The Whole Thing In A Nutshell

"Some masters of this art of influencing the public create a mental picture of themselves sending out great volumes of Thought-Waves for a time, and then afterward mentally imparting a rotary motion to the waves, until at last they form a mental whirlpool rushing round and round and always sucking in toward the center. An effort of this kind acts on the mental plane just as a physical whirlpool acts on the physical plane, that is it draws into its power all that comes in contact with its force. This is one of the most powerful forms of Influencing En Masse, and is used with great effect by many of the "strong men" of this age; who have acquainted themselves fully with the secrets of the ancient occultists. Ancient Occultism and Modern Finance seem far apart, but they are really working together to further the interests of some of these powerful minds of the day - and the public is paying the bill.

You will readily see from what has been said that an individual who has cultivated the faculty of concentration and has acquired the art of creating sharp, clear, strong mental images, and who when engaged in an undertaking will so charge his mind with the idea of success, will be bound to become an attracting center. And if such an individual will keep his mental picture ever in his mind, even though it may be in the background of his mind, when he is attending to the details and planning of his affairs - if he will give his mental picture a prominent place in his mental gallery, taking a frequent glance at it, and using his will upon it to create new scenes of actual success, he will create for himself a center of radiating thought that will surely be felt by those coming within its field of influence.

Such a man frequently "sees" people coming to him and his enterprises and falling in line with his plans. He mentally "sees" money flowing in to him, and all of his plans working out right. In short, he mentally imagines each step of his plans a little ahead of the time for their execution and he concentrates forcibly and earnestly upon them. It is astonishing to witness how events, people, circumstances and things seem to move in place in actual life as if urged by some mighty power to serve to materialize the conditions so imaged in the mind of the man But, understood, there has got to be active mental effort behind the imaging. Daydreamers do not materialize thought - they merely dissipate energy. The man who converts thought in activity and material being, throws energy into the task and puts forth his willpower through the picture on the slide. Without the rays of the will there will be no picture projected, no matter how beautifully the imagination has pictured it. Thoughts pictured in mental images and then vitalized by the force of the desire and will tend to objectify themselves into material beings. That is the whole thing in a nutshell. "

from Practical Mental Influence by William Walker Atkinson (emphasis added)