A properly directed imagination may be as much a help to his progress as an improperly directed one is a certain hindrance to it. During some exercises for meditation it can be creatively used in a particular way. For instance, the aspirant thinks of his master, if he has one, or of a scriptural personage, if he believes in him, or of an unknown, ideal, beneficent, perfected Being in the angelic world, and imagines him to be "the Gate" to a deeper order of existence. The aspirant then implores him for admittance into this order, for strength to make the passage, and for Grace to become worthy of it. In this curious situation, he has to play a double part. On the one hand, he is to be the person making the request; he must feel intensely, even to the point of shedding tears over what he is mentally crying out for; on the other hand, he is to see him doing so, to be a mere witness of what is happening. Thus at one time he will be part of the scene, at another time merely looking at it. Every detail of it is to be vividly pictured until it carries the feeling of veridical reality.
-- Notebooks Category 4: Elementary Meditation > Chapter 5 : Visualizations, Symbols > # 15
