The Mental Highway
	The Mechanism Of Thinking <  Previous Contents Next  >

The worker, his tools and materials, must enter the success or failure of every effort to achieve. Aims and ends, with the plans for their achievement, are all present in the worker. They may be original or borrowed, but unless they are present, be no permanent building can result. No one today questions the truth of the statement that "to think is to create." The material universe moves from the unseen into the apparent because of an intelligent plan. Our work of achievement is simply the result of our thinking, plus action. Whether we will or not, our thought moves into objective form. Our body, our feelings, and our surroundings are the result of our thinking. This is equivalent to saying that we are one thing, but our body and conditions are something else. A speaker does not see the people whom he addresses. He sees a concrete form that tells him that his hearers are present. His hearer is one thing, but the forms before him are the means of communication.

We can show that mind may communicate with mind directly without using any of the five senses, but the experience is unusual and not susceptible of material proof. We are accustomed to communicating with our friends in a certain way, and it is a slow process to become accustomed to a new way of doing it. Besides the still uncharted fields of mental action make it difficult to systematize the countless instances in which one person has clearly caught the exact thought of another. Mental wireless is still an infant.

For the present, we must consider the thinker and his instrument. The body is a complex mechanism that we may understand and use for unlimited service. Skin, skeleton, muscular system, nervous system, arterial system, venous system, and lymphatic system reach every cell in the body, yet they all dwell in a body, which each system perfectly fills. When we are in health, they all get along together in such harmony as to prove that the kingdom of harmony is within us. The thinking, feeling, willing self dwells within this body, and we dwell in every cell of it. Every cell and group of cells is intelligent, but a central point of control and direction causes all these intelligences to work in cooperation, and coordinate all activities of the body.

The nervous system is the point of contact for communication between the mind and its instrument, the body. This is really two systems, the cerebrospinal and the sympathetic. The cerebrospinal system is composed of the brain and the spinal cord. The upper and larger brain is the cerebrum, and the lower is the cerebellum. The upper brain is divided into two lobes that are bound together by a strong cortical tie. These two lobes are made up largely of white matter that consists of nerve fibers. These are covered with a thin layer of gray matter that is also a mass of very fine nerve fibers. The brain answers the analogy of a wireless plant. One side acts as a sending, and the other as a receiving instrument. It is supposed that the side of the brain most highly convoluted is the receiving part of the nervous mechanism. The cerebrospinal system is the instrument of all conscious thinking, and of all volitional action.

The sympathetic system is made up of a series of nerve ganglia, connecting with the lower brain and centering in large groups of ganglia, called plexuses. The solar plexus is the principal one, often called the "abdominal brain." All the involuntary muscles of the body, such as the stomach, receive their nerve supply from the sympathetic. It is wholly the instrument of feeling and of the reflex movements of the body. This marvelous mechanism furnishes the connection between thought, which is the beginning, and expression, which is the ending of all things.

For instance, the thinking self holds the thought of motion, say, in the finger. This thought is a vibration in the ether of the spiritual self, which the brain’s antennae, or little fine fibers of the gray matter catch. From there it passes to the white fibers, whose centers classify and shift it to a motor nerve center. From there it passes as a motor impulse down a nerve to the finger where it distributes the vibration to many divisions of the nerve, which ramify the muscle and reach every cell. The impulse reaches these cells with something of the effect of an electric shock, causing the muscle to contract, and that which started as a purely mental conception, ends in its material expression.

Suppose the self holds the thought of warmth for the finger. The vibrations of thoughts of warmth pass through the same processes, first of the gray matter, then the white, then to the various centers for classification, from which they automatically switch it to the vasomotor nerves for the arm. These are motor nerves threaded into the walls of the blood vessels. As the impulse travels down, these nerves with a motor stimulus, the blood vessels dilate, it increases the flow of the warm blood, and in a short time the thought of warmth in the mind is expressed in the sensation of warmth in the finger. That which began as a purely mental concept has been translated into the terms of material energy. By this same mechanism we may substitute the thought of ease for pain. We can substitute strength for weakness, efficiency for failure, courage for cowardice, love and confidence for fear, abundance for poverty.

These illustrations of the mechanism of thought show the seeker after self-mastery the method by which we may hold any mental conception in the mind, and unerringly transmit it to any part of the body, to express in material form. It hints at the creative power and method of the mind in changing and constructing the body, or in regulating any of its functional activities. Moreover, it shows one way in which conscious thinking may pass downward into subconscious activity, affecting not only the welfare of the body, but directly affecting the elements of thought, feeling and will, which form characters. It points a way by which we may change the whole morale of life from bad to good and vice versa.

It further shows that while the thoughts act directly upon the body and its surroundings, they also react upon the mind itself. The constant action of the will strengthens the will itself. The affirmation of having a strong will adds to the power of the will to resolve and move to action. The constant thought of a perfect memory reacts in increased power to recall any recorded event in consciousness. In a word, it furnishes the mechanism by which we may change every faculty of the mind and element of character for better or worse as we choose to think.

This also opens a vista of mental action from sources outside the self. The exact mechanism of thought transference or telepathy is an open question. It remains a fact that seers and prophets in every age have caught and recorded ideas that we could not fairly say arose from any human mind by any process of thought formation that we know. Countless numbers of people in every occupation have received indubitable messages from other intelligences without any apparent means of communication. From these observed experiences, such proverbs as "Talk about the angels," have arisen.

The body is the accepted externalization of mental thoughts and states, influenced by the action of both inner and outer stimuli. For instance, the eye waters under the stimulus of a cinder or dust. Looking steadily at an object for some time will cause a similar flow of tears, but grief, or another emotion, will open the fountain of tears more effectively than any material stimulus. Certain medicines may quicken or slow the heart’s action. Percussing the seventh cervical vertebra slows it, while percussing the first and second dorsals quickens it. However, the most effective stimulus for the heart arises in the emotions, as anyone knows who has experienced great love or fear. A great joy or grief has often so aroused the emotional reflexes, that the organ could not respond, and the subject died of a "broken heart." The same parallel of action is found in the stomach, the liver, the kidneys and all the organs of the body, and in the changes in blood pressure. These facts support the claim that the most potent powers for influencing the body for good or ill, are the mental and emotional states that we allow ourselves to indulge. We are equipped with the mechanism by which mental scientists are justified in their enthusiastic claims of achievement over the body and its conditions.

Having now a clear idea of the instrument, let us turn to the builder, and his materials. We may use the terms "mind, consciousness, self," or any term, so that we understand that we are referring to the knowing, feeling, willing self. Nothing is clearer to us than the proposition that there is a Universal Intelligence exists, from which all individual intelligences have sprung. All minds are individual points of the One Mind. Whenever we think, this Universal Mind is thinking in us and through us. So that we may clearly understand this fact, let us study some terms to describe a human.

Humanity is spoken of as Spirit, Soul, Mind, and other terms. A careful analysis of these will prevent confusion.

Spirit is the original life principle in the first living cell, out of which have evolved all the countless individual expressions of life. It is the basic principle in the first cell from which any individual being is developed. It is the fundamental entity of consciousness, whether it is a one-celled creature, or the perfectly coordinated group of cells called the human body. It came out of the Universal Life and Mind. It brought the qualities and characteristics of its Source into this incarnation. It is the basis of consciousness upon which all variant forms of consciousness are constructed. It corresponds to the term superconsciousness in psychology.

The law of cell growth makes every cell to be a partaker of the nature of its parent cell. When the life of a cell is extended to its child, it carries all the qualities of its parent with it. As the life principle is thus carried forward through countless experiences of cell life, it begins to be clothed with experiences, impressions and memories of its successive incarnations, until it is surrounded by a "mist of matter." It begins to act otherwise than as pure Spirit or superconsciousness. Its surroundings and experiences influence its activities, so that a new form of consciousness arises, called subconsciousness.

Soul is, therefore, the original Spirit, plus the accretions and attritions of all past incarnations that endow it with instinct, intuition, desires, impulses and various forms of activity unknown to its basic principle. As these accumulated, there arose the necessity for classification of experiences, the power to adjust to material conditions, and a new instrument of mental activity, called the cerebrum came into expression, with a new functional activity, called mind, or objective [egoic] consciousness.

Mind is, therefore, the soul plus the developed power to act consciously in the classification of experiences, to analyze and compare experiences and form judgments and act upon them intelligently. It has the power to scrutinize the reports of superconscious activity, to pass upon all the stored up memories of subconsciousness, to form judgments based upon its own memories and experiences, and to handle all the reports arriving every moment through the medium of the five senses. We call the result of these activities personality.

Personality is the mind conscious, subconscious and superconscious, with all its powers of reasoning and knowing, in the threefold action called cognition, feeling and will, which in their ceaseless interplay upon each other, and their action upon the material world, with the resultant reaction, produces the stable qualities of being called character.

Character is, therefore, the highest attainable climax for the individual expression of mind. It is the objective demonstration of the possession of qualities that the mind knew that it had before it left its source in Universal Mind. These it can never forget, and must forever seek to express. Its relation with Universal Mind is inherent and intimate, as the relation of the finger to the hand. In this unity it exercises practical freedom of choice and independence of action. It was before the body, is superior to the body, and has the power of life independent of the body. The body is its instrument of separate expression.

The five senses are so many channels through which the perceiving power of the self moves out to act upon material objects. In turn the perceptions, which move inward over the visual, auditory and other sense pathways, act upon it. A sixth sense, called the sense of balance, with its organ is found in the ear. All these senses are the development and extension of the original sense of touch. These six do not limit the perceiving self, for some in every age have so developed and extended the perceptions as to be able to transcend the range of the sense perceptions, and to perceive things that were around a material corner.

Understanding is the power of the mind that enables it to classify and formulate, into an orderly method, not only the reports of the six senses, but the memories of all experiences, and those higher perceptions that come in moments of vision and revelation from the realm of Universal Mind. Thus understanding enables the mind to act instinctively toward ends that it does not objectively know, intuitively from grounds of whose nature and reason it is not aware, and rationally by careful analysis of all known and classified facts.

Thought is an inner, unconscious perception of a truth or fact upon which the mind acts and brings to objective form through speech or other material action. Thought may arise from (1) some stimulus coming to the mind through the six channels of sense perception, (2) some stimulus arising from the vast storehouse of memories of the past, upon which there are ceaseless subconscious action and combination, or (3) from truth present to the mind by virtue of its direct relationship to the Universal Mind.

Mind functions as conscious, subconscious and superconscious, each of which is adapted to the particular realm in which it acts. The activities often overlap, but we may detect their elements at once because the characteristic action of each is definite. Any idea bearing the stamp of analysis, comparison, induction, synthesis or conscious deduction, is conscious in its origin. Ideas bearing the stamp of deduction from the known experiences of human life are subconscious. The presence of spontaneous ideas bearing the stamp of absolute truth, yet having none of these marks, is superconscious. It has come into consciousness from the Universal Mind.

A classification of the activities will warrant these distinctions of the three phases of consciousness. Conscious mind reasons in five ways, namely, comparison, analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction. Subconscious reasons by one way alone, that of deduction. Superconscious does not reason at all; it knows and announces the truth in its absolute form, therefore no reasoning is necessary.

Comparison is the simplest form of reasoning. It consists in taking a known fact and contrasting with it a proposed one, and by comparison of points of likeness determines its truth or falsity. Analysis takes the proposition to pieces and applies the method of comparison to each factor, and determines the truth of the whole. Synthesis gathers many known and accepted truths into a harmonious working whole. Induction takes many similar facts and leads them into a common working principle. Deduction takes a principle and draws out from it every logical sequence.

Conscious mind uses all these methods, which enable it to find its way through the maze of experiences that are present in consciousness. It can pass upon the ideas and impulses that rise up from the depths of the subconscious storehouse. It gives us certainty and direction amid the conflicting reports of the objective world. By it we can pass our own thoughts and experiences and those of others. It enables us to adapt the truth that comes to us from the realm of superconscious, and apply it wisely to the conditions of our life. It varies with consciousness for this life and of this life. It could have no place in a monistic world where only truth exists. Nevertheless, it alone enables us to meet the countless problems in a world of dual expression.

The subconscious activity is purely deductive. It cannot reason in any other way. It has no power to compare two ideas because it cannot hold two ideas simultaneously. It, therefore, cannot determine the truth or falsity of any proposition presented to it, but accepts the idea offered and continues to work it out. It is not concerned with the question of the right or wrong of any idea. It does not question why. It takes and moves into formal expression any idea offered it.

The subconscious is the body builder, maintaining all the processes of the metabolism by which it renews the body. It carries these processes forward according to the ideals furnished it by the conscious mind. It does not originate anything. Its creations, such as we see in dreams, are made up of ideas and combinations of ideas received through the channels of conscious activity. Its dreams may be perfectly logical or ridiculous, yet it sets them forth so that they seem to be perfectly natural when they are taking place. It is only when the dream images begin to rise to the plane of conscious action that we are struck with the bizarre elements in them or the dream as a whole.

The subconscious is preeminently the creature of suggestion. It receives, attends to and records every idea held in conscious mind. The subconscious immediately accepts everything we think of, read, hear, or in any way consciously experience, and enters it as a factor in its processes. The strength of the impression measures the power of influence on the subconscious. We may so strongly hold an idea in conscious action that its effects in subconscious will be indelibly fixed. We may repeat a milder idea often enough to produce the same ineradicable impression. Because of its one way of reasoning, it is the side of consciousness given up to habit. Having started to do a thing in a certain way, only profound impression of an opposite idea can change its action. This element, combined with the fact that the subconscious memory is perfect, explains its marvelous tenacity in reproducing things in body, mind and disposition for which we no longer have any need. We see this in the more than forty vestigial remains of an animal ancestry in the body, of more than thirty animal impulses as seen in the emotions and disposition, and in its reproduction of hereditary marks of all sorts in body, mind and character.

It is the body builder, and maintains its conditions. It keeps the whole body conformed to a general family and racial type. It takes care of all the functional activities of the body. It feeds and renews the seventeen thousand trillion cells of the body. It carries on chemical process in the body that would baffle the most expert chemist, and it does these things in accord with what it has learned in the past, or what we teach it in the present. Once given an idea of doing anything, it never deviates from it unless a new idea replaces the old one. Its relation, therefore, to the conscious mind is that of the builder to the architect. It cannot originate, but it can carry out perfectly.

Conscious mind must devise the plan upon which subconscious will act to give it external form. The general idea of health and vigor, of body will inevitably result in such conditions. Constant dwelling on happiness, prosperity or any other desired condition will furnish the subconscious builder with the plan by which it will cause such conditions. Of course, every negative idea held will work on the same principle and the subconscious will reproduce it in the body and conditions. So, we must not give place to a negative thought or word, for the builder will at once accept it and work it out in the outer.

The power of mimicry is a subconscious endowment, and it is universal in all forms of life. It appears in all the lower types of life, in animals and in humanity. One sees mimicry everywhere in nature, where the small insects, animals and birds take on the form and color of their surroundings. It appears in the larger animal forms, such as the polar bear, whose color conforms to his surroundings. It reaches its greatest activity in humanity, where it operates both unconsciously and by intention, We become like those with whom we associate, imitating their appearance, form, color, actions, tones of voice, and even taking on physical characteristics.

The power of good example and right associations rests upon mimicry. It imitates bad examples as faithfully as it does good. It stimulates the forms and expressions of sickness as fully as it reproduces those of health. It clothes the body with the images of power and energy or with weakness and failure, with equal facility. It builds after the images of love and confidence or fear and doubt, without power to change either. Holding the thought, "I am a weak worm of the dust," will create the impulse to crawl, while the thought "I am the son/daughter of the Most High" will make us rise to the mastery of all material and other conditions.

The subconscious accepts the strongest idea. If it is a negative, it will work out its negative results. If positive, it will produce positive effects. "I won’t have a headache today" will almost surely result in a headache, for "headache" is the strongest idea in the sentence. We should never affirm or deny a negative. Affirm the positive. If we deny a negative, we should follow it at once with the most positive, constructive statement.

This is an outline of the mechanism of thinking. Study it until you understand it. Use it faithfully and you can produce any condition you desire. If you want health, and will keep clear of all thoughts of sickness, filling the subconscious with the images of virile, abounding health, it will be yours. If you want happiness, and will fill your mind with the images of happiness, it will come into realization. If you want prosperity, and will hold the idea of what you want steadily before the subconscious, it will set in motion the dynamic energies that produce abundance. You can do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be, if you will use this little key to personal power.

The superconscious mind is that phase of the mind that is divine. It does not reason at all; it knows, and announces that which it knows. Others may say "this is the truth," but it says, "I am the Truth." It sees Truth, Life and Being as they are, and announces them. It sees the Truth in which there is no error. It sees the Absolute in which there is no duality of expression. It furnishes the ideal for thought and action, which the other sides of the mind may act upon and determine whether they will follow or modify them to suit material conditions. The high visioning power of the seers of all ages is found in the superconscious. It announces in the terms of mysticism, "Matter is not, sickness is not, poverty is not, sin is not, death is not. There is only life and Truth." It is the function of objective consciousness to pass upon these statements, to classify and adapt them to the conditions of material life, and then to give the subconscious builder his plans for embodying them in life and character.