Another incredible account is that of Vera Fryling, M.D. A Jewish teenager on the run from the Gestapo, she lived undercover in Berlin during the Holocaust. During this time she imagined that she was a doctor, a psychiatrist in a free land. Overcoming the Nazis, Soviet army and a bout with cancer, Fryling ended up on the faculty of the San Francisco Medical School. “Imagination,” she says, “can help one transcend the insults life has dealt us.

 

The real key to turning imagination into reality is acting as if the imagined scene were real and already accomplished. Instead of pretending it is a scene from the future, imagine it as though you are truly experiencing it in the present. It is a real event in the now. The great masters of antiquity have told use through the ages that whatever you believe you become. If you believe and imagine in the now that you are whatever you wish to be then reality must conform.

The problem most of us have is that we look at our lives through eyes of lack, seeing only what we don’t have and dwell on that. That is also active imagination. You are imagining and actively pushing this lack into your future by dwelling on it as real in the now.

• As an exercise take anything about your life you would like to change or enhance. Sit back, relax, close your eyes and fantasize what you would really like to occur in your life. Don’t put any limitations on it, and don’t shroud it with doubt. Remember, there is no one who is going to judge this fantasy and no one who is going to prevent it from happening. Only you have the power to deter it’s realization. If it is healing your body then imagine yourself as you have felt in your healthiest hour. Become that again and relive it as a real occurrence in the now. Believe that you can regain your health, and this method will facilitate the healing. More and more enlightened physicians, among them Deepak Chopra, are expressing this. You have the power to do anything you want if you first imagine it in your mind’s eye.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, five time Mr. Universe, four-time Mr. Olympia states about his training, “ As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can....I visualized myself being there already - having achieved the goal already. It’s mind over matter.”

The epitome of using visualization to create and invent was Nikola Tesla. At an early age Tesla trained his powers of visualization. In his autobiography “My Inventions”, he describes, “Every night (and sometimes during the day), when alone, I would start out on my journeys - see new places, cities and countries - live there, meet people and make friendships and acquaintances and, however unbelievable, it is a fact that they were just as dear to me as those in actual life and not a bit less intense in their manifestations.

“This I did constantly until I was about seventeen when my thoughts turned seriously to invention. Then I observed to my delight that I could visualize with the greatest facility. I needed no models, drawings or experiments. I could picture them all as real in my mind.”

Tesla was a prolific and unparalleled genius, giving us AC electricity, the electric car as well as many other devices, some which have not seen the light of day because they would revolutionize man’s approach to energy.

In the 1980 Olympics the Russians used this technique. They split their athletes into four groups: Groups A through D. Group A used 100% traditional physical practice; Group B 75% physical 25% mental; Group C, 50% physical - 50% mental and Group D was 75% mental and 25% physical practice. After the Moscow Olympics and the Lake Placid Olympics these world class athletes scores were tallied and those in Group D had won the most medals.

This knowledge that the power to imagine is more powerful than physical practice is being used from medicine to the arts. Many famous musicians practice as often in their mind as they do with their instrument, Pablo Casals, world greatest cellist, being one of them.

This power cannot be underestimated. You can prove it to yourself by taking one thing that is very important to you and imagining it as real in your life. You have nothing to lose by applying this technique, and everything to gain. Your creative abilities will blossom and flourish the more you apply it to your life. Don’t take anyone else’s word for it, and play with the concept until it works for you.