Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Wattles' Impressing the Formless Substance
Perform Wattles’ core metaphysical act: in quiet contemplation, convey your clear image to the ‘Original Substance’ — the thinking stuff he says fills the universe — with the intention to create, holding it as already granted.
Sit quietly with your clear image. Treating thought as the channel, convey it to the “Original Substance” — the thinking stuff Wattles says fills all space — letting your desire ride on “Life seeking fuller expression.” Hold it “with the most positive certainty that it is on its way,” with absolute faith, until it is firmly fixed. Then carry it and act.
What it is
This is Wattles’ metaphysical engine, isolated as a practice: the deliberate act of conveying your clear image to the “Original Substance.” Wattles’ first principle is that “there is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe,” and that “a thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.” The practice is therefore a contemplative transmission: hold the clear picture with intention and faith until it is “impressed” on this substance.
This entry carries the cosmology and the contemplative act explicitly — distinct from the mere image-building of and adjacent to, but more cosmological than, Troward’s.
The Method
- Accept the first principle (the working assumption). “The stuff from which all things are made is a substance which thinks, and a thought of form in this substance produces the form.” Man is “a thinking center, capable of original thought,” who can “communicate his thought to original thinking substance.”
- Bring the clear image to the substance. “Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.” Thought is the channel: “THOUGHT is the only power which can produce tangible riches from the Formless Substance.”
- Let desire be the carrier. “It is power seeking to manifest which causes desire”; your desire for the thing is “the Infinite, seeking to express Himself in you.” Identify your wish with that larger impulse and the conviction firms.
- Hold it as already granted, with certainty. “Hold the mental image of it with the most positive certainty that it is being made, or is on its way to you.” “After once forming the thought, have the most absolute and unquestioning faith.”
- Sit with it until fixed. Contemplate the clear image quietly, with faith and thanksgiving, until it is firmly settled in mind — then carry it and act (Wattles never lets this replace the action of ). (Sourcing note: quoted phrases are verbatim from The Science of Getting Rich, Chapters 4-6; the structure is an attributed paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Wallace Delois Wattles (1860–1911), American New Thought writer drawing on Hegelian monism, Emerson, and Swedenborg. The “thinking Substance / Original Substance” doctrine is the philosophical foundation of The Science of Getting Rich (1910) and reappears as the healing “Principle of Health” in The Science of Being Well. It is New Thought’s classic “one mind/one substance” idealism.
Common refinements
Treating it as magic that replaces work. Wattles is explicit it does not; impression + faith + gratitude + present action is the whole.
- Anxious “sending.” Straining to push the image outward breaks the calm certainty he asks for; sit, fix, and rest in it.
- Vague image. You can only impress what you clearly hold — build the definite picture first.
- Forgetting the desire-link. Connecting your wish to “Life seeking fuller expression” is what gives Wattles’ faith its steadiness; skipping it leaves the contemplation hollow.