And it is the first step. I've proved it. It's the foundation upon which all your actions - all your consequent actions - will be established. It's the first ingredient of a magic formula. There's no magic about it, of course - it just works like magic. It's the first step that unleashes - or begins to unleash - a creative force available to every and any human being.

You've heard of Jesus's words about faith: 'If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, nothing shall be impossible to you!' (Matthew 17:20).

It's absolutely true. Faith is belief, and belief is based on something concrete - something clearly visualised - like that mustard seed. This metaphor of a mustard seed implies something that can be seen and touched and handled.

You must know what you want - and then you must VISUALISE it! You must identify your goal and see it clearly in your mind - in your imagination.

I think my acquisition of a Rolls Royce will best illustrate the power of goal-visualisation. I had heard before about this power. A member of my local Methodist church, one Sunday morning, told me about it. 'If you want a Mercedes Benz,' he said, 'you've not only got to ask the Lord for one; you've got to ask for a specific model and colour!'

I thought it would be very wrong to ask the Lord for something so materialistic! 'I hardly think,' I said, 'that that would be right!'

'Well,' he said, 'it's just to illustrate an important rule when you pray for something. If a Mercedes is something you really want, you've a right to pray about it. If it's God's will for you, he will give it to you. But if you do ask the Lord for a Mercedes - to come back to my example - you've got to be specific. You've got to specify the model, the colour, the horsepower, the upholstery, the steering-wheel padding, and so on. After all, you wouldn't just walk into a shop and say "I want a Mercedes", would you? You've got to order a specific model and specify what you want. It's like going to an estate agent for a house. You don't just ask for a house. You've got to describe the house you want - four bedrooms, a study, air-conditioning, where situated, price range, and so forth.'

It was years later, only after I had become a Professor of English, that I recalled my friend's words. Only then did I dare to aspire to something so materialistic as a luxury motorcar! Well, I didn't want a Mercedes, I thought. As a boy, I had always been aware of Rolls-Royce cars as fanciful wonders beyond my wildest dreams. To have and drive a Rolls, I thought, would really mean something. And I began to cherish a Rolls Royce in my heart.

Of course, a professor's salary, even then, in 1982, was totally inadequate for saving up for a Rolls. The whole idea was madness. Nevertheless, I dared to ask the Lord, subject to his will!

I read Matthew 7:7 - 'Everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds.' I had to ask and, the Bible told me, 'it will be given to you.'

'Well, Lord,' I prayed, 'I know this sounds ridiculous - but I know you know what's in my heart. If it's at all compatible with your will for me, Lord, may I find the means to have a Rolls Royce?' I must admit, it sounded very foolish and extravagant!

Then I remembered about being specific. So I bought books on Rolls-Royce cars. I looked at the advertisements in recent copies of The Times and the Exchange and Mart, and in motor magazines from England. I was then living in Pietersburg, in the northern Transvaal of South Africa, where Rolls-Royce cars were thin on the ground. I took a trip to Johannesburg where I saw a few second-hand models in a garage for exotic cars. The prices, even then, were the same as the prices for expensive houses! But I sat in those cars, smelt the leather, touched the steering wheels, and looked down the long tapering bonnets towards the little silver ladies - the Spirits of Ecstasy - at the end of those bonnets, and I felt what it must be like to own a Rolls.

Now I was in a position to be specific about what I wanted. I would have, I decided, a Silver Shadow, long-wheel base, gold in colour, with a gold-plated Spirit of Ecstasy, and with walnut picnic tables in the back. It would be a well-maintained second-hand model, of course - about a 1973 model, or later. And, half embarrassed by my audacity, I held up this vision to the Lord in prayer.

Now I would need a strategy. How - and where - would I acquire the car? The South African prices were ridiculous. The British prices looked more reasonable, but that would mean importing - and even then I would have to pay 100% duty on the original cost. Most people simply dropped the idea of importing a car - any car, let alone a Rolls - when they were confronted with the fact of the 100% import duty! In effect you had to pay twice the British price, as well as the shipping cost over and above that!

So I dropped the idea. But it resurfaced. It had gripped me. It wouldn't let me go.

So I worked out a strategy. Indeed, the strategy seemed to present itself as the obvious solution. I was due for my 12-months sabbatical leave. I arranged for my sabbatical leave in a year's time - in 1984 - and, in the meantime, I had a year to save up the British price, around £10,000 for a 1973 Silver-Shadow. According to South African law, I would have to purchase a car in the United Kingdom and use it there for at least six-months before being granted an import permit. So the leave would enable me to satisfy these conditions. I just hoped, of course, that I would have the import duty saved by the time I brought the car to South Africa at the end of 1984.

Every month, in 1983, I would have a target amount that had to be saved if I were to reach the target purchase price by the end of the year. I opened a special savings account. I took on extra teaching duties, lecturing for long hours in the hot humid climate of Venda University, nearly a hundred miles away - a distance I had to travel in afternoons and evenings twice a week. I let a cottage in my garden to receive extra income, too. Every month I met my target, somehow. And by the end of 1983, when I took my family to Scotland, I was able to put £11,000 into the Royal Bank of Scotland in Oban! (In 1984 that was a lot of money!)

At that point my loving and ever-wise Yorkshire wife felt it would be unwise to spend all that money on a car, even if the car was a Rolls! The political situation in South Africa was deteriorating rapidly and, she said, having got all that money out, we should keep it out.

I agreed with her, and yet the idea of acquiring the Rolls, especially after all that visualisation and planning, wouldn't release me. Clearly what happens, when an idea is held for a long time, is that it must become a reality. I had been poring over manuals and books on the Silver Shadow for months - and my mind was thoroughly conditioned by the power of visualisation. In another sense, I had asked the Lord for a specific Rolls, and it seemed downright rude if, at the eleventh hour, I turned down the gift! Or, if you like, my subconscious simply demanded the reward after all that beholding of the promised vision!

So I looked for my car, to see if it really existed. I saw only two ads for long-wheelbase Shadows - in London - and took the train to London accordingly. I phoned the first advertiser from my hotel. His car had been sold the day before! Long-wheelbase models were rare, it seemed, and soon went. I took the tube, then, to a garage in South-west London where the other car was. I got there only to be told that it had been sold! 'But,' said the salesman, 'we do have another long-wheelbase - a much prettier car, in my opinion.' He took me into the back of the garage where sleek Rolls-Royce bonnets were like a hypnotic power. And there - in shining, immaculate, unbelievable splendour - was my car! It was the very car I had visualised: gold, with gold-plated Spirit of Ecstasy, and a 1975 model - for sale, unbelievably, at £10,000! Only one thing - it didn't have picnic tables.

'Can picnic tables be fitted?' I asked, 'Say, for £500?'

'Certainly, if it means that much to you!' said the salesman.

So walnut picnic tables were fitted. Three weeks later I and my wife, three daughters and little son Angus took the overnight sleeper to London. We returned to Scotland in our own Rolls Royce. Children waved at us from busses. In Scotland a policeman saluted me. When we reached the glen where we had our rented cottage, a retired and stiff-necked colonel, who had hitherto ignored our existence, nearly broke his neck running to open the gate! It was the most magnificent drive in my life!

At the end of 1984 we shipped the car to South Africa, by which time there was enough saved in my bank account to pay the 100% duty. We collected the car from the shipping agent in Cape Town and, again, enjoyed the magnificent 1000-mile drive to Pietersburg in the northern Transvaal. I was the only Rolls-Royce owner in Pietersburg (now renamed Polokwana), and practically in the whole of the northern Transvaal!

I have often thought back upon how the dream of that car was impossible to let go. I think it should present itself, not only as an example of the power of goal visualisation, but as a warning of just how deep or strong mind-conditioning can go. Be very sure, at the conception of a goal, that it's something you really want. Because, once implanted visually into your mind - with all of its specific details - it takes over and demands realisation. I felt, when I was presented with the choice of leaving the money in Britain, that I hadn't really got a choice. I had already chosen - or the goal had chosen me. It became an obsession. In fact - it had to be realised. I felt that if I didn't go ahead and buy the Rolls, after all the planning, that I would be incapable in future of ever realising or possessing a goal! I argued that I had to be true to myself. It might have been rationalisation - but I may have been right. At least the exercise reinforced in me the conviction that anything is really possible, if you really want it. It lay the foundation for future action and future success. It made me believe in the impossible dream.

(Extract from Have Anything You Really Really Want by Charles Muller. Further information at Diadem Books )

About Author :
Charles Humphrey Muller, MA (Wales), PhD (London), DLitt (OFS), DEd (SA), was Professor and Head of the Department of English at the University of the North in South Africa for ten years. In 1988 he left his academic career to move to Scotland where he runs his editing and publishing business, Diadem Books