Radio Lecture
The Law of Assumption
Radio Talk, Station KECA, Los Angeles, July, 1951.
The great mystic, William Blake, wrote almost two hundred years ago,
"What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be and is productive
of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be."
Now, at first, this mystical gem seems a bit involved, or at best to be a
play on words; but it is nothing of the kind. Listen to it carefully. "What
seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be." That is certainly clear
enough. It is a simple truth about the law of assumption, and a warning
of the consequences of its misuse.
The author of the Epistle to the Romans declared in the fourteenth
chapter, "I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is
nothing unclean of itself; but to him that esteemeth anything to be
unclean, to him it is unclean."
We see by this that it is not superior insight but purblindness that reads
into the greatness of men some littleness with which it chances to be
familiar, for what seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be.
Experiments recently conducted at two of our leading universities
revealed this great truth about the law of assumption. They stated in their
releases to the newspapers, that after two thousand experiments they
came to the conclusion that, ‘What you see when you look at something
depends not so much on what is there as on the assumption you make
when you look. What you believe to be the real physical world is actually
only an assumptive world."
In other words, you would not define your husband in the same way that
you mother would. Yet, you are both defining the same person. Your
particular relationship to a thing influences your feelings with respect to
that thing and makes you see in it an element which is not there.
If your feeling in the matter is a self element; it can be cast out. If it is a
permanent distinction in the state considered, it cannot be cast out. The
thing to do is to try. If you can change your opinion of another, then what
you now believe of him cannot be absolutely true, but relatively true.
Men believe in the reality of the external world because they do not know
how to focus and condense their powers to penetrate its thin crust.
Strangely enough, it is not difficult to penetrate this view of the senses.
To remove the veil of the senses, we do not employ great effort; the