The power of your subconscious is enormous. It inspires you,
it guides you, and it reveals to you names, facts, and scenes
‘rom the storehouse of memory. Your rubconscious started
your heartbeat, controls the circulation of your blood, regulates
your digestion, assimilation, and elimination. When you eat a
piece of bread, your subconscious mind transmutes it into
tissue, muscle, bone, and blood. This process is beyond the
ken of the wisest man who walks the earth. Your subconscious.
mind controls all the vital processes and functions of your
body and knows the answer to all problems.
Your subconscious mind never sleeps, [and] n.ver rests.
It is always on the job. You can discover the miracle-working
power of your subconscious by plainly stating to your
subconscious prior to sleep that you wish a certain specific
thing accomplished. You will be delighted to discover that
forces within you will be” released, leading to the desired result.
Here, then, is a source of power and wisdom, which places you
in touch with omnipotence or the power that moves the world,
guides the planets in their course, and causes the sun to shine.
Your subconscious mind is the source of your ideals,
aspirations, and altruistic urges. It was through the subconscious- mind that Shakespeare perceived great truths hidden from
the average man of his day. Undoubtedly, it was the response
of his subconscious mind that caused the Greek sculptor,
Phidias, to portray beauty, order, symmetry, and proportion
in marble and bronze. It enabled the Italian artist, Raphael,
to paint Madonnas, and Ludwig van Beethoven to compose
symphonies.
In 1955 1 lectured at the Yorn Forest University, Rishikesh,
India, and there I chatted with a visiting surgeon from Bombay.
He told me about Dr. James Esdaille, a Scotch surgeon, who
worked in Bengal before ether or other modern methods
of anesthesia were discovered. Between 1843 and 1846, Dr.
Esdaille performed about four hundred major operations of all
kinds, such as amputations, removal of tumors and cancerous
growths, as well as operations on the eye, ear, and throat. All
operations were conducted under mental anesthesia only. This
Indian doctor at Rishikesh informed me that the postoperative
mortality rate of patients operated on by Dr. Esdaille was
extremely low, probably two or three percent. Patients felt no
pain, and there were no deaths during the operations.
Dr. Esdaille suggested to the subconscious minds of all
his patients, who were in a hypnotic state, that no infection
or septic condition would develop. You must remember
that this was before Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and others
who pointed out the bacterial origin of disease and causes
of infection due to unsterilized instruments and virulent
organisms. This Indian surgeon said that the reason for
the low mortality rate and the general absence of infection,
which was reduced to a minimum, was undoubtedly due to
the suggestions of Dr. Esdaille to the subconscious minds of
his patients. They responded according to the nature of his
suggestion. It is simply wonderful, when you conceive how a surgeon,
over one hundred twenty years ago, discovered the miraculous
wonder-working powers of the subconscious mind.
Doesn’t it cause you to be seized with a sort of mystic awe
when you stop and think of the transcendental powers of
subconscious mind? Consider its extrasensory perceptions,
such as its capacity for clairvoyance and clairaudience, its
independence of time and space, its capacity to render you free
from all pain and suffering, and its capacity to get
to all problems, be they what they may. All these and
more reveal to you that there is a power and an
within you that far transcends your intellect, causing you to
marvel at the wonders of it all. All these experiences
to rejoice and believe in the miracle-working powers
own subconscious mind.