Part 12

The cause which prevents you from walking, whatever it is, is going to disappear little by little every day: you know the proverb: Heaven helps those who help themselves. Stand up two or three times a day supporting yourself on two persons, and say to yourself firmly: My kidneys are not so weak that I cannot do it, on the contrary I can. . . .

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After having said: "Every day, in every respect, I am getting better and better," add: "The people who are pursuing me cannot pursue me any more, they are not pursuing me. . . ."

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What I told you is quite true; it was enough to think that you had no more pain for the pain to disappear; do not think then that it may come back or it will come back. . . .

(A woman, sotto voice, "What patience he has! What a wonderfully painstaking man!")

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ALL THAT WE THINK BECOMES TRUE FOR US. WE MUST NOT THEN ALLOW OURSELVES TO THINK WRONGLY.

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THINK "MY TROUBLE IS GOING AWAY," JUST AS YOU THINK YOU CANNOT OPEN YOUR HANDS.

The more you say: "I will not," the more surely the contrary comes about. You must say: "It's going away," and think it. Close your hand and think properly: "Now I cannot open it." Try! (she cannot), you see that your will is not much good to you.

Observation.--This is the essential point of the method. In order to make auto-suggestions, you must eliminate the will completely and only address yourself to the imagination, so as to avoid a conflict between them in which the will would be vanquished.

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To become stronger as one becomes older seems paradoxical, but it is true.

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For diabetes: Continue to use therapeutic treatments; I am quite willing to make suggestions to you, but I cannot promise to cure you.

Observation.--I have seen diabetes completely cured several times, and what is still more extraordinary, the albumen diminish and even disappear from the urine of certain patients.

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This obsession must be a real nightmare. The people you used to detest are becoming your friends, you like them and they like you.

Ah, but to will and to desire is not the same thing.

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Then, after having asked them to close their eyes, M. Coué gives to his patients the little suggestive discourse which is to be found in "Self Mastery." When this is over, he again addresses himself to each one separately, saying to each a few words on his case:

To the first: "You, Monsieur, are in pain, but I tell you that, from to-day, the cause of this pain whether it is called arthritis or anything else, is going to disappear with the help of your unconscious, and the cause having disappeared, the pain will gradually become less and less, and in a short time it will be nothing but a moment."

To the second person: "Your stomach does not function properly, it is more or less dilated. Well, as I told you just now, your digestive functions are going to work better and better, and I add that the dilatation of the stomach is going to disappear little by little. Your organism is going to give back progressively to your stomach the force and elasticity it had lost, and by degrees as this phenomenon is produced, the stomach will return to its primitive form and will carry out more and more easily the necessary movements to pass into the intestine the nourishment it contains. At the same time the pouch formed by the relaxed stomach will diminish in size, the nutriment will not longer stagnate in this pouch, and in consequence the fermentation set up will end by totally disappearing."

To the third: "To you, Mademoiselle, I say that whatever lesions you may have in your liver, your organism is doing what is necessary to make the lesions disappear every day, and by degrees as they heal over, the symptoms from which you suffer will go on lessening and disappearing. Your liver then functions in a more and more normal way, the bile it secretes is alcaline and no longer acid, in the right quantity and quality, so that it passes naturally into the intestines and helps intestinal digestion."

To the fourth: "My child, you hear what I say; every time you feel you are going to have an attack, you will hear my voice telling you as quick as lightning: 'No, no! my friend, you are not going to have that attack, and it is going to disappear before it comes. . . .'"

To the fifth, etc., etc.

When everyone has been attended to, M. Coué tells those present to open their eyes, and adds: "You have heard the advice I have just given you. Well, to transform it into reality, what you must do is this: As long as you live, every morning before getting up, and every evening as soon as you are in bed, you must shut your eyes, so as to concentrate your attention, and repeat twenty times following, moving your lips (that is indispensable) and counting mechanically on a string with twenty knots in it the following phrase: 'Every day, in every respect, I am getting better and better.'"