C. Harry Brooks

“ We have already seen that a suggester is not needed, that autosuggestion can yield its fullest fruits to those who practise it unaided. But some persons cannot be prevailed on to accept this fact. They feel a sense of insufficiency; the mass of old wrong suggestions has risen so mountain-high that they imagine themselves incapable of removing it. With such the presence of a suggester is an undoubted help. They have nothing to do but lie passive and receive the ideas he evokes. Even so, however, they will get little good unless they consent to repeat the general formula. ”

“ You tread gingerly in the dark places, hurry past the churchyard and feel a distinct relief when the lights of home come into view. It is the old road you have so often traversed with perfect equanimity, but its cheerful associations are overlooked and the commonest objects tinged with the colour of your subjective states. Autosuggestion cannot change a post into a spectre, but if you are very impressionable it will so distort your sensory impressions that common sounds seem charged with supernatural significance and every-day objects take on terrifying shapes. ”

“ In fact, the Unconscious is creating the conditions best suited to realise the thought in his mind—failure. When the game begins his skill seems to have deserted him. He summons the resources of his will and tries to compel himself to play well, straining every nerve to recapture the old dexterity. But all his efforts only make him play worse and worse. The harder he tries the more signally he fails. The energy he calls up obeys not his will but the idea in his mind, not the desire to win but the dominant thought of failure. ”

“ In a frontal attack against an obstacle we use effort, and effort, to be effective, must be approved by the reason and preceded, to some extent, by the idea of success.
Thus, even in our dealings with the outside world, Thought is always master of the will. How much more so when our action is turned inward! When practising autosuggestion we are living in the mind, where thoughts are the only realities. We can meet with no obstacle other than that of Thought itself. ”

“ The sum of all these impressions is the man himself, the ego, the form through which the general life is individualised. The outer man is but a mask; the real self dwells behind the veil of the Unconscious. ”

“ It is fairly obvious that the greater the outcropping the more accessible these dynamic strata of the mind become, and the easier it is to implant there any idea we wish to realise.
As the Unconscious tide rises the active levels of the mind are overflowed; thought is released from its task of serving our conscious aims in the real world of matter, and moves among the more primal wishes and desires which people the Unconscious, like a diver walking the strange world beneath the sea. ”

“ The idea of a difficulty dwells unchanged in his mind, and all his efforts to overcome it only increase its dimensions, until it overpowers him and he faints in the effort to cross a street.
But as soon as we change the idea our troubles vanish. By means of the intellect we can substitute for the blank idea of the obstacle that of the means to overcome it. Immediately, the will is brought into harmony again with thought, and we go forward to the triumphant attainment of our end. It may be that the means adopted consist of a frontal attack, the overcoming of an obstacle by force. ”

“ Some men are notoriously lucky in business; whatever they touch seems to "turn to gold." The secret of their success lies in the fact that they confidently expect to succeed. There is no need to go so far as the writers of the school of "New Thought," and claim that suggestion can set in motion transcendental laws outside man's own nature. It is quite clear that the man who expects success, of whatever kind it may be, will unconsciously take up the right attitude to his environment; will involuntarily close with fleeting opportunity, and by his inner fitness command the circumstances without. ”

“ When we are drowsy, dreamy, lulled into a gentle reverie by music or by a picture or a poem, the Unconscious tide is high; the more wakeful and alert we become the lower it sinks. This submersion of the conscious mind is called by Baudouin the "Outcropping of the Subconscious." The highest degree of outcropping, compatible with the conscious direction of our thoughts, occurs just before we fall asleep and just after we wake. ”

“ During outcropping association by contraries does not seem readily to take place. Thus the mal-association, which neutralised the desired idea and so prevented acceptation, no longer presents itself. We all know what happens during a "day-dream" or "brown-study," when the Unconscious tide is high. A succession of bright images glides smoothly through the mind. The original thought spins itself on and on; no obstacles seem to stop it, no questions of probability arise; we are cut off from the actual conditions of life and live in a world where all things are possible. ”

“ There are times when temperamental failings, or the gravity of our affliction, places our imagination beyond our ordinary control. The suggestion operates in spite of us; we do not seem to possess the power to rid our minds of the adverse thought. Under these conditions we should never struggle to throw off the obsessing idea by force. Our exertions only bring into play the law of reversed effort, and we flounder deeper into the slough. Coué's technique, however, which will be outlined in succeeding chapters, will give us the means of mastering ourselves, even under the most trying conditions. ”

“ A moment's reflection will suffice to show that the will cannot be more than the servant of thought. We are incapable of exercising the will unless the imagination has first furnished it with a goal. We cannot simply will, we must will something, and that something exists in our minds as an idea. The will acts rightly when it is in harmony with the idea in the mind. ”

“ It will be seen that Induced Autosuggestion is a method by which the mind can act directly upon itself and upon the body to produce whatever improvements, in reason, we desire. That it is efficient and successful should be manifest from what has gone before. Of all the questions which arise, the most urgent from the viewpoint of the average man seems to be this—Is a suggester necessary? Must one submit oneself to the influence of some other person, or can one in the privacy of one's own chamber exercise with equal success this potent instrument of health? ”

“ It touches our being in its wholeness. Below the fussy perturbed little ego, with its local habitation, its name, its habits and views and oddities is an ocean of power, as serene as the depths below the troubled surface of the sea. Whatever is of you comes eventually thence, however perverted by the prism of self-consciousness. ”

“ If a man suffers from headaches he searches out, with the help of his physician, their cause; discovers whether they come from his eyes, his digestion or his nerves, and purchases the drugs best suited to repair the fault. If he wishes to improve a bad memory he practises one of the various methods of memory-training. If he is the victim of a pernicious habit he is left to counter it by efforts of the will, which too often exhaust his strength, undermine his self-respect, and only lead him deeper into the mire. How simple in comparison is the method of Induced Autosuggestion! ”

“ Of all the destructive suggestions we must learn to shun, none is more dangerous than fear. In fearing something the mind is not only dwelling on a negative idea, but it is establishing the closest personal connection between the idea and ourselves. Moreover, the idea is surrounded by an aura of emotion, which considerably intensifies its effect. Fear combines every element necessary to give to an autosuggestion its maximum power. But happily fear, too, is susceptible to the controlling power of autosuggestion. ”

“ Autosuggestion, far from producing callousness, dictates the method and supplies the means by which the truest sympathy can be practised. In every case our aim must be to remove the suffering as soon as possible, and this is facilitated by refusing acceptation to the bad ideas and maintaining our own mental and moral balance.
Whenever gloomy thoughts come to us, whether from without or within, we should quietly transfer our attention to something brighter. Even if we are afflicted by some actual malady, we should keep our thought from resting on it as far as we have the power to do so. ”

“ It is not the intellect, however, which does this work, but the Unconscious. The intellect still stands aghast before the problem of the human body, lost like Pascal in the profundities of analysis, each discovery only revealing new depths of mystery. ”

“ But the process does not end with the individual. The thoughts of society are realised in social conditions, the thoughts of humanity in world conditions. What would be the attitude towards our social and international problems of a generation nurtured from infancy in the knowledge and practice of autosuggestion? If fear and disease were banned from the individual life, could they persist in the life of the nation? If each person found happiness in his own heart would the illusory greed for possession survive? ”

“ Pain, whether of mind or body, introduces a new element for which we have hitherto made no provision. By monopolising the attention it keeps the conscious mind fully alert and so prevents one from attaining the measure of outcropping needful to initiate successfully an autosuggestion. Thus if we introduce the "no-pain" idea into the conscious, it is overwhelmed by its contrary—pain, and the patient's condition becomes, if anything, worse.
To overcome this difficulty quite a new method is required. If we speak a thought, that thought, while we speak it, must occupy our minds. ”

“ CHAPTER V THOUGHT AND THE WILL
If we can get the Unconscious to accept an idea, realisation follows automatically. The only difficulty which confronts us in the practice of Induced Autosuggestion is to ensure acceptation, and that is a difficulty which no method prior to that of Emile Coué has satisfactorily surmounted.
Every idea which enters the mind is charged, to a greater or less extent, with emotion. This emotional charge may be imperceptible, as with ideas to which we are indifferent, or it may be very great, as when the idea is closely related to our personal interests. ”

“ How often do foolish parents tell their children that they are naughty, disobedient, stupid, idle or vicious? If these suggestions were accepted, which, thank Heaven, is not always the case, the little ones would in very fact develop just these qualities. But even when no word is spoken, a look or a gesture can initiate an undesirable autosuggestion. The same child, visited by two strangers, will immediately make friends with the one and avoid the other. Why is this?—Because the one carries with him a healthful atmosphere, while the other sends out waves of irritability or gloom. ”

“ By continually repeating "I have no pain" the sufferer constantly renews that thought in his mind. Unfortunately, after each repetition the pain-thought insinuates itself, so that the mind oscillates between "I have no pain" and "I have some pain," or "I have a bad pain." But if we repeat our phrase so rapidly that the contrary association has no time to insert itself, we compel the mind willy-nilly to dwell on it. Thus by a fresh path we reach the same goal as that attained by induced outcropping; we cause an idea to remain in occupation of the mind without calling up a contrary association. ”

“ The mother should avoid with more than ordinary care all subjects, whether in reading or conversation, which bear on evil in any form, and she should seek whatever uplifts the mind and furnishes it with beautiful and joyous thought. But the technical methods of autosuggestion can also be brought into action.
The mother should suggest to herself that her organism is furnishing the growing life with all it needs, and that the child will be strong and healthy in mind, in body, and in character. ”

“ The Unconscious is the storehouse of memory, where every impression we receive from earliest infancy to the last hour of life is recorded with the minutest accuracy. These memories, however, are not inert and quiescent, like the marks on the vulcanite records of a gramophone; they are vitally active, each one forming a thread in the texture of our personality. ”

“ But as long as we look on autosuggestion as a remedy we miss its true significance. Primarily it is a means of self-culture, and one far more potent than any we have hitherto possessed. It enables us to develop the mental qualities we lack: efficiency, judgment, creative imagination, all that will help us to bring our life's enterprise to a successful end. Most of us are aware of thwarted abilities, powers undeveloped, impulses checked in their growth. ”

“ Thus the Will turns out to be, not the commanding monarch of life, as many people would have it, but a blind Samson, capable either of turning the mill or of pulling down the pillars.
Autosuggestion succeeds by avoiding conflict. It replaces wrong thought by right, literally applying in the sphere of science the principle enunciated in the New Testament: "Resist not evil, but overcome evil with good." ”

“ An organic disease may be increased a hundredfold by allowing the mind to brood on it, for in so doing we place at its disposal all the resources of our organism, and direct our life-force to our own destruction. On the other hand, by denying it our attention and opposing it with curative autosuggestions, we reduce its power to the minimum and should succeed in overcoming it entirely. Even in the most serious organic diseases the element contributed by wrong thought is infinitely greater than that which is purely physical. ”

“ A form of particular suggestion which possesses distinct advantages of its own is the quiet repetition of a single word. If your mind is distracted and confused, sit down, close your eyes, and murmur slowly and reflectively the single word "Calm." Say it reverently, drawing it out to its full length and pausing after each repetition. Gradually your mind will be stilled and quietened, and you will be filled with a sense of harmony and peace. This method seems most applicable to the attainment of moral qualities. An evil passion can be quelled by the use of the word denoting the contrary virtue. ”

“ Sympathy is too often regarded as a passive process by which we allow ourselves to be infected by the gloom, the weakness, the mental ill-health of other people. This is sympathy perverted. If a friend is suffering from small-pox or scarlet fever you do not seek to prove your sympathy by infecting yourself with his disease. You would recognize this to be a crime against the community. Yet many people submit themselves to infection by unhealthy ideas as if it were an act of charity—part of their duty towards their neighbours. ”

“ When we employ autosuggestion to heal a malady our aim is so to leaven the Unconscious with healthful thoughts, that not only will that specific malady be excluded, but all others with it. Autosuggestion should not only remove a particular form of disease, but the tendency to all disease.
If after an ailment has been removed we allow our mind to revert to unhealthy thoughts, they will tend to realise themselves in the same way as any others, and we may again fall a victim to ill-health. Our sickness may take the same form as on the preceding occasion, or it may not. ”

“ Autosuggestion is a channel by which the tranquil powers of this ultimate being are raised to the level of our life here and now.
What prospects does autosuggestion open to us in the future?
It teaches us that the burdens of life are, at least in large measure, of our own creating. We reproduce in ourselves and in our circumstances the thoughts of our minds. It goes further. It offers us a means by which we can change these thoughts when they are evil and foster them when they are good, so producing a corresponding betterment in our individual life. ”

“ Just as everything conscious has its preliminary step in the Unconscious, so every conscious thought passes down into the lower stratum and there becomes an element in our being, partaking of the Unconscious energy, and playing its part in supervising and determining our mental and bodily states. If it is a healthful thought we are so much the better; if it is a diseased one we are so much the worse. It is this transformation of a thought into an element of our life that we call Autosuggestion. ”