"What is the body after all but the spirit breaking through the flesh, or health but beauty in the organism?"Every good emotion makes a health and life promoting change in the body. Every thought is registered in the brain by a physical change more or less permanent in the tissue cells.The coming man will find it as easy to counteract an unfriendly, vicious thought by turning on the counter thought to neutralize it, as to rob the hot water of its burning power by turning on the cold water faucet.There is a divine something in man which never was sick and never can be, that divine self, the image of the Creator, perfect, unchangeable, indestructible, immortal, and which some time and somewhere must drive out all trace of sin, disease and death in mankind.Hufeland.
"What is the body after all but the spirit breaking through the flesh, or health but beauty in the organism?"
Every good emotion makes a health and life promoting change in the body. Every thought is registered in the brain by a physical change more or less permanent in the tissue cells.
The coming man will find it as easy to counteract an unfriendly, vicious thought by turning on the counter thought to neutralize it, as to rob the hot water of its burning power by turning on the cold water faucet.
There is a divine something in man which never was sick and never can be, that divine self, the image of the Creator, perfect, unchangeable, indestructible, immortal, and which some time and somewhere must drive out all trace of sin, disease and death in mankind.
Hufeland.
Even those who do not believe in Christian Science as a whole must be impressed with the Scientists' wonderful religious optimism. Their inspiring mental attitude, the hopeful way in which they face life, always looking toward the light, toward health, toward prosperity, toward success, and turning their backs upon the darkness, upon everything which can mar their health, their efficiency, their happiness, is creating a new world for thousands of discouraged souls.
Christian Scientists insist that since God has created everything that is, and since He is perfect, is all-in-all, He could not possibly create anything unlike Himself, such as disease, or anything else which is not good for His children. God is harmony, they reason, and He could not create discord. He is truth and He could not create error. God is love and He could not create the opposite of love,—hatred, jealousy, envy, selfishness, any evil emotion or passion. Hence all disease, all discord, all the enemies of the race, all Satanic influences in the world must be accounted for in some other way than as decrees of His will, for Perfection could not have produced these imperfections. Love could not create anything antagonistic to itself.
Scientists take a positive and vigorous stand against the admission to their mind of any of the enemies of their health, their prosperity, their happiness or their destiny. Notonly is all thought of failure and poverty banished, but they close the portals of their mind against fear, worry and anxiety, against the ravages of jealousy, the poison of hatred, envy, and selfishness. They try to keep their mental realm clear of all black, forbidding pictures, of all sorts of distressing emotions and unfriendly thoughts, while they open it wide to the things which help, inspire and bring hope, the friend thoughts and emotions,—joy, gladness, love, truth, and divine inspiration.
They believe that all human beings were not only made to be healthy but also to be happy, successful, prosperous. They regard poverty, no less than illness, as a mental disease, to be treated in the same manner as bodily disease; and this cheerful religious optimism which they try steadily to maintain is not alone a healing force, but is also a great disease-resisting power.
Health, wholeness, is one of the most important and necessary factors for the attainment of those things which every normal human being desires,—peace, power, plenty, success and happiness. The Scientists' religious optimism is a potent force for placing the mindin the most favorable condition for the attainment of all these things. It removes all hindrances to full, complete self-expression.
It is just as necessary to hold the victorious attitude toward health as it is to hold the victorious attitude toward our career and everything which affects it. It is just as necessary to get rid of our doubts and fears regarding our physical well-being, as it is to get rid of our doubts and fears regarding our ability to succeed.
If we would be strong and vigorous it is quite as important to visualize health, to hold the health ideal, to keep the perfect health picture constantly in the mind, as it is to keep the prosperity, the success ideal in the mind when we are striving for an independence.
The habit of always holding a high ideal of our health, of thinking of ourselves as well, vigorous, physically and mentally perfect, will go very far toward building up a strong disease-resisting barrier between ourselves and all our health enemies. On the other hand, people who never think of themselves as whole, healthy, active and robust, but who constantly hold in mind a picture of themselves as weak,ailing, without vim or stamina, with little or no disease-resisting power, are liable at any time to become victims of disease. The building up of a strong health thought barrier, a vigorous health conviction between ourselves and disease is the best sort of health insurance. Fearing disease, thinking ill health, visualizing physical suffering, is the surest way of attracting those things.
Physicians know that the awful incubus of doubt and worry in the minds of patients, the fear that their disease may be fatal, is the greatest obstacle to their recovery. We head toward our doubts, our fears, our convictions regarding our health, just as we do toward our doubts, fears and convictions regarding other things. If we are convinced that we are not going to be strong, rugged, virile, if we fear that we are likely to develop inherited weaknesses and disease tendencies, we are headed toward these conditions, and will probably realize them. On the contrary, if we hold the victorious attitude toward health, if we visualize the health ideal, the health conviction, we head mentally toward health, and what we head toward mentally is the pattern of thatwhich is continually being built into our life structure.
A healthy body is healthy thought externalized.
Man's normal condition is that of robust health, vigorous vitality, tremendous power of endurance. The Creator evidently intended the human machine to run harmoniously, without friction, without weakness or disability of any kind.
The created is a part of the Creator, an indestructible part of Him. When we rise to a full consciousness of this we shall be victors over disease instead of victims of it; we shall be conquerors instead of slaves of conditions.
Nearly a century ago a celebrated German physician said that there is something in man which was never born, is never sick and never dies, and that it is this something, this omnipotent force within which in reality heals our diseases. No matter what we may call it, this something that repairs and renews is one with the Force that creates us. We may name it variously the God principle, the Christ within us, the divine principle, the omnipotent force or anything else we please; the name does notmatter. All mean the same thing, that is, the creative, the all-sustaining Force that holds the universe in harmony.
There is something in you that is lord over your physical organs. There is a power in you, back of the flesh, but not of it, which dominates the flesh, and that is the real you. Your partner in that power is the Intelligence that created you. You are indissolubly interlinked with that Intelligence. You can no more be wiped out of existence than the Creator who made you, because you are an immortal expression of Himself. You are His masterpiece, and His work must partake of His qualities, of His perfection, of His omnipotence, of His omniscience.
The trouble with us is we do not rise to the power and dignity of our divinity. We do not half believe we are divine. We have a sort of vague theory that we are mere puppets, thrown off as separate units into space, without any vital connection with the Power that gave us life. This false theory is the cause of our sufferings.
The reason why we are such shriveled, scrub oaks of human beings is found in the dried-up,mean, stingy ideal of ourselves which we have been taught to hold. We have been reared to think of ourselves as "poor miserable worms of the dust," unworthy to come into the presence of our Father-Mother-God, even though we are fashioned in His image. Instead of carrying through life an ideal of our mental and physical perfection, we carry an ideal of a defective, diseased, physically and mentally imperfect, being. The mind being the molder of the body, the life-giving processes within us build the sort of body that answers to the model in the mind, the ideal which we hold of ourselves. What we really believe ourselves to be, we tend to become. We keep our minds filled with all sorts of discordant, sick pictures, and of course all of these mental images reappear in the body, react upon the life.
On the other hand, every time we affirm that we are one with the creative Force of the universe, that nothing can separate us from our oneness with the One, we tend to build our bodies into the ideal state of perfect health,—mental, physical, and moral wholeness. If we could hold continually the ideal of our wholeness, and visualize ourselves as perfect beings"even as He is perfect," and constantly try to live up to our ideal, any tendency to imperfection, to discord, to disease would be eliminated.
We are only just beginning to realize the tremendous import of the idea that we really fashion our bodies to correspond with our thoughts, that we are co-creators of ourselves with the Divine Power which is back of the flesh, but not of it.
A prominent surgeon in speaking of infantile paralysis says that the physician's mental attitude toward it has a great deal to do with its cure, and that he should hold firmly in mind the idea that the disease is curable.
Every physician should also be a metaphysician. He should be a profound believer in the principle that the Power which created the patient can re-create him, can repair damages, restore diseased or lost tissues. The most advanced physicians do believe that at best they can but help Nature in her healing processes. They realize that the same Power which created the patient is present in the healing of every wound, every broken bone and every hurt we suffer. The surgeon sets the bone,dresses the wound, but the same Power that first created the flesh and bone must do the healing.
The mental healer vigorously denies the reality of disease in the sense that truth is a reality. To him "all is Infinite Mind, and its infinite manifestation," as Mrs. Eddy says, and therefore all must be good. Only the good can be real as God made all that is.
The persistent denial that anything could exist which the Creator did not create, and that He could make anything unlike Himself, is one of the fundamental principles of the Christian Science faith. To the healer health is a vital, immortal principle, the everlasting fact, and disease, although it seems painfully real to the sufferer, is but a false belief.
The healer holds in mind only what he desires to establish in his patient's mind. He shuts out everything else. Health is what he wishes to establish, and to do this he holds insistently and tenaciously the health ideal. He refuses to see the sick, diseased man or woman, and persists in visualizing the ideal one that God intended. To him the defective, deficient, suffering being which disease and physical discord have made is not the real man or woman. That being is only a travesty of the ideal, perfect creature the Creator planned.
He does not allow himself to think of, or to picture disease symptoms. To visualize the physical appearance of disease would be to acknowledge its reality, and this would be to defeat his healing. He could not, for example, cure cancer or tuberculosis while mentally picturing the horrible symptoms of these diseases. He wishes to keep all such things out of his mind because of their baleful suggestiveness. Visualizing them would merely etch their reality deeper and deeper in his consciousness, and the suggestion would be conveyed into the patient's consciousness.
The mental healer's aim is to produce in the mind of the person he is treating a consciousness of the scientific reality of health, and of the unreality of disease. It does not matter how the disease symptoms may contradict this principle, or how loudly pain may scream for recognition, he persists in considering disease unreal and in holding the scientific sense of health as the reality. He relies wholly upon Divine Mind as the great healing potency, andsteadily affirms his patient's oneness with his Divine Source, and that disease cannot exist in the Divine Presence.
At the very outset he encourages his patient by affirming that, however real his physical discord or disease may seem to him, it cannot affect the God image in him, because that is perfect, as God Himself is perfect, and that in reality there can be no disease. Truth and harmony, he asserts, are the great facts of life. Error is not a reality, but merely the absence of truth; discord is not a reality, but merely the absence of harmony. He assures him that He is God's child, and that God's image cannot be sick, distressed or diseased. "Of course," he says, "this seems very real to you, painfully real, but it is not reality in the sense that truth is a reality." This is discord, the absence of harmony, and divine harmony will antidote all discord just as truth will neutralize error, and as love will neutralize all hatred, jealousy or revenge, or as confidence, self-assurance will neutralize fear, doubt, or self-depreciation.
The healer holds continually the healing suggestions, and concentrates on arousing inhis patient expectancy of relief by bracing his hope, confidence, assurance and faith in Divine Mind that restores, renews and heals. He tries to stimulate and to put into active operation the healing potencies latent in him, to awaken in his mind the lost divine image, and to impress upon him the idea that this divine image cannot possibly be dominated or in any way affected by disease.
I have seen a chemist pour a few drops of liquid from different crucibles into a jar of muddy water and in a few minutes the mud would disappear and the water be as pure as crystal. This is in effect what the mental healer does in treating a patient. No matter what the disease is his great remedy lies in mental chemistry, in neutralizing, destroying the error with its natural antidote.
The healer's constant affirmation that there can be no sickness, no disease in God's image in man, is a powerful suggestion which tends to weaken the grip of error in his patient's body. The very shutting out of all fear, of the terror of disease and death, is a great step towards a cure, because these things are depressing to all the bodily functions. Everything that discourages, that makes the patient despondent, is a great devitalizer, and constantly lowers his disease-resisting power.
The arousing of the belief that the healer is a sort of motorman who puts up the patient's dropped trolley pole, thus making connection with the wire carrying infinite power; or that he is a wireless operator who is connecting him with his Divine Source, the source of health and happiness, and that he is actually receiving the flow of divine force, of peace, of immortal life, is of itself a tremendous healing agency.
When he has succeeded in establishing in the mind of his patient the vigorous conviction that health is the everlasting principle, the great fundamental inviolable fact, the healer has gone far toward establishing a scientific consciousness of health, and has laid a most important health foundation.
After a little practice a sick person can do wonderful things for himself through the vitalizing force of auto-suggestion. He can be his own physician. He can recover health and keep it by applying to himself the same principles that the healer applies to his patient. In this way he can keep himself in consciousunion with the Divine Source of all supply, of all good, all health.
There are sufficient latent potencies in every human being, if he would only arouse and make them operative, to keep him in health and harmony. We can all be our own healers if we will.
The stream must be as pure as its fountain head unless contaminated later, and there is where we humans come in. We contaminate the health stream with our thought poisons. Our doubts, our fears, our unbeliefs, our brutal passions, our selfishness, our greed, our hatreds, our jealousies, our revenge, our ingratitude for life, for the blessings we enjoy,—all of these things tend to pollute the stream which we receive pure as it flows from the crystal fountain, the divine source of the All Good.
But the practice of divine chemistry will enable us to clear up our muddy life streams. We have in ourselves the remedies which will neutralize the vicious poisons we have allowed to flow into and befoul our life stream. We can by the right use of our powers purify it as the chemist purified the jar of muddy water.By right thinking we can neutralize the poison sewage of our bodies, just as chemists can take the foul sewage water which flows out from a city and by the help of chemicals neutralize all the filth, making it absolutely pure again. By applying their antidotes we can neutralize the poisons of disease, the results of wrong thinking and living, which sap and embitter our lives, which make us suffer from all sorts of ills and leave us unable to accomplish one-tenth of what we might if we had that splendid physical and mental vigor which is normal to humanity.
We must offer the same uncompromising opposition to the reality of all kinds of disease, mental and physical, that the mental healer does. We must see ourselves as he sees his patient, in the wholeness, the completeness, the Creator intended. It is the ideal man or woman we must visualize, never the one weakened, deformed by horrible diseases or their symptoms. By recognizing only the real man or woman, unaffected by wrong thinking, we cut off the vicious effects of the mental enemies which are fighting to perpetuate disease or other unfortunate conditions.
The constant holding of the health ideal, of the truth thought, the health and prosperity thought, the optimistic thought, the kindly, cheerful, helpful thought and the shutting out of all their opposites, not only help to restore health, but also increase tremendously the disease-resisting power. Right thought is a health, efficiency, and happiness tonic.
The vital thing in establishing health is to adopt the victorious attitude toward it as toward every other good thing we desire. If we wish to have abounding health (and who does not?) we must cultivate implicit faith in health as our birthright, in the truth that, being the children of Perfection, we must partake of the qualities of perfection, and hence be free from the imperfection of disease or sickness.
Without faith in our wholeness we are not, and cannot be, whole. Without faith in the healing power of Divine chemistry no healing is possible either by patient or healer. The patient may not always have a conscious faith, but the healer has, and a similar faith is aroused in the patient later, as he begins to feel the divine healing power operating and working like a leaven in his nature.
There is no one thing that is emphasized so much in the Bible, and especially in Christ's teachings as faith. Every benefit, every healing depends for its efficacy on the sufferer's faith. In all of His healing this one condition of faith was imperative—"According to thy faith be it unto thee."
When the disciples told their Master that they could not heal certain cases He rebuked them, and told them that they failed because of their lack of faith. "According to thy faith be it unto thee," he reiterated constantly. He recognized the great healing power of faith, and impressed upon His followers the truth, that without it no healing was possible.
Every physician knows that his patient's faith in his power to cure him, in the efficacy of the remedies he applies, are curative agencies. Faith in medicinal remedies is what makes them effective. It is faith that furnishes the potency of thousands of so-called remedies, which have no intrinsic value whatever.
We all know how the visualizing of disease and the fear of it affect the mind in undermining the health ideal. Confidence in our healthis really its sustaining and buttressing power, for the moment we destroy this we lessen our resisting power and invite disease.
The image perpetually held in the conscious mind becomes indelibly etched in the subconscious mind and the body conforms to the thought. To attain perfect health we must hold the image of physical perfection, we must constantly keep in mind this ideal state. We must build ourselves thought pictures of a superb body in all its strength and wholeness; we must relentlessly strangle every image of weakness or disease, every sick suggestion that would blur the picture of perfect wholeness and harmony into which we wish to grow.
What a revolution we would make in our lives if we could only learn to live this health ideal instead of its opposite, the disease ideal!
Every child should be reared tothinkhealth instead of disease; should be made to realize thathealth is the everlasting fact, that disease is not a necessary evil, and was not intended for us, that it was not intended we should suffer. If the young mind were saturated from infancy with health ideas and ideals it would build up a strong disease-resisting power thatwould make it immune to all health enemies. If every child were trained to believe that he was a god in the making, that he had within him the embryo of divinity which ought to develop into a God-like being, we should not have so many mental and physical Lilliputians.
One of our great health troubles lies in the fact that we have been accustomed from childhood to lay too much emphasis on matter, on the support of the body. As a matter of fact, the mind is everything. But mind is not confined to the head alone. We are all mind. We think all over. We live all over. Our sensations are the intelligent expression of all the cells of the body.
The body is a great coöperative institution composed of billions of cells. Some of these cells have a higher functioning quality than others, but they all have their appointed places. Every cell is an important member of the body corporation and has a voice in the government of the whole. When we are wounded or diseased, for instance, billions of these tiny cell repairers, healers, renewers, health builders, rush instantly to the wounded part to repair and restore the injured tissues.
We are all conscious that there is continually going on within us these repairing, renewing, reinvigorating, as well as healing, processes. We feel that there is a marvelous and beneficent intelligence ever working miracles within us, a power which heals our wounds and cures our hurts.
Whence comes the intelligence which governs and directs the work of these little builders and repairers? It comes from the Within of us, for our objective mind is comparatively passive in the process. But the great Intelligence back of the flesh, which keeps the heart beating, the lungs breathing, and all of the various bodily functions in activity, never ceases working, and never leaves us for an instant. It permeates every atom of the body, illuminating each separate cell with a reflection of its own light.
Scientists are making marvelous discoveries regarding the location of the seat of intelligence,—mind. Until recently it was supposed to be confined solely to the brain. But now we know the mind, the brain, or the thinking part of us, extends the entire length of the spinal cord, that there is gray brain mattereverywhere in the sympathetic nervous system. In fact recent experiments indicate selective power in the cells all through the body.
Regular gray matter has been found in the finger tips of deaf, dumb and blind people, thus showing that wherever there is a need there is intelligence. We know what marvels blind and deaf mutes perform by their sense of touch, in distinguishing colors, even fine variations of shades in delicate fabrics, in correctly sensing denominations of paper money and coins, and accurately describing statues and other forms from merely running their fingers over them. This shows that intelligence is everywhere in the body.
Some of our foremost scientists now believe that the cells composing each organ form a sort of coöperative community intelligence which presides over that particular organ. They hold that the bodily organs have what may be termed minds of their own, and are vitally connected with the so-called spinal column brain and the solar plexus brain, as well as with the brain proper. This theory is borne out in fact. We know how quickly the stomach sympathizes with the mental attitude, how it respondsto our thoughts, our emotions; also how quickly the heart, the kidneys respond to our mental states—fear, worry, joy, anxiety, love, hate, jealousy, whatever emotion dominates us.
If there were not a very intimate connection between the brain and the stomach (and the same principle applies to the heart, the kidneys and other organs) the digestion would not be affected so seriously by our changing moods and emotions. Inasmuch as it is so affected, is it not reasonable to assume that the stomach cells are influenced by the thought which you project into them? Is it not reasonable to assume that by sending into these cells black, gloomy, discouraging pictures of indigestion and dyspepsia you injuriously affect them? If these cells have intelligence, and if they respond instantly to our different mental states, as we know they do, isn't it natural that they should be correspondingly affected by our opinion of them, by our lack of confidence in them, our suspicion of their ability to digest our food properly, by our constant complaining of our stomach and our miserable digestive apparatus?
Give a dog a bad name and you might aswell kill him, is an old saying. In the same way, impress, force home on your stomach, your heart, your liver, or any other bodily organ the conviction that it is inefficient, weak, good for nothing, and in addition swallow a mouthful of mental dyspepsia with every mouthful of food, and, sooner or later, it will accept your verdict and be just what you claim it is.
In other words, instead of handicapping them by wrong thought, we must give our bodily organs a fair chance to do their legitimate work. If we expect them to act perfectly, as the Creator intended they should, we must treat them as we would treat our children. We must by right thinking help them to be normal instead of making them abnormal by doubting, being suspicious of them. We must visualize them as our co-workers, our partners, our friends, not as our enemies, our tormentors.
Just think of the horrible pictures of their various organs people get from medical books, which describe minutely symptoms of diseases which they imagine they have! Many people never visualize a normal picture of themselves.They never think of themselves as the perfect beings God intended them to be. What they hold constantly in mind is a picture of an abnormal, diseased, weak, defective creature. They picture their stomach, their liver, their kidneys, their heart in a diseased, imperfect condition. Instead of regarding them as friends, as members of the same family, they look on them as malicious enemies who cause them constant suffering. "Oh," they cry out, "I've got such a miserable stomach! I can't eat anything. Everything I eat hurts me." "My treacherous old heart, how it pumps. I can't walk or do any of the things I like because of it." "My liver is all upset. I seem to be out of kilter everywhere. My kidneys are affected, my back troubles me, and really I might as well be dead!"
Such horrible visualizing and belittling of the hard-working bodily organs would ruin the health of the best trained athlete. If you would be a friend to yourself, you must be a friend of your organs, which are so intimately and sympathetically connected with your brain-mind—the central station of your body. You must believe in their perfection, in theirnormal functioning. You must picture them trying to help you to carry out your great life purpose instead of working at cross purposes with you. You must have confidence in them, think of them as your friends instead of enemies handicapping your success and ruining your chances in life. Replace the pictures of diseased organs with their opposites, pictures of their wholeness, their completeness, their soundness, and you will find yourself coming into health and power.
Assume the victorious attitude, and think of yourself as an absolutely perfect being, divine, immortal, possessing superb health, a magnificent physique, a vigorous constitution, a sublime mind.
Every morning when you rise, before you go to bed at night, and whenever you think of it during the day, stoutly affirm the fact of your perfection physically, mentally and morally. Constantly assert mentally, and, when alone, orally, "I am health because I am of God. God is my life, He is the great creative Power that sustains and upholds me every instant. This Power is perpetually re-creating me, and trying to keep me up to the ideal, the originalplan of my being when I was created. I shall coöperate with it to-day, and every day. I shall aim to be perfect, even as my Father."
There is a great restorative power in the mere resolve to be well, strong and vigorous, in affirming and tenaciously holding the perfect ideal of ourselves which the Creator had in His plan of us. There is a re-creative force in the realization that any departure from this ideal means departure from God, from perfect health, from the reality of the perfect physical, mental and moral being planned by Him.
You will be surprised to see how this mental attitude, this visualized physical ideal, will be reproduced in the body.
The mind is the body builder, the great health sculptor, and we cannot surpass our mental model. If there is a weakness or flaw in the thought model, there will be corresponding deficiencies in the health statue. As long as we think ill health, doubt our ability to be strong and vigorous, as long as we hold the conviction of the presence of inherited weaknesses and disease tendencies, look upon ourselves as victims instead of conquerors of ill health, in short, as long as the mental model is defective perfect health is impossible.
Joyous, abounding health can be established just as anything else can be established, by right thinking and right living, by thinking health instead of disease, thinking strength instead of weakness, harmony instead of discord, thinking true thoughts instead of error thoughts, love thoughts instead of hatred thoughts, health thoughts, upbuilding thoughts instead of destructive tearing down thoughts.
A great many regular physicians now, and all soon will, show patients how they can make use of the great healing, medicinal power of thought, the miracle of right thinking, which unites them with the Force back of the flesh. They will show each patient what attitudes of mind, what affirmations and what auto-suggestions will tend to keep him in harmony; they will teach him the healing use of suggestion. The physician of the future will use largely for his remedies, ideas, mental attitudes, and suggestions.
The time will come when parents and teachers will realize the tremendous force, the character-building power in the affirmation of health, wholeness, completeness, harmony. They will teach children to exert this powerthat will drive out discord and dispel disease. They will impress upon the young that affirmation of perfect ideals, holding in mind the model of a perfect man, a perfect woman, not the one marred, crippled, shorn of strength and beauty by violation of mental law, or by vicious living, will protect them from all assaults from without and from within.
If that mind was always in us which was in Christ, the mind that gives health, peace and happiness, that perpetuates harmony, truth and beauty, we should never know discord of any kind. Perfect health would be the rule and not the exception, because we should never transgress the laws of our being.
Faith and the ideal still remain the most powerful levers of progress and of happiness.Jean Finot.If we are content to unfold the life within according to the pattern given us, we shall reach the highest end of which we are capable.We tend to grow into the likeness of the things we long for most, think about most.The gods we worship write their names on our faces.Emerson.
Faith and the ideal still remain the most powerful levers of progress and of happiness.Jean Finot.
If we are content to unfold the life within according to the pattern given us, we shall reach the highest end of which we are capable.
We tend to grow into the likeness of the things we long for most, think about most.
The gods we worship write their names on our faces.
Emerson.
In Hawthorne's story, "The Great Stone Face," we have an impressive illustration of the power of an ideal. One's memory holds a vivid picture of its hero, whose mind had dwelt from childhood on the local tradition that a man-child should be born whose face would resemble that of the mountain profile above the little hamlet of his nativity; and that this child would eventually become the leader and savior of the people. So whole-heartedly did he believe the legend, so earnestly did he longfor its fulfillment, and so constantly did his eyes dwell on the prophetic profile, that unconsciously his own features changed until, outwardly as well as inwardly, he completely embodied the ideal which his mind had absorbed.
On every hand we see illustrations of the transforming power of the ideal. It is outpictured in the faces we see in the street, in trains and shops, in theaters and churches, wherever people congregate.
How quickly we can select from a crowd of strangers the successful business man. His initiative, leadership, executive ability, speak out of his face and manner. The same is true of men in other vocations,—of the scholar, the clergyman, the lawyer, the teacher, the doctor, the farmer, the day laborer. Go into any institution, factory, store, or other place of business and you can quickly detect the nature of the ideals outpictured in the faces, in the expression, in the manner of the people you see there. Visit Sing Sing and you will see the power of the ideal which has worked like a leaven in its inmates. The criminal suggestion, the criminal thought, the criminal ideal isreflected in the faces of those who visualized crime, planned and thought out its details long before they committed the criminal act.
Whatever we hold in our minds, dwell upon, contemplate, whatever is dominant in our motives, will stand out in our flesh so that the world can read it. Many absolutely authentic cases of stigmata are recorded in the lives of medieval saints, on whose bodies appeared an exact reproduction of all the wounds of the crucified Christ. Some of these cases were in convents and monasteries, and were the result of long and intense concentration of the mind of the subject upon the physical sufferings of Christ. Frequently the phenomena occurred after the austerities of Lent, during which the monks and nuns had focused more intensely and steadily upon the tortures of the Savior's passion and death.
If the contemplation of those tortures, the constant mental picturing of the sufferings of the God-man, the soul's great sympathy with its ideal could change the very tissues of the body, could reproduce on it the actual physical marks of the cruel spear in the side, of the nails in the hands and feet and of thethorns in the head, think of the wonderful possibilities in the reversal of these thoughts and this picturing. Think of what the contemplation of the wonderful work accomplished by the Savior on earth, of the constant mental picturing of His glorious life, of His tenderness, and love for humanity, of His power and dignity, of His continual outpouring of Himself in service; think of what the constant holding of such an ideal, such a model, and the perpetual effort to realize it would do for the race!
We tend to become like what we admire, sympathize with and persistently hold in mind. The hero of "The Great Stone Face" became the counterpart of his ideal. The history of Christianity is a continuous record of the power of the ideal to raise men and women to their highest power. St. Paul, one of the most conspicuous of these examples, is so possessed, so enthused by the inspiration of his great model, that he cries, "I live, not I, but Christ in me."
"The contemplation of perfection is always uplifting." Nothing so strengthens the mind, enlarges manhood, or womanhood, widens the thought, as the constant effort to measure upto high ideals. The struggle to better our best, to make our highest moments permanent, the continual reaching of the mind to the things above and beyond, the steady pursuit of the ideal, which constantly advances as we pursue, is what has led the race up from savagery to twentieth century civilization.
A great artist was one day found by a friend in tears in his studio. When asked the cause of his distress, he replied, "I have produced a work with which I am satisfied, and I shall never produce another." It is said he never did. The inspiration that had urged him on was his ideal. That kept him always striving to improve on what he had previously done. Without it there was nothing to strive for.
Without an ideal there is no growth; and where there is no growth there is retrogression. Without a vision the people perish. Nothing in the universe is static. None of us stands still. We are all traveling in some direction, either forward or backward. Everything depends on the ideal.
What we admire and aspire to enters into the very texture of our being, becomes a part of us. If we had the power to analyze anyindividual, we could tell what books he had read, could detect the type of his friends and associates, and could name his heroes; that is, we could tell what ideals had actuated him.
Parents and teachers should urge upon the young the importance of hero worship, of choosing the highest human ideals. Our lives are molded chiefly after the pattern of the ideals of our youth, and there is no danger of too much hero worship, if only the heroes are worthy.
History is full of examples of the powerful influence of ideals upon our great men. It is said that Alexander the Great always carried a copy of Homer's "Iliad" in his pocket, and that he never tired of reading about Achilles, the great hero, whom he was ambitious to resemble. Many a young man in this country who has been inspired, encouraged and stimulated by Lincoln's career, has not only lived a grander life and made a truer success because he modeled his life after that of his hero, but he has developed many qualities in common with Lincoln which otherwise might have lain forever dormant. Many a young officer in our army is more efficient because of his imitation of Grant and Lee, the ideals which haunted his dreams and which have ever urged him up and on.
It is of the utmost importance to choose our ideal early in life, a high and beautiful ideal, that shall be our pole star, the highest, brightest light we know. A recent writer says: "My advice to all those just starting to travel life's turnpike is:
"'Don't start until you have your ideal.Then don't stop until you get it.'"
Of course we all have ideals of some kind when we are young; but how many of us keep them even till middle age? What young man has entered into active life without an ideal before him of what he is going to do, and how the world is going to be bettered by him? What young girl but who, leaving school, life smiling before her, dreams of the ideal love she will find, the ideal happy home she will make, and the beautiful work she will do in life with the ideal man of her girlish dreams by her side? But do the youth and the maiden hold these ideals throughout the years, with thestrength of conviction that overcomes all difficulties, or do they abandon them with the first discouragement and settle down into a commonplace existence with interest in nothing above the material?
To youth, naturally, come glorious ideals, not only of what one's own life is to be, but of what life in general should be,—the ideal man, the ideal woman, the ideal social system,—and with all these is a vague desire or intention to help toward their fulfillment. But too often the result of disappointment in the effort to better conditions is, first, to give up the hope of realizing the ideal, and then to abandon the ideal itself. Here is where the great danger of retrogression comes in. Unless the ideal be held with a tenacity that no failure or disappointment can relax, it is apt to fade away after the first ardor of youth is past.
One of the greatest aids to the preservation of the youthful ideal in all its freshness and beauty is to recall frequently, daily, the moral heroes who first gave one a glimpse of one's possibilities and aroused one's ambition. Read the special books, or particular chapters which fired you to emulate some noble character. Renew yourself mentally by visualizing the life and work of men and women who have wrought nobly for humanity. Think of the Washingtons, the Franklins, the Lincolns, the Emersons, the Ruskins, the Florence Nightingales, the Jane Addams, the Susan B. Anthonys, the Frances Willards, and you will be strengthened to resist the debasing influence of the fierce competition for wealth and preferment, even for mere subsistence, which in so many instances pushes out of sight the aspirations and ideals of youth. Keep constantly in mind the grand characters whose achievements aroused you to noble thoughts and endeavor in the springtime of life and your standards will never drop. Character always develops according to the pattern within us. No artist could paint the face of Christ with the model of Judas before his mental vision. No great character can ever be built with low, groveling ideals in the mind.
The constant struggle to measure up to a high ideal is the only force in heaven or on earth that can make a life great, beautiful and fruitful. If we would ever accomplish anything of worth, if we would ever establish ouroneness with the Creator, and accomplish the work He sent us here to do, we must live up to our ideal.
With eyes fixed on this ideal, we must work with heart and hand and brain; with a faith that never grows dim, with a resolution that never wavers, with a patience that is akin to genius, we must persevere unto the end; for, as we advance, our ideal as steadily moves upward.
"The situation that has not its duty, its ideal," says Carlyle, "was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy ideal; work it out therefrom, and, working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the ideal is in thyself."
Never were truer words spoken. Wrapped up in every human being there are divine energies which, if given proper direction, will develop the ideal from stage to stage. Who sees a sculptor at work upon a block of marble sees what appears to be only a mechanical performance. But, out of sight in the sculptor's brain, there is a quiet presence we do not perceive;and every movement of the hand is impelled by that shining thought within the brain. That presence is the ideal. Without it he would be a mason; through it he becomes an artist.
"The ideal is the real." By it we shape our lives as the sculptor shapes the image from the rough marble. External means alone will not accomplish this. You must lay hold of eternal principles, of the everlasting verities, or you never can approach your ideal. Your first advance toward it lies in what you are doing now, in what you are thinking. Not on some far-off height, in some distant scene, or fabled land, where longing without endeavor is magically satisfied, will we carve out the ideal that haunts our souls, but "here and now in this poor, mean Actual, here or nowhere is our ideal!"
In the humble valley, on the boundless prairie, on the farm, on sea or on land, in workshop, store, or office, wherever there is honest work for the hand and brain of man to do,—within the circumscribed limits of our daily duties, is the field wherein the outworking of our ideal must be wrought.
"Your circumstances may be uncongenial," says James Allen, "but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travelwithinand stand stillwithout. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labor; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers and resources. Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever. Years later we see this youth as a full-grown man. We find him a master of certain forces of the mind which he wields withworld-wide influence and almost unequaled power. In his hands he holds the cords of gigantic responsibilities; he speaks, and lo! lives are changed; men and women hang upon his words and remold their characters, and, sun-like, he becomes the fixed and luminous center round which innumerable destinies revolve. He has realized the Vision of his youth. He has become one with his Ideal."
The great curse of the average person is commonness,—the lack of aspiring ideals. There are thousands of farmers who never get above cattle and wheat, of doctors who never become superior to prescriptions and diseases, of lawyers who never wholly subordinate their briefs. The ideals of the masses rarely rise out of mediocrity. Most of us live in the basement of our lives, while the upper stories are all unused. Millions of human beings never get out of the kitchen of their existence. We need aspiration and great thought-models to lift us.
God has whispered into the ear of all existence, "Look up." There is potential celestial gravitation in every mortal. There is a spiritual hunger in humanity which, if fed andnourished, will lead to the upbuilding and developing of great souls. There is a latent divinity in every son of Adam, which must be aroused before there can be any great progress in individual uplift.
In a factory where mariners' compasses are made before the needles are magnetized, they will lie in any position, but when once touched by the mighty magnet, once electrified by that mysterious power, they ever afterwards point only in one direction. Many a young life lies listless, purposeless, until touched by the Divine magnet, after which, if it nourishes its aspirations, it always points to the north star of its hope and its ideal.
Every faintest aspiration that springs up in our heart is a heavenly seed within us which will grow and develop into rich beauty if only it be fed, encouraged. The better things do not grow either in material or mental soil without care and nourishment. Only weeds, briers, and noxious plants thrive easily.
The aspiration that is not translated into active effort will die, just as any power or function that is not used will atrophy or disappear. The ostrich, naturalists say, once had wonderful wings, but not caring to use them, preferring to walk on the earth rather than mount in the air, it practically lost its wings, their strength passing into its legs. The giraffe probably once had only an ordinary neck, like other animals, but being long used to reach up to gather its food from the branches of trees, it lifted its body in the upward direction until it is now the tallest of all animals, its elongated neck enabling it to gather the leaves from lofty trees.
Something like this takes place continually in human lives. We rise or fall by our ideals, by our pursuit or our disregard of them. The majority of us make bungling work of our living. We spend much precious time and effort catering to the desires of our animal natures and live chiefly along the lines of life's lower aims and opportunities when we might be soaring.
Everywhere we see men making a splendidliving, but a very poorlife; succeeding in their vocations but failing as men, swerving from their own highest ideals for the sake of making a little more money. On every hand we see people sacrificing the higher to the lower,dwarfing the best thing in them for a superficial material advantage, selling the birthright of the soul's ideal for a mess of pottage.
Is there any reason or intelligence in a man's continuing to turn his ability, his energies, all there is in him, into dollars after he has many times more of these than he can ever use for living and betterment? Is the gift of life so cheap, so meaningless, of so little importance, that we can afford to spend time on things that do not endure,—upon unnecessary material things which so soon pass away,—to the neglect of those that endure? We know that life is our great opportunity to acquit ourselves like men. Yet it is too often into these transient things that we pour the full force of our energies, while we only sigh and "wish" that we could achieve our ideals. We sacrifice much to gain wealth, but practically nothing to realize the outreach of our souls.
Yet the ideal is indeed the "pearl of great price," in the balance with which "all that a man hath" besides is as nothing. The red letter men of the world have always been men of high ideals, to which they were ever loyal: men who have said "this one thing I do," and haveput the whole strength of their lives into their effort to realize their ideal.
If from the start you listen to and obey that something within which urges you to find the road that leads up higher; if you listen to and obey the voice which bids you look up and not down, which ever calls you on and up, no matter what its outward seeming, your life can not be a failure. The really successful men and women are those who by the nobility of their example contribute to the uplift, the happiness, the enlargement of life, to the wisdom of the world,—not those who have merely piled up selfish dollars. A rich personality enriches everybody who comes in contact with it. Everybody who touches a noble life feels ennobled thereby.
There is machinery so delicate that it can measure the least expenditure of physical force. If similar machinery could be devised for measuring character many a millionaire would be chagrined at the record of his own just measurement, while many an humble worker would be amazed at the high mark his earnest unceasing efforts to reach his ideal had achieved.
I believe the time will come when not money, but growth, not lands and houses, but mental and moral expansion in larger and nobler living, will be even the popular measure of true riches, real success. The measure of a successful man will be that of his soul; he will be rated in a new sort of Bradstreet, a spiritual Bradstreet, as a large heart, a magnanimous mind, a cultured intellect, instead of as a great check book.
Phillips Brooks said: "The ideal life of full completion haunts us all. We feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath the thing we are. God hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in his life, each feels a trembling, fearful longing to do some great good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in its hidden impulse to do one's best."
Every one who substitutes the finer for the cheaper goal, each one who to-day and every day holds to his high ideal despite the stress and turmoil of modern daily living, in such measure hastens the day when such an ideal will be the inspiration of the masses and the power that moves the world.
Would you not think yourself fortunate to have a secretary of great ability and worth absolutely subject, day and night, to your will, and so susceptible to instructions that even your slightest mental suggestion would be faithfully carried out? If you had such a secretary, and knew that in spite of his great ability he would be able to do what you suggested only in proportion to your belief in his power to do so, would you not be careful to entertain no doubts of his ability to carry out your wishes or suggestions?
Now, just substitute for this personal secretary your subconscious self, that part of you which is below the threshold of your consciousness, and try to realize that this self is actually the sort of secretary I have endeavored to describe, capable of carrying out all your desires, of executing all your purposes, of realizingyour ambitions, to the exact extent of your belief in its powers, and you will get some idea of what it can accomplish for you.
This secretary is closer to you than your breath, nearer than your heart beat, a faithful servant, walking by your side all through life, to execute your faintest wish, to carry out your desires, to help you to achieve your aims. Every bit of help, of encouragement, of support you give to this other self will add to the magnificence, the splendor of your destiny. On the other hand, all negative, vicious thoughts, all selfishness, greed and envy, all doubts and fears, all the discouraging, destructive thoughts you entertain, will impair and weaken your secretary or servant in exact proportion to their intensity and persistency. In fact it rests with yourself whether your secretary shall be your greatest help, a heavenly friend and assistant, or your greatest hindrance, your worst enemy.
It doesn't matter what we call them,—subconscious and conscious self, or subjective and objective mind, we are all conscious that these are two forces constantly at work in us. One commands and the other obeys. We knowthat one of these, the subjective mind, does not originate its acts, but gets its instructions from the objective mind, which contains the will power. Experience shows us that the subjective or subconscious mind, which I have called a "personal secretary," is a servant which obeys our will, carries out our wishes, and registers in the brain a faithful record not only of every thought, word and act of ours, but of everything we see, and everything we hear others say.
Coleridge tells of a remarkable instance of the truth of this. A young German servant girl was taken ill with a fever, and in her delirium she recited correctly long passages from famous authors in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Scholars were called in to hear this uneducated girl speaking fluently tongues of which she had no knowledge in her conscious moments, and to tell if they could what it meant. They were much puzzled and could make nothing of it; but later the miracle was explained. Years before, it seems, the girl had lived in a minister's family, and was accustomed to hear her master recite the classics aloud. She had listened attentively, and her subconscious mindhad faithfully recorded every word in her brain, and reproduced what it had heard when the objective mind was quiescent.
Numerous instances might be cited to show that our subconscious mind is the record storehouse of all that has ever happened to us. Every thought, every experience, whatever passes before the eye, or that we see or hear or feel is registered accurately in our brain by our subconscious mind.
Now, if this other self, personal secretary, subconscious mind, or whatever we choose to call it, has such enormous power, why can it not be trained to work for us when we are asleep as well as when we are awake? Have you ever thought of the possibilities of spiritual and mental development during sleep? Has it ever occurred to you that while the processes of repair and upbuilding are proceeding normally in the body, the mind also may be expanding, the soul as well as the body may be growing?
"When corporal and voluntary things are quiescent, the Lord operates," said Swedenborg. The great Swedish philosopher was a firm believer in the activity of the other selfduring sleep. He claimed that his "spiritual vision" was opened in the unconscious hours of the night.
The Bible teems with illustrations of the activity of the subconscious mind or self during sleep. Warnings are given, work is commanded to be done, visions are seen, plans are outlined, angels are conversed with, courses of conduct advised; and every suggestion made to the soul in the dream state is literally carried out in the waking hours.
Theosophists believe that during sleep the soul or spirit acts independently of the body; that it actually leaves the body and goes out into the night to perform tasks appointed it by the Creator.
As a matter of fact, few people realize what an immense amount of work is carried on automatically in the body under the direction of the subconscious mind. If the entire brain and nervous system were to go to sleep at night all of the bodily functions would stop. The heart would cease to beat, the stomach, the liver, the kidneys and the other glands would no longer act, the various digestive processes would cease to operate, all the physical organswould cease working, and we should stop breathing.
One of the deepest mysteries of Nature's processes is that of putting a part of the brain and nervous system, and most of the mental faculties which were in use during the day, under the sweet ether of sleep while she repairs and rejuvenates every cell and every tissue, but at the same time keeping in the most active condition a great many of the bodily processes and even certain of the mental and creative faculties. These are awake and alert all the time while the sleeper is in a state of unconsciousness.
Most of us probably have had the experience of dropping to sleep at night discouraged because we could not solve some vexing problem to our satisfaction. It may have been one in mathematics during our school days, or, later on, a weightier one in business or professional life, and behold, in the morning, without any conscious effort on our part, the problem was solved; all its intricacies were unraveled, and what had so puzzled us the night before was perfectly clear when we woke up in the morning. Our conscious, objective self didnot enter the mysterious laboratory where the miracle was wrought. We do not know how it was wrought. We only know that it was done somehow, without our knowledge, while we slept.
Some of our greatest inventions and discoveries have been worked out by the subconscious mind during sleep. Many an inventor who went to sleep with a puzzled brain, discouraged and disheartened because he could not make the connecting link between his theory and its practical application, awoke in the morning with his problem solved.
Mathematicians and astronomers have had marvelous results worked out while they slept, answers to questions which had puzzled them beyond measure during their waking hours. Writers, poets, painters, musicians, all have received inspiration for their work while the body slumbered.
Many people attempt to explain these things on a purely physical basis. They attribute the apparent phenomenon to the mere fact that the brain has been refreshed and renewed during the night, and that, consequently, we can think better and more clearly in the morning. Thatis true, so far as it goes, but there is something more, something beyond this. We know that ideas are suggested and problems actually worked out along lines which did not occur to the waking mind. Most of us have had experiences of some kind or another which show that there is some great principle, some intelligent power back of the flesh, but not of it, which is continually active in our lives, helping us to solve our problems.
One of the most interesting instances of this kind is given in the biography of the great scientist, Professor Louis Agassiz, by his widow:
"He [Professor Agassiz]," the writer says, "had been for two weeks striving to decipher the somewhat obscure impression of a fossil fish on the stone slab in which it was preserved. Weary and perplexed, he put his work aside at last, and tried to dismiss it from his mind. Shortly after, he waked one night persuaded that while asleep he had seen his fish with all the missing features perfectly restored. But when he tried to hold and make fast the image it escaped him. Nevertheless, he went early to the Jardin des Plantes, thinking that onlooking anew at the impression he should see something which would put him on the track of his vision. In vain—the blurred record was as blank as ever. The next night he saw the fish again, but with no more satisfactory result. When he awoke it disappeared from his memory as before. Hoping that the same experience might be repeated, on the third night he placed a pencil and paper beside his bed before going to sleep.
"Accordingly, towards morning the fish re-appeared in his dream, confusedly at first, but at last with such distinctness that he had no longer any doubt as to its zoölogical characters. Still half dreaming, in perfect darkness, he traced these characters on the sheet of paper at the bedside. In the morning he was surprised to see in his nocturnal sketch features which he thought it impossible the fossil itself should reveal. He hastened to the Jardin des Plantes, and, with his drawing as a guide, succeeded in chiseling away the surface of the stone under which portions of the fish proved to be hidden. When wholly exposed it corresponded with his dream and his drawing, and he succeeded in classifying it with ease."
We are all familiar with examples of the marvelous feats performed by somnambulists. They will get up and dress while fast asleep, lock and unlock doors, go out and walk and ride in the most dangerous places, where they would not attempt to go when awake. Many have been known to walk with sure feet along the extreme edges of roofs of houses, on the banks of rivers, or close to the edge of precipices, where one false step would precipitate them to death. They will speak, write, act, and move as if entirely conscious of what they are doing. A somnambulist will answer questions put to him while asleep and carry on a conversation rationally.
In this respect the state of the sleep walker is similar to that of a person in a hypnotic trance. He can be acted on from without and remain wholly unconscious. Surgical operations have been performed upon a hypnotized person without the use of anesthetics; and there is no doubt that this also would be possible during profound sleep. The subjective mind is much more susceptible to suggestion when the objective mind is unconscious. There is no resistance on account of prejudice or external influences.
That we are on the eve of marvelous possibilities of treating disease during sleep there is not the slightest doubt. The same is true of habit forming, mind changing, of mind improving, of strengthening deficient faculties, of eradicating peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, of neutralizing injurious hereditary tendencies, of increasing ability. The possibilities of changing the disposition and of mind building during sleep are only beginning to be realized.
The power of the subjective mind over the body is well illustrated by the fact that thoughts aroused in a hypnotized person can very materially shift the circulation of the blood. They can send it at will to any part of the body. The hypnotist can make his subject blush or turn pale, express in his face fierce anger or appealing love. He can at will produce anesthesia in any part of the body so that a needle or knife may be inserted in the flesh without causing the slightest pain. He can so impress the hypnotized person's mind with the belief that the water he drinks is whiskey that he will actually exhibit all the appearance of drunkenness. He can make him believe that the spoonful of water he takes is full ofpoison so that he will immediately develop the symptoms of poisoning.
The subjective mind is not only capable of carrying out orders but, as has already been shown, every impression made on it is indelible. How often we say, when we cannot recall a well-known name, or the details of some important event or experience, "Well, I cannot think of that now, but it will come to me; I shall think of it later." And how often have the forgotten details flashed into our mind when the occasion had passed and we were thinking of something else. Again and again have we puzzled our brains at night trying to think of some particular thing which had gone out of our memory, only to find it waiting for us in the morning.
We are beginning to realize that all of our experiences during the day, all of our thoughts, emotions and mental attitudes, the multitude of little things which seem to make but a fleeting impression, are not in reality lost. Every day leaves its phonographic records on the brain, and these records are never erased or destroyed. They simply drop into the subconscious mind and are ever on call. Theymay not come at once in response to our summons, but they are still there and are often, many years after they have dropped into the subconscious mind, reproduced with all their original vividness.
I heard recently of a prominent banker who lost a very important key, the only one to the bank treasures. He claimed that it had not been lost in the ordinary way, but stolen. Suspicion at once attached to the employees. A prominent detective was placed in the bank, and, after watching and questioning every one on the staff, he became convinced that none but the banker himself knew anything about the key.
Every detective is necessarily something of a mind reader, and this one, believing firmly in his own theory, suggested a simple plan for recovering the key. He told the banker to quit suspecting the employees and worrying about burglars getting the bank's treasures, to relax his overwrought mind and go to sleep with the belief that he himself had put the key away somewhere, and that it would be found in the morning. "If you do this," he said, "I believe the mystery will be solved."
The banker, to the best of his ability, did as the detective suggested, and on getting up the following morning he was instinctively led to a certain secret place, and, behold, there was the key. He was not conscious that he had put it there, but after finding it he had a faint recollection of previously going to this place.
The banker's objective or conscious mind was probably busy with something else when he put the key away. Only his subconscious self had any knowledge of what he was doing. Then when he missed the key his fears, his worry, his anxiety, his suspicions and generally wrought-up mentality made it impossible for his subjective mind to reveal the secret to him. But after his mind had become poised and he was again in tune with his subjective intelligence the information was passed along.
Dr. Hack Tuke, a distinguished English authority on the subject. "The memory, freed from distraction as it sometimes is," he says, "is so vivid as to enable the sleeper to recall events which had happened years before and which had been entirely forgotten."
Now, if, as we have seen, the subconscious mind can perform real work, real service forus, why should we not use it especially during sleep? Why should we not avail ourselves of this enormous creative force to strengthen all our powers and possibilities, to piece out, virtually to lengthen our time, our lives? Think what it would mean to us in a life time if we could keep these sleepless creative functions always in superb condition so that they would go on during the night working out our problems, unraveling our difficulties, carrying forward our plans, while we are asleep! We have sufficient proof already to show that they do actual constructive work, but the testimony of Dr. Tuke on this point is of interest. "That the exercise of thought—and this on a high level—is consistent with sleep can hardly be doubted," he writes. "Arguments are employed in debate which are not always illogical. We dreamed one night, subsequent to a lively conversation with a friend on spiritualism, that we instituted a number of test experiments in reference to it. The nature of these tests was retained vividly in the memory after waking. They were by no means wanting in ingenuity, and proved that the mental operations were in good form."