THE DIFFERENCE IS TREMENDOUS

 
The process of realization appears to be a process of becoming what one apparently is not. It seems like a movement from where you are to where you are not. To give conscious direction to this process it is necessary not only to have a perception of the goal, but also to dramatize our transport to it in imagination.

For example, a person who wishes to go to London makes his preparations after visualizing all the vicissitudes of the journey. To this inevitable process we must add the consideration that the realistic position where he is actually stationed is itself a creation of his imagination. It is very natural for a person to take imagination for reality and to believe that he has realized in his search what he has only imagined.

There are some assumptions and presumptions which necessarily attend upon the divine speculation, to which each seeker is inevitably drawn. All search is a struggle to arise from the false to the real. Further, the false cannot eternally take its stand upon the false and patently and wantonly cling to itself and remain itself endlessly.

Thus arises the imperative need to visualize Truth, to take one's stand on this imagined or perceived Truth, and to act as if one has realized this cherished goal of search. This also implies a belief that one has realized it although, again and again, one will be rudely shaken out of this belief by having to face the unchallengeable facts that overtake one in one's imaginative race.

A sincere belief, no matter how false, does not chain the seeker irredeemably, because he is open to correction. However, the person who knowingly and deliberately plays a false role is pretentiously airing claims for which he has no authority. He is inviting a spiritual doom for himself by yielding to patent illicitness. He embraces his boastful jingoism in order to exploit the simple credulity of others.

The first person sincerely, albeit falsely, believes in his own spiritual credentials. The other fraudulently and knowingly poses as what he inwardly knows himself not to be — far from veritable truth. The difference is tremendous. The former is confirming his being in perceived Truth, whereas the latter is confirming his being in perceived falseness.