Part 12

Ofttimes men say that the ability to perform a mathematical problem is an example that man is a free agent and capable of thinking. Can a Fiji Islander, having no knowledge of figures, solve a mathematical problem? Can the son of the most brilliant mathematician do so until he has gone to school and had the ideas associated on his “cylinder?” Those who have the ideas properly registered will respond to the problem; they will all work it out in the same way, getting identically the same result, proving that the problem was simply a suggestion that forced into action ideas (actions) already associated.

FOOTNOTES:

It is necessary for the subject to comprehend this, though not necessary for us to tell him in the foregoing specific manner.

MIND

Now, dear reader, if you have comprehended the foregoing, in which I have tried to demonstrate to you that man is simply a machine, forced into action by his environment—this I have learned through hypnosis, which I consider merely a side issue to the Law of Suggestion, a crude and tyrannical use of suggestion—we will go a step further and try to understand the body of man, which is his closest environment. To do so it will first be necessary to explain what you call the “law of nature” or “hand of God.” After I have made you comprehend that, I shall then be able to discuss mankind in general.

If we drop a plum seed, peach seed, apple seed and a grape seed in six square inches of earth what will grow from them? Each of its kind. Why? One says the “law of nature,” another says the “hand of God.” I ask what is meant by these terms, as neither has affected me through my senses, and a sickly smile comes on your lips, and you say, “Don’t you know?” I plead ignorance and reply, “No,” then you won’t talk with me because I fail to know something that you do not know. Then you ask me why, and I tell you the “Law of Suggestion.” You say, “Why, there must be an intelligence to respond to that law.” As it is impossible to conceive of anything happening without an intelligence (associated action) to guide it, every action of all matter is guided.

NOTE.—I will state that all matter contains mind (which word will be used from now on without the quotation marks), and all mind gives expression in matter. Matter is the expression of mind—transformed mind—the utterance of mind; it is the material reproduction of mind; there can be no matter without mind, no mind without matter. Other than matter is incomprehensible.

This intelligence is acted upon by suggestion. There is mind in the rock, otherwise the rock would not disintegrate (respond to the suggestion of the elements). There is mind within wood. You say, “No, water rots wood.” Water does not rot wood. It forces (suggests) a latent (memory) action in wood to produce or transform into rot. As long as the suggestion is kept from the wood, that action will not take place; the moment the suggestion is applied, the intelligence within the wood responds. All changes are an advancement and good (natural response).

All suggestions are transformed. You of the “law of nature” and the “hand of God” claim that intelligence is external and everywhere; I claim it to be internal and everywhere, that all matter contains within itself intelligence (mind). Then you ask me what is mind and in turn I ask you this question: What is maturity? When does a boy become a man, a girl become a woman, and when is fruit ripe? When the seed is accomplished. As the seed is the last thing accomplished to complete the entirety of all attributes required, all of the preceding actions, i. e., responses to suggestion of the development of the tree that has taken place are registered within the seed. Therefore, the complete memory must be in the last thing accomplished—the seed; and I will define mind to be the consensus of all actions acquired during gestation, not a so-called reasoning intelligence, but a memory of response to suggestion, as to heat, cold, different elements of the earth, to guide the commingling into the reproduction of its kind. If the natural suggestions do not occur, a reproduction is an impossibility.

To illustrate, if plenty of sunshine is required and the suggestion of sunshine is lacking, the entire fulfillment of the suggestion required cannot or will not be accomplished. If iron or some certain element in the soil is necessary to force a certain action, and is lacking, the response necessary will not take place. In the spring time, when warmth, et cetera, surrounds the trees, the buds are forced out. If frosts occur, contraction takes place and the buds are pinched off, the entire action of the tree being in accordance with the environment (suggestion). To the degree of the suggestion is the degree of response, identical with the action of man.

Genesis, Chapter XXX, 37-40, reads as follows:

37. And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.

38. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.

39. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled and spotted.

This simple law, the law of environment (suggestion), was in some degree known to Jacob. Therefore, what is, was, and always will be. There is nothing new in the world, only new to our comprehension. Darwin showed us that animals most like their environment, or those which responded closest to (were part of) their environment survived, while the others were destroyed. Man, being a creature of his environment, survives to the degree he responds to or is part of that environment. In the Arctic region animals are white as of their environment; in the reeds they are striped, therefore look like the reeds and are not easily distinguishable from them; up in the tree tops they are spotted. The negro from exposure to the sun was made black. If the white man goes into the sun he becomes what we call “tanned”; that tan can, in time, become very dark. The negro, therefore, is black only as a result of his environment.

Man, not being a perpetual motion machine, must obtain energy elsewhere than through or from his food as our scientists (?) tell us. The energy required to digest the food must be greater than all the energy in the food, otherwise it could not overcome the resistance; therefore, it is self-evident that our energy does not come from the food. Any condition that overcomes resistance sends out an energetic wave; every time we breathe, blink our eye, talk or move, we send out an energetic wave, which can be transmitted only through matter. Life is energy, always moving and being reinforced as it passes through new matter; and I believe those energetic waves are received in the spleen, passed to the solar plexus and from the solar plexus passed to the extremities through the Sympathetic System. It is through the absorption of this energy—which is life—that keeps man going. When a man dies the machinery of his body—the Sympathetic System—fails to respond, to receive, to exert, or transform the energy.

The first part of a child formed is the Sympathetic System. A girl has reached maturity when she can reproduce; i. e., when she monthly gives forth an egg. In that egg is a memory action of building the Sympathetic System, when fertilized by an element of the male. Bear in mind that the element of the male is only a fertilizer.

The Sympathetic System centers are developed at the end of eight weeks. (See Gray.)

Now each ganglion acquires a specific memory from the same ganglion of the mother, and out of the blood of the mother builds over itself the form of the child. Therefore, when the child is born it contains within itself the intelligence that built it; i. e., mind. Every six months this intelligence rebuilds the entire tissues of the body.

The child when born has no cerebral knowledge. It must learn to see, hear, smell, feel and taste. It has no reflexes other than of contraction. All other actions are acquired after birth. The heart action was learned from the mother; also the respiration, which action can very easily be changed. It must learn to take the breast. It has no control over its bowels or bladder. The pupil of the eye does not dilate, contract, nor blink at light. The child’s limbs will not draw away from heat or irritation. If the rectal sphincter be severely dilated a response in the throat will occur. This same action can always be repeated with a chloroformed patient, showing that the noise is simply a response at the other end of the nerve.

From the taking of the breast the child must learn to digest food, to respond to its environment. The moment a child readily does so, it is said to have displayed intelligence.

Physicians differ as to the length of the period after children are born into the world before they can see, hear, smell, feel and taste. There is much discussion, and many volumes have been written as to the length of time after a child is born before its senses are established. After much reading, I finally ask what is meant by seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting; and none of the writers have comprehensively answered. Therefore, why this discussion? What are they talking about?

I will define the senses to be the correlation of the different nerve-end stimuli. Give a new-born child soft, sweet, soothing sound-stimulus, then harsh, discordant sound-stimulus, and the moment a memory of these two extreme nerve-end contacts with sound waves is established, the child will be able to give expression to the degrees of all subsequent stimuli of the auditory nerve-ends. The same with smelling, tasting, et cetera. Sight, unless associated with feeling, conveys no form expression. A child, to be taught the meaning of round, must not only see it but feel it. The same with other forms. The child is now learning to respond to its environment.

Mind is the tenant of the house it lives in—the body. That house is always wasting; mind rebuilding it. When mind rebuilds correctly, we have a healthy body; when incorrectly, we have what is called sickness. Mind can only build as of itself, as it responds to its environment, and consequently must be a reproduction of that environment, modified by the acquired memory learned from the mother. Therefore, the house in which it dwells is the exact representation of its tenant—matter being the expression of mind.

Food is taken into the body to rebuild the house. If a man takes possession of a new brick house and starts in to replace with bad bricks as it wastes away, at the end of six or seven months he will live in a bad brick house. If he replaces with rotten lumber he will live in a rotten lumber house at the end of a period. Hence, man partakes of the nature of the food he eats.

Now, if mind be worried so that he builds awry, his house will be awry; and if his house be awry and he finds his error and corrects it, he will re-establish the symmetry of his dwelling. (Rational treatment—the orificial surgeon and personal suggestion.)

Thus mind rules and builds the body, but a time may come when the body becomes so awry that it rules the tenant. In health, mind rules; after severe illness the body may. Mind cannot choose to correct its error, it can only respond; the suggestion must change. Error can only be distinguished, when known, in comparison with good. Unhealthy surroundings must be changed. The closest environment—the body, may require the knife.

It is inconceivable for anything to happen without an intelligence to guide it. I have shown the intelligence that built the body—that keeps rebuilding the body—but our learned (?) physicians seem to think that the body of man is a dunghill in which seed may be sown and foul vegetation grow, forgetting that nothing in the body can happen without an intelligence to guide it—that the body is a result, and there is no cause within the tissue itself.