426 ROSICRUCIANCOSMO-CONCEPTION
inventors of these improvements possessed the mind and
imagination to form mental images, the improvements could
never have become concrete realities. In our materia listic
day and age there is scarcely an effort made to conceal the
contempt in which the faculty of imagination is generally
held, and none feel the effects of this more acutely than
inventors. They are usually classed as “cranks,” and yet they
have b een t he chief fact ors in the subju gation of the Physical
World and in making our social environment what it is
today. Any improvement in spiritual or physical conditions
must first be imagined as a possibility before it can become
an actuality.
If the student will turn to diagram 1 this fact will
become clear. In the comparison there drawn between the
functions of the different human vehicles and the part of a
stereopticon, the mind corresponds to the lens. It is the
focusing medium whereby the ideas wrought by the
imagination of the spirit are projected upon the material
universe. First they are thought-forms only, but when the
desire to realize the imagined possibilities has set the man to
work in the Physical World, they become what we call
concrete “realities.”
At the present time, however, the mind is not focused in
a way that enables it to give a clear and true picture of what
the spirit imagines. It is not one-pointed. It gives misty and
clouded pictures. Hence the necessity of experiment to show
the inadequacies of the first conception, and bring about new
imaginings and ideas until the image produced by the spirit
in mental substance has been reproduced in physical
substance.
At b est, we are able to s hape t hrou gh t he mind only such
images as have to do with Form, because the human mind