Part 29

The wisdom (?) of the general public is highly amusing. If you want to feel sorry for mankind stand in front of a show window where a subject is asleep. A certain percentage of these know he is not asleep, “because he is placed there;” the next is certain he is not asleep because he moves (no man moves in his sleep); and some ladies are certain to go by and claim he is not asleep because he breathes. These three are the chief explanations as to why the subject is not asleep. Everybody asks how he is fed, and will he not be hungry when he awakens? No one appreciates the absence of thirst. If everything is a combination of attributes, a condition or combination must be produced in the subject that has these functions suspended. The suspension of hunger and bowel action are easily explained, but I have no explanation to offer as to the suspending of thirst and kidney action, knowing only that with a subject who has perfect confidence in me I can suspend the four functions for a period of seven days and longer.

My subject will awaken in a bright and strong condition; his bladder will be perfectly empty and the first drink of water he takes will pass through him within ten minutes. The subject is lying in hypnosis, with the thought that he will have no hunger, no thirst, no bowel or kidney action, and will awaken on the seventh day. This thought being locked in the “mind,” the action that is part of it is certain to take place.

This sleeping act was suggested to me in Xenia, Ohio, by a child asking about the picture of a bear sleeping all winter in a cave. It occurring to me that if a bear could “sleep” all winter, a man could sleep a week. I experimented and succeeded.

While lecturing in New York City, as a rule I concluded my lecture by giving some demonstrations with a subject, and also having a subject pre-inspire himself with the thought of “no feeling,” and stick pins into himself, demonstrating my claims as to the so-called Auto-suggestion of the alleged exposers. After doing this at a lecture one night, an old “horse” came upon the platform and informed me that he could stick pins into himself. While I was getting my wraps, the president of the society for whom I was lecturing wagered this young man that he could not do so. The young man did and won the money. What is the use of trying to teach the people anything? After you read this book, I am afraid that you will know but little more than you did before you started, as it is impossible to put in through one sense what “nature” intended to put in through another. It seems that the president of this society, although seeing the demonstration made, was not satisfied until he had lost a five-dollar bill. The same with you reading this book unless you take a subject (providing you are capable), and demonstrate to yourself the truth I have told, you have simply absorbed a lot of words, which, of themselves, mean nothing. I know one very brilliant man who, notwithstanding he acknowledged that expression was the result of thought, that there could be no expression without thought, turned around and asserted that he believed a subject could “fake.” What to do with such people, how to convince them I do not know. Man’s comprehension is only to the extent of his experience. Try to simulate and see if it is possible; try to laugh and put the real ring into it, and see if you can; try to cry and see if you can get the tone.

I spend months conceiving a condition possible to be produced in a subject, sometimes doing much experimenting to find the proper inspiration to give him to produce the result desired, and any hypnotist who will have the inspiration taken in shorthand, can repeat the experiment, stealing the result of my thought, yet they never give me credit for any of my originations. I did the sleeping act a year before any hypnotist ever dreamed of reproducing it. In fact, until they had taken subjects who had traveled with me and had learned how to give the inspiration, they were doubtful as to its being accomplished, and, with the general public, believed it to be a trick. They are welcome to the inspirations, yet it is no more than just that they should give me credit for them.

In the Middle States, many wise (?) doctors are every day expecting me to kill some subject with my crazy (?) experiments. They wonder how I have continued so long without doing so, failing to appreciate that I possess knowledge of a law, and am not, like them, working in the dark; that my physiology is correct, and neither myself nor the subject I am experimenting with are taking any chances.

I direct the temperature of a subject so low that an ordinary clinical thermometer will fail to register it, thus proving that the accepted theory that combustion produces the heat of the body is wrong. When I reported this to a certain hospital, the wink was passed around, none of them daring to contradict me, inasmuch as they knew I had always succeeded in making good my claims. It happened the night that one of the internes, who was quite a clever amateur, had begun his vacation, and he accomplished in twenty-four hours what I did in twenty minutes; yet I had to conceive it was possible to do so. Our physiologists are wrong from beginning to end, and I state this unreservedly.

In New York, when I explained that “no feeling” was produced by the sympathetic nerves closing over the cerebral nerve-ends and insulating them, it was declared, “Very ingenious, but very unscientific.” Thank Heaven for that! All drug anesthesia is produced by congestion, by forcing the Sympathetic System to insulate the cerebro-spinal nerve-ends or centers, and I challenge the scientific (?) world to demonstrate otherwise.

Dear reader, a superficial reading of this book is time wasted; read and reread, and every time you will find more truths. Can you comprehend them, now they are offered you? The simplest of words have been used, my best has been done to comprehensively correlate the thought offered; yet you must keep referring back, and if you persist, some day the entire philosophy will dawn upon you, and you will say, “Oh, how simple (all truths are simple), why did I not comprehend at first?” Because a new set of attributes has had to be separated so that you could perceive, then conceive, and, lastly comprehend them.

Comprehension—look it up in the dictionary; and, if you can comprehend the definition, you can do more than I. What is comprehension? It is the comparing, realizing, having memories to be aroused with which to compare those of which I am writing. If our memories are slight, our comprehension will be correspondingly slight. To understand or comprehend anything, its attributes must be parted and associated with those of our sense impressions. The larger the number of the attributes “appreciated,” the greater our comprehension. We have been taught Law of Nature, Hand of God, Free Agency, Responsibility, Will Power, all of which are incomprehensible, inasmuch as we have no sense impressions with which to compare them; consequently, they are but incomprehensible words.

Nothing but matter is appreciable, as all impressions received or forwarded can act only through matter.

Space, eternity, beginning and end, destruction, are mere words. Destruction of matter is an impossibility, and what you call destruction is but the dissolution of form, nothing else.

Man is individual only as to form; all of which he is composed is from his environment, of which he is necessarily a part. The individual parts that compose his entirety to-day will be different to-morrow, for even our alleged scientists tell us of waste; we know in part of the supplies—food, yet we fail to comprehend the Law of Suggestion.

As we subsist on all lower (?) matter, gaseous, mineral, vegetable and “animal,” we surely are of all of them. As an individuality, our importance is no greater nor less than that of a grain of sand on the sea shore.

Why, then, should we live? We have never been dead, neither can we die. We have always been, are, and always will be, inasmuch as that of which we are composed has always and ever will exist. We are a part of the Universe (the matter) that for a time in this form will abide. Our so-called consciousness is not of itself greater than that of other “living” matter. We are simply a conglomeration of lesser form of life, and nothing more. By what right, through what sense proof, do we dare to place ourselves above That of which we are; That, that gave us our parts, attributes; That, that continues to supply and relieve us, lest we disintegrate? How dare we claim to be other than of our environment; of the whole, the all, God, good?

We have no conception or comprehension of spirit, soul; they are but words. The soul, the spirit, if it be, must naturally be of the ALL. And yet we dare to assume it to be inherent in ourselves, and to be separate gods of our own. No, no, that cannot be; like Caesar we are too ambitious, and like Caesar, we will fall.

This may seem harsh; yet truth, though it hurts, never injures.

He who comes among us with something “new,” is a disturber, and, therefore, should be crushed. The Nazarene was crucified, not by the Jews, although they were afraid of him. They said, “He is of us, and a disturber. We will suffer if He continues.” Pontius Pilate, representing the authorities at Rome, killed Him for disturbing the accustomed ways.

Gallileo was banished.

Jean Jacques Rosseau was pursued from hamlet to hamlet; yet were it not for him, there would be no United States of America, or Republic of France. He gathered the thought and gave it to the world.

Hahnemann was driven from pillar to post, yet the truth he discovered is and always will be.

Life is a broad highway where the masses follow; perhaps twice, and never more than three times in a century, some one strays away, out of the highway, and starts over the mountain. The moment he has gone far enough for the masses to see him, they call, “Come back, you fool, you will be lost!” and if he fails to turn, they stone him “to attract his attention,” or to kill him lest he be lost and die. The world, the masses, are kind (?), they want to protect the “fool” from destroying himself; they would rather destroy him. After the “fool” has successfully crossed the mountain, another “fool” follows in his pathway; soon more “fools” follow, and at last the masses go, each and every one saying, “I knew he would cross all right, he was too ‘smart’ a fellow to attempt crossing if he was not sure of getting there.”

This is history.

Why was this book written? I am a fatalist, believing that what is, was to have been; that our duty is to impart, to lead others over the path we have discovered, and if we can only make that pathway clear to a few “fools” who will follow as we have gone, I believe I will have responded to my suggestion. I believe myself to be blessed with at least “fair” conception, and to quote from Omar Khayyam:

“Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument About it and about: but ever more Came out by the same door wherein I went.”

I love man, and, through my hypnotic experience, found that he was not as described by our scientific thinkers (?), so began to study him in my unscientific way, and having learned somewhat of him, am forced to offer to the world this thought as to the Law of Suggestion.

First, place your subject, then give him the attributes. Reader, this book is written to place you. Should more attributes be desired, they will be furnished you.

Man does not choose; he knows of no ill until he has conceived of good. He must be led; and it is the duty of man, after conceiving, to lead his fellow man.