The Magic of Believing, Chapter 6

Chapter 6
The Mirror Technique for Releasing the Subconscious

The toughest problem that confronts most people is the lack of money, and while I have read and heard of people finding bundles of $1000 bills by using this Mind Stuff, I think that money comes as a result of combining Mind Stuff and energized action. Money certainly can be attracted by your thought, and once it appears on the horizon your thought will lead you to ways and means of acquiring it. While I was in the investment banking business I knew many people of large means, and I found that every one of them had a “money consciousness.” They thought wealth and their coming to possess it was quite similar to my own experience related earlier in this book.

It is always the same technique, no matter what your desires. Get the picture of what you want and keep telling yourself that you’re going to get it. But don’t think it is going to come to you if you merely indulge in a period of watching waiting. Go to work, always keeping your goal in mind, and start saving. Every dollar you save out of your weekly pay check is a step nearer to the fortune that is going to be yours. Consider it as such and save as many dollars as you can. The more you save, the faster you will build that fortune. Then put your savings out at interest, invest them where they will work advantageously for you, not by gambling or playing the market, but in securities of proven worth, in real estate, or in a business of your own. As your investment grows under your money consciousness, you’ll be agreeably surprised to find that the more you have, the more you accumulate. Furthermore, you’ll find it exciting and stimulating. Opportunities for profitable investments will come to you from many unexpected and unknown sources, but don’t make the mistake that many do and follow will-o’-the-wisps; get sound advice before you invest a cent.

I recall one woman and her daughter who in twenty-five years accumulated more than half a million dollars, which today is largely represented by apartment houses and store buildings. The woman’s husband died shortly after World War I, and she was left with a fairly large-sized house. She was at her wits’ end how to support herself and her daughter who had just finished high school. She had no previous experience in holding a job or carrying on a business, but she could cook and keep house. One morning the idea came to her to take in roomers and boarders. That was the start, and success came rapidly. Within two years she sold the house and the business, realizing a handsome profit, and then bought a much larger house directly across the street from a well-known men’s club, believing that with her high-grade cooking she could get much of the club’s overflow business. She did --and prospered; even though she employed plenty of help, no task was too lowly for her in a rush period.

A retired elderly business man who had taken up his home at her place one day suggested that she open a tea room. He said he would provide the necessary funds to fix up a place. The top floor of an office building in the business section was found and the tea room opened. With herself as hostess and her daughter as cashier during the rush hours, and at other times helping in the kitchen and directing her employees, she soon made the tea room a favourite eating-place for business men. That led to the purchase of a beach hotel through a mortgage company, and also to the profitable sale of the tea room. All of this time she was investing in securities and it wasn’t long before she had accumulated a nest egg of $25,000, which went as the first payment on a run-down apartment house. Remodelling under her direction made the building remarkably attractive, and it became very popular under her management. With the great results achieved her reputation came to the attention of an insurance company that owned other apartment houses in those days, and she was offered the management of a number of them on a salary and a percentage basis. As her capital grew, her opportunities to buy apartment houses followed, and the last time I heard of this woman with the “money-consciousness” she not only owned apartment houses in this particular city, but she had also purchased an apartment house at a near-by beach resort which previously had operated only during the summer months, but which she now operates all the year round.

It has long been by observation that a person with a workable idea seldom has any difficulty in getting money to finance himself. However, he must be thoroughly “sold” on the idea himself before he can convince others to lend him money. If you contemplate having your own business, think about this and use the science of belief, for you’ll find someone with money who will help you.

Great fortunes are not built in a day but come as a result of dollars adding themselves to those you already have or to those you earn and save. But if you want a fortune, you must put your mind and energies to work. It will come --just use the magic of believing.

Here’s another case where by using this science success followed in rapid order --in fewer than ten years. A corner druggist had gone into bankruptcy. The fixtures were owned by the owner of the building and most of the stock by a wholesale druggist. A young pharmacist heard about the location, but had no funds with which to proceed. Finally the wholesaler and the landlord got together, and the young fellow “sold himself” to both of them. The landlord, anxious to keep the place occupied, agreed to finance the young fellow for several months, and with necessary guarantees to the wholesaler the place was reopened. His wife helped behind the counter and at the fountain and the business began to grow. For a long time the young druggist had been interested in a preparation which he thought would help people, but he had never had the funds to finance himself. One day he decided to talk with the owner of the building, a man of considerable wealth. So thoroughly did he believe in his plan that he had no trouble in convincing the owner, who organized a company for the young fellow and put up $5000 to start. For months the preparation was bottled in the basement of the rented home of the druggist during evenings after the store was closed. People began to buy it in increasing quantities and the business began to expand. It spread all over the country, and within a few years not only was the landlord paid off, but he told me that his profit was better than $50,000 and that the young fellow’s income was now more than $100,000 a year.

Another remarkable story came to my attention a few years back in the midst of the so-called depression. The story is from the man’s own lips. He had been in clerical positions most of his life but one day found himself on the WPA payroll. His wife in an endeavour to get help for some of her troubles had taken up “religion.” The religious organization was one that insists upon tithing --that is, upon the payment by each member of 10 per cent of his income.

(By the way, there are thousands of people who are firm believers in tithing, and, as a matter of fact, one of our greatest industrialists, who preaches religion in his own organization and to outsiders, attributes much of his success to his practice of tithing. Another man who is very successful in the selling of baking machines and equipment, credits his success entirely to his tithing. Whether this giving of one-tenth of their income to the church or to some religious or charitable organization has anything to do with the success of these individuals, is, of course, something that the writer cannot answer; but surely these tithers believe thoroughly in the efficacy of their practices, and who is there to say that it doesn’t work for them?)

One night the husband on WPA was prevailed upon to accompany his wife to church and then “the light hit me,” as he told me. Upon arriving at his home, “something” led him to search for an old formula which his father had used in preparing a location or a tonic that could be used in all barber and beauty shops. With the finding of the formula, he began to gather old bottles from junk-shops and scrap piles, which he took home and washed --and they became the first containers. This man went personally from barbershop to barbershop, from beauty parlour to beauty parlour, and so convincing were his stories that it wasn’t long before he gave up his WPA job and opened up a plant of his own. He believed thoroughly that the tithing principle was responsible for his good fortune and for all of the ideas that came to him. His product became widely known throughout the country, but the trade was no longer supplied by the man personally --wholesalers pushed it and he had his own sales organization as well. Another demonstration of the magic of believing.

Everything on the material plane is first an idea, a thought in someone’s mind. A person selling a commodity is actually selling an idea --if it’s a machine, what the machine will do --if building material, how it can be used --if food, how nutritious and tasty it will be, and so on end endlessly. All businesses, all fortunes are the outgrowth of an idea, the workings of someone’s imagination followed by action.

For years I have watched the progress of the Jantzen Knitting Mills, makers of the famous Jantzen swimming suits. I have seen this manufacturing concern grow from practically nothing but an idea to an organization that circles the globe, and the success story of those behind it rivals any told by Horatio Alger. Several times I’ve discussed this science with J.A. Zehntbauer, president of the company and chairman of its board, and with his permission I quote a letter he wrote to me:


As you say, some people seem to possess an indefinable something which spurs them on to a successful and happy life, while others apparently work hard but without that something in their characters which brings them satisfaction and success.

I have never tried systematically to develop this indefinable spirit but believe it has been developed in me by my parents, and especially by my mother, who promptly fought our inclination as youngsters to say, “I can’t do this or I can’t do that,” by saying to us that we should not say we can’t do it, but that, of course, we can do anything anyone else can do, and all that was necessary to tackle the job and keep on trying until it was mastered; and that we would then be ready to tackle a bigger job, and to shrink from no job because it was great or unimportant. Then she was constantly resisting our inclination as youngsters to complain or growl about anything. When we were in a complaining disposition, she would say, “Don’t grumble but think what a privilege it is to live in such a wonderful world and instead of complaining, brace right up and keep smiling and enjoy the blessings at hand.”

There were four youngsters in our family, three boys and one girl. We have always been exceptionally happy and I attribute it to the training of our parents; mother, with her constant training and father corroborating her often by saying: “Always look on the bright side, never on the dark side of things.”

If one has not been fortunate enough to have the advantages of such influences, I can see where it would take a great amount of self-discipline and training to bring one up to the point of view which you clearly point out is necessary to get the most out of life. Regardless of one’s present circumstances, I am sure the application of your science would be valuable to him.


In a postwar world, the competition is unusually keen and naturally the person best prepared for a certain position is in a far better position to get it than one who is not. I say this because I do not wish to give the idea to any of my readers that a man who has had neither the education nor the experience can step out of the army, or out of a job in an industrial plant, and immediately take over the reins of a large industrial corporation simply by using this science of belief. There may be exceptional cases of men doing this, but they are few and far between.

First things come first, always, and if a man feels and believes he is entitled to a better job and has prepared himself for it, then with the use of this science he can get that job or some other as good or better.

A well-known executive once said to me, “The difficulty I see with most people seeking employment is that they are so wrapped up in themselves that they make no effort to impress their prospective employer with what they can do to help him, overlooking the fact that the other fellow is only interested in you to the extent that you can help him.”

To some of my readers this may appear a cold-blooded attitude, but in the world of competition, self-interest is a reality that all prospective employees must face.

There is an old saying that “If you do not follow your own thoughts, then you will follow the thoughts of the fellow who followed his,” and it means exactly what it says --it marks the difference between a leader and a follower. You who do not think or use your creative ability are always being given orders by those who do. Unless you are willing to think, you will have to labour physically, and this means you will receive less for your work.

Therefore, visualize the kind of job you want, and use your cards and your constant affirmations until belief in your goal becomes a vital part of you and you feel it in your blood, your bones, and in every tissue of your body. See yourself actually doing the things you visualize and it will all work out, because every thought held constantly and persistently sooner or later materializes after its kind. All of you sometime in your life have taken vacation trips. Did you ever stop to analyze the mental processes involved? First you got the idea of the trip, then you decided where you would go, and shortly you began to visualize yourself in the mountains, at the seashore, or visiting some new city, and the vacation turned out as planned because you saw yourself doing it --actually before the vacation trip became reality. Could anything be clearer? Whatever you want to do, just apply the same principles and you will get the same successful results.

You will remember the card device, which I explained in detail. There is another device, which I call the mirror technique. Before explaining it, I want to tell you how I how I happened to discover what a truly wonderful thing it is, and how it can be used to bring quicker and more effective results.

Many years ago I was the dinner guest of a very wealthy man who owned many patents covering logging and sawmill machinery. He had invited a number of newspaper publishers, bankers, and industrial leaders to his suite in a prominent hotel, in order to explain a new method he had devised for mill operations. Liquor flowed freely and it wasn’t long before the host himself was very much intoxicated. Just before dinner was served, I noticed him staggering into his bedroom and pulling himself up abruptly before his dresser. Thinking that I might help him, I followed him to the door of his room. As I stood there, I saw him grab the edge of the dresser top with both hands and stare into the mirror, all the time mumbling as a drunken man sometimes does. Then his words began to make sense and I moved back a little to watch the performance. I heard him say: “John, you old --, they tried to get you drunk, but you’re going to fool them. You’re sober, you’re sober, cold sober, this is your party and you’ve got to be sober.”

As he kept repeating these words, while continuing to stare at the reflection of his eyes in the mirror. I noticed that a transfiguration was taking place. His body was becoming more erect, the muscles of his face were tightening, and his drunken look was disappearing. The whole performance was over in perhaps five minutes, but in all my experience as a newspaper man and more especially as a police reporter where I had opportunity to observe many drunken people, I had never seen such a rapid change. Not wanting him to know that I had observed him, I made for the bathroom. When I got back to the dining room I found the host at the head of the table, and while his face was still a little flushed, to all appearances he was sober. At the end of the dinner he presented a very dramatic and convincing picture of his new plans. It wasn’t until long afterward, when I got a better understanding of the power of the subconscious mind, that I understood the science involved in transforming the obviously drunken man into a cold-sober host.

I have for many years given the mirror technique to thousands of people, with some very unusual results. During these years a large number of people came to me for help with their problems. There were a surprising number of women, and practically all of them started their stories with weeping spells. The first thing I did was to stand them before a full-length mirror and have them take a good look at themselves; I made them look into their eyes and tell me what they saw there -crybabies or fighters? Their crying soon ceased, and those cases convinced me that a woman cannot weep while looking herself in a mirror. Whether it be pride, shame, or the repudiated idea that they are weaklings that stops them short, is of no moment. The fact remains that the tears cease flowing.

Many great orators, preachers, actors, and statesmen have used this mirror technique for years. Winston Churchill, according to Drew Pearson, never made a speech of importance unless he made it before a mirror first. Pearson also declared that Woodrow Wilson employed the same technique. It’s what I call a supercharging method of stepping up the subconscious forces of the speaker so that when he appears before an audience those forces flow out to and affect his listeners. By using the mirror in rehearsing the speech as you are going to deliver it, you are creating at that moment a picture of yourself, your words, the sound of your voice, and your sight of the audience, to which the immediate future is to bring reality. By looking into the mirror, you increase the mental vibrations by which the force and meaning of your words will quickly penetrate to the subconscious minds of your audience.

This mirror technique gives a clue to the power and the personal magnetism of Billy Sunday, the evangelist. I knew Bill Sunday in his heyday and often heard him preach, but in those days, knowing little or nothing about this Mind Stuff, I was puzzled as to how he, as well as Gypsy Smith and other great evangelists, was able to influence people to such a remarkable degree.

However, we now have proof that Billy Sunday was versed in the use of the mirror technique; it is given by Eric Sevareid, Columbia Broadcasting System commentator, in his book Not So Wild a Dream, published in 1946. Mr. Sevareid tells how he as a young newspaper reporter secured an interview with Billy Sunday.


“He bounded about the hotel room, now peering intently out of the window, with one foot on the sill, now grasping the dressing-table firmly in both hands while lecturing his reflection in the mirror.”


One of the most outstanding insurance salesmen in America who early accepted the science of belief told me that he never called upon an important prospect without first giving his sales presentation in front of a mirror. His sales were phenomenal.

Every salesman has heard the statement, “If you can convince yourself, you can convince the other fellow,” which is basically true. Every great mass movement in history from religious to military has come about through one individual, whose flaming belief in his own cause gave him the power to convert thousands of others. A man need not be a student of psychology to know that enthusiasm is very contagious and can readily be transmitted to others if one is bursting with it. The mirror technique is a simple and effective method by which a person can strengthen his belief in his own sales ability and thus intensify the power of his enthusiasm.

When the mirror technique is considered in the light of the science given in this book, it becomes a master method by which the mighty forces of the subconscious mind can be employed to influence those with whom you are dealing.

Whether we know it or not, we’re all engaged in selling something --if not our wares, then our personalities, our services, our ideas. As a matter of fact, all human relationships are based upon selling of one kind or another, and we all engage in it whenever we undertake to persuade others to our way of thinking. Legally a contract or an agreement is based upon a “meeting of the minds,” and unless you can get the other person to think your way, you do not get very far. But once the minds meet on the major issues, the rest is easy, and the name on the dotted line is but a matter of a few more moments.

During the “depression” days when I was working with many business and sales organizations to increase their business, I introduced this mirror method with some startling results. In one concern, a pie-making organization, I had mirrors fastened to the inside of the back doors of all the trucks, so that when the driver-salesmen opened the doors to get their goods for delivery, the first thing to be seen was the mirrors. I always admonished each man to determine before calling upon a customer how many pies he was going to sell him, and then to tell himself in the mirror that pies to that number would be left on the customers’ counters. One driver told me that for many months he had been trying to sell one woman restaurant owner, but she had always refused to purchase. Then he decided to try the mirror technique. That day he sold her ten pies. At the time he related his story to me he was selling her an average of fifteen pies daily.

The mirror technique was used with great effectiveness in insurance companies, financial houses, rubber mills, automobile agencies, cookie manufacturing plants, and many other organizations where there were salesmen or where there was a combination of salesmen and production operators. In my own old organization, where a complete about-face movement had to be made to avert disaster, I first used this technique by placing a mirror in a back room of the office where the employees left their hats and overcoats. It was so placed that everyone had to see it when entering or leaving the room. At first I pasted strips of paper with such slogans as “We’re going to win,” “Nothing is impossible to an indefatigable mind,” “We’ve got the guts, let’s prove it,” “Let’s show the world we’re not licked and then go to town,” “How many are you going to sell today?” and a great many others. We then took to using soap to write slogans directly on the face of the mirror. Every morning a new slogan appeared, with the sole purpose of convincing our employees that they could get business even though other firms in the same line were having a struggle to keep their doors open. Later this setup was augmented by a second mirror placed alongside the doorframe of the main door to the office, which would always be the last thing seen by the salesmen as they left the office. Subsequently I had mirrors placed alongside calendar frames on the desks of all salesmen and executives, and the startling thing about it all was that during the worst of the “depression” days the salesmen --and I mean all of them-- trebled and quadrupled their incomes, and they have maintained their progress ever since. There are a number of men whose monthly income probably never exceeded in the best of times $300 who now and for several years have averaged better than $1000 a month. This may sound incredible to some of my readers, but it’s true. In my files are many letters from executives, salesmen, and others who have testified to the effectiveness of the mirror idea.

Now to outline the technique. Stand in front of a mirror. It need not be a full-length mirror, but it should be of sufficient size so that you may at least see your body from the waist up.

Those of you have been in the army know what it means to come to attention --stand fully erect, bring your heels together, pull in your stomach, keep your chest out and your head up. Now breathe deeply three or four times until you feel a sense of power, strength, and determination. Next, look into the very depths of your eyes, tell yourself that you are going to get what you want --name it aloud so you can see your lips move and you can hear the words uttered. Make a regular ritual of it, practice doing it at least twice a day, morning and evenings --and you will be surprised at the results. You can augment this by writing with soap on the face of the mirror any slogans or key words you wish, so long as they are the key to what you have previously visualized and want to see in reality. Within a few days you will have developed a sense of confidence that you never realized you could build within yourself.

If you are planning to call on an exceptionally tough prospect or are proposing to interview the boss whom you may have previously feared, use the mirror technique, and keep it up until you are convinced that you can make the proper presentation without any trepidation. And of course, if you are called upon to make a speech, by all means practice before a mirror. Gesticulate --pound your fist on the palm of your other hand to drive home the arguments-- use any other gestures that come naturally to you.

As you stand before the mirror, keep telling yourself that you are going to be an outstanding success and that nothing in this world is going to stop you. Does this sound silly? Don’t forget that every idea presented to the subconscious mind is gong to be produced in its exact counterpart in objective life, and the quicker your subconscious gets the idea, the sooner your wish becomes a picture of power. Certainly it is not good business for you to tell anyone of the devices you employ, because you might be ridiculed by scoffers and your confidence shaken, especially if you are just beginning to learn the science.

If you are an executive or sales manager and you want to put more push into your entire organization, teach your employees the mirror technique and see that they use it, just as many organizations now do.

Much has been written about the power of the eyes. The eyes are said to be the windows of the soul; they reveal your thoughts, They express you far more than you imagine. They permit others to “get your number,” as the saying goes. However, you will find that once you start this mirror practice your eyes will take on a power that you never realized you could develop (something that writers have referred to as a dynamic or fascinating power); this power will give you that penetrating gaze that causes others to think you are looking into their very souls. Sooner or later there will come an intensity that will bespeak the intensity of your thought, which people will begin to recognize. It will be recalled that Emerson wrote that every man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank. Remember that your own gradation or position in life is marked by what you carry in your eyes. So develop eyes that bespeak confidence. The mirror will help you.

This mirror technique may be used in many different ways and with very gratifying results. If you have a poor posture, or are slovenly in your talk, you will find that practice before a full-length mirror will work wonders for you. Your mirror shows you the person others see when they look at you, and you can fashion yourself into any kind of person you would like them to see.

It is said that if you act the part you will become that part, and here again is no better way than rehearsing your acting before the mirror. Vanity has no part in this science. Consequently, don’t use the mirror in a supercilious manner, but use it to build yourself into the person you wish to be. Surely, if some of the world’s most outstanding men and women use this mirror technique to build themselves and increase their influence over other people, you can use it for your own special requirements.

Much has been written about intuition, hunches, and the like. Some psychologists claim that ideas which come to us intuitively are not something “out of the blue,” but come as a result of our accumulated knowledge or because of something we may have seen or heard in earlier times. That may be true to some extent with chemists, inventors, and others who work by the “trial and error” method of using their knowledge and the results of previous experiments, but it’s the writer’s belief that by far the greatest number of discoveries, illuminations, and inspired works come from the subconscious mind, without previous knowledge having been planted in the mind. Every custom we follow, everything we utilize was first an idea in someone’s mind, and those ideas came first in the way of “hunches,” intuitive flashes, or call them what you will. So it is wise to heed your intuitions and to trust them to the end.

Many great leaders, industrialists, and inventors have openly declared that they have followed the hunches which have come to them in odd moments of relaxation or in periods when they were engaged in some other task than trying to solve their problems. A good way to let your subconscious mind solve a problem is for you to tackle it from all angles consciously; then some night just before dropping off to sleep, order the subconscious mind to bring you the answer. You may awaken in the middle of the night with the answer, or it may come to you upon awakening in the morning or at some odd moment of the day when you are engaged in something quite different. Be quick to grasp it when it comes and waste no time in following through with it.

You may have a hunch to call on or telephone a certain man. He may be the head of some concern and in a position to be of great help to you. However, because of his position you may fear to make the move and you struggle with your “hunch” on one hand and your fear on the other. The fear too often wins. The next time fear or doubt enters your mind, ask yourself this question: “What have I got to lose if I do see him or call him? What harm can I do?” Your fears and doubts can’t answer that question. So obey your hunch without delay.

A word of warning should be given here, however. Many people like to gamble. Some play cards, others bet on the horse or dog races, and many play the market. Undoubtedly there are those who say that they follow their hunches and now and then make a “killing,” but the writer urges you not to use your hunches in an endeavour to get something for nothing. There is something fundamentally wrong about it, because most gamblers die broke. Also, beware of hunches that would lead you into untried fields. They may not be hunches at all, but just sudden fanciful longings. The true kind of hunch is always concerned with something that is related to you directly or indirectly, and it gives you the idea to do a certain thing, followed by the momentum to carry out the necessary action.

The writer takes it for granted that none of his readers will assume that this book is an open-sesame to riches and fame overnight. It is intended only as a key to unlock the door that opens on the roadway which will lead to the goal of your desire. Certainly it wouldn’t be wise to rush into undertakings far beyond your capabilities or your development. If you would be the head of a great utility concern, you would naturally have to know the business, just as you would if you aspired to become head of a huge transportation system. But by using this science, you could learn the various steps which would take you to the top. However, you must have a plan of action before any program is undertaken. You wouldn’t go to the corner drugstore and ask just for drugs. You would be specific and name the drugs desired. And so it is with this science. You must have a plan of action --you’ve got to know what you want and be specific about it.

If you have definitely determined what you want and have fixed a goal for yourself, then consider yourself extremely fortunate, for you have taken the first step that will lead to success. As long as you hold on to the mental picture of your idea and begin to develop it with action, nothing can stop you from succeeding, for the subconscious mind never fails to obey any order given to it clearly and emphatically.

The Magic of Believing, Chapter 5

Chapter 5
The Art of Mental Pictures

When I was in the investment banking business, one of the salesmen, a young chap, came into my office for advice.

“I wish you would tell me how I can overcome my fear of ----. I know I can sell him if I can get in to see him and talk with him on his own level. As it stands, he’s got the life scared out of me and every other salesman.”

The man the salesman referred to is a millionaire with a very imposing office organization. He is a portly type, with a heavy shock of hair and beetle-browed; because of his growling manner, he easily scares timid folks. However, I knew he liked people who talked up to him.

The salesman had been picturing this man as he saw him and momentarily I was puzzled, but the answer soon came and I said: “You know he’s not going to hurt you physically. Suppose you saw him at the beach in a bathing suit, you wouldn’t be afraid of him there, would youk, even though he did appear to be a pretty hairy fellow?”

“Certainly not,” replied the salesman. Then the idea of a hairy body came to me and I asked the salesman: “Bob, did you ever see one of those clownish dancing bears, tied to a grind organ, wearing a fez or a dunce cap? You know they can growl, but most of them are toothless and can’t bite.”

“Sure,” responded the salesman.

“Well, you have an imagination. Just picture our friend as one of those harmless old bears, fez, collar, and all, and the mental hazard is gone, isn’t it?”

The salesman, laughing heartily, went out. A few days later he sold the man $20,000 worth of securities, and this executive may still be wondering how the young salesman ever got in to see him, to say nothing of selling him. At last accounts, the young fellow was still selling this wealthy man.

A couple of weeks later the same salesman was back in my office, telling me how he had used similar methods in making another sale, this time to a gruff old man who wore white whiskers, had a patriarchal and stern appearance, and used a vitriolic tongue that was feared by most salesmen.

“That old goat had me buffaloed for a long time. I knew he had money, but every time I passed his store and saw him scowling --he was always scowling-- I couldn’t get up courage to go in and tackle him. A few days ago I got thinking of the picture-making plan you told me to use on ---- and the idea popped into my head of a picture of Santa Claus. I said to myself, ‘Sure, the old goat could be Santa Claus and who’s afraid of that kindly old boy?” Well, it worked there too. The old man was swell to me --sort of flattered that a young fellow like me dared approach him. I got a $5000 order out of him and he told me to come back next week as he wanted to go over his whole security list with me. That means more business.”

There are many men holding executive positions who assume an importance that causes some people to hold them in awe. With their elaborate office surroundings and their numerous secretaries and clerks, they put on a show that proves impressive to some people. Just bear in mind that these executives are mere human beings with the same fears, the same frailties, the same faults that are common to millions; at home they are often docile little souls. When you do this and picture them as they really are, rather than as they appear or pretend to be, the mental hazard immediately disappears. The genuinely great man is usually easy to approach and seldom barricades himself from callers. If you are a salesman, this should give you a clue to how to eliminate the mental hazards that crop up when you call upon someone who puts on a show of being superior.

A lawyer told me of an experience that nicely illustrates my point.

“I once found myself pitted against a lawyer who had a great reputation and was generally feared by young men. For a little while in the courtroom, I admit I was frightened, but I closed by eyes and said to myself, ‘I’m just as good as he is; as a matter of fact, I’m better. I can lick him and I will.’ I repeated words and phrases like that for several seconds and when I opened my eyes, I could have licked two like him. I now go through the same little ritual whenever I get a tough case or the jury doesn’t look favourable. Maybe it’s luck, maybe it’s all illusory, but it always works.”

People who act and appear hard-boiled are usually “softies” at heart and once an interviewer eliminates the mental hazard, he has licked the situation. Take a couple of deep breaths the next time you call on one, convince yourself he’ll be a “push-over,” and he will.

During the depression days of the ‘thirties, a group of managers and assistant managers, including the butchers of a large grocery chain store, came on their initiative to me for help. After a six weeks’ course of lectures, the men decided to put the lectures into effect. It was agreed that each store one day a week would use the science I had expounded to push the sale of certain items. After considerable debate, among the items selected for the test were cheese, rolled roasts, salmon, and just plain Hubbard squash. (The manager of a store in one of the outlying districts had said he could make a good buy of squash from a farmer customer.) The day before each sale the managers carefully coached their clerks to make a mental picture of each customer coming into their stores and buying the selected items. Of course, prominent displays were made of each item, and each clerk was instructed to think of selling the special item during the day whenever a customer appeared. The results were astounding. The store specializing in cheese sold more cheese in that one day than had passed over the counter in a six months’ period; the shop which on Saturday specialized in the rolled roasts had them sold before noon; the store which on Friday had featured fresh salmon sold more salmon than all the other stores of the group combined; the one where squash had been selected had to call upon the farmer twice during the day to replenish the supply.

Today, with only one exception and he is a war casualty, each man who took the lecture course is either in business for himself or has a much better job. As a matter of fact, one of the men now owns three stores of his own, while another is manager of a chain of stores in a neighbouring state.

I think of a recent conversation with the head of a large Pacific Coast advertising agency, who for a number of years handled the sales promotion work for a well-known coffee manufacturer who had recently sold his business.

“IF there was ever a man who used this stuff to tremendous advantage,” declared the advertising executive, “it was old man ----. He came to this section as a kid and learned the coffee roasting and blending business. He concluded that he could do better if he were in business for himself. He thoroughly believed that he could blend the best coffee, and even up to the time of his retirement, after years in the business, he thoroughly believed that his coffee was the best on the market. Of course, that belief made a millionaire of the old man.”

Once I had given a printer a small manuscript that I wanted to get out in pamphlet form which dealt with the subject we are now considering. The next morning he popped into my office, almost out of breath and visibly shaking. Naturally, I asked if there were anything wrong, and he spluttered: “Just had the oddest experience. I took your manuscript home last night and read it, and I said to myself, ‘If the stuff actually works as the author claims, then I ought to be able to find a parking space close to his office when I go to see him.’ I thought no more about it until I was driving from out plant to your office just a few minutes ago, and then the thought again occurred to me that it might work. Well, I turned the corner and there wasn’t a space to be seen on Sixth Avenue, and I was going to dismiss it all as bunk. But as I slowed down to let some pedestrians pass, I saw a machine pull away from the curb right in front of this building and there was my place. It gives me goose-pimples. Maybe it’s just one of those things.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “but why not try it again?”

He did, and had similar results over a period of years. Call them coincidences if you like. But this printer never would, especially when shortly afterward he was able to more than treble his business while most printers were having a difficult time to get any orders.

Now and then I told acquaintances about the experiences of the printer and I was astounded to learn that others seemed able to find parking space as had this printer. One woman, a Unity student, told me that she and her sister never drove downtown without saying that they would find a parking space in or near a spot that they desired --and they always found it.

A woman, a dietician and instructor in a large hospital, said to me: “The working of this power, or whatever it is, often frightens me. As an illustration, this happens with continued frequency. Every morning on my way to work when I enter the business section, the traffic lights always turn green and I get through all of them without a stop. I cannot recall the time that the lights have shown red against me. Now I just take it all as a matter of course.

A few months ago a woman was arrested for violating the traffic signals, but according to the newspaper stories at the time, she convinced the judge that the green light was on when she crossed the intersection. She was a motherly woman and the judge freed her when she told him, “Judge, the light just had to be green, and it always is for me because I keep repeating as I near an intersection ‘Green light be on, green light be on.’”

The police maintained, however, that there were no signals at this intersection --only the flashing intermittent red light. But here was the motherly old lady convincing the judge of her belief, and obviously she believed in her ability to have the signals the way she wanted them.

A woman told me of an automobile trip made from Washington, D.C. to join her husband who had been assigned to duty in a Pacific Coast city. “I was frightened in the beginning,” she said. “I had never driven any such distance alone in my life. One day I got thinking of my grandmother who had been one of the pioneers to the Pacific Northwest and who had done many things alone. My fear was gone at once. However, the garage man who looked over my car before I started told me not to go without getting new tires; he said the old ones would blow out any time. If I hadn’t been so intent on making the trip and without delay, I might have listened to him; bu the thought again came to me that they would last until I got across the country --and last they did. While I do not use the car much now, the original tires are still there, though in pretty bad shape. But no blowouts ever occurred.”

Another case that reinforces my contention involves an oil refining company and more than a million dollars of investors’ money. In its early days the company experienced great financial difficulties brought on by suits and marketing problems, and it became necessary to reorganize the whole financial structure, with the security holders taking new securities but foregoing interest for a number of years. The stockholders were told to make a mental picture of the oil turning into money and coming from every still and every spigot --in short, to visualize the company as a money-maker. Incidentally, this company was in a field dominated by strongly in-trenched major companies. Nevertheless, not only did the company become a substantial money-maker, but it was subsequently sold and all the security holders got back their money with interest in full.

Jimmy Gribbo, well known to sports fans as a manager of prizefighters, has made winners out of many boxers by teaching them how to visualize themselves as winners --and they became winners.

The writer is aware that some of his readers, especially those who know nothing about Mind-Stuff, will question these stories but those who related them are of undoubted veracity, and the writer also thinks that there are many of his readers who from their own experiences could relate much stranger tales.

G.N.M. Tyrrell, a well-known English investigator and writer, declares that if while dwelling upon the activity of the subconscious mind we determine upon an intention to do a certain thing, we may subconsciously initiate a train of events likely to bring this thing about. The statement is credited to Dr. Shailer Mathews, long associated with the University of Chicago, “That we influence events by very great desires, and there is psychological proof on ourselves of the effects of our own desires.”

Here are two cases directly in point.

The woman head of a large antique shop, a recognized authority on antiques whose advice concerning them was much sought after by other women, happened to dislike social activities. She was constantly bothered by a woman to accompany her to luncheons and tea. This second woman merely wanted to be seen in the company of this authority on antiques, and invitation after invitation had been declined by the authority. A well-known lecturer was scheduled to talk before a woman’s club, and under the insistent pleas of the second woman the head of the antique shop finally agreed to go with her.

“She caught me in an off moment,” she told me, “and no sooner had I agreed than I began to regret that I had made the promise to go. I hate those would-be highbrow affairs and this was going to be one, I was certain. Actually at night I would have cold sweats thinking about what I had done and how I could get out of going without offending the woman, who was a fairly good customer of the store, and who, incidentally, I knew would have a lot of mean things to say about me should I fail to keep my agreement.

“I thought about it and thought about it, figuring on making up excuse after excuse --none of which seemed good enough or plausible. I was nearly beside myself. The woman and I had nothing in common. As a matter of fact, she bored me. The day of the meeting was drawing near and I had about concluded to phone her, telling her that an important engagement had come up making it impossible to attend the lecture, when in she came.

“She was all apologies when she informed me that the lecture had been cancelled. Did I draw a sigh of relief? I thoroughly believe in what you preach and I think that my thought had something to do with what happened. I know that some will say it was a coincidence --let them call it that if they please. But stranger things than that happen, and they’re not all coincidences.”

The second story involves the manager of a company manufacturing a hay fever remedy. He had recently arrived in town, found an apartment near his office, and sought a telephone for his apartment. At that time, just after the war, the telephone company had a long waiting list and was installing the telephones only on very high priorities, such as service for doctors, police, fire officials, and those engaged in public emergency work.

He had tried for two months, without success, to get a telephone, seeking out everyone he could to help him. Through a mutual friend he learned that I knew the manager of the company and he came to see me. I quickly disillusioned him of the idea that I could get the manager to give him a telephone ahead of several thousand others, but I did tell him that if he could establish his rights to a priority, he shouldn’t have any trouble.

I asked him whom he had talked with and he gave me the names of several people occupying both major and minor positions with the company. Then he explained that it was imperative that he have a telephone, for he was the only one connected with his own company who could handle after-office-hour business.

“Do you have many long-distance calls?” I asked. “And how much does your company telephone business amount to a month?”

He gave me an unusually high figure for his monthly bills.

“Take your last few months’ bills with you and see the man you saw first, look him straight in the eye and tell him that you’ve just got to have a telephone without delay,” I told him, “but don’t go near him until you can convince yourself that you can convince him. Otherwise, your task is futile. You’ve just got to make up your mind that you’re going to have a telephone installed in your apartment, and you must believe it.”

“I’ll try it,” he said, then quickly catching himself said, “No, I’ll do it. I’ll get that telephone.”

He came to see me several days later.

“It certainly worked. I must tell you about this, for it’s very funny how a positive thought brings about such a series of happenings. I went to see the man I had first talked with, and he was rather amazed that I had come back to him. I explained in detail this time why it was imperative that I have a phone, I showed him the bills as you suggested, and it was only a matter of minutes before I had him convinced. He was just about to call the manager to plead my cause, when, lo and behold, the manager called him on some other matter. Then this man told the manager of my troubles and the manager agreed I was entitled to a priority. He suggested that I see a Mr. ---- in charge of priority ratings. I had never heard of this man before and prior to that time had known nothing of the priority system. I saw this man, told him my story and considerable about our business, referring to the product we manufactured. I nearly collapsed when he told me that he was bothered by hay fever and had tried various remedies without results. It was a natural from then on. It all gives me a sort of spooky feeling. How did it happen that the manager called the man I was talking with at that particular time and how did it happen that the man with the final say-so was a hay fever victim and one I could help? From now on send me the scoffers.”

Of course, we all know that our thoughts determine our carriage, our facial expression, our conversation, for what we are outwardly comes as a result of what we think habitually. There are many women who have improved their appearance by continuing to feel the delights of beauty, by thinking thoughts of the beautiful, by wearing stylish clothes, by adding things of beauty to their surroundings, by developing poise and easy carriage, and by constantly telling themselves that they are going to win out. You have seen in movie plays how a badly dressed, ordinary-looking girl can be transformed into a most attractive woman by beautiful clothes and the latest style of hair-do. You can do the same thing --and you will speed up the process if you will continue to hold the mental picture of your new self and never relax for a second.

Most people dread going to a dentist. It isn’t so much what happens as what the patients think will happen that brings on the jitters. Again we have thought-created conditions which we would go a long way to avoid. The American Weekly, in its issue of July 7, 1940, told of a Pittsburgh dentist specializing in handling children, who fixed up a children’s playroom adjoining his operating room and had it fitted up with toys, sandboxes, blocks, etc. The idea was to get the children interested in playing and thus get their thoughts off the work on their teeth. Once in the chair, the children were encouraged to talk about anything but their teeth. The dentist even attached a button switch to his electric drill line which the children themselves could turn on and off, the dentist assuring them before he started to work that they might turn off the current at the slightest indication of pain. His practice was enormous.

A barber who has built up a large clientele among small children has on his stands numerous children’s books, all well-illustrated, which he puts in the hands of his little patrons as he places them in his chair. He gets them interested in the pictures before he starts cutting their hair. “Once in a while it doesn’t work,” he said, “especially if the child hasn’t been taught to look at pictures. Then I have to bring out the mechanical toys, such as those that utter throaty sounds or squeaks when they are squeezed. But the trick is to get the kids to forget about their hair being cut. Once that is done I have no trouble.

Imagination or mental picture-making can often produce queer results. Fear is basically an imaginary factor, as millions of men who went through the war will testify. You suddenly receive a telegram or a long-distance telephone call and before you open the envelope or answer the phone you fear you’ll hear bad news --and you promptly get a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. The news may be good but for the moment you are shaken with fear and only the good news relieves you of that nervousness.

The story is often told of two men who got the only room left in the hotel. It was ordinarily a storage room, but the hotel, when crowded, used it as a bedroom. During the night one of the men complained of lack of air, and upon arising he groped through the dark to what he thought was the window. He couldn’t open it, and, after finding a shoe, knocked out the pane of glass. Then they slept comfortably the rest of the night, only to discover at dawn that the window was intact. What had been smashed was the glass door to a closet!

A somewhat similar story was related during the war by Margaretta West in This Week Magazine. She told of returning on a troopship from the South Pacific where she found herself packed into a cabin with seventeen other women. Because of the black-out rules the portholes had been closed, and the cabin was stifling. Inasmuch as the ship was not sailing until morning, permission was granted to open the portholes after everyone was in bed. Miss West tells how she undertook to open the portholes and how everyone was pleased that they could then sleep, and sleep they all did, related Miss West. But, on awakening in the morning, they found that Miss West had opened only the inner porthole, the outer one remaining closed and shutting out both light and air during the night.

During food rationing, thousands of people ate margarine in the home of friends, thinking it to be butter. During prohibition days, it was a common practice to put moonshine whiskey into bottles with labels purporting to be genuine, and many did not know the difference. Sometimes the lowly carp has been served as red snapper, without anyone’s being the wiser.

Science has proved in countless ways the effects of the workings of the imagination. Postage stamps have been placed on the skin of patients who believed that they were small mustard plasters; blisters developed under the stamps. By ringing a bell when food was offered to dogs, scientists soon had the animals associating the ringing of the bell with the thought of food, and it was only a short time before it was discovered that the mere ringing of the bell was sufficient to cause their stomachs to secrete digestive juices. Sit at a restaurant counter and notice an enticing dish placed before your neighbour. At once you are hungry and your mouth begins to water.

The peeling of onions often causes tears to flow from the person doing the peeling. Yet the mere sight of an onion being peeled by another person several feet away and with no odour permeating the air will bring tears to the eyes of others in the room. Some people cannot eat warmed-up leftovers, declaring that they make them sick. Undoubtedly, some leftover food that was eaten years before (perhaps it was partly spoiled) did upset their stomachs, and the mental picture never left them. Others claim that they have to take soda after every meal to help them digest their food. Medical authorities say that this is often merely the working of their imaginations.

The writer has been across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans several times and has never been seasick, even in the most severe storms and violent pitchings and rollings of the ship, except once; this was when he had to help another passenger who was violently ill. However, early in his travelings he learned to look away from those who were seasick, realizing that there was a suggestive force that could make him run for the rail. A sudden shock under the pressure of your imagination will cause your skin to turn cold and may even be followed by alternate sweats and chills. Emotional shocks resulting from something your physician has told you have a terrifying effect when your imagination goes to work.

Try whistling sometime when a friend is near you sucking a lemon. The mere sight of it will stop you, and all because the thought of the sour lemon puckers up your mouth and makes whistling impossible.

Often in lecturing, in order to prove the power of the imagination, I would hold up two small bottles, both containing different coloured fluids. I would tell my audience that one contained lilac perfume and the other attar of roses, explaining that my experiment was for the purpose of determining the difference in the perceptive powers of my listeners. I would then turn my back on the audience so that they could not see which bottle I was partially emptying into the air; at the same time I called upon them to identify the odour. Some would say lilac, others attar of roses. Of course, there was always great chagrin when both groups discovered that their imaginations had led them astray, and that both bottles contained nothing but coloured water, and neither had an odour.

Mark Twain in his little essay, Concerning Tobacco, says that a man thinks he can tell what he regards as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad one --but he can’t. He goes by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavour. Twain, who had the reputation of smoking the worst cigars, tells how he borrowed from a wealthy friend a double handful of forty-cent cigars which bore red-and-gold labels signifying their quality. Twain removed the labels and put the now unbranded cigars into his own box. He passed them out to friends at the end of a dinner and they were all tossed away after two or three whiffs, because his friends believed they were the cheap cigars that Twain smoked. Unquestionably, there is a difference in the taste of even domestic brands of cigars and cigarettes, but the imagination plays an important part in determining it.

When we realize that inventors, artists, scientists, architects, as well as builders of great businesses, employ the imagination, we get some idea of its magnitude. Shakespeare said: “Assume a virtue if you have it not.” Now let’s take this great truth and follow some of its implications. In assuming a virtue, you are assuming it via your imagination. To become the person you would like to be, you create a mental picture of your newly conceived self, and if you continue to hold it the day will come when you are in reality that person. So it is with the accomplishment of desires.

But here we must make a distinction between daydreaming and a true mental picture, or the proper use of the imagination. Perhaps there is some genie who will drop $100,000 into your lap or overnight provide you with a mansion luxuriously furnished, though the writer has never had the pleasure of meeting one. But daydreaming or mere undirected wishful thinking doesn’t have the power to release the latent forces within you that will bring you the one hundred thousand dollars or the mansion. When you employ your imagination properly, you see yourself doing a thing and you go ahead and do it. It’s the doing the thing you have pictured to yourself that brings it into actual existence. In this connection, think about the use of a magnifying glass. When properly focused, it will gather the light from the sun and concentrate it, so that the heat will burn a hole in the object upon which the rays are focused. It must be held steady before the heat power is developed. So it is with the holding of the image or the mental picture.

Dr. Emile Coue, the little French doctor who threw so much light on the power of suggestion, declared that imagination was a much stronger force than will-power; when the two are in conflict, he said, the imagination always wins. In explanation, let’s say you are an inveterate smoker of good cigars and decide to break yourself of the habit. You grit your teeth, shove out your chin, and solemnly declare that you are going to use your will-power to break yourself of the habit. Then suddenly comes the idea of the taste of a good cigar, its aroma and its soothing effects --the imagination goes to work and the resolution to break the habit goes out the window. The same holds true of efforts to break the drinking habit and other bad habits.

Charles Fourier, a French philosopher of more than a century ago, declared that the future of the world would grow out of the brain of man, shaped, controlled, and directed by the desires and passions by which men are moved. His prophecy is coming true, yet man through his mind has barely started shaping and controlling the world.

All of this brings us to the topic of desire and what you actually want in life. There are comparatively few people with great desires. Most are content to go along filling the tiny niches in which they find themselves. They accept their positions in life as something that fate has fixed for them, and very seldom do they make either a mental or physical effort to extract themselves from those positions. They never raise their sights or realize that it’s just as easy to shoot at a bird on a limb thirty feet above the ground as it is to shoot at it on the ground the same distance away. Many engage in wishful thinking, but wishful thinking in itself is without effect simply because the power factor is missing.

But when you run across a person who is “going to town” --and there are many-- you realize that the great power behind it all is projected by desire. The way seems easy for those people --and to a great degree it is-- because they are putting to use the powers of their subconscious minds which in turn magnetize, co-ordinate, and then transmit to their conscious minds the electrifying vision of the object of their desire.

So let’s be reminded that whatever we fix our thoughts upon or steadily focus our imagination upon, that is what we attract. This is no mere play of words. It is a fact which anyone can prove to his own satisfaction. Whether the results come through magnetic or electrical energy is something still undetermined; while man hasn’t been able to define it, manifestations of thought-attraction can be seen on every hand. It is like the electrical field itself --we do not know what electricity is, although in a material sense we know how man can generate it through various kinds of energy-producing apparatus; we see electricity manifest itself every time we turn on a light or snap a switch.

However, it is very difficult for the average person to concentrate for any length of time, to say nothing of holding on to a mental picture for any great period. You can prove this to yourself in countless ways. You will find that thoughts, ideas, fantasies will ebb and flow through your mind with astonishing rapidity. You are constantly being swayed by what you read, see, and hear, and as a result the co-ordinating part of this creative force turns to gather together all these scattered elements in a confused mass, instead of devoting itself to making a clear and dynamic picture of your desire.

That brings us to a system of mechanics by which anyone can focus thoughts so that they will penetrate to the deepest depths of the subconscious mind.

The writer has been in the private offices of a great many industrial leaders, business men, great bankers, and others, and long before this science of belief was understood by him, he was impressed with the pictures, photographs, slogans, bits of statuary, and so forth, which were to be found in the inner sanctums of great firms. In the office of the head of a great utility concern are hung the photographs of the early leaders in the industry; in another office are pictures of the great financiers of history; in some there are busts of Napoleon; in others little shrines, good-sized statues of Buddha; and I saw offices where there hung on the walls such slogans as “We do the impossible --any place, any time,” “If it can be done, we can do it,” “Do it now,” “Be a self-starter --don’t wait to be cranked.” It is reported that F.W. Woolworth, who became known as the Napoleon of business, had his private office in quarters that were a replica of Napoleon’s study. Undoubtedly many of you have seen or heard of such displays, but has it ever occurred to you what their purpose was?

There can be only one answer, and that is that they serve as a constant reminder --getting the picture over to the occupant of the room that he too can succeed as did those before him. He has a motto or a slogan to meet his gaze every time he looks around the room. He sees and feels the eyes of Napoleon upon him when he sits at his desk, or he feels a touch of the spiritual as he gazes at the little shrine. In other words, they are a form of mechanics that the executive uses to excite his imagination, a picture to inspire him, or a series of suggesting forces that reach his subconscious mind. In many a doctor’s office (and in some of those who would scoff at the great power of suggestion) hang the photographs of great men of medicine, or famous teachers in medical schools. I have often wondered if the doctors realized the underlying power of these portraits.

When we realize that the subconscious mind is sensitized to the point that it works accurately to externalize the suggestion which is most greatly impressed upon it, we then get a better understanding of the necessity for concentration and for constant repetition of the one suggestion.

In common with other great men, Thomas A. Edison obviously knew the value of the repeated suggestion and made use of it. When his desk, sealed at his death, was opened February 8, 1947, as a part of the ceremonies celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the great inventor’s birth, conspicuous among the articles found in it was a piece of paper which bore the legend, “When down in the mouth, remember Jonah, he came out all right.” Edison must have thought well of that expression and perhaps reflected much upon it; otherwise he would not have kept it on his desk before him.

Often I have thought of this matter of desire and suggestion in connection with the planting of vegetable or flower seeds. Once the soil is prepared and the tiny seeds are placed in it, it is but a short time when they put forth roots and sprouts begin to appear. The moment they start upward through the soil in search of light, sunshine, and moisture, obstacles mean nothing to them. They will push aside small stones or bits of wood, and if they can’t do that, they’ll extend themselves and grow around them. They are determined to emerge from the ground. They blossom and give forth fruit, vegetables, or flowers, and they succeed unless some greater force destroys them. While we are not aware of the details of nature’s secrets, we observe the seed buried for a long time in the dark gradually expanding and exerting itself until it becomes a thing of beauty or usefulness. Cultivate it, attend it, give it sunshine and water, and it grows into a full life. Remember it always produces after its kind, be it single or hybrid.

So with you and the suggestions you impart to your subconscious mind. The result will be pure or complex, depending upon the original seed and the attention which you give it. In other words, plant the right kind of seed --thought of a pure strain-- and habitually feed it with strong affirmative thought always directed toward the same end, and it will grow into a mighty force, finding ways and means of overcoming all obstacles. It will reach forth with its roots to find more food on which to grow and expand its foliage to gather more sunshine.

It was desire that brought progress to the world. Without it, we all would still be living in a primitive age. Everything we have in our modern world is the result of desire. Indeed, desire is the motivating force of life itself. You see it all around you --in the animal kingdom, in all forms of plant life, and in all acts and operations of human beings. Hunger promotes a desire for food, poverty a desire for riches, cold causes us to desire warmth, inconveniences a desire for better things.

It’s the generating power of all human action, and without it no one can get very far. The keener, the more urgent the desire, the sooner its consummation. It marks the difference between the uneducated ditch digger and the person of accomplishment, between the clerk and the executive, between the failure and the success. So you must start with desire, keeping in mind that with the magic of believing you can obtain what you picture in your mind’s eye. The mechanics are for the purpose of helping you to focus sharply your desire-picture on the screen of your subconscious mind, as well as enable you to shut off and keep out all distracting thoughts, negative ideas, or any fear or doubt projections that might otherwise penetrate to your subconscious.

***So let’s get down to the mechanics. Secure three or four cards. Ordinary business-size cards will do. In your office, your home, your room, or any other place where you can have privacy, sit down and ask yourself what you desire above everything else. When the answer comes and you are certain that it is your uppermost desire, then at the top of one card write a word-picture of it. One or two words may be sufficient --a job, a better job, more money, a home of your own. Then on each card duplicate the word picture on the original. Carry one in your billfold, or handbag, place another alongside your bed or fasten it to your bedstead, place another on your shaving mirror or dressing table, and still another on your desk. The whole idea, as you may have guessed, is to enable you to see mentally the picture at all hours of the day. Just before going to sleep at night and upon waking in the mornings are highly important moments of the twenty-four hours in which to concentrate upon your thoughts with added force. But don’t stop with merely those two periods, for the more often you can visualize the desire by this method (or by one of your own devising), the speedier the materialization.

At the start you may have no idea of how the results are to come. Yet you need not concern yourself. Just leave it to the subconscious mind, which has its own ways of making contacts, and of opening doors and avenues that you may never have even thought of. You will receive assistance from the most unexpected sources. You will find that ideas useful in the accomplishment of your program will come at most unexpected times. You may be suddenly struck with the idea of seeing a person you have not heard from for a long time, or calling upon a man you have never seen before. You may get the idea of writing a letter or making a telephone call. Whatever the idea is, follow it. Keep a pad and pencil on a stand near the head of your bed, and when these ideas come during the night, note them on a pad, so they will not be forgotten by morning. Many successful people get ideas during the night that are immediately transcribed to a pad so they will not be lost.

For many years, before I thoroughly understood this science, I was associated with an executive who, after reaching his desk in the morning, would begin pulling notes out of his pocket. In a few minutes things would begin to hum. These notes might contain comments on various advertising media, an outline of a sales campaign, new purchases, or a rearrangement of the sales organization; but all of them contributed to the success of his operations.

If you bear in mind what I told you about successful executives and their custom of keeping their offices pictures, mottoes, slogans, busts, and statues, you will appreciate that in using the cards you are utilizing the same forces, only in a much more concentrated form.

As I write this, my memory goes back to the time when I put this science to work in order to pull off the rocks the firm of which I was then vice-president. All of the employees sat around in a half-circle, and as I began my remarks I asked each man to provide himself with paper and pencil. Most of them thought I wanted them to take notes. But there was considerable surprise when I told them to write down what they most wanted in life. I explained that if they would do this, I would point out the way to obtain it. Two or three of the younger men laughed, but the older men, realizing that I was deadly earnest, did as I suggested. To the younger men I said simply: “If you want to hold on to your jobs, you’ll do as I ask. For if this stuff doesn’t work, we’ll all be out on the street.” They complied. I told them to show no one what they had written. After the meeting one of the younger men came to me to apologize for having laughed.

“That’s all right, Bob,” I told him.

“But it sounded so silly at first,” he explained. “Imagine me getting a new automobile by simply writing it down. But after you explained the science of it all, I guess it does make sense.”

Several years later this chap came to my home and said he wanted to show me something. He did. There along the parking strip was parked his expensive new automobile.

In the years that followed, I found occasion to ask those who attended that meeting if they had obtained what they had written down. Without exception, every man had. One had wanted a wife of a certain nationality. He got her, and there are two fine boys in the family. Another put down the figures of a very sizable fortune. He got it. Another man wanted a beach cottage. Another a better home, and so on. Steadily through the years every one of these men has constantly made money, many of them averaging monthly more than they had ever made before in their lives, much to the astonishment of many others in the same line of business. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that you should tell no one just what the words on the cards mean nor give anyone an inkling of what you desire. To do so may end disastrously for you. When you get a better understanding of this science, you can understand how thought vibrations, consciously or unconsciously, because of envy or some other cause, may be set up to counteract your own.

To illustrate this, I am reminded of a doctor friend who during the early war days applied for a commission in the navy. He closed his office, told everyone that he was joining the navy, and found himself the recipient of many parties and gifts. “It taught me a lesson never to tell anyone of my plans or desires,” he laughingly told me later. “It was two years before I received notice of assignment, and during those years I found I had to go back into private practice. It certainly was embarrassing to both myself and family to get various farewell gifts and invitations, only to find that I was to cool my heels for two years.”

The truth is that when you talk about what you’re going to do, you scatter your forces. You lose the close connection with the subconscious, and you frequently find that unless you do as here directed, you will have to start all over again in your program of achievement.

“Go and tell no man” still holds true.

My readers will recall what I said previously about Mumbo Jumbo, chants, incantations, affirmations, etc., and I explained that by engaging in them you put the suggestive forces to work to stimulate your subconscious.

These repetitive words and phrases said silently or aloud are merely methods of convincing the subconscious mind, for autosuggestion, no matter what form, is the only way of moulding its pattern. The subconscious is extremely receptive, and it can be convinced of the propositions you present to it, be they true or false, positive or negative; once they are imbedded in the subconscious mind, it goes to work with all of its faculties and energies to materialize them, to make them real in life. The simpler the words to express the ideas you wish conveyed to the subconscious, the better. For example, if you are unhappy, use the words, “I am happy.” You don’t need the cards for this. Just repeat them to yourself twenty or thirty times. “I am strong, I am happy,” “I am convincing,” “I am friendly,” “Everything is fine” are a few simple affirmations that you can use to change your mental point of view for the better. But if the effects are to be permanent, the affirmations must be continued until the desired results are obtained.

The person with a fixed goal, a clear picture of his desire, or an ideal always before him, causes it, through repetition, to be buried deeply in his subconscious mind and is thus enabled, thanks to its generative and sustaining power, to realize his goal in a minimum of time and with a minimum of physical effort. Just pursue the thought unceasingly. Step by step you will achieve realization, for all your faculties and powers become directed to that end.

Suppose you want a better job or a promotion. Not only use the cards, but keep telling yourself constantly and continuously that you are going to get that job. You have already visualized it if you have accepted this science, but the repetition will be the means of driving the suggestion deeply and firmly into the subconscious mind. This may be compared to driving a nail into a board. The first tap puts the nail in place, but it is only by a number of heavy strokes that the nail is driven home. Never forget that the subconscious mind will accept and carry out whatever it is powerfully instructed to do. A great example of power developed by repetition is the story of Milo and the calf. Every day he lifted the calf, and then came the day when he was lifting a full-grown bull.

Think of all of this in terms of the so-called material things. You know that two objects cannot fill the same space at the same time. Your mind can be compared to that space: you can’t keep your mind filled with negative thoughts or doubts if you have it filled with positive, powerful, and creative thoughts. Consider your mind a room with but a single door and you have the only key. It rests with you to decide who is to come through the door, that is, whether you are dominated by positive or negative thoughts, and which ones you are going to admit, for your subconscious mind will respond to the vibrations of the thoughts that are strongest in you.

Again, compare your mind to a tank filled with clear, unadulterated water. You cannot put any object into that tank without displacing some of the water and causing the tank to overflow. When you permit negative thoughts of doubt or fear to enter your consciousness, it is obvious that the forceful, positive, creative thoughts will have to give way, and consequently you lose your positive state. Thus, so long as you do not permit unfavourable vibrations to reach your subconscious mind, it will not be hindered by anything you may hear, see, or experience. In other words, you must at all times keep your mind filled with positive thoughts so that their strong vibrations will ward off all negative and destructive thoughts that might come from the outside.

For years philosophers have taught that if we are to be happy we must be busy, working or doing something that holds our attention. The explanation lies in the fact that when we are concentrated on some task, our minds are then not open to roving and undesirable vibrations. That is why many doctors advise business and professional men to take up hobbies, in order that their minds may be diverted from worry and trouble thoughts. Others advise trips, new scenes, new personal associations away from the familiar places where it is difficult to get away from disturbing thought vibrations and associations.

As I write, I think of an elderly couple who lost their only son in the Normandy invasion. For months after news of the boy’s death was received, the couple kept his room intact just as it was when he left. On Sundays they would spend hours rearranging the furniture and fondly handling his belongings. Was it any wonder, with minds so constantly occupied with the memories of their son, that they became embittered old people? I know what it means to lose loved ones, but I have also learned that it is necessary to close the door on yesterday and keep it closed. We live today, not yesterday.

Now that you have an understanding of how circumstances, environments, and material objectives come into your life through your thinking, it’s up to you to make your cherished dreams come true.

Suppose you want a new home. After you’ve got the first glimpse of the picture, start your affirmations going. Use any expressions you wish, or something like this: “I’m going to have that new home. I’m going to have that new home. I’m going to have that new home.” And one day the way will be found and the new home will be yours.

If you’re a salesman and want to increase your sales, use the cards, as already suggested, and tell yourself as frequently as possible that you are going to increase your sales. Do it with emphasis.

Strange as it may sound, we usually get what we anticipate, and if we anticipate increasing our sales and believe that we are going to do it, our sales will mount just as though some invisible friend were helping us. The idea of anticipation holds in everything we do.

An insurance man who had increased his business more than 200 per cent within a year after he began using this science, related this story to me: “The sales manager told me to call upon Mr. Blank and not come back to the office until I got an order out of him. This prospect was a hard nut to crack, as everyone knew. He had the reputation of being a very stubborn and cranky individual with little time for salesmen, to say nothing of us in the insurance business. However, I knew that he had lots of property and had to carry all sorts of fire and liability coverage. As I went down the stairs from our office and all the way up the street to this prospect’s office, I kept repeating to myself: ‘Fred, you’re going to sell him, you’re going to sell him. You’re going to find him a fine old fellow, no matter what anyone says. He’s going to be friendly and he’s going to accept what you have to offer.’ Maybe I repeated those ideas a couple of hundred times. Not only did he turn out to be very cordial, but I came away with an order for a $25,000 policy, the first our company had ever secured from the old man.”

This insurance man has long since left the agency with which he was connected and now has a firm of his own, with a country estate he is rapidly developing into a showplace. A short time ago he told me that he was “fixed financially for life.”

Dale Carnegie has told of the great success of Howard Thurston, the magician. According to the story, in going out on the stage Thurston would repeatedly say to himself that he loved his audience and that he was going to give them the best that was in him. He made two million dollars!

Another man --he’s seventy-eight but doesn’t look more than sixty-- who is a profound student of this subject, and who used it to make a tremendous fortune for himself, but whose interests today are along other lines, declares that he still orders his subconscious mind to “get busy for him.”

“I talk to it just as I might be talking to some individual to whom I was giving orders. And I never have any doubts or fears that it will not do as ordered. If I get an upset stomch, I simply tell it to be itself and act naturally; so with other ailments that arise. If I want to awaken at five o’clock in the morning without using an alarm clock, I peremptorily order my subconscious mind to awaken me. It has never failed in anything so far.

“I have long had a theory that the subconscious mind controls our age --what I mean is that for centuries the subconscious mind has been led to believe that a man should be old when he is sixty. For most people who have accepted the thought, it can’t be otherwise, for that is what the subconscious mind believes. However, in my case I refuse to accept it and, as you know, I am as active as I was when I was fifty years old --and I expect to carry on for some years to come.”

All of which shows the advisability of not implanting in your subconscious mind the idea that you are becoming old and incapable merely because the years are passing; it also shows that by keeping the subconscious free from the fixed idea of a decline, you improve your chances of prolonging your life far beyond the so-called allotted span.

Repetition is the fundamental rhythm of all progress, the cadence of the universe. It’s the chuff-chuff of the locomotive that takes a train across the continent, it’s the repeated explosions that generate power in the automobile engine, the airplane, the rocket gun, the robot bomb. It’s the constant surging of water against the turbine blades that generates electrical power. It’s the tap-tap of the hammer that drives the nail into place. It’s the deadly put-put of the machine gun that mows down everything before it. It’s the constant and determined effort that breaks down all resistance, sweeps away all obstacles. It’s the repeated auto- or heterosuggestion that makes you and others believe. It’s the tap-tap of the same conscious thought that cause sit to be impressed upon your subconscious mind and on the subconscious minds of others.

While anyone can demonstrate the efficacy of the repeated suggestion, whether it be used either constructively or destructively, the words of Professor Hugo Munsterberg, Harvard psychologist, throw considerable light on its value. He said: “The value of repetition must distinctly be understood in the relation of the inner-setting and the inner mental attitude.”

Before World War II there was in Paris a famous institute devoted to the teaching of suggestion by means of phonographic records. They were played over and over again, and the listeners could hear any record they wanted --records that gave them the repeated suggestion that they were in good health, that they had the power to overcome their difficulties, that they could receive help in other ways.

For years mothers have been taught to talk to their babies and small children while they were asleep, repeating such suggestions as that they were going to grow well and strong, that they were to develop certain good habits, that they were to become good citizens. In view of the fact that the children were asleep, obviously the suggestions were directed to their subconscious minds.

In the destruction of Carthage, the greatest maritime power of the ancient world, we have an instance of the power of the repeated suggestion at work. Cato, the great Roman statesman, convinced that Rome and Carthage could not both survive, ended every speech in the Senate with the words, “Carthage must be destroyed!” He kept it up until the Romans were saying in their sleep, “Carthage must be destroyed” --and
Carthage was destroyed.

Many people become confused and frustrated because they allow themselves to be influenced by negative thoughts of others --this is a weakness of many salesmen-- when they absorb too much of what the prospect says about his reasons for not doing something such as buying. Repetition of negative thoughts will discourage even the most powerful if continued long enough, and unless your mind is closed against them and you counteract them by constantly thinking and radiating positive thoughts, you will sooner or later find yourself sunk. Some people wear themselves out trying to combat these negative forces by superhuman effort and sheer will-power, never realizing that their own minds, operating in accordance with the suggestive influences, are causing all the trouble.

Whether we know it or not, we are all victims of suggestion, in many cases almost to the point of being hypnotized. We follow along a beaten path of living just because we’ve been doing it for decades. We wear certain styles of clothing, hold to certain customs, all because we have been led to believe, through the never-ending suggestive thoughts that come to us from all sides, that that is the thing to do. Houses, churches, office buildings, automobiles, buses, streetcars for years followed a certain pattern, and yet, when someone gets off the beaten path with a new way of doing things, he is considered a crank or an eccentric. What I refer to, on close analysis, as mass hypnosis is seen around us in every human activity.

It has been my observation that those who consciously use this science (as well as those who may be using it unconsciously) are people of tremendous energies, virtually human dynamos. There are people who not only use their imaginations and hold strong beliefs and convictions, but they are great doers in action. And that brings me to this most important statement: “Faith without action is dead.”

Unquestionably, there are people on this earth who by concentrated thought and by thought alone --without moving from their offices or making any contacts, personal or otherwise, with other people-- can achieve remarkable things. But in the main, this so-called material world of ours is controlled by men of action --great dynamos of energy that energize others. Nicola Tesla, who probably understood the laws of vibration better than any other man of his time, declared that he could, with a machine that could be slipped into his pocket, cause the Empire State Building in New York to disintegrate and fall apart. (As a matter of fact, the operation of a somewhat similar bit of apparatus did cause buildings to shake, windows to break, furniture to move, in lower New York when Tesla was first experimenting with it during the eighteen-nineties.) That machine came out of Mr. Tesla’s mind. His thoughts created it. Here is an example of a man who coupled his “faith with action.”

There are metaphysicians and teachers of the occult who claim that a person can sit in his own office and visualize orders pouring on to his desk --and the orders will quickly materialize; but to accomplish it, the mental picture or thought projection must be definite and unwavering, and that requires great practice and concentration. Stranger things have been recorded. But for the person who has not yet developed this mind-power, it is well to add action and energy to his efforts by doing the things, following out the ideas, and by making the contacts which are dictated by his subconscious mind.

Many years ago I read that Franklin D. Roosevelt constantly made use of his subconscious mind, and I am certain that he knew much about the use of the repeated suggestion. He never looked “backward,” but always “forward” --”yesterday” was a closed book. On April 17, 1945, Kirke L. Simpson, an Associated Press Staff Writer and an intimate of the late President, told of a party given Roosevelt after he had been stricken with infantile paralysis. Mr. Simpson said that Mr. Roosevelt was determined to walk again, somehow, anyhow, without crutches. His intimates, according to Mr. Simpson, decided to give him a cane as a token that they, too, expected him to walk again, and after it was presented the President sat all evening with the cane cuddled against his shoulder. Mr. Simpson said that he would reach up to pat its crook now and then, and “we knew that he was saying to himself: ‘You’ll walk again, Frank Roosevelt; you will walk again!’”

Roosevelt firmly believed in the power of believing, as is apparent in an article in Time magazine (March 4, 1946). It told of a letter written by him in 1924 to a doctor seeking advice on the treatment of infantile paralysis. Mr. Roosevelt pointed out that he thought gentle exercise, massage, and sun-bathing were essential. “But,” he added, “more important than most therapy is a ‘belief on the patient’s part that he will eventually recover.’” Here we have a wonderful example of the magic of believing at work, and, as I have pointed out, of the part the “repeated suggestion” plays in establishing belief.

The Magic of Believing, Chapter 4

Chapter 4
Suggestion is Power

How many times have you heard it said, “Just believe you can do it and you can!” Whatever the task, if it is begun with the belief that you can do it, it will be done perfectly. Often belief enables a person to do what others think is impossible. It is the act of believing that is the starting force or generating power that leads to accomplishment. “Come on, fellows, we can beat them,” shouts someone in command, whether in a football game, on the battlefield, or in the strife of the business world. That sudden voicing of belief, challenging and electrifying, reverses the tide and --Victory! Success! From defeatism to victory --and all because some mighty believer knew that it could be done.

You may be shipwrecked or tossed into the water near a rocky shore, and momentarily you may fear that there isn’t a chance for you. Suddenly a feeling comes that you will be saved or that you can save yourself. The moment you have that feeling it begins to take the form of belief, and along with the belief comes the power to assist you. You may be in a fire, surrounded by flames and enveloped in smoke, and frantic with fear. This same power asserts itself --and you may be saved. Emerson explains it by saying that in a difficult situation or a sudden emergency our spontaneous action is always the best. Many stories have been told of the great reserves of the subconscious mind, how under its direction and by imparting its superhuman strength frail men and women have been able to perform feats far beyond their normal powers. Great orators and writers are often amazed at the power of the subconscious mind to furnish them with a steady flow of thoughts.

After studying the various mystical religions and different teachings and systems of mind-stuff, one is impressed with the fact that they all have the same basic modus operandi, and that is through repetition --the repeating of certain mantras, words, formulas, or just plain mumbo-jumbo, which William Seabrook declared witch doctors, Voodoo high priests, “hexers,” and many others followers of strange cults, use to invoke the spirits or work black magic. One finds the same principle at work in the chants, the incantations, litanies, daily lessons (to be repeated as frequently as possible during the week), the frequent praying of the Buddhists and Moslems alike, the affirmations of the Theosophists and the followers of Unity, the Absolute, Truth, New Thought, Divine Science; in fact, it is basic in all religions, although here it is white magic instead of black magic. When one seeks further, one sees the same principle at work in the beating of toms-toms or kettledrums by savages in all parts of the globe, the sound vibrations of which arouse similar vibrations in the psychic nature of these savages, so that they become stimulated, excited, and emotionalized to the point where they defy death. The war dances of the American Indians with their repeated rhythmic physical movements, the tribal ceremonies to bring rain, the dancing of the whirling dervishes, even the playing of martial music at critical times, as well as the spirited music that is played for the workers in many industrial plants, embody the same principle.

Some interesting facts as to the repetition of certain mystical chants and prayers are recounted by Theos Bernard in his book, Penthouse of the Gods, published in 1939. When he wrote it, he claimed to be the first white person to enter the mysterious city of Lhasa in Tibet, high in the Himalaya mountains, where dwell in monasteries thousands of lamas --followers of Buddha.. On reading the book one gets the impression that when the lamas or monks are not eating or attending to the material wants of the body, they are constantly and continuously engaged in their mystical chants, using their prayer wheels. Bernard declared that in one temple the monks spent the entire day repeating prayers they had started at daybreak, the exact number of repetitions being 108,000. He told also of how lamas accompanying him repeated certain fixed chants for the purpose of giving him additional strength.

It is obvious that in all similar religions, cults, and orders there is a prescribed ritual in which the repetition of words, mystical or otherwise, plays an important part. And this brings us to the law of suggestion, through which all forces operating within its limits are capable of producing phenomenal results. That is, it is the power of suggestion --an autosuggestion (your own to yourself) or heterosuggestion (coming to you from outside sources)-- that starts the machinery into operation or causes the subconscious mind to begin its creative work --and right here is where the affirmations and repetitions play their part. It’s the repetition of the same chant, the same incantations, the same affirmations that leads to belief, and once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen. A builder or contractor looks over a set of plans and specifications for a bridge or a building, and, urged by a desire to get the contract for the work, declares to himself: “I can do that. Yes, I can do that.” He may repeat it silently to himself a thousand times without being conscious of doing it; nevertheless, the suggestion finds a place in which to take root, he gets the contract, and the structure is eventually built. Converse, he may say that he can’t do it --and he never does.

This is the identical force and the same mechanics that Hitler used in building up the German people to attack the world. A reading of his Mein Kampf will verify that. Dr. Rene Fauvel, a famous French psychologist, explained it by saying that Hitler had a remarkable understanding of the law of suggestion and its different forms of application, and that it was with uncanny skill and mastery showmanship that he mobilized every instrument of propaganda in his mighty campaign of suggestion. Hitler openly stated that the psychology of suggestion was a terrible weapon in the hands of anyone who knew how to use it. Let’s see how he worked it to make the Germans believe what he wanted them to and once that belief took hold, how they started their campaign of terror. Slogans, posters, huge signs, massed flags appeared throughout Germany. Hitler’s picture was everywhere. “One Reich, one Folk, one Leader” became the chant. It was heard everywhere that a group gathered. “Today we own Germany, tomorrow the entire world,” the marching song of the German youths, came from thousands of throats daily. Such slogans as “German has waited long enough,” “Stand up, you are the aristocrats of the Third Reich,” “Germany is behind Hitler to a man,” and hundreds of others, bombarded them twenty-four hours a day from billboards, sides of buildings, the radio, and the press. Every time they moved, turned around, or spoke to one another, they got the idea that they were a superior race, and under the hypnotic influence of this belief, strengthened by repeated suggestion, they started out to prove it. Unfortunately for them, there were other nations who also had strong national beliefs that eventually became the means of bringing defeat to the Germans.

Mussolini, too, used the same law of suggestion in an attempt to make a place for Italy in the sun. Signs and slogans such as “Believe, Obey, Fight,” “Italy must have its great place in the world,” “We have some old scores and new scores to settle,” covered the walls of thousands of buildings, and similar ideas were at the same time dinned into the people via the radio and every other means of direct communication by the spoken word.

Stalin, too, used the same science to build Russia into what she is today. The Institute of Modern Hypnotism in November, 1946, recognizing that Joseph Stalin had been using the great power of the repeated suggestion upon the Russian people in order to make them believe in their strength and power, named him as one of the ten persons with the “most hypnotic eyes in the world,” rating him as a “mass hypnotist.”

The Japanese war lords used it to make fanatical fighters out of their people. From the very day of their birth Japanese children were fed the suggestion that they were direct descendents of Heaven and destined to rule the world. They prayed it, chanted it and believed it; but here again it was used wrongly.

For forty-four years, ever since the Russo-Japanese war, the Japs immortalized Naval Warrant Officer Magoshichi Sugino, fabled as one of Japan’s early suicide fighters and greatest heroes. Thousands of statues were erected to his memory and in repeated song and story young Nipponese were taught to believe that by following his example, they could die in no more heroic manner than as a suicide fighter. Millions of them believed it and during the war thousands of them did die as suicide fighters. Yet Sugino, who was supposed to have gone to his death while scuttling a ship to bottle up the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, didn’t die. He was picked up by a Chinese boat, and upon learning that he was being lauded by his people as a great suicide fighter, decided to remain forever obscure and became an exile in Manchuria. Associated Press dispatches from Tokyo in November, 1946, tell how he was discovered after all these years and was being returned home. Although he was alive and well, it continued to be dinned into the ears of young Nipponese that there was no greater heroic act than to die as Sugino had. This terrible and persistent deeply founded belief, though based entirely on a fable, caused thousands of Japanese to throw away their lives during the war.

We, too, as Americans, were subjected to the power of suggestion long before and during World War I; we got it again in a big way under the direction of General Hugh Johnson with his N.R.A. plan, and in World War II it inspired us to increase our effort, to buy bonds, and so forth. We were constantly told that Germany and Japan had to be defeated unconditionally. Under the constant repetition of the same thought all individual thinking was paralyzed and the mass mind became grooved to a certain pattern --win the war unconditionally. As one writer said: “In war the voice of dissension becomes the voice of treason.” So again we see the terrific force of thought repetition --it is our master and we do as we are ordered.

This subtle force of the repeated suggestion overcomes our reason, acting directly on our emotions and our feelings, and finally penetrating to the very depths of our subconscious minds. It is the basic principle of all successful advertising --the continued and repeated suggestion that first makes you believe after which you are eager to buy. In recent years we have enjoyed a vitamin spree. Vitamins for this and vitamins for that have come to us from all sides, and millions buy them in capsule form, so potent is the repeated suggestion of their value.

For centuries tomatoes were looked upon as poisonous. People dared not eat them until some fearless person tried them and lived. Today millions of people eat them, not knowing that less than a hundred years ago they were considered unfit for human consumption. Conversely, the lowly spinach may go into the discard, because our own United States Government declares that it does not contain the food values attributed to it for centuries. It is easy to see that millions will believe this and refuse any longer to honor Popeye’s favourite dish.

Nothing is clearer than that the founders of all great religious movements knew much about the power of the repeated suggestion and with it gained far-reaching results. Religious teachings have been hammered into us from the time of our birth, into our mothers and fathers before us and into their parents and their parents before them, and likewise back through the centuries. There’s certainly white magic in that kind of believing.

Such statements as “What we do not know will not hurt us” and “Ignorance is bliss” take on greater significance when we realize that the only things that can harm us or bother us are those of which we become conscious. We have all heard the story of the man who didn’t know it couldn’t be done and went ahead and did it. Psychologists tell us that as babies we have only two fears: the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. All our fears come with knowledge or develop as a result of our experiences; they come form what we are taught or what we hear and see. I like to think of men and women who, like staunch oak trees, can stand firm amid the many crosscurrents of thought that whirl around them. But far too many people are like saplings that are swayed by every little breeze and ultimately grow in the direction of some strong wind of thought that blows against them.

The Bible is filled with examples of the power of thought and suggestion. Read Genesis, chapter 30, verses 36 to 43, and you’ll learn that even Jacob knew their power. The Bible tells how he developed spotted and speckled cattle, sheep, and goats by placing rods from trees, partially stripping them of their bark so they would appear spotted and marked, in the watering troughs where he animals came to drink. As you may have guessed, the flocks conceived before the spotted rods and brought forth cattle, “rings raked, speckled, and spotted,” and incidentally Jacob waxed exceedingly rich.

Moses, too, was a master at suggestion. For forty years he used it on the Israelites, and it took them to the promised land of milk and honey. David, following the suggestive forces operating on him, slew the mighty, heavily armed Goliath with a pebble from a slingshot.

William James, father of modern psychology in America, declared that often our faith [belief] in advance of a doubtful undertaking is the only thing that can assure its successful conclusion. Man’s faith, according to James, acts on the powers above him as a claim and creates its own verification. In other words, the thought becomes literally father to the fact. For further illumination of faith and its power, I suggest that you read the General Epistle of James in the New Testament.

Let us go into the field of sports where everyone who has ever witnessed a football or baseball game has actually seen this power of suggestion at work. The late Knute Rockne, famous coach at Notre Dame, knew the value of suggestion and used it repeatedly. But he always suited his method of applying it to the temperament of the individual team. A story is told that on one Saturday afternoon Notre Dame was playing in a particularly gruelling game, and at the end of the first half was trailing badly. The players were in their dressing room nervously awaiting the arrival of Rockne. Finally the door opened and Rockne’s head came in slowly. His eyes swept inquiringly over the squad --”Oh, excuse me, I made a mistake. I thought these were the quarters of the Notre Dame team.” The door closed and Rockne was gone… Puzzled and then stung with fury, the team went out for the second half --and won the game.

Other writers, too, have explained the psychological methods used by Rockne and have told how the late Fielding Yost of Michigan, Dan McGugin of Vanderbilt, Herbert Crisler of Princeton, and dozens of others, used the “magic” of suggestion to arouse their teams to great emotional heights.

Before the rose Bowl game of 1934, the “wise” tipsters rated the Columbia team as “underdogs.” They reckoned without Coach Lou Little and his stirring talks to his players day after day. The game started and everyone knew that Columbia “was in there.” When the whistle blew for the end of the game, the Columbia men were the top dogs over the “superior” Stanford team.

In 1935 Gonzaga University beat powerful Washington State 13 to 6 in one of the most upsetting games every seen in the West. Gonzaga was a non-conference team, while the Washington State team, because of its great record, was thought to be unbeatable. Newspaper stories at the time reported Sam Dagley, assistant coach, as having declared that Gonzaga played inspired football, and he revealed that Coach Mike Pecarovich for half an hour before the game played “over and over” a phonograph record of one of Rockne’s most rousing pep talks.

Mickey Cochrane of the Detroit Tigers a number of years ago literally drove a second-division-minded group of baseball players to the top of the American League by using the same power of the repeated suggestion. I quote from a newspaper dispatch: “Day after day, through the hot, hard grind, he [Cochrane] preached the gospel of victory, impressing on the Tigers the ‘continued thought’ that the team which wins must go forward.’

You see the same force actively at work in the fluctuations of the stock market. Unfavourable news immediately depresses prices, while favourable news raises them. Intrinsic values of stocks are not changed, but there is an immediate change in the thinking of the market operators, which is reflected at once in the minds of the holders. It is not what will actually happen, but what security holders believe will happen that causes them to buy or sell.

In the depression years --and there may be years like them in the future-- we saw this same suggestive force working overtime. Day after day we heard the expressions, “Times are hard,” “Business is poor,” “The banks are failing,” “Prosperity hasn’t a chance,” and wild stories about business failures on every hand, until they became the national chant, and millions believed that prosperous days would never return. Hundreds, yes thousands, of strong-willed men go down under the constant hammering, the continuous tap, tapping of the same fear vibratory thoughts. Money, always sensitive, runs to cover when fear suggestions begin to circulate, and business failures and unemployment follow quickly. We hear thousands of stories of bank failures, huge concerns going to the wall, etc., and people believe them readily and act accordingly.

There will never be another business depression if people generally realize that it is with their own fear thoughts that they literally create hard times. They think hard times, and hard times follow. So it is with wars. When peoples of the world stop thinking depressions and wars, they will become non-existent, for nothing comes into our economic scheme unless we first create it with our emotionalized thinking.

Dr. Walker Dill Scott, eminent psychologist and long president of Northwestern University, told the whole story when he said: “Success or failure in business is caused more by mental attitudes even than by mental capacities.”

Human beings are human beings the world over, all subject to the same emotions, the same influences, and the same vibrations, and what is a big business, a village, a city, a nation but merely a collection of individual humans controlling and operating it with their thinking and believing? As individuals think and believe, so they are. As a whole city of them thinks, so it is; and as a nation of them think, so it is. This is an inescapable conclusion. Every person is the creation of himself, the image of his own thinking and believing. As King Solomon put it, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Recall the panic on the night of October 20, 1938, when Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre players put on the air a dramatization of H.G. Wells’ novel, The War of the Worlds. It was a story of an invasion by some strange warriors from the planet Mars, but it caused fright among millions of people. Some rushed out-of-doors, police stations were besieged, eastern telephone exchanges were blocked. New Jersey highways were clogged. In fact, for a few hours following the broadcast, there was genuine panic among millions of listeners because they believed our earth was being attacked by invaders from Mars. Yes, indeed, belief can and does cause some strange and unusual happenings.

Rallies held in schools and colleges just before important athletic contests are based on the same principles --speeches, songs, and yells become the means of creating suggestion and arousing the will to win. Many sales managers employ the same principle in their morning sales meetings when frequently music from an orchestra, radio, or phonograph is used to emotionalize the salesmen and to get the idea over to them that they can beat all their previous sales records. The same principle with varying technique is basic in the army --in fact, in all armies. The commands and formations constantly repeated in close-order drill develop in the men instant obedience, which ultimately becomes instinctive; the commands and formations become so fixed in their minds and bodies that their movements are almost automatic --all of which in turn creates self-confidence which is absolutely necessary in active conflict.

It is very important to remember that while the subconscious will get into action at once under the impetus of the commands or suggestions which it receives from the conscious mind, or which come from outside sources and are transmitted to it via the conscious mind, it gets results quicker if the conscious mind accompanies its message with a mental picture of the desired goal. It may be faint, sketchy, or even unfinished, but even if it is only an outline, it will be sufficient for the subconscious to act upon.

And this brings us to rituals and ceremonies which are performed amid dramatic settings in churches and secret orders, all designed to appeal to the emotions and to create a mystical picture in the minds of the beholders. These rituals, no matter what the setting, are there to hold your attention and to link the hidden meanings of these symbols with the particular ideas that are to be implanted in your mind. Various lighting arrangements, different paraphernalia, often a special garb for those directing the operations, all to the accompaniment of soft, often religious, music, help to create a mystical, or what some term a spooky, atmosphere in order to put you in the proper emotional, and incidentally receptive, state. The idea is as old as history. Not only the most civilized people but also the most primitive savage tribes have their characteristic ceremonials. Similar methods for impressing the individual are employed at mediumistic séances and crystal-gazing performances; even the gypsy phrenologist considers it a part of her “props.” Without this atmosphere, which tends to make our conscious mind drowsy and even temporarily puts it to sleep, we would not be so easily convinced, for the desire to satisfy completely our longings for the mystical and miraculous is often not sufficient by itself to permit conviction.

This is not said with any idea of being sacrilegious, but to present a picture of the historic method of appealing to the masses, and to point out how awakening and stirring their emotional interest prepares the way to approach their reasoning mind. Appeal by drama is the first step in arousing the emotions of the people, no matter for what purpose.

Could the late Aimee Semple McPherson, she with the long flowing white robe and picturesque auburn hair-do, have put over her great act of saving souls as well as achieving healings, without her superb understanding of the power of the dramatic? It’s something to wonder about, because Billy Sunday in his best table-sliding act was a novice compared to Aimee when it came to showmanship or a matter of plain impressiveness. She with her many artifices and stage settings put on a most solemn performance, and her followers, on the Pacific Coast at least, declare that the results she got were real and lasting. This is no reflection on the memory of Mrs. McPherson, for her followers were very sincere and believed in her work, her teachings, and the results --and that’s all that matters.

However, there are men and women with strong personal magnetism, and great orators, who can get the same emotional effect without “props” or stage setting to aid them. They are masters of tone effects, emotional appeal, gesticulations, bodily movements, eye magnetism, etc., by which your attention is held and you yourself are thrown wide open to their driving appeal.

Let’s consider charms, talismans, amulets, good-luck pieces, four-leaf clovers, old horseshoes, a rabbit’s foot, and countless other trinkets which thousands of people believe in. By themselves, they are inanimate harmless objects without power, but when people breathe life into them by their thinking they do have power, even though the power isn’t in them per se. The power comes only with the believing --which alone makes them effective.

Two outstanding illustrations of this are found in the stories of Alexander the Great and Napoleon. In Alexander’s day, an oracle proclaimed that whoever unloosened the Gordian knot would become ruler of all Asia. Alexander, as you may remember, with one stroke of his sword cut the knot --and rose to tremendous heights and power. Napoleon was given a star sapphire when a child, with the prophecy that it would bring him luck and some day make him Emperor of France. Could it have been anything but the supreme belief in the prophecy that carried these two great men to a place in the hall of fame? They became supermen because they had supernormal beliefs.

A cracked or broken mirror isn’t going to bring you bad luck unless you believe in it, and as long as the belief is fertilized, nurtured, and made a part of your inner self, it’s going to bring you bad luck --believe it or not, because the subconscious mind always brings to reality what it is led to believe. One of our presidential candidates of a few years back, a man of high attainment and regarded by many as a man of great intelligence, was pictured as standing before the door of his barn above which was nailed an old good-luck horseshoe. The story goes that it was upside down. He was defeated. However, I mention this chiefly to show that beliefs in charms and symbols are not confined to simple, naturally superstitious people, but are frequently held by even the most enlightened.

It is claimed that there are people with certain mind powers which, when directed at plant life, such as grain, vegetables, flowers, and trees, can make them grow more abundantly. A number of years ago we had an old Swiss gardener who insisted that we replace in our yard a number of small trees and shrubs. At first I couldn’t see the reason for digging up the old ones and replanting others, but the old man’s insistence prevailed. I observed that in planting them, just after he got the small trees in the soil and covered the roots, he engaged in some sort of audible Mumbo Jumbo. He did the same with the shrubs. One day, my curiosity piqued, I asked him what he was “mumbling about” as he placed the trees and shrubs in the ground. He looked at me searchingly for a moment, then said: “You may not understand, but I’m talking to them, telling them they must live and bloom. It’s something I learned when I was a boy from my teacher in the old country , Switzerland. Anything that grows should have encouragement and I’m giving it to them.”

It is a long way from Switzerland to British Columbia, but in that Canadian province is a tribe of Indians, the members of which always talk to the halibut and salmon lines, hooks, and so forth, before actually starting to fish, claiming that if they didn’t the fish wouldn’t bite. Many are the tales of South Sea Islanders who offer food to their tools and implements, talking to them as though they were alive, and beseeching them to get results. It isn’t a great jump from those customs to the blessings offered at ship launchings or at sailing times of large fishing fleets in all civilized countries even today, where prayers are offered for successful voyages or ventures.

Observers have often declared that there appears to be a kind of affinity between certain humans and plants, which the plants seem to feel. There are thousands of professional gardeners who will plant seeds only at certain times of the moon. Superstition, you say? Perhaps it is practical mysticism. The Yale investigators referred to previously have also concluded that electrical fields play a major part in plant life, and certainly that is scientific.

When I think of those who plant only at certain times of the moon, I recall a thrifty neighbour of mine who, although a man of intelligence and mature years, had his hair cut at only certain times of the moon. I don’t remember whether it was when the moon was waxing or waning that he would visit the barber, but whatever the phase of the moon, the time he selected, he maintained, caused to hair to grow less abundantly than if he had it cut at other times. I asked him once where he got such an idea and he glared at me as though I were belittling his intelligence. I never did get an answer to my question.

What has been said about plant and animal life may cause a lot of materialistic people to take violent issue, but it must be remembered that there are many forces at work in the world of which we know little or nothing. Consider how many new principles were developed in World War II. As this is written, the American Rocket Society has made application to the United States Government for land on the moon. Perhaps the application was made in a spirit of facetiousness, but who knows when some “Buck Rogers” will pilot a rocket plane to the moon? I, for one, wouldn’t say it couldn’t be done some day, for I don’t know and neither do those who say it is impossible.

Without question human imagination or visualization and concentration are chief factors in developing the magnetic forces of the subconscious mind. You have often heard the statement, “Hold the picture,” and that, of course, means holding the mental picture or vision. Here again is where suggestion --repeated suggestion-- plays a part. For example, you would like a new home and your imagination goes to work. At first you have only a hazy idea of the kind of house you would like. Then, as you discuss it with other members of your family or ask questions of builders or look at illustrations of new houses, the picture becomes clearer and clearer, until you visualize the house in all its particulars. After that the subconscious mind goes to work to provide you with that house. It may come into manifestation in any number of ways. You may build it with your own hands, or it may come to you through purchase or from the actions of outsiders. Its manner of coming is of no great consequence.

The process is the same when you are after a better job or planning a vacation trip. You’ve got to see it in your mind’s eye, see yourself as holding that job, or actually taking the trip. Some of our fears become realities through our imaginations, just as Job’s did. Fortunately, many of them do not, if we hold the mental picture only temporarily, or at least not long enough to have it focused fully upon the screen of our subconscious. The Biblical warning, “Where there is no vision, the people perish,” is a fundamental truth, whether it be considered individually or collectively. For without the mental picture of accomplishment, little is done. You want a better job? You’ll get it when you give your subconscious mind a mental picture of yourself holding that job.

As I write this, I think of the many experiences related to me by those who have used this science during the years, and I want to give you some of the stories, for in them you may perhaps find clues to an even more effective use of the principles and the mechanics of applying them, which I am setting forth.

A friend got the idea of building a boat. He knew nothing about boat construction, but believed that with some simple instructions he could build one. So he went ahead. In the course of the construction he found that he needed an electric drill, but he didn’t want to spend $75 or $80 for the kind he wanted, especially when it would be used only a few months. First, he tried renting a drill, but inasmuch as it could be used only at night and had to be returned early the next morning, he found such an arrangement very inconvenient.

Then he told me: “I got thinking one night that somewhere there was a drill for me and I would have it placed in my hands. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it possible. However, nothing happened for several days; then one evening a friend who owned a sizable garage --a man I hadn’t seen for a couple of years-- came to see me. He, too, was interested in boats, and hearing that I was building one, said he’d like to look it over. He saw me floundering around with the heavy half-inch drill I was using and asked me where I got it. I told him I had rented it and he laughed, saying, ‘Come over to the shop tomorrow and I’ll lend you a smaller one which you can handle much easier.’ Needless to say, I got it and kept it during all the period I was constructing the boat.

“A somewhat similar experience happened when I was cutting the ribs. I had a small jig saw, but found that it wouldn’t cut through three-quarter-inch lumber. Then I found myself wishing for a band saw --that thought led me to a place a few blocks away from my house where I knew there was a woodworking shop. I could use the band saw if I paid the owner fifty cents an hour for its use. However, I found that I was running to and from my home, first to fit the ribs and then to shape them, and losing too much time in the process. I frequently said to myself during those days that there was some easier way to get use of a band saw, and there was.

“The following Sunday another friend came to see how the boat was getting along and when I told him that I had been slowed down without the use of a band saw, he too laughed, saying, ‘I bought one Thursday and I will not be using it for some little time. Got to get my shop fixed up and in the meantime you’re welcome to use it.’ As a matter of fact, he delivered it to me that same day and I kept it a number of months. I finished the boat!”

Another man told me the story of how he got the use of a thirty-foot extension ladder with which to paint his house. “I thought I would undertake the painting in my spare time,” he told me, “and began looking around to find where I could get the use of a ladder. I found places where I could rent one, but they fixed time requirements which didn’t fit into my plans. I don’t know how many times I said to myself: You’re going to find a ladder. And I did. It was Memorial Day, and while in my back yard I happened to notice that a neighbour across the street from me was using a long ladder to wash off the walls of his house. I called to him, asking where he got the ladder. He told me he had bought it when he purchased the house. That afternoon it was in my back yard, and I had the loan of it for several weeks!”

Another man told me that shortly after the United States entered the war, he wanted a garbage can of a certain size, but because of priorities he was unable to locate what he wanted. He said he visited second-hand stores, junk-shops, bakeries, and garages, in an endeavour to find the kind of container he wanted, but without success. He was about to give up hope when one morning he noticed workmen who were making repairs on a concrete building across from his home. They were using some waterproofing material from a can, exactly the kind of can he had pictured for his own use. He said he asked the man in charge of the work what would be done with the container when the work was finished and he was told that it would be left on the ground to be hauled away. He then explained his wants, and a couple of days later the container was in his garage --the workmen had not only emptied it but had washed and scrubbed it before delivery!

I had taken my car to a shop owner for repairs to the ignition system, after several had failed to locate the trouble. I told him how the car had been acting, and after listening he said, “I believe I can fix it.” I casually remarked, “Belief is a great thing, isn’t it?”

“You bet it is. Thought is the greatest force in the world and the dumb ducks laugh when you talk about it,” he answered rather caustically.

“I don’t, I’m interested,” I replied. “Tell me of some instances where you have demonstrated the power of thought.”

“I could keep you here all day telling you of its power --at least in my own life.”

“Tell me a few. When did you first become aware of it?”

“Oh, I guess about twelve years ago when I fell and broke my back. I was in a cast for a long time and the doctors told me that even if I recovered I would be crippled for the rest of my life. As I lay on my back in the hospital worrying about my future, I frequently thought of the words used by my mother to the effect that ‘One just has to believe.’ One day it dawned on me that if I could hold on to the mental picture I was going to be all right, and if I believed in it sufficiently, I could get well. To make a long story short, here I am crawling over and underneath cars, and far from being a cripple as you can see for yourself.”

“Very interesting. Tell me of more cases,” I urged.

“Well, I’ve used it frequently to get more business. As a matter of fact, this present location is a result of it. As you know, I was burned out at my old place a few weeks ago and, owing to the war, space like this in the city is well-nigh impossible to find. For two or three days, worrying about my possible inability to get another location, I deliberated whether I should attempt to continue with the business or go to work for someone else. Then one night I made up my mind I would continue in business for myself. That was the turning point, and just before I went to sleep I said to myself, ‘Oh, you’ll find a place within the next few days. This thought power hasn’t failed you yet.’ I went to sleep with full confidence that the place would be forthcoming. The very next day I went over to see the painter where I had taken the car I saved from the fire, and mentioned that I was looking for another place. ‘That’s funny,’ he commented, ‘you can rent this space, for I’ve just bought the building in the next block from an owner who wanted to retire.’ And here I am on a main thoroughfare and with more business than I can possible handle!”

I know that some readers will say that these are merely coincidences, but my files are filled with similar “coincidences.” To some of you they may be just that, but those who are acquainted with this science know that these things have come about as the result of intensified thought or mental picture-making. However, we come again to a matter of opinion --the difference in conclusions between those who think this is all nonsense and those who know that the things we think materialize after their kind.

Again we are reminded of what Paracelsus said: “Men who are devoid of the power of spiritual perception are unable to recognize anything that cannot be seen externally.”

It is pretty well agreed that the subconscious mind works as a result of images thrown upon its screen, but if there is something wrong with your projection apparatus or the original slide, then the projected image is blurred, inverted, or a total blank. Doubts, fears, counterthoughts, all have a part in blurring the pictures you consciously desire to project.

Those who have well-developed imaginations, such as great artists, writers, and inventors, possess the ability to visualize or to make mental pictures almost at will. However, with the mechanics which will be enlarged upon later and the explanations already given, anyone following them should have no difficulty in being able to see in his mind’s eye the things, objects, or situations as he desires them to be in reality.

One of the greatest fishermen I ever knew used this visualizing method. He could sit in a boat with one or two others and pull trout after trout out of the water, while his companions, using the same kind of bait or fly and with apparently the same mechanical technique, cast or dropped their flies or hooks in the same places repeatedly, but without results. I asked him about it one time and he laughingly replied: “I put the old ‘squeeza-ma-jintum’ [his word for magic] on them. I figuratively or mentally get down there where they are, and tell them to hook the bait or fly. In other words, I see them snapping at the hook and believe that it will work. That’s all I can give you in the way of an explanation.”

This story was told to another fisherman not blessed with the first fisherman’s luck, and he scoffed at it. “Ridiculous,” he declared. “Any good fisherman must know the stream, the holes, the habits of the fish, the type of bait or flies to use, and he’ll catch them if they are there.” However, he couldn’t explain how others skilled in fishing technique could fish in an identical spot and still not catch them like the man who used the old “squeeza-ma-jintum.” The writer is not a fisherman, but surely if this law of attraction works in other ways, there is no reason why it could not be used advantageously in fishing.” *


*Ben Hur Lampman, associate editor of The Oregonian, author of many articles and books on fishing and kindred subjects, twice an O. Henry Memorial Award winner, and a recognized naturalist, upon reading the foregoing said:

“The man who says that it is ridiculous to consider your fishing friend as claiming there’s some sort of magic or attraction at work when he catches fish when others fishing in the same spot get mediocre results, merely makes himself ridiculous by displaying his ignorance. I can’t explain how your friend is always so fortunate in making his catches beyond saying that there is decidedly something psychic about successful fishing. Any one who has studied the habits of fish and tried to catch them sooner or later realizes that there is more to successful fishing than merely throwing a lure or bait into a place where the fish are supposed to be. Just what the relationship is between mind and fish --if any-- I can not explain, but having been a student of fish, their ways and habits practically all my life, I do know that in successful fishing there is an unexplainable element or factor at work --call it what you please. I say it is something psychic and undoubtedly in the realm of psychic phenomena lies the explanation of the so-called fisherman’s ‘luck’ or the ‘squeeza-ma-jintum’ or magic of your successful fisherman friend.


Now, let’s go into the field of golf. For many years I was interested in the game and was a member of several clubs. I frequently played with a man who in his younger days had been one of the world’s tennis champions. This man was one of the most amazing short-shot players on the Pacific Coast. With his mashie or mashie nib lick he could place the ball on any desired spot on the green with a dead stop, as close to or as far from the pin as he desired, and he was usually down in one putt. His putting, too, was an art to marvel at.

“How did you do it, George?” I asked him one day when he amazed everyone in our foursome with what could be called phenomenal shots. “Well,” he replied, “you’ve played handball and squash, and you know what it means to place your shots on the front wall. You intuitively place it high or low or so it will rebound to a side wall or result in a kill or an extremely low ball. I learned placement years ago in tennis. You have sort of a mental picture where you want the ball to go or land before you hit it with your racquet or hand. I use the same principle with my short shots and putting. In other words, when I face the green and before I swing my club, I have an instant mental picture of where I want the ball to land, and when I putt I actually see the ball dropping into the hole. Of course, a proper stance, knowledge of handling the clubs, and so forth, are vital. But most golfers have that and still don’t get results. It is true that I spend menay hours in practice, so do others; but the main thing is that I just seem to know where the ball is going to land before the club its it. There’s a confidence or a belief existing that I can do it and with a mashie or mashie nib lick I cause a backspin that will bring the ball to a dead stop when it lands.”

For you who may raise your eyebrows at this, let’s examine the facts given in a newspaper story written by the famous sports writer, Grantland Rice. It appeared in the middle ‘thirties and had to do with the phenomenal amateur golf player, John Montagu. Rice declared that Montagu could run rings around anyone and that the ball always landed where he wanted to place it, whether 300 yards down the fairways or a chip shot to within two or three feet of the cup, and then when he putted it was like the crack of doom. Rice said that the ball went where Montagu wanted it to go. Now let’s read Montagu’s own explanation as given in the same newspaper story. He said: “Golf to me is played with the head, mind or brain or whatever you wish to call it. Of course, there are fundamentals of stance, grip, swing; but I must have a clear, clean mental picture of what I am doing before I play the shot. That mental picture takes charge of the muscular reaction. If there is no mental picture --what happens is a mere guess. This means almost endless concentration of thought if you are under pressure and there is no thrill in any game unless you are under pressure.”

Gene Sarazen, who was one of the greatest golf professionals of all times, used similar methods in his matches, and if you read his little book Golf Tips, you will find that he has much to say about mental pictures, objectives, concentration, and confidence. All golfers have heard of “mental hazards.” In reality, they are bunkers, traps, water hazards, etc. But in the imaginations of many players they are formidable handicaps to put fear into the hearts of the players. On one course where the writer often played there was a water hole. The distance from the tee to the hole was about one hundred and twenty yards spanning a small pond approximately fifty feet wide, an easy shot with a mashie or a mashie nib lick for the average player. One member of the club who had been a great baseball and football player in his younger days, for a long time could never get over this water hazard. Invariably with his irons he would put ball after ball into the water, to the accompaniment of profanity on his part and laughter on ours. Finally, as the months went by he took to using his spoon and hitting the ball far beyond the green. One day I said to him, “I know, the water fools you, but the next time just blot out of your mind the picture that there is water between the tee and the green and see instead, mentally, an easy short fairway before you.” The first time he followed the suggestion his ball fell a few inches from the pin, and from that time on, he later told me, as long as he followed the blotting-out technique, he never had any trouble; but when he was unable to concentrate on his own mental picture, due to the joshing from other members of his foursome, he landed in difficulties.

In observing many pool and billiard games, I am convinced that certain skilled players influence the direction and fall of the balls by mind control, although they may be completely in ignorance of the power they are using. If it can work on a golf ball, it certainly can work on a billiard ball.

Roy Chapman Andrews tells the story of a San Antonio, Texas, man, who with a twenty-two calibre rifle fired more than 14,500 shots at small blocks of wood tossed into the air without a single miss. Mr. Andrews emphasized perfect timing and remarkable accuracy. Nothing was said of the mind-pictures; but if you have ever done any prolonged trap or target shooting, you know the part visualizing plays.

One finds the same sort of “magic” at work in all fields of sports. Great baseball batters, expert forward-passers in football, accurate drop-kickers --all consciously or unconsciously picture connecting with the ball and placing it where they want it to go. Certainly, practice, timing, and so forth, all have their primary importance, but the mental side must never be overlooked.

In this connection, I was impressed by several statements made by Dr. Marcus Bach in his recent book, They Have Found a Faith. Dr. Bach tells of bowling with Father Divine, and of observing from the way Father Divine selected a ball, and from his stance and delivery, that he was no bowler. Yet Father Divine made a strike on his first try and, according to Dr. Bach, it was one of the prettiest strikes he ever saw. Dr. Bach says: “Father’s nonchalance was characteristic. He rubbed the soft palms of his hands together as if to say, ‘Well, what do you expect when the Lord rolls one!’” *


*From They Have Found a Faith by Marcus Bach, Copyright, 1946. Used by special permission of the Publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill company.


Again Dr. Bach speaks of an interview with Rickert Fillmore, manager of Unity City and son of one of the founders of the Unity movement, in which he asked if the works of Unity could be applied to a real estate venture. Mr. Fillmore replied, “If it works at all, it works everywhere.”

Many readers of this book may not be golfers or billiard players, but here’s a simple experiment that will demonstrate to you this strange power of attraction through visualizing or making the mental picture actually work. Find a few small stones or pebbles which you can easily throw and locate a tree or a post of six to ten inches in diameter. Stand away from it twenty-five or thirty feet or any convenient greater distance and start throwing the pebbles in an endeavour to hit it. If you are an average person, most of the stones will go wide of their mark. Now stop and tell yourself that you can hit the objective. Get a mental picture of the tree figuratively stepping forward to meet the missile or the stone actually colliding with the tree in the spot where you want it to strike, and you’ll soon find yourself making a perfect score. Don’t say it’s impossible. Try it and you’ll prove that it can be done --if you will only believe it.

In the early days of wartime gasoline rationing when most people didn’t consider getting additional coupons a criminal offence, a friend found he didn’t have enough gas to take him to his duck lake. One Sunday while in his home he told me how he had secured sufficient coupons to make several trips to the shooting grounds. Said he: “I had just about given up the idea of duck shooting this fall when the thought occurred to me that I could put this Mind Stuff to work and get some more gas. Of course, everyone around the office knew that I wanted to go duck shooting and most of them knew of my problem. Whether they passed out word to their friends I do not know, but I got more coupons than you could shake a stick at. I had the constant picture of going hunting and using my automobile and of someone giving me coupons. It may be hooey, but I got the gasoline coupons. Even a farmer friend gave me gas out of his allotment.”

Now let’s take this same science into the kitchen. Did it ever occur to you that the so-called good cooks use this same science, some consciously and others unconsciously? Two people can attempt to make the same kind of pie. Identical ingredients will be used and instructions followed to the letter --one will be a failure while the other will be the last word in culinary achievement. Why? In the first case, the one cook approaches pie-making with trepidation. She knows she has had pie failures in the past and wonders how this one is going to come out. She doesn’t have a perfect mental picture of an appetite-satisfying golden brown crust with a wonderful zestful filling. She’s upset and nervous, and, without her knowing it, her uneasiness is communicated to her pie-making. The second one knows that she knows that the pie is going to be “tops” --and it is. That primary mental picture --her belief-- makes it so.

If you are a mediocre cook and you like to cook --that’s a very necessary requisite too --sell yourself on the idea that you can prepare superior dishes and you can do it, for you have the forces inside of you and they will come to your aid of you will only believe in them and call upon them. So put your heart and soul into the next pie you make and even you will be surprised at the results when you see the realization of your mental picture of the perfect pie.

The same law will work no matter where it is applied, and that goes for everything from fishing to money-making or success in business. Let’s take an example out of the war. General Douglas MacArthur declared when he left the Philippines: “I shall return.” With our Pacific Fleet in ruins at Pearl Harbour, practically no airplanes or transports at the time, and with the Japanese in control of most of the South Pacific, MacArthur had no physical evidence that he would ever return. However, he must have had a mental picture of his return or he would have never made the statement. It was a statement of confidence or belief, and history relates his triumphant return. Thousands of similar cases happened during the war and are happening today.