Chapter 1: Using More of your Mind in Special Ways
Imagine coming into direct, working contact with an all-pervading higher intelligence and learning in a moment of numinous joy that it is on your side. Imagine too that you made this contact in such simple ways that for the rest of your life you need never again feel helplessly out of touch with something you always suspected was there but could never quite reach–a helpful wisdom, a flash of insight when you need it, the feeling of a loving, powerful presence. How would it feel? (17)
This is a state of deep relaxation, deeper than in sleep itself but accompanied by a special kind of awareness. It is in fact an altered state of consciousness used in virtually every meditative discipline and in intensive prayer. (18)
The rhythms of this energy are measured in cycles per second (CPS). Generally, about fourteen CPS and up are called Beta waves; about seven to fourteen are Alpha; four to seven Theta; and four and below are Delta.
When you are wide awake, doing and achieving in the workaday world, you are in Beta, or “outer consciousness,” to use Mind Control terminology. When you are daydreaming, or just going to sleep but not quite there yet, or just awakening but not yet awake, you are in Alpha. Mind control people call this “inner consciousness.” When you are asleep you are in Alpha, Theta, or Delta, just not Alpha alone, as many believe. With Mind Control training you can enter the Alpha level at will and still remain fully alert.
You may wonder what it feels like to be in these different levels of mind.
Being in Beta, or wide awake, does not produce any one particular feeling. You might feel confident or fearful, busy or idle, engrossed or bored–the possibilities of Beta are endless.
In the deeper levels the possibilities are limited for most people. Life has taught them to function in Beta, not Alpha or Theta. At these deeper levels they are pretty much limited to daydreaming, the edge of sleep, or sleep itself. But with Mind Control training, useful possibilities begin to multiply with no end in sight… We can do different things in Alpha than we can do in Beta. (20)
Chapter 2: Meet José
He found that the brain was more energetic when it was less active. At lower frequencies the brain received and stored more information. The crucial problem was to keep the mind alert at these frequencies, which are associated more with daydreaming and sleep than with practical activity. (24)
“Everybody already knows how to use his or her imagination. I just get my students to practice it more. I show them that imagination is valid and that there’s a form of reality in imagination that they can use.” (28)
Chapter 3: How to Meditate
If you only learn to meditate and stop there, you will be solving problems anyway. Something beautiful happens in meditation, and the beauty you find is calming. The more you meditate, the deeper you go within yourself, the firmer the grasp you will have of a kind of inner peace so strong that nothing in life will be able to shatter it. (29)
Here is all you have to do to reach the Alpha, or meditative, level of mind:
When you awaken in the morning, go to the bathroom if necessary, then return to bed. Set your alarm for fifteen minutes later in case you drift off to sleep during the exercise. Close your eyes and look upward, behind your eyelids, at a 20-degree angle. For reasons not fully understood, this position of the eyes alone will trigger the brain to produce Alpha.
Now, slowly, at about two-second intervals, count backward from one hundred to one. As you do this, keep your mind on it, and you will be in Alpha the very first time. (30)
It will be more or less familiar to everyone. The reason for this is that when we awaken in the morning we are often in Alpha for a while. To go from Theta, the sleep level, to Beta, the awake level, we must pass through Alpha, and often we linger there through our early-morning routine.
If you feel that nothing happened during this first exercise, it simply means you have been in Alpha many times before without being particularly aware of it. Simply relax, don’t question it, and stay with the exercises. (31)
Use the hundred-to one method for ten mornings. Then count only from fifty to one, twenty-five to one, then ten to one, and finally five to one, ten mornings each.
Beginning with the very first time you go to your Alpha level, use only one method to come out of it. This will give you a greater degree of control against coming out spontaneously.
The method we use in Mind Control is to say mentally, “/I will slowly come out as I count from one to five, feeling wide awake and better than before. One-two-prepare to open your eyes-three-open eyes-four-five-eyes open, wide awake, feeling better than before./” (31)
Once you have learned to reach your level with the five-to-one method in the morning you are ready to enter your level at any time of day that you choose. All you need is ten or fifteen minutes to spare. Because you will be entering your level from Beta rather than the light level of Alpha, a little extra training will be needed.
Sit in a comfortable chair or on a bed with your feet flat on the floor. Let your hands lay loosely in your lap. If you prefer, sit cross-legged, in the lotus position. Hold your head well balanced, not slumped. Now concentrate on first one part of the body, then another, to consciously relax it. Start with your left foot, then the left leg, then the right foot, and so on, until you reach the throat, the face, the eyes, and finally the scalp. You will be amazed the first time you do this at how tense your body was.
Now pick a spot about 45 degrees above eye level on the ceiling or wall opposite you. Gaze at this spot until your eyelids begin to feel a little heavy and let them close. Start your countdown from fifty to one. Do this for ten days, then ten to one for another ten days, then five to one from then on. Since you will no longer be limited to the mornings for this practice, establish a routine of meditating two or three times a day, about fifteen minutes a session.
Once you reach your level, what then? What do you think about?
Right from the beginning, from the very first moment you reach your meditative level, practice visualization. This is central to Mind Control. The better you learn to visualize, the more powerful will be your experience with Mind Control.
The first step is to create a tool for visualization, a mental screen. It should be like a large movie screen but should not quite fill your mental vision. Imagine it not behind your eyelids but about six feet in front of you. You will project onto this screen whatever you choose to concentrate on. Later there will be other uses for it.
Once you have built this screen in your mind, project onto it something familiar and simple, like an orange or an apple. Each time you go to your level, stay with just one image; you may change it the next time. Concentrate on making it more and more real–in three dimensions, in full color, in all its details. Think of nothing else. (32)
Be patient with this simple exercise. Using your mind, train your brain to go quietly into Alpha and to attend exclusively to the job of creating a simple image more and more vividly. In the beginning, as thoughts intrude, be gently forgiving. Slowly push them away and return to the single object at hand. Becoming irritated or tense will bring you right out of Alpha. (33)
Chapter 4: Dynamic Meditation
Every successful result in Mind Control becomes what we call a “reference point”–we hark back to the experience consciously or unconsciously, repeat it, and go on from there. (34)
Once you have reached the meditative level, to simply stay there and wait for something to happen is not enough. It /is/ beautiful and calming and it does contribute to your good health, but these are modest accomplishments compared with what is possible. Go beyond this passive meditation, train your mind for organized, dynamic activities–which I believe it was designed for–and the results will amaze you.
I make this point now because this is the moment for us to go beyond the passive meditation technique you have just read about and learn to use meditation dynamically to solve some problems. You will now see why the simple exercise of visualizing an apple, or whatever else you choose, on a mental screen is so important.
Now, before you go to your level, think of something pleasant–no matter how trivial–that happened yesterday or today. Review it briefly in your mind, then go well into your level and project onto your mental screen the total incident. What were the sights, the smells, the sounds, and your feelings at that time? All the details. You will be surprised at the difference between your Beta memory of the incident and your Alpha recall of it. It is almost as great as the difference between saying the word “swim” and actually swimming.
What is the value of this? First, it is a steppingstone to something bigger, and second, it is useful in itself. Here is how you can use it:
Think of something you own that is not lost but would take a little searching to find. Your car keys, perhaps. Are they on your bureau, in your pocket, in the car? If you are not sure, go to your level, think back to when you had them last, and relive that moment. Now proceed forward in time and you will locate them if they are where you left them. (If someone else took them, you have another kind of problem to solve, which requires much more advanced techniques.)” (35)
Now for a giant leap forward. We are going to connect a real event with a desirable one that you imagine–and see what becomes of the imaginary one. If you operate according to some very simple laws, the imaginary event will become real.
Law 1: You must /desire/ that the event take place. “The first person I see on the sidewalk tomorrow will be blowing his nose” is so useless a project to work on that your mind will turn away from it; it will probably not work. Your boss will be more agreeable, a certain customer will be more receptive to what you are selling, you will find the satisfaction in a task that you ordinarily find disagreeable–these are prospects that can engage a reasonable measure of desire.
Law 2: You must /believe/ the event can take place. If your customer is overstocked with what you sell, you cannot reasonably believe he will be eager to buy. If you cannot believe the event can reasonably take place, your mind will be working against it.
Law 3: You must /expect/ the event to take place. This is a subtle law. The first two are simple and passive–this third one introduces some dynamics. It is possible to desire an event, believe it can take place, and still not expect it to take place. This is where Mind Control and effective visualization come in, as we will see in a moment.
Law 4. You /cannot create/ a problem. Not /may/ not but /cannot/. This is a basic, all-controlling law. “Wouldn’t it be great if I could get my boss to make such an ass of himself that he’ll be fired and I’ll get his job?” When you are working dynamically in Alpha you are in touch with Higher Intelligence, and from the perspective of Higher Intelligence, it would not be great at all. You may trip up your boss and get him fired, but you will be entirely on your own–and in Beta. In Alpha it simply would not work.” (37)
If, at your meditative level, you try to tune in to some kind of intelligence that will assist in an evil design, it will be as fruitless as trying to tune a radio to a station that does not exist. (37)
There is plenty of evil on this planet, and we humans perpetrate more than our share of it. This is done in Beta, not Alpha, not Theta, and probably not in Delta.
I never recommend wasting time, but if you must prove this for yourself, go to your level and try to give someone a headache. If you visualize this “event” as vividly as necessary to accomplish anything at all, one or both of the following will result: You, not your intended victim, will get the headache and/or you will snap out of Alpha. (37)
Will this work always, invariably, without a hitch?
No.
However, here is what you will experience if you keep at it: One of your very earliest problem-solving meditation sessions will work. When it does, who can say it was not a coincidence? After all, the event you chose had to be probable enough for you to believe it could materialize. Then it will work a second time, and a third. The “coincidences” will pile up. Abandon your Mind Control activities and there will be fewer coincidences. Go back to it and the coincidences multiply again.
Further, as you gradually increase your skill you will notice that you will be able to believe and expect events that are less and less probably. In time, with practice, the results you achieve will be more and more astounding.
As you work on each problem, begin by briefly reliving your best previous successful experience. When an even better successful experience comes along, drop the earlier one and use the better one as your reference point. (39)
The deeper levels of our minds experience time flowing from left to right. In other words, the future is perceived as being on our left, the past on our right. (39)
Chapter 5: Improving Memory
It is basically unsound to use Mind Control techniques for anything but important matters because of that desire, belief, expectancy trilogy. (40)
The lecturer has already memorized a word for each number; thus each number evokes a visual image of its corresponding word. We call these images “memory pegs.” When a student calls out a word, the lecturer combines it in some meaningful or fanciful way with the image he has associated with the word’s number. (41)
Anything you believe you have forgotten is associated with an event. If it is a name, the event is the time you heard or read it. All you have to do, once you learn to work with your mental screen, is visualize a past event that surrounds an incident you believe you have forgotten, and it will be there.
I say an incident you /believe/ you have forgotten because in reality you have not forgotten it at all. You simply do not recall it. There is a significant difference. (41)
It is doubtful that we ever really forget anything. Our brain squirrels away images of the most trivial events. The more vivid the image and the more important it is to us, the more easily we recall it. (42)
This is the mind at work–the super-observer, the interpreter–and no electrode has ever touched it. The mind, unlike the tip of our nose, does not exist in a specific place. (42)
I question whether it is possible ever to be unconscious. We either can or cannot recall what we experience, but we are always experiencing and all experiences leave memories firmly printed on the brain. (43)
This [recalling a name] takes fifteen or twenty minutes. But we have another way, a sort of emergency method, which will take you instantly to a level of mind where recall of information will be easier.
This method involves a simple triggering mechanism which, once it becomes really yours, improves in effectiveness as you use it. Making it yours will require several meditation sessions to thoroughly internalize the procedure. Here is how simple it is: Just bring together the thumb and first two fingers of either hand and your mind will instantly adjust to a deeper level. Try it now and nothing will happen; it is not yet a triggering mechanism. To make it one, go to your level and say to yourself (silent or aloud), “Whenever I join my fingers together like this”–now join them–“for a serious purpose I will instantly reach this level of mind to accomplish whatever I desire.”
Do this daily for about a week, always using the same words. Soon there will be a firm association in your mind between joining the thumb and two fingers and instantly reaching an effective meditation level. (43)
The three fingers technique has been associated with other meditative disciplines for centuries. The next time you see a painting or sculpture of a Far Eastern person-a Yogi, perhaps, sitting cross-legged in meditation–notice that the three fingers of his hands are similarly joined. (44)
Chapter 6: Speed Learning
The Three Fingers Technique, once it is so thoroughly mastered that you can instantly reach your level and operate consciously there, can be used while you listen to a lecture or read a book. This will vastly improve concentration, and information will be implanted more firmly. Later you will be able to recall it more easily at the Beta level and more easily still at the Alpha level. A student writing an exam with his three fingers together can almost see the textbook he read, almost hear the instructor as he discussed the lesson in class. (47)
Let us say that you have a complex chapter of a textbook to learn; you must not only remember but understand it. During the first step, do not go into Alpha but remain at outer consciousness, Beta. Read the chapter aloud into the recorder. Now go to your level, play it back, and concentrate on your own voice as it recites the material.
At an early stage of your Mind Control, particularly if you are not too familiar with the machine you are using, you may flip back to Beta when you push the playback button and find that the sound of the tape will make it more difficult to return to Alpha. By the time you do return, you will have missed part or all of the lesson. With practice, this is less likely to happen. Here are a few tips:
Go to your level with your finger already on the button. This will prevent your having to search for it with your eyes open.
Have someone else press the playback for you when you give the signal.
Use the Three Fingers Technique to speed up your re-entry into Alpha.
The problem may appear more serious than it is. In fact, it may actually be an indication of your progress. As you become more adept, the Alpha level itself will begin to feel different. It will feel more and more like Beta because you will be learning to use it consciously. (47)
For added reinforcement, let some time pass, several days if possible, then read the material again at Beta and play it back in Alpha. The information will now be firmly yours. (48)
Chapter 7: Creative Sleep
How free we are when we dream! The barriers of time, the limitations of space, the laws of logic, the constraints of conscience are all swept away and we are gods of our own fleeting creations. (50)
Our interest is in deliberately creating dreams to solve specific problems. Because we program their subject matter before-hand, we interpret them differently–with spectacular results. Though this limits the spontaneity of our dreaming experiences, we gain a significant freedom: greater control over our lives.
When we interpret a dream which we preprogram, in addition to gaining insights into the pathology of our psyches, we find solutions to everyday problems.
There are three steps to the Dream Control we teach, all involving a meditational level of mind.
The first is to learn to recall our dreams. Many say, “I don’t dream at all,” but that is never true. We may not recall our dreams, but we all dream. Take away our dreams and in a few days mental and emotional troubles set in. (51)
We have no objection to the word “coincidence” in Mind Control; in fact we attach special meaning to it. When a series of events that is hard to explain leads to a constructive result, we call it coincidence. When they lead to a destructive result, we call it accident. In Mind Control we learn how to trigger coincidences. “Just a coincidence” is a phrase we do not use. (54)
While meditating just before going to sleep, say, “I want to remember a dream. I will remember a dream.” Now go to sleep with paper and pencil by your bedside. When you awaken, whether during the night or in the morning, write down what you remember of a dream. Keep practicing this night after night and your recall will be clearer, more complete. When you are satisfied with your improved skill, you are ready for step two:
During meditation before going to sleep, review a problem that can be solved with information or advice. Be sure that you really care about solving it; silly questions evoke silly answers. Now program yourself with these words: “I want to have a dream that will contain information to solve the problem I have in mind. I will have such a dream, remember it, and understand it.”
When you awaken during the night or in the morning, review the dream you recall most vividly and search it for meaning. (55)
Only you can interpret the dreams you /decide/ to have. With proper self-programming beforehand to understand your dreams, you will have a “hunch” about their meaning. The hunch is often the way our voiceless subconscious communicates with us. With practice you will develop more and more confidence in these programmed hunches. (57)
If you will be patient with Dream Control and practice, you will uncover one of your more priceless mental resources. You would not reasonably expect to become a lottery winner; it is in the nature of lotteries that very few win. But it is in the nature of life that everyone can win much more than lotteries offer. (57)
Chapter 8: Your Words Have Power
In the Introduction it was suggested that you not practice any of the exercises on first reading. The following is an exception; try it right now. Bring all of your imagination to bear on it.
Let’s consider the implications of this.
Imagine that you are standing in your kitchen holding a lemon that you have just taken from the refrigerator. It feels cold in your hand. Look at the outside of it, its yellow skin. It is a waxy yellow, and the skin comes to small green points at the two ends. Squeeze it a little and feel its firmness and its weight.
Now raise the lemon to your nose and smell it. Nothing smells quite like a lemon, does it? Now cut the lemon in half and smell it. The odor is stronger. Now bite deeply into the lemon and let the juice swirl around in your mouth. Nothing tastes quite like a lemon either, does it?
At this point, if you have used your imagination well, your mouth will be watering.
Let’s consider the implications of this. (58)
Words, “mere” words, affected your salivary glands. The words did not even reflect reality, but something you imagined. When you read those words about the lemon you were telling your brain you had a lemon, though you did not mean it. Your brain took it seriously and said to your salivary glands, “This guy is biting a lemon. Hurry, wash it away.” The glands obeyed.
Most of us think the words we use reflect meanings and that what they mean can be good or bad, true or false, powerful or weak. True, but that is only half of it. Words do not just reflect reality, they create reality, like the flow of saliva.
The brain is no subtle interpreter of our intentions–it receives information and stores it, and it is in charge of our bodies. Tell it something like “I’m now eating a lemon,” and it goes to work. (59)
Now it is time for what in Mind Control we call “mental housecleaning.” There is no exercise for this, just a determination to be careful about what words we use to trigger our brains.
The exercise we did was a neutral one–physically, no good or harm came of it. But good as well as harm can come from the words we use.
Many children play a little game at dinner. They describe the food they are eating in the most nauseating possible terms… The object of the game is to pretend not to be nauseated by these new perspectives on food and to push someone else beyond his ability to pretend. It often works, with someone’s appetite suddenly dulled.
As adults we often play this same game. We dull our appetite for life with negative words, and the words, gathering power with repetition, in turn create negative lives, for which our appetites become dulled. (59)
Of course, every time that we say something gives us a pain, a pain does not immediately result. The body’s natural state is good health, and all its processes are geared toward health. In time, though, with enough verbal pounding away at its defenses, it delivers up the very illnesses we order.
Two things add power to the words we use: our level of mind, and our degree of emotional involvement with what we say. (60)
Mind Control offers effective defenses against our own bad habits. At Alpha and Theta our words have enormously increased power. (60)
1. We can think of only one thing at a time, and
2. When we concentrate on a thought, the thought becomes true because our bodies transform it into action.
Therefore, if you want to trigger your body’s healing processes, which may be blocked by negative thoughts (conscious or unconscious), just repeat twenty times in succession, “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” Do this twice a day and you are using the Coué method. (61)
I have made some adaptations of this method. At Alpha and Theta levels we say, ‘Every day, in every way, I am getting better, and better, /and/ better.” We say it only once during meditation. We also say–and this too is Dr. Coué’s influence–“Negative thoughts, negative suggestions, have no influence over me at any level of mind.” (62)
Mrs. Mabrey’s work illustrates three things that we teach in Mind Control: First, words have special power at deep levels of mind; second, the mind has much firmer command over the body than it is given credit for; and third, as I noted in Chapter 5, we are always conscious.
How many parents brusquely pop into a sleeping child’s room, quickly adjust the covers, and leave, when a pause for a few positive and loving words would help make the child more secure and calm during the day? (63)
Chapter 9: The Power of Imagination
Willpower needs an enemy to overcome before it reaches its goal. It tries to be tough and, like most toughies, it becomes a cream puff when the going gets rocky. There is a gentler, easier way to shuck bad habits–imagination. Imagination seizes directly on the goal; it gets what it wants. (65)
This is why in earlier chapters I placed so much emphasis on your learning true-to-life visualization at deep levels of mind. If you spur your imagination with belief, desire, and expectancy, and train it to visualize your goals so that you see, feel, hear, taste, and touch them, you will get what you want.
“When the will and the imagination are in conflict, it is always the imagination that wins,” wrote Emile Coué. (65)
If you think you want to give up a bad habit, chances are you are deceiving yourself. If you really wanted to give it up, it would fade away on its own. What you should want more than the habit itself is the benefit of giving it up. Once you learn to want that benefit strongly enough, you will become free of the “unwanted” habit.
Thinking about your habit and firmly resolving to give it up may bind you more tightly to it. It is a little like firmly resolving to go to sleep; the very firmness of your resolve can keep you awake. (65)
If you want to lose weight, your first step is to reason out the problem at the outer level.
Is your problem overeating, underexercising, or both?
It may very well not be overeating, but eating the wrong foods. A diet of foods more suitable to your particular needs may be the answer. Your physician would know.
Why do you want to lose weight? Are you so fat that your health is impaired, or do you simply feel that a slimmer you would be more attractive? Either provides a good reason for losing weight, but you must know beforehand how you expect to profit from the weight loss. (66)
If you are sure that you really want to lose weight and you know why, your next step is to analyze all the benefits you will derive–not general benefits like “I’ll look better” but concrete ones involving, if possible, all of the five senses. Example:
Sight: Find a photograph of yourself when you were as thin as you would like to be now.
Touch: Imagine, when you are thin again, how smooth your arms and thighs and stomach will feel to your touch.
Taste: Imagine the flavor of the foods you will emphasize in your new diet.
Smell: Imagine the odor of the foods you will be eating.
Hearing: Imagine what those who are important to you will say about your success at losing weight!
Even the five senses are not enough for thorough visualization. Emotions are important, too.
Imagine how elated and confident you will feel when you are as thin as you wan to be.
With all this firmly in mind, go to your level. Create your mental screen and project onto it a visualization s you are now. Now let it disappear and from the left (the future) slide on an image (the old photograph perhaps) of yourself as you ultimately want to be and will be when the diet succeeds.
While you mentally gaze at the new you, imagine in as much detail as you can what it will feel like to be this thin. How will it feel when you bend over to tie your shoelaces? Walk upstairs? Fit into clothing that is now too small? Walk on a beach in a bathing suit? Take your time and feel all this. Go through the five senses, one at a time, as described above. How will your attitude toward yourself /feel/ as a result of achieving this goal?
Now mentally review your new diet–not just what you will eat, but how much–and select a few between-meal snacks, raw carrot or whatever. Tell yourself that this is all the food your body will need and that it will not send you hunger pangs as a way of asking for more.
This is the end of your meditation. Repeat it twice a day.
Notice that not once during your meditation was there any image or thought of the foods you should not eat. You eat too much of them because you like them; the mere thought of them will make your imagination lurch in unwanted directions. (67)
As you progress with your Mind Control in this and other areas, your total mental state will improve and this in turn will contribute in important ways to better functioning of your body. With a little mental nudging it will more gladly seek its proper weight. (68)
Chapter 10: Using Your Mind to Improve Your Health
The first is to begin–in Beta–to feel yourself becoming a loving (and therefore a forgiving) person, and to consider love as an end in itself. This will probably require a pretty thorough mental housecleaning (see Chapter 8).
Second, go to your level. This alone is a major step toward self-healing because at this level the negative work of the mind–all its guilts and angers–is neutralized, and the body is set free to do what nature designed it to do: repair itself. You may, of course, have very real feelings of guilt and anger, but we have found that these will be experienced only at the outer, or Beta, level and they tend to disappear as you practice Mind Control.
Third, mentally speak to yourself about step one: Express your desire to achieve a thorough mental housecleaning–to use positive words, to think positively, to become a loving, forgiving person.
Fourth, mentally experience the illness that is troubling you. Use the mental screen and see and feel the illness. This should be brief; its purpose is simply to focus your healing energies where they are needed.
Fifth, quickly erase this image of your illness and experience yourself as completely cured. Feel the freedom and happiness of being in perfect health. Hold on to this image, linger over it, and know that you deserve it–know that now in this healthy state you are fully in tune with nature’s intentions for you.
Sixth, reinforce your mental housecleaning once again, and end by saying to yourself, “Every day in /every/ way I am getting better, better, /and/ better.” (75)
My experience is that fifteen minutes is about the best length of time. Go through this exercise as often as you can, no less often than once a day. There is no “too much.” (75)
Our emphasis is on involvement with the world, not withdrawal from it–not with transcending practical problems or ignoring them, but with facing them head-on and solving them. You cannot do too much of this. (76)
There is no end to step one. Practice it in Beta, Alpha, and Theta. Live it. If you feel it slipping during the day, put your three fingers together for instant reinforcement. (76)
The president of the American Cancer Society, Eugene Pendergrass, said in 1959, “There is some evidence that the course of disease in general is affected by emotional distress. Is is my sincere hope that we can widen the quest to include the distinct possibility that within one’s mind is a power capable of exerting forces which can either enhance or inhibit the progress of this disease.” (81)
“You can see the power we ascribe to the disease by our fears and the mental imagery we use in our fears.” (82)
Chapter 11: An Intimate Exercise for Lovers
My own marriage is an extraordinarily good one–it has been rich and interesting for 36 years, but I do not thoroughly understand why. Perhaps not thoroughly understanding is part of what makes it good. (83)
The best foundation for a marriage is intimacy–not an invasion-of-privacy kind of intimacy, but the sort that comes from deep understanding and acceptance. (84)
During deep and prolonged meditation, connections are made–minds are sensitively receptive and are gently touched by other minds in ways otherwise familiar only to those who have lived full lifetimes together. Most instant intimacies are superficial and false and leave us feeling a little uncomfortable. They last only briefly. Not this experience; it is on a durable psychic level. (84)
Each of us has an aura which some can see as a faintly visible energy field surrounding the body. We can be trained to see this aura. In fact, as another byproduct of Mind Control training, many of our graduates report they see their own and others’ auras. Each is as distinctive as a fingerprint.
When people are physically close, their energy fields overlap. Their shape, their intensity, their color, their vibrations change. This happens in crowded theaters and buses as well as in beds with two. The more frequent the contact, the more durable is the change in auras. (87)
Chapter 12: You CAN Practice ESP
ESP stands for “extrasensory perception.” I do not like this terminology. “Extrasensory” means outside, apart from, our sensory apparatus. This seems to deny the existence of a sensory apparatus other than the five senses, though obviously one exists, since we do sense information without the use of them. There is nothing extrasensory at all about ESP. The word “perception” is fine for the sort of experiments conducted by JB Rhine at Duke University, where percipients guessed the turn of special cards accurately enough to virtually rule out chance. However, in Mind Control we do not simply perceive, we actually project our awareness to where the desired information is. Perception is too passive a word for what we do. Therefore in Mind Control we speak of “Effective Sensory Projection.” The initials are the same, and appropriately so, since we mean all that is generally understood by ESP and more. (90)
In an especially deep level of meditation, sometimes well into Theta, Mind Control students–in their now well-trained imaginations–construct laboratories of whatever size, shape, and color they are comfortable with. These will include a desk and chair of their own design, a clock, a calendar containing all dates, past, present, and future, plus filing cabinets. Nothing unusual so far.
To understand the next step it is necessary to point out again how far our psychic sensing apparatus is from language and logic, how close it is to images and symbols. I point this out because the next step is to equip the laboratory with “instruments” for physically correcting abnormalities detected in the humans who will be examined the following day. Most of these instruments are like nothing you have seen in any laboratory. They are highly instrumental symbols–symbolic instruments, if you will.
Imagine in a fine sieve for filtering impurities from blood; a delicate brush to sweep away the white powder (calcium) that can be seen physically in cases of arthritis; lotions for fast healing; baths for washing away guilt; a hi-fi set with special music for calming the distressed. Every student makes up his own armamentarium; no two sets of tools are exactly alike. They come from where all is possible, from deep levels of mind, and many graduates come to realize that the work they do with them has consequences in what we call the objective world.
As the student works with these tools, he may have need of some wise counsel to help in the perplexing moments–an inner “still small voice.” For the Mind Control student, though, it is not a small voice but a strong one, and not one but two.
In his laboratory he evokes two counselors, a man and a woman. He is told before he begins this meditative session that he will do this and, if he is like most other students, he will have a pretty firm idea of whom he wants as counselors. Rarely does he get his wish; almost never is he disappointed. (93)
Counselors can be very real to Mind Control graduates. What are they? We are not sure–perhaps some figment of an archetypal imagination, perhaps an embodiment of the inner voice, perhaps something more. What we do know is that, once we meet our counselors and learn to work with them, the association is respectable and priceless.
More than four centuries before Christ, the Greek philosopher Socrates had a counselor who, unlike our counselors in Mind Control, limited his advice to warnings. According to Plato, Socrates said, “I have, since my childhood, been attended by a semi-devine being whose voice from time to time dissuades me from some undertaking, but never directs me what I am to do.” Another writer, Xenophon, quotes Socrates as saying, “up to now the voice has never been wrong.” (94)
Too often we think of the imagination as an irresponsible creature of nonsense. Often it is. But works of art are the products of trained imaginations; psychic results are also the product of imaginations trained in a very special way. The Mind Control Student, when he functions physically for the first time, feels that he is “just imagining” what he sees. This is why the psychorientologist tells him to “keep talking, even if you feel you are just guessing.” If he were to stop talking, his logical mind might tempt him to start reasoning things out, stifling his psychic powers, just as it does in everyday life. (97)
What is at work are perfectly natural laws. Our minds are not confined to our heads; they reach out. To reach out effectively, they must be motivated by desire, fueled by belief, sparked by expectancy. (98)
Often what appear to be misses turn out to be hits on the wrong target. With practice, the aim improves. With more practice, the psychic can connect with things as well as people. (99)
The psychic energy which people send out is strongest when their survival is at stake. This is why so many cases of spontaneous ESP involve accidents and sudden death. (101)
The graduate who conscientiously practices his case work learns to pick up weaker and weaker psychic signals until one day he is able physically to connect with anyone he has in mind, whether or not the person is in trouble. With practice we become more and more sensitive.
In my early experiments I learned that children demonstrate psychic ability more readily than adults do. They are far less limited by Beta’s view of what is possible, and their sense of reality has not developed to the point where they will say only those things that seem logical. (101)
This is case work at a more subtle level than we conduct with adults in our classes. It takes practice to “become as little children.” (102)
Chapter 13: Form Your Own Practice Group
Agree beforehand that there will be no “ego trips.” Someone in the group will probably succeed more spectacularly than the rest–at first. This does not mean that he is the “best” or in any sense superior; he has simply succeeded first. Some may not begin to operate physically until the fifth or sixth meeting, but the slowest often turn out to be the best psychics. (103)
What occurs to you on the first thought is more often correct than what occurs on the second thought. (103)
If success takes longer to come to you, it does not mean that you have no psychic gift. IT means nothing more than that success is taking longer to come to you. (107)
Chapter 14: How to Help Others with Mind Control
Obviously there is an energy involved in mental projection, an energy aimed by the intentions of our minds. Change these intentions from information gathering to healing and we change what the energy does.
How do we link our intentions to this energy so that it accomplishes what we want? The intention alone, in its pure from, is something like the will. As I said in the chapter on habit control, the will alone is of very little use. Just as we detect abnormalities by visualizing them, we visualize conditions as we want them to be–without the abnormalities. This is psychic healing. It’s as simple as that. (108)
Many of life’s possibilities hang in a precarious balance. One little push and you can tip this balance your way. (109)
The subjects we discussed gave him added confidence in parapsychology. In psychic work, confidence is as important as faith is in religion. Meanwhile I began to visualize him in better health and, just as important, learned to like him more and more. Love is a tremendous power; I wanted that on our side, too.
I did one more thing in preparation for what I would later do that night. To help visualize him later, I studied the priest–his face, the feel of his handshake, his various expressions and mannerisms, the sound of his voice, the overall feeling of being in his presence. This was the “initial work.”
Several hours later, when the priest was asleep and I was back at home, I did the rest of the job. What I did was totally different from what I do now. I had learned that psychic energies are transferred most effectively when survival is at stake, as I mentioned in the last chapter. Instead of going to my level, as I would today, I held my breath while picturing the priest in perfect health. Long minutes went by, until my body screamed for breath. Still I held on to my image of the priest in perfect health. Meanwhile in my brain, in a sort of psychic scream, cried out and the energy of the scream carried the carefully held image of perfect health exactly where it was supposed to go. (111) [an example illustrating the power of visualization even though he wasn’t using Mind Control back then; he then explains how to do it with Mind Control method]
Among the laws of the universe there seems to be a sort of cosmic Bill of Rights which guarantees that all of us, no matter how high or low, no matter how bright or dull, can take part in causing lawful things to happen through the firmness of our desire, belief, and expectancy. (113)
One small observation: Notice that in our folklore, when we make a wish–with a wishbone or when we see a star fall or when we blow out birthday candles–we are admonished not to reveal our wish. This secrecy is probably more than mere child’s play; I think there is some wisdom behind it. Keeping our wish–or, more to the point, our visualization of a healing–bottled up in secrecy seems a way to avoid dissipating its energy, maybe even to add to its energy. For this reason, I and many of our lecturers advise students to keep their healing work to themselves. (114)
Chapter 15: Some speculations
1. Does the universe have laws? Of course–science is discovering them.
2. Can we break these laws? No. We can jump from a building and die, or make ourselves sick, but the laws are not broken; we are.
3. Can the universe think about itself? We know that at least one part of it can: we ourselves. Is it not reasonable to conclude that the whole can?
4. Is the universe indifferent to us? How could it be? We are part of it, and it responds to us.
5. Are we fundamentally good or bad? When we are in closest touch with ourselves–in meditation–we are capable of no harm at all and a vast amount of good. (116)
The best definition I ever heard of reality is that it is the one dream we all share. We have only the faintest hints of what it actually is. What we perceive, the way we see things, is largely for our own convenience. Things at a distance are not really smaller, and solid things are not really solid.
Everything is energy. The difference between a color and a sound, between a cosmic ray and a television picture, is frequency, or what energy is doing and how fast. Matter is energy, too, and we learn from E = MC2–it is energy doing something else, being in another state. An interesting thing about energy–in a world of opposites: up and down, black and white, fast and slow–is that there is no opposite for energy. This is because there is noting that is not energy, including you and me and everything we think. Thinking both consumes and creates energy, or, to be more accurate, it converts energy.
You can see now why I find little separation between a thought and a thing.
Can thoughts influence things? Of course; energy can.
Can thoughts influence events? Of course; energy can.
Is time energy? I have only the most tentative speculations on this because time presents so many different faces to us. Look at it one way and we think we see it clearly, then look at it another way and it seems altogether different.
To tie our shoelaces or cross a street, we had better think of time as running in a straight line from past through the present into the future. We /must/ think of it this way in order to get through the everyday job of living, just as we still conveniently think of the sun as rising and setting, as if the old astronomy of Copernicus had never been proved wrong. From this perspective we can remember the past, experience the present, and look uncertainly, if at all, into the future.
Not so from another perspective. In Alpha and Theta we can look into the future as well as the past. Coming events /do/ cast their shadows before, and we can be trained to see them. This ability is known by the now-respectable word “precognition.” (117)
If in Alpha and Theta the future can be seen here and now, it must send ahead some kind of energy, which we can tune into. For time to send any kind of energy anywhere, it must be an energy itself. (118)
On this planet the sun brings the new day from the east and carries it to the west. If I faced south during meditation, east would be on my left and west would be on my right and I would thus be oriented to the planetary flow of time.
Whether or not I really discovered the direction in which time flows on earth, I do not know; I do know that once I began facing south I felt better oriented in time and could move around in it more freely. (118)
Chapter 16: Your Self Esteem Will Soar
It is well known that a person who finds himself out of work suffers a blow to his self-esteem. This makes it more difficult for him to think and act his way out of his problem. A defeated, self-deprecating job applicant conducts lackluster interviews that prolong his unemployment, in turn lowering his self-esteem even more. This may ultimately lead to welfare. If something could intervene in this downward spiral and provide a realistic boost to self-esteem, the person would be in a more powerful position to help himself. (151)
Chapter 20: Where Do We Go From Here?
“In what other field of research are expensive laboratories and sophisticated equipment so unnecessary? The most sophisticated research tool ever developed–one so remarkable that I am in awe whenever I think of it–is at your disposal and mine twenty-four hours a day: our minds. We are all, therefore, directors of research.” (170)
Where do we go from here? Down a long path of exciting self-discovery. With each new finding you will be closer to the goal of the ultimate research project spelled out for us by William Blake:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour. (171)