The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental ScienceTroward, T. (Thomas)
Religion
The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science
Troward, T. (Thomas)
New Thought
the comparison of facts, and deduction by the application of universal
principles. Now it is the deductive method only which is followed by the
subjective mind. Innumerable experiments on persons in the hypnotic state
have shown that the subjective mind is utterly incapable of making the
selection and comparison which are necessary to the inductive process, but
will accept any suggestion, however false, but having once accepted any
suggestion, it is strictly logical in deducing the proper conclusions from
it, and works out every suggestion to the minutest fraction of the results
which flow from it.
As a consequence of this it follows that the subjective mind is entirely
under the control of the objective mind. With the utmost fidelity it
reproduces and works out to its final consequences whatever the objective
mind impresses upon it; and the facts of hypnotism show that ideas can be
impressed on the subjective mind by the objective mind of another as well
as by that of its own individuality. This is a most important point, for it
is on this amenability to suggestion by the thought of another that all the
phenomena of healing, whether present or absent, of telepathy and the like,
depend. Under the control of the practised hypnotist the very personality
of the subject becomes changed for the time being; he believes himself to
be whatever the operator tells him he is: he is a swimmer breasting the
waves, a bird flying in the air, a soldier in the tumult of battle, an
Indian stealthily tracking his victim: in short, for the time being, he
identifies himself with any personality that is impressed upon him by the
will of the operator, and acts the part with inimitable accuracy. But the
experiments of hypnotism go further than this, and show the existence in
the subjective mind of powers far transcending any exercised by the
objective mind through the medium of the physical senses; powers of
thought-reading, of thought-transference, of clairvoyance, and the like,
all of which are frequently manifested when the patient is brought into the
higher mesmeric state; and we have thus experimental proof of the existence
in ourselves of transcendental faculties the full development and conscious
control of which would place us in a perfectly new sphere of life.
But it should be noted that the control must be _our own_ and not that of
any external intelligence whether in the flesh or out of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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