Imagination · “Feel It Real”
The Master Mind
Become a ‘master mind’ — one who chooses his own thoughts, ideas, and desires through imagination rather than reflexively mirroring whatever environment, people, and impressions suggest.
Don’t let what you see/hear/feel reproduce itself in your mind automatically. Intercept each impression and work it out — see it from every angle and form your own, superior idea (even reframe the negative by understanding the force behind it). Keep your thought higher than your environment’s. Choose the thought you want and hold it to completion; choose the desire you want and shield it from foreign desires. Stay open to all input — just never blindly obey it. That is the master mind.
What it is
Larson’s most ambitious imagination teaching, and the source of his phrase “master mind” (in his sense, decades before Napoleon Hill’s group-alliance meaning).
The master mind is “the mind that thinks what it wants to think, regardless of what circumstances, environment or associations may suggest.” Most people, he argues, form their thoughts and desires “after the likeness of the impressions received through the senses,” so they are run by their surroundings and “in the hands of fate,” drifting with the desires of the world and ending up misplaced — living a life not their own.
The cure is not to close the mind, but to intercept every impression and transform it into a chosen idea through the imaging faculty: “when he transforms every impression received from without into an original idea… he uses environment as a servant, thereby placing fate in his own hands.” Practically it has two halves: (a) convert impressions instead of absorbing them, and (b) hold a chosen line of thought/desire to completion instead of being pulled off it by the next suggestion.
The Method
- Refuse automatic reproduction. “Never permit objects discerned by the senses to reproduce themselves in your mind against your will. Form your own ideas about what you see, hear or feel, and try to make those ideas superior to what was suggested.”
- Work out every impression. “To work out an impression, try to see through its whole nature. Look at it from every conceivable point of view… Use your imagination in determining what you want to think.” A worked-out impression “becomes instrumental in giving the mind a number of new and superior ideas” rather than reproducing itself.
- Reframe even the negative. “When you see evil do not form ideas that are in the likeness of that evil… try to understand the forces that are back of that evil — forces that are good in themselves, though misdirected.” You then “feel no bad effects from experiences that may seem undesirable.”
- Out-think even good environments. “Surround yourself… with those things that suggest the superior, but do not permit such suggestions to determine your thought… your thought must always be higher than the thought your environment may suggest.” Use good impressions as raw material for still-better thoughts.
- Choose the thought and hold it to completion. “Think what you want to think, no matter what your surroundings may suggest; and continue to think what you want to think until that particular line of thought or action has been completed.” (He warns that obeying each new suggestion makes the mind drift, leaving every task unfinished.)
- Choose the desire and shield it. “Desire what you want to desire and impress that desire so deeply… that it cannot possibly be disturbed by those foreign desires that environment may suggest… When you know that you are in the right desire, do not permit anything to influence your mind to change. Take such suggestions and convert them into the desire you have already decided upon.”
- Stay open, never blindly follow. “Keep the mind open to… all those worlds… gain valuable impressions from every source, but do not blindly follow those impressions. Use them constructively in building up your own system of original thought.”
Source & Lineage
Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912), Chapter XVIII, “Imagination and the Master Mind.” Larson’s “master mind” is the self-governed thinker; this predates and differs from Napoleon Hill’s later “Master Mind” (a coordinated group of minds).
Christian D. Larson (1874-1962). → (larson christian d).
Common refinements
Closing the mind. Larson is explicit: stay open, gather impressions widely — just don’t blindly obey the desires they suggest. Refusal-of-input is not the method.
- Reframing into denial. “Understand the force back of the evil” is meant to defuse reactivity, not to pretend harm is fine. Keep discernment.
- Choosing a thought, then dropping it. The discipline is to completion; chronic switching at each new suggestion is the drift he warns about.
- Mistaking it for Hill’s group “Master Mind.” Different concept — here it’s the self-governed individual thinker.