The Power of Awareness · 23 of 28

Case Histories (Part 1)

IT WILL be extremely helpful at this point to cite a number of specific examples of the successful application of this law. Actual case histories are given. In each of these, the problem is clearly defined and the way imagination was used to attain the required state of consciousness is fully described. In each of these instances, the author of this book was either personally concerned or was told the facts by the person involved.

Case 1

This is a story with every detail of which I am personally familiar.

In the spring of 1943, a recently drafted soldier was stationed in a large army camp in Louisiana. He was intensely eager to get out of the army, but only in an entirely honorable way.

The only way he could do this was to apply for a discharge. The application then required the approval of his commanding officer to become effective. Based on army regulations, the decision of the commanding officer was final and could not be appealed. The soldier, following all the necessary procedure, applied for a discharge.

Within four hours, this application was returned – marked “disapproved”. Convinced he could not appeal the decision to any higher authority, military or civilian, he turned within to his own consciousness, determined to rely on the law of assumption.

The soldier realized that his consciousness was the only reality, that his particular state of consciousness determined the events he would encounter.

That night, in the interval between getting into bed and falling asleep, he concentrated on consciously using the law of assumption. In imagination, he felt himself to be in his own apartment in New York City. He visualized his apartment, that is, in his mind’s eye he actually saw his own apartment, mentally picturing each one of the familiar rooms with all the furnishings vividly real.

With this picture clearly visualized, and lying flat on his back, he completely relaxed physically. In this way, he induced a state bordering on sleep, at the same time retaining control of the direction of his attention. When his body was completely immobilized, he assumed that he was in his own room and felt himself to be lying in his own bed – a very different feeling from that of lying on an army cot.

In imagination, he rose from the bed, walked from room to room, touching various pieces of furniture. He then went to the window and, with his hands resting on the sill, looked out on the street on which his apartment faced. So vivid was all this in his imagination that he saw in detail the pavement, the railings, the trees and the familiar red brick of the building on the opposite side of the street. He then returned to his bed and felt himself drifting off to sleep.

He knew that it was most important in the successful use of this law that at the actual point of falling asleep, his consciousness be filled with the assumption that he was already what he wanted to be. All that he did in imagination was based on the assumption that he was no longer in the army. Night after night, the soldier enacted this drama. Night after night, in imagination, he felt himself, honorably discharged, back in his home, seeing all the familiar surroundings and falling asleep in his own bed. This continued for eight nights.

For eight days, his objective experience continued to be directly opposite to his subjective experience in consciousness each night, before going to sleep. On the ninth day, orders came through from Battalion headquarters for the soldier to fill out a new application for his discharge.

Shortly after this was done, he was ordered to report to the Colonel’s office. During the discussion, the Colonel asked him if he was still desirous of getting out of the army.

Upon receiving an affirmative reply, the Colonel said that he personally disagreed, and while he had strong objections to approving of the discharge, he had decided to overlook these objections and to approve it. Within a few hours, the application was approved and the soldier, now a civilian, was on a train bound for home.

Case 2

This is a striking story of an extremely successful businessman demonstrating the power of imagination and the law of assumption. I know this family intimately, and all the details were told to me by the son described herein.

The story begins when he was twenty years old. He was next to the oldest in a large family of nine brothers and one sister. The father was one of the partners in a small merchandising business. In his eighteenth year, the brother referred to in this story left the country in which they lived and traveled two thousand miles to enter college and complete his education. Shortly after his first year in college, he was called home because of a tragic event in connection with his father’s business. Through the machinations of his associates, the father was not only forced out of his business, but was the object of false accusations impugning his character and integrity. At the same time, he was deprived of his rightful share in the equity of the business.

The result was he found himself largely discredited and almost penniless. It was under these circumstances that the son was called home from college.

He returned, his heart filled with one great resolution. He was determined that he would become outstandingly successful in business. The first thing he and his father did was to use the little money they had to start their own business. They rented a small store on a side street not far from the large business of which the father had been one of the principal owners. There they started a business bent upon real service to the community. It was shortly thereafter that the son, with instinctive awareness that it was bound to work, deliberately used imagination to attain an almost fantastic objective.

Every day, on the way to and from work, he passed the building of his father’s former business – the biggest business of its kind in the country. It was one of the largest buildings, with the most prominent location in the heart of the city. On the outside of the building was a huge sign on which the name of the firm was painted in large bold letters.

Day after day, as he passed by, a great dream took shape in the son’s mind. He thought of how wonderful it would be if it was his family that had this great building – his family that owned and operated this great business.

One day, as he stood gazing at the building, in his imagination, he saw a completely different name on the huge sign across the entrance. Now the large letters spelled out his family name (in these case histories actual names are not used; for the sake of clarity, in this story we will use hypothetical names and assume that the son’s family name was Lordard).

Where the sign read F. N. Moth & Co., in imagination, he actually saw the name, letter by letter, N. Lordard & Sons. He remained looking at the sign with his eyes wide open, imagining that it read N. Lordard & Sons. Twice a day, week after week, month after month, for two years, he saw his family name over the front of that building. He was convinced that if he felt strongly enough that a thing was true, it was bound to be the case, and by seeing in imagination his family name on the sign – which implied that they owned the business – he became convinced that one day they would own it.

During this period, he told only one person what he was doing. He confided in his mother, who with loving concern tried to discourage him in order to protect him from what might be a great disappointment. Despite this, he persisted day after day.

Two years later, the large company failed and the coveted building was up for sale.

On the day of the sale, he seemed no nearer ownership than he had been two years before when he began to apply the law of assumption. During this period, they had worked hard, and their customers had implicit confidence in them. However, they had not earned anything like the amount of money required for the purchase of the property. Nor did they have any source from which they could borrow the necessary capital. Making even more remote their chance of getting it was the fact that this was regarded as the most desirable property in the city and a number of wealthy business people were prepared to buy it. On the actual day of the sale, to their complete surprise, a man, almost a total stranger, came into their shop and offered to buy the property for them. (Due to some unusual conditions involved in this transaction, the son’s family could not even make a bid for the property.)

They thought the man was joking. However, this was not the case. The man explained that he had watched them for some time, admired their ability, believed in their integrity, and that supplying the capital for them to go into business on a large scale was an extremely sound investment for him. That very day the property was theirs. What the son had persisted in seeing in his imagination was now a reality. The hunch of the stranger was more than justified.

Today, this family owns not only the particular business referred to, but owns many of the largest industries in the country in which they live.

The son, seeing his family name over the entrance of this great building, long before it was actually there, was using exactly the technique that produces results. By assuming the feeling that he already had what he desired – by making this a vivid reality in his imagination, by determined persistence, regardless of appearance or circumstance –, he inevitably caused his dream to become a reality.

Case 3

This is the story of a very unexpected result of an interview with a lady who came to consult me.

One afternoon, a young grandmother, a businesswoman in New York, came to see me. She brought along her nine year-old grandson, who was visiting her from his home in Pennsylvania. In response to her questions, I explained the law of assumption, describing in detail the procedure to be followed in attaining an objective. The boy sat quietly, apparently absorbed in a small toy truck, while I explained to the grandmother the method of assuming the state of consciousness that would be hers were her desire already fulfilled.

I told her the story of the soldier in camp, who, each night, fell asleep, imagining himself to be in his own bed in his own home.

When the boy and his grandmother were leaving, he looked up at me with great excitement and said, “I know what I want and, now, I know how to get it.” Surprised, I asked him what it was he wanted; he told me he had his heart set on a puppy.

To this, the grandmother vigorously protested, telling the boy that it had been made clear repeatedly that he could not have a dog under any circumstances, that his father and mother would not allow it, that the boy was too young to care for it properly, and furthermore, the father had a deep dislike for dogs – he actually hated to have one around.

All these were arguments the boy, passionately desirous of having a dog, refused to understand. “Now I know what to do”, he said. “Every night, just as I am going off to sleep, I am going to pretend that I have a dog and we are going for a walk”. “No”, said the grandmother, “that is not what Mr. Neville means. This was not meant for you. You cannot have a dog.”

Approximately six weeks later, the grandmother told me what was to her an astonishing story. The boy’s desire to own a dog was so intense that he had absorbed all that I had told his grandmother of how to attain one’s desire – and he believed implicitly that at last he knew how to get a dog.

Putting this belief into practice, for many nights, the boy imagined a dog was lying in his bed beside him. In imagination, he petted the dog, actually feeling its fur. Things like playing with the dog and taking it for a walk filled his mind.

Within a few weeks, it happened. A newspaper in the city in which the boy lived organized a special program in connection with Kindness to Animals Week. All schoolchildren were requested to write an essay on “Why I Would Like to Own a Dog”.

After entries from all the schools were submitted and judged, the winner of the contest was announced. The very same boy who weeks before in my apartment in New York had told me “Now I know how to get a dog” was the winner. In an elaborate ceremony, which was publicized with stories and pictures in the newspaper, the boy was awarded a beautiful collie puppy.

In relating this story, the grandmother told me that if the boy had been given the money with which to buy a dog, the parents would have refused to do so and would have used it to buy a bond for the boy or put it in the savings bank for him. Furthermore, if someone had made the boy a gift of a dog, they would have refused it or given it away.

But the dramatic manner in which they boy got the dog, the way he won the city-wide contest, the stories and pictures in the newspaper, the pride of achievement and joy of the boy himself all combined to bring about a change of heart in the parents, and they found themselves doing that which they never conceived possible – they allowed him to keep the dog.

All this the grandmother explained to me, and she concluded by saying that there was one particular kind of dog on which the boy had set his heart. It was a collie.

Case 4

This was told by the aunt in the story to the entire audience at the conclusion of one of my lectures.

During the question period following my lecture on the law of assumption, a lady who had attended many lectures and had had personal consultation with me on a number of occasions, rose and asked permission to tell a story illustrating how she had successfully used the law.

She said that upon returning home from the lecture the week before, she had found her niece distressed and terribly upset. The husband of the niece, who was an officer in the Army Air Force stationed in Atlantic City, had just been ordered, along with the rest of his unit, to active duty in Europe. She tearfully told her aunt that the reason she was upset was that she had been hoping her husband would be assigned to Florida as an Instructor.

They both loved Florida and were anxious to be stationed there and not to be separated. Upon hearing this story, the aunt stated that there was only one thing to do and that was to apply immediately the law of assumption. “Let’s actualize it”, she said. “If you were actually in Florida,what would you do? You would feel the warm breeze. You would smell the salt air. You would feel your toes sinking down into the sand. Well, let’s do all that right now.”

They took off their shoes and, turning out the lights, in imagination they felt themselves actually in Florida, feeling the warm breeze, smelling the sea air, pushing their toes into the sand.

Forty-eight hours later, the husband received a change of orders. His new instructions were to report immediately to Florida as an Air Force Instructor. Five days later, his wife was on a train to join him. While the aunt, in order to help her niece to attain her desire, joined in with the niece in assuming the state of consciousness required, she did not go to Florida. That was not her desire. On the other hand, that was the intense longing of the niece.