How To Put The Subconscious Mind To Work
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Epilepsy is one of the diseases of which we know very little. To say that all Epilepsy is caused by suggestion may not be supported by some authorities, but I believe that nearly all authorities now accept the theory that there are at least certain kinds of Epilepsy which are psychic--mental.

Gowers has described psycho-epileptic attacks, the symptoms consisting principally of periodic attacks of intense fear or of intense depression, usually beginning and ending suddenly, but of more or less protracted duration.

Coriat, in "ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY" supports this theory. The purely psychic character of the attacks is shown in their origin in anxiety or other emotions, the complete or abortive persistence of the anxiety in the attacks, the cleavage of the personality, their automatic character, and the possibility of their artificial reproduction or the artificial synthesis of the lost memory for the attack.

When the attacks consist merely of periodic anxiety and depression, they can frequently be reproduced at will by allowing the mind to dwell upon the attacks and can even be prevented by directing the mind along other channels. The feeling of depersonalization, of unreality, the possibility of artificial reproduction of the attacks and of the artificial recovery of the amnesic period, shows that we are probably dealing with a process of mental dissociation.

If this be true, and it is as reasonable as any other theory which has yet been adduced to explain epileptic attacks, we see where psychology may be the key to solve the whole situation.

Many people in our classes who have been sufferers from Epilepsy have been greatly benefited by mental treatment. Oliver Sabin tells of a man who had been a victim of epilepsy for over forty years but when there came into his mind the realization of the truth that he was the image and likeness of God, that he lived and moved and had his being in the God-consciousness, and therefore was perfect as God is perfect, the epilepsy never again made its appearance. Yes, epilepsy can be healed.

One of the greatest mental healers in America, was, over twenty years ago, given up by some of the best physicians in the country, with the diagnosis that his malady would lead either to death or insanity. He is still living and, in his own language, "I am not a dead one, and if I am insane, I am enjoying it." He has not had an epileptic seizure for a quarter of a century.

Into one of Henry Victor Morgan's meetings there entered a young lady who had been an epileptic for years. She had heard the story of some one else who had been healed of epilepsy and was so thrilled with the thought that healing could be effected by mind and that she could be normal like others, that she took the statement exactly as it was given in the healing meeting that day and went out cured. She has not had a seizure since.

Yes, many people are healed of epilepsy. We may not know the particular thing that has caused it, but we do know that mind treatments can heal.

The young lady mentioned above was healed and never had a second treatment, however, if one is not healed so quickly, the following method of treatment will be of great service.

That people have been cured of epilepsy is no longer a question. Many have been. The best suggestion we can offer you is that you practice the silence and charge the subconscious mind faithfully each night upon retiring with this affirmation (also take the affirmation when you hold the silence).

All the organs of my body are functioning normally. I am a son of the Divine, perfect in Spirit, mind and body. I am at one with the Universal Spirit of God and just as there is no imperfection in the Father, neither is there any in me. I am well, whole and perfect, strong and harmonious.

If you will hold this thought as mentioned above at least four times a day, five to fifteen minutes at each period, and then again as you drop off to sleep, using the method of charging the subconscious mind as outlined in this volume and Practical Psychology and Sex Life, Volume 3 in this series under chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, you can get your mind so that your seizures will not be so frequent. The main thing is to have your mind thoroughly occupied with the affirmation or formula we gave you above (or other formulae), a few days before your customary seizures. When you have passed one or two of your ordinary periods for the paroxysms you will feel much encouraged. This will give you more strength to continue holding this thought we have given you, most faithfully a few days and hours before the expected time. This in time will crowd out the subconscious thought of epilepsy, making you well.

It will not be long before you will have passed the time for seizure the second time and probably the third time for a seizure, then again it will come back. This is to be expected but be not discouraged ; know that if you have been able to de- lay one seizure each week, that you will have that same power again and in time have perfect control.

Probably, for some reason or other, there is deeply imbedded in the subconscious mind the idea that at certain times the seizures are going to return. Every time that so-and-so happens, so-and-so will follow.

To make the opposite suggestion strong enough and often enough is to effect a healing, while, as we mention above, some are healed instantaneously.

Perhaps not all epileptics are responsive to mental healing and yet that may be due to the fact that we have not learned the last little letter in the alphabet of healing. Possibly, therefore, all cases of epilepsy can be healed. Surely it is worth while to make the effort. There is a large percentage of cures to the credit of suggestion. Some who have practiced this method believe that every case of epilepsy can be cured in the young before forty years of age is reached. In view of the fact that many have been healed even after that age we need not give up trying just because we have not yet learned a one hundred per cent healing.

The late Hugo Munsterberg, M. D., for a number of years Professor in Harvard University, was successful in curing certain kinds of diseases by hypnotism. If every other method fails, we should not hesitate in recommending that this method might prove successful with certain subjects, if treated by a reputable practitioner of hypnosis. To verify this method we give below an illustration by Professor Munsterberg.

A young woman afflicted with epilepsy was brought up in the belief that she had only from time to time fainting attacks from overwork, and with them secondarily neurasthenic symptoms, especially spells of depression colored by a constant fear of the next fainting. She had heard voices all her life and they frightened her in an intolerable way. I produced a very slight hypnotic state. I concentrated my effort entirely on suggestions which were to give her new interest in life, and diminished the emotional character of the voices without even trying to make them disappear. I proceeded for several months. The young woman herself believed that the fainting attacks came less frequently afterwards; yet I am inclined to think that that is an illusion. But there was no doubt that her whole personality became almost a different one with the new share in the world.

The epilepsy remained probably unchanged but all the superadded emotions were annihilated and she felt an entirely new courage which allowed her to control herself between her regular attacks. She had been unable to undertake any regular work before for a long while, but all that improved. More than a year afterward, she wrote me: "I have really worked most of the time this past winter and spring and I think I can see a steady though slow gain. I am reading quite a little and doing it for the most part easily. To be sure I have, after I have read, hard times with the voices but their character is usually less determined and fearful than formerly. Several times I have thought I must come again to you but each time I have started again to fight it out for myself, but now, as I am gaining, I can better estimate the great help your influence was to me at a juncture when everything seemed so hopeless and helpless."

Even in slight psychasthenic disturbances, the psychotherapeutic influence is not always successful, especially if there is no time for full treatment. But it is very interesting to see how even in such cases the symptom is some- how changing, almost breaking to pieces. It becomes clear that a protracted effort in the same direction would destroy the trouble completely. Typical is a case like the following.

An elderly woman has been troubled her life long by a disproportionate fear of thunderstorms with almost hysterical symptoms. As she had no other complaint, I hardly found it worth while to enter into a systematic treatment and could not expect much of a change from a short treatment, considering that her hysteric response had lasted through half a century. As she begged for some treatment, I brought her into a drowsy state and told her that she would in future enjoy the thunderstorms as noble expressions of nature. The whole procedure took a few minutes. Yet after some summer months she wrote me a letter which clearly indicated this characteristic compromise between the habitual dread and the reinforced counter idea. "I have the same sick dread at the sight of thunder clouds that I have always had, but I seem to have gotten somehow a most desperate determination to control my fear. I have done this to the extent of keeping my eyes open and looking at the storm. Is that hypnotism or pride."

We have had enough evidence now by the practice of mental therapeutics to know that insanity can be cured. Insanity may be healed also by music.

There is a doctor who does not want his name known because he would be ostracized by his profession, but who tells me that he has healed many a person from insanity by talking directly to the subconscious mind. The patient may seem to be listless and paying no attention to what the doctor says. That does not discourage the experimenter. He continues to talk in a constructive, positive, health bringing, normally constituted way to the subconscious mind of the individual. Sometimes weeks afterward he will see the same patients (he's working in a big State Insane Hospital) when they will speak to him in a normal way and say they knew everything he was telling them when he was talking to their subconscious and yet they could not answer, or they seemed to be speechless.

It is the same thing in healing insanity as any other kind of weakness or sickness, namely, reach the subconscious by a counter suggestion. Crowd out the old thoughts and images with the new.

One of the particularly evil suggestions of the day is implanted in wide spread medical dicta relative to venereal diseases, especially syphilis, which is said to be detected by the blood test.

Of all of the discouraging things I ever met in my practice, the most pronounced examples (psychologically speaking) have been good, normal young women who have contracted syphilis from their husbands, have had blood tests made month after month, with the awful news, periodically imparted to them, that they are no better.

George Starr White, M. D., has written a most illuminating treatise, "The Blood Test Fallacy" in which he shows that blood tests are absolutely erroneous and that there is nothing to them. We have records of people who have been healed of blood poisoning, without any recurrence in any way whatsoever for fifteen years and more.

To tell a person that he or she is infected with the most loathsome and horrible of scourges and then to continue to inform the sufferer that he or she is getting no better (because blood tests indicate no improvement) is about as deadly a suggestion as imagination could conceive.

Don't believe everything that you hear.

For many years the medical profession has been taught, and they, in turn, have taught the laity, that "pure blood means health." How often we hear it said that "the blood tells."

Inasmuch as great truths are taught by similes, I shall introduce one here: In a certain village there are one hundred inhabited houses. The water supply is carried through a common main to all these houses. A sewer system takes away the liquid refuse from these houses. Would you judge the character of any one of those inhabitants by the water-supply pipe, or by the outflow of the sewer ? The water might be contaminated that goes to those houses, but the inmates might be educated enough to so change that water as to make it safe to use. One house might pour quantities of alkali into the sewer, but another might pour in enough acid refuse to neutralize the alkali of the other. In short, no one would think of judging the character of the inhabitants in a village by the water supply, nor by the sewer outflow.

In all life--be it animal or vegetable--there is a "liquid tissue" which acts as a carrier of food to all parts and also acts as a carrier of detritus, or worn out tissues, to be cast out.

The sap of the tree carries the life-giving particles, be they gaseous or solid, to every part of the tree and fruit. It also carries off, for final disposal, that which is not wanted by the tree. Would you imagine that the sap of a tree would tell that a limb was dead, or that some fungus had attacked the bark of the tree or the fruit? No, it will not.

The blood of any animal--red blood or white blood-- carries food to all parts of the body and carries away the waste particles. The fluid that carries the food is called arterial fluid, while that which picks up and carries away the waste is called venus fluid.

In warm-blooded, and in some cold-blooded animals, the food-carrying fluid is red and called arterial, or oxygenated blood, while the waste-carrying fluid is blue and called venus, or deoxygenated blood.

This blood is a tissue just as much as muscle and bone are tissues. It is a part of the "community" and like the water pipe in a community, carries something in for the "families" to use, and like the sewer, carries out of the "families" what is not wanted.

From time immemorial there has appeared to be something mysterious about red blood. Had the "old philosophers" reasoned from the standpoint of evolution, they would have discovered that the juice of plants and the sap of trees and the white blood of some animals and the red blood of other animals, are all for the same purpose and act about the same. Because the blood was red and represented life, as it were, the erroneous idea arose that "pure blood means health."

An animal may have any kind of disease and still not have it show in the blood. The blood itself can be diseased, and because of its inability to carry on its work make all other parts of the body sick, but an arm or a leg or any part of the body can be diseased and the blood not show it at all.

I have often seen the blood of persons dying from various diseases tested and show nothing abnormal, except, maybe, a lack of red cells, the carriers of food, and an increase of "white cells," the carriers of waste material. By certain standard laboratory tests, the blood may even indicate disease when this action resulted simply from some temporary change in the blood itself, dependent upon the demands made upon it.

Now I expect those who have not investigated the subject, or those who have not made it a business to study laboratory methods of all kinds, to say that such statements as the above cannot be true. I am prepared to say that I know they are true.

I have sent, or had sent, samples of blood from persons afflicted with known diseases, to State and Government laboratories as well as to the best known private laboratories, all using so-called ethical and standard methods of testing, and received no two reports alike. The reports are always more often contrary to the clinical findings than corresponding to them.

Here is the crucial test: Let the blood be sent to any board-of-health laboratory, state or city--and no symptoms of any kind be given, and the reports will be a revelation to the sender. If the symptoms are given, be they correct or not, the reports will usually be in keeping with the report sent.

I have squandered hundreds of dollars on laboratories throughout the United States to make sure that I was correct in this and now I know that I am correct!

I have had personal training in all modern laboratory work and I know that I know what I say when I state that there is no test of the blood that will tell what ails the person from whom that blood was taken, unless the disease be of the blood itself!

I have talked "confidentially'' with the heads of the best laboratories in the land and they have told me the same thing, but added, that inasmuch as their work was that of testing, they had to use the recognized, standard, ethical methods. They also would state, if closely questioned, that they usually reported to suit the sender, for to be at variance with the sender would likely make them lose his patronage. This is human nature. There is no use in trying to side step that factor, even if the blood would tell. But the blood cannot tell!

The brain or nervous system sends out a call for certain food and the blood brings it, if it can be had, or can be manufactured for it in the system. The blood then picks up what waste it can and carries it off with whatever it may pick up along the way and sets it free through the various channels provided for it in the system.

Nature has a way of walling off all localized diseased tissues if given a chance. While that process is going on the "builders'" are very busy and call for materials that they would not otherwise need. Certain portions of the blood contents might be depleted for a short time, but the blood always seeks its equilibrium. Depletion can take place from numerous causes, therefore no test is reliable for that. The waste-carriers in the blood may be overworked from some localized disease, but the blood is so eager to equalize its load that it is impossible to tell by a blood analysis just what the blood is doing in carrying away debris.

Here is what any one can prove and settle all controversy : Take blood from any person not living rightly and it will have a certain test. Change the habits of that individual for a day, if no more, and then test again. The "blood picture" will be entirely changed. If a person overeats, the blood has to work as hard to take away the excess as if it had to carry away from a diseased part in the breast, arm or leg.

The blood of one who breathes only a fifth of his capacity will have an entirely different test than that of one who breathes three-fifths of his capacity.

Many a person has gone to a sudden grave because some laboratory reported that his "blood test" indicated that he had some incurable disease. Many a family has been broken up because some laboratory has reported from the "blood test" that one or the other of the pair had syphilis. Many a doctor has given treatments that have ruined the patient's health because the laboratory had reported wrongly from the "blood test."

This state of affairs will not cease, in a general way, till the prominent medical men understand that the blood does not tell. When doctors understand that the person in toto must be diagnosed and not the blood tissue only, our methods of diagnosis will rapidly improve. Investigators are working on the wrong track. They are wasting valuable time and countless thousands of lives.

One of the most popular methods of medical faking at the present time, is to test "energies from the blood," then "find" every horrible disease known and tell the victim that they can guarantee a cure in a certain length of time for a certain sum of money. Had the gullible public not been fooled into thinking that "the blood tells"

there would not be so many fake "blood-testing systems" in vogue.

Regarding "energies from living tissues," I have written and talked about my findings after over forty years of careful investigation.

Live, red, arterial blood gives off an energy the same as the live, arterial sap in trees; while the energy from venus, or blue blood, while it is in the circulation, gives off energy the same as that from venus sap in the leaves of plants. After any blood is drawn it is venus, or deoxygenated blood. It is dead, hence it has the same energy as the air in the room or vessel that it is kept in. Dead material of any kind has lost its vital force, therefore it gives off no characteristic energy. Only vital force gives off energy! It is on the same plan as the water in a kettle--it gives off no steam till it is heated, then the amount of steam is in direct ratio to the amount of heat applied.

The State of California, always up and coming is leading the van in education along this line. The State bought enough pamphlets entitled "The Fallacy of Blood Test" by Dr. "White to send one to every voter in the State. The danger of circularizing foolish and absurd claims about blood tests is certainly apparent after you have read the foregoing by Dr. White.

Tumors of all sorts are simulated with a fidelity that is absolutely startling, and skilled doctors are constantly being deceived. They may occur in any part of the body, but are most common in the breast and abdomen. In the breast severe pain is complained of, and a hard mass may be felt, which, however, disappears if the hand be laid flat upon the part. Not so, however, with those in the abdomen. Patients with these perverted nerve centers have an unconscious power of either contracting part of a single abdominal muscle so rigidly that it forms a hard, round, solid swelling, plainly perceptible; or they can spasmodically contract the digestive canal at two points so as to imprison between them a largely distended portion which, being filled with flatus and partly movable and easily felt in the abdominal cavity, is exactly like an abdominal tumor. If the person be thin and the tumor be pressed down or resting on the abdominal aorta, the pulsations from the blood-vessel are so perfectly communicated to the false tumor that it is believed to be an aneurysm.

I was told by one of our best known physicians that fifty cases had been sent in to the hospital of this form of pulsating tumor, as abdominal aneurism; all of them, previous to admission, having been examined and certified to be such by medical men; and yet, on further examination, every one of them turned out to be of hysterical, and not local, origin. The only way in which they can, in many cases, be found out, is by anesthetizing the patient, when the tumor generally disappears, but, of course, returns immediately the patient regains consciousness. I remember in hospital practice one special case of this sort under my care of a woman whose whole abdomen was greatly distended by a supposed tumor of enormous size. Under chloroform it at once disappeared, but on regaining consciousness there it was as large as ever. The woman was not, therefore, "cured," and it was no comfort to her to know that when she was unconscious the swelling was not there; all she wished was to be relieved of it.

I therefore put her under chloroform again, and, while unconscious, tightly bound her round with plaster-of-Paris bandages that I allowed to set as hard as stone before she regained consciousness. This time, of course, she could not expand, and the "tumor" was gone. She was delighted we had "removed" it; and after keeping the bandage on three weeks, it was taken off, and the woman left, most thankful to be relieved of her distressing complaint.

The late George C. Pitzer, M. D. who was actively engaged in the practice of medicine with drugs as well as by suggestion for forty-two years says he has:

Cured by suggestion scores of people of organic diseases, as well as nervous troubles, where other means, such as medicines, electricity, etc., had entirely failed. I say I have cured scores of such cases by suggestion alone. I have cured people by suggestion that I could not even help with medicines.

It ill becomes, therefore, the medical man, who recognizes in these cases that it is the mind that cures, to decry any form of faith cure, however little its process may be understood by him in detail. We have seen that the powers of the conscious mind over the body are well-nigh immeasurable; and knowing, as we now do, that our old division into functional and organic diseases is merely the expression of our ignorance, and that all diseases, even hysterical, involve organic disturbance somewhere, we are prepared to believe that faith and other unorthodox cures, putting into operation such a powerful agent as the unconscious mind, or, if you prefer the formula, "the forces of nature" are not necessarily limited to so-called functional diseases at all.

That certain kinds of nervous diseases--functional disorders can be cured by mind, has been long accepted by many in the medical profession. Moreover, as we have already seen by the testimony given above, many are now admitting the same thing in connection with organic diseases, or at least are remaining discreetly on the fence. They are not yet definitely "agin" it or for it, but several are open minded and advanced enough to give the subject a thorough and conscientious study. One of the most outstanding studies along this line was conducted at the shrine of Lourdes in France.

Tens of thousands of people have been healed purely by mental suggestion after visiting the Lourdes Spring, France. Physicians became interested in the "miraculous" power which seemed to move within the waters of the great spring and examined patients before they had their healing and after. The record says that of 8,000 patients who were carefully watched by the medical profession there were something over 1,000 who were healed of functional diseases and over 7,000 of organic diseases. This leads us to conclude, with- out a peradventure of a doubt, that mind can heal organic as well as functional diseases.

In the early day of this mental science movement which is now gripping the civilized world, there were some of the skeptics gradually converted to the idea of the power of mind over the body and admitted that certain forms of nervous diseases might be healed. While there are skepticism’s in some quarters about the kinds of diseases to be treated by mental therapeutics I believe most of the leaders in mind cure treat all kinds of diseases, acute or chronic, with success.

And it does not matter the age of the person. Small children and adults are cured with equal degree of success. Patients with organic and functional ailments are treated with equal success. The mental therapeutist need turn nobody away.

Advanced mental scientists also, I think, will try not to maintain too great an extreme. We would not say that suggestion will cure every case of sickness, functional or organic, because it will not.

Not because it cannot, but because the human element sometimes enters into the situation to such an extent that the patient is unready or in some way unable to get en rapport with the healer or the natural laws.

But when the patient conforms to all the natural laws of living, as outlined in this series, becoming in thorough harmony--rapport--with his healer and his God; then he may claim that everything which man and God can do can be done, and that the same power which made man can surely keep him well.

There is no limit to the power of mind in healing.