Now comes the strange part. This clever (?) fellow, like the clever (?)
public, told all about the eating, never once mentioning thirst. Man
can go fifty or sixty days without food, but must have liquids. Being
for seventy-two hours without water or liquids will always produce
insanity, except through hypnosis. In these exposés nothing has ever
been said as to the method used to give them water. Nothing has
been said as to the emptying of the bladder. If food is taken into the
stomach and digested, the secretions must be at work; if the secretions
are at work, the bowels will move. These things were all overlooked
in these exposés; the stories were told of tubes in the bed, as to
procuring food, et cetera, but nothing was said of how the subject’s
system was freed of the waste from the food given him.
[Sidenote: No desire for contradictory facts]
A story was told of his lying in a cage; this act I have never
performed, but have proposed it, agreeing, if the profession desired
such a test, to lay a naked subject on a sheet on a bed, put a
cage over all, and seal it to the floor so as to demonstrate that
nothing was passed to the subject; but the wise and learned medical
profession cared for no test that demonstrated, through suggestion, the
possibility of suspending hunger, thirst, bowel and kidney action; such
knowledge they did not care to learn as it contradicted their teachings.
During the New York sleep, made by Kilmer, he was watched night and day
by relays of students from Bellevue Hospital. When arrangements were
being made, one student, who hoped to graduate that spring, insisted on
having charge of the entire affair, which, finally, was agreed upon. I
had nothing to do with the arrangements, which were made by my manager,
whom I had only known a week. If it were a “fake,” it is strange that
I should allow the details to be handled by a stranger. This would-be
doctor took charge of the sleeper, stayed up some forty-eight hours,
when off watch, hiding in a box to catch us _feeding_ him. On
the Wednesday night when he stood before the audience and told them
that the experiment was fair, and that I had done as claimed, he was
very angry. When he took charge, he told his chums that he would
_expose_ the fraud and thereby get a big advertisement for himself
when he began practicing, but when he found out there was no fraud to
expose, he regretted the loss of sleep and the time wasted; and later
presented a bill to me for services rendered, which bill as yet is
unreceipted.
The thought that a man with a “fake” would, could or dared to open
at Hammerstein’s with the proposition that I made is ridiculous.
The sleeper to be examined, weighed, and watched from being naked
to putting on a sound pair of silk tights, a silk shirt, a pair of
silk pajamas, to lie on a large mattress covered with a crumb cloth
(all previously examined), and for no one but the committee to touch
the subject, I not going nearer than five feet from him (giving my
exhibition on the stage would bring me that close). The thought of
it being other than genuine could only appear in the “mind” of an
ignoramus, or some one looking for newspaper notoriety.
[Sidenote: Tests of no value]
[Sidenote: Feeling vs. hypnosis]
During the test of a twenty-four hour sleep made for the New York
Herald (no test being of any value of less than seventy-two hours), the
wise doctors who knew _nothing_ of hypnosis, tested this subject
as to his _feeling_. For Heaven’s sake, what has _feeling_ to
do with _hypnosis_? They stuck pins into him, they dropped water
on his eyelids; they put him through all kinds of torture, but through
pure fortitude (?) he stood it. When this is possible all laws of
suggestion can be overcome. When “normally,” a man can control what the
doctor calls his reflexes, he is worthy of more money than he got out
of the alleged exposé.
[Sidenote: A good liar]
One wise (?) doctor called to him that there were rats in the room,
and because the subject did not respond, said he was not in hypnosis,
because the hypnotized subject responds to “suggestion.” Why, if the
subject could hear and respond to him he would be awake, because that
_is_ what constitutes the _waking_ state. The subject did not
hear him, did not respond to him, thereby proving that he _was_
in hypnosis. After the subject was awakened, they asked him if he did
not suffer severe pain _while they dropped water on his eyes_;
and, like a good liar, he said, “Yes,” the answer being put into his
mouth by the question asked. Why, if he suffered from the dropping of
the water on his eyelids the reflexes would have acted, the doctors
would have seen it, and the subject could not have endured it. But
this subject knew what he was up against, that the doctors were not
testing him as to hypnosis, but were simply there to prove their views
as to suggested anesthesia, he taking the pre-inspiration that he
would _sleep for the twenty-four hours and suffer no pain_, which
he did. The wise (?) doctors named everything that he did and then
asked him a question; or, in other words, they put the answers in his
mouth, which he gave them, taking _his_ word for it that he could
endure pain and suspend his reflex actions without hypnosis. These
doctors knew this to be an impossibility, yet the desire for newspaper
notoriety was so strong that they pretended to accept this degenerate’s
word. Assuming that he could do so, proved nothing. Lack of feeling is
not hypnosis. How can a man prove or disprove something which he knows
nothing about? I, myself, could prove no hypnotist to be a fake; all
that would be possible for me to do would be to force the hypnotist to
produce a phenomenon that would be satisfactory to me.
I perform many operations on hypnotized subjects. The two severest are
the stretching of the rectum and the cutting around the tender phrenum.
With the first I always get a groan, with the other a very pronounced
reflex action, and yet when the subject awakens he remembers nothing of
it. The extent of pre-inspiration I do not know, but in my long years
of experience, have met with but three, viz.: no feeling, rigidity,
awakening.
These alleged exposés have all been good advertising, inasmuch as
intelligent people are in no hurry to take the word of one who has
nothing at stake against one who has everything.
[Sidenote: Poor man]
The wisdom (?) of the general public is highly amusing. If you want
to feel sorry for mankind stand in front of a show window where a
subject is asleep. A certain percentage of these know he is not asleep,
“because he is placed there;” the next is certain he is not asleep
because he moves (no man moves in his sleep); and some ladies are
certain to go by and claim he is not asleep because he _breathes_.
These three are the chief explanations as to why the subject is not
asleep. Everybody asks how he is fed, and will he not be hungry when
he awakens? No one appreciates the absence of thirst. If everything
is a combination of attributes, a condition or combination must be
produced in the subject that has these functions suspended. The
suspension of hunger and bowel action are easily explained, but I have
no explanation to offer as to the suspending of thirst and kidney
action, knowing only that with a subject who has perfect confidence
in me I can suspend the four functions for a period of seven days and
longer.
My subject will awaken in a bright and strong condition; his bladder
will be perfectly empty and the first drink of water he takes will pass
through him within ten minutes. The subject is lying in hypnosis, with
the thought that he will have no hunger, no thirst, no bowel or kidney
action, and will awaken on the seventh day. This thought being locked
in the “mind,” the action that is part of it is certain to take place.
This sleeping act was suggested to me in Xenia, Ohio, by a child asking
about the picture of a bear sleeping all winter in a cave. It occurring
to me that if a bear could “sleep” all winter, a man could sleep a
week. I experimented and succeeded.
[Sidenote: Wise, curious or a fool (?)]
While lecturing in New York City, as a rule I concluded my lecture
by giving some demonstrations with a subject, and also having a
subject pre-inspire himself with the thought of “no feeling,” and
stick pins into himself, demonstrating my claims as to the so-called
Auto-suggestion of the alleged exposers. After doing this at a lecture
one night, an old “horse” came upon the platform and informed me that
he could stick pins into himself. While I was getting my wraps, the
president of the society for whom I was lecturing wagered this young
man that he could not do so. The young man did and won the money. What
is the use of trying to teach the people anything? After you read this
book, I am afraid that you will know but little more than you did
before you started, as it is impossible to put in through one sense
what “nature” intended to put in through another. It seems that the
president of this society, although seeing the demonstration made,
was not satisfied until he had lost a five-dollar bill. The same with
you reading this book unless you take a subject (providing you are
capable), and demonstrate to yourself the truth I have told, you have
simply absorbed a lot of words, which, of themselves, mean nothing. I
know one very brilliant man who, notwithstanding he acknowledged that
expression was the result of thought, that there could be no expression
without thought, turned around and asserted that he believed a subject
could “fake.” What to do with such people, how to convince them I do
not know. Man’s comprehension is only to the extent of his experience.
Try to simulate and see if it is possible; try to laugh and put the
real ring into it, and see if you can; try to cry and see if you can
get the tone.
I spend months conceiving a condition possible to be produced in
a subject, sometimes doing much experimenting to find the proper
inspiration to give him to produce the result desired, and any
hypnotist who will have the inspiration taken in shorthand, can repeat
the experiment, stealing the result of my thought, yet they never give
me credit for any of my originations. I did the sleeping act a year
before any hypnotist ever dreamed of reproducing it. In fact, until
they had taken subjects who had traveled with me and had learned how to
give the inspiration, they were doubtful as to its being accomplished,
and, with the general public, believed it to be a trick. They are
welcome to the inspirations, yet it is no more than just that they
should give me credit for them.
[Sidenote: I know a law]
In the Middle States, many wise (?) doctors are every day expecting me
to kill some subject with my crazy (?) experiments. They wonder how I
have continued so long without doing so, failing to appreciate that I
possess knowledge of a law, and am not, like them, working in the dark;
that my physiology is correct, and neither myself nor the subject I am
experimenting with are taking any chances.
I direct the temperature of a subject so low that an ordinary clinical
thermometer will fail to register it, thus proving that the accepted
theory that combustion produces the heat of the body is wrong. When I
reported this to a certain hospital, the wink was passed around, none
of them daring to contradict me, inasmuch as they knew I had always
succeeded in making good my claims. It happened the night that one of
the internes, who was quite a clever amateur, had begun his vacation,
and he accomplished in twenty-four hours what I did in twenty minutes;
yet I had to conceive it was possible to do so. Our physiologists are
wrong from beginning to end, and I state this unreservedly.
In New York, when I explained that “no feeling” was produced by the
sympathetic nerves closing over the cerebral nerve-ends and insulating
them, it was declared, “Very ingenious, but very unscientific.” Thank
Heaven for that! All drug anesthesia is produced by congestion, by
forcing the Sympathetic System to _insulate_ the cerebro-spinal
nerve-ends or centers, and I challenge the scientific (?) world to
_demonstrate_ otherwise.
[Sidenote: Read and reread]
Dear reader, a superficial reading of this book is time wasted;
read and reread, and every time you will find more truths. Can you
comprehend them, now they are offered you? The simplest of words have
been used, my best has been done to comprehensively correlate the
thought offered; yet you must keep referring back, and if you persist,
some day the entire philosophy will dawn upon you, and you will say,
“Oh, how simple (all truths are simple), why did I not comprehend at
first?” Because a new set of attributes has had to be separated so that
you could perceive, then conceive, and, lastly comprehend them.
[Sidenote: Comprehension]
Comprehension—look it up in the dictionary; and, if you can
_comprehend_ the definition, you can do more than I. What is
comprehension? It is the comparing, realizing, having memories to be
aroused _with which_ to compare those of which I am writing. If
our memories are slight, our comprehension will be correspondingly
slight. To understand or comprehend anything, its attributes must be
parted and associated with those of our _sense_ impressions. The
larger the number of the attributes “appreciated,” the greater our
comprehension. We have been taught Law of Nature, Hand of God, Free
Agency, Responsibility, Will Power, all of which are incomprehensible,
inasmuch as we have no sense impressions with which to compare them;
consequently, they are but incomprehensible _words_.
Nothing but matter is appreciable, as all impressions received or
forwarded can act only through matter.
[Sidenote: Destruction an impossibility]
Space, eternity, beginning and end, destruction, are mere words.
Destruction of matter is an impossibility, and what you call
destruction is but the dissolution of _form_, nothing else.
Man is individual only as to form; all of which he is composed is from
his environment, of which he is necessarily a part. The individual
parts that compose his entirety to-day will be different to-morrow, for
even our alleged scientists tell us of waste; we know in part of the
supplies—food, yet we fail to comprehend the Law of Suggestion.
As we subsist on all lower (?) matter, gaseous, mineral, vegetable
and “animal,” we surely are of all of them. As an individuality, our
importance is no greater nor less than that of a grain of sand on the
sea shore.
[Sidenote: Why should we live?]
_Why, then, should we live?_ We have never been dead, neither can
we die. We have always been, are, and always will be, inasmuch as that
of which we are composed has always and ever will exist. We are a part
of the Universe (the matter) that for a time in this form will abide.
Our so-called consciousness is not of itself greater than that of other
“living” matter. We are simply a conglomeration of lesser form of life,
and nothing more. By what right, through what sense proof, do we dare
to place ourselves _above That_ of which we are; _That_, that
gave us our parts, attributes; _That_, that continues to supply
and relieve us, lest we disintegrate? How dare we claim to be other
than of our environment; of the _whole_, the all, God, good?
[Sidenote: Spirit and soul]
We have no conception or comprehension of spirit, soul; they are but
words. The soul, the spirit, if it be, must naturally be of the ALL.
And yet we dare to assume it to be inherent in ourselves, and to be
separate gods of our own. No, no, that cannot be; like Caesar we are
too ambitious, and like Caesar, we will fall.
This may seem harsh; yet truth, though it hurts, never injures.
[Sidenote: A disturber]
He who comes among us with something “new,” is a disturber, and,
therefore, should be crushed. The Nazarene was crucified, not by the
Jews, although they were afraid of him. They said, “He is of us,
and a disturber. We will suffer if He continues.” Pontius Pilate,
representing the authorities at Rome, killed Him for disturbing the
accustomed ways.
Gallileo was banished.
Jean Jacques Rosseau was pursued from hamlet to hamlet; yet were it not
for him, there would be no United States of America, or Republic of
France. He gathered the thought and gave it to the world.
Hahnemann was driven from pillar to post, yet the truth he discovered
is and always will be.
[Sidenote: Like a broad highway]
Life is a broad highway where the masses follow; perhaps twice, and
never more than three times in a century, some one strays _away_,
out of the highway, and starts over the mountain. The moment he has
gone far enough for the masses to see him, they call, “Come back, you
fool, you will be lost!” and if he fails to turn, _they stone him_
“to attract his attention,” or to _kill_ him lest he be lost and
die. The world, the masses, are kind (?), they want to protect the
“fool” from destroying _himself_; they would rather destroy him.
After the “fool” has successfully crossed the mountain, another “fool”
follows in his pathway; soon more “fools” follow, and at last the
masses go, each and every one saying, “I knew he would cross all right,
he was too ‘smart’ a fellow to attempt crossing if he was not sure of
getting there.”
This is history.
Why was this book written? I am a fatalist, believing that what is,
was to have been; that our duty is to impart, to lead others over the
path we have discovered, and if we can only make that pathway clear to
a few “fools” who will follow as we have gone, I believe I will have
responded to my suggestion. I believe myself to be blessed with at
least “fair” conception, and to quote from Omar Khayyam:
“Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but ever more
Came out by the same door wherein I went.”
I love man, and, through my hypnotic experience, found that he _was
not_ as described by our scientific thinkers (?), so began to study
him in my unscientific way, and having learned somewhat of him, am
forced to offer to the world this thought as to the Law of Suggestion.
First, place your subject, then give him the attributes. Reader, this
book is written to _place_ you. Should more attributes be desired,
they will be furnished you.
Man does not choose; he knows of no ill until he has conceived of good.
He must be led; and it is the duty of man, after conceiving, _to
lead_ his fellow man.