Here is a peculiar passage from Week Nine of The Master Key System. Charles F. Haanel wrote:

To know the Truth is the underlying condition necessary in every business transaction or social relation.

The “Truth” to which Haanel is referring (that’s “Truth is spelled with a capital “T”) is the intrinsic meaning or value of something or what you are doing. If you embark on something without the knowledge of what it is that you’re really doing — or why you’re doing it — then you are more apt to make mistakes or overlook opportunities.

This quest for seeing the thing as it really is — for seeing the “soul” of something, for lack of a better word — is what all of the exercises in The Master Key System are building within you. Instead of seeing or being fooled by appearances or ornament, you are seeing the thing (or event or experience) as it really is.

Refer back to the exercise in Week Eight (the one with the battleship) to see it in action. You are not just disassembling the ship, you are taking it back to its root cause — its core, its soul. As you do that with everything that you experience, you gain a greater understanding of what something is.

It’s a very powerful tool and holds the potential to open many doors for you.

The process of breaking something down to its core can be called “distillation.” It is exactly like taking water and converting it to steam to rid it of impurities. It is the same thing you are doing with the exercises. You are “distilling” reality to see past the shibboleths of your mind and to see reality free of preconception, ornament, and impurities.

For example, many people are befuddled by business. Yet each and every business can be reduced (“distilled”) to merely the buying and selling of a good or service. You have something people want and you sell it to them at a price that is greater than what it cost you to produce or provide it. Most of the things over and above that are just ornament: a clown as your mascot to help you sell hamburgers; the beautiful design of your computer that “just works”; or the the uniforms of the junk haulers.

Below the surface of what you see is the root of what is actually happening.

It is an idea come to life.

It is the Truth unfolding.

Don’t make things more complicated than they are.

Learn the Truth of things.

When you do that, then life will unfold before like the petals of a flower or the wings of a bird.

Beautiful.

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Truth is not just stranger than fiction, it is better than fiction.