r # ^ ^ ' -5=-. ,V •* .o 3 '^ <*' , .~v 'A s A X ^ , ^ V * X ** V- ,• * c ^ ^ % % <\ o, ■' o ., -. ^ , ■ . '// c^ ... • -V **. V> H: r + o 4$ $ % % '-L V^' **^ o <•> ^ ^ z aV c <*, : REV. S. E. MAXWELL, Author. UNSEEN FORCES AND HOW TO USE THEM BY S. R. MAXWELL Atlanta, Ga. The Franklin Printing and Publishing Company - Geo. W. Harrison, State Printer, Manager 1903 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Two Copies Received JUL 22 1903 Copyright Entry ^to.- l(-— ft\ C-o CUSS &, XX* No. L / e> 1 R COPY B. Copyright 1903 by S. R. MAXWELL. AU rights reserved. V /; * • • » a • • • •J **• •"* • •• . * # &L CONTENTS, - ii CHAPTER I. "From the Without to the Within"— A Sketch of Human Progress 1 CHAPTER II. Theories Examined: (1) Christian Science ; (2) Materialism.. 28 CHAPTER III. The Visible a Creation of the Invisible and the Medium of its Expression 50 CHAPTER IV. Forces in the Universe and in Man— God— The Ego — Thought- force — Nerve-force 79 CHAPTER V. The Conscious Brain the Spiritual Man's Instrument in the Visible Realm 103 CHAPTER VI. The Subconscious Brain the Spiritual Man's Instrument in the Invisible Realm 130 CHAPTER VII. The Subconscious Brain — Continued 160 CHAPTER VIII. The Law of Thought-projection 212 CHAPTER IX. The Central Law of Cure 265 CHAPTER X. The Law of Character-building 302 UNSEEN FORCES AND HOW TO USE THEM. CHAPTER I. HUMAN PROGRESS. The twentieth century promises to be the grandest in point of discovery and achievement that has ever dawned upon the human race. The law of human progress is the law of evolution : " first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." Whether the (i fall of man" is true or false does not concern us at all. This is purely a spec- ulative question of academic interest merely. The old theology dealt with empty problems, and the old theolo- gians spent valuable time and brain energy in shaving into shape inflexible theories with the iron tools of logic — theories utterly void of value. The present age demands facts, and great principles established by the facts. The facts of history demonstrate that the great principle of progress is evolution, and the method of the progress has been from the visible to the invisible, from the exter- nal shell to the internal substance, from the periphery to the hub, from the without to the within. This gradual progress of man was natural, and in full accordance with the laws of his own being and the circum- stances of his environment. It is a matter of no practical 2 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. value as to when man first appeared on this planet. We know that he must have stepped into the arena of time at some definite period in the distant past because he is here now, and when he came he found himself surrounded with a set of sublime circumstances concerning the nature of which he was in complete ignorance. With wonderful powers of mind and body man stood forth midst the majestic scenes of nature. Bending over him he beheld the magnificent sweep of heaven's dome, traversed during the day by the sun and bespangled at night with innumerable points of twinkling light. Beneath his feet was the solid earth; yonder towered the mighty mountain ; he hears the roar of the ocean as the surf in snowy spume breaks upon the rocks; the white cataract leaps from the heart of the mountain ; the river rolls on- ward to the sea ; the great forest • stands in its primeval grandeur ; the earth is covered with grass and flowers ; the wild beasts roar in the forest glades, and the birds sing in the branches. The majestic scenes in nature and the myriad sounds of life and action must have appealed with power to primitive man's untutored and undisciplined mind, arousing within him an intense spirit of curiosity. He was ignorant of his surroundings ; ignorant of the laws that governed the great forces that he beheld in continual operation around him ; ignorant of the wealth that resided in the soil and the min- eral wealth that lay in un fathomed mines beneath the soil ; ignorant of his own splendid powers and the laws that governed these physical and spiritual energies. This is a purposeful universe, and to my mind the pur- pose for which man came here was : Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 3 1. To find out who he is. 2. To find out what he is. 3. To find out where he is. 4. To find out why he is. In other words, man was sent here into the planet to find out his relations to the infinite Father and the universe ; to find out his own inward potentialities ; to locate himself in relation to all things, and to learn the supreme lesson that he is placed here to unfold the spiritual man to the highest perfection by right knowledge, right thinking and right action. Now, in solving the problem of the uni- verse and his own nature, it was perfectly natural that man should commence his study by investigating the nature of those objects that appealed most powerfully to his senses. The external objects of nature appealed most powerfully, and he commenced his great task by studying external objects and gaining control over the great forces of the ex- ternal universe. Old mother Eve was the pioneer of progress in physical science. She was the first who em- ployed experiment as the test of truth. Centuries were consumed in the great work of studying external objects. Primitive man was under the influence of an irrepressible desire to conquer his external environments — " subdue the outer universe" Yonder is the gray and hoary forest that has never as yet heard the sound of the woodman's ax ; go cut it down. Yonder is the mighty ocean; go build your ships, harness the winds to your sails and explore its dis- tant shores. Navigate the rivers, build great cities on their banks, teeming with mighty populations. Tunnel the mountains, bridge the rivers, build great roads, quarry the granite rocks for your great architectural structures. Plunge 4 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. your shafts and bring from the bowels of the earth the gold, the silver, the iron, the coal and all minerals. Cul- tivate the soil and let the earth blossom with vegetation. The raw material surrounds you in rich abundance; bring things together and provide yourself with food, fuel, cloth- ing and shelter, was the first imperial command that man felt under obligation to obey. Did man obey this irrepressible impulse ? Let history answer. He built mighty empires. He marshaled strong armies and went forth upon careers of conquest. He erected great cities with millions of people. He built great pyramids of squared rock, each rock weighing tons, so heavy that the strongest derricks of this age would break down in the attempt to place them in position. He built splendid temples, outrivaling in architectural beauty the finest structures of to-day. He chiseled the marble into forms divine, made the canvas speak, constructed great roads extending for miles over mountain and marsh, over water and wilderness. He explored the continents, slew the wild animals and brought the earth into subjection by his tireless energy. He tunneled the mountains, navigated the rivers, bridled the ocean, put a bit in the mouth of the lightnings, harnessed the steam. He has plunged into the depths of the earth and read from the earth's strata a his- tory of creation. He has studied the laws of light, con- structed the telescope, examined the depths of the skies, and with mathematical precision he has measured the orbits of suns and comets, weighed the earth in scales and computed the tonnage of the stars. He has constructed the microscope and has inspected the infinitesimal. He has weighed atoms and discovered the law of their combina- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 5 tion. He has analyzed light, found out how to use the X-ray, and by its use photograph the skeleton or the coin in a man's pocket. He has condensed the atmosphere in liquid form with a temperature three thousand degrees colder than zero. He has abolished wires and utilizes the etheric waves to convey his messages across continents and oceans. In all his marvelous achievements man has dealt ex- clusively with the objects and forces of the external uni- verse — the objects and forces that stand outside of himself. Now it is not to be wondered at that this tendency on the part of man to deal with externals should materialize every part of his being and blot out of his vision all knowledge of the unseen universe and its realities. The mission of every reformer and mighty thinker that has ever lived has been to rescue man from the paralyzing grip of externalism and bring him to a keen realization of the facts and forces of the internal and invisible universe. That great spiritual thinker Paul said concerning the religions of mankind in his day : " For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead ; and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things ; they changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator." To this impeachment humanity must plead guilty. The religious systems of Babylon, Greece and Rome furnish unlimited evidence in support of Paul's impeachment. It 6 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. is not my purpose to enter into a detailed examination of these old religions. Their main features are given in the quotation above. 1. Dealing with external things, man lost sight of the internal and invisible. 2. Having lost sight of the invisible God and the unseen universe, to satisfy his aspirations for the unseen, man wor- shiped the visible objects around him. 3. He created God in his own image, with human pas- sions and propensities. 4. The visible universe is the invisible God in self-ex- pression, but man lost sight of this and mistook the visible for the invisible, and "worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator." Thus it happened that the old pagan religions became essentially materialistic and dealt exclusively with externals. Not alone was this true concerning the pagan religions; it was also true concerning Judaism. When Moses gave Judaism to his nation, it was grand in its majestic princi- ples, pure in its revelations of God and man and man's relations to his fellows. The Mosaic conception of the universe — God, man, and man's relations to his environ- ments — was superior to anything that had as yet been given to the world. But by contact with a material environment and in the hands of men engrossed by the visible this system of re- ligion had become corrupt, and in the days of Christ it had degenerated into unadulterated externalism. The great teacher, in his famous Sermon on the Mount, shows how the simple and majestic principles of the Mosaic law had Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 7 been mutilated and buried beneath mountains of commen- taries. He declared that " he came not to destroy the law" but to unfold its intense spirituality, and to cut away from the law the useless encumbrances wherewith the Jew- ish rabbis had trammeled it. All through his ministry he opposes and denounces with unsparing intensity the exter- nalism of the religion championed by the religious teach- ers of his age. Materialism had taken possession of the temple, the feasts, the sacred altars, the Holy Scriptures and the whole machinery of worship. The knowledge of the infinite Father was lost; spiritual religion was dead. The infa- mous Annas and his sons held a monopoly of the temple market and farmed out the privileges of the sanctuary to conscienceless robbers, and made millions. The voice of true prayer was stilled and its place was taken by clouds of incense. The priests had cast aside inward righteousness and had substituted therefor splendid ecclesiastical gar- ments studded with diamonds and ornamented with gold fringe. The voice of true worship was not heard, and the temple enclosure was the scene of noisy bargainings, weigh- ing money, demanding heavy discount, and noisy argu- ments over the price of pigeons and cattle to be offered in sacrifice. The teachers of religion were robbers of widows and despoilers of orphans, who hid their meanness under long robes and longer prayers. The truth of the universe, the truth concerning God, the truth concerning man, had vanished from the mind of man. Every nation had cre- ated its own god, and their conceptions of man and the universe were conditioned upon their conception of God, and since their conception of God was false, their conceptions 8 Unseen Forces o/nd How to Use Them. of man and the universe were utterly false, and the reign of King Delusion, with his subordinates — ignorance, superstition and brutality — was absolute and universal. Jesus, the divinest individual that ever walked the earth, Jesus the Christ came out of the eternities into time to bring man back to the truth and bring the truth back to man. (a) He revealed God as the infinite Father. The na- tions had created gods according to their own limited con- ceptions, and colored them with their own national preju- dices, and limited them to their own national boundaries. A divided God meant a divided world. A quarreling set of gods meant a world of men in boisterous strife. The Jewish mind had created Jehovah ; the Greek mind had created Apollo ; the Roman mind had created Jupiter. These gods were purely human inventions and undiluted falsehoods. Jesus uncovered the truth concerning God and proclaimed him as "the universal Father." A reali- zation of this truth makes all men brothers. (6) So Jesus uncovered the truth concerning man. War- ring gods meant men struggling on the battle-fields; meant the butchery of human life in the coliseum; meant the savagery of law ; meant the utter estrangement of nations, the enslavement of millions, the degradation of woman, the crushing of the weak by the strong, and the savage and intense brutality of the times. Jesus, by revealing the Fatherhood of God, taught the brotherhood of man; that man is God's child, made in his Father's image, invested with splendid possibilities, a creature of eternity dwelling for a little while in time. (c) Jesus revealed the truth concerning the universe. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 9 He taught that the visible universe is only a transient shifting panorama affording standing room for God the Father and man his son to erect the perfect spiritual tem- ple ; that the body is only an external expression of the in- ward spiritual man ; that the spiritual man is supreme and eternal ; that the body or external form is temporal and subordinate, and the unfoldment of the spiritual man is the grand end of all things. Jesus the Christ was in himself the expression of the truth concerning God, man and the universe in visible form. He was the revelation of that which is. That which is is permanent and eternal, for that which is is in conformity with the plan of the universe when it €ame fresh from the hands of the Creator. This is the best possible universe, because it is the expression of the infinite mind. God intended that the spiritual man should be master and the material man servant. God intended that the spiritual man should be unfolded and that the physical man should become subservient to this grand end. God intended that man should live in the inner universe and make the outer universe a ladder whereby he could €limb to higher heights in the realms of the unseen. Jesus, when he arrived, found humanity absorbed in the material, the very conception of God, the inner universe and the spiritual man blotted out of existence. In all his sermons he emphasized the spiritual and taught that it was supreme, and that all material things were secondary and subordinate. Man had put the outer before the inner ; en- throned the visible and dethroned the invisible ; glorified externals and banished internals. Jesus corrected the whole false philosophy and revealed the divine order of 10 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. man and the universe, and was therefore " the truth " embodied in a living person. He walked out of his father's carpenter's shop without any worldly prestige or power, and with perfect soul-poise commenced the gigantic work of his life. The god of a materialistic philosophy of life, the spirit of the times that had governed humanity for ages, met him in the wilder- ness, penniless and hungry and weary, for he had fasted forty days in demonstration of his belief that the spiritual man was supreme. This spirit said to him: "You are hungry, you have great power, you are invested with cre- ative energy. Use your powers as all others have used them, to gratify your appetites." "Command that these stones become bread." Jesus answered this false spirit thus: " The spiritual man, feeding upon the eternal truth and in vital communion with the infinite Father, can rise superior to the physical man and assert and retain his supremacy." " Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' r The false spirit again advances and says: "If your philos- ophy is true, then you can demonstrate it by casting your- self down from one of the pinnacles of the temple. If the spiritual man is supreme and the physical man subordi- nate, then the spiritual man can suspend the physical man in mid-air, and by thus demonstrating the correctness of your philosophy to the assembled Jews at Jerusalem they will crown you king and the world will accept your teach- ings." Jesus answered by saying: "An act of this kind would be presuming on the divine goodness. It is su- premely true that spirit is master of matter, but it is also true that falling from a lofty height will crush and kill. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 11 It is not necessary, in proving the existence of one law, to demand that another law shall be suspended. It is not necessary, in proving the supremacy of the spiritual, that we ask God to interpose in a miraculous way to save us from an act of wilful and deliberate rashness. The spirit- ual man is obedient to all law, the laws of matter as well as the laws of spirit." "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." The false spirit advances again and brings before his mind a vision of all the kingdoms of the world, their pomp and power and magnificent exterior pageantry, and then says to him: "You are a young man with splendid powers of mind and body. You can take advantage of the conditions of the time. Your own people the Jews are looking for a great leader, a man who can marshal a great army and equip that army with all the enginery of war. You can gratify their national desire and lead this army against the Roman legions and crush them in a single battle. Then this victorious army will lead you to the throne at Jerusalem. Jerusalem will thus become the capital of a conquered world. Millions of money, palaces, honors, unlimited kingly emoluments, will be yours if you will deny your philosophy and fall down and worship me. Live, oh young man, for life's externals; all this philoso- phy of yours is beautiful, but there is nothing in it. I will give you the golden key to the world's tangible treas- ures." Jesus waved the tempter aside and said : " Get thee behind me, Satan." "All this glory and honor you have shown me is outward, transient and will vanish like the shadow of a dream when the sleeper awakes. The spiritual alone is real and eternal." 12 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. The young Nazarene vanquished the false spirit of the times and marched forward with the quiet step of antici- pated triumph to the accomplishment of his world task. He carefully instructed his disciples in his divine philoso- phy, and told them prior to his departure that it was ex- pedient that he go away, because when he went away " the Spirit of Truth" would come and lead them into all truth and inspire them to lay the foundations of the Kingdom of Truth. After living a life of unparalleled beauty; a life which was the result of the combination of gentleness and strength, intellectual power and the most translucent sim- plicity; a life that was the visible expression of truth, beauty, love and goodness, he was seized by the most re- ligious men of his day, condemned by his judges without giving him the chance of defense, for they deprived him of all legal rights, and on the testimony of false witnesses he was condemned to die by crucifixion. He had declared that the spiritual man was supreme, and he had also de- clared, in the presence of his disciples, that the gates of the grave could not prevail against his claim. By his res- urrection from the grave he smashed death's gates and demonstrated that the spiritual man was supreme, that he was the Christ, and that his mission and teachings were divine. He came out of eternity into time. He leaves the realms of time and goes into eternity, and forty days after his departure into the invisible his kingdom was ushered in by the affusion of "the Spirit of Truth" upon his disciples, and they went forth proclaiming " Jesus the Christ" as the sum total of spiritual truth to the conquest of the world. Without learning or rank, without politi- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. IB cal power or intellectual prestige, without social standing and subject to the withering scorn and ostracism of hu- manity, these men marched forward with a spirit of the utmost intrepidity to the seemingly forlorn task of over- whelming the materialism of that brutal and savage age. Judaism was mighty, and the reins of ecclesiastical power were in the hands of its defenders in Palestine. Its- synagogues were in every great city ; its history was re- splendent with miracles and made brillant by great names. It stood hoary with age, and its creed was woven into the texture of Jewish character. What could the preachers of a message given to the world by a crucified Galilean peasant hope to accomplish in the presence of this venerable system? Heathenism was mighty and the reins of supreme politi- cal power were in the hands of its champions at Eome and in all the great cities of the empire. Its power was up- held by a mighty army; its votaries were numbered by the million ; its temples lifted their glittering minarets to the skies everywhere; its altars dripped with the blood of numberless animals, and it extended from the banks of the Euphrates to the confines of Britain, and from the German forests to the Nile. It surely looked like folly for the fol- lowers of a crucified and disgraced carpenter to face a sys- tem like this and demand its abolition. It would have been folly if Jesus had been nothing save a disgraced and dishonored enthusiast and his mes- sage nothing but the vision of a disordered brain. But this Galilean prophet was divine ; he was the incarnation of the highest truth, the richest life, the deepest love. Be- cause he was divine, and because his doctrine was the 14 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them, simplest and divinest truth, it was destined to a speedy and universal victory. The world has never 'in all its his- tory witnessed such a marvelous revolution; a revolution without the shock of battling armies, without the clash of weapons; a revolution wrought by the resistless force of simple truth. Christianity conquered the world, and three hundred years after its immortal Founder entered the in- visible it was the dominant force in the Roman empire. But the inveterate tendency of humanity to drift into externalism again began to manifest itself. History re- peats itself. The splendor of the diamond will become their mechanical methods to force it into material forms. It is a matter of much gratification, however, that the signs of the times point to a new departure on the part of the Anglo-Saxon race. Having conquered the outer and sighing for new worlds to explore and conquer, we have come to the outer edge of the unseen universe ; in fact, our study of the forces of the external universe have brought us to the boundaries of the internal universe, rand we have been compelled to acknowledge its existence. As we stand on the inner rim of the universe of facts at the point where the invisible forces emerge that produce these facts, we are compelled to admit the existence of the inner universe of causes. Within the next one hundred years the Anglo-Saxon race will have made great ■discoveries in the inner universe. In our study of the laws and forces of this invisible realm we will receive Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 7T great assistance from the works written by the deep thinkers of the Orient. The occidental races have con- quered the outer universe. The oriental races have made their great conquests in the inner universe. We will give the Orient the finished results of our labor in the without. The orientals will give us the finished results of their labor in the within. The oriental races have furnished the world already with splendid systems of spiritual philosophy, but to my mind the greatest master in spiritual science is Jesus the Christ ; the greatest sys- tem is Christianity, and the greatest book is the New Testament. I would not ignore other great oriental thinkers that clamor for a hearing, but their teachings are merely side-lights to the teachings of Jesus. Chris- tianity, as Jesus gave it to the world, unpolluted by the touch of theologians, is all inclusive, the total summary of all truth in the highest realms of being. In this volume I propose to assist the reader in obtain- ing a more intelligent understanding of how the spiritual man assimilates the truth given to the world by Jesus ; how the spiritual man, by the operation of certain laws, weaves the life and truth of Jesus into the warp and woof of his character. I propose to show the reader how he can obtain self-mastery ; how he can master all the forces of his own mind and utilize them ; how he can master the forces of his own body and cure disease and establish the habit of health. I propose to show him the marvelous extent of the " kingdom within," the infinite resources of that kingdom ; how to develop these resources and utilize them for the benefit of himself and others. I propose to show him how to reach the richest unfoldment of soul ; IT 8 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. how to master adverse circumstances and utilize favorable circumstances and thus fulfil the design of his creation. Up to the present I have been endeavoring to establish funda- mental principles. I have shown the correctness of the dualistic theory. I have shown that man and the universe are built on the same plan. I have shown that "there is a spiritual man and there is a physical man"; that the spiritual man is the real man ; that the physical man is the external organism through which the spiritual man operates. In the next chapter I will discuss the methods of operation. It is one thing to say that the spiritual man operates through the medium of the physical organ- ism, it is quite another thing to show how he operates. The how is the supreme thing. " Knowledge is power," and if we know how the spiritual man operates and know Jiow to control the how, we will have learned the first lesson of self-control. From now on our central theme of study will be the dual nature of man. If we advance beyond man it will only be for the purpose of obtaining illustrations that may throw light on our main topic, and the supreme purpose of our study will be to obtain as thorough a knowl- edge of the laws that govern man and the forces that reside within him as we can possibly obtain, because we desire to attain to self-mastery, and we cannot master ourselves .unless we know ourselves. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. CHAPTER IV. FOECES IN THE UNIVERSE AND IN MAN — GOD — THE EGO — THOUGHT- FORCE — NERVE-FOKCE. Having established the fact that dualism inheres in the structure of the universe and man, we are ready to proceed in our investigations. We have established the proposi- tions, namely : 1. The universe is dual : the invisible and the visible. 2. The invisible eternal God is the originator and sus- tainer of the visible universe. 3. The invisible uses the visible as the medium of its expression. In other words, the external is the outward expression of the invisible on the visible plane. Since these propositions are true in regard to the uni- verse at large, and since man is the universe in miniature, they must be true in regard to man ; therefore, 1. Man is dual : the spiritual man and the physical man. 2. The spiritual man is the builder and sustainer of the external form or body. 3. The spiritual man uses the physical man as the me- dium of his expression. In other words, the body is the outward expression of the spiritual man on the visible plane. The next question that presents itself, demanding an •answer, is : How does the spiritual man operate through 80 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. the physical organism ? What are the forces employed ? Where do these forces originate ? What are the laws that govern these forces ? How can I know these laws and obey them, and thereby gain complete self-mastery ? I cannot answer all these questions in this chapter. The answer to some of them will be reserved for future chapters. In this chapter I will discuss the forces em- ployed by the spiritual man and then some of the leading characteristics of these forces. For convenience I will throw the substance of this chapter into a few propositions : 1. Force in man is dual: thought-force and nerve-force. 2. Thought-force originates in the spiritual man and is the spiritual man in action. 3. Nerve-force originates in the physical man and is the body in action. 4. The spiritual man is master, the body is servant. Thought-force masters nerve-force, because the spiritual man masters the body. 5. Since thought-force masters nerve-force, and since nerve-force controls the body, and since the spiritual man controls and directs thought- force, then it is perfectly clear that the spiritual man has within himself the power to wisely direct and control and balance all the nerve- forces of his body and thereby win complete mastery over himself. The supreme power in the universe is the invisible God, and the supreme power in God is thought. God is the causeless cause of all things ; to him there is no past nor future; he is the I am. Time and space are emanations from God; they are the creations of his thought, but God is greater than his own creations, though he may choose Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 81 to abide within his own creations. Thought is the might- iest power in the universe, because the universe itself is the product of God's thought. If God, as the theologians have described him, had been perfectly satisfied he never would have created the uni- verse. A being that has reached the point of complete satisfaction, having no desires to satisfy, never does any- thing. Achievement is impossible without aspiration ; aspiration is born in desire. The infinite God desired ; he aspired and achieved. His achievement is this glorious universe. So the universe is the complete expression of God's desire. It is the crystallization of the divine ten- dencies. It is the externalization of the divine thought- forces. Moses says : "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." David says : "He spake and it was done ; he commanded and it stood fast." John says : "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by the Word, and without the Word was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men : this is the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. " A word is thought expressed ; it is thought in movement. The divine thought in movement preceded all things and brought all things into existence. A man's thought is his individuality moving in a certain direction and for a spe- cific purpose. God's thought is his individuality moving in a certain direction with a specific purpose. Since God's thought is charged with the full measure of his individuality, then God's thought must be omnipotence in irresistible. 6m 82 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. action. This being true, then thought is the mightiest force in the universe. What is law but an ascertained mode of movement. There cannot be any movement without mind. The laws of nature are simply the thought of God operating upon and through matter. Matter is the negative pole of the universe ; mind is the positive pole. Matter is therefore passive; mind is active. Matter is always acted upon; mind is the power that acts. The thought of God, acting upon and through matter, produces certain regular well- defined movements. These movements are called laws. Now it seems perfectly clear from an examination of the orderly operations of the universe around us that God is never in a hurry ; he has unlimited time at his disposal. Eternity is his working day, and he never has any holidays. Eternal progression is the order of all creation. All things are invested with a desire to push onward and upward. If God pervades every atom, then this universal aspiration to move onward must be a divine inspiration which fills the universe. This inspiration is regular, slow and patient in its movements. Instantaneous creation is an exception that is unknown to this universal law. God demands one hundred years to unfold the oak to perfection. He demands thousands of years to build a coral island. He requires millions of years to store away in the depths the coal beds. Man is ever in a hurry; he wants everything done at once. And our teachers in religion first created God in their own image, and then published the doctrine that God created the universe in six days of twenty-four hours each. That description of creation in Genesis is a sublime poem, and our teachers in religion have forgotten that every poet has Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 83 a license to use language and adjust his phrases in any way he pleases — a license that is denied the writer of history. Again, the sober facts of geology scientifically established overthrow the idea. The orderly and steady progression of tte universe around us shows its folly. God created the universe by law, and what is law but an ascertained mode or order of movement. Thought-force has its laws govern- ing its movements. The movements of divine thought in action are regular and harmonious; they never change. When I say then that God created the universe by law, I mean that he brought all things into existence by the regu- lar and harmonious operations of his thought. Law, in the universal sense, is simply the divine thought creating matter and acting upon and through matter in a multitude of ways. Man, in studying the laws of nature, is simply uncovering the tracks of God's thought movements, and the results of man's studies in all departments of investiga- tion demonstrate the fact that the divine method of carry- ing the universe on to perfection is evolution. All nature's forces and laws are emanations of divine thought in motion. Thought, then, as we behold its operations in the uni- verse around us, must be omnipotence in action. Not alone is thought the mightiest force in the universe at large ; it is the mightiest force in the human realm of action also. The greatest power in the human realm is the spiritual man ; the greatest power in the spiritual man is thought. The invisible force that lies behind all human progress is thought. Ignorance is the nursing mother of all savagery, barbarism and degradation. "The people perish for lack of knowledge." Knowledge is the nursing mother of all refinement, civilization and advancement. Mane juld 84 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. not advance a single step without the inspiration of ideals. What are ideals but ideas, and what are ideas but thoughts ? Thought, then, in the form of ideals embodied in men and written in books, has in every age been the supreme cause of advance. The Hebrew race was under the heels of tyranny and in chains of bondage for four hundred and thirty years in Egypt. Without ideals, they sank into the lowest degra- dation. Moses, in himself and in his laws, furnished the Hebrews with ideals, and this nation of slaves became one of the most illustrious nations on the earth, and has fur- nished to man the greatest leaders in spiritual seience. What is meant by " the confusion of tongues" at Babel's tower but difference in modes of stating ideas, variety in expressing thought. Want of similarity in expression di- vided primitive man ; similarity of expression joined prim- itive man into clans and nations ; so that the mode of ex- pressing thought dispersed the human race over the earth, populating it, and this same cause united peoples into fam- ily and clan and nation and confederacies. An implicit belief in ideas concerning the rotundity of the earth — ideas that were completely at variance with the thought of his times — was the powerful inspiration that guided Columbus as he sailed westward over the trackless Atlantic. He expected to continue sailing until he com- pletely circled the earth, and would have done so had the continent of America not stopped his progress. The dis- covery of America was the result of thought, and in its bearing upon the advance of the human race this event was one of the most influential that ever occurred. All great reformations were born in thought. It was the Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 85 thought embodied in Christ and expressed by him that swept away the idolatry of Greece and Rome, and laid the foundations of the greatest empire ever established — the empire of truth. In fact, Christianity is a system of sim- ple and naked principles — a system of pure thought. The Renaissance in Europe was the result of thought. When the European mind came into contact with the pure thought of the old Roman and Greek thinkers, this pure thought roused the European mind, gave it the key to open the golden gates to grander intellectual freedom. The German reformation was the result of an idea. Martin Luther was a lonely and silent monk, buried in the depths of his cell in a monastery. He was engaged in a profound study of the soul and how to get rid of his misery and sin. He resolved to visit Rome the Eternal City, and find absolution and peace at the hands of his Holiness the Pope. The German reformation, with its de- bates and excitements, its pamphlets and passions, with its wars and excesses, its conflicts and triumphs, its evils, to- gether with its far-reaching and magnificent uplifting in- fluences, is found in one thought that entered the mind of Luther as he climbed up the stairway of Pilate leading to the Vatican, and that thought was, " the just shall live by faith." When one thinks of the conflict of forces that resulted from the preaching of Luther, he will be con- vinced of the fact that thought is the mightiest power in the universe. What is architecture but thought visibly expressed in splendid structures ? What is sculpture but thought con- gealed in marble ? What is painting but thought wrought into the canvas? All human advance on the visible plane 86 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. was preceded by thought, and the'finished products of all advance are simply thought externalized. The human body itself is one of the finished products of thought. The human body is a result and not a cause. The spiritual man is a part of the eternal substratum of the universe. The spiritual man is. The spiritual man, in his very essence, is eternal because he is a finite part of the invisible God. That the vibrations of the cells of the human brain produce thought and life is pure folly. A doctrine like this finds lodgment nowhere save in the soft brain of the excessively credulous. When I hear a man urging the acceptance of this doctrine I always think of the story of the colored preacher and a member of his congre- gation. His sermon was on the creation of man ; he said ; " An de Lawd created Adam out of red earth and leaned him up against de fence to dry." One of his congregation interrupted the flow of his eloquence with the pertinent inquiry : " Massa preachah, youse gwine too fast for us ; we would like to know, sah, fore you goes any furder, who built dat fence." And when a man eloquently asserts that vibration of nerve cells in the brain causes thought, I feel like asking him, " What causes the vibration ?" The an- swer to the question overthrows the above doctrine. The spiritual man sets these cells in vibration, producing thought intelligible to other spirits enveloped in physical organisms. In fact, since man is the microcosm of the universe, the spiritual man builds the body just as God his Father built the universe. All man does is to imitate his Father; he can attain perfection in no other way. This is the way of life. The spiritual man, a part of the eternal life, comes out Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 87 of the timeless eternity and enters time; he comes out of the invisible into the visible ; he comes into the world to gain a knowledge of the visible universe; to wake up to a consciousness of the fact that he is an individual, that he is a child of the invisible Father, and that the opulence of the universe is his because it is his Father's. When he "comes to himself," when he realizes his position and relationships, he then sees that "all things are his, whether Paul or Apollos or Christ, things present and things to come, life, death, — all are his and he is Christ's and Christ is God's." Now the spiritual man enters this time world to receive instruction and to awaken to a deep realization of what and where he is and what he can become. To accomplish the purpose of his coming he must have a physical organism adapted to his earthly environments. Herein arises the necessity for the human body. Its existence cannot be ex- plained on any other basis. The body is an organism built by the spiritual man out of earthly materials for temporary uses only. When man, under the law of eternal progress, rises to a higher plane, he will be compelled to "put off the earthly tabernacle," for "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither can corruption inherit incor- ruption." Death, then, to the man whose life is in line with the eternal will of the invisible God, is not a misfor - tune to be dreaded. It is the golden gateway swung open by angels in white to admit him to the higher planes of a richer and grander life. Birth is a gateway ; death is a gateway. In this book I do not propose to spend much time on the mysteries of entrances and exits. I shall offer my opinion, 88 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. but I shall not dogmatize. All I know is that somehow man is here, and birth seems to be the gateway through which he comes ; death the gateway through which he goes. The gateway through which the spiritual man passes from the invisible into the visible is shrouded in deep mystery. If a miracle is a phenomenon that occurs in obedience to a law of which we as yet have no knowledge, then every birth is a miracle, for we know very little of the law in obedience to which the spiritual man emerges into time and commences the construction of a physical organism for his use while here. Standing on the earthward side of the phenomenon of birth, we have collected a few facts and formulated a little knowledge concerning the origin and growth of the body, but we know very little of the spiritual side of the question. The origin of the body and the growth of the body are under the control of the subconscious forces of the spiritual man. I am aware that the initial step in the formation of a new individual is a conscious one taken by the parents ; then the work from that moment on is under the control of the subcon- scious in the subconscious realm. In this deep and mys- terious realm the living spirit of the coming individual begins the work of building, and begins as God began the build- ing of the universe, or as he begins the building of an oak- tree — at the center. All forms of life commence with a cell, and man is no exception to that law. The solar-plexus is first formed, and from this common center every organ and limb is built in accordance with a perfect plan. In my humble opinion the builder and the plan came from the invisible spiritual universe. He comes here just as the builder goes to the quarry to find material to construct Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 89 his dwelling. From the earthward side we can watch the progress of the work, and after the new individual ap- pears on this planet we can trace the gradual steps of the slow development. We can see that the body is composed of millions of cells arranged in a multitude of ways, form- ing bone and brain, nerve and muscle, blood and fluid, a compact and magnificently constructed organism, perfectly adapted to its environment and perfectly responsive to the demands of the spiritual man within. All the arrange- ments and movements of the body are perfect and self- acting. Conscious control of the body is limited to the voluntary muscles only. We have discovered that the subconscious region of the brain is the absolute governing power in the body. This subconscious region governs the body and builds it through the intermediate agency of the nervous system. The whole business of building the body and governing it is conducted under the threshold of consciousness. The heart, the lungs and all the internal viscera act automat- ically. The heart is the force-pump that sends the blood, charged with positive electricity and laden with building material, to every part of the organism. The lungs are the supply station where the blood obtains the electricity out of the air and converts it into nerve-force. The stomach is the food depot, where the blood obtains the building material to build up the cells. The nerves are the builders, and under the control of the subconscious brain centers these nerves are constantly building, repair- ing and replacing. Now in this great work there must be waste material, useless material and injurious material. We can see how 90 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. the various organs apparently select and reject. The hu- man body requires a certain kind and a certain quantity of material; therefore, we see the necessity for selection and rejection. All elements that do not enter into the body must be cast out ; the precise quantity of material needed must be assimilated and the overplus rejected. All this business requires wonderful discrimination and wis- dom. We discover that the business is attended to with automatic accuracy, and the eliminative organs cast out of the system all the overplus, the injurious and the useless material. In short, the human body is a beautiful palace perfectly equipped for all the uses of the spiritual occupant within. The windows of this palace look out upon majestic scenes — mountains, valleys, the stars, the changing, shifting pan- orama of nature in all her moods. This palace is the registering center for all the sounds of the universe. Through the auditory nerves troop the noise of the jostling crowd, the discordant sounds of conflicting interests, the roar and rush of business, the cry of pain, the moan of suffering, the roar of thunder, the noise of the waterfall, the thunder of the waves, the sighing of the storm, the warbling of the birds ; and if this delicate registering cen- ter in the human ear was sufficiently sensitive we could hear the harmonious music of the worlds as they spin and swing in their orbits, and we could hear even the discordant sounds of earth caught by the magic dome of God's over- arching providence and resolved there into the sweetest concord. Through this self-built, self-moving palace the spiritual man comes into contact with his entire earthly environment, and through it he obtains his knowledge of Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 91 the universe as he passes on towards a higher plane of be- ing. Behind this marvelously constructed organism stands the spiritual man, co-ordinating/ constructing and controlling it. The body, then, is one of the many products of thought- force in dynamic action. Since this is true, then it follows that the body is the spiritual man externalized ; the inward forces thrown into outward form. Spiritual forces reveal themselves in outward form. Character, then, cannot be disguised easily, for the body is a tell-tale ; the body car- ries the record of a man's deeds; it is the index of the con- tents of the soul. A man's temperament is legibly inscribed upon his body. Just as the sculptor chisels out of the marble the angel or the fiend, so the spiritual man with ten thousand chisels shapes the body into conformity with the predominant tendencies of his inward life. The heavy sluggish disposi- tion, the light active wiry nervous disposition, the strong aggressive disposition, the cautious timorous disposition r the keen sharp incisive disposition, the slow steady plod- ding disposition, in short, the multitudinous variety of human dispositions, are revealed by the structure and con- formation of the body. The face is the most expressive portion of the body ; so a man's character may be read from his face. The eye, the nose, the hair, the mouth, the numerous lines and counter lines, all have their story to tell if we are suffi- ciently skilled in the alphabet of character to read their language. This language of the face is written in obe- dience to a law that is as accurate and unchanging in its movements as is the law of gravitation. 92 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. The thoughts that move in dynamic vibration from the spiritual man within vibrate every cell in the human body. These vibrations specially reveal themselves in the face. A repetition of these vibrations throw the muscles of the face into fixed attitudes, thereby revealing the pre- dominant tendencies of the individual. Just as the glove ■conforms to the structure of the living hand within, so the face conforms to the ruling forces of the spiritual man within. So we have the pinched face of poverty, the drawn face of the sufferer, the placid face of the contented, the blank face of the idiot, the dark face of the melan- choly, the pale face of the student, the illuminated face of the spiritual, the sour face of the cynic, the aggressive face of the fighter, the calm face of the philosopher, the downcast face of the criminal, and so on in endless ■category. A man's theological tendencies are revealed in his face. Religious sentiments are the strongest sentiments in the soul; by virtue of this they are the mightiest moulders of the face. The creed a man believes in, if you allow suffi- cient time for it to get in its work, will mould his face into conformity to itself. A narrow creed contracts the spiritual man, and this spiritual contraction narrows the face. A broad, free, tolerant and liberal creed broadens the spiritual man, and the broadening tendency is eventually transferred to the countenance. Being a preacher and associating with all kinds of religious people for over sixteen years, I find no difficulty in making a fairly cor- rect diagnosis of a man's theological notions by examin- ing the lines of his face. In obedience to the same law a man's occupation is re- Unseen Forces and Hon> to Use Them. 93- vealed in his countenance. It must be remembered that this chiseling of the face requires time, and the man must remain in a certain occupation for years before the muscles of the face are fixed ; and so we have the preacher's face, the lawyer's face, the politician's face, the farmer's face, the sailor's face, the business man's face. Seeing, then, that the material in the human body is sim- ply clay in the hands of the potter, that the spiritual man moulds the body into conformity with the nature, quality and tone of his thought-forces, it looks reasonable that all disease must in the last analysis arise in the thought. It is profoundly true that " there cannot be a physical effect without a mental cause." It is also true that the body is the product of thought, for the body is a physical effect. All diseases, then, must originate in the mind. I do not mean to affirm that physical conditions play no part in the creation of disease ; physical conditions may furnish the occasion, but in no case can it be shown that they are the cause. There is a wide distinction between the cause and the occasion of a thing. The occasion giving rise to the sepoy rebellion in India was furnished when the English army authorities greased the end of their gun cartridges with lard. The hog is an unclean animal to the Brahmin, and the occasion of that awful rebellion occurred when a high caste Brahmin, an officer in the army, discovered he had driven his teeth through hog's grease. The cause of the rebellion was the deep- seated hatred that existed in the heart of every inhabi- tant of India against England. The occasion of an explosion in a powder magazine may be the dropping of the spark into the powder, but 94 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. the cause of the wide-spread destruction was not the spark, it was the expansion of the gases in the powder. The occasion rouses the cause into action. Physical con- ditions may act as the occasion, but in the last analysis mental conditions produce physical conditions, for the human body is a product of thought. I will explain my position on this point more ex- haustively further on in this volume. For the present I simply assert that the spiritual man receives his knowledge of his environment through the medium of his physical senses. If the spiritual man receives intelligence, either consciously or unconsciously, that disease exists in the com- munity, or that he has exposed himself to certain con- ditions rendering disease probable, in either case, if he does not know the law whereby he can throw off these impressions and fortify himself at every point, fear of taking the disease destroys resistive power, opens all the doors to the subconscious brain, and he is taken captive by the condition he fears. He fears and shudderingly ex- pects, and it is a great law intended to operate beneficially upon man that all expectations persistently dwelt upon will sooner or later be realized. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." In his own province it is eternally true that what a man affirms he creates. Think disease, and disease is the result ; think health, and health is the result. In the following chapters of this book I propose to deal with this question more fully and reveal the simple law under- lying it. I have shown that thought-force is the mightiest power in the universe at large and in the human province. I have shown that thought-force is the spiritual man in Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 95 action, and that the spiritual man, through the power of thought in action, builds the body and reveals himself through the body. I have shown how every cell in the human body vibrates in harmony with the nature of the thought- forces set in motion by the spiritual man. The next question that confronts us is this : Does the spiritual man act upon and through the body directly or indirectly ? What is the connecting link ? I affirm that the spiritual man does not act immediately upon and through the body; he acts mediately through the agency of nerve- force. 1. Man is dual — the spiritual man and the physical man. 2. The spiritual man employs thought-force as the instru- ment of his achievements. 3. The physical man is the medium through which the spiritual man operates. 4. The spiritual man controls the physical man through the agency of nerve-force. 5. Nerve-force is organic electricity, and is taken into the body through various organs, but chiefly through the lungs. G. The interblending of thought-force with nerve-force constitutes the coupling link between the spiritual and the physical man. That nerve- force is a form of electricity is a theory that has been lately confirmed by the experiments of Dr. Loeb and Professor Matthews of the Chicago University. Dr. Loeb suspended portions of a turtle's heart in a saline solu- tion and obtained a rhythmic beat; he then advanced to an analysis of the mysterious power in the salt solution which caused the heart of the animal to throb, and discovered that the atoms of salt are charged with electricity. The 96 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. conclusion arrived at by Dr. Loeb is this : " I have posi- tive proof to the effect that positively charged atoms bring about or create life." Professor Matthews, at the same time, in conjunction with Dr. Loeb, entered into a series of experiments to dis- cover the action of electricity in the tissue of the nerves, and came to this conclusion : " Negatively charged atoms produce nerve contractions, and positively charged atoms produce the opposite effect." According to these conclu- sions it seems clear that "the enabling power" in all mus- cular movements is the action of positive and negative electric currents. The experiments conducted by these two scientists are in line with other experiments, all leading to the same conclusion. Some years ago a famous English physician conducted experiments with rabbits that demonstrated the identity of electricity with nerve-force. He took two rab- bits and fed them with the same quantity and quality of food. He then took one of the rabbits and severed the pneumogastric nerve between the stomach and the brain, and sent down the nerve a current of electricity from a galvanic battery. At the end of twenty-four hours he killed both rabbits, and, upon examining the contents of the stomach of each, he found the food in the stomach of the one whose pneumogastric nerve was severed was about as well digested as the food in the stomach of the other. Other experiments were conducted by which it was dem- onstrated that the whole machinery of the vital organs in an animal could be operated by the action of electric cur- rents sent down the nerves that control these organs. It is my opinion that the body is a galvanic battery operated ♦ Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 97 by the spiritual man through the brain. But the question naturally arises: How and where is this organic electricity or nerve-force created? When we attempt to analyze the how we are confronted by a deep mystery. Faraday, who discovered the principle upon which all electric dynamos are constructed, could not answer this question. Galvani, who discovered the principle in obedience to which all galvanic batteries are built, could not answer; nor could Edison himself, the great wizard in electrical science, solve this deep problem. In the electric dynamo unlimited en- ergy is developed, where no power apparently exists, for there is no visible contact between the revolving shaft and the poles of the powerful magnet. It is weirdly mysterious to see a shaft around which in- sulated wire is coiled longitudinally revolving at a point midway between the ends of a big magnet revolving in space not in contact with the magnet, and yet that shaft, as it whirls, picks up unlimited quantities of energy. !Now, I say that the question how do these longitudinal coils of wire cutting through space develop this mighty energy is a problem that no man can successfully solve. Another problem equally as mysterious is this : How does a pile of metal composed of alternate pieces of copper and zinc steeped in sulphuric acid develop a current of electricity ? I say no man can successfully explain how this is done. If there is any difference in the mysteries, then the question how does the human body create organic electricity or nerve-force is involved is deeper mystery. This question, to my mind, is one of the ultimates in material science, as the essence of spirit is one of the ultimates in spiritual science. The only thing we can do is "to think around 7m 98 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. the edges." When we come to the question, where does man create this organic electricity or nerve-force ? it is my opinion that the principal organ employed in the produc- tion of organic electricity is the lungs. I believe that the skin absorbs large quantities of elec- tricity, and that large quantities are liberated during the process of digestion. I believe that just as the spiritual man is enswathed in and pervaded by an atmosphere of spirit, so the physical man is enswathed in and pervaded by an atmosphere of electricity. Scientists tell us that " ether," an invisible, impalpable element, pervades the whole universe, is the encircling at- mosphere of all worlds, the element filling the interstellar spaces. " Ether" is the illimitable ocean in which the whole creation of visible things is immersed. " Ether" is a form of electricity. This being true, then the physical man *' lives, moves and has his being" in an atmosphere of electricity. What could be more natural, then, than that the physical man, being negative to his positively charged atmosphere, should absorb electricity through the millions of pores in the skin ? So that if man is the reg- istering center for all sounds of the universe, he is the re- ceiving center for all forces ; the spiritual man the receiv- ing center for spiritual forces, the physical man the receiv- ing center for all electric forces. During the progress of digestion it is probable that large quantities of electric energy are liberated and seized by the blood. But as I have stated above, the principal organ in creating the organic electricity is the lungs. I use the word lungs in the sin- gular sense, as I am discussing their function, and so far as their function is concerned they act as one. The lungs are Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 99 composed of spongy tissue and contain about two million cells. Now, in order that we may see clearly how the lungs are the chief source of supply for organic electricity, it would be well for us to remember : 1. That the nerves obtain their supply of nerve-force from the arterial blood, or blood that has passed through the lungs. 2. That oxygen constitutes twenty-one per cent, of the air we breathe. 3. That oxygen is a form of electricity. 4. That when the arterial blood deposits its material at every point in the body, it returns to the veins through the capillary system, and the veins carry it back again to the lungs through the heart. 5. When the blood returns to the lungs, having made its circuit of the body, it is dark, for it is deprived of all its positive electricity. With these considerations before us we can see more readily how the lungs furnish the blood with organic elec- tricity. When an individual takes a deep breath he fills every single cell with air charged with electric force, or pos- itive electricity. When the heart pumps the blood into the lungs the blood is negatively charged, or, in other words, the venous blood has less electricity in it than the air, for the nerves have absorbed it. Here then is the situation : The lung cells are filled with air charged with positive electricity ; the blood on the other side of the cells is neg- atively charged and greedily hungry. What is the result ? The result is in accordance with electric law ; the positive electricity of the air rushes into the blood, and the blood, laden with electricity, passes on to every part of the body, 100 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. continuing to supply the nerves with the element that en- ables them to discharge their functions. The New Thought philosophy emphasizes the impor- tance of deep breathing, and from this explanation we can see the scientific accuracy of its advice. We are now prepared to give a satisfactory explanation of that strange, subtle and mighty power called " personal magnetism." It is universally admitted that such a force exists. The successful business man who sells you his goods even when you do not want them; the physician who cures more by his magnetic presence than by his drugs; the gen- eral who can enthuse an entire army by the force of his per- sonality ; the orator who can sway an audience as the storm bends the tops of the forest trees ; the actor who can make an audience weep over fiction as if it were fact ; the musi- cian who can play upon the emotions of his audience with as much ease as be can play upon his instrument ; the politician who can with shrewd persuasion incline even his enemy to vote for him ; the charming woman who can compel admir- ation from foe as well as friend, all these possess this strange power to an unusual degree. But how can we explain this power? Its philosophy is simply a question of nerves, nerve-force, circulation of nerve-force and the ability to conserve and wisely direct the resultant magnetism. Take a bar of common iron in which there is no active magne- tism, wrap an insulated wire around it, and then send a current of electricity through the wire ; while the current is passing through the wire the bar is invested with mag- netic powers, and the magnetic power displayed depends upon the strength of the electric current. Now, the bar of iron may represent the material that enters into the Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 10T structure of the body ; the insulated wire may represent the nerves; the current of electricity may represent the current of nerve-force ; the circulation of the nerve-force through the nerves invests the physical man with magne- tism, and the magnetic power a man possesses depends upon the amount of nerve-force and the man's ability to conserve it and wisely direct it. The man who has reached self-mas- tery has reached the point where he can control all the u resident-forces" of his mental and physical nature. The central power amongst these forces is the "ego." I have shown that thought-force is simply the ego sending out dynamic vibrations of his own essential nature. I have shown that nerve-force is organic electricity in dynamic action. I have shown that the " ego," being the supreme power, can marshal and direct thought-force and nerve-force, and by so doing the individual can reach the point of self-control. In the next chapter I propose to show how the individual can do this. I propose to take up the brain, the great cen- ter of all operations, both mental and physical. I will attempt to show its functions and laws, its divisions and possibilities in the light of the latest scientific conclusions, and I will endeavor to put into the hands of every reader of this volume the bridle and reins of his own life. Before concluding this chapter I would say that perfect self-control involves two grand conditions : 1. Complete mastery of the body and its forces by the spiritual man. 2. Complete mastery of the spiritual man by the infinite God. This is in full and perfect harmony with the very struc- ture and laws of the universe. The infinite Father is the 102 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. supreme force in the universe at large. All the laws of nature, as we have seen, are God's thoughts in dynamic action. In the human province man is the supreme force, and the laws that govern the body are the movements of thought-force in dynamic action. Since man is a unit in the great organic whole, harmony in man and harmony in the universe depend upon the complete subordination of every unit to the will of the master mind of the universe. If the above is true, then Jesus the Christ stands upon the page of history as the highest exhibition in human form of the perfect man. He had complete control over all the forces of his mind and body. He was master over all the forces of nature, and he was completely under the sweet mastery of the infinite Father. The man who attains to self-mastery in its highest sense must be conformed to the image of Jesus the Christ. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 103 CHAPTER Y. THE CONSCIOUS BRAIN THE SPIRITUAL MAN'S INSTRU- MENT IN THE VISIBLE REALM. A careful study of the brain and the manner in which the spiritual man operates through the brain is of supreme importance — Because', we need a plain, simple and practical ex- planation of how we can put the New Thought philosophy into practical operation. The New Thought philosophy makes comprehensive claims ; it claims to be the science and art of psycho-physical self-mastery and self-unfold- ment. It contains within itself the philosophy of man and his environment. Its teachers claim that they can give a man such a thorough knowledge of himself that he can master "all the resident forces" of body and spirit. Knowledge is power; knowledge is the lever whereby man can gain mastery of all the forces within and without himself Now, man as we know him is a composite personality ; he is a spiritual being manifesting himself through an ex- ternal form. To gain self-mastery we must know the spiritual man and the laws of thought-force; we must know the physical man and the laws of nerve-force : but, thought-force and nerve-force both operate through the brain, and complete self-mastery can not be obtained unless we know something about the brain and the manner in which the ego or spiritual man operates through it. VOLUNTARY ACQUIRE NERVE OF MOTION NERVE OF SENSATION Diagram of Brain and Sensori Motor Arcs. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 105 Some marvelous books have been written on the New Thought philosophy. From the idealistic standpoint they are sublime, lofty, beautiful; from the standpoint of lan- guage they are racy, lucid, sweet, charming, but the fault I find with them is this : they leave the reader surrounded by grand ideals and sublime visions ; they carry him up into the seventh heaven of exalted and rapturous con- ceptions, but the writers do not tell him how to carry these ideals and visions down to the earth plane and weave them into the structure of a living character. Nearly all the knowledge the spiritual man obtains he obtains through the nerves and brain. All influences, all sounds, all scenes, all forces, before they can reach the spiritual man, must come through the brain and nervous system. In fact, the nerves are simply prolongations of the brain, and, since you cannot insert the point of the finest cambric needle into the body without touching a nerve end, the whole body may be looked upon as the brain. The brain, then, is the spiritual man's receiving vehicle. The brain is also the great instrument through which the spiritual man operates. The spiritual man builds, uses and moulds the brain, and the brain in turn modifies the movements, limits the power and influences the action of the spiritual man. Just as the grub builds its own chrys- alis or the oyster builds its own shell, and the chrysalis and shell become hard and throw around the enclosed ani- mal inflexible limitations, so the spiritual man builds and moulds the brain, and the brain in the lapse of time as- sumes a rigid inflexibility in conformity with the nature of the spiritual man's predominant thought-force. We talk about men being "case-hardened," and the Bible says, 106 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. "God shall send strong delusion upon them that they should believe a lie, that all might be damned who re- ceive not the love of the truth but had pleasure in un- righteousness." Thought-force in dynamic action moulds* the brain into conformity with the nature of the thought- force in action, and in the lapse of time the brain assumes a rigid attitude which is difficult to change. The brain, then, may have a reflex influence upon the spiritual man, and whether it will influence him for good or bad depends upon how he has moulded it and what kind of thought- forces he has allowed to play upon it. This being true, a knowledge of the brain and the laws which govern it is of supreme importance in any system that claims to teach self-mastery. Again, a knowledge of the brain and the manner in which the spiritual man operates through it will save us- from a great many mistakes concerning the nature of man- The real man is the ego or the spiritual man. The phys- ical man is composed of material atoms. All the move- ments of life that we see in the body are movements of the spiritual man. The spiritual or real man is one^ All the intellectual powers, spiritual forces and physical energies are varied manifestations of the one spiritual man. I confess that I have very little respect for any system that destroys the unity of the spiritual man. I have very little respect for any philosophy of God that arbitrarily separates the one supreme God into three, and then makes one of these Gods stand between man and the supreme God of the three to save man from the outbursts- of rage on the part of the supreme God. The invisible, Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 107 eternal, infinite God is one, and the spiritual man is made in his image and of necessity must be one. Furthermore, if man in his composite nature, as we know him, is the universe in miniature, he must be one, for the meaning of the word universe, from the Latin " uno " one and " versus " to turn, meaning turned into one, dem- onstrates the unity of man. Some writers arbitrarily divide the spiritual man up into two, others into three, and then turn the province of man's being into a battle-field for a dual or a triple contest for victory. I am of the opinion that these writers mistake the manifestations of the spir- itual man for his real essence. The spiritual man is essen- tially one, but his manifestations are multiform. To illustrate what I mean : The essence of light is one, its manifestations are numerous, and the manifestation is con- ditioned upon the medium through which the light passes. Astronomers have shown us that the light from the sun on its passage to the earth passes through an enveloping at- mosphere of metallic vapors, and the metals forming these vapors can be known by the lines cast by the spectrum. Electricity is one, but its manifestations are varied. It can be manifested in the form of light, heat or power, and the nature of the manifestation is determined by the mechanism through which the electricity passes. The spiritual man is one, his manifestations are varied, and the nature of the manifestation is conditioned by the mechan- ism through which the spiritual man directs his energy. Through the eye the spiritual man comes into contact with light, through the ear he comes into contact with sound. Every organ of the body has its own specific function, and the manifestation of the spiritual man through that organ 108 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. is determined by its structure. The entire body is con- trolled by the spiritual man through the brain. I am of the opinion that every cell in the body is represented by a cell in the brain. The various organs of the body are composed of associated cells. The brain contains within its compass groups of associated cells representing the as- sociated cells of the various organs. The brain, then, is the seat of representative govern- ment, and the entire physical man is controlled by the spiritual man operating through groups of associated cells in the brain. There are in the brain cells numbering from six hundred millions to a thousand millions. The brain substance is wrapped up in the form of convolutions, and, as we shall see further on in this chapter, the brain is used by the spiritual man as the organ of mental operations as well as physical. The extent of brain area is determined by the depth and fineness of the convolutions. The ex- tent of area is extent of mental power, because extent of area is extent of capacity. A man may have a large head, but the convolutions may be coarse and shal- low, giving small capacity. Another man may have a small head, but the convolutions may be deep and fine, giving him large capacity. Dr. Schofield, in his book on the " Unconscious Mind," says: "Besides the obvious divisions of the brain into greater or lesser, or cerebrum and cerebellum, and into right and left, we may divide the brain into three regions consisting from above downward of surface brain, mid- brain and lower brain, each of these containing a large proportion of the active agent in brain- work known as grey matter, which consists of masses of brain cells. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them, 109 The medulla, or lower brain, connects the spinal cord below with the mid-brain above, and is, as Herbert Spencer says, " the coordinating center of most associated move- ments." It is, in fact, the organizing center for carrying on all the processes connected with the passive or vegetative life of the body. All the processes carried on here are far below the level of consciousness. The basal ganglia of the mid-brain are principally three in number : the corpora quadrigemina connected with sight, the corpora striata with motion, and the optic thalami connected with sensation. In this mid-brain we see the organization of the functions of animal life subject to the highest centers and conducted below the level of conscious- Lastly, we come to the surface brain, the seat of con- scious mental life and the source of all voluntary actions. According to this there are in the brain : 1. Three regions, the outer brain, the mid- brain and the lower brain. 2. These three regions are intimately connected with each other, forming parts of one whole. 3. These three divisions govern, respectively, three distinct functions in man — namely, the vegetative, the an- imal and the intellectual. 4. The lower brain governs the vegetative, the mid- brain the animal and the upper brain the intellectual. 5. The operations of the lower and mid-brain are all performed below the level of consciousness. 6. The operations of the upper brain are all performed above the level of consciousness. In this book I shall examine the brain under two di- 110 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. visions, the conscious and subconscious, and I am governed in my decision by two reasons: First. According to tbe quotation above, the opera- tions of the mid-brain and the lower brain are all conducted below the level of consciousness, and the operations of the upper brain are conducted above the level of conscious- ness. In accordance with this, which seems to be the latest declaration of physiological science, I shall treat the mid and lower brain under one head — the subconscious brain, and the upper brain under the term the conscious brain. We talk about the " submerged tenth " when we speak of that portion of humanity that lives in the slums, but our mental philosophers have been slow to recognize the submerged nine tenths of the spiritual man. During this twentieth century the most astonishing discoveries will be in regard to the part of man that is submerged be- neath the threshold of consciousness. Second. As we proceed in our investigations we will dis- cover that there are two great laws operating in the realm of the brain. The portion of the brain that is submerged beneath the level of consciousness is governed by one law, and the portion of the brain above the level of conscious- ness is governed by another law. In other words, the conscious brain, or the brain whose operations are con- ducted in the sunlight of conscious knowledge, is gov- erned by the will; and the subconscious brain, or the brain whose operations do not rise into the realm of conscious- ness, is governed by suggestion. Now, because the limits of the province of the will are the limits of the conscious brain, and the limits of the province of suggestion are the limits of the middle and lower brain, I shall examine the Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. Ill brain under two heads, the conscious and the subconscious brain. 1. The spiritual or real man is one. 2. The spiritual man conducts all his operations through the brain. 3. The agents employed by the spiritual man in his operations through the brain are thought-force and nerve- force. 4. The spiritual man is a resident of two realms, the in- visible or inner universe, the visible or outer universe; he lives in the realm of causes and in the realm of effects. 5. Since the spiritual man lives in two realms, the inner and the outer, and since he operates in these two realms, and since all his operations are conducted through the brain, it becomes necessary that man possess a duality in the brain. 6. The spiritual man operates in the external universe through the conscious or external brain, and he operates in the internal universe through the subconscious or in- ternal brain. 7. Because man lives in two realms, the realm of spirit and the realm of matter, and because he uses the brain in all his operations, the brain must be capable of a double action — spiritual and physical. This being true, the con- scious brain is the instrument of all conscious intellectual operations and voluntary muscular action ; the subconscious brain is the instrument of all subconscious intellectual operations and involuntary muscular actions. With these general statements before us we will enter into a more detailed consideration of the conscious and subconscious brains, their laws, functions and powers. I am aware that the subject is deep and mysterious and 112 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. fraught with many difficulties, but it is profoundly inter- esting, and I hope to be able to give the reader a glimpse into the vast regions of the inner man and help him to ar- rive at a clearer knowledge of the laws that govern these realms. And first we will take up the conscious brain. 1 . The conscious brain stands guard at life's outposts. It is through this brain that the spiritual man within comes into contact with the external universe. The spiritual man operates outward in all directions through the nerve centers of this brain, and the spiritual man obtains his knowledge of the external universe through this brain. Away down in the deep realms of the subconscious the gateway opens for the entrance of the new individual. He remains in the shadowy antechamber to be robed in a physical form fitted for earthly environments. After nine months in the antechamber the gateway to earth opens, and generally with a groan the spiritual man arrives on the earth plane to commence the struggle for perfection. Now, it is my opinion that just as the giant oak tree lies capsulate in the acorn, so lying capsulate in the uncon- scious infant is the plan of a great individual. Whether this ideal plan of a magnificent individual will be thrown into external form or not depends largely upon the en- vironments of the after-life. It is an interesting study to watch the slow development of the child. Holland asks the significant questions: 11 Who can tell what a baby thinks ? fWho can follow the gossamer links By which the manikin feels his way Out from the shores of the great unknown, Blind and wailing and alone, Into the light of day ? " Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 113 It is impossible for us to reproduce the baby's experience as he feels his way out of the shadowy realms of uncon- sciousness into the light of consciousness, but we can trace by observation the steps of his slow development. The baby, when he comes here, knows nothing of his sur- roundings. He remains in the realm of unconsciousness until the conscious brain is formed. The bones of the head are left open to give room for the growth of the conscious brain. The spiritual man within cannot come into touch with the external world until the organ of communication is constructed. This organ is the external or conscious brain. How the spiritual man, slowly emerg- ing from the deeps of the invisible, builds this organ is a question that defies solution. That this brain is slowly constructed to meet the ever -increasing demands of the spiritual man is a fact. As this brain is gradually built the child's conscious world widens as Tennyson says: "The baby, new to earth and sky, What time his tender hand has pressed Against the circle of the breast Has never known that this is I. Bat as he grows he gathers much And learns the use of I and me, And learns I am not the things I touch And other than the things I see. So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory doth begin, While through the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined." Now the spiritual man comes here to discover what he is, to find out where he is, to be instructed in his own possi- bilities and in the nature of his surroundings, and to de- 8m 114 Unseen Forces and. How to Use Them. velop his individuality; and since the conscious brain is the organ through which he obtains a large share of this knowledge, then this brain ought to be thoroughly efficient and adapted to perform with perfect precision its special work. This brain stands at the outer door of the throne- room where the spiritual man sits in state. The business of this outer guard is to guard the king against all in- truders, inspect the credentials of all who would seek audience, and give the monarch within an accurate de- scription of all that transpires within the limits of his ob- servation outside of the palace. Dropping the figure of speech, we find that the conscious brain, when fully de- veloped, is in possession of all the powers that eminently fit it to protect the spiritual man within in case of attack and guard him against wrong impressions of the external universe. The function of the conscious brain : It stands guard at life's outposts. Because of this the spiritual man, operating through this material organ, 1. Can reason — By the use of these powers the spiritual man sifts and inspects all impressions from without. 2. Through this brain the spiritual man exerts his will- power ; it is the seat of the nerve-centers that control all voluntary muscular movement. It is the domain of will. Beyond the limits of this brain the will does not seem to have any power. 3. Through this brain the spiritual man becomes con- scious of sensation ; it is the registering center for all con- scious feeling. By deduction By analysis By synthesis Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 115 4. Through this brain the spiritual man becomes con- scious of knowledge. It is the illuminated room where the spiritual man inspects all knowledge that comes from with- out, and it is the place where all knowledge from within stops to be subjected to a rigid scrutiny before it is trun- dled out to the world. The conscious brain is the cus- toms house of the kingdom of man. 5. In this brain the spiritual man can only entertain one idea at a time. The train of ideas entering, or the train of ideas going out, must wait in single file and enter singly, then pass on, and the spiritual man cries, " Next." 6. In this brain the spiritual man deals exclusively with the external rim of things in general, the external move- ments of the body, the external forces of the external uni- verse. This brain has nothing to do with the building of the body, the governance of the interior vital organs, the involuntary movements or the faculty of intuition. With these general propositions before us to guide us we will proceed to elaborate them. The conscious brain is the throne-room of reason. In other words, the spiritual man, when he enters the con- scious brain, enters the region where he exercises the power of reason. The baby is largely under the control of in- stinct. In the baby the subconscious brain is in a good state of development, but the conscious brain is not as yet developed, and the baby cannot exercise the powers of rea- son until the conscious brain is grown. It the conscious brain remains undeveloped the result is idiocy. We talk ^bout " men being weak in the upper story," and we speak wiser than we know; when we use this expression we ex- press a scientific fact. 116 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. As the baby unfolds and the conscious brain grows in re- sponse to the demands of the growing spiritual man within, in the course of time the child begins to exercise the pow- ers of reason. When the conscious brain is fully devel- oped the reasoning powers have reached their maturity. Through this brain the spiritual man studies the external universe and subjects all things that come to him from the external universe to a thorough inspection. Operating through this brain the spiritual man can subject the ques- tion under inspection to a rigid aualysis, a careful synthe- sis. He can employ the inductive method or the deduc- tive method. In fact, he can examine the question from all standpoints and thereby come into possession of its true nature. Through this brain the spiritual man emerges into the sunlight of conscious action ; through it he operates in all visible realms; through it he comes into contact with his fellows. This is the brain he uses during his hours of wakefulness. All the magnificent retinue of sounds and scenes, ideas and influences, that seek to enter the throne-room of the spiritual man must stop here for examination. All the retinue of ideas and influences that the spiritual man desires to externalize ought to stop here for examination. Unfortunately for the world a good many of us rush our stuff into the market without stop- ping to have it examined. " We ought to think twice be- fore we speak once/' f< The sober second thought is always the best." I am of the opinion that nearly all the devil- ment that shames humanity and darkens the face of society is planned in the conscious brain. The conscious brain is the throne-room of will. It is. very important that the spiritual man, during his hours of Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 117 conscious activity, should have around him the tools to carry his decisions into action. When the spiritual man sits in judgment on a question and adjudicates it in the light of reason, he then announces his will concerning it. The will is simply the final decision of the spiritual man in dynamic action. The baby has a will, but it has no physical organ in the shape of a conscious brain to carry that will into action. The baby is a bundle of helpless potentialities. It does not know what to do with its hands or legs. It is successful as a suction-pump, but its suction powers are governed by blind instinct. As the conscious brain slowly grows the child begins to exercise will-power. He begins to sit in judgment upon questions and declare his decisions. Long before he can intelligently explain his reasons he affirms his decision. The conscious brain is the spiritual man's executive mansion ; he announces his will here, and through this brain he carries his will into exe- cution. During the months of infancy he is down in the subconscious realms, and does not seem to care what is going on in the sunlit regions above him. After the con- scious brain is grown the spiritual man spends one third of his time in the subconscious realms, for he retires into the subconscious brain when he goes to sleep. The will is absolute master in the conscious brain. All the nerve centers that control the voluntary movements of the muscles are in the conscious brain. During his wake- ful hours the spiritual man is surrounded with millions of electric buttons in the shape of nerve centers. These nerve centers control the voluntary movements of every muscle and set of muscles in the body. Any man can see the marvelous wisdom of this arrangement. While the 118 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. spiritual man is operating in the external universe the vol- untary muscles are the tools he uses ; it becomes necessary that he have all the tools he uses within easy hand reach. The conscious brain is the seat of all conscious feeling. In other words, it is the registering center of all conscious sensation. Turn to the chart of the brain and you will find an explanation of what I mean. Insert the point of a needle at the point A in the skin. The nerve of sensa- tion carries the sensation up through the spinal cord to the conscious brain center; if the sensation could be made to return by short circuit through any of the reflex centers the individual would never perceive the sensation; if the feeling is to rise into consciousness it must pass up into the conscious brain and be registered there. When the sensation reaches the conscious brain the individual be- comes conscious of pain, and since the conscious brain is the throne-room of will and the spiritual man controls all voluntary movements from this region, he sends a com- mand down the nerve of motion removing the needle or withdrawing the portion of the body that is being punc- tured. No sensation is felt until it rises into and is regis- tered in the conscious brain. Strip off the conscious brain and the individual may live but he will be void of all con- scious feeling. When the associated nerve centers con- trolling sensation in any part of the body are paralyzed, the power to move it may remain but the power to feel in that portion of the body is destroyed. The conscious brain then is the seat of all conscious sensation. This being a demonstrated fact, we can explain the action of chloroform and other anesthetics. The brain is composed of minute cells; these cells must cohere or come together Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 119 to form a roadway along which thought-force and nerve- force travel. When chloroform or gas or any other anes- thetic is taken, it goes to the brain and destroys the power of the brain cells to cohere by temporary paralysis. The part of the brain first affected is the conscious region. Now when the brain cells that register sensation are par- alyzed and their power to cohere is destroyed, conscious sensation is impossible. Now if the centers that control the heart and other vital organs were in the conscious brain, the administration of anesthetics would always result in death. In thousands of instances the giving of anesthetics does result in death. Why ? Because the administrator gives too much and the paralysis of the nerve centers ad- vances from the conscious to the subconscious, and when the paralysis seizes the nerve centers in the subconscious that control the heart and other vital organs the individual dies. That the conscious brain is the seat of sensation is also demonstrated by the action of alcohol on the brain. If a moderate quantity of alcohol be taken the voluntary nerve centers are excited. But if this is exceeded and larger quantities are swallowed, symptoms of paralysis of the conscious brain are seen in the loss of will-power and con- scious control over actions. While at the same time the individual can perform automatic actions such as singing well-known songs and dancing well-known dances, this shows that the paralysis has not as yet reached the subcon- scious brain, the seat of all reflex actions or habits. Here is an instance : a woman engaged to play at a private concert took too much drink at supper, and the result was she not only kept on playing too long when she returned to the 120 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. piano, but whenever her fingers came in contact with the keys she started playing like an automatic music-box and could not stop. If more alcohol be swallowed the paralysis extends still further downward and involves the portions of the brain that control the associated muscles employed in the act of standing, and the victim falls to the floor. All automatic actions then cease, the man no longer sings or dances ; he is "dead drunk, " which means that the alcohol has de- stroyed the cohering power of all the nerve centers of the brain, with the exception of the extreme lower portion — the medulla, which still quietly carries on the vital functions of life. Now if the man could drink any more he would die, but he cannot drink any more at the time because the nerve centers that control the arm are paralyzed, and fortu- nately for him these centers are paralyzed before the paralysis reaches the centers that control the vital organs. Thousands would kill themselves by drink every day were it not for the interposition of this simple physiological law. The arm is first rendered powerless and the man cannot raise the poison to his lips. Now, when this condition en- sues, if some companion would pour the alcohol down his throat the man would die, because the paralysis would in- volve the nerve centers of the lower brain, thus depriving the heart and all the vital organs of their motive power. Alcoholism, or in plain words drunkenness, is the greatest curse afflicting humanity because it paralyzes the delicate nerve centers of the brain. In the case of the confirmed drunkard the brain is saturated with alcohol and has become cheesy, incapable of discharging its func- tions as the responsive organ of the spiritual man, and Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 121 If the man continues to drink the brain tissue is wrecked, the man is afflicted with destructive diseases and speedily tumbles into a premature grave. Any drug that has a tendency to paralyze these delicate nerve centers is dangerous. Medical practitioners are criminal when they prescribe morphine and chloral or any other drug that has a tendency to produce paralysis of the nerve centers of the brain. They say they do it to deaden pain. Yes, but in thousands of instances they put a knife in the hands of the sufferer to commit suicide. Sometimes the physician is compelled to give an anesthetic, as in the -case of surgical operations. In these cases he ought to be very careful, for thousands have been killed on the operat- ing-table by poisonous drugs administered by reckless practitioners. Some drugs, like cocain and strychnin, increase the co- hering power of the nerve centers ; others, like alcohol, morphine and chloral, destroy the cohering power. In each case there is a disturbance created which interferes with the normal operations of nature, and the result, if the practice is kept up, is destructive. The advance of medicine is as slow as " molasses in win- ter." Medical practitioners are paralyzed by the medical creeds of the past. When will they learn that there is a natural and harmless method provided by nature of ren- dering the patient unconscious of pain. A man can be put into "a deep sleep " by obeying a law that operates in his own brain. This is the natural method. All other meth- ods are artificial, and because they are artificial they are injurious. Any departure from nature's methods is more harmful than helpful. That method is hypnotism. Fur- 122 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. ther on in this volume I will explain hypnotism and show that there is no difference between hypnotism and sleep, for both are the result of the operation of the same law. In hypnotism no foreign element is introduced into the system. A foreign element is introduced when any chem- ical anesthetic is given. When an element that can not be assimilated and become a natural part of the living tissue of the body is introduced into the body, all the life-forces orgauize in battle array to drive the intruder out. This principle explains the "so-called action of medicine." The medicine does not act on the patient; the patient acts on, the medicine. All the vital forces are roused into action to eject the intruder speedily and forcibly. When hypno- tism is resorted to in surgical operations the operator obeys a natural law in the brain producing unconsciousness, and by obeying the same law he can rouse the patient to con- sciousness at will, free from pain, without any injury to the delicate nerve centers and without taxing the system in forcing it to eliminate any foreign element. Furthermore, the conscious brain is the seat of all conscious- knowledge. This is perfectly reasonable, because the conscious brain is the region into which the spiritual man must emerge before he can become conscious of anything. The vast region of the subconscious in man may be likened to a deep under- ground reservoir; the conscious brain may be likened to the stream above ground that flows into the reservoir and flows out. Man is a receiver, and he is also a giver. A refusal to give violates one of the natural laws upon which man is built. Man receives to give, and the more man gives the greater becomes his capacity to receive and the more he receives. Jesus, the great teacher, said: "Give and it Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 123 shall be given unto you; good measure pressed down r shaken together and running over shall men return unto your bosom." A self-contained life is a violation of the established order of the universe. Altruism, or receiving in order to- give to the other fellow who needs it, is in harmony with the established order of things. The conscious brain is- the receiver of knowledge, and is also the giver of knowl- edge; it is the channel of communication to and from the outside world. In this illuminated chamber the spiritual man becomes conscious of all that passes in and all that passes out. All during our wakeful hours there is a con- stant procession of ideas passing in and passing out. The- conscious brain can only entertain one idea at a time. To think that we can entertain a multitude of ideas at one time is an error. A close scrutiny of our conscious men- tal activity shows that we can not entertain more than one idea at a time. Our mental movements are quicker than the flash of lightning ; because of this we imagine that we can concentrate upon a number of ideas at once. In logic one of its fundamental axioms is that "no two ob- jects can occupy the same place at the same time." Now, i( thoughts are things." A thought is one of the substantial entities of the universe, and in the science of mind the spiritual man can not focus his mind upon two ideas at the same time and in the same place. When the spiritual man concentrates all his conscious mental powers upon an idea, he can not exercise his conscious mental powers in any other direction. The conscious brain is the seat of the will, and the will is simply the thought-forces of the spiritual man concentrated upon a single purpose. 124 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. Now we will see further on in this chapter that the sub- conscious brain is governed by suggestion, and we have already seen that the conscious brain examines all thoughts and suggestions, modifying them, correcting them or re- jecting them before they pass into the subconscious realm. Now, if you can succeed in concentrating a man's atten- tion upon an idea and succeed in holding his attention there, you can slip your suggestions into the subconscious brain without his knowing anything about it. All men who are successful in influencing others for good or evil instinc- tively operate upon this principle. They seize the man's hand, place their hand upon his shoulder, look him in the eye, concentrate his attention upon an idea, and the conscious brain, being fully occupied, does not perceive the sugges- tions as they slip in and take full possession of the sub- conscious brain. Afterwards the man will do the very thing the other man suggested he should do and think it is his own mind in operation. Pickpockets instinctively operate on the same principle. This is why they mix with great crowds bent on witnessing some interesting spectacle. Slippery, shrewd and keen, the pickpocket hunts his victim and waits his chance. As the horses, neck and neck, lashed by the jockeys, come thun- dering down the track, all the conscious powers of the in- dividual are concentrated upon the exciting scene. The pickpocket at this point relieves the gentleman of all his valuables. The successful hypnotist intelligently operates upon the same simple principle. He first gains the confidence and con- sent of the subject; he then concentrates his attention upon some object or idea, and the suggestion of sleep is then Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 125- given. This suggestion enters the subconscious brain because the attention of the outer guard is fully occupied, and before the subject is aware the suggestion of sleep pervades the entire region of the subconscious brain and he falls into a state of unconsciousness; and because the subconscious* brain is stronger than the conscious and is governed by suggestion, he can be held in that state by the will of the operator. It is important to remember that the conscious brain can only entertain one idea at a time. Again, the conscious brain has nothing directly to do> with the building of the body ; it has nothing to do directly with the work of controlling the involuntary movements of the muscles or the operations of the vital organs. It is true that the process of breathing is partially under the control of the conscious brain. We can up to a certain point stop the act of breathing. To stop the act of breath- ing beyond this point would jeopardize the life of the body, and because of this the subconscious rushes to the rescue,, overmasters the wilband the business of breathing is re- sumed. With the exception, then, of the respiratory sys- tem, which is partially under the control of the conscious brain, all the other vital organs of the body are governed, by the subconscious brain. The digestive, the lymphatic,, the reproductive, the eliminative and the circulatory sys- tems are dominated by the subconscious brain. All their operations are conducted below the level of consciousness. All these functions are intimately connected with the life,, growth and development of the body, and because of this. the machinery of their movements is automatic and sub- conscious. There is marvelous wisdom in this arrange- ment. It would be unfortunate, indeed, if all the move- 126 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. merits of the blood, the process of digestion, the process of elimination and the work of body-building should rise into the conscious realm. When the machinery is out of order it is proper that we become conscious of the derange- ment. But it would be confusion confounded if the regular normal movements of the subconscious machinery should be heard and felt in the conscious realm. It would be un- fortunate, too, if we were compelled to keep this machinery in operation by a continued act of the will. Under these circumstances we could not discharge any of the active duties of life. The conscious brain must be free. It is a wise arrangement to hand over the work of sustaining and building the body to the automatic nerve centers of the subconscious brain. By this division of labor the con- scious brain can attend to the conscious active duties of life. Now, while it is true that the conscious brain has noth- ing to do directly with the operations connected with the building and sustaining of the body, it is also true that the conscious brain can influence the nerve centers of the sub- conscious indirectly. The spiritual man is one, and he oper- ates exteriorly through the conscious brain ; he operates interiorly upon the body and its functions through the sub- conscious brain. Now the conscious and subconscious brain centers are closely connected ; because of this close connec- tion whatever vibrates one will vibrate the other. Affirma- tions made by the spiritual man in the conscious brain, by virtue of this close connection between the braius, reach and mould the subconscious centers in conformity to the nature and quality and force of the affirmation ; and just .as the shoe conforms to the living foot within, so the sub- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 127 •conscious brain centers assume a fixed attitude, conforming to the nature, quality and force of the repeated affirmations made by the spiritual man in the conscious brain. All the cures wrought by Christian Science are wrought in obedience to this simple law. The denials of Christian •Science are powerless ; its strength lies in its affirmations. The Christian Science healer crowds the conscious brain of the patient with powerful affirmations, such as "I am spirit"; therefore, "I am well"; "I cannot be sick." These affirmations are first accepted by the patient as suggestions. The healer commands him to repeat these suggestions con- tinually ; he tells the sufferer that his physical salvation depends upon his repetition of these suggestions, driven home with a faith unmixed with doubt. These suggestions then become affirmations ; the patient affirms " I am spirit"; •" spirit cannot be sick ;" " I am well ; " and he continues to affirm with grim determination in spite of all outward symptoms. Eventually these affirmations made by the spiritual man in the conscious brain mould the nerve cen- ters of the subconscious brain into conformity with the nature of the affirmation, and since the subconscious con- trols the vital functions of the body, the patient gets well and is ever after a champion of Christian Science. The cures wrought by Christiau Science healers, divine healers and faith curists are wrought in obedience to this simple principle. The champions of these systems are ignorant of the law they are obeying, and their explanations of how the cure is wrought is superstitious rot. All the cures wrought at the idol temples of Iudia, by the bones of Saint Ann, by the thigh bones of Saint Stephen, by the holy waters of the Ganges, the spa wells of Ireland, the sacred 123 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. fountain at Lourdes, by relics and charms and various other systems of cure, are wrought in obedience to this simple law. Absolute demonstration of this assertion is furnished when I say that a man can cure himself by obeying this law, while he rejects as pure folly all the theories of all the champions of these systems of cure. A man can auto-suggest himself into any state of mind or body he pleases. By repeated affirmations he can be- come an incarnate lie, or he can auto-suggest himself into an incarnate truth; he can become an incarnate failure or an incarnate success; he can auto-suggest himself into a self-created hell or self-created heaven ; he can auto-suggest himself into a state of chronic disease or into a state of permanent health. The law never changes, it works with automatic precision and unvarying accuracy. Like a milb it will grind out whatever you put into it. Like the sun- light, it will photograph the object placed before it. A man may deny the law, but his denial, by the operation of the law denied, will write the denial upon the brain. " As a man thinketh in his heart so is he" is a great scientific truth. It is an unchanging natural law. It shapes the material we furnish it into a form that accords with the quality and nature of the material furnished. Thought-force is the raw material it uses, and it manufac- tures this raw stuff into good or bad character, into good or bad health. The subconscious automatic brain machin- ery is the loom of life ; it weaves day and night. The spiritual man sits in the deep shadows of the subconscious at the loom, his foot presses the treadle, and the material to be woven into the structure of both body and soul is- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 129 furnished by the conscious brain. That great teacher Paul the apostle must have known something about this law when he said : " Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, ( think on these things." Thinking on these things consciously furnishes the sub- conscious weaver with splendid material to build up a per- manent and magnificent character. In the next two chapters I will examine the subcon- scious brain, its functions and powers. 9m 130 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. CHAPTER VI. MENT IN THE INVISIBLE REALM. The New Thought philosophy is sometimes called " the New Psychology/' because it deals with a phase of the mind the existence of which was stoutly denied by the mental philosophers of the past. The Old Psychology dealt exclusively with conscious mental activity. The in- vestigations of its teachers were conducted in this realm. Their specific purpose was to discover the laws, functions and possibilities of this phase of the spiritual man's self-ex- pression. That the spiritual man manifested himself in any other direction they denied with bitter vehemence, and when they attempted to explain all mental phenomena on the basis of their discoveries they failed miserably. The reason for their failure is very simple. The field of their outlook was too narrow. The laws of spiritual operation in the conscious brain, based on facts discovered in that realm, could explain all conscious mental phenomena, but these laws could not explain phenomena that transpired in the realms of the subconscious. Hypnotism, sleep, insanity, mental telepathy, some of the phenomena of spiritualism, prodigies in music and mathematics, could not be explained by the laws of the conscious brain, and the honest at- tempts of these great thinkers to solve these occult phe- nomena by the laws of the conscious always resulted in failure. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 131 The facts that we discover in any region in man or in the universe must be explained by the laws that govern that region. Astronomical facts cannot be explained by chemical laws; spiritual facts cannot be explained by physical laws ; a fact of digestion cannot be explained by the laws of respiration, nor can the fact of breathing be explained by the laws of digestion. A fact is the crystal- lized result of law ; to explain the fact we must understand the law that produced it. In accordance with this princi- ple the phenomena that transpire in the subconscious can not be explained by the laws of the conscious ; to under- stand them we must understand the nature of the laws that produced them. The New Thought, then, is fitly termed " the New Psy- chology," because it is an advance upon the old. The spirit of progress has entered all realms, and mental phi- losophy is reaping the benefits of its influence. The New Thought broadens the conception of mind ; it declares that the realm of consciousness in man is only a small segment of the circle of man's self-expression. The spiritual man throws himself outward through the conscious brain into the external universe of forces and facts, and he throws himself inward through the subconscious brain, and deals with the inward forces and facts of the body and the internal universe. The New Thought opens the door into the unseen uni- verse, and declares that the unseen universe is the only real and permanent universe ; that the seen universe is a system of temporary scaffoldings merely. It declares that the unseen spiritual man is the only real and permanent 132 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. man ; that the body and its brain are only temporary scaf- foldings for the spiritual man in this time world. The New Thought declares that the spiritual man operates in the unseen universe as well as in the seen, and that the giant possibilities of man lie far below the level of con- sciouness. Just as the body of the Sphinx exquisitely carved lies beneath the shifting sands, so beneath the changing scenes of the external lies the real man in all his giant power and exquisitely balanced forces. It declares that the achievements of the individual on the seen plane are only a small fragment of what he can do and does do. Man is far greater than he appears to be. It is a one-sided and fragmentary study of man when we investigate his conscious activity only and limit his power to his spiritual movements in the external. The activity of the spiritual man in the deep unseen sub- conscious realms is a far grander revelation of his powers than that furnished by his activity in the conscious realms. All the forces that man exhibits in the conscious must rise out of the subconscious, and no man can put forth bis full strength through the conscious brain ; it would wreck the delicate nerve tissues. When we see an insane man smash- ing chains, bursting through massive doors and performing giant feats of strength, we have a faint conception of the strength that resides in man. When we consider the in- tellectual achievements of men of genius in all departments of human action, it gives us a faint idea of the vast treas- ures of intellectual power that are in man. But the question naturally arises: How does the New Thought philosopher propose to enter this deep and mysterious realm below the plane of the conscious to pursue his inves- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 133 tigations ? He has already entered through the door opened by hypnotism. Hypnotism sustains the same rela- tion to the study of the subconscious as the light shining on the cadaver does to the study of anatomy. A knowledge of anatomy can never be obtained from books. The student must enter the dissecting-room, armed with scalpel and mi- croscope, and he must have before him on the dissecting- table the human body, and he must minutely dissect every part of the body before he can come into possession of the anatomical principles upon which the body is constructed. The human body is the text-book of anatomy, and the subconscious brain is the text-book of the philosophy of the subconscious, and hypnotism is the means whereby we enter the realms of the subconscious; and in the light fur- nished by hypnotism we can study the operations of the spiritual man in the subconscious. Hypnotism is a science. Perhaps nothing illustrates better the fact that hypnotism occupies a foremost place amongst the leading sciences of to-day than the report of the International Congress of Hypnotism which was held in Paris, August 12, 1900, in the building of the Congress of Medicine. Twenty-four different nationalities were rep- resented in this congress by over five hundred delegates, including college professors, medical men and scientists from both continents. Hypnotism is not in itself the science of the subconscious; it is the science of entrance. Science is simply another word for the how. Hypnotism does not claim to formulate how the forces in the subcon- scious operate, but it does claim to show hoiv to enter the domain of the subconscious. Hypnotism has demonstrated beyond the possibility of a 134 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. doubt that the spiritual man can and does operate in the realm of the subconscious. Apart from the facts furnished by hypnotism, the feats of the somnambulist and the phys- ical and intellectual performances accomplished in sleep have given intimations that man can exert physical and intellectual energy when he is not conscious of it. But the vast array of facts furnished by hypnotism have ban- ished doubt on this question forever. I do not make this assertion upon the testimony of others merely. I am an investigator myself, and I have succeeded in putting scores to sleep. My purpose in doing this was : 1. To demonstrate to my own satisfaction that hypno- tism was possible. 2. To demonstrate that man can exert physical and in- tellectual power in a state of utter unconsciousness. 3. To discover whether the subconscious brain is gov- erned by suggestion or not. 4. To test the power of suggestion in relieving pain and curing disease through the subconscious brain. After numerous experiments under varying conditions I have demonstrated to my own complete satisfaction that hypnotism is a science ; that man can exert giant strength, both physical and intellectual, and remain utterly unconscious of it ; that the subconscious brain is governed by suggestion, and that pain and any form of disease will yield to the suggestive treatment. With these preliminary remarks we are prepared to ad- vance to our study of the subconscious brain. For convenience sake I will state the substance of this and the following chapter in the form of propositions : Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 135 1. In the subconscious brain the spiritual man stands guard at life's citadel. 2. The subconscious is the seat from which the spiritual man controls the involuntary movements of the muscles and the movements of all the vital machinery of the body. 3. Through the subconscious brain centers the spiritual man controls all automatic actions or acquired habits, such as walking, speaking, piano-playing, skating, swearing, drinking^ etc. 4. In the subconscious realm the spiritual man is gov- erned by suggestion. 5. In this realm the spiritual man never forgets. 6. In this realm the spiritual man never sleeps. 7. This realm is the great laboratory of thought. 8. In this realm the spiritual man deals with the inner universe and the interior of the body. Here the spiritual man is free from the limitations of time and space. Here he comes into contact with God and the invisible forces of the unseen. We will now proceed to elaborate and illustrate these propositions. Through the agency of the subconscious brain the spirit- ual man guards the citadel of life. This is the first part of the brain that lives, and it is the last part that dies. Life is communication with environment. The spiritual man communicates with the body and the external uni- verse through the brain and nervous system. The refined and subtle agency employed by the spiritual man in his operations through the brain and nerves is nerve-force; the power that drives nerve-force is thought- force ; thought- force is the will of the spiritual man in dynamic action. 136 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. Since life is communication with environment, the fullest, richest and grandest life in the physical sense demands that the nerves and the brains be healthy ; that there be an abundant supply of nerve-force, and that the spiritual man be sufficiently strong to send forth powerful thought- waves to every portion of the body. Now we have seen already that the part of the brain that brings the spiritual man into direct contact with the external universe is the conscious or surface brain. When the spirit- ual man retires from this brain the individual is asleep ; he has vacated the organ that brings him into communication with his external surroundings, and he is therefore blissfully unconscious of them. Insanity is very often a disease of the conscious brain. Some great grief or intense emo- tion has swept in powerful vibration through the delicate nerve centers of the brain and wrecked them. The nature of the insanity is conditioned upon the effects Wrought in the nerve tissues by the wave of intense emotion that has swept through them. In some forms of insanity the en- tire machinery of the conscious brain is thrown out of gear and the spiritual man cannot use it at all. Under the circumstances he is compelled to retire to the subcon- scious. I met a man some years ago who informed me that he had just come from the asylum, where he had been for five years. He said : "The strangest part of my story is that I was not conscious a single moment of the time, and yet, while these five years are to me a complete blank, I filled them with successful achievements. I wrote and delivered orations to my companions. I patented a num- ber of useful inventions and seemed to have the ability to discharge all the duties of life." A case of this kind finds Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 137 simple explanation on the theory that the spiritual man could not use the conscious brain because all its delicate machinery was thrown out of gear. The material sub- stratum through which the spiritual man comes into con- tact with the external world being wrecked, the man remained in an unconscious state for five years. The sub- conscious brain acted as a willing substitute for the con- scious brain until the life-forces could readjust it. Death itself is simply the retirement of the spiritual man from the brain, and death is not complete until the spirit- ual man vacates the last cell of the subconscious brain cen- ters. The subconscious brain is the last to surrender to the law of death. Life is communication with environment; death is the retirement of the spiritual man from the channels of com- munication. This being so, the advance of old age and death becomes a problem easy of solution. When the child is born the skeleton is composed of gela- tin. To build up this framework and make it sufficiently strong to sustain the pull on the muscles nature provides that abundant quantities of lime be taken into the system. This lime changes the gelatin into bone. Instead of the process of ossification ceasing at the age of physical maturity it continues. A certain quantity of lime is needed to re- pair waste bone tissue. The overplus ought to be elimina- ted from the system through the kidneys. This overplus is not entirely eliminated and the process of ossification continues. Limy deposits are formed in the skin and it becomes dry, hard and wrinkled. Deposits of lime are formed along the inside walls of the capillary system and the blood must force its way through. The nerves become 138 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. bony, preventing the free and easy flow of nerve-force. The heart muscles, through lime deposits, become stiff and non-responsive. The ossification continues until, at length,, the brain is involved, rendering its delicate tissue hard, fixed and non-responsive. Under these physical conditions the channels of communication that the spiritual man ha& with the outside world are gradually closed up ; the extrem- ities become cold, and the process of ossification drives the spiritual man back and back until he is compelled to va- cate entirely. When a man dies of old age we can say literally that he has been pelted to death with pellets of lime. If some man would discover a method whereby the- process of ossification which commences in the child could be reversed when the man reaches physical maturity, then human life could be indefinitely prolonged. The law of longevity from this view -point would be, dissolve the cal- careous deposits, sweep them out of the system, retaining just sufficient to keep the bony framework in good repair. It has been stated upon good authority that fruits of all kinds and distilled water will dissolve the lime and assist the eliminative organs in removing it from the system. The act of dying is not complete until the spiritual man vacates every cell in the subconscious brain. The spiritual man is not willing to retire, and he fights for his supremacy at every step of his retreat, and his last valiant stand is made in the ramparts of the subconscious brain. In this age of marvelous invention and discovery we hear a great deal about " the conquest of death. " A great many theories are furnished showing how death can be- banished from the earth and man become immortal. One man says : " Inhale vast quantities of oxygen." Another Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 139 says : " Give subcutaneous injections of pure salt solution. " Another says : " Spiritualize the body by unfolding the spiritual man to his highest and richest development." Another says: "Banish the delusive notion of death by denial." Another says : " Dissolve the limy deposits." Another says : " Discover a serum that will kill all mi- crobes." All these theories have a beneficial effect in pro- longing life, but none of them have as yet succeeded in conquering death. That grim old monarch sits upon his throne of skulls and continues killing off generation after generation. The New Thought philosopher knows that the law of decay is one of the deep and profound laws of the universe. To destroy this law a man must overturn the universe itself. Progress from the lower to the higher is based upon the law of decay. Geology proves conclusively that long before the days of Adam death reigned, and that in the construc- tion of this planet the grim old contractor furnished the material. Just as the builder places his name upon the marble of the building he has constructed, so death has stamped his sign manual upon every atom of the material universe. The universe was born in the womb of death. There can be no life without death, for life springs out of the ruins of death. " Except a corn of wheat die it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." There can be no advance without death. The materials furnished by death are used to build the ladder to loftier heights of power and achievement. Liberty, that priceless boon, is written in letters of blood. Civilization advances along a roadway constructed by death — the death of old methods, ideas and theories. 140 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. The New Thought philosopher knows that progress to the higher, holier and grander is through the gates of death. The spiritual man must step out of the lower to enter the higher. When the spiritual man vacates " this earthly tabernacle v it falls to the ground, and under the law of disintegration it is resolved back to its original condition. Why should it disintegrate? Simply because the power that built it cell by cell, and held it together in its integ- rity, is withdrawn, and, like any other old house vacated by its owner and left tenantless, it goes to pieces. The New Thought philosopher knows that death to the man who is aspiring to reach the highest is a step in a grander advance. The things that he objects to are : 1. Being sick. He declares that sickness is unnatural and abnormal, and that the spiritual man can banish sick- ness. It is not necessary to be sick in order to pass up- wards through death. Let death come in its natural order. Like the apple perfectly ripe dropping from the tree, or like the beautiful butterfly unfolding from the chrysalis, death ought to be a painless step in the upward advance. 2. He objects to being put uuder six feet of earth in a black coffin before he has vacated the premises. To bury a man alive is a forcible ejection, and a forcible ejection is always painful. When you consider that in death the conscious brain is first vacated, and that the subconscious brain is the last vacated, and that death is not consum- mated until the last cell of the subconscious brain is vacated by the spiritual man, one can readily see how, mistaking unconsciousness for death, a man may be buried alive. In the natural normal order of things it was designed that the spiritual man remain a tenant of the body until Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 141 lie is fitted to take an advance step upwards. Under these circumstances it would be unwise to give the will direct control over the machinery that governs the vital organs ; therefore, 1. All the machinery that sustains and protects life is governed by the spiritual man through the nerve centers of the subconscious brain. 2. This machinery acts automatically, instantaneously and continually. When a man commits suicide the deep subconscious instinctive desire for continuance in the body is mastered by the presence of outward circumstances, or else the nerve centers are shattered by disease or wrecked by some powerful emotion. Suicide is utterly repugnant to the healthy subconscious brain. All its forces are leagued against death. The purpose of the spiritual man operating through this brain is to marshal all the forces in the body towards one grand end — namely, a strong, vigor- ous, healthy life. This subconscious marshaling of all forces in the body towards health is what the doctors call " the life forces of nature," and they say that their work is to " assist nature." I deeply sympathize with poor nature when the "young doctor" comes around carrying his minia- ture drug store under his arm. Instead of assisting nature he fills the system with poisonous drugs, giving nature addi- tional work to remove this poison from the system. The best way to assist nature is to study and find out how na- ture does things and let all methods of cure harmonize with nature's methods. All the cures that ever have been wrought have been wrought by the life-forces of the spir- itual man operating through the subconscious brain centers. This deep subconscious tendency in the human brain to- 142 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. wards health proves that the subconscious brain centers guard life's citadel. Again, the fact that all the vital organs are governed through the subconscious nerve centers proves the same proposition. The entire conscious or surface brain can be removed and all the vital organs will discharge their func- tions with automatic precision. Remove the subconscious brain, and the heart, lungs, stomach, liver, kidneys and all the internal vital machinery would stop. Again, the fact that the nerve centers that control the involuntary movements of the muscles are in the subcon- scious brain demonstrates the correctness of the proposi- tion. In the case of the drowning man his first efforts to save himself when he finds himself in the water are conscious. In a few minutes he loses consciousness, and then the involuntary nerve centers of the subconscious brain are brought into action and he automatically seizes his rescuer with a grip of steel, dragging him down to death with him. Under these circumstances the spiritual man, operating through the subconscious centers, is gov- erned by one blind intense impulse — namely, hold on to any- thing that promises life. The spiritual man manifests giant strength through the subconscious centers ; man's reserve power lies in the subconscious. The exhibitions of mus- cular power through the conscious are as nothing compared with the exhibitions of muscular power through the sub- conscious. Samson's strength was all subconscious. The marvelous strength put forth in times of emergency by men and women of ordinary muscular development is all subconscious. A lady told me some time ago that when her house was on fire unassisted she dragged a heavy ma- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 143 hogany piano from the parlor far out into the street and was utterly unconscious of doing it at the time. Under ordinary circumstances she could not raise one end of it. The strength she exhibited was subconscious. Some years ago history records that an eagle that had built its nest on the top of a crag amongst the Alps, a crag that no mountaineer in all Switzerland could scale, swept down on broad wing over the valleys searching for prey. He saw a baby playing on the grass in front of a cottage. Swooping down upon the child he seized it by its garments in his sharp talons, and with a wild shriek he directed his swift course to his nest upon the crag. The mother of the child heard the shriek of the eagle, and, thinking that her child was in danger, came to the door just in time to see the eagle carry the child away. Swift almost as the antelope she followed the eagle across the valley, and, endowed with superhuman strength, she climbed the almost perpendicular face of the crag and saved her child. All this strength was subconscious, for when she hugged the unharmed child to her bosom she regained her normal condition and became weak and won- dered how she had accomplished such a marvelous feat of strength and skill. I could multiply illustrations showing that the subconscious brain is the reservoir of giant reserve power, and I am of the opinion that if man could control and direct this reserve power just as the general controls and directs his reserve forces, he could conquer disease and win perfect health without taking a single drop of medi- cine. The New Thought philosophy teaches how to con- trol and direct this reserve power. Again, the subconscious is the seat of all habits, such as 144 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. walking, piano-playing, bicycle riding, difficult gymnastic feats, etc. It will be noticed by the reader of this volume that I always connect the mental act of the spiritual man with its corresponding physical effect. The effect of thought- force upon the brain and through it upon the body is a fact that is not dependent upon either affirmation or denial. The subconscious brain is composed of atoms of matter > the arrangement of these atoms in cells and combinations of cells is the result of thought-force. Since their con- struction and coordination is the result of thought-force their modification is the result of thought- force, for what- ever has the power to construct has the power to modify. 1. An affirmation is a conscious mental act. When a man says I will, he directs a stream of thought-force in a specific direction. 2. An affirmation is thought- force in action in the brain. 3. Affirmations from the conscious brain reach the sub- conscious by virtue of their close connection. 4. Affirmations or thought-force in action sets nerve- force in action, because thought- force dominates nerve- force. 5. These affirmations repeated and repeatedly carried into action send successive streams of nerve-force through the brain directed towards the muscles employed in the act. 6. In the course of time tracks are created amongst the nerve cells of the mid-brain, and the act which was at first done with effort and done clumsily is now done without effort and with automatic accuracy. These propositions show clearly how habits are formed. Invisible thought-force drives invisible nerve-force, and Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 145 these two forces create tracks in the brain. Thought and nerve-force, like all other forces, seek the path of the least resistance. We speak with scientific accuracy when we say : " It is hard to get out of the old ruts." This law was intended to operate beneficially : — (a) In making the subconscious brain a labor-saving machine. With all his mechanical skill man has not as yet succeeded in constructing an automatic machine so wonderful in its working, so intricate in its details, and with so many countless adaptations as we see here. When, by numerous repetitions, an act becomes automatic, the spiritual man, through the conscious brain, can turn on the steam, and the automatic machinery of the subconscious takes full charge and the spiritual man can turn his at- tention elsewhere. Because of this arrangement a man can walk through a crowded thoroughfare deeply immersed in thought, and yet he will not stumble over obstructions or collide with other pedestrians. On account of this ar- rangement the piano-player can manipulate the keyboard with lightning rapidity and read the music, and yet he is not conscious of the keys or the notes. Because of this the proof-reader can glance down a column of type and tell with automatic accuracy how many mistakes there are in the column. Because of this arrangement the orator can charm the audience with well-balanced sentences, rounded rhetoric, modulated intonations, or brilliant periods, and yet remain unconscious of the words or methods he is em- ploying. Because of this as I write I am not conscious of each letter nor am I conscious of the words I am employ- ing. Writing itself and the whole business of clothing ideas in words by repetition becomes automatic. In short, 10 m 146 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. this law operates in all departments of human action. " Practice makes perfect." Repetition creates tracks in the brain, and the thoughts tend to run in the tracks they have themselves created. (b) This law operates unceasingly, and it was intended to operate beneficially. The law does not seem to care ; it will hand over to the subconscious machinery anything the spiritual man gives it. If the spiritual man hands over an awkward method, this awkward method tends to become automatic. Hesitancy in speech or stammering, by repeti- tion, shapes the speech centers in the subconscious creating a habit. Fluency or ease in speaking obeys the same law. " Sow a thought, reap an act ; sow an act, reap a habit ; sow a habit, reap a character ; sow a character, reap a des- tiny." The entire philosophy of character-building and success, or, on the other hand, of character-blasting and failure, is found in this sentence. But this law operates unceasingly and all affirmations tend to become automatic, and when we consider that the subconscious brain has com- plete control over all the vital organs of the body and is also the absolute master in the business of body-building as well as character-building, we may say that the whole philosophy of health or disease is found in this sentence also. Changing the phraseology a little we may say : " Sow a thought, reap an act ; sow an act, reap a brain attitude ; sow a brain attitude, reap health or disease." It is indeed very strange to me that we will admit that this law operates in the realm of character-building and deny that it has any bearing upon body-building ; but, whether we deny it or aifirm it, the law operates silently and sublimely. The same brain that furnishes the physical Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 147 basis for character-building furnishes the physical basis of body-building. Affirm disease and the law carries the affirmation over to the subconscious brain centers, creating, if the affirmation is repeated, a fixed attitude in the sub- conscious brain cells, making the disease chronic. The chronic mental attitude has a tendency to become the chronic brain attitude ; the chronic brain attitude is follow- ed by a chronic physical condition, and disease thus be- comes a fixed fact in the body. Affirm health and the result is reversed. The law itself is not reversed, but the spiritual man gives the law the idea of health, he gives this idea repeatedly, and the result is that health become a fixed fact in the body. I will illustrate : Here is a man who works hard mentally and physically ; he exhausts all his vital forces and takes no steps to replenish his wasted energies; he feels bad. Instead of throwing his whole na- ture into a positive attitude by powerful affirmations based upon and buttressed by proper physical exercise, he throws his whole nature into a negative condition by surrendering to his feelings. He affirms " I am sick " when the re- verse of this is true. The spiritual man cannot be sick. The ego is an individualized part of the Eternal Spirit of life. Sickness is something that inheres in the physical or external man ; it is therefore (unless some lesion has occurred as the result of the impact of some external force) a transfer of morbid thoughts through the brain to the body. Believing that he is sick, he commences a course of drug-swallowing. If he never had the sensation of feeling bad these drugs would produce it, for the system is bitterly opposed to the presence of any foreign element. Every spoonful of drugs he takes, coupled with the effect of the 148 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. drug, becomes continued affirmations of disease. If the affirmations that he gives himself that the drug will cure him are stronger than the combined effects of the drug and his morbid affirmations he will get well, for in the contest of forces the strongest always wins. In the man's case under consideration the effects of the drugs and the morbid affirmations are greater in their force than the affirmations of improvement. The result is he daily grows worse. He becomes more morbid and studies the flaming advertise- ments of patent medicine and examines pictures of diseased tissue. These are photographed by the law we are consid- ering on the subconscious brain. He becomes worse and wretchedly morbid. He then determines to plunge more deeply into the cause of disease, and he reads medical works with their coarse materialism and learns the erro- neous stuff that the cause of all disease is bacilli. The air, the water, he learns to his utter horror, are full of moving bacteria; the whole universe is peopled with millions of microscopic animals — animals so small that a quadrillion could lie on a ten-cent piece and not touch each other. He learns that these monsters cause all disease. They are armed with pincers and claws and teeth like a wild boar's tusks. They enter the human body in countless hordes and tear away the tissue, devouring it, leaving their offal to poison the system. He imagines his body is the home of crawling millions of these beasts; he can feel them as they march up and down his backbone getting ready for the attack. This sensation is transferred to his subcon- scious brain and he becomes still worse. The man is now thoroughly frightened; fear takes possession of him and throws down all doors, and the man becomes the roosting- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 149 place for thousands of morbid fancies. All these fancies are transferred and he becomes steadily worse. Eventually the subconscious brain is entirely warped and twisted and moulded into a chronic abnormal shape in conformity with the nature of the man's repeated affirmations. The man's physical condition becomes one of chronic disease, and when he passes beyond a certain limit recovery is impos- sible. When the subconscious brain centers have assumed a permanent attitude in a morbid direction we have chronic disease in the body. This is why chronic diseases have been pronounced incurable, and I am of the opinion that any disease can become chronic, and when the brain centers have become permanently set the condition of the patient becomes hopeless. When a Christian Science practitioner collides with a man whose subconscious brain centers are set in the direc- tion of disease it " gives him pause " and causes him to think that there is something defective in Mrs. Eddy's philosophy. He has been taught that all disease will yield instantly to the magic formula of the Christian Science cult. He has been taught that the power he turns loose on the patient — for cash — is the power of God. But this chronic condition produced by years of continued affirma- tions of disease will not yield to his affirmations of health. The patient dies, and the demonstrator who failed to dem- onstrate consoles himself and patches up his theory with the thought that the patient did not have enough faith. My experience in the realm of suggestive therapeutics convinces me that it is an easy matter to warp the subcon- scious brain into an abnormal attitude by disease-laden affirmations, and exceedingly difficult, when the brain has 150 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. become hardened, to take the twist out by affirmations of health. When the subconscious brain is temporarily disar- ranged by a temporary disease, the cure is easy, for all the life-forces are on the alert to assist in the restoration ; but when the life-forces themselves are saturated with the poison of disease-laden suggestions, and the spiritual man himself is shot through and through with tens of thousands of sug- gestions of disease, the case is very difficult to treat. Ma- terial agencies in a case of this kind are worse than useless. The supreme need in a case of this kind is a regular course in mental suggestion. Sometimes we find a case where the spiritual man is eager to be cured and all the spiritual forces are ready to engage in the contest for mastery, but the blood is thin, the body is attenuated, the supply of nerve-force is deficient and the tissue of some of the organs is wasted. In this case the practitioner must not expect instantaneous victory. The process of degeneration was gradual and the process of restoration must be gradual. Eepeated suggestions, coup- led with the neglect of physical exercise, brought about the diseased conditions. Repeated suggestions, coupled with proper physical exercises, will bring about the cure. But the practitioner or the man who undertakes to cure him- self must remember that it is easier to fall down the moun- tain than it is to climb up. The first is done without ef- fort ; the second is accompanied with much effort. Besides, the fall has so weakened the man that the upward progress is accomplished with much pain. Further on in this volume I propose to enter into this question more exhaustively. The next question for consideration is the governing power in the subconscious brain. The governing power is Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 151 suggestion. We have seen already that the conscious brain is the realm where the spiritual man exerts his will-power and reasoning faculties. The will is king in the realm of the conscious, and reason is the judge and his throne is the same realm. fleason sifts all things that would seek for entrance, and when the question presented is sifted and a correct conception is obtained, the will hands the concep- tion over to the subconscious and the subconscious weaves the idea into the texture of the spiritual life. The spirit- ual man operating in the subconscious does not seem to have the power to go behind the suggestion to discover whether it is false or true. He accepts the suggestion with- out question and commences to act upon it. When I say that the subconscious brain is governed by suggestion I do not mean to affirm that there is no excep- tion to this law or that the operation of the law cannot be modified by existing conditions. There are in every case certain forces and factors existing in the subconscious brain which modify the operation of this law. (a) We have seen that the spiritual man acting through the subconscious brain centers guards the life of the indi- vidual, and that he is armed with vast reserve power to carry out this important mission. This being true, the sub- conscious brain will not accept any suggestion that would militate against the life of the individual. All the forces of the subconscious brain are leagued against suicide. Closely associated with the life of the individual is the life of the offspring, for a man will surrender his life to save his child. The subconscious brain will reject any suggestion that would threaten the life of the offspring. Under this head comes the individual's reputation, the reputation of his 152 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. children and relatives, and the life and reputation of his nearest and dearest friends. The subconscious will reject any suggestion that would militate against any of these. (6) The spiritual man acting through the subconscious brain will reject any suggestion that antagonizes his well- fixed habits. We have seen that all habits are formed by re- peated suggestions carried out into living action. A man who has established habits of honesty will reject the sug- gestion to steal or cheat or defraud. A man who has established the habit of abstinence will reject the sugges- tion of liquor-drinking. A woman who has established the habit of chastity will reject all salacious suggestions. And the reserve forces of the subconscious are ever on the alert to assist the spiritual man in guarding himself against any and all suggestions that would wreck these established habits. This principle holds good in the case of bad habits. Bad habits are formed just as good habits are formed, by repeated suggestions carried into action. The morphine habit, the whisky habit, the cocain habit, the swearing habit, the stammering habit, the disease habit, the lying habit, all habits, whether bad or good, are formed in the same way. Repeated affirmations carried into living action throw the subconscious brain centers into fixed attitudes, and the suggestion that antagonizes the set attitude of the brain centers is rejected. But there is this notable differ- ence to be observed in the application of the law of sug- gestion in the realm of the subconscious to the reconstruc- tion of brain attitudes produced by repeated good sugges- tions or repeated bad suggestions. The spiritual man was made in the image of God, and the plan of the soul em- bodies the idea of moral and spiritual perfection. All Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 153 good habits are therefore in full harmony with the deepest and strongest instincts of the spiritual man ; all bad habits are positively repugnant to him. The spiritual man longs to get rid of all habits that are wrong and injurious. This being true, all suggestions that tend to destroy wrong and injurious habits find a powerful response in the deep in- stincts and aspirations of the spiritual man. If this pow- erful opposition to the wrong, the sinful and injurious and this internal aspiration for the true, good and beautiful did not exist in the deeps of the spiritual man, the preacher and the physician might as well go out of business, for they would have nothing to work on. Suggestion is one of the most influential forces in the universe. Suggestion is thought-force in living action. Suggestion is therefore a living, moving, substantial reality. The visible and invisible universe were swung into existence in obedience to suggestion. " He spake and it was done ; he commanded and it stood fast." u God said, Let there be light and there was light." Suggestion has changed the front of human history thousands of times. Sugges- tions of hate have roused nations against each other and made a thousand battle-fields slippery with blood. Suggestions of ambition have created world conquerors like Alexander, Csesar and Napoleon. Suggestions of avarice and greed have turned men into brutes and written some of the darkest chapters of human history. Sugges- tions of pride, ambition and infallibility have erected great ecclesiastical establishments, clothed these es- tablishments with political power and sent forth into the world the forces of intolerance. These forces have stained the snows of the Alps with blood, erected the Inquisition, 154 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. burned martyrs and turned Europe into a second Acel- dama. Suggestions of freedom have wrought revolutions, overturned despotisms, written immortal political docu- ments and founded republics. Suggestions of love have given the Christ to humanity, established the church, swept away idolatries and given inspiration to all the philanthro- pies of nineteen hundred years. Suggestions set in motion by the rattle of the lid of the teakettle as the steam escaped have given us the locomotive and the steam engine. Sug- gestions aroused by the leg of the skinned frog touching the pile of metal saturated with acid have given us the telegraph and telephone and all modern electrical appli- ances. The foundations of all splendid character in man or woman are made up of suggestions, and the superstruc- ture is composed of the same material. The lawyer em- ploys suggestion in his appeal to the jury ; the politician as he addresses his constituency ; the orator as he sways his audience ; the mother as she trains her child ; the teacher as he imparts instruction; the physician as he prescribes his medicine ; the merchant as he sells his goods, and the preacher as he proclaims his doctrine. Suggestion rules the world. Suggestion is the king at whose footstool we all bow and whose imperious scepter we all obey. Sugges- tion is omnipresent in human affairs. There is no depart- ment of human action or thought where suggestion is not. The atmosphere we breathe is crowded with suggestion. Suggestion touches us at every point. Suggestion consti- tutes our spiritual environment while we live on this earth plane, and in the higher altitudes after death it will still envelop us. But the question naturally arises at this point : If sug- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 155 gestion is such a mighty force, and if it is the all-pervad- ing atmosphere of human existence, touching man at all points and pervading the living tissue of his body and spiritual character, then man must be a mere automaton moulded by the nature of the suggestive atmosphere about him. In the actual world this statement finds abundant verification. The average human head is like an egg f and it partakes of the flavor of its envi- ronment. This is why we have "bad eggs" amongst us. I admit that it is almost impossible for a child, born in the slums and surrounded during the formative period of his life with suggestions of crime and deceit, to master his environments and unfold a noble character. A slum envi- ronment develops the cut-throat, the drunkard, the burg- lar and the dangerous classes in human society. The sug- gestive atmosphere surrounding the child is absorbed by him consciously and subconsciously and flowers out in the man. This is why one man is a Methodist, another a Bap- tist, another an Episcopalian, another a Roman Catholic, another a Buddhist, another a Mohammedan . All charac- ter is made up of beliefs ; all beliefs are absorbed from without. The substance of beliefs are ideas; ideas are suggestions. The suggestive atmosphere of the child in the majority of cases is absorbed by the child, forming the beliefs that consolidate in the developed character of the man. The theological atmosphere of the child is re- vealed in the man ; the political atmosphere of the child declares itself in the man ; the social atmosphere of the child flowers out in the man. This is a statement of the actual condition of things as they exist amongst us. The majority of us are shaped in the mould of suggestion. 156 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. But it must be observed that the conditions which ob- tain in the actual world of the present are a perversion of the original design. In the plan of the universe and in the construction of man it was intended : (a) That the spiritual man should be supreme master of all the forces within and without himself. The ego is the mightiest force in the human provinces. Man is a living, moving spiritual force. He is a self-governing, self-moving, self-determining entity. He has the power to select and reject. He has the power of discrimination and can subject all suggestions that come to him to a rigid sifting process. He can discern between the suggestion that will help and the suggestion that will hinder ; he can accept the one and reject the other. (b) Suggestions are created by the spiritual man, and it was intended that the spiritual man should master his own creations and not be mastered by them. It was intended that the spiritual man should absorb the good in his men- tal atmosphere and weave it into the texture of his unfold- ing life, and reject the bad. The sacred book says: "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." " Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." " Buy the truth and sell it not." Man then ought to be a greater circumstance than all circumstances. The spiritual man is the supreme force on this planet. All things that surround him are subordinate to him. All things are plastic to the touch of the master hand. All forces — thought-force, chemical force, electric force, organic force — are obedient to the imperious demand of the spiritual man. History furnishes us with a mag- nificent vision of the ideal man in the person of Jesus the Christ. He is indeed The Master. tl He is the mightiest Unseen Forces and How to Use Them.,, 157 amongst the holy and the holiest amongst the mighty." He was surrounded with an environment that was not con- ducive to moral purity or intellectual grandeur. Nazareth was situated on the great caravan road to Damascus, and was the resting-place of the world's hoboes. Nazareth was ia bad repute. Nathaniel said : "Can anything good come out of Nazareth? " But Christ mastered his early environment and pushed it away from around him, rising into a nobler and purer realm. He was surrounded with a mental envi- ronment of old creeds, the accumulations of centuries of thought. Moses and the prophets and the rabbis of a thousand years had created an atmosphere of religious thought that environed him and touched him at every point. Yet he pushed all this away from him and rose superior to his age and to all the beliefs of his times and poured forth a doctrine broad as the human race, deep as its needs, white as the sunlight, pure as the unfolding lily, and sparkling as the fountains of Lebanon. He is indeed The Master. All forces are obedient to his command. He is absolute master of all forces within himself. He is the incarnation of perfect self-control. He is never disturbed. His self-balance is perfect. In the hour of triumph he never loses his steadiness. In the hour of disaster his moral equilibrium is undisturbed. He is absolute master over disease. Having won perfect mastery in himself he is now able to master others. Disease flies away as he ad- vances. His touch of harmony brings all things he touches into tune with the music of the spheres. The dis- arranged mental machinery of the demented, as he speaks, runs smooth, and the man sits at the Master's feet clothed in his right mind. The stormy billows on the sea of Gal- 158 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. ilee acknowledge his supremacy, for as he speaks the winds sink away into a dead calm and the waves crouch at his command like abashed spaniels in the presence of their master. The regions of the dead acknowledge his power, for the departed spirits at his command come back to re- animate the tabernacle of clay. Jesus the Christ, the conqueror, is a revelation of the ideal man. He is a rev- elation of the possibilities that are in man. If he is not, then he is utterly useless as an example and utterly power- less as an ideal. It looks like folly for a preacher to pro- claim Jesus as our ideal and example, and then smite us through with despair by saying that we cannot imitate him in all the points of his excellence. I am aware that as our ideal he is ever beyond us and above us, but it is our duty and exalted privilege to aspire to the golden heights of character to which he attained. An examination of his grand and lofty life reveals these great truths: 1. It is possible to unfold the spiritual man to the high- est degree of perfection. 2. The physical man ought to be subordinate to the spiritual man and his responsive servant. 3. The spiritual man is absolute master of all forces within and without. 4. Being master, the spiritual man can select the good and reject the bad out of all environments. 5. Man can embody in his character the true, the beau- tiful and good, and he can create his own atmosphere. 6. Man is responsible. He is the architect of his own character. The materials are unlimited in supply, and he is to blame if he fails, and will be rewarded if he succeeds. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 159 Jesus gave us in his splendid life the truth of the highest science of the universe — the science and art of the perfect life. He assimilated all truth and transmuted it into the pattern of his glorious life so that he could say : " I am the way ; I am the truth ; I am the life." The only way we can reach the highest life is to take the suggestions that he furnishes by his life and weave them into the pattern of our lives. By assimilating his teachings we become like him. Living in the atmosphere of truth and hourly ab- sorbing it, all error, delusion, fear, gloom, discouragement and disease will pass away. When all individuals are per- vaded by his truth and unfolded to their grandest develop- ment by his spirit, then shall the golden age be ushered in ; " the wilderness and the solitary place shall be made glad ; the desert shall blossom as the rose ; " heaven shall descend to earth; universal harmony will reign and dis- cord will be banished forever. The way to bring this about is for every individual to transmute the suggestions of Christ into character. 160 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. CHAPTER VII. THE SUBCONSCIOUS BRAIN CONTINUED. One of my aims in writing this volume is to open the eyes of my fellows in the struggle of life to the grandeur of the powers they possess and to the infinite possibilities that lie in the realms of the unseen and subconscious. Medicine, by prescribing material remedies exclusively and neglecting the mental factor ; theology, by preaching the doctrine of human depravity and the powerlessness of the human will; hymnology, by setting the false theology to music; and psychology, by its narrow definition of mind, have surrounded man with a dense thought-atmosphere composed of weakness, helplessness, depravity and fear. Man has absorbed this atmosphere. These suggestions have entered and become part and parcel of his being ; they are inscribed upon the convolutions of his brain ; in fact, they have so modified these brain convolutions that, by the laws of heredity, these suggestions have been handed down from generation to generation. We literally live, move and have our being in an ocean of suggestions that enslaves the ego, cramps the powers of the soul, freezes all warm aspirations and turns man into a cringing, fright- ened coward, "a worm of the dust," "a broken and empty vessel," singing that hymn that smells of death and decay, "Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound." The aim of the New Thought philosophy is to sweep away this false environment and put in its place an environ- Unseen Forces and IJow to Use Them. 161 ment of thought that is an exact counterpart of the truth of the universe and man's being. I freely concede that it is a herculean task, but just as Hercules cleansed the Augean stables by turning the crystal streams of the river through them, so we propose to sweep away the false envi- ronment by turning upon man the crystal streams of truth. We propose to meet all objections in a spirit of serene calmness. Storm meeting storm only adds to the fury of the conflict. Truth never engages in stormy argument. Truth quietly makes a statement and allows error to worry itself to death in the vain attempt to overcome it. Truth is like all the other conquering forces of the universe ; like light, for instance. Light never argues ; it does not announce its approach with bands, banners or boisterous- ness ; its coming is as silent as the footfall of a fairy. As it comes the darkness staggers, turns and vanishes like a frightened deer. As it comes all life rejoices and all na- ture dons her festive garments. As the truth advances we expect that it will meet with intense opposition, but all opposition in the long run will vanish like the darkness. To oppose truth is to commit suicide. Truth is man's best friend. Truth comes to man with her hands full of blessing, her heart full of love, her lips dropping benedictions. Truth is a beautiful angel to the man who is receptive to her gracious tenderness, but she is the minister of justice to the man who obstinately refuses her gifts. Saul of Tarsus held the clothes of those criminals who slew Stephen the white-souled, the silver-tongued cham- pion of truth ; after this he "breathed out threatenings and slaughter" against the new system launched by Jesu* 11 m 162 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. of Nazareth ; he resolved to destroy it, and he obtained letters of authority legalizing his mad rage, and started for a distant city to carry his wicked purpose into effect. On the way the light of truth, with a brilliance that outflashed the Syrian sun in its splendor, shone upon him and he fell to the earth, and a voice out of the majestic splendor was heard saying : "It is hard for thee to kick against the goad." The goad was a sharp stick shod with sharpened steel used by the teamsters of that day in driving oxen. So truth is a sharp stick shod with sharpened steel, and the man who throws himself into a hostile attitude to it injures himself but does not hurt the truth. Christianity, before it received the touch of polluted hands, was simple, beautiful, majestic truth, and Saul of Tarsus was committing suicide by attempting to destroy it. Saul was an ardent and fiery champion of Judaism. He had been surrounded with a thought-atmosphere ex- clusively Jewish from his childhood. He had absorbed this atmosphere, and he became an incarnation of that old system and one of its most noted exponents. Christianity aimed at the complete abolition of this system of thought, and Saul flung himself forward and fought to avert the supposed calamity. He might as well have tried to stem Niagara or drive back the tides. He might as well have tried to rein in the cyclone or brush back the morning with a broom. The New Thought philosophy is a restatement of the simple teachings of Christ. We demand that this teach- ing be freed from all human opinions, divorced from all cast-iron creeds, cleansed from the poison of human error Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 163 and given to the world without addition, subtraction, mul- tiplication or division. Christ taught the dignity of man and revealed man's magnificent possibilities in his own splendid life. He also taught the brotherhood of man, and in his grand life and sacrificial death revealed the law of brotherhood. The New Thought philosophy says in the language of Edwin Mark- ham : "The crest and crowning of all "good, Life's final star, is brotherhood ; For it will bring again to earth The long lost poesy and mirth, Will send new light upon each face, Will send new power through the race, And till it come we men are slaves And travel down to dust of graves. Gome, clear the way, then clear the way,— Blind creeds and kings have had their day ; Break the dead branches from the path, Our hope is in the aftermath, Our hope is in heroic men, Star-led to build the world again. To this creed the ages ran : Make way for brotherhood, make way for man." How can we have grand and heroic men if we surround them with a thought-atmosphere laden with suggestions that dwarf their powers, blacken their souls with the doc- trine of total depravity, wrest from them their will-power, bemean the intellect, and make them believe that they are the footballs of circumstances and the toys of chance. No man can ever rise higher than his beliefs. All con- duct is the direct result of belief. All character is made up of beliefs. All hope, all aspiration, all achievement, is founded upon beliefs. " Let a man believe that he can 164 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. win some great and noble thing, high success in business or in art, the love of a true woman, his children's growth in every great virtue, the advance of some good cause, the destruction of some vested wrong, the triumph of some glorious principle, the opportunity of an immortal life, and the strength and greatness of that belief will pass into and become a living part of the man." We have already seen that the spiritual man comes here to find out what he is and what are his possibilities. How can he unfold himself if he believes that he is a poor, mis- erable wretch, orphaned, ragged, smitten through and through with a million infirmities. These false ideas have turned the world into a poorhouse and God's children, sons and daughters of the King, into a race of shivering, cowardly wretches. The infinite Father in training his children has fur- nished innumerable object-lessons, but these lessons have been tarnished by human hands. History is a gallery filled with splendid portraits of men and women who were great from the standpoint of character and achievement, but our teachers have told us that these great individuals were specially created and specially endowed and inspired by God for a special work, that we have nothing in common with them, and that it were folly to attempt to emulate their example. I am of the opinion that our teachers in the pulpit and in the chairs of theology have unwittingly acted the part of robbers, for they have stolen from us the memorable examples of the master spirits of the past by proclaiming that it is a matter of impossibility for us to attain to such heights of achievement. The infinite Father has also written upon the plan of Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 165 the soul intense aspirations towards perfection, a profound reverence for truth, a holy respect for the good and a lofty admiration for the beautiful. The theology that turns God into a green-eyed monster of jealousy is a relic of barba- rism. Such a God is a purely human creation. It suited very well in the days when men made their gods to order. But the infinite Father cannot be jealous when his chil- dren unfold their powers and advance to splendid accom- plishment. Is the painter jealous of his painting that commands the admiration of thousands ? Is the musician jealous of his music that charms the vast audience ? Is the author jealous of his book when it chains the attention of the world ? Is the father jealous of his son who by virtue of his superior ability throws him into the shade? To these questions we all answer, No. Shall we then stigma- tize the character of God by ascribing to him feelings which we would consider disgraceful in man ? God is honored when man unfolds himself and marches on to grander achievement in the realm of action. Man was built to walk upright with his face towards the stars, and it is a crime against humanity to freeze ambition, to destroy aspiration, to crush the instinct for achievement and paralyze the will. The robes of the professor in the divinity school, the holy hands of ordination or the bejew- eled crown of the king confers upon no man the right to crush the legitimate aspirations of the soul in man. The great teacher refused to " break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax." He strengthened the bruised reed and fanned the smoking flax into a brilliant flame. Just as the gentle sunlight wooes the seed into life so Jesus wooed the soul onward towards perfection. 166 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. Man stands next to God. He is God's son. He was born with magnificent possibilities within him, and the in- finite Father has surrounded him with the opulence of life r love, truth, power and wisdom. The universe was built for man, and it is his delightful privilege to explore the regions of his own being and estimate his powers ; to ex- plore the realms of the universe and discover its laws ; to open the storehouses of life and take possession in the Father's name. It must be remembered that man has no right to use his powers to crush his fellows ; he has no right to use the treasures of the universe to gratify selfishness. Selfishness is a perversion ; it is a defiance of all law, both human and divine ; it is a destruction of the principle upon which the whole system of things was constructed. Love created the universe ; love pervades and enswathes it. All law is love in self-expression. Nature sometimes wears a stern and savage appearance. She is only stern and severe towards those who stand hostile to her program. Swing into line with law, and it becomes your friend ; oppose it, and it be- comes your enemy. All punishment is remedial. An everlasting hell of fire and brimstone, where damned spirits fry on burning coals forever, may be on the program of the narrow theologian, but it does not appear on the program of the infinite Father. Punishment is inflicted, but it is self-inflicted, and its ultimate outcome is knowledge and obedience. Since love built the universe, and since all things are moving onwards up the path of eternal progress through love's inspirations, then selfishness is an abortion and ought to be banished. It is the supreme purpose of the New Thought philoso- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 167 phy to instruct man and reveal to him the measure of his own inward powers, the extent and grandeur of the king- dom within and the wealth of infinite treasures in the store- houses of God. With these considerations before us we will proceed in our investigation of the powers of the spiritual man oper- ating in the subconscious brain. When the spiritual man in the subconscious brain comes into possession of anything he holds on to it. Once his, it is always his. We have already seen how T this power of the spiritual man in the subconscious is exhibited in the formation of habits of all kinds. The stream of thought- force originating an act, driving a stream of nerve-force, if repeated a number of times, creates tracks in the brain cells, and when these tracks have set then the habit is formed, and the man can never while he lives forget how to do that which he has impressed upon the brain by re- peated acts. The subconscious brain not alone furnishes the physical substratum for the formation of habits ; it furnishes the vast receiving-room for the storing away of facts, princi- ples, ideas and experiences, and when anything enters this storehouse there are no back doors by which it may escape ; in other words, the spiritual man in the subconscious brain never forgets. The human brain, with its two compartments, is a mar- velous mechanism. When it is well built and healthy it is perfectly adapted in all its arrangements for the use of the spiritual man as he deals with the external and internal in his own body and in the universe. The external brain, as we have already seen, is the spir- 168 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. itual man's observatory ; it is the throne-room of will, the seat of judgment and reason. It is the brain into which the spiritual steps when he awakes out of sleep ; it is also the assorting-room for ideas. All ideas pass in review here and are stamped with the word accepted or the word re- jected, and then allowed to pass into the vast storehouse of the subconscious. In this region the spiritual man weaves the ideas that are accepted and the rejection of the ideas that are rejected into the living tissue of body and spirit. If the idea refers to the body it goes to the body, and if it refers to the spirit it goes to the spirit. The wonderful weaver in the depths never makes a mistake. The very same law that weaves thought attitudes into brain attitudes, thereby producing habits, is the law that seizes all ideas, whether of acceptance or rejection, and weaves them into life; and just as the tattoo marks remain permanently in the body unless they are replaced by some new material, so these ideas remain in the subconscious and in the living tissue of body and spirit until they are replaced by new ones; and even then the ego as he oper- ates in the subconscious can never forget that at one time in his experience he was in possession of them. The conscious brain is the department where the spirit- ual man throws into external form his thoughts, words and actions. The subconscious is the storehouse from whence he is furnished with material as he needs it. Thought- stuff is the material. There is, so to speak, a double elevator in movement all the time in the brain, one carry- ing thought-stuff down to the subconscious, the other carrying thought-stuff up into the conscious. Man is building his own character, and he is furnishing material Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 169 to build the characters of others. The concentration of thought-stuff in the individual and the distribution of the same material are going on all the time. This law of con- centration and distribution is a law of the universe and does not depend upon the human will. The human will operates in the conscious brain. Here is where the stuff that enters into character is inspected. The spiritual man acting as inspector in the conscious brain is responsible for the quality of the thought-stuff that he hands over to the builder in the subconscious regions. The laws of charac- ter-building are so mathematically adjusted to truth and justice that if the spiritual man hands over thought-stuff to the builder that is undesirable he injures himself beyond computation. There lived a contractor in a northern city. He was a dishonest man, and when he received a contract to erect a building his main ambition was to make as much money out of the contract as he could. To this end he used cheap and defective material and covered up the de- fects with putty and paint. His wife was a woman of noble type. She was employed as a dressmaker by the wife of a United States senator who lived in the same city. The senator resolved to make her a present, so he called her husband to his office and told him to erect a comfortable and substantial home on one of the lots owned by the sen- ator. The senator went to Washington, and before he went he gave the dishonest contractor definite instructions. The contractor went to work and put cheap and defective material into the building, covering up all the defects. When the senator came home he examined the house and then handed the contractor a deed for the house and lot. The contractor in surprise examined the deed and found 170 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. that it was deeded to his own wife, and he unconsciously blurted out: " What a confounded fool I was; if I had. known that this house was to be my own I would have put good material into it." But it was too late then ; the opportunity was gone forever. Every man is building his own character, and he is furnishing the material to build the characters of others. He is responsible for the timber he puts into the structure and the timber he furnishes to others within the sweep of his influence. As a unit in the grand body of humanity his main ambition ought to be to build up a strong, white, noble soul out of selected mate- rial and furnish his share of similar material so that the entire body may reach perfection. Man-timber is thought-stuff. We have already seen that this stuff is inspected in the conscious brain under the flashlight of reason and judgment. When it is inspected and approved it goes down, and the builder in the subcon- scious silently transmutes it into character. When it has passed through this process it is ready to be given forth to the world in visible or audible form as prepared material. Every man that lives furnishes in his conversation and actions a transparent show window in which are samples o* the thought-stuff that is in him. The best kind of man- timber is truth wrought into living form in the person of some majestic individual. Human creeds are composed of worm-eaten, decayed human opinions. This age de- mands truth translated into magnificent lives. We have now arrived at the point where we can explain memory in a simple way. Memory is the ability to call up thought-stuff from the realms of the subconscious into the conscious. It is clearly impossible for a man to have a Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 171 vivid memory of anything unless it has entered into and become a part of his life. When a man has translated an event, experience or an idea into the fiber of his being, it is a matter of impossibility to forget it. In fact we cannot forget anything on which we have focused our attention until it has entered our life. A man cannot, in his con- scious hours, forget himself. How, then, can he forget that which is a part of himself? Memory has a physio- logical side as well as a psychical side. To have a vivid memory of a thing the thing must so completely dom- inate the spiritual man that it will be indelibly impressed upon the nerve centers of the subconscious brain ; in other words, the vibrations produced in the spiritual man by the study of the matter under consideration must produce corresponding vibrations in the brain and nervous system. There are at least three conditions governing the devel- opment of a strong memory : 1. A healthy brain. 2. Concentration. 3. Repetition. To remember anything a man must concentrate his attention upon it to the exclusion of everything else. He must repeat this act of concentration until the thing enters his being and is transcribed upon the subconscious brain cells. It must never be forgotten that the spiritual man can never recall anything that has not entered into and become part of himself. Sir Fowell Buxton advised his sons in the following golden words : " What you do know know thoroughly. There are few instances in^ modern times of a rise equal to that of Sir Edward Sugden. After one of the Wey~ 172 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. mouth elections I was shut up with him in a carriage for twenty-four hours. I ventured to ask him what was the secret of his success. His answer was: 'I resolved, when beginning to read law, to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and never to go to a second thing till I had entirely accomplished the first. Many of my com- petitors read as much in a day as I did in a week, but at the end of twelve months my knowledge was as fresh as on the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollection. '" Memory is the power to call up from the subconscious to the conscious the thought-stuff therein stored, and Sir Edward Sugden, in the above cited case, so concentrated his attention upon each item of his studies that the ideas permeated his entire spiritual being and were impressed upon the convolutions of his brain. By concentration he impressed them upon the subconscious brain, and by repeti- tion he mastered the power to recall them out of the sub- conscious into the conscious. Having obeyed the law of memory he mastered the law, and that law was ever after his willing -servant and delivered up the thought-stuff when the master needed it. We now see clearly that a good memory involves obe- dience to two grand conditions, concentration and repetition. A man may by concentration impress an idea deeply upon the subconscious brain, but unless he cultivates the power of calling it up by repetition he may apparently forget it. Concentration is only one-half of the law of memory. Expression is the other half. The law of memory may be stated thus : Concentrate upon the matter to be remem- bered until it has pervaded the soul and has been im- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 17& pressed upon the nerve centers of the subconscious brain ; then give expression to the thought in your own language. Concentration supplies the subconscious with the thought- stuff. Expression develops thje power to call it up into the conscious brain for use. Man is a wonderful institution. Concentration capitalizes thought-stuff and expression dis- tributes it. Thousands upon thousands complain of an imperfect memory. They say: "No matter how much I fix my attention upon the subject-matter, I cannot remember it." The reason they cannot remember it is because they have failed to obey the law of expression. The subconscious will not yield up its rich treasures unless we obey the law. I am of the opinion that the spiritual man in the subconscious never forgets anything he has ever known. He may not be able to bring it up into the realm of con- sciousness, but this is no proof that he has forgotten it. My experiments in hypnotism have demonstrated to my mind conclusively that the spiritual man in the subcon- scious can never forget anything he has ever known. In hypnotism the spiritual man retires from the conscious brain into the subconscious. When the subject is in this state of unconsciousness I have by means of suggestion enabled him to give expression to facts, ideas and experi- ences that he could not reproduce in his conscious state. Individuals who have been rescued from drowning, in relating their experience, have said that in the few mo- ments of awful struggle in the water all the events of their lives passed in rapid panorama before them. Evidently, in a case of this kind, under intense mental agony, the subconscious brain delivered up its contents. 174 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. History records some strange cases corroborating the opinion that the subconscious brain can never forget any- thing that has been impressed upon it. Here is a well- known and oft quoted story furnishing a case in point : "A servant girl in Germany was very ill of nervous fever accompanied with violent delirium. In her excited rav- ings she recited long passages from classical and rabbinical writers which excited the wonder and even terror of all who heard them, the most of whom thought her inspired of a good or evil spirit. Some of the passages which were written down were found to correspond with literal extracts from learned books. When inquiries were made concerning the history of her life it was found that several years before she had lived in the family of an old and learned preacher in the country, who was in the habit of reading aloud favorite passages from the very writers in whose works these extracts were discovered. Evidently her mental excitement acted upon the subconscious brain just as suggestion acts upon the subconscious brain in the case of the hypnotized subject, enabling her to give ex- pression to these long extracts which had been impressed upon it by hearing the old preacher recite them. Rev. Timothy Flint, in his "Recollections," records of himself that when prostrated by malarial fever he repeated aloud long passages from Virgil and Homer which he had never formally committed to memory, and of which both before and after he could scarcely repeat a line. The subconscious brain is a delicate and exquisitely sen- sitized instrument. Because of this it will receive impres- sions more easily and retain them longer than the disc of a phonograph. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 175 In Rev. Mr. Flint's case he had read these passages from Homer and Virgil, and they were impressed upon the subconscious brain area. Daring his fever the blood rushed to his brain and the nerve centers of the subcon- scious were abnormally excited and active, enabling him to repeat the long Latin passages that he supposed he had forgotten. If the spiritual man in the subconscious never forgets anything he has known then man is his own recording angel, and the leaves of the book are the folds of the sub- conscious brain. In every book there is the invisible thought and the visible, tangible material upon which the invisible thought appears. So in man the visible, tangible material is the brain ; the invisible thought approved by the spiritual man and created by him is the intangible stuff that enters into his spiritual manhood and remains with him forever. This being true, we can see the signifi- cance of the Master's statement in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus : "Son, remember that thou in thy life- time receivedst thy good things and Lazarus his evil things, but now he is comforted and thou art tormented." Tormented? Yes, because he had lived a mean, selfish life and allowed Lazarus to lie at his palace gates to die of wretchedness, disease and hunger. The hungry and gaunt dogs of the street showed more of the spirit of hu- manity than he did, for "they came and licked the beggar's sores." Memory of his brutality, inhumanity and selfish- ness would not allow him to rest in peace. Hell is a self- induced condition, and the flames of hell are the self- created atmosphere emanating from the man who refuses to fall in line with the program of the universe. 176 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. Again, the spiritual man in the subconscious brain never sleeps. In sleep the spiritual man retires from the conscious brain. During his waking hours the spiritual man operates exteriorly through the conscious and interiorly through the subconscious. In sleep he ceases to operate exteriorly, and all his forces act downward and inward. Sleep is therefore refreshing and invigorating because there is an intensified stream of spiritual and nerve energy operating upon the vital organs. We have already seen in a former chapter that the spiritual man, through the subconscious brain, guards the citadel of life. To sustain life the vital organs must be kept in operation day and night ; there- fore, the spiritual man never sleeps; he keeps his hand upon the vital machinery of the body every moment of existence. If there was no other evidence of the activity of the spiritual man during sleep save the continued and regular activity of the vital organs this in itself would be sufficient. Apart from this we could furnish evidence in unlimited quantities. I will record a few. K. L. Stevenson, the great novelist, shows how his dreams increased in complexity with his life until, when he commenced to write stories for publication, he got most of his ideas from his dreams. He says : "My Brownies, God bless them, do one half my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human like- lihood do the rest for me as well when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for myself. I had long been wanting to write a book on man's double being. For two days I went about racking my brain for a plot of some sort, and on the second night I dreamt the scene in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the window, and a scene after- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 177 wards split in two in which Hyde pursued took the pow- der and underwent the change in the presence of his pur- suer. In 'Otalla the Count/ the mother, Otalla's cham- ber, the meeting on the stairs, the broken window, were all given to me in bulk and detail as I have tried to write them." Coleridge is said to have dreamed " Kubla Khan" after dinner during a nap, and wrote it down line by line when he awoke. A distinguished lawyer had studied for days a most im- portant case. One night his wife saw him rise up in the night, sit down and write a long paper, which he put in his desk and returned to bed. Next morning he told his wife that he had a most interesting dream ; that he deliv- ered a clear and luminous opinion on the case, and that he would give anything to recover the train of thought which had occurred. She then directed him to the desk, where to his surprise and joy he found all that he had dreamt clearly written out. Lord Karnes, in his " History of Man," says : " There are various interesting operations of which we have no consciousness, and yet that they have existed is known by their effects. Often have I gone to bed with a confused notion of what I was studying and have awakened in the morning complete master of the subject." These incidents, a few out of tens of thousands that might be recorded, demonstrate beyond all doubt the capa- bility of the spiritual man for action during sleep. In fact, if all these incidents were wiped out of existence the facts furnished by hypnotism would be more than sufficient to prove it. My own experiments in hypnotism have shown 12 m 178 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. me the marvelous intellectual power of the spiritual man as he operates through the subconscious brain. I have placed subjects in a deep sleep and carried them in thought to places they had never visited, on the top of the Blue Ridge mountains, in the "land of the sky/' and made them describe the sunset behind the mountains and the majestic sceneries that stretched far below. I have carried them to the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington in thought, and heard them describe in glowing language the beauty of a masterpiece in painting or a group in sculpture. I have carried them in thought on a sailing trip over the Chesapeake bay and heard them describe their sensations of pleasure and the scenes they witnessed. I have carried them in thought to the opera-house to hear the great band- master Sousa. I have watched the changing expression on the face as the waves of imagined music swept over the soul. I have seen them clap their hands as the music ceased and heard them express their extreme pleasure. Such experiments as these have demonstrated to my mind the marvelous capability of the spiritual man for ac- tion as he operates in the subconscious realms. At this point we will examine the philosophy of dreams. We have already learned that the spiritual man operating in the subconscious is governed by suggestion. All dreams can be explained by considering the nature of the suggestion that rouses the spiritual man into action in sleep. For in- stance, a dream ean be caused by — 1. Peripheral Suggestion. It is a cold night, the ther- mometer is hovering near zero, and the sleeper, as he turns, tosses the covers to the one side, exposing his body. The cold air coming into contact with the skin conveys the sug- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 179 gestion of cold to the brain through the nerves of sensa- tion, and, behold, the man dreams of sleeping on an ice- berg wrapped in a blanket of snow. A man eats a heavy supper, the stomach is overloaded with rich viands and gravies; he goes to sleep and the work of digestion commences. It is heavy and painful work, and the masses of food press heavily against the ends of the pneumogastric nerve. The suggestion of weight and strug- gle and pain is conveyed to the brain, and, behold, the man dreams of the devil sitting astride his stomach goug- ing him with a red-hot pitchfork. Other dreams may be caused by — Auto-suggestion. Auto-suggestion is suggestion con- veyed from the conscious to the subconscious brain. R. L. Stevenson, for instance, declares that " for two days he racked his brain seeking for a plot whereon to build a story of man's double being." He went to sleep directing a stream of thought embodying his desire down into the depths of his brain. This intense desire for a plot was a powerful auto-suggestion, and it roused the spiritual man into action in sleep, and, behold, he dreamt the entire story of Jekyll and Hyde. Some dreams are caused by — Hetero-suggestion, or the suggestion of some other per- son. We have seen that the subconscious brain is ex- tremely sensitive and takes impression more readily than the wax takes the impression of the die. Understanding this, we can readily see how easy it would be for a sugges- tion given by some one else to act upon the subconscious brain during sleep, giving rise to a dream. I heard my father recite " Tarn O'Shanter." It was a wild night, the 180 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. wind howled around the house, the night was pitch-dark, and the rain rattled upon the window-panes. I was fright- ened ; the surroundings added terror to my fear. I went to sleep with a vision of Satan playing upon the bagpipes surrounded by coffins. That night I had a fearful dream. I dreamt that I was " Tarn O'Shanter" flying for my life on a grey mare, with all the demons of hell yelling on my track. The suggestions aroused by hearing the wild tale recited operated upon the subconscious brain in sleep, rous- ing the spiritual man into action. The suggestion gave him the nudge and he did the rest. I do not propose to combat the idea that the substance of some dreams is conveyed to the sleeper by spiritual messengers. Man is open to both the seen and the unseen universe. He can be influenced from both worlds. I am simply endeavoring to explain in a simple way the origin of dreams. I assert it as my firm belief then that some dreams are caused by spiritual suggestion. Jacob fled away from home. He slept one night upon the mountains. It must have been an ideal summer night in that oriental land. The air was balmy and the moon sailed through silvery clouds. With a stone for his pillow and the soft moss of the mountain for his bed, he had a beautiful dream. He dreamt that he saw a ladder extend- ing from earth to heaven, and he beheld angels ascending and descending upon it. I believe that an angel touched the subconscious brain of the tired sleeper, and, behold, the entrancing vision appeared. Peter the apostle is asleep on the housetop. Now, Peter was a Jew, and all through his life he had absorbed an atmosphere of thought that made him present a hostile Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 181 attitude to all Gentiles. After he became a Christian he clung with inveterate tenacity to the belief that Chris- tianity was for the Jews alone. Eventually, as he unfolded in his spiritual life, the new idea began to dawn upon him that Christianity was for all nations. There was a conflict in Peter's nature between the old and the new thought. He did not know what to do. He was in a dilemma. He went to sleep arguing the question with himself. The question that pressed its way downward and inward upon the nerve centers of his subconscious brain as he went to sleep was : " Must I preach the gospel to the Gentiles ? Are they not under ban by divine decree ? Are they not declared unclean by the Mosaic law ? " As the apostle slept the suggestions involved in these questions roused the spiritual man into action in the subconscious realms. At this juncture God entered upon the scene, and Peter be- held a vision of a sheet let down from heaven filled with all kinds of animals, both clean and unclean, and the com- mand was given ; " Rise, Peter, kill and eat." Peter's stubborn prejudices were still sufficiently strong to rouse him into opposition. The sheet was let down three times, and the command was given and the explanation made : u What God hath cleansed that thou must not call common nor unclean." The sheet was then drawn up out of sight, and when Peter awoke he found the Gentiles clamoring for the gospel from his lips. I am profoundly of the impression that man is open to suggestions from all beings and from all realms — from God, the angels, from the perfected spirits of just men, as well as from living men and women. He is open to suggestions that are embodied in the visible objects in the universe, 182 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. from those enshrined in architecture, paintings or sculpture or embalmed in literature. With this view of man I find no difficulty whatever in believing that some dreams and visions may have been the result of spiritual visitation. In the next place, the spiritual man operating in the subconscious acts as the chemist in the great laboratory of thought. We have seen already that the spiritual man operating through the subconscious acts as the chemist in the process of digestion and assimilation. He not alone governs the digestion and assimilation of food-stuff for the body ; he digests and assimilates the thought-stuff for the building of character. 1. The most important part of the mental work per- formed by the spiritual man is done in the deep silences of the subconscious. Mythology tells us that Yulcan forged the thunderbolts of Jove in the deep caverns beneath the mountain of Olympus. So the spiritual man welds the thought-stuff furnished him in the deep realms of the sub- conscious. Solomon King of Israel built a gorgeous tem- ple. For grandeur of conception, for symmetry of struct- ure, for perfection of detail and beauty of appearance it has never been surpassed. That temple rose into beauty without the sound of the hammer or the gratings of a saw. In absolute silence it rose into towering majesty, and if the eyes had not beheld the workmen one would have sup- posed that the temple was being built by angel hands. How was this possible ? The architect had every piece of material ready to be put into place. Every stone and col- umn, every joint and fastening, was perfectly adjusted, and that adjustment was so perfect that the workmen could erect the temple without noise. Far away from the site of Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 183 the temple were the quarries where the stone was cut and the shops where the wood was planed and carved. These quarries and shops were the scenes of noise and dust and confusion. The manner in which this temple was erected furnishes us with a good illustration of the operations of the spirit- ual man in the conscious and subconscious brains. The conscious is the external brain and is the instrument used by the spiritual mau in the realm of the external. If the spiritual man aspires to write a poem, paint a picture, build a temple, invent a new machine, write a novel, construct a philosophy, float a business scheme, found an institution or build a character, he must employ the conscious brain to gather the raw material. The gathering of raw material and the business of approving it is done in the conscious brain. This work is always accompanied with noise, clouds of dust and confusion. The external world is where the quarries and the workshops are. When the material is gathered and approved and handed over to the subcon- scious, then the silent worker, in the silences and depths of the subconscious, throws the material into perfected form. If the material gathered and marked "approved" is faulty the form it assumes under the moulding hand of the sub- conscious moulder is perfect, but the material that fills in the form is faulty and imperfect. If you employ a tailor to make a coat and you agree to furnish the material, you must not quarrel with the tailor if the coat does not wear if you have furnished him with shoddy. The conscious brain is the realm of responsibility. Here the spiritual man furnishes the raw material ; the subconscious furnishes the manufactured article. 184 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. Our responsibility ceases at the edge of tbe conscious brain, for we have no consciousness of how the spiritual man in the subconscious turns the material into the finished article. The only thing we know is that the work is done somehow, and it is done without any reference to our will. We know how we gather material and how we approve or reject it. All this work is done in the light of conscious- ness. But when we hand the material over to the subcon- scious it passes out of the realm of conscious knowledge and control, and remains away until it reappears in perfected form. It is profoundly and scientifically true that " every man is the architect of his own character." He is not re- sponsible for the plan, but he is responsible for the mate- rial that enters into the structure. Again, all this work of throwing material into finished forms is done without ef- fort; in other words, it is done automatically. The spirit- ual man in the subconscious governs the vital organs ; keeps them in continual movement aud builds the body without any conscious effort. In this realm he is proudly indepen- dent of the will, and as he manufactures food-stuff into a visible organism, marvelously constructed and perfectly ad- justed, without effort, so he manufactures thought-stuff into plan and philosophy, measure, system, poem, paint- ing or character, without any conscious effort on his part at all. The conscious effort comes into play when the spiritual man desires to give the finished work external form. It will be noticed, then, that the work of the spiritual man operating through the conscious brain is all external work, while his work through the subconscious is all in- ternal. With one brain he works in the seen, with the Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 185 other in the unseen. The business of the spiritual man as he works in the conscious is to externalize ; his business as he works in the subconscious is to realize. The whole philosophy of life is summed up in these two words reali- zation and externalization. The spiritual man as he operates in the conscious ought to furnish selected material and then give free and spon- taneous expression to the work of the subconscious. Pro- vided the material furnished is good the finished products of the subconscious are always beautiful and perfect in themselves, but they are often spoiled in the act of expres- sion. If the material furnished was faultless and the pow- ers of expression were equal to the powers of subconscious performance, then all the achievements of man that have assumed visible shape would be faultless. The spiritual man in the conscious brain ought to en- deavor to give free, easy and unobstructed expression to that which is in the interior depths of the soul. He ought not to attempt to modify or change or correct by conscious effort the thoughts that rise from the depths and surge for- ward seeking for expression. I would give the subcon- scious self free rein. I would "loose him and let him go." But some one objects at this point and says : " This would not be policy." It might not be policy but it would be honesty. The child, before it is versed in the dishonest subterfuges of society, is honest, free, outspoken and spon- taneous in his utterances. What is in him comes out. He hides nothing. He is perfectly transparent. What he is, he is, through and through his being. He is simple, artless, candid and courageous. The great Master taught us u that we must become like the child to enter the kingdom of 186 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. heaven/' The beauty of childhood is the beauty of spon- taneous utterance. I am of the opinion that all dishonesty, deception, sub- terfuge, policy and masquerading arises in the conscious brain. If they had their origin in the depths of the sub- conscious man would not be responsible for them. In the conscious brain responsibility begins and ends. Here is where the deep utterances of the soul are changed and modi- fied and chiseled to suit the convenience of the hour and the false conventionalities of the occasion. Here is where the masks are taken off or put on. In the silence of the inte- rior man is true; in the noise of the exterior he is false. On the spiritual and invisible plane he is in line with the program of God ; on the human and visible plane he is in line with the program of society. Shakespeare uttered a great truth when he said : " To thine own self be true, And then it follows as the night the day, Thou canst not be false to any man." This is why I plead for spontaneous expression. Throw the soul outward as it is. Externalize the internal. Throw away all masks and let the visible be a transparent win- dow out of which the soul will look. Banish the unreal and let the real assert itself. Carry all the gigantic poten- tialities of the real man out into the open air and turn them to use on the visible plane. The subconscious is natural; the conscious is inclined to be artificial. The subconscious deals with the real ; the conscious with the unreal. One deals with the spiritual and eternal ; the other with the material and temporal. It Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 187 is unfortunate when the conscious will not give the sub- conscious free expression. All true beauty is unconscious of itself. All artificial methods must fail to produce the beautiful. These methods are conscious attempts to supply that which nature denied. If nature has not furnished a woman the raven's plumage in her hair, it is folly for her to try to make up the defi- ciency by killing the blackbird and fastening it to her hat. If nature has not put the blush of the peach on her cheek, it is useless to try to put it there with powder. If nature has not put the red of the cherry upon her lips, she cannot impart it by cosmetics. A beautiful woman is nature's own achievement, and she can not be counterfeited. Na- ture herself is utterly unconscious of her own loveliness, and this is why she is so beautiful and in some of her moods entrancingly sublime. When a woman with a beautiful form becomes conscious of herself and begins to admire herself and pose to produce effects, she then becomes self- conceited, and self-conceit is always repugnant. Nature never admires herself in the mirror. All true goodness is the outflow of the subconscious. Goodness is a growth from the center. Goodness never brags of its virtues. When goodness declares itself in flaming advertisement, when it becomes conscious of itself and wears a dress-suit on the parade ground of the world's respectabilities, and for a pretense " makes long prayers," it becomes hideous hypocrisy. All true love is an outflowing from the subconscious. Love is not the product of the will. No man can will himself to love. Love's source is not in the conscious brain, for no man can love by conscious effort. We do not learn 188 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. to love as we learn to skate or play the piano. Love has its source in the subconscious; it is the spontaneous out- flowings of the soul's affinities. Love never publishes its gifts. As it dispenses its charities " the left hand knoweth not what the right hand doeth." Love never demands pay for its services. Love gives for the joy of giving. Love is not hemmed in by conscious limitations. It breaks over and through all barriers of sect and creed and party. Love is a divine impulse and does not recognize the artifi- cial distinctions of the external world. Love " thinketh no evil." It cannot conceive of evil, because in itself it is essentially pure. When love becomes conscious of itself and begins to glory in its own excellence, then it becomes selfishness and loses its luster and charm. All true eloquence is an outflowing from the subcon- scious. The etymology of the word is proof of this ; it means " to speak out of." Eloquence is the soul in ac- tion. It is a stream of speech from the deep interior of the soul. It is a surging torrent of thought at white heat. When the orator is at his best, all the powers of his being are brought into requisition. The conscious is subordi- nate to the subconscious. The soul rises in its majesty and marches out into the external form. It flashes from the eye, quivers on the lip, vibrates in the voice and sways the entire body. The artificial is absent, the natural is present, the human is crowded back, the divine stands re- vealed. In true oratory the impact of the soul upon the audience is irresistible. Naked soul touches naked soul, and the orator, seizing the deeps, carries the audience whithersoever he pleases. ■ The true orator, like the true poet, is born, not made. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 189 He cannot be fashioned by the culture of the schools. True eloquence cannot be produced by artificial methods. The shadow of consciousness mars the beauty of the souL Man can build an automaton, dress him up and cause him to walk, but we can see the wheels, springs and strings of the machinery. So a man by conscious effort can speak well, but when he speaks his piece with studied gesture we can easily discover the artificial. Nature can not be coun- terfeited. All the marvelous achievements of genius are the out- Sowings of the subconscious. A genius is a man who does a thing beautifully, grandly, perfectly, and does not know how he does it. Talent is the work of the conscious ; genius is the performance of the subconscious. Talent is artificial; genius is natural. Talent is rule; genius is life. If Shakespeare could tell exactly how he wrote his dramas, each man could become a Shakespeare by learning the art. If Raphael could give minute directions as to how he painted, all could learn the art and the world would be crowded with masterpieces. If Michael Angelo could tell how he thought out the plan of St. Peter's, all who wished could learn these rules and become great architects. But genius has no rules. The formulation of rules is the work of the conscious braiu. The subconscious is a law unto itself; it rides roughshod over all methods born of consciousness, sweeps out grandly and declares its supe- riority. Genius is the deep, grand, majestic life of the soul in magnificent movement. " Every man is a sphinx to all others, an unsolved rid- dle, an agent from his creator with sealed orders." Shakespeare cannot tell us the secret of his power. He 190 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. was essentially great, and because he was great it was nat- ural for him to do great things. The deep subconscious life poured itself out through him in matchless drama. Shakespeare drank in from nature ; he unconsciously and consciously assimilated what he saw and heard, and then organized in visible forms of dramatic art the life of the world. The king, the courtier, the prince, the peasant, the fop, the fool, manhood and womanhood pure and simple and beautiful, manhood and womanhood black with impurity, passion and policy, every form of life that came within the range of his far-sweeping vision, he appropriated. Then he associated them, invested them with life and motive, and then he embodied in dramatic art the dramas they had played in his wonderful brain. Shakespeare in his conscious state was simply the aman- uensis for the hidden creator in the depths of the subcon- scious. As Shakespeare was the unconscious medium for the expression of the highest drama, so Beethoven was the unconscious medium for the expression of the richest har- mony. Beethoven could not tell us the secret of his art. He could not sell it for millions; he could not impart it for a mine of gold. The inspiration of his art had its source away in the deeps below the level of consciousness. He was organized for music. Music was part and parcel of his being; it pervaded the fibers of his subconsciousness. Because of this he attracted harmony from the whole uni- verse; it rushed to him and demanded expression. It was as natural for him to create a symphony as it is for the peafowl to array himself in a blaze of beautiful colors. Raphael could not barter his skill for a throne. He Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 191 was born to paint. It was his mission to breathe life into the canvas. The grandeur of conception, sublimity of expression, beauty of composition, perfection of drawing, fineness of tone and effectiveness of technique that we find in his paintings were all in himself. He drew them from no external source. To be sure he studied and practiced. He did this to master the resident forces in his being. He could not give away his powers. His powers were him- self. To duplicate his masterpieces you must duplicate the man. He poured out himself in his work, and he mixed his paints with his own quivering emotions. v Genius, some one has said, "is an infinite capacity for taking pains." A better definition would be, "an infinite capacityfor doing things without taking pains." It gives a man the worst kind of pains to attempt to do anything for which he is not naturally adapted. It gives the fish pains to take him out of the water. He was built for the water; let him remain in his own environment. Every man is a genius in some direction. Every man comes here for a specific work, and he is magnificently equipped for that work, and for that alone. Every soul ought to run in its own groove. Emerson said: "Like a boat in a river, every boy runs against obstructions on every side but one. On that side all obstructions are taken away and he sweeps serenely on over a deepening channel into an infinite sea." I am aware that in the world of externals the deep life of the subconscious is not allowed to express itself, and if on rare occasions it is allowed to express itself, it must express itself through definitions and moulds that have long ago become obselete. Obstructions and barriers of 192 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. all kinds have been and are being set up to interfere with free, spontaneous expression. The conscious external world is a world of limitations, regulations, by-laws, red tape, artificialities, respectabilities, customs, creeds, crys- tallized ideas and definitions. Some of these things are necessary. I would not sweep them all away. I would retain all law and rule that are in accordance with the nature of things and the law of the souPs movements, but the balance T would sweep into limbo, for they are simply bleached and whitened skulls that obstruct the flow of the deep life from the interior. A genius is a man through whom the infinite life of the subconscious flows unobstructed, and when such a man appears he has a rough time of it. When he begins to speak the world demands that he shut up or suffer the penalty. To the world of men and women moulded in the formularies of creed and dogma, custom and respectability, such a man is a foreigner and an enemy. The inward life of the soul speaks in Isaiah, and custom-made respecta- bilities become exceedingly mad against him and saw his body in twain with a wooden saw. The voice of the infi- nite spirit of truth speaks through the lips of John the Baptist, and a lecherous woman, at the command of an adulterous king, receives his bleeding head in her lap. God speaks through the lips and the magnificent life of Jesus the Christ, and the authorities of Church and State, who had grown rich by the destruction of truth, nailed him to the Cross. Truth seeks expression through Galileo, and the authorities of his time, rolling in wealth by the destruction of freedom, forced him to deny his statements under the threat of death. John Wesley Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 193 becomes a medium of a transforming message from the Unseen, and the world pays him for his services by drag- ging him through horse ponds and pelting him with mud and missile. The world of men and women, moulded by custom, brutalized by bigotry and enslaved by creed, smites down the hand that holds to its lips the chalice containing the waters of Eternal Life. " There was a man sent from God whose name was John." This is the language of the Bible, and I am pro- foundly of the impression that every man is " sent from God." He comes out of the deep unseen universe into the seen universe with a message distinctively his own. When he emerges he finds himself barred in by ten thousand limi- tations thicker than the walls of Babylon. He must either force his way through, making a new channel for his thought, or else allow it to run in the contracted channels built by his ancestors. Thus it happens that the boy is forced into an occupation for which he is not fitted, and the artificial moulds the free movements of the soul. The round man ought to avoid the square hole. The young lady makes her " d£but " into the social world to have her individuality destroyed by the moulds of fashion and cus- tom. The young student enters college to be pressed into shape and hardened in the intellectual moulds of dead methods. The young Christian is " born again " into the church, where his freedom is destroyed by rules and his manhood is dwarfed by forms, and his free, spontaneous, spiritual growth is interfered with by creeds that were made by men who lived a thousand years ago. When will the church learn that every soul born into this world is a new creation sent here to " work out his own salvation " 13 m 194 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. in obedience to the universal laws of truth and love? No other man can think or decide or act for him. He stands forth in his own lonely individuality, on the plains of life, in the immediate presence of God, to build his own char- acter and determine his own destiny. We have too much law; we are organized to death. The New Thought philosophy stands for the universal, and the universal is always simple. In religion we are the victims of over-organization. The soul is crucified on the cross of creed and form, and the Christ is smothered in the voluminous folds of liturgy. In government the voice of the people can not be heard ; we are strangled with red tape and governmental expedient. In social intercourse contact of soul with soul is impossible because of a million intervening frigid artificialities. The New Thought declares that the soul is the one eternal simple of the universe. There is no complexity in the soul and its methods. Because of this the New Thought stands for simplification. Simplify government, simplify religion, simplify social intercourse, simplify education. Iu a word, simplify life. Give the soul a chance. Give us more elbow room. Give the soul room to expand to its grandest and fullest expression. The New Thought philosopher does not worry over the actual condition of affairs. He knows that the history of humanity is expressed in one word — evolution, and that the successive advances of humanity are marked by long stretches of dead methods tossed up on the shores of time. He knows that the tides of life from the infinite ocean of the unseen are ever lifting humanity to new heights of attainment. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 195 The New Thought philosopher makes a plea for free- dom, for spontaneity of expression. He declares that u spontaneity is the supreme thing. Pumped-up effort is as barren of results as is the average prayer. You may ami- ably wish and wish and wish, but you will never get it. You may drudge like a slave for the thing you want, but unless spontaneity is at the back of your desire it will not materialize." Jesus said, " Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature ? " All the anguish-smitten, con- scious effort of the soul can not add the thousandth part of an inch to a man's height. He says again : " Consider the lilies how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these/' The lily unfolds spontaneously into matchless beauty. Conscious worry dwarfs the soul ; subconscious spontaneity unfolds it to the highest perfec- tion. Effort originating in the conscious is unnatural. Effort originating in the subconscious is natural. Effort originating in the conscious is a movement commencing in the periphery. Effort originating in the subconscious is a movement commencing at the center. The first is wasted energy ; the second is potential power ; the first is the human method; the second is the divine method; the first is a violation of law ; the second is in conformance to law. Pursue the first course and you become a spiritual dwarf. Pursue the second and you become a spiritual giant. Holmes expressed the central truth of all true character- building when he sang : " Build thee more stately mansions, oh my soul, As the swift seasons roll. Leave thy low-vaulted past ; 196 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. Till thou at length art free ; leaving thine outgrown shell By life's unresting sea." The noblest type of man is he in whom the conscious and the subconscious operate in perfect harmony. In him logic does not destroy the products of intuition ; in fact, the products of intuition are so faultless and so free from folly that they always stand the test of logic. In him logic does not infringe upon the province of intuition, nor does intuition infringe upon the province of logic. In the per- fect man each of these powers acts in the sweetest harmony. In him intuition is logical and logic is intuitional ; one corroborates the other at all points. In him there is no discord between the external and the internal ; in obedience to the simple natural law of spontaneity the internal is ex- pressed through the external, and the internal is so in con- formity with truth that it never desires to express anything that would be condemned in the courts of common sense. The perfect man cannot give birth to an abnormal thought. There ought to be no discord between the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious and the subconscious are the two hands of the ego that bring out of the organ of life perfect harmony. It is profoundly true " that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." All thought, like light, is colored by the medium through which it passes. An ill- balanced mind will always produce a system of thought that dips away from the level. If the conscious and sub- conscious are the two hands of the ego bringing out of life's keyboard harmony, is it not unfortunate when only Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 197 one hand is used, and still more unfortunate when that hand strikes discordant notes. It follows from these remarks that the individual who undertakes to instruct the world in the highest science of life, the science of harmonious unfoldment, must be a perfect being. The author of Christian Science has a mind that dips away from the line of perfect balance. Her wild claims are outlawed by the facts, and the products of her intuition are disowned by logic. So far as I am personally concerned he who instructs me must claim and demonstrate his own intrinsic per- fection and perfect self-balance. Jesus the Christ stands on the page of history unchallenged — the perfect being. He claimed and demonstrated perfection. He was the embodiment of stainlessness, the incarnation of love, the exhaustless source of life, the grandest demonstra- tion of truth, the loftiest ideal of goodness, the high- est manifestation of power and the most perfect example of self-balance the world has ever seen. In him there was no discord. The external was a perfect medium for the outward expression of the internal, and the in- ternal was so in line with truth that it could desire the expression of nothing else. In him the conscious and sub- conscious wrought in beautiful harmony. The system of simple truth he has given us in his matchlessly perfect life has never been surpassed. The system is perfection be- cause he is perfection. The libraries of the world are filled with volumes of commentaries and sermons and creeds, but none of them have added a single truth to the system he furnished us with. It was impossible to add to the science he gave us, for it contains within itself the sum-total of all 198 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. truth in the highest science of the universe, the science of the perfect life. He not alone gave us the sum-total of the science ; he gave us in his great and luminous life the sum-total of the art also. Any attempt to improve upon the system he gave us always has resulted in a miserable caricature. Calvinism, Arminianism, Mormonism, Eddy- ism, are miserable caricatures, abortions born of ill-bal- anced brains. I have shown that the spiritual man in the deeps of the subconscious is the chemist in the great laboratory of thought. I have shown that the subconscious is the source of all inspiration. I have shown that the spiritual man in the subconscious is the silent architect of character, and that the spiritual man in the conscious must furnish the raw material for character construction. Now, in concluding this part of our study of the subcon- scious, I would say that we have conscious access to the simple records of the life of Christ, and we have his doc- trine reported by his disciples. If anybody can furnish me with a loftier book than that collection of documents known as the New Testament I will willingly discard it. But I have come to the conclusion that as a storehouse for timber for the development of the highest type of character its excellence has never and will never be surpassed. In this book we have the science of the perfect life taught by the world's master teacher, and we have the art illustrated in his exquisite life. I would advise all the readers of this volume who are in search of the most beautiful and most enduring thought-stuff to use in character-building to read this book and crowd New Testament timber into the sub- conscious, and under the automatic laws of character- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 199 building every one who does so will unfold a character similar to that of Jesus. Finally, the spiritual man, operating in the subcon- scious, seems to be free from the limitations of time and space. To understand what I mean by this the reader will call to mind the point I have given frequent emphasis to, namely, that man is an inhabitant of two realms, the visible and the invisible. The visible realm is the realm of external objects. The invisible is the realm of thought. Thought comes out of the invisible into the visible and becomes externalized. The invisible is the realm of finished ideals. Here is where the great Architect of the universe keeps his finished plans, for the sacred Book says : " The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. " The vis- ible is the realm where the finished plans gradually assume shape, for the Lamb was not actually slain until the events of four thousand years, had prepared the way. The invisi- ble is the realm of the absolute; the visible is the realm of the relative. The invisible is the realm of the perfect; the visible is the real of the imperfect. The invisible is the realm of perfect ideals; the visible is the realm where the perfected ideals are slowly evolved into visible form. These finished ideals are ever emerging seeking expression. In the invisible thought-realm time and space are annihilated. So completely is thought master of time and space that they are as if they were not. In the visible realm where invisible thought slowly assumes visible form time and space are both necessary. There could be no visible realm if time and space were both absent. In fact, time and space are inherent qualities of the visible universe; with- out them even the conception of such a universe would be 200 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. impossible. In the visible realm time is measured off by the motion of the earth upon its axis and around the sun. Man, then, is an inhabitant of two realms, and when he operates through the conscious brain he operates in the visible, and he requires both time and space to embody his thought-forces in visible form. In other words, when he works in the external he is limited by time and space and must conform to their laws. When he operates through the subconscious in the internal he operates in the invisible, and in this realm he is so superior to time and space that they exist as if they were not. In the visible man is lim- ited by the finite and hemmed in by its laws. In the in- visible he operates in the infinite and to the infinite the finite exists as if it were not. But some one asks: How can a thing exist and yet ex- ist as if it were not ? I answer by saying the stars and the moon exist. Gro out at night and you behold them in glittering array, crowding each other on the midnight skies. But in the daytime they disappear; they exist, and yet they exist as if they were not. The superior effulgence of the sun has annihilated them. In the realm of communication time and space have been annihilated because man has learned to direct a force that is superior to both time and space. Marconi, the electrical wizard, has ascended into a realm where time and space are unknown, and manipulates a force that does not recognize either. Marconi sends out his message by lightning flash, and the instant it is sent it is received thousands of miles away. Time and space are nonentities in the presence of that invisible potential energy mastered by Marconi. Now the power that masters is greater than Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 201 the power mastered. The thought of Marconi and his associ- ates mastered this mysterious energy which the scientists call "ether." Thought-force is mightier than ether, and if ether in vibration does not recognize time and space, much less does thought-force in vibration recognize them. Coming back to my original proposition : When the spiritual man operates in the realm of the subconscious he -does not recognize time or space. Zerah Colborn could tell instantaneously the square root of 106,929 as 327, and the cube root of 68,336,125 as 645. Before the question of the number of minutes in forty- ^ight years could be written out he answered by saying 25,228,810. He gave without a moment's hesitation the factors of 247,483 as 941 and 263, and when asked for the factors of 36,083 he answered there are none, for it is a prime number. He could not tell how the ansivers came to his mind, and he could not perform on paper a simple sum in multiplication or division. The element of time enters into all man's performances on the visible plane, but when he operates on the invisible plane time does not seem to be a factor at all. Thousands of times it has happened that all the events and experi- ences of a lifetime have been crowded within the compass of a single instant. Individuals who have been rescued irom drowning and others who have escaped death in an accident, in relating their experience, have said that in a second they have lived over again their entire past lives. In these rare and mysterious moments the spiritual man ope- rated on the invisible thought-plane where time and space as factors are not recognized. We have already seen that in the hours of sleep the 202 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. spiritual man has retreated from the conscious brain and ceases to manifest himself on the visible planes of action. We have also seen that this temporary retirement by no means destroys his activity, and although he may be utterly unconscious of his material surroundings, yet he continues to manifest himself on invisible planes. This invisible activity of the spiritual man in sleep is revealed in dreams. The mental movements of the spiritual man in dreams are more rapid than the lightning stroke. Sometimes in dreams an entire tragedy is enacted in the fragment of a second ; an entire life is lived in a moment, or a multitude of events that would fill a volume are packed within the limits of an instant. All these things go to show that in the invisible thought-realm time and space exist as if they were not. The spiritual man in this deep and marvelous realm is utterly independent of all the limitations of the external universe. To the spiritual man in this realm there is no past and no future ; there is no here and no there. Here and there past and future belong to the visible realm; they form the limiting barriers of the universe of externals, but in the deep interior spiritual universe none of these things exist. In concluding this chapter I would remark: 1. That man is a wonderful being and stands surrounded with matchless opportunities. He stands on the edge of the material at the point where the invisible forces of eter- nity rush forth to be embodied in visible form in the realm of time. Thus he stands between the visible and the in- visible, and he embodies in himself in finite form the quali- ties of both ; therefore he is responsive to all the forces that move in the realms of both. Man is open to the forces Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 2.03 from both realms. The body or the external man is open to the play of the forces in time, and the spiritual or inter- nal man is open to the play of the forces in eternity. I am not prepared to accept the doctrine that is being widely disseminated to-day in pamphlet and book and ad- dress that man is God in self-expression. God is the abso- lute one ; man is a relative being. God is the perfect whole r man is a fragmentary unit. God is infinite in life, power r love, truth, wisdom and justice ; man possesses these attri- butes but they are limited by the finite measure of his ca- pacities. God is the causeless cause ; man is an effect. God is the infinite ocean of perfection ; man is a lake receiving his supplies regularly from the ocean of the divine fulness. God is the independent one ; man is dependent. God is the giver ; man is the receiver. Now, since man stands between the visible and the in- visible, and since his being is open to the operation of the forces that move in both, he can enter into the deeps of the invisible, come into vital union with the giant forces of the unseen, assimilate these forces, and then march forward into time with the step of a conqueror and externalize these forces in splendid achievement. To do this he must enter into the silence, shut out the rattle, noise and confusion of the external universe, absorb the forces of the infinite and then come forth a veritable giant of strength to achieve something for the upliftment of humanity. This is what the great Master meant when he said, " When thou prayest enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door? pray to thy Father who seeth in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Here you have the command to enter into the silence, shut out all external 204 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. noises ; come into living contact with the invisible God, become surcharged with his power and love and wisdom; then go forth into the open of the external and achieve great things for humanity. All the great movements of human history that have been fraught with infinite blessings to humanity were conceived and born in the deep silence. Christianity in its beautiful simplicity was the most gracious movement that ever entered human history. Christianity, freed from all human opin- ions, is the divine thought-force in action in the realms of time. It is a wave of light and love, and power and joy, and freedom and purity from the vast realms of the invis- ible. Its author was a man who habitually entered into the silence. When the tired world was hushed in slumber he was up amidst the solitudes of the mountains commun- ing with the invisible. It is recorded that on one occasion he entered into the silence of communion with the invisible with three of his disciples, and, behold, the resplendent majesty of the invisible forces shone in effulgent glory through his body ; his face shone as the sun and his rai- ment was as white as the light, and the glorified spirits of the masters of history, Moses and Elijah, conversed with him, and the voice of God was heard saying, "This is my beloved Son ; hear ye him." The matchless achievements of the Christ are to my mind a perfect demonstration of the fact that he was a perfect medium for the display of the infinite forces that reside in the invisible. In him the perfect ideal of man that exists in finished form in the eternal world was exhib- ited in time. In him the infinite God found a perfect in- strument for the display of the omnipotent energies of the Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 205 invisible. Through him vibrated without obstructiou the thought- forces of God. The majesty, the truth, the dig- nity, the calmness, the love, the truth and power of the invisible were absorbed by him in the silence, and this is why he shook the world and changed the front of history. His miracles, his resurrection and his ascension were per- fectly natural to a being of his type. Such divine achieve- ments belonged to him as naturally as music belonged to Mosart or drama to Shakespeare or invention to Edison. Christ was the divine in external form. His miracles, his resurrection and ascension were not done in violation to law ; they were wrought in obedience to law. All the laws of inferior forces are annihilated when a superior force be- gins to operate. Christ was perfect master of the highest forces of the universe. He moved on the highest plane. He was the perfect medium of the energies of omnipo- tence, and because of this his achievements were in perfect keeping with his character. The Christ of history can never be duplicated. He stands forth upon the pages of history in lonely and silent grandeur. Because of this he is the great Example and the loftiest Ideal. He gave ua the science and art of the perfect life, and as he habitually entered into the silence for inspiration and power so must we. All the great men of history since his time who have benefited the world by their lives and achievements have been men who habitually entered into the silence of the invisible. Martin Luther remains in the silence of his cell in the monastery communing with the invisible, and when he comes out he shakes Europe and the vibrations of his voice "206 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. overturn the thrones of despotism, cause tyrants to trem- ble, emancipate the mind of man from the slavery of cen- turies, aod give birth to a thousand movements fraught -with blessings to the race. John Bunyan is flung into the silence of Bedford jail. There, with a bundle of straw for a bed and cold stone for a table, he enters into communion with the invisible in the silence, and there he obtains the inspiration to write a book called (t The Pilgrim's Progress," a book that has a perennial charm and has lifted millions from the "slough of despond" and placed their feet upon the sun-bathed summits of a lofty character. The clouds of disaster hang heavy in the skies of Amer- ica's history. In the battle for freedom the combatants are uoequally matched. The armies'of England are mighty ; her treasury contains unlimited supplies. The colonial army is ragged and hungry ; the treasury is depleted ; dis- content is in the atmosphere, and despair makes the heart of freedom's defenders shiver with dread. George Wash- ington, the general of the colonial army, upon whose shoulders rests the responsibility of achieving independ- ence, is sad and his heart is heavy. He retires into the deep silence and falls upon his knees and communes with the invisible God. A wave of light sweeps away the clouds of fear and despair. The man in the silence is in- spired. He has a vision of victory, and he rises from his knees a conqueror. In that moment the grandest, the strongest and mightiest republic the world has ever seen was born, and George Washington has been fitly named u the Father of his country." In short, all history stands ready with volumes of evi- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 207 dence to show that all great character in men and women and all great movements that have showered infinite bene- dictions upon humanity were born in the profound depths of the silence. 2. My second remark is this : To realize the perfect we must enter into the silence and stand face to face with it, aud when the majestic vision interpenetrates the entire spiritual man, then we must march out into the open and give the vision visible form. I am aware that by reason of our limitations we cannot give perfect expression to the matchless visions of perfection that we obtain in the silence, but we must do the best we can with the materials at hand. Realization is done in the silence of the invisible. Externalization is done in the noise of the visible. Realization is like faith ; "it is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Just as the entire oak-tree lies capsulate in the acorn, so all history lies in perfect seed-form in the invisible ; and just as time and space are factors in the unfoldment of the oak-tree to mature perfection, so time and space are necessary factors in the unfoldment of the perfect plan of history. Faith opens the door into the invisible and shows the spiritual man the finished ideals of history to be external- ized in time. This is why a prophet is called a seer. The seer has spiritual vision ; he sees the finished ideal and the perfect plan lying in the dazzling splendor of the timeless invisible. This explains how Daniel could predict the movements of all history, and John could predict the vary- ing fortunes of the Empire of Truth and Righteousness. Faith then is the power that enables the spiritual man to 208 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. enter the invisible and behold in substance " things hoped for" and see in finished form "things not seen." As George Washington entered into the silence and re- mained there in communion with the invisible he had a vision of a mighty republic ; the plan was there, the fin- ished ideal in seed-form was already existing in substance. Washington saw it, and it gave him a confidence that no defeat could destroy and an inspiration that no barrier could daunt. After this vision Washington was irresisti- ble. He was organized victory in himself. The man who enters into the silence and beholds the vision of the per- fect cannot be vanquished. He sees the perfect plan, and he knows that if the plan is ever carried forward and ex- ternalized in time that this work must be done by human agency. If one set of individuals refuse to carry the plan for- ward and externalize it on the planes of the visible, an- other set of individuals will have the opportunity. The plans and specifications of history are finished and the ma- terial is ready in ample quantity and quality, but those who take the contract must comply with the conditions. The Jews refused to comply with the conditions of extending the kingdom of God, and the Gentiles received and em- braced the opportunity. If the structure is finished with defective material man is to blame. Man is surrounded with the opulence of eternity so far as material is concerned ; the plans are matchlessly perfect and the instructions full and definite ; if he puts bad material into the structure he has no one to blame but himself. But I would have the reader to notice with special atten- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 209 tion this fact : the man who enters the invisible and has a vision of the finished ideal generally falls in love with it and falls in line with the purpose of the eternal Architect, and thus becomes a living, moving part of the plan, and so far as his work is concerned in carrying the plan forward into time he is invincible. He will not be held responsible for the failure of others. The supreme thing for the individual, however, is the unfoldment of a pure, well-balanced, lofty character. This business of character-building can not be accomplished in a day or a month or a year. It is supreme folly to imagine that a man can live in hourly disobedience to the laws of character-building for seventy or eighty years, and then, when his whole character is a mass of ruins, expect to have it reconstructed in a moment upon his death-bed. The laws of character-building, like the laws of history- building, are the laws of God, and they are inflexible; no man can play fast and loose with them. What are these laws? 1. The man must enter into the silence and stand with receptive soul in the presence of the perfect ideal. 2. He must do this habitually and concentrate all his powers upon the vision until the automatic laws of the subconscious weave the qualities of the vision into his life. 3. He must then march out into the open and crystal- lize those qualities into a transparent character on the planes of visible action. The man must first u tarry at Jerusalem," enter into the upper room and hide himself in the silence, and when the vision of the perfect Christ appears he must open his whole nature in the spirit of perfect receptivity to its transforming 14 m 210 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. power. He must do this habitually until the automatic machinery of the subconscious shall weave the Christ quali- ties into the life. When he becomes surcharged with the life-forces of the Christ his thoughts will create a holy atmosphere around him and his tongue will become a flame of love ; then he will march forth into the open and preach a new gospel that will shake Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and reach the outermost edge of the earth, and that gospel will be that the " Christ v is the sum-total of all truth and "the power of God unto salvation." Every man has within himself this perfect ideal. The historic Christ externalized on the page of history corre- sponds to the invisible Christ that exists in the depths of every man ; for " This is the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world/' and Paul says : " The word is nigh thee even in thy mouth, and in thine heart even the word of the gospel we preach. If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God hath raised him from the dead, you shall be saved." When a man surrenders to the highest within himself he surrenders to the highest outside of himself, and the highest outside of man is the historic Christ. We need the matchless portrait of " the Christ " in history to interpret the " Christ within. " The Christ without is the Christ within written out in terms of flesh and blood. One is the tenon, the other is the mortise ; they are complements of each other. Jesus himself said, " He that is of the truth heareth my voice." Again, in the matter of unfolding a healthy body the same conditions must be complied with : Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 211 1. The man must enter into the silence of the invisible and stand with receptive nature in the presence of the vision of perfect health. 2. He must do this habitually until the thought-quali- ties of health shall, under the operation of the automatic machinery of body-building, enter into the living tissue of his body. 3. He must then march forward into the visible and crystallize the thought-qualities of health in a strong and vigorous body by exercise on the visible plane of action. In the realm of the invisible there is nothing imperfect and nothing abnormal. u There is no night there." There is no discord there. There is no crying nor tears nor sorrow there. There is no sickness nor disease nor death there. All these things belong to the visible realm where man is slowly struggling on towards the realization of " the per- fect." When the perfect ideals of the invisible are per- fectly externalized in time, then all sorrow and discord and disease and pain aud death will be swept away. To gain health we must realize the vision in the silence of perfect health and then externalize it on the planes of action. This can not be accomplished in a day or a month. Body- building, like character-building, requires time. 212 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. CHAPTER VIII. THE LAW OF THOUGHT- PROJECTION. Up to the present we have been dealing specifically with fundamental facts and principles. It was necessary that we enter into a thorough investigation of these funda- mentals for a full understanding of this, and the following chapters would have been impossible apart from a clear-cut knowledge of the fundamental facts and principles in the universe and in man. At this point I feel justified in say- ing that the results of our study have led us to one grand conclusion — namely : " That the whole universe without and the whole universe within are governed by law/' This is God's universe, and in it there is no such thing as chance ; there is no such thing as luck ; there are no slip- shod methods. The infinite superintending mind is absolute perfection; the laws of the universe are the outgoings of this infinite mind, and since that mind is perfection the laws must be perfection also. We have seen that the business of uni- verse-building and universe government are achievements wrought in obedience to law. We have seen that body- building, mind-building and character-building are wrought in obedience to well-ordered and never-changing law. We have seen that the attainment of physical health and soul opulence, the attainment of personal self-control, personal attractiveness and power, and the attainment of success of the highest type are all obtained by obedience to barmo- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 213 nious, well-ordered, never-changing laws. There is noth- ing arbitrary in the universe. There is no such thing as favoritism. The doctrine of election is a libel on God — a clumsy theory fabricated to support a false assumption. By obedience to law all the forces of the universe within and all the forces of the universe without become man's willing servants. By disobedience all these forces become man's enemies. By obedience to law man masters law. Through disobedience law masters him. By obedience all law conspires to make man free. Through disobedience to law man forges the chains of his own slavery. When man obeys all forces crown him. When he disobeys all forces crush him. When a man's life is in harmony with the program of God, the serenity of heaven's repose reigns throughout the dominions of man's inner kingdom. When his life is run in accordance with the program of selfishness, the discord of hell reigns through the same do- minions. The same principle obtains in the universe that obtains in human law — namely: "Ignorance of the law excuses no one." If a man does not know the law and obeys it, he reaps the benefit. If he does not know the law and dis- obeys it, he receives the penalty. All departments of hu- man action are governed by these unchanging laws, and a man may obey the laws that obtain in one section of human action and reap the reward, while he may disobey the laws that govern another section and receive the penalty. There are, for instance, laws governing character-build- ing and laws governing fortune-building. A man may, by strict obedience to the laws that govern business success, amass millions, while at the same time he may disobey the 214 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. laws of soul enrichment and in the matter of character- building he may be a dismal failure. On the other hand, a man may obey the laws of soul enrichment and, from the standpoint of spiritual unfoldment, he may be gloriously successful, while at the same time he may fail to fulfil the conditions of business success and remain poor all his life. A man may obey the laws of physical health and become strong and vigorous, while, at the same time, he may fail to comply with the conditions of spiritual health and be- come a moral wreck. The converse of this is also true. A man may obey the laws of spiritual unfold ment and be- come a spiritual giant, while he may fail to comply with the conditions of physical health and become a physical wreck. Harmonious development along all lines — in spiritual unfoldment, mind-building, body-building and achieve- ment upon the planes of the visible — depends upon habitual obedience to the laws that govern these realms. According to these remarks the supreme thing for man is to know the law and obey it. I believe that all things are possible to the man who knows all law and obeys all law. The measure of a man's power is the measure of his knowledge of and obedience to law. The advance of man is exactly commensurate with his knowledge of and obedience to law. When a man knows how a force moves he can then construct a machine that will in all the details and general plan of its construc- tion conform to the manner in which that force moves ; through this machine he can harness and direct this force and compel it to do his bidding. Man has found out how electricity moves, and he builds his machines and dynamos Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 215 in accordance with the law of electrical movement, and, behold, that giant force that shivers the atmosphere and cleaves the oak and shakes the earth becomes tame and willingly acts as man's obedient servant. All things are possible to the man who knows all law and obeys all law. It must be remembered that this is a state- ment of the ideal condition towards which man has been struggling for thousands of years. When humanity as a whole reaches in the path of progress the point when each individual shall know all law and obey all law, then hu- manity shall have reached ultimate perfection, and all the units of the perfect ivhole shall have attained to permanent and perfect union with the invisible God. My purpose in writing this volume is to furnish a small quota towards the magnificent general result by showing how a man, by obedience to law, can win self-control and unfold his own inward powers and thereby develop a strong, noble, pure and permanent character. With these considerations I will now proceed in the dis- cussion of the laid of thought-projection. The two questions that present themselves demanding an answer are these : Can a man send out his thoughts to a distant point with- out the aid of intermediate instrumentalities ? If he can, how is this mysterious performance wrought? The first question is easy to answer ; the second question is exceedingly difficult. We will now proceed to answer the first question. 1. That it is possible for man to send his thought to a dis- tant point without the aid of any intermediate instrumental- ity visible to the human eye or tangible to the human touch 216 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. may be shown by the achievements of Marconi. That the reader may fully understand the marvelous performance of Marconi I take this description of his work from " The New York World " : " Marconi consented to take the news- paper correspondents into the operating-room and explain the process by which the Hertzian waves are started on their way through 'ether.' The room is about thirty feet square. Near the door is a raised platform upon which the operator stands while sending the message. The key is on a shelf, and on the wall there is a switch which turns on or shuts off the power from the dynamo. First sendings by the wireless methods were done by means of a wooden lever which operated pump-handle fashion. The new key devised by Marconi, while several times larger than the regulation telegraph key, is like it in many respects. It is about twelve inches in length, made of brass, has a gutta-percha button and platinum contact points. The play between the points is about one inch. This of course can be regu- lated, but a considerable play is necessary to prevent stick- ing. " The greater part of the operating-room floor space is occupied by condensers. They are about waist high and form a square in the room. Crossing them from corner to corner are two pieces of sheet zinc about a foot wide and ten or twelve feet long. At the left end of the room from the entrance are the electrodes, with three square oil tanks for cooling purposes and two silvery globes about the size of a croquet ball. There is a space of about four inches between these globes, and it is the crossing of the electricity over this air bridge that gives the sparks and the loud re- ports when the operator is busy with the key. One of the Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 217 electrodes is connected with the ground; the other with the aerial wires above ground. When the electricity was switched into the condensers it gathered force, passed into the wire and down to the electrode. The opening and closing of the key caused the wires to charge and discharge, and the jumping of the current across the space between the elec- trodes gave the pulsations which vibrated the ether and was •conveyed to the other side of the Atlantic." Here you have — 1. A machine for crowding electricity into small com- pass. 2. A machine through which man controls and directs this condensed force. 3. A machine through which man, by liberating this condensed force, sets the inner atmosphere or ether in vi- bration. 4. These vibrations are of almost inconceivable rapid- 5. The laws of time and space seem to be annihilated in the presence of this mysterious energy. 6. On the invisible wings of this subtle energy man can send his thought to any distance. The point that it is important for us to remember in our -examination of the invention of Marconi is this : Here is an invisible, intangible force, concerning the essence of which man knows nothing — a force harnessed and directed by man ; this force leaps into the saddle upon the back of another invisible, intangible element called " ether " and rides with inconceivable rapidity to the receiving instru- ment, where the message carried is automatically recorded. This wonderful invisible rider cares not for wind nor wave, 218 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. rock nor mountain. He finds an unobstructed pathway through all things. Whether he winds his way around the atoms of matter or drives through them we do not know. One thing we do know — "he gets there just the same." Prior to the discovery of Marconi man was compelled at great expense to build a copper highway at the bottom of the sea for this invisible rider. Marconi has found out that he does not need any elaborate highway constructed by man. Almighty God, when he created him, created at the same time an invisible highway for him through the universe. Marconi has adjusted his machines so as to send this swift rider out in his own invisible track, and has thereby done away with all visible and tangible highways. The transmission of thought to great distances without the use of visible intermediate instrumentalities is an ac- complished fact. Our scientists have buried forever the doctrine of coarse materialism. They have opened the door into the unseen universe. They have demonstrated that the unseen realm is the source from which issues all the omnipotent poten- tialities of eternity. The utilization of electricity as a means for transmitting thought on the waves of "ether" will speedily be followed by the utilization of a still swifter force. I refer now to the rays that flow from that newly discovered metal called "radium." All over the world scientists are experiment- ing with this marvelous substance. Sir Wm. Crookes, the discoverer of the X-ray, Lord Kelvin, Prof. Henri Becqueral, Madam and Professor Curie, Professors Pegram, Pupin and Thompson are delv- ing into the fascinating mystery of its power. These scien- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 219 tists have discovered that flying atoms from radium will whirl through sheet-iron with no diminution of speed and photograph an object afterwards. A single crystal will give out its steady blue light for a million years without cessation, while continuing to hurl forth its atoms into space and to impart to other substances the property of giving light. The light from radium is entirely devoid of heaf. Its flying particles will burn the flesh without the sensation of heat. Down in the deepest depths of pitchblende mines where particles of radium have been hidden away from sunlight since the world was built they are still found shining with their strange blue light. After ages of time they continue to hurl their atoms outward and upward through the en- casing pitchblende, vast masses of granite, clay and sod and grass, beyond the surface of the earth and beyond the flamiug sun. What an amazing gunner is this who fires his atomic projectiles from the profound depths of the earth and hits a star. These projectiles move at the rate of one hundred and twenty thousand miles a second ; one of them would make a double viewless loop around the moon and back again before you could say " Jack Robinson." Sup- pose you should hold a crystal of radium in your hand and face the east. Suppose one of the particles shot forth by the radium crystal was a bullet ; you would be shot in the back five times within the limits of a wink. One of these particles sent out to chase a Mauser bullet would pass through it as if it was standing still. The force that Marconi has harnessed rides with incon- ceivable rapidity, but the rays from radium ride faster. 220 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. My purpose in recording this description of radium from the reports of the scientists who have been studying its properties is to give the reader the conclusions arrived at by these men who have every facility for arriving at a just estimate of its properties. The conclusions are as follows : 1. Radium is a substance. 2. Its rays are substantial parts of itself. 3. These rays move faster than electricity. 4. Matter in its densest form offers no obstruction to its passage. Radium then is a mineral. It is composed of an aggre- gation of minute particles of matter. It belongs then to the visible external universe. It is subject to the laws that govern the material universe. It occupies space and time is a factor in its movements, for it consumes time in its rapid flight. It is unquestionably the rarest mate- rial substance yet known to science. The rapid flight of its infinitesimal particles through the universe is probably the highest and most rarefied form of matter in existence. But with all its marvelous properties it is still a form of matter and will always remain in its own realm. When we ascend in our investigations through the coarse material forms to the more rarefied, and from the more rare- fied to the still more rarefied, we eventually reach the outermost edge of matter, and we find that here another realm begins. We call this realm the realm of spirit. While the inmost essence of spirit and matter defies our mightiest powers of analysis, yet we know that matter is not spirit and spirit is not matter. We know that spirit is the cause and matter is the effect; spirit is the creator Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 221 and matter is the created. We know that spirit is obedient to its own laws of movement and matter is obedient to its own laws of movement. We know that spirit creates matter and then moulds it in obedience to law into conformity with its own purpose. We know that since spirit is the creator and governor of matter it is infinitely superior to matter. Now my argument is this : If the thing created has the power to send forth parts of itself with such marvelous speed, the creator can move with still greater speed. If matter in motion can almost knock out time and space,, spirit can knock them out altogether. If the most rarefied forms of matter can pass through all other forms of matter that stand below them without any diminution in the ve- locity of their flight, then spirit can pass through the most rarefied forms of matter as if it did not exist at all. If spirit was sent on a chase after radium rays it would pass through them as if they were standing still. With these considerations before us, I will state the sub- stance of this chapter in the form of propositions : 1. Spirit is the supreme force in the universe. 2. Thought is spirit in action. 3. Thought in movement annihilates time and space. 4. The realm where thought moves is the realm of the eternal now. 5. In this timeless, spaceless realm where thought moves matter does not exist. 6. That the spiritual man acting in the subconscious realm can project his thought on the unseen plane to a distance. 222 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 7. That this ability is conditioned upon obedience to law and is susceptible of cultivation by exercise. 8. That the medium of communication is the spirit at- mosphere in which we all live and move and have our being. As we proceed in our study of this invisible force and its realm of action we must remember that language is sometimes misleading. Language itself is simply the ex- ternal shell of invisible thought ; it is thought externalized on the plane of the visible. It source is in the external ; the qualities that enter into its structure are all qual- ities that inhere in the visible. If we could strip off all ex- ternal envelopes and sweep away all material environments and commune as the angels do we would need no language. Then we would need no explanations of the majestic real- ities of the unseen universe. It would not be necessary to attempt to show that in the unseen universe there is no time and no space, aud that matter in all its forms is ab- sent. The spiritual man standing in the midst of this great and mysterious realm would need no argument to convince him. The order of the invisible universe would be self-evident. But the situation with us at present is different. We are fleshed up spirits. We reach each other on the visible plane through the medium of matter. Our language, the vehicle for the conveyance of thought, is material through- out its structure, and the organs of speech are composed of matter. Because of this — I say that the language we are compelled to use in expressing the results of our study of the unseen universe and the movements of the spiritual man in that realm is liable to mislead. I would advise Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 223 the reader not to mistake the symbol for the idea symbol- ized, nor the drapery for the principle. I shall not discuss the first five propositions because I have already, in previous chapters, furnished evidence in support of their scientific accuracy. I will simply restate them and proceed. In the universe at large and in man spirit is the supreme force. Thought is the spirit in movement. When thought moves dynamically time and space are annihilated, because thought moves in the realm of the eternal now, where there is no here nor there, and no past nor present. When thought moves dynamically it moves in the unseen universe where matter does not ex- ist to offer a barrier to its progress. The proposition that now presents itself for illustration and proof is this : "The spiritual man, acting through the subconscious brain, can project his thought on the unseen plane to a distance." This proposition will be clearly understood if the reader will recall the point repeatedly made in the previous chap- ters, namely : That man is an inhabitant of two realms, the visible and the invisible. That he operates in the visible through the conscious brain, and he operates in the invisible through the subconscious brain. His methods of thought-transmission in each realm must conform to the laws that govern in each realm. When he transmits his thought in the visible he uses audible, tangible and visible methods. When he transmits his thought in the invisi- ble he uses inaudible, intangible and invisible methods. Man cannot transmit his thought on the conscious plane by the subconscious method, nor can he transmit his thought on the subconscious plane by the conscious method. 224 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. I find it exceedingly difficult to convince the average undeveloped individual that man is far greater than he appears to be ; that what we see of man is only a small part of his vast and potential selfhood. I refuse to argue with an individual who has never risen higher than the animal plane in his conception of man. To argue with such a man is wasted energy. A man of this undeveloped type, with his coarse and gross materialism, cannot appre- ciate the majestic revelations of the spiritual man and his powers. A man cannot understand the highest truth, much less appreciate it, until he has unfolded his highest nature. To the man who has unfolded his material nature only all spiritual truth is repugnant. He opposes spiritual truth because he has cultivated no susceptibility for it. His opposition is a vivid revelation of his own inward coarseness, and it is always best to leave such a man to the refining influences of life's discipline. The majestic realities of the unseen universe exist, whether man affirms or denies. Affirmation or denial has no effect whatever upon them. The denial of the exist- ence of a thing by the man who is constitutionally inca- pable of perceiving it by no means destroys it. The man who has no eyes may affirm with intense vehemence that light does not exist, but the light shines on with increasing luster, sublimely indifferent to his affirmation. The man who has never attempted or is incapable of sending his thought to a distant point may deny with in- tense bitterness that such a thing can be done, yet his denial does not destroy the fact. Coming back to the original proposition I restate it : Man can transmit his Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 225 thought on the subconscious plane to a distant point with- out the use of any visible intermediate agency. This will appear beautifully reasonable — 1. When you consider the nature and power of thought- force. Thought-force in dynamic action is the mightiest force in the universe. In the universe at large the divine thought-force is omnipotence in action. The universe at large is the theater for the play of giant forces. Gravitation, that silent, invisible energy, operates every- where in the vast expanses of the visible universe. Every atom in the countless worlds that crowd the amplitudes of God's great empire responds to its touch. " The very law that moulds a tear And bids it trickle from its source, That law preserves the earth a sphere And guides yon planets in their course." . Gravitation poises the mote floating in the sunbeam upon its finger, hurls from the crest of the mountain the crush- ing avalanche, guides countless worlds and suns in their orbits and reins in the flaming comet. The viewless winds, when they are roused, are mighty. The stoutest ships built by man are as nothing when the storm king reigns upon the ocean. The winds in their fury seize the giant steamship and crush it as a man would crush an empty egg-shell, and it sinks to the bottom, or dash it to pieces on the rock-ribbed coast. Nothing can withstand the fury of the storm king on the land when he sweeps on attended by the roar of thunder and the splitting shiver of the lightnings. The twisting winds, rushing with inconceivable rapidity towards a com- mon center, as they sweep like flying demons across the 15 m 226 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. ocean, can twist the waters into a rope rising hundreds of feet into the air, and as they sweep over the land they switch immense trees up by the roots, wipe cities out of existence and leave the strongest buildings erected by man a mass of shattered ruins in their wake. Electricity is a gigantic force. I am of the opinion that the entire visible universe floats in a sea of electricity, and I believe that all storms and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are electrical movements. An electrical explo- sion in the sun is conveyed to the earth, producing a cor- responding disturbance in the earth's atmosphere, and every star in the sisterhood of planets feels the shock. An earthquake shock, when the earth trembles like a ship struck by a wave and cities are overwhelmed, is simply a quiet effort on the part of electricity to make itself more comfortable. When electricity is making an effort to --equalize itself it leaps from the earth to the sky, and from the sky to the earth, and from cloud to cloud, in blinding flash, and the shock of its movement causes the earth to quiver from pole to pole. The new metal discovered by scientists called radium is a mass of condensed power. Sir Wm. Crookes says that one crystal of this strange metal contains enough energy to lift the navies of England and France to the top of Ben Nevis mountain. But behind all these giant forces of the universe stands the power that brought them into existence — the thought of the infinite God. This is the inexhaustible source from -which all these forces flow; this is the power that marshals, sustains and directs them. In fact, I am of the opinion Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 227 that these forces are varied manifestations of the infinite spirit of God in omnipotent action. Now man contains within himself in finite form all the forces of the universe. This being true, thought in man sustains the same relation to all other forces that are in him as thought in the universe sustains to all other forces that are in it. Thought-force in man, then, is the mightiest force that is in man. There is this difference, however : thought-force in the universe at large is unlimited in its power, while thought-force in man is limited. All forces displayed by man are of necessity limited, for man is a lim- ited being. That man is equal to God is a raw assumption unsupported by the facts in the case. Amongst all the forces that operate in the theater of man's being thought-force stands out easily supreme. The spiritual man is the radiating center of thought ; thought flows out from him on all sides, environing the man in a thought-atmosphere, and from this luminous thought-cen- ter rays of thought shoot out in all directions. A measure- ment of the physical man does not give you accurate ■dimensions of a man's power ; to accurately measure him you must belt his thought-atmosphere with your tape-line. This is why some men are so big that they actually fill the earth and spread themselves over the centuries. Seeing, then, that thought-force is the mightiest force in man, it should not be considered a thing incredible that a man can send his thought out to a distance with such di- rectness and force that the individual receiving it can give expression to it. The man who denies that man can do this virtually admits that Marconi has outstripped Almighty God in his achievement, for in constructing his thought- 228 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. transmitting machine he has invested it with the power to send thought to a distant point and have it automatically recorded, while Almighty God, in creating his thought- transmitting machine man, failed to invest him with the same power. I affirm that man is the most perfect machine ever built for the business of transmitting thought. 2. To assist us further in seeing the beautiful simplicity and reasonableness of this theory, I would say that man,, the thought-transmitter, can send his thought out in two ways — by the conscious or above-ground method and by the subconscious or underground method. Now, man was made in the image of God, and if man has two ways of communicating his thought, God must have two ways of communicating his thought. We know from nature and history that God employs two methods in thought-transmission. He employs the visible method. The vast array of visible objects in the external universe are ideas arrayed in the garments of matter. Beauty, power* justice, order, harmony, life, sublimity, wisdom and thou- sands of other grand conceptions are presented to our senses by the vast panorama of changing scenes on the stage of the visible universe. These actors that play for our benefit on the plane of the visible never tire, and they are ever presenting something new for our instruction. The pages of history are made brilliant with the names of great men and women, great because they represented in themselves and in their achievements the power of great ideas. The lives and achievements of these great heroes and heroines form a part of God's visible method of transmitting his thought to man. All the great truths that have been re- corded in books, uttered in address, oration or sermon are Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 229 parts of God's visible method of transmitting thought to man. But God employed the invisible method of transmitting his thought to man also. Moses never obtained that mar- velous condensation of priceless wisdom contained in the decalogue by conscious study of the external universe ; it came to him out of the depths of the invisible as he com- muned with God amidst the solitudes of Sinai. The great spiritual thinkers amongst the Jews and other ancient people did not obtain the rich treasures of truth wherewith they have enriched the world by the conscious study of the visible universe. They obtained these priceless treasures by entering into the silence of the invisible thought-world a nd communing with God. Jesus, the greatest teacher of the centuries, the man whose teachings have flooded the lives of millions with love and truth and light and free- dom, never attended school and refused to enter the col- leges of the rabbis. He entered into the solitudes of the wilderness aud retired into the deep fastnesses of the moun- tains, and there communed with his Father and obtained by the invisible method the great truths that made his own life magnificent and has lifted millions into the white sun- light of splendid character. Now, man was made in the image of God, and as God transmits his thought by the visible and invisible methods, so can man. 3. In the invisible realm of pure thought, where thought is transmitted by the invisible method, there are no bar- riers to its movement. In the external universe we have many barriers. Language itself is a barrier. Very often instead of revealing thought language conceals it. 230 Unseen Forces cmd How to Use Them. Time constitutes a barrier. In audible speech we must utter word by word ; we must pause and emphasize and enunciate distinctly. All this consumes time. When we undertake to make known our thought in writing we find difficulty in selecting the proper word ; we must prune and condense here and enlarge there, and when we have done our best the language fails to adequately express our mean- ing. Space also constitutes a barrier. Mountains and valleys, oceans and rivers, rocks and walls and noises of all kinds interfere with the act of thought- transmission. But away down in the deep silences of the invisible, far below the visible, none of these barriers exist. Language is not needed ; vocal organs are not used. Time is not recognized. " A thousand years in the thought-realm is as one day and a day as a thousand years." Space is absent; matter is not there to obstruct the flight of thought. In this deep interior thought-realm God and man and man and man touch elbows. Touch elbows? — the uuion is closer than that. In this realm God and man and man and man are intersphered and yet preserve their own indi- viduality. When we consider the constitution and order of things in the thought-realm the transmission of thought without the use of visible intermediate agencies is simpli- fied. It is the natural method. The employment of the means used in the visible realm would be utterly impossible in the invisible realm. Because man is a citizen in two realms he transmits his thought in two ways : in the visible by the visible method, by speech or writing; in the invis- ible by the invisible method, or thought-transference. He also receives thought in two ways : by the visible method, Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 231 speech or writing or symbolic form; by the invisible method, or telepathy. Man stands at the center of all things, and he attracts thought from all sides and transmits thought in all directions. Electricity, radium and other known invisible forces laugh at all the barriers of matter as they rush with incon- ceivable rapidity towards their point of destination. Thought is mightier and speedier than any of these forces, and when it moves it can outstrip them all. Amidst certain surroundings, when an individual has sunk into a specific mental condition, intimations of things to come leap into the luminous light of consciousness, and impressions of movements going on far beyond the limits of conscious knowledge give proof of the marvelous power of the spiritual man in the realm of the invisible. It is a cold night. You sit in a comfortable chair in a warm room. You sink down into a condition of profound med- itation. You become absorbed in yourself, immersed in the deeps of semi-consciousness. Your gaze is centered blankly upon the sputtering, crackling logs in the fire- place ; the flickering light gleams in ghostly radiance upon the walls ; the air is still outside. In such seasons of pro- found semi-consciousness the marvelous power of the spir- itual man to transmit and receive thought without the aid of visible means is revealed. As you sit there the thought- power of the soul leaps with incredible velocity back over the past life ; a multitude of memories sweep in careless abandon before the mind. The thought-power then sweeps over continents and oceans and you are back amidst the scenes of youth. You see the grey old mountain, the river rushing on down through the mountain defiles to emerge, 232 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. broad and deep, in the shimmering sunshine of the meadow. Then the scene changes and you have an impression that somebody is coming, a friend or relative that you have not seen for years, and, behold, the door opens and he enters? and as you joyfully welcome him you say : "I was just thinking that you were coming." Or you have an impres- sion that you will receive a letter from a distant relative, and, behold, the whistle of the postman rouses you from your reverie and he hands you a letter from that relative. Or you have an intimation that a stranger will visit you to-morrow, and on the morrow the correctness of your in- timation is verified. Happy is the man who can command these hours of self- absorption, this complete relaxation of all intense conscious effort, this complete abandon of the spiritual man as on invisible lightning wing he sweeps out into the deep thought-world and brings into the light of consciousness sweet memories of the past and brilliant visions of the fu- ture. In these hours of meditation there is just a suffi- cient glimmer of consciousness present to enable the man to see his own marvelous sweep, power and scope of move- ment as he operates in the subconscious, and the wonderful velocity of thought-movement in all directions during these hours of self-absorption demonstrates the theory that thought can be transmitted and received without the use of visible means. Hypnotism has furnished us with tens of thousands of facts demonstrating beyond all doubt the truth of man's ability to transmit and receive thought without the use of visible means. What is hypnotism ? We can best define hypnotism by Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 233 saying that its phenomena are the results of obedience to a natural law of man's being. There is nothing abnormal in its phenomena. No one save the ignorant or supersti- tious are afraid of it. Drugs have slain their tens of thou- sands, but in the whole history of hypnotism no one has ever been hurt. Natural sleep and the sleep induced by the hypnotist are the results of the operation of the same law. In natural sleep the individual obeys the law with- out assistance. In hypnotic sleep he obeys the same law with the assistance of the operator. That the law produc- ing natural sleep is the same as the law inducing hypnotic sleep can be demonstrated by the philosophy of man advo- cated in this volume. (a) The spiritual man is one. (6) He operates in two realms, the seen and the unseen. (c) He operates in the seen through the external brain, and he operates in the unseen through the internal brain. (d) In sleep the spiritual man retires from the upper brain into the lower brain. Now in natural sleep the spir- itual man retires from the upper brain without assistance. In hypnotic sleep he is assisted in this step by the opera- tor. So that hypnotic sleep is only another word for nat- ural sleep. Again, the very same methods employed by the operator in inducing hypnotic sleep will produce natural sleep if employed by the individual himself. All the methods em- ployed by the hypnotist are visible means adjusted to the natural order of movement in the human brain and mind. What is this natural sequence of movement ? Simply this : (a) The upper or conscious brain can only entertain one idea at a time. 234 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. (b) The lower or subconscious brain is governed by sug- gestion. (c) When the spiritual man operating through the con- scious brain concentrates his attention upon one object or idea continuously this act shuts off conscious mental action in all other directions. (d) The hypnotist occupies the attention of the outer guard or conscious brain by asking the subject to gaze blankly upon the bright object ; the attention of the outer guard being fully occupied the suggestion of sleep steals in and takes possession of the subconscious brain. (e) Now since the suggestions that interpenetrate the sub- conscious brain always rise into and dominate the conscious brain, the suggestion of sleep overpowers the spiritual man and he retires gradually into the subconscious subject to the will of the operator. Now I contend that a man can obey this natural order of movement without the assistance of the hypnotist. He can concentrate his attention blankly upon an object, and if he keeps the act up for fifteen minutes he is bound to fall asleep. In concentrating he must remember that there is a vast difference between active concentration and passive concentration. In active mental concentration he will re- main magnificently and alertly awake. In passive mental concentration he must fall asleep, for he has thrown his mind into line with the law of sleep. To illustrate by a familiar example the difference between active and passive mental concentration : Sit down and commence to read a book ; so long as you are keenly inter- ested and so long as you greedily absorb each idea as it comes to you from the page you remain intensely awake, but the Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 235 moment yon cease to take in the thoughts and blankly gaze upon the page, taking in words and sentences without as- similating the ideas, you begin to nod backwards or for- wards, and in a few minutes you are sound asleep in the chair. Thousands of individuals have cultivated the habit of reading themselves to sleep. The mother in putting the child to sleep adopts a variety of methods to bring the child's nature into line with the law that produces sleep. The rhythmic rock, the low, droning lullaby, the absence of noise and the intense mental sug- gestion interpenetrating these methods all conspire to bring the mind and brain of the child into line with the natural sequence of movements producing sleep. When an individual reads himself to sleep he hypnotizes himself. When the mother rocks and sings the child to sleep she uses methods similar to those used by the hypno- tist. When the New Thought student sinks into a state of calm self-absorption he employs methods similar to those employed by the hypnotist. There is a far-reaching and deep-seated prejudice to the word hypnotism. A true knowledge of the simple nature of the phenomena would sweep away the prejudice. Hypnotism is not the master- ing of the weaker will by the stronger; it is the harmoni- ous blending of two wills towards one specific end. The man who can not concentrate his conscious intellectual pow- ers upon an object or an idea for five, ten or fifteen minutes is difficult to hypnotize. The fool, the idiot or the lunatic can not be hypnotized. Hypnotism demands as conditions a strong will, a healthy brain, a receptive brain. My experi- ence in the science leads me to the conclusion that the best 236 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. results in hypnotism are obtained from the best trained minds. I have at this time given this plain and simple explana- tion of hypnotism to show — 1. That it is the result of a natural law existing in the human mind and brain. 2. To show that the spiritual man in hypnotic sleep has ceased to act on the planes of the external universe. 3. To show that hypnotic sleep, natural sleep and sea- sons of profound self-absorption such as the New Thought student trains himself to assume are identical and are the results of obedience to the same law. 4. To show that in these states the spiritual man operates on invisible planes in the unseen universe through the sub- conscious brain, and that he can transmit his thought to a distance and receive thought from a distance in this realm without the use of visible means. The transmitting and receiving instrument is the subcon- scious brain, and the transmitter and receiver is the spirit- ual man. Now it is a profound law operating in all realms known to man that the power of the invisible forces of the uni- verse is conditioned upon the capacity and responsiveness of the visible machine through which they manifest them- selves. For instance, you can take life. Life is an invisible force. But life can not manifest itself on the visible plane without a physical substratum, and the power exhibited by life on the visible plane is conditioned by the capacity and respon- siveness of the physical form through which it expresses itself. Unseen Forces ind How to Use Them. 237 Almighty God himself respects this law. When he would build a magnificent oak-tree he demands a rich soil and favorable environments. Oak-tree life must be a giant force, for it builds up cell by cell a magnificent tree, defying the law of gravitation and the destructive storm ; but this giant force can not build a splendid tree on a barren soil. Electricity is an invisible force. Its power is appar- ently unlimited, but the power exhibited by electricity is conditioned upon the size of the dynamo, the perfection of its workmanship and its adaptability to the purposes of its construction. Marconi could not handle this giant force without a machine. With his machine he can hurl it across the Atlantic. In speaking of his invention to a newspa- per correspondent he said that his ability to send a mes- sage around the world was conditioned upon the size of his- dynamo, the capacity of the electrical condensers and the responsiveness of the receiving machine. All human inventions are at best only clumsy imitations of God's creations. All the mechanical achievements of man are the results of man's study of the mechanism of the visible universe. Man is following in the tracks of God his Father. The physical man is God's object-lesson as a thought-transmitting machine. The subconscious brain is the thought-condenser ; the will is the key to turn off or turn on the stream of thought. The spiritual man is the transmitter. The physical man with his brain and nerves is also a thought-receiving machine. The brain is the receiving instrument ; the nerves convey the thought to the receiv- ing instrument and the spiritual man is the receiver. Now I am sufficiently bold to declare that the law that 238 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. operates in all other realms known to man operates in the realm of thought also, namely: that the power exhibited by the invisible forces of the universe is conditioned upon fhe capacity and responsiveness of the physical instrument through which they manifest themselves. This being true, then it follows that man's ability to transmit or receive thought depends upon — 1. The capacity and responsiveness of the orain for the work. 2. The ability of the individual to shut off or turn on the stream of thought. All individuals are not in possession of equal power in this direction. In the visible universe we see that every man has a talent fitting him for some specific work in life t All are not equally talented. One man has a talent for music, another poetry, another history, another mathe- matics, another business, another politics, another language, another oratory. This same diversity of talents exists in the invisible thought-realm. One has the talent for far seeing, another for far hearing, another of predicting the future, another that of character analysis, another mind- reading, another the ability to send thought to a distance. Some have great capacity to receive thought, but they have not the same power to transmit it; others have great power to transmit thought, but their ability to receive it is limited; others have great natural ability to transmit thought but they lack the perfecting power of training, while others have large natural ability to receive thought but lack the power of discrimination and discernment. All individuals, however, possess a measure of this power to transmit or receive thought in the realms of the invisible, Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 239 and the power is susceptible of development by proper exercises. We have already seen the conditions that underlie successful thought-transmission. We will now state the conditions that underlie thought-reception. The conditions are these : 1. The subconscious brain must be sensitive and recep- tive to the touch of thought. 2. It must be tuned into perfect harmony with the tone and quality of the thought sent. 3. Perfect affinity must exist between the transmitter and the receiver. We have now arrived at a point in our investigations where we can explain " Christian Science absent treat- ment." The Christian Science demonstrator claims that he is the transmitter of the omnipotent energies of the eternal world. I am perfectly willing to commend the good that Christian Science accomplishes, and the move- ment would accomplish a thousand times more good if its claims were more moderate and its explanations of how its cures are wrought were more scientific. I have no desire whatever to ridicule its beneficial aspects, but its wild and unfounded claims and unscientific theories provoke me to riotous laughter. When Christian Science marches forward into the arena of action and claims — 1. To be the science of the loftiest character ; 2. The only science and art of cure ever patented in heaven and given to Mrs. Eddy by the Angel of the Apocalypse ; 3. The only method of switching on omnipotent ener- gies in existence; 240 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 4. The inspired right to put all other methods under the ban of condemnation ; 5. The inspired right to make its theory of "the non- existence of matter" the foundation of a movement called " the Church of Christ "; 6. The inspired right to copyright a system on earth that was invented and patented in heaven and make this system the channel for the amassing of millions; I say, such wild and unfounded claims, such rabid intol- erance of other systems and such nonsensical theories provoke vibrations of riotous laughter. Must I swallow the mass of error because of the moiety of truth con- tained therein ? Must I overlook the destructive conse- quences of the system because of the beneficial tendencies ? To the monopolists that stand behind this system and reap the financial benefits there is nothing solid in the universe except " the dollar." They obtain the substan- tial by denying the existence of the substantial and, as Mark Twain says, "they claim an absolute monopoly of turning on the forces of God through the nerves of the sick man — for cash." The trust manipulating the movement has a college in Massachusetts, and they charge one hun- dred dollars a month, payment strictly in advance, to instruct in the holy business of curing disease by switch- ing on the omnipotent energies of the eternal world. When the course, which continues three months, is finished and paid for, "the trust" gives the student a diploma, a book of private instructions and the right to put C. S. D. after his name. These letters mean " Christian Science Demonstrator," but they might mean Catch Solid Dol- lars. This would be a more appropriate meaning, for Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 241 this seems to be the main purpose of the men who stand behind the movement. I repeat my affirmation, we have now arrived at a point in our investigations where we can explain in a natural way " Christian Science absent treatment." To prove the va- lidity of my contention we will pursue in detail the meth- ods of the demonstrator as he proceeds to treat a patient at a distance. He retires into a room and locks the door. He shuts out all visible objects' by closing his eyes. He relaxes all the muscles of his body as much as possible. He then centers his thought upon the patient. In a few moments he sinks into a state of self-absorption ; in other words, he retires from the active conscious brain down into the sub- conscious. He has now reached the subconscious plane along which thought can be transmitted. He continues to think intensely, directing his thought towards the patient. Eventually, as this exercise continues, he is identified with his patient and he begins to affirm silently, without the slightest mixture of doubt, such thoughts as these : i( You are well." " There is no disease. " " Sickness is a delusion." " You are an expression of God, and since God cannot be sick you cannot be sick." Now during the performance the demonstrator has sunk down to the interior level of the subconscious. He trans- mits his thoughts on invisible planes, and just as the elec- trical vibrations set in motion by Marconi are caught al- most instantaneously by the receiving instrument thousands of miles away, so the thoughts sent forth on invisible planes by the demonstrator are impressed instantly upon the sub- conscious brain area of the patient ; and as we have already 16 m 242 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. seen the subconscious brain governs the body and is in turn governed by suggestion, these suggestions continually im- pinging upon that brain, it responds to them and the patient gets well, and the Christian Science church obtains another ardent member. Now, so far as the practice of sending out thoughts of health and harmony, joy, freedom and love is concerned, I can not find language sufficiently strong to express my appreciation of it. This is a beautiful ex- ercise, and under the guidance of the law of thought- projection and thought-reception such a habit uplifts the individual who practices it and benefits the individual to- wards whom the thoughts are directed. All actions originate in thought. Hate thoughts trans- lated into action spell out strife, discord, ill temper, bru- tality and battle-fields slippery with blood; fear thoughts translated into action spell out gloom, doubt, despondency, bad health, failure and disaster ; love thoughts flower out into great men and noble women, uplifting institutions, asylums, philanthropies and a million ministries of mercy ; freedom thoughts develop heroes and heroines, and actual- ize themselves into opportunities, privileges, charters of liberty, declarations of independence and mighty republics where every man is an uncrowned king and every woman an uncrowned queen. Thought is the supreme compelling power in the universe. If all men and women could be trained to spend some time each day in sending out thoughts of love and joy, freedom, harmony and happiness, all hate and selfishness, slavery and strife and battle would speed- ily pass away and the millennium ensue. I object when Christian Science claims the honor ot originating this beautiful custom. It has been the teaching of Christianity Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 243 for thousands of years. Christianity has always taught that the good man sends out waves of blessing in joyous ■vibrations through society. " Ye are the salt of the earth." u Ye are the light of the world." Christian Science ab- stracted from Christianity its best parts and then labeled them with its own tag. I do not object to the admirable qualities of Christian Science, though it may have robbed other systems to obtain them. I object to its wild and unfounded claims and the inaccuracy of its theories. The Christian Scientist claims that he possesses the power to turn on the omnipotent dynamics of God upon the patient he is treating. I deny this assumption and positively re- fuse to accept it unless he furnishes absolute proof. If he is the Professor of Applied Divine Dynamics, then when he turns on the current the effect ought to be instanta- neous and complete. When the omnipotent God moves in dynamic force through the spirit and body disease must yield instantly, miraculously. We know that the Christian Science demonstrator does not perform his cures instantly. Sometimes he treats his patient six months, and sometimes he must wait a year before he begins to see a change for the better. The assumption that to him is given the ex- clusive right to lift the sluice-gates of the eternal forces is a wild assumption unsupported by the plain facts in the case. When he succeeds in curing a patient at a distance he is simply using the thought-force that resides in himself to rouse and direct into the channels of health the thought- forces of his patient. The cures wrought in the last analy- sis are simply illustrations of the thought-transmissive and thought-receptive power of the spiritual man as he operates on the planes of the subconscious. 244 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. This same power of the spiritual man explains the phe- nomena of mind-reading. "We have seen in a former chapter of this volume that the subconscious brain is the record-book of the entire life of the individual. Nothing that the spiritual man has ever known is forgotten. The individual may not be able to bring it up into the light of conscious knowledge, but this failure to call it up by no means proves it is not there. Now the mind-reader has the natural and trained ability to sink down to the subconscious plane, come into living invisible touch with the record of the past life contained in the pages of the subconscious and' from these pages read the man's past history, bringing be- fore him at times facts and events and experiences long forgotten. With regard to the mind-reader's power of predicting the future, I have no hesitancy in declaring that even this, strange as it may appear, lies within the scope of sub- conscious capability. The conscious brain is an instrument for use in the realms of time and space. It would be as reasonable to expect that the ear could see or the eye hear as to imagine that the conscious brain can predict the fu- ture. The conscious brain has no such function. Its functions begin and end with the visible universe. Its business is to give expression to that which the subcon- scious delivers up from the depths. We have already seen that away down in the depths of the subconscious there is no here and no there ; there is no past and no future. A million years are as one day and one day as a million years. In this deep invisible realm are all the plans of history and the life-plans of the individual in perfect seed-form. The mind-reader, as he sinks down into the depths of the Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 245 subconscious state, enters into the timeless realm and stands before the finished plans of the individual's life, and if his spiritual vision is clear and undimmed he will astonish the individual by his ability to predict the events of the future. The ability to predict coming events in the history of the world has been ridiculed by men who did not understand its laws, but our study of the powers of the spiritual man as he operates in the subconscious realms of the universe demonstrates that the power to predict future events is a function of the spiritual man operating on invisible planes. The marvelous power of the mighty seers of the past in predicting the great events of history with such marvelous accuracy is a revelation to me of how this natural power can be made magnificently effective when reinforced by spiritual illumination. Almighty God adds no new faculty to the soul. In sending forth his messages to the world he uses the forces and faculties that are already in man. I am of the impression that all the great seers of the past were individuals of fine nervous organization, and this fineness of organization was rendered still finer by habitual communion with the invisible. 1 have observed that the most successful mind-readers are women. Women as a rule have a finer nervous organization than men and live in closer touch with the invisible realm of thought and emo- tion. A successful mind-reader must have all the necessary physical and mental qualifications for his business. He must be built on fine nervous lines. The subconscious must be exquisitely sensitized and as susceptible to the vi- brations of a thought as the leaf is to the stirring of the breeze. Mediums with these natural qualifications do not find it necessary to avail themselves of any artificial assist- 246 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. ance in conducting their experiments. Swedenborg, the- great philosopher and seer of Sweden, could enter into the deeps of the invisible at will; and it is my opinion that the mighty prophets of the past could enter into the pro- found depths of the invisible at will. Unquestionably man is a wonderful being. When we obtain a clear-cut conception of the fact that the real man is the spiritual man, and that the spiritual man stands at the center of things and operates externally in the seen and internally in the unseen, and that the unseen contains history's finished plans and the finished plans of individual lives ; when we have a clear-cut conception of the fact that the spiritual man can enter the unseen and stand before these plans, prophecy is then stripped of the element of the miraculous and is shown to be in conformity to law. There is, therefore, nothing incredible or strange in the fact that the mighty spiritual giants of the past, the great prophets of Israel, could describe long before the events transpired on the planes of the visible universe the overthrow of Baby- lon, the downfall of Nineveh, the wreck of Egypt, the con- quest of Palestine, the captivity of the Jews and their sub- sequent dispersion amongst the nations. There is nothing strange or miraculous in Nebuchadnezzar's dream or Dan- iel's interpretation. The king as he slept beheld in weird symbolism the rise and fall of mighty empires and the es- tablishment of the Empire of Truth by " the Christ of God." There is nothing strange in the fact that the old prophets in their predictions described the Christ in all his beauty, power and influence, his ignominous death, his resurrection and the subsequent world-wide sweep of his power. These mighty men of the past lived in touch with the invisible. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 247 This natural power, which exists in a measure in all men, of perceiving the outlines of coming events was in them unfolded by spiritual exercises and the inflow of spiritual illumination to marvelous delicacy of intuitive touch and wonderful perfection of power. They could enter into the invisible at will and behold the finished plans of history long centuries before they were carried out into the open of the seen and translated into visible forms on the planes of time. If you or I cannot exhibit this power we must remember that there are other things done that defy our ability. We cannot evoke harmony from a catgut like Paganini, or sway an audience with commanding power like Webster, or strike from the chords of a piano harmonies like Paderewski, or astonish the world by inventive skill like Edison, or con- trol the world's transportation systems like Morgan. We may have within us the power to appreciate these splendid accomplishments, and we may have within us a measure of the qualities that make these achievements possible, though we may not possess these qualities in sufficient quantity to enable us to perform them. This power to enter into the invisible and obtain a view of the finished ideals of history belongs, as I said before, in a measure to all men. Only a few, however, possess this power to an unusual degree. A fact is a fact, and the gruff denial of it is utterly un- scientific. Prophecy is a fact. The history of humanity is crowded with prophetic facts, and the duty of the man of science is to find out the law that produces the fact and explain its existence. The " higher criticism " claims to be scientific, but it is utterly unscientific when it attempts to show, and that by 248 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. dishonest and unfair methods, that the so-called prediction of the events of history by the writers of the Bible was given subsequent to the events. The careful study of the powers of the spiritual man as he operates in the unseen has shown that prophecy is natural to man, and the law of prophecy to my mind is very simple indeed. Here it is : 1. In the timeless unseen universe are the perfected ideals of history. "The Lamb was slain from the founda- tion of the world/' and Paul, speaking of God's promise to Abraham, says : "God who speaks of things that are not as though they were." God is the I am, and Jesus says "before Abraham was I am" There is no has been and no will be in the invisible universe. 2. These ideals are externalized on the planes of the seen universe where time is measured off by the motion of the earth. 3. The spiritual man operating in the unseen can behold these ideals intuitively and then give conscious expression to them in prophetic form centuries before they are actual- ized in time. All prophecies whatsoever can be explained by this sim- ple law. By examining the seed one can tell whether the life that lies capsulate in the seed will unfold itself into the oak or the pine, the corn-stalk or the apple-tree. The invisible is the realm where all the events that materialize on the visible planes lie in perfect seed-form. This state- ment of the law of prophecy by no means annihilates the free-agency of the individual. The free agency of the in- dividual is to my mind one of the elements that belong to and inhere in the perfect ideals contained in the invis- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them, 249 ible. The plans of a great building may be in existence in finished form for hundreds of years, and generations of workmen may give these plans visible shape without the slightest deviation in any particular, and in doing this work each man may have perfect freedom of action in the use of his brain and tools and material; or to use a better illustration, I can conceive of a master inventor who is in possession of such wonderful mechanical ingenuity that he can give to a thousand workmen scattered over the earth, knowing nothing of each other, certain parts of a ma- chine to construct and allow each man perfect freedom of choice and action, and when each part is finished I can conceive of him bringing all the parts together and by his superior mechanical genius building with them a grand machine, smooth in all its movements and perfectly adjust- ed to its purpose. God's creative and constructive skill is only expressed by the word infinite. History is the unfold- ment of his infinite plan on the planes of the external uni- verse. The free will of the individual workers is a part and parcel of the ideal and a part and parcel of the unfold- ment of the ideal. There is no conflict between the free will of man and the sovereignty of God ; both are facts that meet at the center and converge towards a common end. In the next place the thought-transmissive and thought- receptive power of the spiritual man acting through the subconscious explains all kinds and varieties of thought- atmospheres. Man is a thought-absorber and thought- distributer. He is a receiver of thought-vibrations from others, and he is a giver of thought-vibrations to others. The thought-atmosphere surrounding an individual is the 250 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. creation of the individual himself, and the nature, quality and tone of that atmosphere correspond to the nature,, quality and tone of his predominant thought. The predominant thought of individuals of the Napo- leonic type is will. Napoleon believed in his own destiny,, and as the result of that belief he became the incarnation of an iron resolution. When the officers of his army told him that he could not cross the Alps, " Alps," said he,. " there will be no Alps ; if there is no way I will make one." This is why he became the autocrat of Europe. This enabled him to move kings and thrones as easily as the player moves the wooden men on a checker-board. He carried with him everywhere the compelling atmosphere created by his own invincible will. Caesar's predominant thought was will. His will car- ried him across the Rubicon. His will created around him a far-reaching, compelling atmosphere that welded his army together until it became a living unit expressive of Caesar's purpose. His iron will creating an atmosphere of force enabled him to crush all opposition, and as the wedge crushes its way through the rending log so he crushed his way up to universal supremacy. Will is a mighty mani- festation of thought- force and creates an enveloping at- mosphere of power, but there is a mightier manifestation of thought-force than will. Napoleon was crushed at Wa- terloo. Caesar fell by the dagger of the assassin. These men met a combination of circumstances that will could not surmount. The mightiest manifestation of thought-force is love. Amidst all the manifestations of thought love is supreme. It is greatest because the visible universe is enswathed in Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 251 an atmosphere of love; the worlds swing in rhythmic move- ment to the music of love. In man love is supreme as an expelling, repelling and propelling power. It expels dis- cord, disease, gloom, fear and the whole dark brood of neg- ative conditions. "Love took up the harp of Life, Struck the chords with all its might, Struck the chord of self which, trembling, Passed in music out of sight. 5 ' When the love thought is held steadily in the mind, after it expels it repels all negative conditions, and with invinci- ble inspirations it propels the soul up the sunlit pathway of health, wealth and magnificent achievement. Thus love creates a magnetic personality and a magnetic atmosphere. The individual enswathed in an atmosphere of love becomes a magnet, attracting to himself from the surrounding uni- verse love, wisdom, joy, freedom, power, influence and vic- tory, and becomes at the same time a distributing center for all uplifting forces of health, life, power, light, truth, joy and triumph. Love can not be conquered. It is the only force in the universe that we can call invincible. All things yield at the approach of love ; all doors open to love's knock ; all treasures are poured at love's feet; all knowledge comes at love's call. What we think is love's degradation becomes her exaltation ; what we think is her cross becomes her throne ; what we think is her defeat is her triumph ; what we think her death is the gateway to a richer life. Love is the supreme wizard of the universe. Under her touch misfortunes become benedictions, failures become triumphs, chains bring freedom and the stones flung in hate become thrones of power. The man made 352 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. by will merely will fail, but the man uihose will is the ex- pression of love can never fail. When the predominant thought is fear y fear being a negative force creates a thought-atmosphere utterly void of all compelling power. According to this law there is no resistive power in the individual who is dominated by fear and surrounded by an atmosphere of like quality. Such a man is open on all sides to the destructive forces of the universe. i( Like attracts like." In accordance with this law the man gives a standing invitation to all the forces of pessimism. Disease takes possession of his body. Real disease has slain thousands but fear has slain millions. The fear of taking disease predisposes the whole nature to- wards disease. It throws the body open to the attack and the army of disease enfilades the trenches. Just as the flies seek the rotten parts of the meat that they may de- posit their eggs, so disease germs riot in luxurious life in the physical tissues of the man who is dominated hyfear> The entire body can be fortified against the attacks of dis- ease by persistent and powerful affirmations. The body is composed of countless millions of infinitesimal cells. Every cell in the body can be charged with the thought that is originated by the spiritual man. Fear thoughts send a shiver down the spinal cord, cause every cell in the body to cringe and cower and lose its natural resistive power, and the man becomes sick. The man who is dominated by fear becomes the incarnation of failure. Gloom, de- spondency and sadness sweep into his mind; wrinkles write defeat upon his countenance; sorrow pulls down the corners of his mouth ; discouragement twists his shoulders into a stoop; despondency pushes his head down; and de- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 253 1 spair overcasts the sky of his soul with the storm-clouds of disaster. Everywhere he goes he carries with him the atmosphere of defeat, and he becomes the apostle of pessi- mism. The man who can't can't, and that is the end of it. The man who repeatedly says he can't unconsciously becomes the incarnation of his own affirmation. The man who objects constantly unconsciously becomes an incarnate objection. The man who fears a thousand imaginary ills unconsciously becomes an incarnate coward ; in other words, he becomes organized defeat. I am intensely anxious that every reader of this volume shall become the living incarnation of powerful affirma- tions. I have explained the laws of character-building;; I have shown that they operate automatically and contin- ually. Just as atoms build the universe so character is the aggregate of trifles. Every thought originated by the spiritual man or received from others, if held in the mind and acted upon, goes into the invisible structure of charac- ter. The universe is full of the choicest material. Al- mighty God has given us the key to the storehouses of eternity. We can open these storehouses and consciously select what we want. We ought to select the choicest ma- terial — "love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith,, courage, wisdom, power, life." We ought to affirm that we are in possession of these majestic qualities, for " all is ours and we are Christ's and Christ is God's." We are God's dear children, and we live at home. In the man- sions of the infinite Father nothing is too good for us. The opulence of the universe is ours. The man who fears in- sults God, or else he is not living a life that conforms to the divine program. '254 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. Paul says : " Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." He says again : " Seek those things that are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God, for ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God." The holy life is a life of becoming; becoming what you are in reality. The holy man affirms until he becomes the incarnation of his own affirmations. The laws of charac- ter-building are such that a man always becomes the incar- nation of his own affirmation. Under the law of thought-transmission and thought- ;attraction, when a man by repeated affirmations of some thought transmutes himself into an incarnation of that thought, he becomes the rallying center for thoughts of the same kind and for people who are dominated by similar thoughts. Money attracts money ; success breeds success ; failure produces failure; wisdom attracts wisdom; courage creates courage; joy arouses joy ; love draws love. Christ brings out this great law when he says: " To him that hath shall be given and he shall have much more abundance, and from him that hath not shall be taken away that which he hath." We have countless illustrations of this law. Make yourself the incarnation of an idea and you become a magnet attracting to you from your surroundings the elements that have an affinity with the idea. If the idea is financial success, for instance, the moment you become organized financial success in yourself you attract money and men with money. Morgan by belief and affirmation transmuted himself into organized financial success, and men and money tumble over each other to get to him. Marconi by persistent effort, belief and affirmation makes Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 255 -wireless telegraphy a success, and now men and money roll towards him. A man of lofty intellect, who has become noted for his intellectual attainments, gets all the knowledge he wants without paying for it. Authors visit him and pour at his feet their choicest thought. He receives thousands of books every year that the authors may have the benefit of his reviews. All men love the lover. Because he has become the in- carnation of love he becomes a magnet drawing love to himself from the whole universe. What a man is he gets. If he is a failure he " gets it in -the neck/' If he makes himself an ass every one throws his sack on his back. The supreme thing is to be. What a man is determines what he does; what he is determines what he becomes ; what he is determines his atmosphere ; what he is determines his destiny. When a man becomes that which he in reality is, he is then a giant in spiritual stat- ure and influence. But what in reality is man ? He is a spiritual eternal being — a son of the infinite Father. He stands at the center of the universe. He is open to all forces and influences and energies. He can receive these forces and in accordance with the measure of his ability transmute them into an ever unfolding symmetrical char- acter, and thereby create around himself an atmosphere of thought that will enable him to become a conqueror over all obstacles and an inheritor of the universe. I believe in carrying the 1 am of the soul out into the I do; transmuting the real into action ; knowing the truth and thereby attainiug freedom; " seeking first the king- 256 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. dom within and the control of that kingdom, and then all other things will be added." This power of the spiritual man explains what is known, as spirit communion. I am profoundly of the opinion that communion with angels and "the spirits of just men made perfect" is a glorious possibility. The material man whose entire attention is absorbed in earthly things is utterly incapab le of following me as I enter into a discussion of this part of my subject. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God ; they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned." The great law announced here by Paul is this: The facts and laws of the spiritual realm cannot be understood much less appreciated unless a man has developed the capacity to perceive them. Shakespeare said: " There are more things in heaven and on the earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." It will not do to crowd ourselves within the narrow confines of any humanly defined conception of the universe. Brother, this little planet upon which you and I remain tabernacled in a body for a few years is not all there is of this great universe. Go out on a clear night and look up at the overarching dome of the skies and behold the countless worlds and suns that crowd the vast domains of space. Do you mean to tell me that this vast assemblage is uninhabited ? This universe was built for useful purposes ; nothing is unnecessary ; utility is inscribed upon all things. Now, since all things have a useful purpose, it is reasonable to suppose that these countless worlds are or will be the homes of num- erous forms of life. The realm of the visible is the realm of the becoming. Some of these orbs may be a mass of Unseen Forces and How to Use Them, 257 gases and vapor of fire ; some may just be in the process of cooling ; others may be the homes of the lowest forms of life ; others may be fully prepared as the home of intelli- gent beings ; while others may be the home of beings that have reached a far higher state of perfection than man has yet attained. I am also of the opinion that there are orders of spiritual beings dwelling in invisible realms, and that these spir- itual beings are not limited in their movements and are superior to all the laws of matter and the barriers of time and space. I furthermore believe that the spiritual man, separated from the external form which is cast into the grave at death, passes through the gates of death into the invisible and rises into a fuller, richer and grander life. With these views of the universe and its inhabitants it becomes easy for me to believe that the whole universe is the home of the infinite Father, and that all beings, whether they are in the flesh or out of the flesh, whether they dwell on this earth or in far distant worlds, whether they live in the invisible or in the visible, are members of the same great family and are profoundly interested in each other's welfare. The Bible, which contains the condensed wisdom of the greatest spiritual teachers of the centuries, sustains me in my belief; it teaches the existence and ministry of spiritual beings. When the universe was finished "the sons of God shouted for joy/' Spiritual beings conversed with Abraham and warned Lot. A strong angel appeared to Joshua and gave him the assurance that victory would attend his arms in the conquest of Canaan. Angels are 17 m 258 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. represented as guarding Jerusalem. When Christ was born the earth's atmosphere was filled with a company of angels who sang the first Christmas anthem, " Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will toward man." After his struggle in the wilderness "an angel came and strengthened him." During his agony in the garden "an angel strengthened him." After his resurrection angels guarded his tomb and announced the fact of his resur- rection to the women who came to embalm his body. With regard to the continued existence of the glorified dead and their interest in human affairs, when Christ was transfigured on the mountain Moses and Elijah, who had been dead for centuries, appeared and conversed with him concerning his death which was soon to take place at Jeru- salem. A powerful spiritual being, who declared himself to be "one of the prophets," conveyed to John on the lonely island of Patmos the magnificent spiritual visions of the struggles and the ultimate victory of the church over all her enemies. These biblical instances of the existence of angels and the spirits of the glorified dead and the pro- found interest they take in the progress of humanity dem- onstrate to me the possibility of communion with spirits. These biblical facts demonstrate the substantial accu- racy of the contention of this chapter : that the spiritual man, operating on the planes of the invisible universe, can communicate with other spirits without the use of visible means. The communication of thought on the planes of the visible by writing, speech or symbol is the communion of spirit with spirit. On the conscious plane spirit com- munes with spirit through the medium of matter. Com- munion on the external plane is not possible by any other Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 259 method. On the invisible or subconscious plane there are no physical barriers, and spirit communes with spirit without the use of visible means. Now my argument is this : If a spirit enshrined in a body can, on the invisible planes of the subconscious, com- municate with another spirit enshrined in a body without visible means of communication, it becomes reasonable to believe that a spirit untrammeled with a body could com- municate with a spirit in a body with greater ease. The power of the spiritual man operating on invisible planes demonstrates that communion with the infinite Father :and communion with spirits is natural and a magnificent privilege. Now we have already seen that absent treatment, mind- reading, sleep, hypnotism, the inspiration of genius, prophecy, are illustrations of the power of the spiritual man operating in the realms of the subconscious. I fur- thermore assert that table-knocking, table-tilting, the sus- pension of heavy articles in the air, automatic writing, inspirational speaking, clairaudience, clairvoyance and the scenes witnessed in trances can all be explained by a con- sideration of the powers of the spiritual man operating in the subconscious. Answers to questions through table-knocking is explained by the thought-transmissive and thought-recep- tive powers of the spiritual man in the subconscious. We will consider the conditions that must be observed to make this possible. (a) The individuals who engage in the performance ar- range themselves around the table. (6) They place their hands upon it, hand touching hand, 260 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. and in absolute silence; with one accord, they concentrate upon the thing desired. (c) There is in the company one who is a medium — an individual so delicately sensitized that he is naturally in living touch with the invisible. (d) In a few minutes the entire group of individuals sink back into a state of self-absorption. They, in other words, gather themselves within themselves, and by so do- ing they all begin to operate on the planes of the subcon- scious. The medium is then in living touch with each of the group on the subconscious plane. (e) We have seen that the subconscious realm in man i& the realm of the invisible, where there is no past nor fu- ture ; where all the past lies stored and all the future lies* capsulate in the light of the now. The medium, operating on this invisible plane and in living touch with each indi- vidual, can answer questions regarding the past and pre- dict sometimes with rare accuracy concerning the future. Some mediums use cards ; others use coffee grounds- The oracle at Delphi sat on a three-legged stool over a fire that sent forth intoxicating vapors. Other ancient medi- ums used the entrails of birds; others the flight of a hawk. All the methods of all the oracles of the past and medi- ums of the present are means employed by the individual to reach the passive or subconscious state. With regard to the ability to suspend heavy articles in the air or drag them about the room without visible contact, I think that this lies within the power of the spiritual man acting in the subconscious. Matter can be moved without physical contact. Profes- sor Savary d' Ordiari has demonstrated this. He has con- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 261 structed a machine by which a needle of metal can be moved over a dial plate by a person of strong will. He -employs this instrument in his electro-medical hospital at -30 Silver street, London W., England, for watching the effects of various temperaments, emotions and diseases. There is no physical contact at all, and if the atmosphere is dry the individual can stand ten feet from the instru- ment and by concentrating his will upon it cause the needle to move over the dial. This important invention demonstrates that mind can move matter without physical contact. I am of the opinion that mind itself does not come into living touch with the needle, but that mind sends out a strong vibration of nerve-force or organic elec- tricity, and through the instrumentality of this organic electricity mind moves the needle. The reader will notice that in the case of this marvelous invention the force that moves it is consciously directed ; it is, in other words, the direct product of the conscious brain. Now we have already in another chapter learned that no comparison can be made between the power which the spiritual man ex- hibits through the conscious and the power he exhibits through the subconscious. The power of the spiritual man acting through the subconscious is almost unlimited. Again we have seen that the spiritual man acting through the subconscious is superior to all the laws and properties of matter. Now one of the properties of mat- ter is weight. The spiritual man acting through the sub- conscious has no consciousness of weight. Four boys with their finger tips, if they act in perfect unison, breathe with one accord and concentrate upon one thing, can raise a heavy man from the floor without effort and without any 262 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. consciousness of weight. In an illustration of this kind you have an exhibition of the power of the subconscious. Now ray argument is very simple: If an individual,, bringing the powers of his conscious brain to bear upon a needle at a distance of ten feet, can move it over a dial plate of three hundred and sixty degrees, four men sitting around a table, bringing the concentrated energy of the forces of the subconscious upon it, ought to be able to sus- pend it in the air. Professor d' Ordiari has demonstrated the fact that a man can generate a sufficient amount of in- visible energy to move a small body of matter at a dis- tance through the conscious brain. The spiritualists have shown that man can move large bodies of matter without visible contact through the giant forces generated by the subconscious brain. In connection with this subject we will be materially as- sisted in understanding how man can generate a sufficient amount of invisible energy to move a ponderable body by considering the nature of the machine lately invented by Thomas H. Williams, an Englishman. We have already seen how Marconi starts waves in the ether so powerful that they hurl themselves onward through all obstructions to vast distances. Williams has invented an arrangement whereby he can catch these powerful waves and transform them into force to drive a street-car. His model is on ex- hibition. He has a model car on a circular track. In the center he has an electrical generator ; by the use of this generator he sends out powerful vibrations. On the car he has arranged an instrument that catches these waves and conveys them through a transformer to the motor, causing the car to fly around the track. There is absolutely no Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 263 visible contact between the generator and the car. Now my argument is this : If man can- invent a machine that can move ponderable bodies at a distance without contact, and if man is a machine constructed by God for the pur- pose of transmitting and receiving thought, and if thought is the mightiest force in the universe, it becomes reasona- ble to suppose that we can find amongst men some who have by exercise reached the point where they can use this power. In fact gravitation and levitation are complements of each other. Since the universe is held together by the an- tagonism of opposites, you can not have one without the other. Gravitation is the law of matter; levitation is the law of spirit. Gravitation drags down ; levitation lifts up. Spirit is infinitely superior to matter and all its laws. The lifting power of spirit is infinitely more powerful than the gravitating power of matter. The problem of lifting heavy articles becomes as simple as the problem of drag- ging them down. Substances sink towards the center be- cause of the gravitating power of matter ; they rise towards the heavens because of the levitating power of spirit. When the spirit leaves the body it falls, under the gravita- ting power of matter, prostrate on the earth. Animated by the levitating power of spirit the body stands erect, leaps and walks and runs. In the human body standing erect we have an illustration of the fact that the lifting power of the spirit is mightier than the falling power of matter. When the spiritual, affirmative forces of the soul sweep through the human body, vibrating every atom with the vibrations of the infinite life, a man feels as if he was stepping on air ; every movement is an exhilaration. If 264 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. this spiritualizing power could be raised a thousand de- grees, and if this power could be directed and controlled by man, I can see no reason why man could not then be absolutely superior to all the limitations and laws of mat- ter. In accordance with these remarks the translation of Elijah, the transfiguration and resurrection of Christ, lie within the realms of spirit force. An exclusive study of the laws of matter incapacitates a man for accepting the translation of Elijah and the resurrection of Christ. The range of a man's beliefs are measured exactly by the range of his studies. To accept the translation of Elijah and the resurrection of Christ a man must study the laws of spirit. The resurrection of Christ is the grandest demonstration of the absolute mastery of the fully unfolded spiritual man over all the laws of matter, and furnishes the complete proof of his claim that he was " the Son of God. v Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 265 CHAPTER IX. THE CENTRAL LAW OF CURE. Health of body is one of the priceless treasures of life. Rockefeller offers one million dollars for a healthy stomach. The body is the visible instrument through which the spirit- ual man manifests his powers. The spiritual man's power of self-expression is conditioned upon the harmonious rela- tion of all the parts of the body to each other and to the body's environment. Health is simply another word for harmony. The unfoldment of the spiritual man to his highest state of development and the attainment of the most perfect results in the fields of intellectual and spiritual ac- tion are dependent upon the harmonious action of the body. Death is natural but disease is unnatural. It is not necessary that a man be sick to die. Death is a part in the drama of man's unfoldment. "This corruptible must put on incorruption." Death is a step up. The spiritual man is an eternal being moving along the pathway of evolution, and just as the seed disintegrates that the new life within shall burst forth into beauty and splendor, so this outer en- velope called the body must fall away that the spiritual man may rise into a higher realm. I have noticed fre- quently that when a man lives in full accordance with the law of love he grows old gracefully, and when the time comes for him to ascend into the higher rooms of the pal- ace of God he welcomes the change, and the change comes painlessly and naturally. The man who has filled out the 266 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. plan of his coming here, and who has enriched his spirit- ual nature with all the rich gifts of the spirit, murmurs not when death beckons him through the gates into the majestic realms beyond. Some people argue that disease is in accordance with the divine will. If this is true, then it is an act of treason against the divine government to call the physician or to adopt any method to get rid of it. If this is true, then every physician and healer on earth are rebels against the supreme government of the universe. Disease, to my mind, is a declaration of God's abhorrence- of disloyalty. All the great laws of the universe have one grand purpose towards which they unceasingly and unerringly move, and that purpose is harmony. Disease and pain are a declaration that the individual afflicted has disobeyed law and swung out of line with the purpose of the universe. The realm of cure is the realm of confusion, where con- flict is the law and controversy is the custom. The men whose business it is to bring about harmony in the body wage continual war amongst themselves. Schools of phy- sicians call each other quacks ; theory wars with theory, and method condemns method. The science of medicine exists nowhere save in the name. Science is a statement of unified, universal, axiomatic and eternal law based upon irrefragable facts. Science is another word for truth. Truth is one with itself; one truth never comes into conflict with another truth. Truth is universal; it is the same everywhere. Truth is axiomatic ; it demon- strates itself. Truth is eternal ; it will always be what it now is. Truth is something known ; a fact is something Unseen Forces and How to Use Them, 26 T done. When a man knows exactly hoiv a thing is done he knows the truth about that thing. When he knows how~ a thing is done, he is in possession of the science of that thing. Facts are things, and science is an exact statement of how facts assume form. Every system of cure in the world claims to be a science. The claim is empty, for science is truth and truth is har- monious with itself, while these various systems of cure wage continual battle amongst themselves. To show the reader the confusion that exists in the realm, of cure I will briefly state the substance of the theories ad- vanced by the various schools. Allopathy is the most ancient school. This school was- originated by JEsculapius, and the backbone principle around which this system is built is the doctrine of oppo- sites. The Latin phrase is u contraria contrariis curantur." When the allopath makes an examination of a case of dis- ease and tabulates the symptoms, he prescribes a compound of drugs which he believes will produce opposite symptoms. If he can succeed in developing these opposite symptoms the original disease will disappear. In other words, the allopath creates one disease to destroy another. Any de- parture from the normal regular action on the part of any of the organs of the body is a state of disease. When that condition becomes set then the disease is chronic. When a man is afflicted with constipation the allopath gives him heavy doses of calomel. This drug acts upon the mucous membrane of the stomach and bowels in much the same way as a sharp mote of metal acts upon the lining of the eye, causing increased action and an increased flow of secre- 268 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. lion to wash out the foreign element. To cure constipation the allopath must create diarrhea. Homeopathy occupies the opposite pole. The disagree- ment between allopathy and homeopathy is complete at every point. The allopath gives heavy doses. The homeo- path triturates his drugs down until there is hardly any- thing left but the sugar and the water. The allopath be- lieves in the doctrine of opposites. The homeopath believes in the doctrine of similars. The backbone of the system of homeopathy is "similia similibus curantur," or like cures like. When the homeopath makes an examination of a case of disease and tabulates the symptoms he pre- scribes a compound of drugs that he believes will produce similar 'symptoms. When he succeeds by artificial meth- ods in producing similar symptoms to the symptoms al- ready in existence the disease will disappear on the princi- ple, I presume, that no two things can exist in the same place at the same time. Homeopathy, to my mind, is a magnificent demonstration of the power of suggestion, and the sugar pills and alcohol furnish a splendid means of con- veying suggestion to the subconscious brain. Then we have the theory advanced by the school of mag- netism. The magnetic healer asserts that man is a perfect magnet; that the left side is the negative or receiving side, and the right side is the positive or giving side. He asserts that health is harmony in the movements of the magnetic currents. When there is in man a sufficient quantity of the magnetic fluid and the magnet man is in harmony with the magnet earth and the magnetism in man circulates in rhythmic swing, the man enjoys health. When there is in man a deficiency of the magnetic fluid and its flow is dis- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 26£ turbed disease is the result. To cure disease this deficiency must be supplied and the disturbed flow must be regulated. The magnetic healer claims that he is a magnet containing- an overplus of this element; that he can supply the defi- ciency and can regulate the movement by manual manipu- lation. Then we have the microbe theory. The champions of this theory say that the visible universe is literally packed with countless millions of microbes. These animals are so small that ten millions of them can find more room to- disport themselves on a ten-cent piece than a bullfrog can iu Lake Michigan. They furthermore assert with the ut- most blandness that these microbes create all the disease wherewith humanity is afflicted. These microbists are de- termined to huut down and destroy all microbes whatsoever.. One of them asserted lately that laziness is caused by a germ, and he went out to hunt it and trailed it to its den, identified and arrested it somewhere in South Carolina. To cure disease we must saturate the body with subcuta- neous injections of germ-killer. Every germ has its own poison. To cure all disease we must first sequester the germs of all disease, find the substance that will poison them, then, when you find a man suffering with any disease,, saturate the tissues of his body with the fluid that will kill the germ of the disease and the man will recover. The scientists of this school will, I suppose, discover the germ o flying, and then they will manufacture some antitoxin to kill the germ. One dose of this anti-prevaricator injected under the tongue will cure the worst kind of liar and then turn him into an angel. Then we have the theory of the osteopath. The osteo- 370 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. path has no sympathy with drug- medication and no pa- tience with the germ theory. He says that man, constructed by the Almighty, is a perfect machine. The two hundred bones constitute the framework of the machine and act as braces and supports for the muscles. Muscles, nerves and blood-vessels are distributed all over and through this framework. The nerves are the wires for the conveyance of the nerve-force to every part of the body. The veins and arteries are the channels for the flow of blood. The heart is the great muscular pump forcing the blood along these channels. The internal organs are the vital ma- chinery. Health is that condition when all the belts and wheels run smooth and the fluids flow without obstruction. The main cause of disease is the result of a lack of blood- supply or some mechanical obstruction to a natural func- tion. There is some displacement, enlargement or abnormality of the bone, muscle or ligament, or some un- natural pressure upon a nerve or blood-vessel, throwing the machine out of order. To cure disease the osteopath detects and removes the obstruction by mechanical manip- ulation, allowing nature to resume her natural functions. Then we have the hydropath, or the water-curist. His theory is this : Man's body is composed of various ele- ments, the principal element being water. All the functions of the human body require water as the main condition of healthy action. Water is the element that dissolves pois- onous matter in the body and eliminates it through the sweat glands and through the kidneys. Disease is caused by a retention of poisonous matter in the body. To cure disease this poison must be eliminated. All drugs are poisonous and only add to the confusion. The best way is Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 271 to employ nature's method. Nature's method is hydrop- athy. The hydropath uses water in a variety of forms. He fills the patient with water; rinses out his bowels with water ; rolls him in wet blankets ; stands him up to the neck iu water, and thereby washing out the accumulated poisons he restores the man to health. Then we have the champions of the sunlight cure. Their theory is that the sun is the source of all life. Take the sun away and life on this planet would become extinct. When plants are away from the sun they turn pale and speedily die. All disease is caused by insufficiency of sun- light. What humanity needs to cure disease are copious supplies of sifted sunlight. The actinic rays of the sun are man's eternal rejuvenators. So in accordance with their theory they erect wide, roomy hospitals flooded with sun- light for their patients. They construct huge reflectors to which is attached an ingenious arrangement to absorb the heat rays of the sun, allowing the actinic rays to pass on. They then place their patients upon stretchers and concen- ter the actinic rays of the sun upon the diseased portion of the body. These rays produce changes in the tissue, the •cells rearrange themselves and the patients recover rapidly. Then we have thousands of patent medicines, and accord- ing to the loud-voiced claims of their respective discoverers each of these remedies can cure anything from a case of eholera morbus to a case of itching 1 for office. Some fellow discovers a wild herb in the woods and from it he makes a nauseous decoction; another fellow compounds a few drugs; both of these gentlemen cure a few diseases, and forth- with companies are formed for the purpose of selling these patent nostrums. Flaming advertisements disfigure the 272 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. newspapers, appear upon barns and sign-boards, are seen at the circus and at the theater, are found on the backs of Sunday-school papers and alongside solemn and weighty articles in our church papers. These advertisements de- clare that these remedies can cure all the ills that flesh is heir to, or forfeit one thousand dollars. Then we have the Christian Science theory. The au- thor of this system puts every other system under the ban of everlasting condemnation by asserting that this system is heaven's own method of curing disease. She asserts* that matter in all its forms is a huge delusion. Belief in the actual existence of the visible universe and the human body is a huge lie and the source of all ".sin, sickness, dis- ease and death." The truth is the only remedy man needs. To strike out at once all disease, its concomitants and consequences you must correct false views of man and the universe. Convince the patient that the human body does not exist save as a false mental picture, and when this idea saturates his whole being and masters his intellect disease vanishes. There is no such thing as body ; how, then, can disease exist in a thing that has no actual existence. Con- sumption and diphtheria, headache and gout, laziness and weakness, cholera morbus and worms, croups and colds, are all false mental pictures originating in the original delusion that man has a body. Then we have the badly-balanced teachers amongst the mental science and New Thought people. One fellow who has just caught a passing ray of the New Thought marches forth in print in flaming advertisement and says : "I re- alize that in giving my treatments I am using the only power that there is in the universe." Reading such an Unseen Forces and How to Use Them, 273 advertisement, I ask, when did God allow himself to be doled out in quantities to suffering humanity for cash, strictly in advance ? Another fellow says: "I am the incarnation of the truth. I am a dynamo of condensed energy. I can send my thought loaded with five dollars' worth of healing to any distance. No man can beat me. I am It." Like Simon Magus whom St. Paul met, this man and others drunk with the same blind fanaticism advertise themselves to be " the great power of God." Modesty and humility are the true marks of greatness. These individuals pos- sess neither ; they are blatant egotists, and in their flaring advertisements they declare that they have cured the hon- orable John Weakmind and the famous Madame Softhead and the great tragedian Simon Simple. The advertise- ment winds up with an urgent command to the afflicted reader to write now, with inclosed money order for five dol- lars' worth of therapeutic thought sent by express on the viewless wings of ether. Then we have others who claim that they have discov- ered a method for the destruction of death. Death of the body is simply a bad habit that the human race has fallen into, and it can be eradicated like any other bad habit. But the secret of destroying the habit rests securely with them until you furnish the cash. These inventors of u im- mortality in the flesh" want to organize a second " immortal ten thousand " who will auto-suggest themselves into a moving army of incarnate affirmations of immortality in the flesh. These ten thousand will create such a powerful thought-atmosphere that the whole human race will be leavened by this dominant thought and lifted up to the 18 m 274 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. planes beyond the reach of death. Just send five dollars and become the possessor of "the elixir of eternal youth" and be a radiant center for sending out immortal thought- waves to others at five dollars for each expiration. Then we have others who locate all disease in the solar plexus — that bunch of nerve ganglia lying close to the backbone at the pit of the stomach — that point from which all sickening sensations arise. This mass of nerve ganglia is the door of entrance for all the giant invisible energies of the universe. Unbelief and fear contract the muscles and close up the door, shutting out all these giant energies, and the man is sick. The champions of this theory ask you to send one dollar and become the joyous possessor of how to open the solar plexus door by belief and breathing exercises. When the door is flung wide open all the solar and planetary influences will surge through and through the body, and you will become a giant in strength and your personal magnetism will become mightier in pulling power than the cable of a tug-boat. Now, the question naturally arises in the mind of the reader, what is the cause of such confusion ? The cause of this confusion is found in the fact that the champions of these various theories look at this great subject from dif- ferent standpoints. Some individual will seize on some single feature of this great subject and make it the keel- thought of a system. He then proceeds to chisel all the various parts of his system into conformity with the main idea. Each system is a crystallization around some single distinguishing feature. By virtue of this we have claims and counter-claims, confusions, controversies and battles, and this condition must continue until we find the true Unseen Forces and How to Use Them, 275 ventral principle. When this is found everything else will naturally fall into its proper place, and we will have a homogeneous system — a perfect whole — unified around the great central law ; but until this is an accomplished fact we can not say that we have a science of disease or cure. Science is truth, and truth always conforms with itself. Science and truth are alike because they always reduce di- versity to unity ; out of inharmony they bring harmony, and they destroy disagreements by finding the common center. The same confusion that exists to-day in the realm of disease and its cure existed in astronomy prior to the dis- covery of the great law of gravitation by Isaac Newton. When this great central law was announced all disagree- ments passed away and the students of the stars stood upon common ground ; every astronomical fact fell into its place; fragmentary systems based upon incomplete views were abolished, and astronomy became an exact science. The realm of religion furnishes a fit parallel to the realm of disease and its cure. In both realms theories multiply ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Christianity as it came from the unsullied hands of its immortal Founder was based upon one great central truth, and that truth was, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus himself said, "I am the truth." Christ was the central Sun around which all the other truths of the system he gave the world revolved. He was the hub of the great wheel of truth ; his teachings were the spokes scud his law of love the rim. He was the keystone of the great arch that spans the eternities. He was the founda- 276 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. tion of the vast superstructure, and history teaches us that the church remained one so long as preachers proclaimed him as the creed and his laws as the conditions of entrance- and test of fellowship. When preachers departed from him as the grand common center and proclaimed something else as a creed and the condition of entrance and test of fellowship in the church divisions commenced. Christ unites ; human theories divide. We have some one hun- dred and sixty divisions of Protestant Christians in the world to-day, and in nearly every instance they have departed from the common center to find a basis for their respective churches. Theologians plunged into the stormy sea of specula- tive argument instead of proclaiming Christ as the grand- common center. Instead of announcing him as the sum- total of truth and compliance with his commands as condi- tions of entrance into the empire of truth, they wrought themselves into a frenzy of rancorous controversy over questions that have no bearing upon human salvation. They departed from the hub, and some of them have built their churches upon the spokes, some on the rim and some- have gone out and constructed a wheel of their own. The supreme unifying purpose of the Christ has been com- pletely neutralized by the leaders in the church. Instead of having one great church standing square on the grand, common, central, harmonizing truth, "Thou are the Christy the Son of the living God," we have one church built on the infallibility of a man, another on the sovereignty of God, another on the free will of man, another on the sufficiency of the inner light, another on holiness, another on the non- existence of matter, another on the apostolic succession,. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 277 another on baptism, another on the unity of God, and so on all the way down to the smaller sects that dangle at the end like a rope all frazzled out. All this interminable confu- sion is the result of flying away from the grand common center. The supreme need in Christendom is the rediscovery of the common center. The person of Christ is the common center. When all the preachers in all the churches pro- claim the acceptance of Jesus as " the Christ " and com- pliance with his commands as the conditions of entrance and test of fellowship in the church, allowing every man absolute freedom of opinion on all other questions, then we will have unity in Christendom. When Christ occupies his true place in the church all creeds and theories will vanish, all differences and conflicts pass away, all the facts of salva- tion fall into their proper place, all the truths he announced slip into their true orbits, and the entire church will move onwards, each member held in his true place by the silken bands of his love, the whole moving in rhythmic tune to the music of heaven. Christianity, then, has only one true common center; as- tronomy has one true common center; chemistry has one true common center ; in short, every department of human investigation in the universe has a central, dominating, supreme law, and when this law is found and formulated science is born. If I was asked, What is the mission of science ? I would answer : The mission of science is to reduce diversity to unity by the discovery and formulation of the central supreme harmonizing laws of the universe. Now, if scientists have discovered the central domina- ting law in other departments of human investigation, and 278 Unseen Forces and Horn to Use Them. if the intellect of man demands in all departments of thought the discovery and formulation of the supreme uni- fying principles, I assert that in the realm of disease and its cure there must be one great, dominant, central force to which all other forces are obedient. This supreme force unquestionably exists, for the majority of these schools declare that it is their mission to assist this force in throwing off disease, while others amongst these schools declare that they can harness and control this force directly. The allopath gives heavy doses of drugs to rouse this force into intense action. It has become dormant and slug- gish, and it needs a foreign stimulus to wake it into power- ful action. Whether he will admit it or not the principle that the allopath works on is this : Nature is utterly hostile to the introduction of any foreign element into the body. A drug is a foreign element. When a drug is introduced into the system the forces of nature resident in the body rush forward to eject the intruder. The supreme force calls all the subordinate forces into action, and they march for- ward against the common foe and drive it out through the eliminative organs. In every case where drugs are given the patient acts upon the medicine, while at the same time the chemical action of the medicine acts upon the patient. If in the contest for mastery the chemical action of the medicine overcomes the mental and nerve action of the patient the result is death; but if the mental and nerve action of the patient overcomes the chemical action of the medicine and drives it out the patient will recover. The homeopath also declares that it is his mission to as- sist this force of nature. He says that the drastic measures Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 279 of the allopath weaken the forces of nature and leave these forces so enervated that they cannot successfully cope with disease. His method is a milder method, but he operates on the same principle; he introduces a foreign element and the resident forces are roused into action to expel the intruder. The hydropath works on the same principle. He ac- knowledges that there is a central supreme force in the hu- man body. It is the work of this supreme force to elimi- nate refuse and poisonous matter. The element used in this scavenger work is water. By copious supplies and copious applications internally and externally the hydro- path wakes up this supreme force to intenser action. In other words, he centers the attention of this supreme force upon its natural function by giving it an extra quantity of water to eliminate. The osteopath also acknowledges that this supreme force exists when he says that it is his business to assist nature. To this end he uses the bones to stretch the muscles. The bones become levers in his skilled hands. To this end he pulls the muscles of the neck and loosens all the muscles attached to the backbone. To this end he pulls the head, and thus he raises all the bones in the vertebral column. His supreme purpose in all his manual manipulations is to open the way for the unobstructed flow of nerve-force and blood to all the vital organs and to every part of the phys- ical system. The nerves lie embedded in the muscles like a strand inside a rope. When the muscles are contracted the nerves are also contracted, and the flow of nerve-force is thus seriously interfered with. When the muscles are stretched and loosened up the kinks and contractions are taken out of the nerves, allowing the nerve-force to flow 280 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. smoothly. When he raises the bones of the vertebral col- umn he opens the way for an unobstructed flow of blood and nerve-force through the blood-vessels and nerves that emerge through apertures in this column. In short, all the manual manipulations of the osteopath aid to assist the supreme dominant force in winning complete mastery over all the resident forces in the body. Every school employing material methods acknowledges the existence of this supreme force and declares that it is its mission to assist nature in conquering disease and re- storing order in the body. The various schools employing mental methods also acknowledge the existence of this su- preme force. The Christian Scientists say that this force is u the im- mortal mind/' but they do not stick to any one word ex- pressive of this force. They give it so many names that the student is lost in the wilderness of bewilderment ; they call this force love, life, intelligence, God, good, truth, mind — The All. The practitioners of this school claim complete control of the market. This complete control is protected by a patent secured in heaven and delivered sealed and bound to the author by a regularly commis- sioned angel. By virtue of this patent they claim a su- preme monopoly of selling this force at so much a vibra- tion, cash in advance. All the other schools employing mental methods acknowl- edge the existence of this force. Their methods of treatment and their definitions differ widely, but they all agree on one point — namely, that in disease and recovery from dis- ease there is one great central all-controlling force in the presence of which all other forces act in a subordinate ca- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them, 281 pacity. We have arrived, then, at one very important conclusion : All schools in the realm of disease and its cure admit the existence of this one harmonizing all- con- trolling dominant force. I am of the impression that when this force is defined and the law of its movement formulated we will be in pos- session of the central harmonizing law which will reduce diversity to unity and make disease and its cure a science. What is this supreme force and what is the law of its movement is the question upon which I propose to throw some light. Whether I shall succeed in answering this double question or not must be left to the sober judgment of the readers of this volume, as I do not claim infalli- bility, and if I did my claim would not protect me from just criticism if my conclusions are fallacious. Before stating in propositional form my answer to this double question I call the reader's attention to the fact that i:he various schools in the realm of disease and its cure may be thrown into two broad divisions : the school of material methods and the school of mental methods. They differ in their theories, not so much because these theories are false, but mainly because these theories are incomplete. The philosophy of man outlined in this volume has shown be- yond all possibility of successful contradiction that he is a spiritual being dwelling in a material body. This being true, an attempt to state a comprehensive explanation of disease and its cure from the material standpoint exclu- sively must fail, and for the same reason an attempt to comprehensively explain disease and its cure from the mental standpoint exclusively must fail also. The mind acts upon the body and the body reacts upon the mind. 282 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. A comprehensive statement of the supreme central dom- inant force and the law of its movement in disease and its. cure must include in its terminology both mind and mat- ter. We have already seen that all invisible forces demand a visible substratum of matter to express themselves on the visible plane, and the law of their movement is determined by the adaptability, quality and fineness of the physical substratum through which they manifest themselves. With these considerations before us I assert that the supreme central dominant force in disease and its cure is thought-force, and the law of its movement is suggestion acting through the nerve-centers of the subconscious brain. The reader will notice that this statement embodies the two elements in man : the mind and the physical sub- stratum through which the mind operates — the brain. Utilizing the conclusions arrived at in preceding chap- ters of this volume I will now give a more comprehensive statement of this force and the law of its movement. 1. The ego is the supreme force because the ego or I am is the spiritual man himself. 2. Thought-force is the supreme power in man because thought-force is the spiritual man in action. 3. Suggestion is thought-force in action. 4. The spiritual man operating through the subconscious brain is governed by suggestion. 5. The spiritual man operating through the subconscious brain controls all the forces in the body, governs every cell and is absolute master over all the vital machinery in the body. G. Now since suggestion or thought-force in action con- trols the spiritual man as he operates through the subcon- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 28£ scious, and since the spiritual man operating automatically- through the subconscious governs all the forces and is ab- solute master over the construction of each cell and all the vital machinery in the body, we are forced to this plain conclusion : That the supreme central dominant force in disease and its cure is thought-force operating through the subconscious brain centers. We have already seen in previous chapters in this vol- ume how thought-force or suggestion, acting through the subconscious brain centers, can produce changes in the- body corresponding to the idea embodied in the sugges- tion. But the question naturally arises : Do the facts demonstrate the proposition that thought-force acting through the subconscious brain centers is the one true central dominant force in disease and cure? I answer by saying that hypnotism furnishes us with tens of thousands of facts illustrating and demonstrating the absolute cor- rectness of this proposition. Admitting that the facta furnished by hypnotism are non-applicable and therefore non-conclusive, the realm of medicine furnishes us with volumes of evidence in support of this proposition. Every physician on earth who has had any experience in dealing with disease can recite case after case of marvelous cures wrought with common bread pills after the most powerful drugs had failed to produce any effect. The marvelous effect of the bread pills was due to the fact that the physi- cian kept the patient ignorant of their real composition and led him to believe that the pills were a preparation of the most powerful drugs and were never known to fail in effecting a cure. The bread pills afforded a convenient channel for the physician to arouse the latent thought- 284 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. force in the subconscious brain. This thought-force laden -with the idea that the pills swallowed contained an infalli- ble remedy, acting downwardly and inwardly through the nerves, roused all the subordinate forces into action and the cure was effected. The history of cure is crowded with facts demonstrating the curative power of mind. In ancient times when med- icine and magic were synonymous terms a word scrawled upon parchment would cure fevers ; two lines from Homer's Iliad cured gout ; rheumatism succumbed to a verse from Lamentations. In those days the remedies given freely to the sick could not fail to arouse powerful emotions. Who oould refrain from having powerful thought-currents stream through his anatomy when the physician would dose him with a concoction made from the brain of a murderer, or a tincture made from venomous bugs, or a pill made from the dried liver of a bat, or a powder from the head and legs of a spider? These ancient magician doctors wrought astonishing cures with such compounds. In the old country Ireland, where I was born and reared, holy wells are found in almost every county. The ignorant peasants believe that St. Patrick, Ireland's patron saint, blessed these wells and imparted curative power to them. Thousands of sick people visit these wells and wash in the water and go away cured. This custom has prevailed for hundreds of years. It is the custom of the cured to hang upon the bushes contiguous to the springs mementoes of their cure. I have seen the bushes all around for a considerable distance covered with fragments of clothing, rags, crutches, canes and splints, each one an evi- dence of a cure wrought in the belief of these ignorant Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 285 people by these magic waters. I have gone into a church in the city of New York and heard hundreds of people testify that they were cured of all sorts of disease by prayer and the laying on of hands, and I noticed crutches and bands and splints by the score hanging up in the vestibule, each one an evidence of a cure wrought; and as I looked upon these mementoes I thought of the Irish spa wells and the bushes covered with fluttering rags. The holy spring at Lourdes, France, is the source of an immense revenue to the Roman Catholic Church, and amongst all the shrines in the world this famous grotto has wrought more cures, if we accept the verdict of the pilgrims wha have been restored, than all others combined. But lest the Roman Catholic Church should become too proud of the famous therapeutic spring miraculously endued with curative power by the Holy Virgin, there is in India a fa- mous idol, and a most hideous looking idol too, that has been curing all sorts of complaints for centuries. The marvelous power of mind in curing disease may be further illustrated by what is known in history as " the royal touch." It prevailed in England from the days of Edward the Confessor to that of the house of Brunswick. In those days the people believed that the king was an in- carnation of God — a divine person ; being in possession of divine power he could cure disease. From all over the kingdom people afflicted with scrofula and other diseases would come to be cured by the touch of the royal finger. Thousands were thus cured. Surgeon Wiseman of Lon- don, one of the most distinguished surgeons and physicians of his day, records his belief in the king's power in these words: "I myself have been an eye-witness of many 286 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. thousands of cures performed by his majesty's touch alone, without any assistance of medicine or surgery, and these many of them such as had tired out the endeavors of able surgeons before they came hither;" and he adds: " I must needs profess that what I write will little more than show the weakness of our ability when compared with his maj- esty's, who cureth more in one year than all the surgeons of London have done in an age." Unfortunately for the king the theory of the divinity of his touch was exploded and his monopoly of curing abol- ished in the seventeenth century by a man named Great- rakes, who outroyaled royalty itself in curing disease by the laying on of hands. This man was so marvelously successful that the Royal Chirurgical Society of London expressed the opinion that his success was the result of " a mysterious sanative contagion from his body." About one hundred years ago an ignorant blacksmith in this country by the name of Elijah Perkins furnished us with absolutely conclusive proof of the curative action of the mind. Elijah thought that he could weld together a number of metals in such proportion that they would be vested with power when attached to the body to enable it to throw off disease. After long and patient endeavors he declared he had succeeded, and he exhibited what he called his "metallic tractors" — a pair of tongs about six inches long, one prong of brass, the other of steel. They were applied over or as near the diseased parts as possible, always in a downward direction. They were tried in all kinds of disease and exhibited curative powers so wonderful that thousands believed they were invested with divine energy. The demand for " tractors " became so great that they Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 287 oould not be supplied fast enough. The fame of these heal- ing tongs spread to England and continental Europe. Within a brief period one million five hundred thousand cures were reported from Europe alone. Unfortunately for the fame of Perkins and his tongs, when the craze was at its height Dr. Haygarth, of London, determined to find out how far the effects might be ascribed to mental action. So he made tractors of wood, painted them and with much pomp and ceremony attached them to sick persons who had previously been prepared to expect something extraordi- nary. The effects were astonishing. Obstinate pains in the limbs were suddenly cured; joints that had long been immovable were restored to motion ; in short, except the renewal of lost parts or a change in mechanical struct- ure, nothing seemed to be beyond their curative power. The explanation is very simple : these tractors fastened to the body became the medium for the arousal of strong thought-currents acting downwardly and inwardly upon the subconscious brain centers ; these strong thought-cur- rents of belief, hope and expectancy roused all the subordi- nate forces in the body to normal and healthy action and the patients recovered. In accordance with this principle the students of Mrs. Eddy's philosophy would accomplish their cures more rap- idly if instead of asking their patients to read Mrs. Eddy's book they would advise them to fasten the book to their wrists before they went to sleep. The pressure of the book, which they believe contains the dynamics of health, would act as a continual suggestion on the subconscious brain, producing health. This would be a far speedier way of restoration than that of reading the book. 288 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. That thought-force persistently directed controls all the subordinate forces of the body can be demonstrated by every reader of this volume without reference to the pages of history at all. If the reader will take two exceedingly delicate thermometers and place them in each hand and then concenter his attention upon the right hand for a few minutes the right hand will become warmer than the left, the hand will increase slightly in diameter, and all the tissue changes in the hand will increase rapidly ; the blood supply increases and the nerve supply increases, showing how thought persistently directed controls all the subordi- nate fluids and forces of the body. Or the reader can sit down, and, if his nervous organization is delicately con- structed and keenly responsive, as he concenters his atten- tion upon the idea of running, he can feel the muscles of his legs twitch and new energy flow into his feet. What is the cause of this ? The thought-currents carrying the idea of running send increased streams of nerve-energy and blood coursing through the legs to give strength for the imagined race. It is probable that the reader has at one time in his past life been marvelously saved from an impending danger which would have killed him. When he thinks of the narrow escape cold currents run down his spinal cord and vibrate his entire body. This universal shiver that passes instantaneously over his entire body is caused by the mighty power of thought driving nerve and blood currents all over his body. A man is hungry and he thinks of eat- ing a good juicy beefsteak. The flow of saliva to his mouth is increased and the digestive juices are poured into his stomach, all in preparation for the hypothetical beefsteak. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 289 The best way in the world to stop a brass band is to stand where all the players can see you and suck a lemon, and as you suck make a loud suction noise and facial grim- aces. In a few minutes the music will stop, for the players must cease so that they can swallow the accumulating saliva. I could multiply instances showing the absolute mastery that thought-force possesses over the muscles, nerves, blood- vessels, over the lymphatic, circulatory, assimilative, diges- tive and eliminative systems of the body ; but I will con- clude this part of my argument by submitting one infallible test which will demonstrate the accuracy of my contention beyond all possibility of doubt, and every reader of this volume can subject himself to this test if he chooses, but it will require courage of a high order to attempt it, and still more to carry it to a successful conclusion. The test is this : To demonstrate the complete control that thought has over all the subordinate fluids, forces and cells of the body sit down three times a day, in the morning after you rise, at noon-time and before retiring, and repeat to your- self: I am a complete failure. I am becoming a wreck. I am sick. My heart is breaking down. lean not digest my food. My liver is diseased. My lungs are rotting away. All my organs are in awful condition. 1 shall die, and there, is no remedy. To make the test complete you must con- tinue this practice for two months. You must believe that: these affirmations are expressive of your real condition, and you must not allow any thought of success or health or joy to enter the mind. If, at the end of two months, you are alive, you will be sufficiently convinced that thought- force, laden with baleful, gloomy and destructive ideas, will wreck the entire physical system. 19 m 290 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. The truth of the converse of this statement can be dem- onstrated by the same practice with this difference : in- stead of affirming failure and sickness and death, affirm I am a success. I am strong. I am well My organs are in splendid shape. I am power. At the end of two months of continual affirmations the improvement will be so marked that you will not know yourself. Now, there is nothing magical or miraculous in this ; it is the result of a natural law established by God in the human brain. It is simply the mighty power of thought acting through the subcon- scious brain centers. With these considerations before us we can easily see how the practitioners in all schools of therapeutics perform their cures ; in the last analysis they reach and rouse into action by their methods the supreme power of thought, and this power, acting downwardly and inwardly through the subconscious brain, harmonizes the forces and fluids of the body, resulting in health. Apart from thought-force there can be no such thing as disease or cure. Thought-force is the supreme power in the universe at large and in man. But the objection is raised at this point that this theory is sufficient to explain cures wrought in grown persons who are capable of receiving thought impressions, but the theory will not explain the cures wrought in the case of infants, idiots or animals. This objection can be successfully met by the arguments advanced in the preceding chapter, in which I have abundantly shown that it is not necessary for thought to rise into the conscious realm to reach the sub- conscious brain. The natural plane upon which thought can be projected into the subconscious brain is away below the level of consciousness. Now, when you take these facts Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 291 into consideration, that infants and idiots and animals are all largely under the control of the subconscious, and that the subconscious brain is controlled by suggestion given either orally or mentally, the cure of infants, idiots or ani- mals is explained on the principle stated above. Drenching a horse, dosing an infant with bitter drugs and forcing an intellectual weakling to take a nauseous compound are powerful mental operations on the part of the practitioner as well as on the part of the patient, aud even if the com- pound had no chemical action the thought-forces aroused and sent out in dynamic action would produce powerful changes of some sort in the body. My experiments in hypnotism have demonstrated to my mind beyond all shadow of doubt that it is thought and not the chemical action of the drug that works the cure. When an individual is in the hypnotic state he is down on the subconscious plane, acting exclusively through the subconscious brain. In that state he is not conscious of receiving thought; he is not conscious of acting in obedi- ence to the suggestions of the operator. By thought con- veyed silently through mental suggestion he can be made sick or well in a few seconds. By thought conveyed audi- bly he can be made sick or well in a few seconds. When, a man is on the subconscious plane of action, sight, hear- ing, smelling, tasting, feeling, can be controlled in obedi- ence to the thought of the operator. I have given a man water and by a thought given with the water changed it into a powerful drug, making the man sick instantly. I have then given him another glass of water and cured him instantly by suggestion that the water was a corrective. All 292 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. the organs of the body are directly controlled by thought, and their action can be changed instantly by thought. We are now ready to give plain, simple and practical directions on the matter of self-healing. Points to be remembered: 1. Thought acting through the subconscious brain builds the body. The material out of which the body is built is found around us in the visible universe in unlimited quan- tities. Nerve-force, as we have seen, is organic electricity and the atmosphere contains the raw material. The raw material out of which the blood and all the fluids of the body are made, the atoms that enter into the composition of the bones, the muscles, the nerves and the brain are all found around us in food-stufls in unlimited quantities. Now, man as he builds his body must take in the mate- rial from without, and the entire business of taking in the raw material is directly under the control of the spiritual man acting through the conscious brain, plowing the soil, scattering the seed, bringing the crops to maturity, cook- ing, eating, masticating, and on to the initial part of the act of swallowing the food-stuffs. All these acts are under the control of the conscious brain. When the food-stuff passes beyond a certain point in the act of swallowing the conscious brain then loses control and the automatic ma- chinery of the subconscious takes full charge of all that follows. And what follows ? The construction of the most perfect piece of mechanism in the universe follows. The human body is a perfect structure, exquisitely framed and perfectly adjusted to the needs of the spiritual man as he deals with the external universe. The human body is the product of thought, and the building of this piece of deli- Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 293 cate machinery is under the control of the spiritual man operating through the subconscious brain. The digestion of the food in the stomach, the selection out of the food- stuffs digested the proper material to make blood and lymph, to build bone and muscle, and brain and nerve, the marvelous intelligence that directs this work in accordance with a perfect plan, the overseeing of the scavenger work in eliminating the refuse matter and the surplus, the con- struction of the vital machinery itself that does all this work instrumentally, all this is under the control of the spiritual man operating through the subconscious brain. How any man can consider this and not be convinced that thought-force is the supreme factor in disease and cure is to my mind simply amazing. Thought built the universe at large, and thought acting subconsciously builds the body. Then, since thought builds and sustains the body, it be- comes clear that the quality of the thought transmitted through the subconscious brain will be built up into flesh and blood. " The word became flesh," and the word always becomes flesh, for thought-force throws itself outward into visible form in the human body. Thoughts laden with the ideas of disease constantly dwelt on are automatically con- veyed by the law of the subconscious into the cells of the body. 2. This brings us to this point : that affirmations from the conscious brain are impressed upon the subconscious, and through the nerves by the agency of nerve-force con- veyed to every cell in the body. If a man wants to know how he can reach the subcon- scious brain and influence the body through it by auto- suggestion, the answer is plain. Crowd the conscious brain 294 Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. with the affirmations that you want to have translated into living physical tissue, and these affirmations, according to this never-changing law, will be gradually converted into tissue that will be an outward manifestation of the affirma- tions repeatedly made. It must be remembered that this work of clothing thought in living tissue is performed within well-defined limits. The plan of the body cannot be changed. This plan is like the laws of the Medes and Persians ; it is fixed, unalterable. This plan is one of the ultimates of the universe, one of the fixed ideas of the in- finite mind. Obtaining the raw material, building the structure in accordance with the plan and modifying the condition of the material within the limits of the plan, ail this is under the control of the spiritual man. So far as health of body or power of spirit is concerned man tends to become that which he affirms himself to be, and if these affirmations are continued he becomes in reality that which he affirms himself to be. 3. Another important point to remember is this : that the affirmations must be directed downward and inward ; in other words, all the thought-force in both brains must operate in the same direction ; the thought- force that op- erates outwardly through the conscious brain must be withdrawn and by a conscious effort of the will directed inwardly. To do this successfully the individual must re- tire into the silence, shut out as much as possible all exter- nal sights and sounds, relax all his muscles, and having brought himself into a passive condition of body and spirit, he must then quietly and intensely affirm that which he desires to become physically. I have no desire to lay down inflexible rules to cover the details of these exercises. Unseen Forces and How to Use Them. 295 Every reader must adopt whatever methods he finds best suited to his temperament and environments. You may sit in a chair, recline on a lounge, lie on a bed or assume a restful attitude in a rocker. Au important point to re- member is this : that