Mind control

“ Remember your object is to discipline the mind, and bring it under the control of the will. But, to suffer your mind to be controlled by your feelings, in the very act of discipline, is absurd. As well might a mother talk of governing her child, while she allows it to do as it pleases. Finish one division of your subject every time you sit down to this exercise, until the whole is completed. ”

“ What range and type of consciousness will best serve to adjust us to our world of opportunity and responsibility? First of all we must know our world, hence, our mind must be capable of gathering knowledge. Second, we must be able to feel its values and respond to the great motives for action arising from the emotions. Third, we must have the power to exert self-compulsion, which is to say that we possess a will to control our acts. These three sets of processes, knowing, feeling, and willing, we shall, therefore, expect to find making up the content of our mental stream. ”

“ In the measure that you master self, that you control your mental forces instead of being controlled by them, in just such measure will you master affairs and outward circumstances.
Show me a man under whose touch everything crumbles away, and who cannot retain success even when it is placed in his hands, and I will show you a man who dwells continually in those conditions of mind which are the very negation of power. ”

“ In fact, every system of management that does not make this principle, of mildly calling forth and gently exercising this internal principle of self-control on matters that are least connected with the diseased parts of the brain, a constant and primary object of attention, is not merely defective, but exhibits very great ignorance of the attributes of mind, as well as of the causes and nature of its maladies; and it follows that, as a system, it must be without any clear principle to guide its physical and moral treatment. ”

“ In the realm of our own minds we have absolute control, or we should have, and if at any time we have not, then there is a method by which we can gain control, and in the realm of the mind become thorough masters. ”

“ I am sure, however, that the best way to meet these demands for conscious control is to be careless of them, to be willing to experience these extravagances and inconsistencies without fear, in the belief that finally will come a quiet and peace which will be all that we can ask. The peace of mind that is unguided, in the conscious and literal sense, is a thing which too few of us know. ”

“ I am often asked how I can expect by such a system to rest the organs of mind. No act of will can force them to be at rest. To this I should answer that it is not the mere half-automatic intellectuation which is harmful in men or women subject to states of feebleness or neurasthenia, and that the systematic vigorous use of mind on distinct problems is within some form of control. ”

“ We shall learn from wide and long experience to anticipate and provide for the steps of the unfolding mind, and train it, through carefully prearranged experiences, to a power of judgment, of self-control, of social perception, now utterly unthought of. ”

“ When we realize this fact, we are likely to suppose that it exists because control of the body is physical and hence is external to mind and will. Transfer the command inside character and mind, and it is fancied that an idea of an end and the desire to realize it will take immediate effect. After we get to the point of recognizing that habits must intervene between wish and execution in the case of bodily acts, we still cherish the illusions that they can be dispensed with in the case of mental and moral acts. ”

“ The facts of thought-transference, of mesmeric control, of apparitions of the living, and the like, as critically tested by the members of this society, seem to indicate clearly that mind can affect, influence, and control mind through some other channel than that of the senses, usually over short distances, but in case of strong mental concentration over long distances. ”

“ To control the mind you must go deep down into the subconscious mind, classify and arrange in order all the different impressions, thoughts, etc., stored up there, and control them. This is the first step. By the control of the subconscious mind you get control over the conscious. ”

“ There is nothing that holds the faculties at work in a sustained and continuous manner as static exercises do. For, as stated before, when you learn to control the body, you are gaining control over the mind.
LESSON III. HOW TO GAIN WHAT YOU WANT THROUGH CONCENTRATION The ignorant person may say, "How can you get anything by merely wanting it? I say that through concentration you can get anything you want. Every desire can be gratified. But whether it is, will depend upon you concentrating to have that desire fulfilled. Merely wishing for something will not bring it. ”

“ Every purposed movement is preceded and inspired by thought.
Such reasoned control, by indwelling mind, may be undetectable and inconceivable to a low order of intelligence, being totally masked by the material garment; and the purpose underlying our activity may have to be inferred, by such intelligence, with as great difficulty as we feel in detecting indwelling Purpose amid the spontaneous operations of Nature. ”

“ But when we take into consideration the fundamental truth that mind controls matter, and that the few who were at the top had cultivated brains while the many who were at the bottom had only cultivated muscles, the mystery is solved. ”

“ Mind as a concrete thing is precisely the power to understand things in terms of the use made of them; a socialized mind is the power to understand them in terms of the use to which they are turned in joint or shared situations. And mind in this sense is the method of social control. ”

“ The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive, is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts, and “not even in inmost thought to think again the sins that made the past so pleasant to us.”134 Whatever makes any bad action familiar to the mind, renders its performance by so much the easier. ”

“ The mind uncontrolled and unguided will drag us down, down, for ever—rend us, kill us; and the mind controlled and guided will save us, free us. ”

“ You can make vassals of the gods; You can be ever youthful; You can walk on water and live in fire; But control of the mind is better and more difficult. ”

“ In other words, every appetite, every excess, has a physical basis, and if we only knew enough of the human system—of the tides and currents of thought and will and wish—enough of the storms of passion—if we only knew how the brain acts and operates—if we only knew the relation between blood and thought, between thought and act—if we only knew the conditions of conduct, then we could, through science, control the passions of the human race. ”

“ If you will just realize that through deep concentration you become linked with thoughts of omnipotence, you will kill out entirely your belief in your limitations and at the same time will drive away all fear and other negative and destructive thought forces which constantly work against you. In the place of these you will build up a strong assurance that your every venture will be successful. When you learn thus how to concentrate and reinforce your thought, you control your mental creations ”

“ It may be said, however, by an objector, that this accounts only for the case in which the voluntary attention flows easy and unimpeded, almost as if it were spontaneous; when the mere perception that the idea is connected with our purpose—with the pleasurable end which suggested the train of thought, at once and without difficulty produces that exclusive occupation of the mind with it, which is called fixing the attention. ”

“ Above all, you may find that your mental training is defective, not from lack of capacity, but from some remediable or irremediable weakness of the will which robs you of the power of controlling your own minds. Never let it be forgotten that with steady effort, aided by the cumulative power of habit, the processes of the intellect can be brought under the control of the will. ”

“ In so far as you are enslaved by the changing moods within you, will you need to depend upon others and upon outward aids as you walk through life.
If you would walk firmly and securely, and would accomplish any achievement, you must learn to rise above and control all such disturbing and retarding vibrations. ”

“ After a certain period of mental discipline, of deliberate habit-forming and habit-breaking, such as I have been indicating, a man will begin to acquire at any rate a superficial knowledge, a nodding acquaintance, with that wonderful and mysterious affair, his brain, and he will also begin to perceive how important a factor in daily life is the control of his brain. ”

“ The power to survey the act, when united with the power to act, sets mind infinitely above matter, and places the action of instinct, wonderful as it is, infinitely below the action of self-consciousness. ”

“ It twinkles and goes out the moment it appears in the margin of our consciousness; and we need a resolute effort of voluntary attention to drag it into the focus of the field, and to keep it there long enough for its associative and motor effects to be exerted. Every one knows only too well how the mind flinches from looking at considerations hostile to the reigning mood of feeling. ”

“ If you will do this you will soon cultivate a concentrated mental habit, which will enable you to read with ordinary rapidity and remember all that you read.
LESSON I. CONCENTRATION FINDS THE WAY Everyone has two natures. One wants us to advance and the other wants to pull us back. The one that we cultivate and concentrate on decides what we are at the end. Both natures are trying to gain control. The will alone decides the issue. A man by one supreme effort of the will may change his whole career and almost accomplish miracles. ”

“ So if you lack success, believe in it, hope for it, claim it. You can use the same method to brace up your thoughts of desire, aspiration, imagination, expectation, ambition, understanding, trust and assurance.
If you get anxious, angry, discouraged, undecided or worried, it is because you are not receiving the co-operation of the higher powers of your mind. By your Will you can so organize the powers of the mind that your moods change only as you want them to instead of as circumstances affect you. ”

“ How many times has your reasoning mind urged you to do one thing, while the instincts of your body led you to do another? Mind and body are always at strife in all of us—it's been so in all human history. ”

“ Conclusions about the world had subtly assembled in the back of his brain in the course of his life, conclusions repudiated at other times for the need to think positively and to make the world his home for lack of a choice of another, slipped through barriers of his mind to the forefront of his brain. ”

“ In all directions our habitual courses of action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit, and control, both with others and even with ourselves; everywhere we see the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to some sound order and authority. This we can only get by going back upon the actual instincts and forces which rule our life, seeing them as they really are, connecting them with other instincts and forces, and enlarging our whole view and rule of life. ”

“ Passing on to genius, which I discussed in my third chapter, it is noticeable that there also there is a certain degree of temporary substitution of one control for another over important brain-centres. ”

“ It is requisite, therefore, that the circumstances leading to the concentration of the mind should be well understood. We assume that there is power available for the occasion, and we seek to turn it into the proper channel. Now, there is no doubt that the will is the chief intervening influence, and the chief stimulants of the will are, as we know, pleasure and pain. This is the rough view of the case. A little more precision is attainable through our psychological knowledge. ”

“ I must more particularly advert to this most powerful argument in favour of this plan, which is, that it conduces to form the habit of self-control, which is the habit above all others which ought ever be our aim to form. It ought to be the primary object in every moral plan of cure. ”

“ Through concentration we can work out our ideals In physical life. What a different world this would be if we would build the right kind of ideals. Every time you change your ideal you think differently. Life is one continuous unfoldment. You can be happy every step of its way or miserable as you please. How our grandest thoughts come to us.
LESSON 18. MENTAL CONTROL THROUGH CREATION. An inventor's vision. Why It is easy to project your thoughts to another. How your mental powers can draw to you forces of a helpful nature. The big business man must possess mental power of control. ”

“ We are surrounded by many forces of which we know but little at present. Our knowledge of these is to be wonderfully increased. Each year we learn more about these psychic forces which are full of possibilities of which we are not even dimly conscious. We must believe in mental control, learn more about it, and use it, if we want to command these higher powers and forces which will unquestionably direct the lives of countless future generations. ”

“ The story of the life of man and the story of the mind of man must begin with the instincts. Indeed, any intelligent approach to human life, whether it be that of the mother, the teacher, the preacher, the social worker or the neurologist, leads back inevitably to the instincts as the starting-point of understanding. But what is instinct? ”

“ Only when the disordered impulses and perceptions settle down into a trained instinct, a steady, vital response and adequate preparation for the world, do clear ideas and successful purposes arise in the mind. ”