SOUL SCIENCE
The Rosicrucian Lectures of Aureolis
Volume 2 of 3

This article contains numbers 5-8 of the Soul Science lectures given to Peter Caddy by his Rosicrucian teacher Dr Sullivan (Aureolis).  For more information see Lectures 1-4 and Lectures 9-12.

5. DEMONSTRATION

“What is truth ?” is an old question.  Let us answer it thus: Truth is all that is; all that is, is Truth.  But Man’s perception of Truth is partial; he has Truth only as he unfolds.  Being a part of that which is, he is therefore Truth; all that he is, is to be; he KNOWS only by Being.  Much that passes for knowledge is only learning, is acceptance of someone else’s opinion.  Truth never comes to manifestation through anyone else but SELF.

I AM TRUTH means: What I AM is Truth.

Nothing is Truth till it is manifest in my living it.  All else may be Truth to others but not to me.  Until I live it, it is not Truth to me.  Fully comprehend this before you go further with this lesson.

Remember, only what you have DEMONSTRATED IN LIVING is truth to you; all else is possible Truth.  Demonstrate by experiment; LIVE IT.  Then you have knowledge.  You cannot make a success as far as your manhood or womanhood is concerned until you know that what you hold is truth.  To accept statements from others is for you to be a counterfeit, an echo.  To be a living voice is the only manhood.

Read Emerson’s Self Reliance in connection with this lesson.  Read it until you have digested it as you digest your breakfast; make it part of your mental constitution.  Read this essay once a week for a year and thereafter at least once a month. (NB Self Reliance: an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published in paperback.)

How to demonstrate?   Just as a boy tests the strength of the ice in winter before he ventures to skate on it, just as the farmer tries the soil, so you must demonstrate Truth.  In these lessons you are to demonstrate by trying what I tell you is Truth, by experiment.  When by experiment you have found that it is Truth, then you have knowledge.  As knowledge comes much that you have learned will be found to be valueless.  Much of theology is learned; theologians are very learned.  Professors in Colleges are very learned in most things except in matters with regard to mind; in regard to psychic phenomena, and in working with the Positive Mind Suggestion principle, these authority figures are sometimes very ignorant.  You are to Know.  This is the first requirement of Soul Culture.

The first thing is that you shall not accept but shall KNOW that these principles I now share with you are Truth.  Therefore as fast as I state principles you are to demonstrate them by living them.  Try them in everyday life.  Affirm the Truth I give you and see the result.  Therefore I give you the next rule: ACCEPT NO AUTHORITY FOR TRUTH.  It is its own authority.  Cut yourself aloof from all books, teachers, friends who would lead you, and follow Truth.  NO AUTHORITY FOR TRUTH is to be your affirmation.  It is my purpose to put you into conscious possession of that which you already possess, as manifestation of omnipotence.  These lessons are merely byways to lead you to the fountainhead of all Truth, your Soul, your REAL SELF.  For it is with the real Self, the Human Soul, that positive mind suggestion deals.  Through it you are brought into closer relations with the soul of others and with your own than Man has ever been consciously brought before.  He has been there by accident, by instinct, by habit, but never into conscious communication as he is with bodies.  Think about this premise.  Through Positive Mind Suggestion you will come into conscious relation with your own soul and the souls of your friends.

Soul is a manifestation of Mind, of intelligence.  Intelligence lies latent until called into expression.  What is it that wakens this Positive Mind Suggestion ?   Intelligence is expressed because something calls it out.  That which calls it into expression is all that is not the Soul, all that is without the person.  You are awakened into expression by feeling; this feeling or sensation is occasioned by vibrations from without.  We know we are, first, because we feel.  Anything that awakens a sensation is a Suggestion.  All Human Life is called forth by Suggestion.  To know Positive Mind Suggestion is to know all possible knowledge.  We therefore have the definition of Suggestion: WHATEVER AWAKENS A FEELING OR A THOUGHT is a Suggestion.

To know how to suggest to others is to cause them to think and feel as you wish them to think and feel.  If they do not know how to protect themselves from adverse suggestions, they are not self-controlled but are the slaves of circumstance.  To know therefore what Suggestions to accept and what to ignore is to be Master of your Fate.

Self-control begins with control of the emotions.  We should not feel anything we do not wish to feel; not hear anything you do not wish to hear; and not see anything you do not wish to see.  Always find the good, the pleasant, the sweet in life, through the use of the Positive Mind Suggestions I share with you now in these truth lessons.

Suggestion being vibration from things external to yourself, you see the necessity of understanding something of vibration and its effects upon you.  This occasions a lesson in vibration, which will be our next assignment.  All our study is from the soul side.  We see body as the result of the determined purpose of the Inner Man, the Real Man.

The body is Soul-built and the Soul is thought-directed in the building.  This Real Man knew how to build the body when he first incarnated.  This knowledge existed in the Absolute before birth.  The Soul knows how to build ear and eye, to make nerve and muscle.  The Soul knows how to create and repair and develop the body.  Shall we not trust it ?   Through Positive Mind Suggestion you will come into closer relations with Soul than by any other known method.  All we have to do is to choose these Suggestions and to give these auto-suggestions that are in line with our ideal.

Here you have the rule of Life, the rule of Success in every walk of Life.  It is the greatest rule man ever found, the diamond commandment, the greatest commandment of Life: ALWAYS SUGGEST FROM THE IDEAL.  Seek and live the Ideal.

This rule will be often repeated until you think instinctively and act from the Ideal.  Seek and live the Ideal.  The Ideal moulds the external expression; only through the Ideal is there any progress.  The fidelity with which you cling to your Ideal determines its realisation.  When you come to practising Positive Mind Suggestion on others, you will learn that you must repeat the Suggestion until it takes effect, until the person really sees himself carrying out the purpose which is being suggested to him.

So it is with yourself.  You must affirm the Ideal as really existing.  Then it will exist.  Tell the boy he will succeed at his task until he succeeds at his task.

So tell yourself that you are well until you see yourself well.  Tell yourself that you are happy until you see yourself happy.  Tell yourself you are possessed of all you need until want passes away.  This is building the Ideal and holding it until it manifests.

Note the Ideal you have had during the past week: health and sickness mixed; poverty and wealth mixed; happiness and misery, worry and peace, rest and work, anxiety and ease, fear and courage, doubt and faith.  Have they not materialised ?   Is not your life a crazy-quilt made of all these ?

When unexpected good comes out of seeming bad, some people call this a miracle.  That is what we are talking about here: creating our own miracles.  Now begin to build your Ideal.  Consider carefully what you desire.  You will then wish for less and have it better.  Like the sculptor you will put in nothing you do not wish.  Then what is built you will carefully guard in thought lest you mar the expression of the Ideal.

Herein lies the power of AFFIRMATION.  It is the Creator of the miracle, or Ideal, of that which manifests in the external.  Therefore, in order to BE that which you desire, affirm that you ARE that which you desire.  Man’s greatest conception of Power is this.  Guard it well.

Practice

Memorise this from Lowell:

The thing we long for, that we are for one transcendent moment,
Ere yet the present poor and bare can make its sneering comment.
E’en though our paltry stir and strife glows down the wished Ideal
And Longing moulds in clay what Life carves in the marble real.

(from Longing by James Lowell, 1819-1891)

6. SPECIAL STUDIES

In dealing with Positive Mind Suggestion, you are using Thought as Power.  That you may understand the Force you are to use, it is necessary that you have a clear conception of Force, natural law.  It will be your privilege to demonstrate that Thought is a form of this One Universal Energy.  You will, when familiar with the practice of Positive Mind Suggestion, develop the power of sending and receiving Thought messages in yourself, and developing others to do so.

Know then, that to Science and Philosophy, there is but one Energy.  It manifests in many ways.  These ways differ only in the speed in which this One Energy moves.  You have only to deal with its movement in right lines.  But I recommend that you study Motion, Energy, Force, Atom and especially the wave theory of motion – these waves we call Vibrations – in any text book or Encyclopaedia.  So that you may understand the power you use, you will study Vibrations in their relation to all Motion.

Each of the five senses has a certain range of Vibrations to intercept and convert into sensations.  Therefore what we term “light”, “sound”, “taste”, and “odour” are in us sensations produced by vibration.  The length of some of these waves has been measured.

Light and sound are the sensations best adapted to scientific enquiry.  Study the phenomenon of the flash from the cannon being seen some seconds before the sound is heard.  Sound waves are slower than light waves.  Music is an art based upon knowledge of sound waves; optics is the science of light, and upon it several arts are based.  In like manner we are trying to base the Art of Positive Mind Suggestion, Telepathy and Clairvoyance, upon knowledge we have obtained of Thought-waves.

The only difference between light and sound, sound and electricity, lies in the length of the wave of motion, and in the time it takes the wave to pass through a given space.

Sound waves are slow compared to light.  Between these lies electricity.  Twenty four waves passing through an inch of space in a second of time give us the lowest tone we hear; between four and five thousand waves in a second give us our highest tone.  375 million of million waves in a second give us the red ray, while 875 million of millions passing through an inch of space in a second gives us the violet ray.

These rays impinge upon our nerves, and cause sensations which we term “sound” and/or “light”.  When we separate sound waves one from another, we say “C”, “C sharp’, “B flat” etc.  In separating light waves, we name them RED, YELLOW, VIOLET and so forth.  These names we also give to the sensations caused by them, as well as to the rays that cause them.  Red and Violet rays, B and C tones are sensations.  Therefore these names stand in our thought for both cause and effect.

In our discussion here, we use these vibrations for the sensation, for we deal with the Soul, and not with that which is without, and acts upon the Soul.  Light and sound and all the rest of the phenomena of motion are to us sensation.  I wish you to study this carefully, otherwise you will fall into errors.  You need a clear understanding of motion that you may fitly represent Truth to others.  You need it that you may be protected from the fads and foolishness of much that is passing now, under various names, for Truth.

Remember that our senses ARE objective life.  Our objective life is a partial manifestation of the Real Man.  Truth is known to the intellect first through the objective life.  What we call body and matter is a manifestation of the ONE, and that ONE is Truth Itself.  Therefore our senses are true.

We are to learn of the inner self through them; we are not to deny the body, we are not to deny the senses, we are to make all we can of the body, and are to get nothing but pleasure out of both it and the senses.  This we shall do when we become wise and understand Life, when we understand Vibration, and when we understand the power of Positive Mind Suggestion.

We are not to deny the objective life, therefore we are not to deny the facts upon which material science is based.  Remember that the moment you do this, there is no end to the possible speculations into which you can fall.

It is time we called a halt to the merely speculative ideas of life, and build upon the solid foundation of fact.  How can we reason, but from what we know ?   Stick to what you know.  Knowledge is found only in the five senses.  It is the intelligence in the Soul, called into activity by vibrations from without.  Without these vibrations you would have slept, and been only a possibility of Life.  Were the vibrations to stop you would not unfold.  I think you would evaporate.  As a ring of smoke evaporates into the atmosphere, so would you evaporate into the Eternal One.  You will ever have sensations.  They will ever be caused by your coming into contact with some conditions of the Eternal Force called Vibrations.

Think now of the possible range of vibrations in the infinite, think of yourself as passing up that scale of vibrations.  You will thus see that immortal life is a necessity, and that you are now living that life, living in the lower octaves.  As you unfold, your range of sensations increases; you unfold new powers of perception.  In these higher ranges you have Telepathy, Clairvoyance and Psychometry, among all the other senses yet untapped.  They are but the conscious recognition of sensations produced by vibrations of greater speed than those we term light, electricity, magnetism and gravity.  In telepathy we sense thought waves; in clairvoyance, psychic waves; in psychometry, soul waves.  Psychometry is the recognition of soul waves and the intellectual interpretation of them.

This much you need now.  You should continue in the practice recommended in these lessons and develop all these faculties.  By this understanding you will not be led into a common error of calling them additional senses.  There are only five senses; they are adapted to the vibrations on the lower octaves called matter.  Spiritual perceptions are independent of the senses.  Each sense has a special organ developed for its purpose.  There are no organs for clairvoyance, telepathy or psychometry.  These are sensations upon the whole nervous system.  They are no more senses than memory or thinking.  They are faculties through which we interpret that which the whole nervous system feels.  Those who have developed them, receive the names “sensitives” or psychics.  In a later lesson you will learn about sensitives, and learn how to unfold your own sensitiveness, and how to protect yourself.

Turn now to a practical application of this Truth to Health.  Positive Mind Suggestion deals entirely with Thought as Force, and it, like all other forms of Force, moves in waves.  We are to take advantage of these waves, and bring about any desired condition.  Health and disease alike are produced by Thought waves.  Epidemics are scattered by it.  By thought a person inoculates himself with rheumatism, colds or fever, because it is in the neighbourhood, and he thinks of it.  Thinking produces it.  To see a person ill, and to say “He is ill”, is to start a vibration that produces a like condition within, unless some counteracting thought is introduced.  TO RECOGNISE DISEASE IS TO INVITE IT UPON YOURSELF.  This is the most important fact man has discovered.  Suggestive Therapeutics is the opposite of suggestive contagion.  The only channel of disease is a thought channel.  Thought-inoculated are we all.  To think disease it to create it.

This is all you have to master to become a healer by Positive Mind Suggestion.  REFUSE TO RECOGNISE DISEASE, AND REFUSE TO THINK DISEASE.  EVER SUGGEST HEALTH.

This is the secret of all successful healing.  With this incorporated thoroughly into your brain tissue, you may heal thousands with no danger and with increasing health to yourself.  Without it you are in constant danger of creating conditions in yourself that you would relieve in others.  Mental healing in any way is dangerous to the healer until he learns this law.  Never recognise disease.  Treat health; never treat disease.  To have health, think health.  To cure, suggest health.

Do this orally and telepathically.  Do it by word, attitude, look and gesture.  They are all Positive Mind Suggestions.  You thus start Thought waves that are converted into Life-waves along the nervous system of your patient, and these Life-waves build new cells.  Every cell of the body is a materialised thought.  As every rock is a materialisation of the One invisible substance, so is every cell of your body.  The rock is vibrating all the time in a much lower scale, and you do not recognise it.  About you are the presences of invisible persons and things vibrating too high in the scale for you to recognise them.  Vibrations are everywhere.  You are in the midst at all times of infinite oceans of them all along this infinite scale.

Through them all you must pass, just as you have passed from the slight scale of childhood to your present scale of recognition, just as from the crude tom-tom of the Indian, the leader of the orchestra has passed to Wagner.  To extend our range of sensation is to extend our range of recognition – and this is unfoldment.  “I AM AN UNFOLDING SOUL” is ever to be your thought.

Practice

Study your sensations.  Try to feel absent people, places and things.  Try to reproduce sensations you had in the past.  Recall the sensation of some time of grief or joy.  Try to imagine how you would feel under any supposed conditions.  Take an extract from a poem or speech, and recite it with feeling.  Throw your will into passages illustrating different emotions, especially those you would most like to cultivate.  If you are quick-tempered, use those of peace.  If you are fretful and worried, use those of self-control.  Affirm: I AM PEACE.  I AM SELF-CONTROL.

7. SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS

It is necessary that you understand this subject so that you may induce conditions of harmony between yourself and those you would help, and do it more readily.  Until there is harmony there is no benefit, but positive injury may result.

Look at the words harmony, concord, agreement.  In music it is a just proportion of sound, a mingling of tones, a blending of chords.  When they do not blend it is discord.  You have already learned that tone is the effect produced on the nervous system by vibrations.  When vibrations of differing speed impinge upon us so that we have no un-pleasant feeling, it is music; harmony.  But when they impinge upon us so that we feel unpleasantly, it is discord.

Music is FEELING.  Think upon this until it is clear.  It is the plan to show you that all you know is FEELING.  Light is an effect upon you.  When the differing vibrations cause you to feel pleasantly, you call it harmony of colour.  Persons differ in power to feel tones, to distinguish colours.  In this case those persons who do not feel the vibrations do not see, hear or sense the same effect as those who do feel the vibrations.  For example, people who are colour blind do not feel the seven colours; the uneducated ear does not feel the finer chords of the musician.  You have learned that those senses can be developed.  So can your recognition of the finer vibrations.

A study of music or any vibration will soon lead you to a recognition of the fact that when you feel tone or colour you vibrate with them; this is called sympathetic vibration.  You are in a boat, it rocks, you resist.  It produces a discord in you that is called dizziness, seasickness.  When you rock with it, vibrate as it vibrates, all dizziness passes away.  You are in a crowd in the United States on the Fourth of July.  Horns are tooting, fireworks are going off and it pains you.  When you toot a horn or light a firecracker yourself, all pain will pass, because you are now vibrating with the crowd, while before you were antagonistic to it.

This is the Law: ENTER INTO SYMPATHETIC VIBRATIONS WITH CONDITIONS AND THEY WILL BE PLEASANT TO YOU.  You must either endure discord or convert it into harmony.  There are two ways of harmonising: either by coming into sympathetic vibrations with the conditions or by lifting conditions into sympathy with yourself.

How will you do it ?   By first recognising your power, then by understanding that you can manifest that power only by Positive Mind Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion (Affirm-ation).  Affirm to yourself the higher vibrations, suggest them to others.  Hold on to this till others vibrate or are in harmony with you.  Thus you elevate, thus you unfold, thus you truly educate, thus you heal.  Repetition, persistency, in thinking what you desire, is the way.

When a violin is lying on a table, and a piano nearby is played, the strings of the violin will vibrate to the repeated tone on the piano.  When a “C” in one octave on the piano is struck, a “C” in other octaves will respond on the violin without the violin being touched.  This demonstrates the same secret of healing, the secret of sympathetic conditions between two persons.  It is the secret of Telepathy, Clairvoyance and Psychometry.

It is the secret of your success in your suggestive or affirmation work.  It is the secret of happiness in married life and in business success.  It is as simple as all nature is.  The law is clearly: GET INTO HARMONY.

Whenever there is discord in any case, cease contention.  Stand still.  Exercise the power Jesus is said to have exercised when He said, “Peace, Be Still”.  Say it silently to yourself.  Persist in it until you have toned yourself up, or toned others down.  It will make no difference to yourself, when you are out of tune, whether you are too high or low.  The word “Peace” will tone you into harmony when you persist in affirming it.

In treating by Positive Mind Suggestion this law is all important.  Until there is harmony between yourself and the subject or patient, there is no benefit.  When there is complete harmony there is cure.  You are to suggest what you wish until harmony is secured.  Repeat, as one does a tone upon the instrument, until the vibrations are felt upon the nerves of the one you are to heal.  When the harmony is felt, keep up the Word and the Thought until health is manifest.

This is the case whether you are treating for health, habits, education or the development of any psychic power.  Be yourself harmonised in all your conditions.  Then suggest the desired conditions until the person comes into harmony with you.  This person will then think as you think, feel as you feel and be helped.  No voice has the effect upon you that your own has, no thought can help you as your own can.  Therefore when you realise that this lesson is instructing you to become both patient and healer, operator and subject, you will see the power and beauty of Positive Mind Suggestion.  Whatever I say with regard to your power over others, I say with redoubled force in regard to your power over yourself.  Remember that until you come into sympathetic relations with another or bring him into such relations with yourself, you cannot benefit him.  If you descend into his vibrations, you are his subject.  If you lift him into your vibrations, he is yours.  You are at all times to protect yourself from vibrating with others in their thoughts of pain, sickness, failure, grief and all unpleasantness.

Therefore, when you are in places or in company that have heretofore made you feel badly, affirm Power and rise above it.  Think Power, BE POWER, to protect yourself.

When conversation turns upon anything unpleasant, do not engage in it.  Turn the conversation your way.  Do not talk of pain, sickness, death, sorrow, failure, fear or any like things.  When negative thinking and conversation is brought up by others around you, refuse to vibrate on these notes.  Affirm to yourself the Good and converse on something else.  Soon you will be the positive one and can cause people to talk upon your chosen thoughts.

When you are in company, decide for yourself how it shall affect you.  Control yourself and when you think GOOD, you will soon have the conversation on Good lines, for Good IS.  Evil is the absence of Good.  That which IS will always take the place of that which is not, when given the opportunity.  Truth IS.  Error is its absence.  When you will affirm Truth it will soon fill the vacuum and people will receive it gladly.

A positive affirmation will easily turn the tide of a conversation and the tide of thought.  In learning it you are taking upon yourself the power to bless others, to benefit the world beyond the power possessed today by priests, doctors, reformers or millionaires.  Like Jesus you will carry power to heal in your garments and power to bless in your vibration.  You will not think evil, for to think it is to suggest it to yourself, and to suggest it is to create.

This leads us to pay slight attention to the cry of evil effects of Suggestion.  Understanding this law of sympathy, understanding the effect of Suggestion upon yourself, you become aware that you cannot think evil of another without bringing that evil upon yourself.  To think evil is to create it in yourself; to wish evil upon another is to bring it upon yourself.  As sure as a ball returns from the wall a ball and not an orange, so will your thoughts return to you from without, and evil thoughts sent out come back to affect you for evil.  Macbeth says: “We do but teach bloody inventions which return to plague the inventor”.

As you grow in the understanding of these principles and the Power of Thought, you will think only good.  To attempt to use your power to injure another will surely harm you.  It will pass without injury those who are good.  Therefore there is no art that will more conduce to happiness than this.

For you to think evil in anger, lust, hatred, envy, jealousy will cause you evil, sickness, failure, whatever effect it has or may have upon another.  It is akin to your suggesting to your subject that he has a pain.  When you have so suggested long enough, he feels the pain, but protected by auto-suggestion, can and does throw it off.  When however you suggest it to yourself, it will remain and produce in you the effect you thought for another.  Morally, you can study nothing equal to this.

Practice

Begin consciously to bring people into sympathetic vibrations with you.  Go into a crowd for the purpose of starting conversation on certain lines.  Choose someone in that crowd and think that he shall echo your words.  Talk to him with that determination in your mind.  Go into a shop and determine to have a certain assistant come to you and treat you in a certain manner.   Go into Church and put your mind upon someone, telling him to look upon you.  Tell someone that he looks well when you know he is ailing.  Put your thought upon something that you desire – a book, picture, a piece of money – and thus draw it to yourself, saying “Someone will bring it to me”.  Concentrate your thought upon some friend and tell him to come to you.  Tell another to write to you.

Do all this IN LOVE or your antagonistic feelings will repel them.

8. THE FIVE SENSES AND THEIR USE IN SUGGESTION

Through the five senses the Soul becomes cognisant of the external world and of its own power.  Through these it becomes conscious of itself.  These five senses are but a differentiation of the ONE general sense of Feeling or Touch.  It is the touch of vibrations on a particular nerve that causes us to say “special sense”.  The length and speed of the vibrations determine how we shall feel them.  That sensation is One, and that it is a mind or psychic sensation, and not a physical condition, is important for you to understand.  It is necessary that you realise that it is via the senses that you reach the Soul.

In your work you will suggest to each of the senses.  You will get control, through the consent of the subject, of each of them.  You will cause him to smell, taste, see, hear and feel anything which he has ever experienced before.  Here you reach a limitation of your power.  Experience is the first barrier in the way of making a subject do anything you wish him to do.  You will soon learn that a subject does only that which he wishes to do; he is willing to do because he gives himself to your will.  Imagination is another limit; imaginative persons will carry out suggestions where the unimaginative will not.  Thus you learn that Character is your limit; it is the permanent factor.  You can develop but cannot otherwise change it.

This is your sufficient answer to the assertion that the operator can do anything with a subject.  There is another limit: Conscience.  He will never do that which he feels is wrong.  Here is your answer to the assertion that the Art of Positive Mind Suggestion teaches a man how to lead others into evil.   Only the uncontrolled, those weak in moral principle, can be influenced to evil by others at any time.  I have not one single experience to lead me to believe that even the morally weak can, by the operator in suggestion, be made to commit a wrong.  They can be influenced on the street, in the home, at church, and so forth, to carry out their own natural inclinations.  That is all.

This method or principle teaches you how to use a power which everyone possesses: the power to influence others for their good or ill.  Personal influence is but the power of Positive Mind Suggestion; knowledge is power.  All the power one person has over another is that of knowing more, or trusting more to self.  The unconscious use of this power and the unconscious submission to it is the one condition to be avoided.  We should know when we act that we act from our own thought and volition, and not because someone wishes it and we act from mind Suggestion.  The difference between the self-controlled and the weak lies here.

The knowledge of the workings of Positive Mind Suggestion gives one this power of self-control and also gives one the power to lead others through mind Suggestion.  That power is one thousand percent stronger in daily conduct than it is when used as a conscious factor on the stage of a hypnotist.  Ten people will submit to Suggestion in the social and business affairs of life, where there is one that can do so when requested.  The unconscious hypnotism of the market, street, church and school is to be avoided.  Seek the voluntary condition that from it you may gain self-control, the power to choose what suggestion to accept and what to reject.  Personal influence is Effect, Positive Mind Suggestion is Cause.

In the Art of Positive Mind Suggestion, when you make an appeal to a subject or patient, you will suggest to him in the way he is most easily led.  You will, to be successful, find his weak point.

By suggesting odours you can easily cause him to smell them.  You can readily cause him to taste by telling him that such a thing is sweet or sour.  You can cause him to see something you suggest.  Then lastly you can cause him to hear any suggested sound.  I find it best to follow development in this order.  Hearing is the most difficult sense to control because the ear is constantly on guard.

Yet for him who would become proficient in listening to the Silence, this is a necessary development.  When one learns to do so, he can shut out any sound.  One can do this by paying no attention to it, by concentrating upon something else.  You do it now involuntarily; learn to do it by will or at will.  Do not hear the baby cry, do not hear the noises in the street, do not hear the wind.  Read without being disturbed by anything.  This is the Silence of the Christian Scientist; this is Concentration.  I find that musicians readily take the suggestion that there is music on the street; they are used to listening to it.

This power is that of self-control.  All the power one person has over another is to turn his attention to any sense or to any condition.  If he is imaginative or sensitive, you can cause him in this way to FEEL the sensations which he has at any time experienced.  You will ever remember while studying these lessons to think of Man as Spiritual entity, a Soul.  This Soul has built the body as a means for its own expression.  It has developed five avenues through which to become cognisant of the objective world.  Each of these senses has been developed by vibrations impinging upon the sensitiveness of the organism in which the Soul has incarnated itself.  Biologists will tell you how a nerve has concentrated into a ganglion and how that ganglion has unfolded into an organ of special sense.  (ganglion: a network or structure of cells)

It is not the eye that sees nor the ear that hears.  All feeling, seeing, hearing, is in the Soul.  The vibration imparts a motion to the nerves which the Soul recognises and says: “I feel”, “I hear”, “I see”.  “I” is the Soul.  It is important that you separate the “I” from the body.

If you are to understand Positive Mind Suggestion and the conditions that can be developed through its intelligent use, you are, in all your practices, dealing with the Unseen, with the Real Man, with the Soul-man.  Therefore you are doing something which man never consciously or intelligently did before.  You are learning how to talk with the Soul.

You are to approach the Soul through the same channels that all Nature approaches it, and that is through the avenues of the senses.  This once done, you are to teach the individual that he is independent of the senses and need not feel that which he does not desire to feel.  The Soul learns its power through the senses and is to become superior to them by becoming itself Sensation.  No new sense is possible but it is desirable to transcend the five senses and live above them when one desires to do so.

When you cause a subject to feel cold or heat, the external conditions being comfortable, when you cause him to see or hear that which is not present to the senses, you are yourself learning and are teaching him a most valuable lesson.  That lesson is that eyes and ears are not necessary and that beyond the limitation of these lies the infinite realm open to the Soul when it wills to enter it.

Thus by the simple experiments I shall later give you, you are to find Psychometry, Clairvoyance and Telepathy a very normal and natural part of your field of labour.  You cannot touch the Soul without awakening latent powers into expression.  By Positive Mind Suggestion you are to do for the Soul what it might otherwise take many years for the Absolute to accomplish through Universal Law.

The Principle of Positive Mind Suggestion is the greatest possible power for education that man has yet found.  Through the senses Man is taught by the Universal; through Positive Mind Suggestion – which opens to communion the realm which lies beyond sense – the individual becomes a conscious factor in his own or his brother’s evolution, and then the “I” becomes the Conscious God enthroned within.

Practice

Test the taste of your friends.  Take something that is flavourless and as you bite it say “0h how bitter !” and then see how many will taste the bitterness, which is not there.  Try cake or candy or anything that comes to mind.

Try odours.  Open a bottle of water which you have prepared and ask people to smell and tell you what the odour is.  Stop as if listening and say: “Did you hear that noise ? Someone is coming (or something is moving in the room)”.  Suggest a mouse in the wall.  Try sight.  Walking along the road, stop and say: “What is that stone over there ?” or some similar test.  Try general feeling by saying: “Don’t you feel something in the air ? (or in the room)”.

You will originate other ideas from these examples.  Keep at these until you have convinced yourself that one’s senses are not correct guides and that it is necessary to correct the decisions of one by others.  You may perhaps come to the conclusion that the sense life is an illusion.  It is a reality but only real as a shadow of the inner life, the Real Life of the Soul.

Test this statement by temperature and you will see that when the thermometer will say ‘temperate’, some people will be cold and some hot.  It will be a good thing for you sometimes to try your friends with a thermometer.  Say: “0h, I did not think it was so hot. Why, the mercury is at 90 degrees” or “It is colder than I thought, it is at 30.”

You must realise that Positive Mind Suggestion is a constant factor in every life and learn to suggest to yourself only that which you wish to sense.