​                                    On Manifestation

Manifestation means making an idea real.  The manifestation miracles of Jesus are taught as if the fish and loaves of bread physically appeared at the Prince of Peace’s Command.  But can an ordinary person manifest an idea through wish alone?  If so, how?  

By one theory, all human beings can and do manifest their ideas through hard work, ingenuity, and making the right choices.  There are a number of models and metaphors to describe the process of manifestation, including passing through the right metaphorical doors, co-creation, predicting the Mind of God or appealing to It, the power of the word to refine and elucidate unclear ideas, densification, and the neuroanatomical model. 

The manifested objective can result in something tangible or intangible.  A non-physical objective is a goal conceived and maintained in the mind’s eye.  For an ordinary person, the process of manifesting a non-physical objective requires a realistic goal, the requisite resources, and sustained effort until the goal is achieved.  One may change one’s goal at any moment, requiring a new plan or building off of a previous one.

There may not be an ‘aha’ moment when one realizes that the goal is achieved because there may not be any contextual indicators of manifestation (or the ones that exist are identical to those for other objectives).  But if there are no perceptible clues of achievement of a non-physical objective, how do we chart a course? 

Fortunately, society provides educational pathways for just about every career goal.  Doctors go to medical school.  Lawyers go to law school.  Engineers go to college, graduate school, or vocational institutions.  But what about goals that are less definite or ones that require innovation?  The initial step is still to identify the goal clearly.  Then, the process of achieving a clear objective is like passing through the right door.

Doors

Doors are a metaphor for a combination of choice and action.  Each door connects to a result.  It is not guaranteed that a given door will always lead to the same outcome.  But it will lead to a place technically different than the starting point and it will result in a different person, too.  For example, the photograph below shows a door opened through academic study.

Each subject may open a different door though all require sustained effort.  To successfully manifest one’s goal, one must select the right door (e.g., the right educational degree), have sufficient resources, exert the necessary effort at the right time, and make other choices along the way.  

If the goal changes, one may have to choose a different door (presumably with a different destination) midway through the manifestation process.  The possibility of failure looms as well; for example, a door representing an unintended destination might not lead to anything desirable.  Doors are not the only metaphor for manifestation. 

Co-Creation

Another way to conceptualize manifestation is co-creation.  Co-creation occurs when spiritual Light from God shines through the filter of the human mind, creating its content externally (not necessarily in physical form).  There are at least two components to this model: an idea and a Co-creator.  The idea is a product of the human mind; the creative Force that manifests the idea comes from God. 

Co-creation raises very difficult questions: what ideas are quickest to become real?  Does the Light prefer ideas that aid others or is there no preference at all?  Formal religious doctrine suggests that God only supports ideas consistent with religious ethics (e.g., Christians’ duty to feed the hungry).  But consider if God was objective; perhaps God pours Light equally through those who seek Him (please forgive the use of one set of gender pronouns) and those who do not believe in God at all?  But that is not the subject of this essay.

Co-creation involves cooperation with God (or creative Light) more so than doors but offers a spiritual dimension to what has recently been conceptualized as a secular manifestation process by some New Age enthusiasts.  Some find co-creation inspiring while others would rather rely on themselves alone.  However co-creation is conceptualized, there is a role for the human being (the genesis of the idea) and one can attribute all of the actuating factors to one’s efforts or to God.  The co-creative Source does not have to be God’s Light; the latter might be a metaphor for inspiration, sustained intent, diligence, and know-how.  

The Word

Words have power.  They can help or hinder.  Positive words bring about positive results.  But can they manifest?  Words influence relationships and help to construct a plan to accomplish a goal.  Talking about an idea with the right person can provide flesh to bare bones concepts.  This manifesting power of the word relies on what is mentally real to oneself and others.  During a conversation, those speaking the same language with the same vocabulary all understand the meaning of the words spoken.  Through communication, one may manifest the blueprint for any idea.

But do words manifest in physical reality?  Perhaps words can instantiate their referents and content through the co-creative power of God?  Or maybe the word specifies a part of the world that draws nearer to the speaker through repetition or deliberate action? 

By one theory, words alone cannot instantiate physically but they can direct conscious effort to actualize an idea (like building a house).  Thus, the word allows one to fully elucidate and substantiate an unclear concept.

Reality as Expression of the Mind of God

What we see as external reality is the manifestation of a single Mind.  Some call it God but it has many other names as well.  “Manifestation,” or perceptible reality, expresses the thoughts and emotions of one omnipresent Mind that is in continuous conversation with each consciousness through the results of the choices one makes and the temporary bodies, words, actions, and expressed emotions of those with whom one communicates. 

Each form of consciousness is a hologram in that Mind with its own thoughts and emotions (which may also be part of the single Mind).  Each hologram has different levels of density; those who are “alive” as commonly understood have physical bodies temporarily.  An individual’s idea is also a hologram, real only to the thinker and to God until one applies their ingenuity and exerts effort to manifest that idea.  A metaphor may illustrate this concept better.

Imagine that life is a video game.  While it looks like the main character has a physical form and navigates visible obstacles and characters, in fact each entity and each image are actually mathematical equations. The game players’ inputs are translated into mathematical equations which specify the action of the main figure and its interactions with the other representations on the video screen.  The probability equations predict how and how quickly an input is instantiated and how action affects the future. 

 

This model of manifestation means that the reality that can be perceived or described is only the form that the thoughts of the Mind of God take.  But if manifestation is perceptible reality, how are thoughts manifesting?  Is the manifestation process regular and orderly or idiosyncratic and new each time?  Does the existence of mathematical descriptions of physical development (e.g., the Golden Ratio) mean that manifestation is pre-determined or a scientific process that is out of the hands and conscious choices of each individual?  Maybe there is no Thinker as so much as a program that obeys the laws of mathematics?  Do appeals to God for Divine Favor for one’s attempts to manifest their ideas actually work?  An exegesis of how to request Favor or whether prayer results in manifestation is outside the scope of this essay (see the essay God Answers Prayers in Time).

Suffice it to say that within the Mind of God, math can quantify size dimensions, symmetry, density, emotionality, intelligence, effort, resources, personality, and the probability of every outcome.  These equations are continually changing to recalculate the probability of a future outcome (e.g., contributing to children) based on how certain contingencies affect one’s course.  The equations not only represent the will or content of each consciousness but the state of each aspect of the universe.

It is important to realize that math is a description of the process of manifestation and not the process itself. Each individual may manifest their ideas through a careful study of how the Mind of God is conversing with him or her and by making the right choices, exerting the necessary effort at the right time, and using one’s resources appropriately.  There is a role for gratitude and steadfast loyalty to God as well.

Densification

Densification suggests that a concept in one’s mind’s eye becomes physically real by taking on definite characteristics such as size, color, shape, weight, texture, chemical composition, and many other properties.  Alternatively, densification could be a metaphor, the constituent sub-processes of which are sustained intent, effort, and correct use of the available resources.  

Whether a metaphor or an actual process of acquiring physical dimensions, densification creates a physical instantiation of what is in the mind’s eye.  To the best of the author’s knowledge, ordinary persons are not currently capable of densifying an idea so there is no process that describes manifestation through densification.

The Brain

A powerful way to approach modeling manifestation is to describe how the brain facilitates the processes of idea inception to manifestation.  How does the brain’s organization accomplish vision, language, and decision-making? 

A neuroscientist will tell you that the cerebral cortex devotes more neural real estate to vision than to language.  Understanding spoken language and producing intelligible speech are localized primarily to Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas, respectively, usually in the dominant hemisphere of the brain, which is the left hemisphere in 95% of right-handed persons and 60% of left-handed individuals.  The brain processes visual input through the retina, the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus, and the occipital lobes of the brain (near the back of the head).  Unlike language, visual processing is not lateralized to one cerebral hemisphere.  The prefrontal lobes are the neural machinery for executive decision-making. 

Language, vision, and decision-making are not the only functions of the brain relevant to manifestation but it does provide a rudimentary map: moving from the rear of the brain to the front, humans see, hear language, speak, and decide.  First, a concept appears in the mind’s eye.  Next, one learns what the concept is and how to think about it through the language heard.  Third, humans have to say the idea to elucidate what is in the mind’s eye and provide the basis for the prefrontal lobes’ decisions.  It may be that manifesting ideas follows this assembly line: see, hear, say, and decide.  Once the decision has been made, effort and availability of resources determine success at manifestation.  The neural model has tremendous potential because the brain is the physical basis of the mind which underlies manifestation in every model.  

Conclusion

Whether the goal is to manifest a non-physical objective or a tangible object, manifestation involves intention, effort, and persistence.  There are a variety of metaphors and models to describe the process: choosing and passing through doors; co-creation with God; the word’s ability to elucidate a fuzzy concept; holograms in the Mind of God; densification of an idea into its physical instantiation; or the neuroanatomy of the brain.  Each of the models has utility in describing what manifestation is or can be and how the process works.  However, some may find another conceptualization more useful in the process of going from idea to finished product.

Share your theory of manifestation with scott@theorism.org.