Section 2 - Part B:

 The Subconscious Mind 

At the beginning of the creation of your body it was merely a blending together of a male and a female cell, and the new cell formed by this blending was so small as to be almost invisible to the unaided eye. 

Your Subconscious Mind took charge of the building at that point. It had a very definite mental picture of what the completed body should be. It knew all the marvellous details of the building, and all the intricate and highly technical scientific principles involved. From that moment to this it has been the builder, the repairer and the sustainer. 

When and just how did your Subconscious Mind acquire all this wisdom? That is a difficult question, the answer to which you may or may not find in this Lesson, all depending upon how you read and understand it. 

Your Subconscious Mind exclusively occupies its own portions of your brain, these portions being in general the lower and back portions and the downward extension of your brain called the spinal cord. It communicates with every part and organ of your body over a complicated network of nerves, all centring in the portions of the brain and spinal cord from which it operates. Over this network of nerves, it sends its messages, instructions and commands, just as the operator of a central telephone exchange might send messages, instructions and commands to all the outlying exchanges reached by the wires coming into that central exchange. The force it uses in sending these messages is nervous energy. This force is similar to electricity, and used to be called animal magnetism.  

Over one of these living wires your Subconscious Mind is constantly saying to you heart: "Contract expand-contract - expand", fixing its rhythmical beating. Over another it sends directions to your liver for the manufacture of sugar and bile. Over another it tells your stomach how to manufacture digestive juices, and then gives detailed instructions for sending the different elements of the digested food to the parts that need them. These are just a few of the simpler processes that are constantly controlled and directed by your Subconscious Mind. There are thousands of others, and many of them are so intricate and profound that the Objective Mind can only comprehend bits of their workings here and there.  

Your Subconscious Mind does its work of building, operation and repair by the creative power of its thought. It thought your body into its form and parts. Over one of its nerves it sends the thought of a certain chemical formula or mechanical action, and then the formula is compounded or the mechanical action effected.

The Power of Thought 

This knowledge of the modes and methods used by the Subconscious Mind has been gathered from several different sources. As a matter of common knowledge, we know that the intelligence which builds and operates our bodies works without either hands or tools. We know that the power of an objective thought, sent over a nerve leading from that part of the brain occupied by the Objective Mind, can stimulate a muscle into action, for it is in this way that all our voluntary movements are affected and controlled. We also know that the muscles of the voluntary system are not kicked nor punched into action; rather, they move under the force of a thought of the Objective Mind. The process by which a gland is moved to compound a certain chemical formula is more intricate than the process by which a muscle of the arm is moved to swat a fly. But in principle they are the same. Each is the response of a bodily organ to a thought. The gland responds to a thought of the Subconscious Mind, while the muscle responds to a thought of the Objective Mind. 

We know that certain single and intense thoughts, such as intense fear-thoughts and intense anger-thoughts, drive through into the Subconscious Mind and affect the orderly and usual course of organic operation. Among many other things, these single and intense thoughts affect the action of the heart, over which the Objective Mind has no control.  

It has also been demonstrated over and over again that certain other single and intense thoughts carry through to the Subconscious Mind suggestions of healing which it will accept and work out into realities. Many doctors were rather slow in accepting this truth. Then they admitted that functional diseases might be cured in this way, but insisted that organic diseases required pills, powders and knives. But organic diseases of the most serious nature are now being cured in this way all over the world, and many doctors are practising this method of treatment. Of course, I am not saying that you should not consult a doctor if you are ill. But in partnership with orthodox medicine the Subconscious Mind is a marvellous healer.  

And, what is more to the point just here, a great many of the students who have made this journey before you have reported marvellous healings of many kinds of physical ailments, including rheumatism, piles, catarrh and eczema. These specific ailments are mentioned here because everyone knows that they are stubborn organic defects and not mere functional disorders. If the Subconscious Mind may be induced to heal such ailments, who shall say that it has limitations in healing, beyond which it may not go? It may have such limitations, but after years of careful study, research and active work in this field, I have not found them. In one particular case it may seem to have limitations, but in another case these limitations are swept away. 

I am of the opinion that in the realm of healing the only limitations upon the power of the Subconscious Mind are limitations placed upon it by the Objective Mind. I think that is what Jesus meant when he said: "According to your faith be it done unto you" (Matt. ix. 29). But a bare, inactive faith has little power. As St. James so aptly pointed out in his General Epistle, "Faith without works is dead" (James ii. 20, 26). This is so because a mere passive faith carries no suggestion to the Subconscious Mind. Such suggestion can be affected only by DOING something. In Practical Psychology, as in Religion, mere "hearers of the word" never accomplish much. The outstanding results are accomplished by "doers of the works". And in Practical Psychology the "work" consists of an accurate and persistent application of the prescribed formulae.  

The formulae should be used one at a time. If you are sick, then use the healing formula exclusively until your physical condition at least reaches such a stage of improvement that you can comfortably turn your attention to another formula for a while. If your most pressing need is financial in its nature, then use the success formula until the urgency of the need is relieved. This adherence to one formula at a time will get much prompter and better results than can be obtained by experimenting with first one formula and then another.  

In affairs outside the body, too, the Subconscious Mind seems to be just as powerful as in the healing of ailments and complaints. When its wisdom and power are invoked by the methods that will be pointed out to you later on in the Course, it takes charge of your financial affairs, and solves the problems that hold you back from achieving and possessing the things necessary to your happiness. I have had many reports of remarkable achievements along financial lines, some of which will be called to your attention as we proceed.

Students have often asked me why it is that the Subconscious Mind does not of its own volition and accord use its power and wisdom for healing the body and bringing to the individual the fulfilment of his or her ambitions. At first, it seems strange that this wonderful indwelling mind should so often permit us to be sick, poor, lonely, disappointed and unhappy. But it does; we can't get away from that stubborn fact. And we are here trying to get the facts, regardless of any theories we may have. This question so often arises that I'll try to answer it, for a vitally important truth is bound up in the answer. 

The Power of Suggestion 

Although the Subconscious Mind is marvellously wise and powerful, it never operates outside certain beaten paths unless moved to act by a suggestion from the Objective Mind. One of its beaten paths leads it through the process of building human bodies according to a general plan, and of carrying them along the border between sickness and health down to the end of life. It is a part of the general plan to heal certain diseases that attack the body. Diseases such as measles, scarlet fever and the like, run a certain course and then the patient gets well. These diseases can be very serious in nature, but the tendency of the Subconscious is to cast them out and repair the damage they have done. There are many other diseases that it seems to make no effort to heal. Bright's disease, diabetes and cancer furnish examples of the last- mentioned kind of diseases.  

The truth of the matter is that the wisdom and power of the Subconscious Mind are in a static or inactive state, like the power in a coiled spring, or the electricity in a battery, becoming active only when released by some outside influence. Some such outside influence long ago moved upon the phase of intelligence which now manifests as the Subconscious Mind, and set it to building human bodies along certain general lines. We have no exact knowledge as to the nature of the first created specimens. They might have been perfect, or they might have been crude and imperfect. But if they were perfect, it is certain that imperfections soon crept in, and that they have persisted until now. In this respect man is no different from the animals. We rise above the animals only when we come to a realisation of this indwelling and unused power, and begin intelligently to draw upon it.  

Your Mental Mirror  

And so it is that you, and every other normal human being, have within yourself a marvellous storage battery of power, upon which you may draw for whatsoever things are necessary to make your life what you want it to be. To put it in another way, you have within yourself a mental mirror which receives your suggestive thoughts and reflects them back as realities in your body and affairs. The purpose of this journey is to lead you to a discovery of that marvellous inner store of creative power, and to teach you how to draw upon it for the things you desire.  

The Universal Mind builds by the sheer power of its thought, and so does the individual Subconscious Mind. The Universal Mind projects a mental picture into a formless mass of material, and the formless mass takes the form of the picture; and so also proceeds the individual Subconscious Mind in building the body.  

The Subconscious Mind of the human beings of any particular race always proceeds in the same way in building and repairing bodies, and always employs the same marvellously intricate processes, regardless of the distances by which such beings may be separated, and regardless also of any differences, in education or intelligence.  

Therefore, I think you must realise that individual Subconscious Minds are all just so many grains of the golden sand of the Universal Mind. Perhaps the metaphor would be a little more apt if I said that each individual Subconscious Mind is merely an individualised expression of the Universal Mind, just as the wave is an individualised expression of the ocean from which it springs and of which it is a part. This explains the fact that the individual Subconscious Mind knows how to build a body from the very first minute that it begins building operations.  

If you are aware that any particular part or organ of your body is ailing or weak, here is a slight variation of the healing formula, by the use of which you ought to get excellent results. Begin with your usual assertion, "Hour by hour and day by day, I'm getting well in every way". repeating it slowly and deliberately until you become drowsy. Then thinking of the organ or part you wish to heal or strengthen, turn your attention to the clock, and let its ticking say: "I'll fix it while I sleep - I'll fix it while I sleep" - and so on indefinitely until you fall asleep.  

During this practice you will, in a general way and without effort, realise that you want the Subconscious Mind to draw from the healthy parts of your body enough protoplasmic material to repair the particular organ or part, and that you want it to mould this material into the necessary repairs. With this general thought in your mind, the exercise isolates the idea that the repair will be made while you sleep; and the tendency of isolated ideas, you will remember, is to become realities in the body and affairs of those who isolate them.  

This is really a wonderful Lesson, because it brings you face to face with your Real Self, your Greater Self. It digs down through all the petty things that up to now may have seemed to be you, and reveals the "real you", with all your infinite possibilities for achievement, possession, love, service and happiness.  

Allow me to urge upon you the tremendous importance of doing the prescribed work, as well as learning the Lessons, for it is only by doing this work that you can get results. Do the work prescribed in each. Lesson, persistently and exactly as it is prescribed.