INTROSPECTIVE EVIDENCE OF MENTAL MASTERY
[Sidenote: Doing the Thing You Want to Do]
The first and most conspicuous evidential fact is voluntary bodily
action; that is to say, bodily action resulting from the exercise of the
conscious will.
[Sidenote: Source of Power of Will]
If you will a bodily movement and that movement immediately follows, you
are certainly justified in concluding that your mind has caused the
bodily movement. Every conscious, voluntary movement that you make, and
you are making thousands of them every hour, is a distinct example of
mind activity causing bodily action. In fact, the very will to make any
bodily movement is itself nothing more nor less than a mental state.
_The will to do a thing is simply the belief, the conviction, that the
appropriate bodily movement is about to occur._ The whole scientific
world is agreed on this.
For example, in order to bend your forefinger do you first think it
over, then deliberately put forth some special form of energy? Not at
all: The very thought of bending the finger, if unhindered by
conflicting ideas, is enough to bend it.
[Sidenote: Impellent Energy of Thought]
Note this general law: _The idea of any bodily action tends to produce
the action._
This conception of thought as impellent--that is to say, as impelling
bodily activity--is of absolutely fundamental importance. The following
simple experiments will illustrate its working.
Ask a number of persons to think successively of the letters "B," "O,"
and "Q." They are not to pronounce the letters, but simply to think hard
about the sound of each letter.
[Sidenote: Bodily effects of Mental States]
Now, as they think of these letters, one after the other, watch closely
and you will see their lips move in readiness to pronounce them. There
may be some whose lip-movements you will be unable to detect. If so, it
will be because your eye is not quick enough or keen enough to follow
them in every case.
Have a friend blindfold you and then stand behind you with his hands on
your shoulders. While in this position ask him to concentrate his mind
upon some object in another part of the house. Yield yourself to the
slightest pressure of his hands or arms and you will soon come to the
object of which he has been thinking. If he is unfamiliar with the
impelling energy of thought, he will charge the result to mind-reading.
[Sidenote: Illustrative Experiments]
The same law is illustrated by a familiar catch. Ask a friend to define
the word "spiral." He will find it difficult to express the meaning in
words. And nine persons out of ten while groping for appropriate words
will unconsciously describe a spiral in the air with the forefinger.
Swing a locket in front of you, holding the end of the chain with both
hands. You will soon see that it will swing in harmony with your
thoughts. If you think of a circle, it will swing around in a circle. If
you think of the movement of a pendulum, the locket will swing back and
forth.
These experiments not only illustrate the impelling energy of thought
and its power to induce bodily action, but they indicate also that the
bodily effects of mental action are not limited to bodily movements that
are conscious and voluntary.
[Sidenote: Scope of Mind Power]
_The fact is, every mental state whether you consider it as involving an
act of the will or not, is followed some kind of bodily effect, and
every bodily action is preceded by some distinct kind of mental
activity. From the practical science point of view every thought causes
its particular bodily effects._
This is true of simple sensations. It is true of impulses, ideas and
emotions. It is true of pleasures and pains. It is true of conscious
mental activity. It is true of unconscious mental activity. It is true
of the whole range of mental life.
Since the mental conditions that produce bodily effects are not limited
to those mental conditions in which there is a conscious exercise of the
will, it follows that _the bodily effects produced by mental action are
not limited to movements of what are known as the voluntary muscles._
On the contrary, they include changes and movements in all of the
so-called involuntary muscles, and in every kind of bodily structure.
They include changes and movements in every part of the physical
organism, from changes in the action of heart, lungs, stomach, liver
and other viscera, to changes in the secretions of glands and in the
caliber of the tiniest blood-vessels. A few instances such as are
familiar to the introspective experience of everyone will illustrate the
scope of the mind's control over the body.
[Sidenote: Bodily Effects of Emotion]
Emotion always causes numerous and intense bodily effects. Furious anger
may cause frowning brows, grinding teeth, contracted jaws, clenched
fists, panting breath, growling cries, bright redness of the face or
sudden paleness. None of these effects is voluntary; we may not even be
conscious of them.
Fright may produce a wild beating of the heart, a death-like pallor, a
gasping motion of the lips, an uncovering or protruding of the
eye-balls, a sudden rigidity of the body as if "rooted" to the spot.
Grief may cause profuse secretion of tears, swollen, reddened face, red
eyes and other familiar symptoms.
Shame may cause that sudden dilation of the capillary blood-vessels of
the face known as "blushing."
[Sidenote: Bodily Effects of Perception]
The sight of others laughing or yawning makes us laugh or yawn. The
sound of one man coughing will become epidemic in an audience. The
thought of a sizzling porter-house steak with mushrooms, baked potatoes
and rich _gravy_ makes the mouth of a hungry man "water."
Suppose I show you a lemon cut in half and tell you with a wry face and
puckered mouth that I am going to suck the juice of this exceedingly
sour lemon. As you merely read these lines you may observe that the
glands in your mouth have begun to secrete saliva. There is a story of a
man who wagered with a friend that he could stop a band that was playing
in front of his office. He got three lemons and gave half of a lemon to
each of a number of street urchins. He then had these boys walk round
and round the band, sucking the lemons and making puckered faces at the
musicians. That soon ended the music.
[Sidenote: Experiments of Pavlov]
A distinguished German scientist, named Pavlov, has recently
demonstrated in a series of experiments with dogs that the sight of the
plate that ordinarily bears their food, or the sight of the chair upon
which the plate ordinarily stands, or even the sight of the person who
commonly brings the plate, may cause the saliva to flow from their
salivary glands just as effectively as the food itself would do if
placed in their mouths.
[Sidenote: Taste and digestion]
There was a time, and that not long ago, when the contact of food with
the lining of the stomach was supposed to be the immediate cause of the
secretion of the digestive fluids. Yet recent observation of the
interior of the stomach through an incision in the body, has shown that
just as soon as the food is _tasted_ in the mouth, a purely mental
process, the stomach begins to well forth those fluids that are suitable
for digestion.
[Sidenote: Bodily Effects of Sensations]
The press recently contained an account of a motorcycle race in Newark,
New Jersey. The scene was a great bowl-shaped motor-drome. In the midst
of cheering thousands, when riding at the blinding speed of ninety-two
miles an hour, the motorcycle of one of the contestants went wrong. It
climbed the twenty-eight-foot incline, hurled its rider to instant death
and crashed into the packed grandstand. Before the whirling mass of
steel was halted by a deep-set iron pillar four men lay dead and
twenty-two others unconscious and severely injured. Then the twisted
engine of death rebounded from the post and rolled down the saucer-rim
of the track.
Around the circular path, his speed scarcely less than that of his
ill-fated rival, knowing nothing of the tragedy, hearing nothing of the
screams of warning from the crowd, came another racer. The frightened
throng saw the coming of a second tragedy. The sound that came from the
crowd was a low moaning, a sighing, impotent, unconscious prayer of the
thousands for the mercy that could not come. The second motorcycle
struck the wreck, leaped into the air, and the body of its rider shot
fifty feet over the handlebars and fell at the bottom of the track
unconscious. Two hours later he was dead.
What was the effect of this dreadful spectacle upon the onlookers?
Confusion, cries of fright and panic, while throughout the grandstand
women fainted and lay here and there unconscious. Many were afflicted
with nausea. With others the muscles of speech contracted convulsively,
knees gave way, hearts "stopped beating." Observe that these were wholly
the effects of _mental_ action, effects of _sight_ and _sound
sensations_.
[Sidenote: The Fundamental Law of Expression]
Why multiply instances? All that you need to do to be satisfied that the
mind is directly responsible for any and every kind of bodily activity
is to examine your own experiences and those of your friends. They will
afford you innumerable illustrations.
You will find that not only is your body constantly doing things because
your mind wills that it should do them, but that your body is
incessantly doing things simply because they are the expression of a
passing thought.
The law that _Every idea tends to express itself in some form of bodily
activity_, is one of the most obviously demonstrable principles of human
life.
Bear in mind that this is but another way of expressing the second of
our first two fundamental principles of mental efficiency, and that we
are engaged in a scientific demonstration of its truth so that you will
not confuse it with mere theory or speculation.
To recall these fundamental principles to your mind and further impress
them upon you, we will restate them:
I. _All human achievement comes about through some form of bodily
activity_.
II. _All bodily activity is caused, controlled and directed by the
mind._
PHYSIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF MENTAL MASTERY