Chapter 1:

The Game
Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game.
It is a game, however, which cannot be played successfully without the
knowledge of spiritual law, and the Old and the New Testaments give the rules
of the game with wonderful clearness. Jesus Christ taught that it was a great
game of Giving and Receiving.
Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." This means that whatever
man sends out in word or deed, will return to him; what he gives, he will
receive.
If he gives hate, he will receive hate; if he gives love, he will receive love; if he
gives criticism, he will receive criticism; if he lies he will be lied to; if he cheats
he will be cheated. We are taught also, that the imaging faculty plays a leading
part in the game of life.
Keep thy heart (or imagination) with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of
life." (Prov. 4:23.)
This means that what man images, sooner or later externalizes in his affairs, I
know of a man who feared a certain disease. It was a very rare disease and
difficult to get, but he pictured it continually and read about it until it manifested
in his body, and he died, the victim of distorted imagination.
So we see, to play successfully the game of life, we must train the imaging
faculty. A person with an imaging faculty trained to image only good, brings into
his life "every righteous desire of his heart" - health, wealth, love, friends,
perfect self-expression, his highest ideals.
The imagination has been called, "The Scissors of The Mind," and it is ever
cutting, cutting, day by day, the pictures man sees there, and sooner or later he
meets his own creations in his outer world. To train the imagination successfully,
man must understand the workings of his mind. The Greeks said: "Know
Thyself."
There are three departments of the mind, the subconscious, conscious and
superconscious. The subconscious, is simply power, without direction. It is like
steam or electricity, and it does what it is directed to do; it has no power of
induction.
Whatever man feels deeply or images clearly, is impressed upon the
subconscious mind, and carried out in minutest detail.