WisdomLeads # 6: As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

Do you know why it is important to have dreams and ideals in your life? No. Then read what Allen says in Chapter No. 6 of “As a Man Thinketh.”

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The dreamers are the saviours of the World. Begins Allen with these words. From the smallest things to the biggest inventions and greatest discoveries in the world, the dreamers seem to have the largest part in it, I think. Just look around yourself and observe the things and ideas around. From laptops to TV screens, gadgets, PCs and mobile phones; online stores to all kinds of medicines and all the greatest of books and not to miss this Google and Facebook thing. Everything seems to be culminations of someone’s vision and realization of someone’s dreams. Aren’t these things amazing? So, in words of Allen “Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the realities which it shall one day see and know.” 

The Dreamers are the Architects of heaven. “Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are the makers of the after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived; without them, labouring humanity would perish,” writes Allen.

How true and beautiful it is. Can you imagine your world without music and melody? Without compositions of Beethoven and Mozart? Without voice and music of Lata and AR Rehman? Won’t it be too drab and boring for all? And what about world without poetry and painters?Don’t we owe gratitude to all these architects of heaven for making our world alive and so beautiful? Haven’t these dreamers truly changed the face of the world?Delete them and you will find your world labouring and full of mundane.

Cherish your dreams and cherish your ideals. “He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it,” says Allen. Columbus, Copernicus, and Buddha envisioned their perfect worlds and following their paths, they entered into their dream worlds, writes Allen and thus advises “Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.”

Nelson Mandela, Junior Martin Luther King, Mahatama Gandhi and Mother Teresa were all such dreamers who built their visionary worlds, despite challenges and atrocities in their lives. And Malala Yousafzai is another one such.

There were many, there are many and there will be many, who, with the power of their thoughts and dreams , will cherish visions in their hearts and will leave marks on this world.

To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve. “Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.” Says Allen.

To quote a few dreamers here like Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Wright Brothers, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Edison and Einstein, who become one with their ideal. In words of Allen thus “The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”

So, nurture the dream seedling in your heart and let it grow with the time, who knows the next name in the list of dreamers can be yours.

Become one with the Ideal. For those of us who always blame our circumstances and situation in life, Allen says that “Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it.” By giving example of a youth who despite living in abject poverty changes his destiny the day he decides to change his thoughts, so says Allen change your thoughts and change your circumstances and achieve what you envision in your heart. And just like this youth changed his life, says Allen, “and you too, youthful reader, will realize the vision(not the idle wish)of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love.” You will get the results of your thoughts and your dreams. No less, no more. Whatever be your present circumstances, you can always rise, fall or remain where you are with the power of your thoughts and your dreams.

Dreamers write their own Destiny. So for those of you who always believe in some luck Allen writes that “the thoughtless, the ignorant, and the insolent, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune, and chance.”

According to him, all those of us who look at the success of other people must also see is the struggle, trails and tribulations though which all these people have gone before realizing their dreams. We give credit to chance, but what we do not credit are their relentless efforts and their invincible faith in their dreams which changed their destinies.

So Allen says, “In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.”

And to sum up Allen says that “The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart-this you will build your life by, this you will become.”