Dr. Lothax von Blenk-Schmidt, a member of the Rocket
Society and an outstanding research electronic engineer,
gives the following condensed summary of how he used his
subconscious mind to free himself from certain death at the
hands of brutal guards in a Russian prison camp coal mine.
He states as follows: “I was a prisoner of war in a coal mine
in Russia, and I saw men dying all around me in that prison
compound. We were watched over by brutal guards, arrogant
officers, and sharp, fast-thinking commissars.
After a short medical checkup, a quota of coal was assigned
to each person. My quota was three hundred pounds per day.
In case any man did not fill his quota, his small food ration was
cut down, and in a short time he was resting in the cemetery
“I started concentrating on my escape. I knew that my
subconscious mind would somehow find a way. My home in Germany was destroyed, my family wiped out; all my friends
and former associates were either killed in the war or were
in concentration camps. “I said to my subconscious mind, I
want to go to Los Angeles, and you will find the way.” I had
seen pictures of Los Angeles and I remembered some of the
boulevards very well as well as some of the buildings. “Every
day and night I would imagine I was walking down Wilshire
Boulevard with an American girl whom I met in Berlin prior
to the war (she is now my wife). In my imagination we would
visit the stores, ride buses, and eat in the restaurants. Every
night I made it a special point to drive my imaginary American
automobile up and down the boulevards of Los Angeles. I
made all this vivid and real. These pictures in my mind were as
real and as natural to me as one of the trees outside the prison
camp.
“Every morning the chief guard would count the prisoners
as they were lined up. He would call out ‘one, two, three,’ etc,
and when seventeen was called out which was my number in
sequence, I stepped aside. In the meantime, the guard was
called away for a minute or so, and on his return he started by
mistake on the next man as number seventeen. When the crew
returned in the evening, the number of men was the same, and
I was not missed, and the discovery would take a long time.
“I walked out of the camp undetected and kept walking
for twenty-four hours, resting in a deserted town the next day.
coal trains going to Poland and traveled on them by night, until
I was able to live by fishing and killing some wild life. I found
finally I reached Poland. With the help of friends, I made my
way to Lucerne, Switzerland.
“One evening at the Palace Hotel, Lucerne, I had a talk
a man and his wife from the United States of America.
This man asked me if I would care to be a guest at his home in Santa Monica, California. I accepted, and when I arrived
in Los Angeles, I found that their chauffeur drove me along
Wiltshire Boulevard and many other boulevards which I had
imagined so vividly in the long months in the Russian coal
mines. I recognized the buildings which I had seen in
so often. It actually seemed as if I had been in Los Angeles
before. I had reached my goal.
“I will never cease to marvel at the wonders of the
subconscious mind. Truly, it has ways we know not of.”