Section 3 - Part A:

 Drawing on the Subconscious 

You have already learned that an isolated idea tends to realize itself. To say this in another way, when one thought is held in the Objective Mind to the exclusion of everything else, that thought passes over to the Subconscious Mind and becomes a subconscious thought. 

Remember, your Subconscious Mind is all-wise and all-powerful. It implicitly accepts as true any thought that reaches it from the Objective Mind - that is, it adopts the thought as its own. And you will remember that it builds by its thoughts. 

This question will probably come to mind: "May I then lie to my Subconscious Mind, and make it accept a lie as the truth?" This question cannot be answered with "Yes" or "No". The reason is that you cannot lie to your Subconscious Mind about anything that concerns your body or affairs, because the only way in which you can tell it anything of this kind is by sending it a single thought, and when that thought reaches it, all its wonderful wisdom, power and resourcefulness are brought into play to make the thought true, even though it was previously untrue. 

To present this profound and important truth in yet another way, all the thoughts about yourself and your affairs that you send to your Subconscious Mind are converted by it into mental pictures of the things suggested by the thoughts, and the mental pictures of the Subconscious Mind tend to become realities in your body and environment. Therefore, if you can make your mind concentrate on the thought, "Hour by hour, and day by day, I am getting well in every way", it transforms this thought into a mental picture of you in radiant health, with nothing wrong with you IN ANY RESPECT, and because its mental pictures express themselves in physical realities, your bodily condition will gradually conform to the subconscious mental picture.

Your success or failure, prosperity or poverty, is determined in the same way and by the same means; but that phase of the work still lies before you, to be taken up in the next Part of this Lesson. 

Management and Control 

I am here trying to bring together in your mind the following thoughts: in the management and control of your body and affairs your Subconscious Mind is all-wise and all-powerful; any single thought going to it from your Objective Mind is converted by it into a mental picture of the thing or condition represented by that thought; and since it does its work by making mental pictures, the thing or condition represented by the single thought will actually appear. 

I will describe a simple experiment from which you can get a good idea of this entire process. The next time you are affected by any pain, go to a quiet place where you can relax for a few minutes, and go over your little formula, "Hour by hour", etc., several times. Then turn your thoughts to the pain, and begin repeating just as rapidly as your tongue and lips can frame the words: "It is getting easy - it is getting easy", or "It is passing away it is passing away". Keep these repetitions going at the highest possible speed, without the slightest pause or break, and if necessary, repeat them hundreds of times. If you are entirely alone, so that you will be in no danger of being misjudged by someone who might overhear you, it is better to speak this rapid assertion aloud, because you will get faster results; but if this condition cannot be met, mere whispering of the words or even framing them with your lips and tongue without whispering them will do. The important point is that the words shall be repeated rapidly and without pauses. 

This constant repetition will serve to isolate the idea, "It is passing away", and the rapidity of it will give your Objective Mind no opportunity to break in and say, "You are lying, it is getting worse" - which it would do if it had a chance. When this single thought reaches your Subconscious Mind, it quickly starts an investigation as to the cause of the pain, and, having found the cause, makes a mental picture of the change necessary to lessen it. These processes will take only a few minutes, and when they are completed your Subconscious Mind will halt your runaway train of assertion by breaking in to suggest, "It is gone", when you will come back to a normal state of mind and to a realisation that the pain has actually passed away. 

This is a simple exercise which can be carried out by anyone, but it will give you a practical demonstration of the methods used by your Subconscious Mind in all its work for your betterment. What's more, its results are so swift and certain that you will be very impressed, and your enthusiasm greatly stimulated. Keep strictly to the methods and words I have prescribed. A mistake would be unfortunate. For instance, if you should say, "It is easy", or "It has passed away", you would be powerless to prevent your Objective Mind from disputing the assertion; and this dispute would invoke what is known as the Law of Reversed Effort, by the operation of which all your work would be turned against you and your efforts brought to nothing. You will learn more about this troublesome Law of Reversed Effort in the next Part of this lesson.

The Technical Formula 

Here is the technical formula for drawing on your Subconscious Mind for the things you want: Desire plus Fixation of Attention plus Concentration plus Suggestion equals Desire Realised. 

This formula is perfectly sound and will actually work. If you wish to call on your Subconscious Mind for the things you desire, you should first decide what one thing you desire above everything else, and concentrate on that one thing alone. Desiring several things at once is liable to result in confusion, and to defeat the purpose. Moreover, you should make special preparation for using this method. You should have a room or place to which you can go at least once a day. Some people will find no opportunity for such seclusion during the day, for in the hurry and bustle of life today we have little or no time for a leisurely hour of privacy. But we must all sleep more or less every day, and our retirement for sleep may also be a retirement for quietness. It would be better if you had a bedroom all to yourself; but if that is impracticable, the next best thing is to have a separate bed. If you live in the country, you have plenty of opportunity for privacy and quietness. 

Build a Metal Plan or Picture 

When you have decided upon just the thing you desire and have arranged for a quiet period, you should then form a very definite and concrete idea about the thing you want; that is to say you should build up a mental plan or picture of it. The Subconscious Mind is heedless of mere words. It reads the thought-picture lying behind the words. When this mental plan or picture is impressed upon the Subconscious Mind, it is then that it begins to make it a reality in your life and affairs. 

Let us suppose that you would like a new home. You should first know just what kind of a home you want; and to that end you should begin by making pencil sketches, however crude, of its floor-plans upstairs and downstairs. All the built-in conveniences should be included in these plans. If necessary, a book of plans may be consulted, so as to formulate a clearer mental plan. Or one of the plans from such a book may be adopted in toto. The material of which the house is to be built should be determined, and its outside appearance should be clearly fixed in the mind. With the pencilled sketch or printed plan before you, you should mentally go in at the front door, and slowly and carefully proceed through every room, noting each feature of construction. After a little practice the whole mental house will get to be so familiar that the pencilled or printed plans will no longer be necessary. 

Having decided definitely on the house you want; you may begin concentrating on it. Picturing it in your mind, you should go carefully through your mental house again, quietly and slowly studying all its details, and mentally enjoying its comforts and conveniences. A similar concentration period should be spent morning and night with a contemplation of the mental plan. The mental picture will be more or less hazy at first, but, if the practice prescribed is carefully followed, it will grow clearer day by day.

 

When you retire at night mentally "go over" the house again. Make use of the clock. Then say to yourself over and over again, slowly and deliberately, "My house is now completed — I'll soon move in." When you begin to get drowsy turn your attention to the clock and hear it say: "I'll soon move in - I'll soon move in," until you fall asleep. 

The time will come when for just a moment you will forget your present location and environment, and will imagine yourself to be already in possession of the house you have planned. You will believe that you have built it, and in that moment the whole plan will be registered on the Subconscious Mind as indelibly as a photograph is captured on film. 

Such a method complies with and conforms to the findings of scientific psychology. It singles out and isolates the idea of owning the desired house, when the Subconscious Mind immediately begins to exercise its wisdom and power to make the isolated thought materialise. The house will not spring up in any magical way. But things will soon begin to happen in your life if you have isolated the idea. You will see and take advantage of opportunities that you have not seen before, things will begin to come your way, or your income will increase, and in due course the house will be built. 

I think you will also realise that this simple formula may be used for getting other things besides houses. This is not mere theory. It is a very practical procedure which has been successfully used by many Students of this Course. 

Make Your Plans a Reality 

Unless I have so far proved a very poor teacher, you must realise that the aim and purpose of this simple method of procedure is to isolate the idea that you actually own the house, telling your Subconscious Mind to make and hold a mental picture of it. By your care in working out the details of the house you will make the subconscious image of it strong and clear, hastening its process of becoming a physical reality. Anything else may be obtained by the same method prescribed for getting the house. But the methods of drawing upon your Subconscious Mind for success and prosperity in general will be more fully explained in Part B of this Lesson, which is devoted to that particular phase of the work. 

You no doubt wonder from Lessons One and Two if all your subconscious work must be done in the process of going to sleep. The simple work I have prepared for you in this Lesson will make you realise that not only your sleeping hours, but your waking hours as well, may be used in your great work of self-liberation. The fact is, however, that you may do more swift and powerful work by the "somnolent method" than by the "wakeful method". Without in any way detracting from the great merits of the work that has already been prescribed, less and less emphasis will now be laid upon the wakeful method. By way of preparing, you for this advance in our journey, and in addition to what was indicated in our talk about getting the house, I want to suggest two simple exercises which will help you to begin to move forward in your mastery of the wakeful method. 

Can you close your eyes and make clear mental pictures? For instance, can you close your eyes and see an orange lying on a table in front of you, when in fact there is no orange there? If you can make clear mental pictures at will, I suggest that you practise this exercise for a few minutes each day. If you have no other opportunity, you may profitably engage in this exercise just after you retire at night, and before you begin the somnolent method exercises explained in the first two Lessons. Try to control your mental pictures so as to be able to make them what you want, and to blot out quickly any undesirable ones that may come. After you have attained some proficiency in mental picture- making, I suggest that you make pictures of things you actually want. 

How to Cultivate the Right State of Mind for Making Mental Pictures 

Not everyone can make these mental pictures. But whether you can or cannot make them, I suggest this additional exercise. Sit quietly in a comfortable chair, and look steadily at some small bright object. A diamond positioned where it will shine is excellent for this purpose. But if you have no diamond, then any one of a number of other things may be substituted for it. Any small object having a bright glitter will do. A candle-flame is also excellent. If you use the candle-flame, and if you can make mental pictures, you should see in or beyond it a picture of something you desire. If you have a pendulum clock with the pendulum visible, you can transform it into a most excellent instrument for this purpose by fastening a piece of shiny silver paper on the face of the pendulum. 

The exercise consists in looking at the bright object steadily for several minutes without turning your eyes away from it. Its principal purpose is to make your mind blank. Have you ever sat before a low- burning fire in a quiet room and gazed upon some glowing ember, until you fell into a state of reverie in which the least noise in the room sounded like a crash and aroused you with a start? This exercise is intended to cultivate just that state of mind. The monotony of gazing at a bright point for several minutes’ tires the faculty of attention, and in revolt against this tiredness the mind stops thinking at all. 

If the attention is steadily fixed upon a bit of silver paper on a clock pendulum, the rhythmical effort to follow its swing quickens the onset of the state of weariness, at which the mind will balk and stop thinking. 

When the mind is made blank, the next thought that comes will necessarily be a single thought. A chain of thoughts will quickly form, but the chain will begin with a single link, and this single thought, by the very fact of being single, will enter the Subconscious Mind. 

If you wish to begin immediately to use this exercise for getting practical results, each time before beginning it make up your mind definitely just what you want to accomplish by it, realising that by making your mind blank you will accomplish that very thing. In this way you may solve perplexing problems and acquire wisdom for making important decisions. 

This Lesson brings us to a turning-point in our journey. Until now we have devoted ourselves largely to a study of fundamental principles, doing only enough simple practical work to remedy pressing conditions. But from this point forward we will swing rapidly into the task of working out your success; releasing the prisoners of your Subjective Mind; consolidating the improvements in your own health; looking and feeling younger; and improving your relationships with the opposite sex.