The Victorious Attitude Part 15

"Your circ.u.mstances may be uncongenial," says James Allen, "but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel _within_ and stand still _without_. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labor; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement.

But he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers and resources. Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he pa.s.ses out of it forever. Years later we see this youth as a full-grown man. We find him a master of certain forces of the mind which he wields with world-wide influence and almost unequaled power. In his hands he holds the cords of gigantic responsibilities; he speaks, and lo! lives are changed; men and women hang upon his words and remold their characters, and, sun-like, he becomes the fixed and luminous center round which innumerable destinies revolve. He has realized the Vision of his youth. He has become one with his Ideal."

The great curse of the average person is commonness,--the lack of aspiring ideals. There are thousands of farmers who never get above cattle and wheat, of doctors who never become superior to prescriptions and diseases, of lawyers who never wholly subordinate their briefs. The ideals of the ma.s.ses rarely rise out of mediocrity. Most of us live in the bas.e.m.e.nt of our lives, while the upper stories are all unused.

Millions of human beings never get out of the kitchen of their existence. We need aspiration and great thought-models to lift us.

G.o.d has whispered into the ear of all existence, "Look up." There is potential celestial gravitation in every mortal. There is a spiritual hunger in humanity which, if fed and nourished, will lead to the upbuilding and developing of great souls. There is a latent divinity in every son of Adam, which must be aroused before there can be any great progress in individual uplift.

In a factory where mariners' compa.s.ses are made before the needles are magnetized, they will lie in any position, but when once touched by the mighty magnet, once electrified by that mysterious power, they ever afterwards point only in one direction. Many a young life lies listless, purposeless, until touched by the Divine magnet, after which, if it nourishes its aspirations, it always points to the north star of its hope and its ideal.

Every faintest aspiration that springs up in our heart is a heavenly seed within us which will grow and develop into rich beauty if only it be fed, encouraged. The better things do not grow either in material or mental soil without care and nourishment. Only weeds, briers, and noxious plants thrive easily.

The aspiration that is not translated into active effort will die, just as any power or function that is not used will atrophy or disappear. The ostrich, naturalists say, once had wonderful wings, but not caring to use them, preferring to walk on the earth rather than mount in the air, it practically lost its wings, their strength pa.s.sing into its legs. The giraffe probably once had only an ordinary neck, like other animals, but being long used to reach up to gather its food from the branches of trees, it lifted its body in the upward direction until it is now the tallest of all animals, its elongated neck enabling it to gather the leaves from lofty trees.

Something like this takes place continually in human lives. We rise or fall by our ideals, by our pursuit or our disregard of them. The majority of us make bungling work of our living. We spend much precious time and effort catering to the desires of our animal natures and live chiefly along the lines of life's lower aims and opportunities when we might be soaring.

Everywhere we see men making a splendid _living_, but a very poor _life_; succeeding in their vocations but failing as men, swerving from their own highest ideals for the sake of making a little more money. On every hand we see people sacrificing the higher to the lower, dwarfing the best thing in them for a superficial material advantage, selling the birthright of the soul's ideal for a mess of pottage.

Is there any reason or intelligence in a man's continuing to turn his ability, his energies, all there is in him, into dollars after he has many times more of these than he can ever use for living and betterment?

Is the gift of life so cheap, so meaningless, of so little importance, that we can afford to spend time on things that do not endure,--upon unnecessary material things which so soon pa.s.s away,--to the neglect of those that endure? We know that life is our great opportunity to acquit ourselves like men. Yet it is too often into these transient things that we pour the full force of our energies, while we only sigh and "wish"

that we could achieve our ideals. We sacrifice much to gain wealth, but practically nothing to realize the outreach of our souls.

Yet the ideal is indeed the "pearl of great price," in the balance with which "all that a man hath" besides is as nothing. The red letter men of the world have always been men of high ideals, to which they were ever loyal: men who have said "this one thing I do," and have put the whole strength of their lives into their effort to realize their ideal.

If from the start you listen to and obey that something within which urges you to find the road that leads up higher; if you listen to and obey the voice which bids you look up and not down, which ever calls you on and up, no matter what its outward seeming, your life can not be a failure. The really successful men and women are those who by the n.o.bility of their example contribute to the uplift, the happiness, the enlargement of life, to the wisdom of the world,--not those who have merely piled up selfish dollars. A rich personality enriches everybody who comes in contact with it. Everybody who touches a n.o.ble life feels enn.o.bled thereby.

There is machinery so delicate that it can measure the least expenditure of physical force. If similar machinery could be devised for measuring character many a millionaire would be chagrined at the record of his own just measurement, while many an humble worker would be amazed at the high mark his earnest unceasing efforts to reach his ideal had achieved.

I believe the time will come when not money, but growth, not lands and houses, but mental and moral expansion in larger and n.o.bler living, will be even the popular measure of true riches, real success. The measure of a successful man will be that of his soul; he will be rated in a new sort of Bradstreet, a spiritual Bradstreet, as a large heart, a magnanimous mind, a cultured intellect, instead of as a great check book.

Phillips Brooks said: "The ideal life of full completion haunts us all.

We feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath the thing we are. G.o.d hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in his life, each feels a trembling, fearful longing to do some great good thing. Life finds its n.o.blest spring of excellence in its hidden impulse to do one's best."

Every one who subst.i.tutes the finer for the cheaper goal, each one who to-day and every day holds to his high ideal despite the stress and turmoil of modern daily living, in such measure hastens the day when such an ideal will be the inspiration of the ma.s.ses and the power that moves the world.

CHAPTER XIII

HOW TO MAKE THE BRAIN WORK FOR US DURING SLEEP

Would you not think yourself fortunate to have a secretary of great ability and worth absolutely subject, day and night, to your will, and so susceptible to instructions that even your slightest mental suggestion would be faithfully carried out? If you had such a secretary, and knew that in spite of his great ability he would be able to do what you suggested only in proportion to your belief in his power to do so, would you not be careful to entertain no doubts of his ability to carry out your wishes or suggestions?

Now, just subst.i.tute for this personal secretary your subconscious self, that part of you which is below the threshold of your consciousness, and try to realize that this self is actually the sort of secretary I have endeavored to describe, capable of carrying out all your desires, of executing all your purposes, of realizing your ambitions, to the exact extent of your belief in its powers, and you will get some idea of what it can accomplish for you.

This secretary is closer to you than your breath, nearer than your heart beat, a faithful servant, walking by your side all through life, to execute your faintest wish, to carry out your desires, to help you to achieve your aims. Every bit of help, of encouragement, of support you give to this other self will add to the magnificence, the splendor of your destiny. On the other hand, all negative, vicious thoughts, all selfishness, greed and envy, all doubts and fears, all the discouraging, destructive thoughts you entertain, will impair and weaken your secretary or servant in exact proportion to their intensity and persistency. In fact it rests with yourself whether your secretary shall be your greatest help, a heavenly friend and a.s.sistant, or your greatest hindrance, your worst enemy.

It doesn't matter what we call them,--subconscious and conscious self, or subjective and objective mind, we are all conscious that these are two forces constantly at work in us. One commands and the other obeys.

We know that one of these, the subjective mind, does not originate its acts, but gets its instructions from the objective mind, which contains the will power. Experience shows us that the subjective or subconscious mind, which I have called a "personal secretary," is a servant which obeys our will, carries out our wishes, and registers in the brain a faithful record not only of every thought, word and act of ours, but of everything we see, and everything we hear others say.

Coleridge tells of a remarkable instance of the truth of this. A young German servant girl was taken ill with a fever, and in her delirium she recited correctly long pa.s.sages from famous authors in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Scholars were called in to hear this uneducated girl speaking fluently tongues of which she had no knowledge in her conscious moments, and to tell if they could what it meant. They were much puzzled and could make nothing of it; but later the miracle was explained. Years before, it seems, the girl had lived in a minister's family, and was accustomed to hear her master recite the cla.s.sics aloud. She had listened attentively, and her subconscious mind had faithfully recorded every word in her brain, and reproduced what it had heard when the objective mind was quiescent.

Numerous instances might be cited to show that our subconscious mind is the record storehouse of all that has ever happened to us. Every thought, every experience, whatever pa.s.ses before the eye, or that we see or hear or feel is registered accurately in our brain by our subconscious mind.

Now, if this other self, personal secretary, subconscious mind, or whatever we choose to call it, has such enormous power, why can it not be trained to work for us when we are asleep as well as when we are awake? Have you ever thought of the possibilities of spiritual and mental development during sleep? Has it ever occurred to you that while the processes of repair and upbuilding are proceeding normally in the body, the mind also may be expanding, the soul as well as the body may be growing?

"When corporal and voluntary things are quiescent, the Lord operates,"

said Swedenborg. The great Swedish philosopher was a firm believer in the activity of the other self during sleep. He claimed that his "spiritual vision" was opened in the unconscious hours of the night.

The Bible teems with ill.u.s.trations of the activity of the subconscious mind or self during sleep. Warnings are given, work is commanded to be done, visions are seen, plans are outlined, angels are conversed with, courses of conduct advised; and every suggestion made to the soul in the dream state is literally carried out in the waking hours.

Theosophists believe that during sleep the soul or spirit acts independently of the body; that it actually leaves the body and goes out into the night to perform tasks appointed it by the Creator.

As a matter of fact, few people realize what an immense amount of work is carried on automatically in the body under the direction of the subconscious mind. If the entire brain and nervous system were to go to sleep at night all of the bodily functions would stop. The heart would cease to beat, the stomach, the liver, the kidneys and the other glands would no longer act, the various digestive processes would cease to operate, all the physical organs would cease working, and we should stop breathing.

One of the deepest mysteries of Nature's processes is that of putting a part of the brain and nervous system, and most of the mental faculties which were in use during the day, under the sweet ether of sleep while she repairs and rejuvenates every cell and every tissue, but at the same time keeping in the most active condition a great many of the bodily processes and even certain of the mental and creative faculties. These are awake and alert all the time while the sleeper is in a state of unconsciousness.

Most of us probably have had the experience of dropping to sleep at night discouraged because we could not solve some vexing problem to our satisfaction. It may have been one in mathematics during our school days, or, later on, a weightier one in business or professional life, and behold, in the morning, without any conscious effort on our part, the problem was solved; all its intricacies were unraveled, and what had so puzzled us the night before was perfectly clear when we woke up in the morning. Our conscious, objective self did not enter the mysterious laboratory where the miracle was wrought. We do not know how it was wrought. We only know that it was done somehow, without our knowledge, while we slept.

Some of our greatest inventions and discoveries have been worked out by the subconscious mind during sleep. Many an inventor who went to sleep with a puzzled brain, discouraged and disheartened because he could not make the connecting link between his theory and its practical application, awoke in the morning with his problem solved.

Mathematicians and astronomers have had marvelous results worked out while they slept, answers to questions which had puzzled them beyond measure during their waking hours. Writers, poets, painters, musicians, all have received inspiration for their work while the body slumbered.

Many people attempt to explain these things on a purely physical basis.

They attribute the apparent phenomenon to the mere fact that the brain has been refreshed and renewed during the night, and that, consequently, we can think better and more clearly in the morning. That is true, so far as it goes, but there is something more, something beyond this. We know that ideas are suggested and problems actually worked out along lines which did not occur to the waking mind. Most of us have had experiences of some kind or another which show that there is some great principle, some intelligent power back of the flesh, but not of it, which is continually active in our lives, helping us to solve our problems.

One of the most interesting instances of this kind is given in the biography of the great scientist, Professor Louis Aga.s.siz, by his widow:

"He [Professor Aga.s.siz]," the writer says, "had been for two weeks striving to decipher the somewhat obscure impression of a fossil fish on the stone slab in which it was preserved. Weary and perplexed, he put his work aside at last, and tried to dismiss it from his mind. Shortly after, he waked one night persuaded that while asleep he had seen his fish with all the missing features perfectly restored. But when he tried to hold and make fast the image it escaped him. Nevertheless, he went early to the Jardin des Plantes, thinking that on looking anew at the impression he should see something which would put him on the track of his vision. In vain--the blurred record was as blank as ever. The next night he saw the fish again, but with no more satisfactory result. When he awoke it disappeared from his memory as before. Hoping that the same experience might be repeated, on the third night he placed a pencil and paper beside his bed before going to sleep.

"Accordingly, towards morning the fish re-appeared in his dream, confusedly at first, but at last with such distinctness that he had no longer any doubt as to its zoological characters. Still half dreaming, in perfect darkness, he traced these characters on the sheet of paper at the bedside. In the morning he was surprised to see in his nocturnal sketch features which he thought it impossible the fossil itself should reveal. He hastened to the Jardin des Plantes, and, with his drawing as a guide, succeeded in chiseling away the surface of the stone under which portions of the fish proved to be hidden. When wholly exposed it corresponded with his dream and his drawing, and he succeeded in cla.s.sifying it with ease."

We are all familiar with examples of the marvelous feats performed by somnambulists. They will get up and dress while fast asleep, lock and unlock doors, go out and walk and ride in the most dangerous places, where they would not attempt to go when awake. Many have been known to walk with sure feet along the extreme edges of roofs of houses, on the banks of rivers, or close to the edge of precipices, where one false step would precipitate them to death. They will speak, write, act, and move as if entirely conscious of what they are doing. A somnambulist will answer questions put to him while asleep and carry on a conversation rationally.

In this respect the state of the sleep walker is similar to that of a person in a hypnotic trance. He can be acted on from without and remain wholly unconscious. Surgical operations have been performed upon a hypnotized person without the use of anesthetics; and there is no doubt that this also would be possible during profound sleep. The subjective mind is much more susceptible to suggestion when the objective mind is unconscious. There is no resistance on account of prejudice or external influences.

That we are on the eve of marvelous possibilities of treating disease during sleep there is not the slightest doubt. The same is true of habit forming, mind changing, of mind improving, of strengthening deficient faculties, of eradicating peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, of neutralizing injurious hereditary tendencies, of increasing ability. The possibilities of changing the disposition and of mind building during sleep are only beginning to be realized.

The power of the subjective mind over the body is well ill.u.s.trated by the fact that thoughts aroused in a hypnotized person can very materially shift the circulation of the blood. They can send it at will to any part of the body. The hypnotist can make his subject blush or turn pale, express in his face fierce anger or appealing love. He can at will produce anesthesia in any part of the body so that a needle or knife may be inserted in the flesh without causing the slightest pain.

He can so impress the hypnotized person's mind with the belief that the water he drinks is whiskey that he will actually exhibit all the appearance of drunkenness. He can make him believe that the spoonful of water he takes is full of poison so that he will immediately develop the symptoms of poisoning.

The subjective mind is not only capable of carrying out orders but, as has already been shown, every impression made on it is indelible. How often we say, when we cannot recall a well-known name, or the details of some important event or experience, "Well, I cannot think of that now, but it will come to me; I shall think of it later." And how often have the forgotten details flashed into our mind when the occasion had pa.s.sed and we were thinking of something else. Again and again have we puzzled our brains at night trying to think of some particular thing which had gone out of our memory, only to find it waiting for us in the morning.

We are beginning to realize that all of our experiences during the day, all of our thoughts, emotions and mental att.i.tudes, the mult.i.tude of little things which seem to make but a fleeting impression, are not in reality lost. Every day leaves its phonographic records on the brain, and these records are never erased or destroyed. They simply drop into the subconscious mind and are ever on call. They may not come at once in response to our summons, but they are still there and are often, many years after they have dropped into the subconscious mind, reproduced with all their original vividness.

I heard recently of a prominent banker who lost a very important key, the only one to the bank treasures. He claimed that it had not been lost in the ordinary way, but stolen. Suspicion at once attached to the employees. A prominent detective was placed in the bank, and, after watching and questioning every one on the staff, he became convinced that none but the banker himself knew anything about the key.

Every detective is necessarily something of a mind reader, and this one, believing firmly in his own theory, suggested a simple plan for recovering the key. He told the banker to quit suspecting the employees and worrying about burglars getting the bank's treasures, to relax his overwrought mind and go to sleep with the belief that he himself had put the key away somewhere, and that it would be found in the morning. "If you do this," he said, "I believe the mystery will be solved."