The Mystic Will: A Method of Developing and Strengthening the Faculties of the Mind, through the Awakened Will, by a Simple, Scientific Process Possible to Any Person of Ordinary IntelligenceLeland, Charles Godfrey
Philosophy
The Mystic Will: A Method of Developing and Strengthening the Faculties of the Mind, through the Awakened Will, by a Simple, Scientific Process Possible to Any Person of Ordinary Intelligence
Leland, Charles Godfrey
Mental suggestion
But he is not the only thinker--there are all over the body ganglions
which act by a kind of fluid instinct, born of repetition, and when
the tired master even drowses or nods, or falls into a brown study,
then a marvelously curious mental action begins to show itself, for
dreams at once flicker and peer and steal dimly about him. This is
because the waking consciousness is beginning to shut out the world--
and its set of ideas.
So consistent is the system that even if Waking Reason abstract
itself, not to sleep, but to think on one subject such as writing a
poem or inventing a machine, certain affinities will sleep or dreams
begin to show themselves. When Genius is really at work, it sweeps
along, as it were, in a current, albeit it has enough reason left to
also use the rudder and oars, or spread and manage a sail. The reason
for the greater fullness of unusual images and associations (_i. e._,
the action of genius) during the time when one is bent on intellectual
invention is that the more the waking conscious Reason drowses or
approaches to sleep, the more do many images in Memory awaken and
begin to shyly open the doors of their cells and peep out.
In the dream we also proceed, or rather drift, loosely on a current,
but are without oars, rudder or sail. We are hurtled against, or
hurried away from the islands of Images or Ideas, that is to say, all
kinds of memories, and our course is managed or impelled, or guided by
tricky water-sprites, whose minds are all on mischief bent or only
idle merriment. In any case they conduct us blindly and wildly from
isle to isle, sometimes obeying a far cry which comes to them through
the mist--some echoing signal of our waking hours. So in a vision ever
on we go!
That is to say that even while we dream there is an unconscious
cerebration or voluntarily exerted power loosely and irregularly
imitating by habit, something like the action of our waking hours,
especially its brown studies and fancies in drowsy reveries or play.
It seems to me as if this sleep-master or mistress--I prefer the
latter--who attends to our dreams may be regarded as Instinct on the
loose, for like instinct she acts without conscious reasoning. She
carries out, or realizes, trains of thought, or sequences with little
comparison or deduction. Yet within her limits she can do great work,
and when we consider, we shall find that by following mere Law she has
effected a great, nay, an immense, deal, which we attribute entirely
to forethought or Reason. As all this is closely allied to the action
of the mind when hypnotized, it deserves further study.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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