_taken down literally by Mme. Emile Leon, his disciple._
Do not spend your time in thinking of illness you might have, for if
you have no real ones you will create artificial ones.
***
When you make conscious autosuggestions, do it naturally, simply,
with conviction, and above all _without any effort._ If unconscious
and bad autosuggestions are so often realized, it is because they are
made without effort.
***
Be sure that you will obtain what you want, and you will obtain it,
so long as it is within reason.
***
To become master of oneself it is enough to think that one is
becoming so. . . . Your hands tremble, your steps falter, tell yourself
that all that is going to cease, and little by little it will disappear.
It is not in me but in yourself that you must have confidence, for it
is in yourself alone that dwells the force which can cure you. My part
simply consists in teaching you to make use of that force.
***
Never discuss things you know nothing about, or you will only
make yourself ridiculous.
Things which seem miraculous to you have a perfectly natural cause;
if they seem extraordinary it is only because the cause escapes you.
When you know that, you realize that nothing could be more natural.
***
When the will and the imagination are in conflict, it is always the
imagination which wins. Such a case is only too frequent, and then
not only do we not do what we want, but just the contrary of what
we want. For example: the more we try to go to sleep, the more we
try to remember the name of some one, the more we try to stop
laughing, the more we try to avoid an obstacle, while _thinking that
we cannot do so,_ the more excited we become, the less we can
remember the name, the more uncontrollable our laughter becomes,
and the more surely we rush upon the obstacle.
It is then the imagination and not the will which is the most
important faculty of man; and thus it is a serious mistake to advise
people to train their wills, it is the training of their imaginations
which they ought to set about.
***
Things are not for us what they are, but what they seem; this
explains the contradictory evidence of persons speaking in all good
faith.
***
By believing oneself to be the master of one's thoughts one becomes
so.
***
Everyone of our thoughts, good or bad, becomes concrete,
materializes, and becomes in short a reality.
We are what we make ourselves and not what circumstances make
us.
***
Whoever starts off in life with the idea: "I shall succeed", always
does succeed because he does what is necessary to bring about this
result. If only one opportunity presents itself to him, and if this
opportunity has, as it were, only one hair on its head, he seizes it by
that one hair. Further, he often brings about unconsciously or not,
propitious circumstances.
He who on the contrary always doubts himself, never succeeds in
doing anything. He might find himself in the midst of an army of
opportunities with heads of hair like Absalom, and yet he would not
see them and could not seize a single one, even if he had only to
stretch out his hand in order to do so. And if he brings about
circumstances, they are generally unfavorable ones. Do not then
blame fate, you have only yourself to blame.
***
People are always preaching the doctrine of effort, but this idea must
be repudiated. Effort means will, and will means the possible
entrance of the imagination in opposition, and the bringing about of
the exactly contrary result to the desired one.
***
Always think that what you have to do is easy, if possible. In this
state of mind you will not spend more of your strength than just
what is necessary; if you consider it difficult, you will spend ten,
twenty times more strength than you need; in other words you will
waste it.
***
Autosuggestion is an instrument which you have to learn how to use
just as you would for any other instrument. An excellent gun in
inexperienced hands only gives wretched results, but the more
skilled the same hands become, the more easily they place the
bullets in the target.
***
Conscious autosuggestion, made with confidence, with faith, with
perseverance, realizes itself mathematically, within reason.
***
When certain people do not obtain satisfactory results with
autosuggestion, it is either because they lack confidence, or because
they make efforts, which is the more frequent case. To make good
suggestions it is absolutely necessary to do it _without effort._ The
latter implies the use of the _will,_ which must be entirely put aside.
One must have recourse _exclusively_ to the imagination.
***
Many people who have taken care of their health all their life in vain,
imagine that they can be immediately cured by autosuggestion. It is
a mistake, for it is not reasonable to think so. It is no use expecting
from suggestion more than it can normally produce, that is to say, a
progressive improvement which little by little transforms itself into a
complete cure, when that is possible.
***
The means employed by the healers all go back to autosuggestion,
that is to say that these methods, whatever they are, words,
incantations, gestures, staging, all produce in the patient the
autosuggestion of recovery.
Every illness has two aspects unless it is exclusively a mental one.
Indeed, on every physical illness a mental one comes and attaches
itself. If we give to the physical illness the coefficient 1, the mental
illness may have the coefficient 1, 2, 10, 20, 50, 100, and more. In
many cases this can disappear instantaneously, and if its coefficient
is a very high one, 100 for instance, while that of the physical
ailment is 1, only this latter is left, a 101st of the total illness;
such a thing is called a miracle, and yet there is nothing miraculous
about it.
***
Contrary to common opinion, physical diseases are generally far
more easily cured than mental ones.
Buffon used to say: "Style is the man." We would put in that: "Man
is what he thinks". The fear of failure is almost certain to cause
failure, in the same way as the idea of success brings success, and
enables one always to surmount the obstacles that may be met with.
***
Conviction is as necessary to the suggester as to his subject. It is this
conviction, this faith, which enables him to obtain results where all
other means have failed.
***
It is not the person who acts, it is the method.
***
. . . Contrary to general opinion, suggestion, or autosuggestion can
bring about the cure of organic lesions.
Formerly it was believed that hypnotism could only be applied to the
treatment of nervous illnesses; its domain is far greater than that. It
is true that hypnotism acts through the intermediary of the nervous
system; but the nervous system dominates the whole organism. The
muscles are set in movement by the nerves; the nerves regulate the
circulation by their direct action on the heart, and by their action on
the blood vessels which they dilate or contract. The nerves act then
on all the organs, and by their intermediation all the unhealthy
organs may be affected.
Docteur Paul Joire, _Président of the Societe universelle d'Etudes
psychiques_ (Bull. No. 4 of the S. L. P.)
***
. . . Moral influence has a considerable value as a help in healing. It
is a factor of the first order which it would be very wrong to neglect,
since in medicine as in every branch of human activity it is the
_spiritual forces_ which lead the world.
Docteur Louis Renon, _Lecturing professor at the Faculty of
Medicine of Paris, and doctor at the Necker Hospital._
***
. . . Never lose sight of the great principle of autosuggestion:
_Optimism always and in spite of everything, even when events do
not seem to justify it._