufficient reason for saying that there is nothing to the principle. If, after two or three tests, you have found sufficient results that you never had before, you would have reason to believe there is something to the principle. And each time you feel some reaction you would see at least the general scheme of what we are presenting.

So we find that man has the ability to imagine.

Stop and think a moment what that is. It is something by which you can close your eyes and build up something you have never seen before. It is not merely a matter of recollection. If I said to you, "Close your eyes for a moment and visualize where you were or what you were doing Christmas Eve," and each one of you recalled how you were out somewhere, or at home, or around the Christmas tree, that process would be visualizing and recollecting something that had already existed in concrete form and was registered in your mind.

But if I said, "I want you to close your eyes and visualize something that does not exist and that you have never seen," you will ask, "What is it?" Then I will say, "Close your eyes and visualize an old-fashioned sugar barrel sitting on the pavement on top of which is a bronze bust of George Washington." You would have no trouble in seeing that, and yet there you are, imagining, or, as science says, imaging, something that never before existed. I could go on and say, "I want each one of you to close your eyes and visualize a five-room bungalow, sitting in the middle of a piece of lawn, two hundred feet square, with red tiled roof and green trimmings around the windows." I could continue on and on, telling you about the curtains, etc. and build the whole picture up in your mind.

This is like taking some element from one quality and one element from another and making something new. It is a divine process, a divine faculty and power that is resident in you and not in the other animal species. They have no use or understanding for it. Your imagination is absolutely unlimited. The men who have been conceiving skyscrapers in New York, trying to out-rival each other, imagine one taller and taller until New York is just spotted with them. I remember when I stopped this August in New York City, we were on the twentieth floor of the Hotel New Yorker, and looked down. That was not so high. There are many other floors in that building, and we were only on the twentieth. As we looked eastward, we could see the Empire State Building with its mast for dirigibles, and many other taller buildings, and each year they are taller and taller.

The imaging of the architect in putting the component elements together, in letting the buildings rise higher and higher, is unlimited. When building bridges, his imagination is unlimited. When he comes, however, to draw out on paper the plans for the structural work, there are certain structural limitations that have to be abided by. He has to shorten the span a little, or may have to drop the height a little in order to come within building restrictions, but in man there are no limitations. There is nothing to prevent man's mind from visualizing the taking of the Atlantic Ocean and putting it in the Pacific Ocean, and from taking the Pacific and putting it in the Atlantic.

These things you form with your imagination. You do it constantly, although you seldom realize it. If you would stop to think of it, you would recognize this peculiar characteristic of the human mind which enables it to create things that have never existed before. Now you will have to admit that you create mentally before you create materially. You know very well that before an artist begins to paint a masterpiece on the canvas, he visualizes it first in his mind; in fact, it is worked out so well in his mind that the process of painting is really a transference of the creation from his mind to the canvas. The man who is to build an apartment house works out a great many of the general schemes of the structure in his mind before he starts making lines on paper. We find that all the way through history.

Take, for instance, the first man, sitting on the bough of a tree on a river bank, and sleeping on some dry grass for a bed in order that animals would not get him, beginning to think of a home, what it would be, where it would be, the size of it, and how he would be protected from the animals. He began to think of means of safety and pictured it all in his mind before he began to make wood and grass walls around the home he was going to make.

All through civilization man has created mentally the things he wants and he does not stop. Here is the particular thing the Rosicrucians want to drive home. It is not sufficient to do this mental creating, visualizing, the building up of something in your mind that is perfectly created, and then stop, because that would produce nothing. Man would still be living in the boughs of a tree on the river bank, if that were as far as he could go. The more we keep working over the mental picture in our minds and make it a part of us, the more we attract to it and gradually build it into material existence.

Please do not think I am implying that a man can go down and lie on one of the wharfs of the Hudson River with a cigarette in his mouth and visualize a bridge across the Hudson, and if he stayed long enough, some day the steel would go up and finally the bridge would be built. Such a statement would be foolish. We must draw a line between rationalism and fanaticism. It is unfortunate that some of the ideals of mysticism have fallen into the hands of fanatics. To hear them speak of it and hear them interpret their understanding of what we are trying to teach makes mysticism sound weird and devoid of logic.

Not long ago, a woman came into my office and was trying to impress upon me the merits of Christian Science, and she said this: "Once you know and understand Christian Science, nothing of a material, physical nature can affect you." I said, "Do you mean that nothing in this material world will affect us?" I knew she was not talking true Christian Science. She said that if she were to go out in the street and be hit by an automobile and injured to such an extent that bones were broken, she would say that there was no automobile and she was not hurt; it was just the thought that the automobile hit her and that her bones were broken. That is absurd and such a person can do more injury to a worthy movement than she can possibly do good.

But, I do mean to say that the man or woman who has built up, mentally, in his or her mind, a day dream, and each day adds to it, magnetizes with more vitality the imagination, that he or she is building in the material world as well as the mental. I say such persons gradually attract to themselves the condition that will help them to realize what they dream.

You might only take the reverse of this proposition to prove how true it is. Take the man who finds himself in the business world, or home, or social world, in need of something, and after visualizing it momentarily, says, "Yes, that would solve my problem if I could have that thing." It may be an addition to his home, a new position, raise in salary, or something of that kind. Suppose he thinks of it for a moment, visualizing and seeing it in all its completeness, and then says, "It is impossible for me," and no longer thinks of it. Is there any hope of that man bringing to him what he needs as long as he does not allow it to come into his consciousness again? It is the reverse of the picture that I am trying to bring to your mind.

We know that different types of men congregate together. We know that the young man who is deeply interested in art will sooner or later come in contact with like minds. We know the person deeply interested in music will sooner or later come in contact with similar minds. In the first place, the person will not only go where he will hear music, but goes to the library and reads about music and meets people who are interested in music. The artist attracts art and all those who are interested in art. The seventeen-year old boy who leaves school and goes to the pool rooms can tell you a surprising amount of information about pool rooms that uninformed people would think he had wilfully completed, but it would be because he had attracted to himself all the knowledge pertaining to that one subject. Take the young man interested in law; another interested in botany, or some other subject. You will find that they associate with people of similar minds. You will find the same among women. You will find the woman interested in social things attracting to herself those who are interested in the same things. It is sane and logical, and you can demonstrate it in your own life.

Take the man going around from morning to night with the thought that he wants a seven-room house in a certain neighborhood. He dreams of it, visualizes it. He looks at all advertisements of houses and compares them with the one he has in mind; he adds to it and takes away from it until it is perfect. It gradually brings to that man the house he dreams about. How? Why, there are one and a million ways in which it might happen. He might be in a restaurant and by him is a man, sitting reading a magazine about homes and gardens, and this man with the dream house in his mind, in his enthusiastic way, says, "Excuse me, but I am interested in homes too." This man might say, "Yes, this picture is of a nice house. I was attracted to it myself. Are you building?" "No, I am not, but hope to. I want to build in the West." The other replies, "I would have built long ago if I had wanted to build in the West, but I want to build in Chicago. I have a cousin in the West who has some property, and he would gladly loan money to anyone who would want to build on it. I will be glad to give you his name." And before he knows it, he is on his way to have his house built.

That sort of person gets what he is thinking about. It is not the woman who says, "I am going to try a new thought method," and sits in the middle of the room and folds her hands. "I want a house; I shall have a house; the house belongs to me; I will have the best house in the neighborhood; I will have Mrs. Smith envious of me; I will have a house; I will have a house; I will have a house." That is as far as she gets. There is a lot radically wrong with a system of that nature.

Did you ever go back and look into your own life? Did you ever know of anyone who had his or her heart set on something from morning to night, that that person did not get somewhere, in the end? It is all according to the degree of will power and determination he uses. That is the thing. Create in your mind and keep on creating until it bursts out in material force around you, the very thing you want. It is the use of that creative power you have that counts.

This creative power, your imaging power, is only one of the great powers you have. You have healing powers; you have mental powers and the power of sending messages to reach people. Just suppose, speaking along this creative idea, there is something you want and that you could send that picture to the mind of some other person, and make him see it, and also use another power to make the person write you or grant you a favor. Just think of these faculties being brought together for one issue! Look at the unlimited possibilities, and yet these are only three of the powers you have out of a million. Man has never been told a third of the truth about himself, not a hundredth nor a millionth. He has been taught that he has five faculties--seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling, and that they constitute all that he has. It is the most false, belittling story of man that was ever told. The great men in the past who discovered these things were commanded to remain silent so that the mass would never know about themselves. Libraries were burned so that the writings of the oracles, wise men, magi, and others should be destroyed in order that man would not know about himself.

Napoleon, not only a Rosicrucian but a great leader, once said, "I would rather have every man in my army acquainted with his own possibilities and follow himself rather than follow me in ignorance"; but other leaders thought differently. Kings, queens, and others were trying to hold man down so they might have a greater power, thus making slaves out of men.

The Essenes, the Therapeuti, and the Arcane Schools of Egypt and India, were the ones who kept this knowledge preserved and had to keep it under cover. In some parts of Europe today, the Rosicrucians dare not mention their existence. It was forbidden in Italy only until the last few years, and also in Germany. At one time Russia was one of the greatest countries for Rosicrucianism and then along came the rule of the Czar and then the World War, and after that the work was forbidden.

In this country the work is open and free. It is being offered to you on a silver platter with sparkling diamonds to make it attractive, and still we have to beg some of you to try and see what you can do, to become what God created--an image of Himself with all of His creative powers. In all of the affairs of your life you can use these things. You do not have to wear any garbs or robes or peculiar expressions on your faces. You may live the life of the era, adopt its customs, and still retire alone to a place of quiet and demonstrate these infinite laws.

Rosicrucian Writings Online
Making Your Dreams Come True A LECTURE GIVEN IN THE ROSICRUCIAN AUDITORIUM SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA By H. Spencer Lewis, Ph.D., F.R.C. [From The Rosicrucian Digest June 1932] WHEN approaching this subject of making your dreams come true, we must realize, in the first place, that there are two kinds of dreams with which many of us are familiar. I am not quite sure which is the most mysterious--night dreams or the so-called day dreams. I do not know if it has ever been determined that animals lower in the scale of evolution of man can have day dreams. That is, whether they can build up in their imagination things that do not exist. However, we know that man can do this. We know also, that he can turn ethereal, dreamy things, into concrete form. Now, that is something which is not commonly admitted, and I have no doubt but what persons in the audience will challenge my statement. They will say, "That is all bunkum; that is all talk." There are, undoubtedly, some learned, wise men in this city, business men, or, perhaps, men who are trained as doctors and lawyers, who will also challenge my statement. On the other hand, there are men and women in the audience who have tested our work, and thousands and thousands of men and women throughout the United States and Europe who are connected with our work, and some who are not, who are daily proving it to be true. You now have, therefore, the opinion of those who doubt and of those who have proven it. I have a way to prove it to you, too, if you are one of the conscientious persons who has an open mind, who will say to yourself, "There is some evidence on both sides." You can do yourself no harm by performing a test. If it fails, after two or three trials, you perhaps have reason for your doubts, but even two or three failures would not be sufficient reason for saying that there is nothing to the principle. If, after two or three tests, you have found sufficient results that you never had before, you would have reason to believe there is something to the principle. And each time you feel some reaction you would see at least the general scheme of what we are presenting. So we find that man has the ability to imagine. Stop and think a moment what that is. It is something by which you can close your eyes and build up something you have never seen before. It is not merely a matter of recollection. If I said to you, "Close your eyes for a moment and visualize where you were or what you were doing Christmas Eve," and each one of you recalled how you were out somewhere, or at home, or around the Christmas tree, that process would be visualizing and recollecting something that had already existed in concrete form and was registered in your mind. But if I said, "I want you to close your eyes and visualize something that does not exist and that you have never seen," you will ask, "What is it?" Then I will say, "Close your eyes and visualize an old-fashioned sugar barrel sitting on the pavement on top of which is a bronze bust of George Washington." You would have no trouble in seeing that, and yet there you are, imagining, or, as science says, imaging, something that never before existed. I could go on and say, "I want each one of you to close your eyes and visualize a five-room bungalow, sitting in the middle of a piece of lawn, two hundred feet square, with red tiled roof and green trimmings around the windows." I could continue on and on, telling you about the curtains, etc. and build the whole picture up in your mind. This is like taking some element from one quality and one element from another and making something new. It is a divine process, a divine faculty and power that is resident in you and not in the other animal species. They have no use or understanding for it. Your imagination is absolutely unlimited. The men who have been conceiving skyscrapers in New York, trying to out-rival each other, imagine one taller and taller until New York is just spotted with them. I remember when I stopped this August in New York City, we were on the twentieth floor of the Hotel New Yorker, and looked down. That was not so high. There are many other floors in that building, and we were only on the twentieth. As we looked eastward, we could see the Empire State Building with its mast for dirigibles, and many other taller buildings, and each year they are taller and taller. The imaging of the architect in putting the component elements together, in letting the buildings rise higher and higher, is unlimited. When building bridges, his imagination is unlimited. When he comes, however, to draw out on paper the plans for the structural work, there are certain structural limitations that have to be abided by. He has to shorten the span a little, or may have to drop the height a little in order to come within building restrictions, but in man there are no limitations. There is nothing to prevent man's mind from visualizing the taking of the Atlantic Ocean and putting it in the Pacific Ocean, and from taking the Pacific and putting it in the Atlantic. These things you form with your imagination. You do it constantly, although you seldom realize it. If you would stop to think of it, you would recognize this peculiar characteristic of the human mind which enables it to create things that have never existed before. Now you will have to admit that you create mentally before you create materially. You know very well that before an artist begins to paint a masterpiece on the canvas, he visualizes it first in his mind; in fact, it is worked out so well in his mind that the process of painting is really a transference of the creation from his mind to the canvas. The man who is to build an apartment house works out a great many of the general schemes of the structure in his mind before he starts making lines on paper. We find that all the way through history. Take, for instance, the first man, sitting on the bough of a tree on a river bank, and sleeping on some dry grass for a bed in order that animals would not get him, beginning to think of a home, what it would be, where it would be, the size of it, and how he would be protected from the animals. He began to think of means of safety and pictured it all in his mind before he began to make wood and grass walls around the home he was going to make. All through civilization man has created mentally the things he wants and he does not stop. Here is the particular thing the Rosicrucians want to drive home. It is not sufficient to do this mental creating, visualizing, the building up of something in your mind that is perfectly created, and then stop, because that would produce nothing. Man would still be living in the boughs of a tree on the river bank, if that were as far as he could go. The more we keep working over the mental picture in our minds and make it a part of us, the more we attract to it and gradually build it into material existence. Please do not think I am implying that a man can go down and lie on one of the wharfs of the Hudson River with a cigarette in his mouth and visualize a bridge across the Hudson, and if he stayed long enough, some day the steel would go up and finally the bridge would be built. Such a statement would be foolish. We must draw a line between rationalism and fanaticism. It is unfortunate that some of the ideals of mysticism have fallen into the hands of fanatics. To hear them speak of it and hear them interpret their understanding of what we are trying to teach makes mysticism sound weird and devoid of logic. Not long ago, a woman came into my office and was trying to impress upon me the merits of Christian Science, and she said this: "Once you know and understand Christian Science, nothing of a material, physical nature can affect you." I said, "Do you mean that nothing in this material world will affect us?" I knew she was not talking true Christian Science. She said that if she were to go out in the street and be hit by an automobile and injured to such an extent that bones were broken, she would say that there was no automobile and she was not hurt; it was just the thought that the automobile hit her and that her bones were broken. That is absurd and such a person can do more injury to a worthy movement than she can possibly do good. But, I do mean to say that the man or woman who has built up, mentally, in his or her mind, a day dream, and each day adds to it, magnetizes with more vitality the imagination, that he or she is building in the material world as well as the mental. I say such persons gradually attract to themselves the condition that will help them to realize what they dream. You might only take the reverse of this proposition to prove how true it is. Take the man who finds himself in the business world, or home, or social world, in need of something, and after visualizing it momentarily, says, "Yes, that would solve my problem if I could have that thing." It may be an addition to his home, a new position, raise in salary, or something of that kind. Suppose he thinks of it for a moment, visualizing and seeing it in all its completeness, and then says, "It is impossible for me," and no longer thinks of it. Is there any hope of that man bringing to him what he needs as long as he does not allow it to come into his consciousness again? It is the reverse of the picture that I am trying to bring to your mind. We know that different types of men congregate together. We know that the young man who is deeply interested in art will sooner or later come in contact with like minds. We know the person deeply interested in music will sooner or later come in contact with similar minds. In the first place, the person will not only go where he will hear music, but goes to the library and reads about music and meets people who are interested in music. The artist attracts art and all those who are interested in art. The seventeen-year old boy who leaves school and goes to the pool rooms can tell you a surprising amount of information about pool rooms that uninformed people would think he had wilfully completed, but it would be because he had attracted to himself all the knowledge pertaining to that one subject. Take the young man interested in law; another interested in botany, or some other subject. You will find that they associate with people of similar minds. You will find the same among women. You will find the woman interested in social things attracting to herself those who are interested in the same things. It is sane and logical, and you can demonstrate it in your own life. Take the man going around from morning to night with the thought that he wants a seven-room house in a certain neighborhood. He dreams of it, visualizes it. He looks at all advertisements of houses and compares them with the one he has in mind; he adds to it and takes away from it until it is perfect. It gradually brings to that man the house he dreams about. How? Why, there are one and a million ways in which it might happen. He might be in a restaurant and by him is a man, sitting reading a magazine about homes and gardens, and this man with the dream house in his mind, in his enthusiastic way, says, "Excuse me, but I am interested in homes too." This man might say, "Yes, this picture is of a nice house. I was attracted to it myself. Are you building?" "No, I am not, but hope to. I want to build in the West." The other replies, "I would have built long ago if I had wanted to build in the West, but I want to build in Chicago. I have a cousin in the West who has some property, and he would gladly loan money to anyone who would want to build on it. I will be glad to give you his name." And before he knows it, he is on his way to have his house built. That sort of person gets what he is thinking about. It is not the woman who says, "I am going to try a new thought method," and sits in the middle of the room and folds her hands. "I want a house; I shall have a house; the house belongs to me; I will have the best house in the neighborhood; I will have Mrs. Smith envious of me; I will have a house; I will have a house; I will have a house." That is as far as she gets. There is a lot radically wrong with a system of that nature. Did you ever go back and look into your own life? Did you ever know of anyone who had his or her heart set on something from morning to night, that that person did not get somewhere, in the end? It is all according to the degree of will power and determination he uses. That is the thing. Create in your mind and keep on creating until it bursts out in material force around you, the very thing you want. It is the use of that creative power you have that counts. This creative power, your imaging power, is only one of the great powers you have. You have healing powers; you have mental powers and the power of sending messages to reach people. Just suppose, speaking along this creative idea, there is something you want and that you could send that picture to the mind of some other person, and make him see it, and also use another power to make the person write you or grant you a favor. Just think of these faculties being brought together for one issue! Look at the unlimited possibilities, and yet these are only three of the powers you have out of a million. Man has never been told a third of the truth about himself, not a hundredth nor a millionth. He has been taught that he has five faculties--seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling, and that they constitute all that he has. It is the most false, belittling story of man that was ever told. The great men in the past who discovered these things were commanded to remain silent so that the mass would never know about themselves. Libraries were burned so that the writings of the oracles, wise men, magi, and others should be destroyed in order that man would not know about himself. Napoleon, not only a Rosicrucian but a great leader, once said, "I would rather have every man in my army acquainted with his own possibilities and follow himself rather than follow me in ignorance"; but other leaders thought differently. Kings, queens, and others were trying to hold man down so they might have a greater power, thus making slaves out of men. The Essenes, the Therapeuti, and the Arcane Schools of Egypt and India, were the ones who kept this knowledge preserved and had to keep it under cover. In some parts of Europe today, the Rosicrucians dare not mention their existence. It was forbidden in Italy only until the last few years, and also in Germany. At one time Russia was one of the greatest countries for Rosicrucianism and then along came the rule of the Czar and then the World War, and after that the work was forbidden. In this country the work is open and free. It is being offered to you on a silver platter with sparkling diamonds to make it attractive, and still we have to beg some of you to try and see what you can do, to become what God created--an image of Himself with all of His creative powers. In all of the affairs of your life you can use these things. You do not have to wear any garbs or robes or peculiar expressions on your faces. You may live the life of the era, adopt its customs, and still retire alone to a place of quiet and demonstrate these infinite laws.

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Making Your Dreams Come True