How To Put The Subconscious Mind To Work
	Larvated – Placebos - (Masked) Suggestion <  Previous Contents Next  >

Mental healing should embrace the use of every form of suggestion that leads to health of mind and body.

Any reputable physician, if he were to draw back the curtain of light to show you the truth of healings in many cases where he didn't know what to prescribe, would tell you that in such cases it is very common for physicians to administer "placebos"--(larvated suggestion) make- believe medicine, colored water, bread pills, sugar- coated pills, etc. This is very often given when physicians do not know the cause of the trouble and is administered because people are so educated that they want a physician to prescribe some kind of medicine. The administration of placebos is originally intended to quiet the patient and satisfy his expectation of medicine, but in addition to this, most any physician will tell you that people are completely healed by these make-believe medicines.

The power of the mind over the body is so universally accepted now that it does not seem

necessary to even give illustrations. One or two might be given in passing. Dr. Hack Tuke, the famous English physician, in making his investigations on imagination effecting sickness and healings, tells of an army officer who was subject to severe cramps of the stomach which powerful remedies had failed to cure. The doctor finally gave him "powder containing four grains of ground biscuit." This was to be taken every seven minutes with a caution by the doctor that it should be taken exactly on time, owing to its great power. The man was cured in a short time, the "powerful drug" acting upon the imagination of the patient to make him well.

Another unique experiment Dr. Tuke relates is a case in which the house surgeon in a French Hospital experimented with one hundred persons, prescribing sugared water for them. Then with a great show of anxiety and concern announced that they had given them a powerful emetic instead of the intended remedy. No fewer than eighty--four-fifths of the entire number--were unmistakably sick.

In the hands of the prudent physician, who is distrustful of his own diagnosis, the placebo is of the very essence of conservatism. It conceals the ignorance of the doctor--which is in itself a measure of great therapeutic value--and it supplies the patient's strenuous demand for medicine. It gives the physician time to study the case, and "nature" an opportunity to do his work for him. Best of all, it does no harm; and when accompanied by an intelligent therapeutic suggestion, it often does much good.

"Masked suggestion"--placebo, brings about an effect because the subject is told positively that the drug or treatment which is being administered, will bring about certain results and this suggestion having been repeated in different forms until the mind of the patient confidently expects the stated results, and then the "thought takes form in action."

Commenting upon Larvated Suggestion, Chas. F. Winbrigler says :

The sick man who goes to see the doctor is examined and wisely informed that he has a serious illness, but that he can be readily cured by taking the medicine prescribed. He swallows the drastic drug and soon begins to feel much better. He believes the medicine (larvated suggestion) has done the work, whereas the examination and the assurance of the doctor were the secret of cure through the vital functions of the organic life. Bread pills or other things in the Materia Medica could have been just as efficiently used as the medicine which was prescribed and taken. We are coming to a time when this wonderful law of suggestion will be as generally used as medicines have been, and perhaps more effectively and less deleterioush.

And Thomson Jay Hudson in "Mental Medicine" also states:

Indeed, I know some physicians of high standing in the profession who never administer anything in the form of medicine except the placebo, accompanied by a vigorous suggestion as to the expected results, firmly believing that the therapeutic value of all medicines is due wholly to suggestion.

It may be noted, in passing, that one of the most hopeful indications of advancement in medical science consists in the fact that the profession now very generally recognize the placebo when diagnosis fails. Manufacturing pharmacists consequently derive a large income from the sale of the ready-made placebo. That many fatal mistakes have been avoided by its employment, and many cures effected, goes without saying.

So, you see, from every side suggestion of various kinds are being used more and more.

There are many recognized international authorities, both in medicine and laymen with whom I agree--that ultimately suggestion will take the place of medicine entirely. The heyday for medicine is passed. The new age for nature to help itself is dawning. The kingdom of man is approaching, and the kingdom of God is not far distant. It is within each individual.

In fact, Placebos, is considered quite ethical these days as a substitute for "Mental Healing."

Hugo Muensterberg, himself a physician and one of the world's acknowledged authorities on psychology gives added emphasis to the wise use of Larvated Suggestion when he says:

This belief in the future entrance of a change frequently demands an artificial reinforcement. There belongs first the application of external factors which awaken in the background of the mind the supporting idea that something has been changed in the whole situation or that some helpful influence has made the improvement possible. Medicines of colored and flavored water, applications of electric instruments without currents, in extreme cases even the claptrap of a sham operation with a slight cut in the skin, may touch those brain cells which words alone cannot reach with sufficient energy and may thus secure the desired psychophysical effect. The patient who by merely mental inhibition has lost his voice for weeks may larynx with a mirror and has held an electrode without battery connection on the throat.

Repetition. One of the axioms of Suggestive Therapeutics is that "Suggestions gain increased force by repetition." A constant repetition of the suggestions fastens it firmly upon the mind of the patient, therefore the healer should repeat the key-word of the suggestion again and again--not so as to become monotonous--but in a different arrangement of words, remembering to bring the key-word, or principal suggestion into each new arrangement. Remember that planting a suggestion is like attacking a fort. It must be attacked from all sides, and so a repetition of the suggestion in different forms is important. In repeating the suggestion, let the key-word ring out strong and vibrant.

Henry Wood in Ideal Suggestions Through Mental Photography, says.

This deeper or transconscious mind can only be gradually changed in most cases, and that by means of a stream of changed conscious thinking, which must be poured in for a considerable time. It may be compared to a cistern into which a small stream of turbid water has been flowing for a long period, until the process has rendered the whole contents turbid. Now begin to turn in a stream of pure sparkling water, and gradually the character of the whole aggregation will be changed. Just so by a controlled thinking power we can now begin to rectify the reservoir of mind by turning in a stream of pure wholesome thought, until the quality of the whole is purified.

When this has been thoroughly accomplished the deeper ego will not accept or fear disease and contagion, but will go among them unscathed. Realizing the importance of a rectification, we should each lose no time in turning such a sparkling rill of positive thought into the submerged mentality, as will make it grow clearer and stronger, so that when disorder or inharmony knocks at its door, it will respond: "Depart; I never knew you!" The recognition of man's two differing minds, and a reasonable discrimination between their provinces and operations, explains a great mass of phenomena otherwise unintelligible.

As Swami A. P. Mukerji in "Spiritual Consciousness" has also said:

At first when you start forming a new habit, there is resistance from your brain and many heroic efforts are necessary. Then gradually the task shall become easy and really pleasant. Another important fact to remember is that if at some hour today you go into your room and send forth an intense thought, next day the same thought shall start up in your mind at the same point of time.

This is known as Periodicity. Therefore, supposing you want to perform some difficult task with which your mind is not accustomed to cope, sit up a few hours previous to that time and suggest to yourself, "I wish you, subjective mind, to prepare yourself for the performance of such and such a task tomorrow at 4 o'clock. Be sure you do it. Now prepare yourself."

Next day you will find yourself quite prepared to accomplish the task. Suppose you wanted to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning. Before retiring to bed say to yourself on your subjective mind:

"Look here--I wish you to get up (or wake me up) at 4 o'clock. Be sure you do it.".

You will wake at that hour.

Always concentrate your attention upon such autosuggestions and repeat them till you feel sure your commands will be obeyed and they will be, if you insist upon their fulfillment positively and persistently with confidence. Believe in your power to succeed and everything in nature shall rush to your aid.

There is always a way to be healed by mind. One should not only keep repeating formulae, but should also continue to seek help.

The author of the book of Silent Prayer, printed by "Unity" expresses the idea, which all seeking health should commit to memory.

By experimentation, modern metaphysical healers have discovered a great number of laws that rule in the realms of mind, and they all agree that no two cases for healing are exactly alike. Therefore, one who prays for health should understand that it is not the fault of the healing principle that his patient is not instantly restored. The fault may be in his own lack of persistency or understanding; or it may be due to the patient's dogged clinging to discordant thoughts. In any case he must persist in his prayers until the walls of resistance are broken down and the healing currents are turned in.

It was long thought and steadily maintained that the stigmatists did wonders. As we have explained earlier in this volume, it will be by repeated thought, as the stigmatists steadily maintained, not by intermittent, spasmodic endeavor, that those seeking health, success and happiness will finally have that which they desire. Results are obtained not by half hearted visioning, but by steadily holding in the chamber of imagery "seeing," the picture and desire that one wishes to materialize.

Those who seek health, success and happiness through the inflexible laws of life, namely, by conforming to hygienic, spiritual and natural conditions, aided by the power of mind, often become like the novitiate studying the piano--impatient.

Many of us act almost childlike in our inability to maintain a continued state of mind for that which we desire, we are impatient for quick results.

A child too young to understand when given music lessons and kept playing the scales or exercises wonders, when tunes would be so much easier, so much more pleasant, what it is all about. But the music master knows what he is doing. Practice makes all technique a habit, accordingly, later on, the player will unconsciously have everything at his finger tips, and his execution will be as nearly perfect as possible.

It is similarly true of mind healing. We must have the repetition of thought, the repeated exercises, the steady concentration, the drill and relaxation, the continued holding of the thought until our mental technique becomes a habit and we accomplish what we desire.

We must hold certain thoughts in the conscious mind day after day, month after month and in some cases, year after year, until those thoughts become an essential part of our being, until they reach the subconscious mind and there become a fixed habit.

If a person desires to have abundance, prosperity and success, he must hold thoughts reflecting those conditions in his mind until they bring results. No fleeting thought of success, no passing thought of prosperity, no flitting thought of abundance, can bring the ideal state which one aspires to. The thought must be held day by day until the desire has been accomplished.

The subjective mind will be found to respond more faithfully with each succeeding success. After much training it will act with power and celerity. It will perform with fidelity the labor entrusted to it. Give it instructions with objective confidence, and it will be found a useful and faithful servant. This confidence is to be stimulated by autosuggestion and faithful endeavor.

Should you not succeed the first time, even though you had labored an hour, do not stop to question future attempts, but repeat and repeat the same every day or oftener if you can. In the meantime say to yourself many times a day: "I will succeed. My subjective mind has the power, and it is going to obey." In time the subjective mind will become an obedient servant. It has the power. All it wants is the training. Persistent auto-suggestion will accomplish its obedient assistance, even starting from the objective mind's disbelief. Remember the premise of its amenability to control by suggestion. Cease, then, all adverse autosuggestions and employ all favorable suggestions. In this way a man may persuade himself even against his first premise.

It is well known from every one's personal experience that a physical act becomes more natural and more easily performed the oftener it is repeated. "Practice makes perfect" is the common adage. Do physical acts, after being often repeated, become purely automatic; an act without the direction of the mind? Is it the muscle and nerve that has been trained, or is it an intelligence, the mind?

Elizabeth Towne's experience in "Self Healing by Herself," presents a wonderful history of her own physical cure, after which she says:

Then I set to work with good will to understand the Jaw of wealth and live it. I meant to make of myself a magnet which should draw gold and silver and green- backs, instead of steel filings. I meant to let the spirit of me (God), lead me into the ways of wealth--out of the ways of poverty into the ways of plenty and peace and pleasantness.

I had been years making a healthy woman of myself, now I meant to charge myself with real dynamic power for attracting money. I meant to be so right with the kingdom of Good that good money would not only follow me but catch up with me.

I went to filling myself up on I-shall-be-wealthy statements. I could see no results but I kept at it. For hours a day, whilst busy at all sorts of work, I poured hi those future tense statements. I kept it up for months in spite of the fact that I could see little results if any. I could have kept my soul and body together on the money I took in, but there were other souls and bodies to be kept, and still those old ends that would not quite meet, even yet.

Then suddenly it came to me one day that I was putting off my wealth to some future time. I must claim wealth NOW. Then I began to say, I AM wealth--I AM. I said it actually millions of times. And I tried to imagine it true, and to live up to it. When I had not money enough to buy a thing needed I consoled myself by calling it mine anyhow--as we used to do when we were children. When we needed something and I did have the dollar for it I imagined that dollar as one of a boundless store, and I spent it willingly, smilingly. I blessed it and bade it Godspeed. I took infinite pains to get into the wealthy attitude of mind over the spending of every five-cent piece that went through my purse. You see, I used to squeeze every nickel and hate to part with it, because I saw 100 places where it "ought'' to go. Now I was taking great pains to spend as the truly wealthy spend, with that sense of plenty always in reserve.

By little fits and starts more money came to me. My success grew by fits and starts. There would be quite a swell in the tide, then apparently a dead level; then an- other swell. But always there would come a little higher swell.

I was healing and teaching along like this (doing lots of "charity work'" too, as every healer, even a doctor, must), and my finances taking little rises in the right direction, when I found that somehow we were holding our own--no new debts were being added. Still the old ones stood and there was no prospect of liquidating them. But deep down m my heart I found for the first time a sort of steady faith that I was really getting ahead, and that in due time I would be able to pay all those old debts. There were not so many of them, nor so great, but there were enough to be a mill-stone about the neck of my spirits whenever I remembered them.

To my mind this is the greatest self-healing I have ever done. So I have told it to you in the hope that you will understand and be inspired to the persistence necessary to the working out of your own problems of finance.

No idea held in the conscious mind, if it be persistently maintained fails to receive attention in the subconscious. Everything we read or hear, think or feel or in any way consciously experience, is entered as a factor in the subconscious processes.

An idea may be so strong held in conscious action, that its effects in subconscious will be indelibly fixed. Or the milder idea may be repeated 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 memory of the subconscious is perfect, explains its marvelous tenacity in reproducing things in body, mind and disposition for which we no longer have any need. This is seen 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.

So, in this process repetition is also most valuable. Repeat over and over again, at stated intervals, day after day. Thus we give depth to the impression. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and demonstration.

Affirmations and suggestions are useful in arriving at a knowledge of a given truth, but when it becomes one's habit of mind to think in a certain way, it has become a matter of his permanent conscious state. He has only to turn his attention to the fact in consciousness and act at once upon it. It ceases to be a series of affirmations and becomes a state of realization.

Someone has well put it in this fashion: Permit me to emphasize the training of the subjective character. Make it a strong, useful servant, one that will defend you when a crisis comes, and it will repay you in a rich fruitage every day of your life.