The thought-image or ideal pattern of a thing is the first cause relatively to that thing.
Primary causation is the power to initiate a train of causation directed to an individual purpose.
Conditions are never causes in themselves, but only the subsequent links of a chain.
What we have to do is to reverse our method of thinking and regard the ideal as the real, and the outward manifestation as a mere reflection which must change with every change of the object which casts it.
It is here that we find the importance of realizing spirit's independence of time and space. An ideal, as such, cannot be formed in the future. It must either be formed here and now or not be formed at all; and it is for this reason that every teacher, who has ever spoken with due knowledge of the subject, has impressed upon his followers the necessity of picturing to themselves the fulfilment of their desires as already accomplished on the spiritual plane, as the indispensable condition of fulfilment in the visible and concrete.
If the end is already secured, then it follows that all the steps leading to it are secured also. The means will pass into the smaller circle of our conscious activities day by day in due order, and then we have to work upon them, not with fear, doubt, or feverish excitement, but calmly and joyously, because we know that the end is already secured, and that our reasonable use of such means as present themselves in the desired direction is only one portion of a much larger co-ordinated movement, the final result of which admits of no doubt. Mental Science does not offer a premium to idleness, but it takes all work out of the region of anxiety and toil by assuring the worker of the success of his labour, if not in the precise form he anticipated, then in some other still better suited to his requirements.
From: THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE
By THOMAS TROWARD[1909]
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