f VI f I IJifiA NIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO SovrVSlcep) 3 1&20239946i9 .Jl4ii Rhodes LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO presented to the LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA • SAN DIEGO by FRIENDS OF THE LIURARY MR. JOH N C. RO SE donor <3b WW UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORN A SAN R}EGO 3 1822 02399 4619 '^-j^e-e^^tZ-cw l/L-r-v, u^> Vffitjrj^^ |EffiffiS»as6i!Sg56sKSI!SS3ffiffil«!sSasgSl5l5 PSYCHCOMA (Soul-Sleep) BY HELEN RHODES ## WITH INTRODUCTION BY ELIZABETH TOWNE **- PUBLISHED BY ELIZABETH TOWNE HOLYOKK. MASS. 1000 Si!'!;,! il SsEq ; iflani «4p M an MMMBB COPYRIGHT BY HELEN RHODES October, 1908 SUBJECTS Introduction : How to Use Psychcoma. (By Elizabeth Towne.) Page 7 Part I. Psychcoma or Soul-sleep : Existence as we know it. Birth and death. Astral, phys- ical, spiritual life. Psychic visions. Obsession. Subliminal self. Transmutation of instincts, or " Killing out. " Cosmic consciousness. Page 13 Part II. Transmutation : Sex. Law of vibra- tion. Control of the breath with liberating exercises. Solar plexus. Law of concentra- tion and meditation. Page 43 Part III. Awakening : Aspiration. Subconscious mind. Obsession. Law of suggestion, concen- tration, meditation, affirmation. Going into the silence. Development during sleep. Page 77 PAST IV. Mastership : Cosmic consciousness. Happiness. Dominion. Realization. Healing. Page 119 I ACKNOWLEDGE MY INDEBTEDNESS TO ALL RELIGIONS. PHILOSOPHIES. SCIENCE. AND CO-WORKERS, AND IN- SCRIBE THIS BOOK TO MY BELOVED FRIEND Xoutse 2). flMtcbell The Tower. June. 1908. PSYCHCOMA. INTRODUCTION. |HE author of Psychcoma has written this book out of the fullness of a new and re- markable experience. There are new ideas in its pages, new discoveries that will short-cut the path of at- tainment for every earnest student who uses the information, in- stead of reading it merely. It is the desire to insure to every reader the fullest benefit from these teachings, that impels me to write this intro- duction. These teachings and special exer- cises are not theoretical. They were all first discovered and then tried out by Helen Rhodes, during a period of PSYCHCOMA two years when — as she wrote me in May, 1908 — she was at times "con- sciously living outside the physical." Later they were fully proved by a group of students in New York, with amazing results. In other words, Mrs. Rhodes has found what Dr. Maurice Bucke calls the cosmic con- sciousness. And in the finding she has made practical discoveries which I believe to be in advance of any other teachings yet put into print. This belief every reader can prove by using the book as herein directed. Mrs. Rhodes used special hours every day, and the result was a deep experience and original discoveries. Use this book faithfully, dear reader, and yours, too, shall be a soul-satis- fying experience and yet other new discoveries. 8 OR SOUL-SLEEP. First of all, do not sit down and read the book through. Decide upon a special hour for development, to be used every day for at least two months. Then keep that daily en- gagement with yourself as the most important thing in life. This is not "impossible" to any- body. Don't fool yourself with that plea. Not a man or woman but could arrange to attend a series of lectures, or a school, at a certain hour every day for two months. Every one can arrange to attend to his soul development with the same precision, if he will. The results are sure and rich. Let the student take one chapter at a time, reading it every day for two weeks ; reading it slowly, with a quiet desire to know the truth. PSYCHCOMA After the reading let him practice, faithfully, whatever directions are given in that part of the book. Let him not quarrel with what he reads; let him assume, for the time being, that it is all so. Let him ac- cept with a will and aim to see things and feel them with the author. After the eight weeks of practice he will know better whether or not there is anything to reject. Did not Jesus say, "Do the will (of the Father) and ye shall know (of the doctrine) what to believe"? And William James says it is at the moment of doing that the brain receives a new kink to correspond. I say unto you, Do the will of this book and you will be glad for ever- more. Elizabeth Towne. Holyoke, Mass., Sept. 9, 1908. 10 JULIA WARD HOWE'S VISION Boston, June 29tl , 1908. "One night recently I experienced a sudden awakening. I had a vision of a new era which is to dawn for mankind, in which men and women are battling equally, unitedly, for the uplifting and emancipation of the race from evil. " I saw men and women of every clime work- ing like bees to unwrap the evils of society and to discover the whole web of vice and misery, and to apply the remedies, and also to find the influences that should best counteract evil and its attendant suffering. "There seemed to be a new, a wondrous, ever permeating light, the glory of which I can- not attempt to put in human words — the light of a newborn hope and sympathy blazing. The source of this light was human endeavor — im- mortal purpose of countless thousands of men and women who were equally doing their part in the world. " I saw the men and the women standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder, a common, lofty, and indomitable purpose lighting every face with a glory not of this earth. All were advanc- ing with one end in view, one foe to trample, 11 one everlasting good to gain. And then I saw the victory. All of evil was gone from the earth. Misery was blotted out. Mankind was emancipated and ready to march forward in a new era of human understanding, all-encom- passing sympathy and ever present help. The era of perfect love, of peace, passing under- standing." JULIA WARD HOWE. PART I. PSYCHCOMA (Or Soul-Sleep) Existence as we know it. Birth and Death. Astral, Physical, Spiritual Life. Psychic Visions. Ob- session. Subliminal Self. Transmutation of Instincts, or "Killing Out." Cosmic Consciousness. PSYCHCOMA. PSYCHCOMA. SYCHCOMA is the diagno- £* sis of your own soul, your self. Before you read fur- ther dwell upon this word "Psychcoma." It is the keynote of existence as you know it. This word is used according to its original Greek root meaning. "Psyche, the principle of life as connected with the body." Man is a soul, not has a soul. His manifestation is thru a physical body for this life experience. "Coma" means stupor, lethargy. You who think you are so very much alive know that in your present life you are in this coma. This life is a twofold life, not 15 PSYCHCOMA more. It is spiritual and physical with their subdivisions: the physical includes the mental ; the spiritual in- cludes the astral and super-astral; all these interpenetrate. The astral plane and physical plane are one with two names, astral for the thought life and physical for the ac- tion life. Spiritual life is the unseen life and functions with an activity normal to its plane and unseen by our physical eye just as we are un- seen by it. Man cannot be cut up into phys- ical, mental, astral, and spiritual man, but he is all these at one and the same time and ensheathed as a unit. The spiritual life measures attain- ment acquired thru two avenues, men- tal deposit and subconscious agency — the physical body being merely a 16 OR SOUL-SLEEP. vehicle of expression, its mechanism drawn from the earth elements of earth, air, and water, belonging to its kingdom and subject to its laws. It has taken asons and aeons to pro- duce so responsive an instrument and it requires years of individual adjustment to acquire ordinary pro- ficiency and precision. Every self enters the earth life with this jacket of limitation around it, the wires for automatic activity and muscle con- trol all unattached and unstrung, unable to articulate a word; the first few years of existence are spent in simply maneuvering the apparatus. The mental part of man is purely a physical and mechanical medium, a laboratory of external impressions of the physical life, and has no sepa- rate plane or life apart from the 17 PSYCHCOMA physical. It is non-existent on any- plane but this and is the transmitter between the physical and spiritual states, its mechanism so dependent upon the physical that it is incapable of carrying over as hereditary qual- ity even the primary knowledge of speech, and closes its record with the life of its one operator. Its mission is to present sensitive plates upon which the physical life experience (the ideo-motor content of action) is recorded in a metaphysical lan- guage intelligible to both spiritual and physical states, which thru the chemistry of the unseen passes over into the subconscious as emotion and will. Our life here is a soul-sleep or Psychcoma with periods of partial and complete coma known as waking 18 OR SOUL-SLEEP. and sleeping. During both of these periods we are wrought upon by the agencies resident upon these planes. During sleep the soul functions on the subconscious plane and except during fugitive moments of somnam- bulism is in a deep physical coma and reached only thru the subcon- scious. During our waking period w e are dreaming out loud! We ask how did this come about? Herein lies the secret of our earth life. We have all been told of the so- called astral life, that at death we pass to the astral plane, that we leave our physical body here and as- sume an astral body and that there we remain sifting out karma until the time for rebirth draws us to the earth plane again ; that the astral existence may, or may not, be a long 19 PSYCHCOMA sleep according to the laws govern- ing our reincarnation. Naturally we ask where we are during this period of rest? Are we laid aside on some astral shelf to await re- birth? Know, then, that we are not in some far away place, but here. This is startling, but this simple fact makes you the liberator of yourself. Physical life is the manifested. As- tral life the unmanifested. Both here. Spiritual life is a distinct life in a higher state of conscious- ness. The greatest bogie of modern cults is the death symptom. It is a ghost no prophet has been able to disperse, as it depends upon the law of birth. Its protecting shadows veil the sharp- est awakening the soul can know, when, by means of the death mani- 20 OR SOUL -SLEEP. festation, the physical body is laid aside. To the physical eye the phe- nomenon is a grief, but this death door swings wide into a world of life, different life, where the external transmitter of physical experience (brain and reason) no longer func- tion. The subconscious, the sum total of impressions and desires, now has power. The soul is now face to face with itself, and functions with an activity normal to its plane, un- intelligible to the physical eye as we are unseen by it. Into this awful silence of the im- manent life, and with all the earnest- ness that teachers and helpers exert on this plane to awaken the mind and destroy illusion, the workers on the astral plane put forth every ef- fort to awaken the sleeper and with 21 PSYCHCOMA just as futile result. Hope and re- incarnation are altar fires that give strength to the helpers and sustain faith. This is the battle ground of desire and reality. This death a temporary awakening. The memory of this impotent, unhinged self with the lust for sensation and momentary glimpses of life without it weigh against each other. Only within himself can come deliverance. The initiation of Pythagoras into the mys- teries of ancient Egypt symbolizes this new experience of the soul. If it has awakened sufficiently to say, "I know you all, ye host of terrors and brood of tempters," then there is no need for such to repeat the life. "That which began in him when he began, is finished; he hath wrought the purpose thru of what did make 22 OR SOUL-SLEEP. him man, and he hath felt the blessed last of deaths when death is dead." This is the hell we dread, where every inherent interest or tendency is a leading string and backward pull toward the life that was. The hell of the astral plane has burned itself into the subconscious instincts of the race since when the first man laid aside his physical body. The preservation of the self has remained the one deep impulse in every rebirth in fear and challenge to the dissolv- ing process. The universal cry is "Do not let me die." Death is in- separable from life and need be feared only by the sensualist as a breaking up of his dream. The dif- ference between being saved from sin and hell or from karma and re- 23 PSYCHCOMA birth lies in a choice of words, the process is the same. If the dreamy, sensuous longings and thirst for things drug the soul, it issues again upon the earth to live out the unpurged fragment. Those who hoped to see us waken from the earth experience watch us sink into coma and call it death. Life and death are the same looked at from different points of view. Each de- parture is called death on the plane it leaves, and birth by those who watch its entrance on the plane in which it arrives, and emphasizes the fact that it is not all of death to die nor all of life to live. The sense-struck, sodden self vi- brates to thought conditions. Slowly the stupor grows until coma is reached. Every breath potent with 24 OR SOUL-SLEEP. thought magnetism to draw it to its kind, it becomes a matrix for mani- festation. There is but one avenue for the earth life, thru birth; a be- lief and indulgence which engulfs every other instinct and impulse; an octopus that saps its victim while it fattens. Only thru the avenue of lust and love of self can an open way be found for the Psychcoma to be manifested. Like attracts like, and when the conditions are fulfilled to make its shell or physical body, it enters upon the wheel of life "to hug and kiss its spokes of agony." During the months of extending its physical vehicle and wrapped in the parent body, it is electrified with its every vibration and nourished on its life principle, which makes its manifestation possible. In the as- PSYCHCOMA tral world there are no physical limits and to enter life as a proto- plasm is as natural as to develop a seed. The law of birth fulfilled, the human life phase begins again its intermittent manifestation of Psych- coma, alternately waking and sleep- ing in a world of somnambulists each intent upon his little dream, bent upon self-gratification and in- grown upon itself, unaware that real life is yet to be lived, a life sur- charged with universal love. The data for self-stimuli and develop- ment thru the centuries have fur- nished certain laws for protection and restrictions for community good, yet how feeble we are to control this wild and fanciful dreamer our jails, brothels, court rooms, peace councils, and daily newspapers can tell us. 26 OR SOUL-SLEEP. Each day a revelry of dreamers so deep in sleep as to commit theft, for- gery, murder, and every crime that a thwarted ego may fancy effective in pursuing its fatuous desires. Only thru impacts of grief and the interference available on this plane of consciousness can the Psychcoma be disturbed. The victim of Psych- coma is under the protection, di- rection, and help of two worlds, the external with its weapons of sorrow, disappointment, injustice, sickness, all products of the inharmony of the dream life with his desires mirrored in the life surrounding him, and the subconscious world, where unseen helpers companion him with ardent, hopeful application of every known means for his awakening. The sub- conscious or superconscious mind is 27 PSYCHCOMA amenable to external suggestion and when the soul wakens to understand this, and uses the power of self- suggestion, he becomes a master in two worlds and elects his own devel- opment. Every latent thought and vagrant wish must be brought out into the manifest to test its worth. There can be no separation of me and thee. The Psychcoma is no re- specter of persons ; what the vilest is, you have been or may be, the dream life is not to be labeled respectable or otherwise, it is legitimate and is proving worthy to the one who has awakened. Envy not those whose days are spent in idleness, the sheath of self enveloped in the contentment of satisfied desires; theirs is a dark- ness into which the divine light has not yet penetrated. 28 OR SOUL-SLEEP. True growth is slow. By doing and failing and doing again is suc- cess assured. In the midst of a large experience the soul is quickened and evolution is accelerated. No shame is attached to ineffectual re- sults. The seat of the strife lies in the attempt, that alone asks for gen- erous consideration. Draw no lines between appearances. Remember that every thought you may have skillfully hidden from view is illus- trated in the life of some other one, they the victim, you the onlooker. Give pity and great love. Maybe through them the light has been re- vealed to you. And be comforted to believe that the Father of Lights loves you as well as He loves them, no better; they are but dreaming as you have dreamed, they sleep and 29 PSYCHCOMA you are awake. Spiritual percep- tion has to do with the beginning of things, while human reason has to do with the result. All life typifies one life. The thief, liar, hypocrite, are parts of yourself left behind. Against that same backward pull you struggle up to new values. Re- pression, suppression, or killing out will not determine your awakening. It is wrong to negate our power by killing out anything. We may transform and transmute; positive power is creative and when aspira- tion potentizes vibration it raises all lower vibrations to itself. We ac- celerate our progress by appropriat- ing higher values and steadily and consciously transforming our desires. Self-attainment depends upon our mastery of every note in the divine 30 OR SOUL-SLEEP. harmony. Thru that scale vibrates immorality, vice, sham, deceit, greed, theft, lying, drunkenness, exclusion, pride. Not until all is understood and dissolved is the soul freed from rebirth. The sense-man resents the impu- tation of Psychcoma, to him the dream is the thing. Neither can you explain to the insane man that he is unbalanced, so do not expect too much from the dreamer. If he awake even for brief spaces of time he will recognize the approaching coma as sensation and desire wrap their psychic folds about him and dim resolve. "What lets?" "Igno- rance lets, whereby ye take these shows for true and thirst to have, and, having, cling to lusts which work your woes." Yet the soul may 81 PSYCHCOMA wrench itself free and reach the sor- rowless state lost sight of and neg- lected many myriads of cycles. In the story of Parsifal, Kundry alternately finds herself doing serv- ice in the Grail Castle as its good angel, and in the Castle of Klingsor the Magician, as his "Rose of Hell." Always before coming under the in- fluence of Klingsor she is aware of a growing sense of stupor, and as its lethargy steals upon her she sinks deeper and deeper into sleep. At long intervals she wears out the in- fluence and in a feeble way regains the path leading to the Grail and vaguely remembers she has been there before. This torpor symbolizes fugitive upheavals of unlived-out fragments of self-absorption which sweep over 32 OR SOUL-SLEEP. the soul to engulf it or exert it to supernormal action. Not until de- sire is burned out or transformed can the spirit be freed. Obsession is influence to the point of complete subjection. This sub- jection is not to another unseen entity, but it is the deep coma of self-desire or any sense domination of joy, fear, grief. The "silver cord" uniting the spirit with the physical body is never "loosened" to the point of surrender except at death, and this detachment means death. Only thru physical form can any creature function on this plane and with the same laws governing as govern action on the astral or subconscious plane. Fear of so- called "elementals" reduces one to the level of crass superstition and negate 33 PSYCHCOMA effort. Self is the only enemy of self, and self the only victor. The struggle is within. The Psychical Research Society has exhausted every device to open the door of the astral realm, but as yet no message has reached any one that has opened any mine of knowl- edge, revealed supernormal secrets, or described the activity on that plane interpreted in any terms but of this life. There are profound scientific stu- dents who believe all these psychic phenomena to be subconscious phe- nomena, that it is the evidence of supernormal powers existing in every human being rising to and manifesting on the plane of the con- scious; which merely means that the objective senses are not function- 34 OR SOUL-SLEEP. ing and the subconscious senses are. It has nothing to do with a high spiritual life. Many depraved per- sons are able to enter this so-called clairvovant or trance condition. Many see without perceiving and many hear without knowing. To see clairvoyantly is not limited to the one who has awakened. It is a phase of the coma. If, during the subconscious state, the soul was fully awake and cognized its condition and surroundings, would it not answer the questions regarding the next life, what death meant, and would it not direct in moments of trial and peril, telling us how to act? What me- dium is able to direct future action without the shadow of a doubt? Psychic visions are caverns where lie buried wrecks of incipient think- 86 PSYCHCOMA ers gone mad over thought systems whose bludgeon opens all the doors of the underworld and challenges the doorkeepers of innumerable heavens. Mysticism of the incanta- tion kind must yield to the spirit of this century, which flings high and wide the demand for the clearest, simplest laws. There is no need of glossaries, special keys, spheres of consciousness and superstructures of plane upon plane and a thousand intricacies that enmesh the student in a labyrinth of mental whirligigs. Our inheritance from the past is absolute for us only so far as it yields us proof for every advance step under the X-Ray of scientific research, revelation, and discrimi- nation. Elemental principles and laws are the possession of the adept 36 OR SOUL-SLEEP. who reduces them to their last and simple analysis. Clairvoyance and psychic power are not evidence of a spiritual life but rather the predominance of a superconscious activity which sees and registers conditions of the Psych- coma when the physical brain re- mains inert or inoperative. The objective mind is then in subjection. The aura holds as in solution the content of individual experience, the arithmetic of which is the brain cal- culator. If rebirth meant an easy and sure release and promotion, the sensualist might indulge his desires. But to be involved in sense satisfactions is an inebriety that deadens aspiration and increases spiritual anesthesia. If rebirth were unnecessary and 87 PSYCHCOMA a mistake in the world economy, then suicide were a blessing and a privi- lege. But death does not liberate the soul except it liberate itself. Experience is life and we do not de- velop alone. We need the all as the all needs us. To cease this experience at any time and at our pleasure means to shirk and condemn the self to a coma controlled by the idea that the welfare of the personal self may be secured by grasping the goal and escaping the machinery of develop- ment. There is only one place for the liberation of the sense life, here. This is the place of bondage. Real life begins when this bondage ends. The dream to waken from is "I am this little body." Who, looking up into the heavens at the constellations and zones of associated stars, could think 38 OR SOUL-SLEEP. for one moment that this rolling planet was the cause and purpose of illimitable space, and that life began and ended here for no ultimate good? Every so-called law of the universe subsisted in that universe before it existed for us. We are not making laws, they were made from the be- ginning, and as we recognize these laws we may learn to live in har- mony with them. The opportunity of life here is but one section of our infinite nature. You who are awak- ened to-day as you read this may seize upon the sex instinct as the only vicious element, perhaps be- cause it is so in evidence, or because life seems dependent upon it, that you believe it the source of all evil. But cosmic life is hydra-headed; one by one the evils are uncovered as by- 89 PSYCHCOMA paths to the soul's citadel. Attack the evil that is within your power; lesser evils are the foothills that lead to the mountain tops. You who hold yourselves sponsors for other lives, accept your privilege as a divine agent for the evolution of a soul. No one can escape the earth life, it is a legitimate part of evo- lution and the only way for the Psychcoma to be undermined. Would you ask if the awakened life becomes a dead level of existence, if spontaneity is impossible, if the throb of pure joy is checked? No! a hundred times, no! It is an anti- dote for pain and joy is heightened. No one enmeshed in the desire life can know what happiness is. To the unawakened life is a constant strife. Joys grow out of personal 40 OR SOUL-SLEEP. gain, depending wholly upon the ca- price of individuals. Happiness born of sensation is temporary and de- pendent. Only when infatuation, lust, hatred, is understood can one know happiness. There is a happi- ness, an abiding attitude, which be- longs to and is inherent in the consciousness; it moves outside and beyond the senses and becomes real- ization, realization of the oneness of all creatures, of the oneness of friends and enemies, of the oneness of all worlds, of the oneness of the eternal purpose. This awakening is accomplished thru the understanding and use of the law of Vibration, Aspiration, Transmutation, Control of the Breath, Concentration, Meditation, Affirmation. Analyze. Awake ! 41 PART II. TRANSMUTATION Sex. Law of Vibration. Control of the Breath with Liberating Exercises. Law of Meditation and Concentration. Men have professed the love of God, Of king, of church, of state, of family ; A loftier strain than all of these I sing, I love humanity. Divide not and exclude not, Build no wall ; No special tie shall bind me from the whole ; Love's garment has no rent, it clothes the all, I love the cosmic soul. ' ' — /. A. Edgerton. PSYCHCOMA. TRANSMUTATION. OUBERT has said, "There A are inferior truths which minister to life and its operation ; intermediate truths which exercise the mind and afford it some satisfaction ; and, lastly, higher truths which en- lighten the soul, nourish it and con- stitute its happiness." It is easy to say that we seek the truth, but to seek truth implies, first, to apprehend the real ; second, to un- derstand the temporal ; and, third, to harmonize the two, that into the temporal may be released as much of the real as can be absorbed by the soul that is full and full of itself. IE PSYCHCOMA Spiritual development is masquerad- ing under many names and not one proclaims the need of omitting ma- terial and external evidence of sense satisfaction. The soul eagerly seeks sanction of its desires and adheres with less effort to the one who grants some measure of indulgence. Who is willing to receive a truth that lessens in any particular the pleasure of physical sensation? The point of discrimination is the separa- tion of sensation and reality. There are those who defend the testimony of the senses as sacred altar fires. Do not be deluded, analyze all ex- perience, begin to think for yourself. Awake! The love impulse is not threatened with extinction thru analysis, the true elements are preserved and only 46 OR SOUL-SLEEP. the spurious drops away. The ca- pacity for companionship is aug- mented and the elemental instincts of home and family life fostered thru elimination and preserved thru revaluation. Race suicide is not the high water mark of transcendental spirituality, it may be rather the brutality of in- stinct. We hark back to an animal ancestry with the solar plexus brain governing and we signify the out- grown life thru the germination of spiritual attributes resident in the human. The becoming life is the glory with which the awakened one is en rapport. We are not blind to existing con- ditions because we attain spiritual sight. We are able to differentiate. Reason is not in abeyance; rather is 47 PSYCHCOMA its power heightened to recognize the sphere of physical activity and the necessity of its functions and con- sciously granting its normal devel- opment thru the informing, educa- tive process of analysis, lifting its satisfactions to a high and refined plane. The gaining of wisdom and en- lightenment does not mean the neg- lect of any duty, the annihilation of any expression of affection, indiffer- ence of heart or exhaustion. It means to be keenly alive to the necessity of feeding the affections with tenderness and appreciation. It makes of fatherhood and mother- hood an office equivalent to signing a contract and pledging responsibility for the direction of another soul sunk in Psychcoma. The awakened 48 OR SOUL-SLEEP. one acknowledges the mission of pleasure, knows the environment necessary to psychological develop- ment, and denies none of these things and is able to enter into them with conscious enjoyment. To be involved is not the fullness of enjoyment. The lust of self is the loss of self, the negation and surrender so com- plete as to involve and unify the en- tire creative impulse. If the desire life predominate then the vibration of the solar plexus brain controls; but if transmuted thru conscious di- rection it is merged into another vi- bration, invigorating and fertilizing any group of cells we wish to culti- vate for the expression of invention, literature, music, and the fullness of understanding for any work. We may speculate as to the end of 49 PSYCHCOMA life on this planet should the whole world be persuaded of this truth. Mating would still prevail, the at- traction would impel from like mo- tives and mental and spiritual likes and sympathy. Jealousy and covet- ousness and all their attendant evils would never be possible, because truth would answer to truth and as- pirations coalesce. Your hesitancy at taking the giant swing into the realm of reality will be duplicated for ages. No one, save the truly wise, is willing to turn back even to regain the right road. The goal is not so easily reached that any one truth holds complete sway even for one generation. World emancipa- tion is first individual emancipation. The Psychcoma is insidious, the waking hour does not nor cannot 50 OR SOUL-SLEEP. dawn at the same moment for all dreamers. Freedom is not to be won thru the "killing out" process. Freedom comes thru recognizing tendencies that companion one as a shadow and will not fall away except they be transformed and transmuted. Mere resistance is of no avail ex- cept it be educative and informing. Virtue when a matter of expediency and calculation remains vice. Crea- tive energy is at the call of the oper- ator and functions thru whatever matrix thought has magnetized. The intricate and delicate machinery of the objective body is little taken into account. Power flows automatically to centers which tap the source thru habit. You may unify this vital force and command it to feed the fires of the upper brain or stupefy 51 PSYCHCOMA and retard it by relapsing into the languor of the clamoring animal nature. "Within yourselves deliv- erance must be sought." Treat all tendencies as friends. Say not to the reprehensible thought rising into consciousness, "Get thee behind me, Satan," but rather, "I welcome you, my friend, you are my guarantee of power, come with me into my laboratory of mind and create great thoughts." Then do something, if only to close a window, for any motor activity releases over- plus production and at your lightest bidding you may pour creative in- stinct dynamic with electric power into any channel and materialize your highest desires. This process is called Transmuta- tion and may be accomplished thru 52 OR SOUL-SLEEP. analysis, breathing, aspiration, medi- tation. Concentration and meditation will not give power so long as ignorance remains. Desire and misery will recur until one masters the nature of things. Analysis is a potent remedy, and may be applied on every occasion of physical allurement or distraction. One of the surest ways of killing a tree is to lay bare its roots. When the elements that constitute the stream of any individual existence have their source undermined they cease to originate, and when we cease to preserve we disinter the origin. Cease to dote on dreams. Awake! Face your own soul and con- quer the animal self which dwells in sensation only. Link yourself to the great Over-Soul rather than to hu- 58 PSYCHCOMA man caprice. The soul is not one thing and the body another, neither may one say, "I will indulge my body, my soul will not be involved." Man, body, soul, are one in the roots and in fruition. A partnership which is a unit on the physical plane, dependent upon each other in unison and simultaneously as factors which constitute the elements of being, not by a part of their number nor by one succeeding the other. Method in the manner of attain- ment is a guarantee of success. Power flows easily in grooves magnet- ized thru repetition. Only for a few times is it necessary to whip the self to execute the rules determined upon ; soon action and reaction become partners and the consciousness be- comes duplex in receiving and over- 54 OR SOUL-SLEEP. coming at the same time. No teacher has furnished so detailed a method for lifting the self into higher states of consciousness as the Buddha, and Warren in his "Buddhism in Trans- lations" gives this potent method: "At the moment of need at once viz- ualize the body and analyze it ac- cording to the elements of which it is composed; thus it ceases to be thought of as a living entity or in- dividual but only as so many ele- ments. Thru analysis a mental reflex is acquired that is invincible. Thus are vigor and high pressure con- served. Separate desire from the animal body concealed by adventi- tious ornament, and recognize the essential repulsiveness of the body and thus acquire the mental reflex, and know that there is not the small- 55 PSYCHCOMA est reason for being pleased. Ac- curate comprehension of what a man is and what he does prefigures en- lightenment. "To analyze the body: Consider this body upwards from the soles of the feet and downwards from the crown of the head, inclosed by skin and full of all manner of unclean- ness, saying, there is in this body, hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, flesh, bone, marrow of the bone, kidneys, heart, lungs, in- testines, bile, pus, blood, sweat, saliva, urine. Contemplate upon this and repeat it over and over." Analysis of the body may be supple- mented by contemplating the Bud- dhic law of physical existence or de- pendent origination, thus: — "On ignorance depends karma; 56 OR SOUL-SLEEP. On karma depends consciousness; On consciousness depend name and form; On name and form depend the six organs of sense; On the six organs of sense depends contact; On contact depends sensation; On sensation depends desire; On desire depends attachment; On attachment depends existence; On existence depends birth; On birth depend old age and death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair. "On the cessation of birth cease all these evils. Thus does the entire aggregation of misery cease. Thus may one readjust equilibrium and power, gaining in the practice of observing the body, strenuous, con- 57 PSYCHCOMA scious of sensation and the elements of being, of the nature of form, the bondage that arises thru dependence upon it, how bondage not yet arisen may arise, how to be abandoned and how it may be kept from arising." As analysis is one method of de- liverance, so also is the control of the breath and the law of vibration. The law of vibration in the phys- ical world requires no effort of the imagination. Light is a rate of vi- bration which at a certain speed imparts color; so is sound and heat a rate of vibration. The primitive savage lighted his fire by the vibra- tion or friction produced by rubbing two flints together. Motion is a rate of vibration. Every emotion pulses a rate of vibration, the pulse is the indicator. A thought forces 58 OR SOUL-SLEEP. vibration according to emotional re- action, the physical machinery re- cording its vibration. If it can be changed by others it can be ordered by ourselves. We are the governor of the dynamo. Vibration is the unifying element of thought. Like attracts like. Thru unrelated but affiliated thought waves a vibration is produced which swallows up elements foreign to it. This operates for bad as well as for good. When a person senses the lower nature governing he can re- adjust himself quicker thru the breath than thru the management of the mental machinery. Thus are all mental and physical processes re- actionary. The mere physical automatic proc- ess of breathing is a blind force. It 59 PSYCHCOMA is not mere use that develops but the amount of nourishment in thought and breath that is circulated. Breath is the energizing force in nature and the vital force in the human organ- ism, consequently the most potent agency for the invigoration of the body. It is the resident power in physical life, inbreathed in the raw state, where it becomes impregnated and surcharged thru the fusion of essential elements, physical and men- tal, and becomes the magnetic fluid by which circulation is sustained. Congestion and inflammation is ob- struction of the breath. This means cell decay and death. The demand is for more breath. Any diseased part demands the conscious spraying of that part with a thought which in- flates the cells of that center to re- 60 OR SOUL-SLEEP. sponse. Thought is the lightning message carried by the unseen mes- senger vibration, according as the switchboard of the brain indicates the connection. The Inward Breath Used by Adepts. The spraying of the body inwardly is a developing process known to adepts for purposes of invigoration, recuperation, and healing. It con- serves every atom of energy and is a vastly different thing from merely inhaling thru the nostrils and ex- haling thru the mouth, thus pouring outside of the body all the vibratory essence of psychic equation, which has by virtue of the intake become charged with power. When we take breath, every atom of our being gives consent to the re- ceiving process. We are apt to 61 PSYCHCOMA think that the burden of breathing is left wholly to the orifice in the face; but every cell inhales. When the breath is charged with a specific thought, every atom is subject to it. Inhaling and exhaling are the nega- tive and positive poles of one process, and you may connect all the belts of the revolving mental and physical machinery and become a dynamo in- vincible. The method of the inward breath: Inhale as from a circle with yourself as the center and the solar plexus as the focus. Hold the breath a mo- ment then slowly exhale upward spraying or spreading the breath within and over the entire body, visualizing the process as similar to the piece of fireworks known as a "shower." To heal any organ or to 62 OR SOUL-SLEEP. acquire an increase of power, direct the spraying to that organ, accom- panied with certain affirmations. To inhale the organs are inflated; in ex- haling they contract. Beware of drawing in the abdomen except as you exhaust the breath, as this shuts off breath supply. The muscular movement of extending and contract- ing the abdomen will of itself supply breath without consciously inhaling or exhaling. The singer is able to sustain long phrasing only thru the abdominal capacity, and it is the last source to be exhausted and holds its supply normally as does a rubber ball. Method: Inhale slowly thru the nose, inflating lungs, sides, abdomen in turn, following the inbreathing with a mental picture of its progres- 03 PSYCHCOMA sion, focussing and holding the breath a moment at the solar plexus or abdominal brain, which is at the up- per part of the abdomen, just back of the stomach. Then exhale slowly upward along the spine and spray, in thought, the entire brain area. Do this at least ten times. This vibra- tion centered at the solar plexus is so powerful that it will restore equi- librium at any time. For harmoniz- ing the entire body, direct and spray the body and the feet thru the mental visualizing, not confining it to the brain, but continuing it as in a circle. To induce sleep visualize the breath, descending the spine, and carry it downward into and out of the feet. No one who practices this exercise need suffer from cold feet. 64 OR SOUL-SLEEP. By holding the breath at the solar plexus the same length as the inhala- tion, chills may be averted and per- spiration induced. This general exercise may be used at all times by the speaker, writer, worker, or idler and will change the vibration of the entire body in the quickest time. Congestion, paraly- sis, constipation, and swellings all yield to this process, as the mass is broken up by circulation and the dead or inert atoms cease to adhere. In fever the need is to expel the breath from and outside the body. Increase of power is more rapidly gained if the exhaled breath is con- trolled and released slowly. The distributing station should al- ways be the solar plexus, as this is the center for elemental energizing PSYCHCOMA of physical creative force. Not until the upper brain controls the solar plexus brain can sensation ripen into understanding. How to generate this power, to transmute the sepa- rate, irresolute, and erratic currents of thought into direct and trenchant force is the path out of Psychcoma into Mastership. All exercises are absolutely of no value unless they are a conduit for breath, inhaling as you begin each movement, and exhaling as the move- ment draws toward the close, mak- ing the moment of the held breath at the solar plexus the center of the exercise. The inhaling and exhaling are the going and returning of the life current, and describe the circum- ference of the power circle, the in- haling, or taking in, to the limit of 66 OR SOUL-SLEEP. power, then holding, which is con- serving, then letting go in exhaling. This "letting go" thru the positive directed thought is the beginning of whatever manifestation you desire. This is the method for changing every condition. Each exercise should close with a relaxing move- ment. Normally this very act of ex- haling is relaxation. No teaching is recognized to-day in any field of study which does not regard this law of creative energy. All exercises are unprofitable un- less they carry a thought in solution, refreshing the nerves as well as the muscles. To go thru a form without incorporating it into the understand- ing and circulation is a waste of time. An idea (thought) is completed thru its angle of action (motor) ; just how 67 PSYCHCOMA it is deflected in the brain mechan- ism is the chemistry of the unseen, but thought always has muscle (motor) response. To withhold ac- tion sometimes requires more muscle control than action. Extremes of joy and sorrow weigh down the muscles beyond the normal. Ideo- motor methods in psychology mean that an idea or thought has specific gravity, which is the scientific psy- chological way of saying "Thoughts are things." If, then, our thoughts have specific gravity, and if weighted with pain or grief, the delicate nerve wires are easily exhausted under the burden of the ideo-motor message; but if winged with joy and encouragement there is an increase of power. By carrying a thought on the 68 OR SOUL-SLEEP. breath the whole organism is stirred and magnetized to a high degree. The personal currents open and ex- pand, inviting supply. There is lack of nothing in the universal energy; the lack is in ourselves contracting our own avenues and shutting out supply or canceling the creative power thru neglect to visualize the thought, fixing it in the mind and breathing upon it as a matrix for manifestation. A daily exercise should compre- hend a complete series and involve upper and lower parts of the body, arms, legs, head, closing with a body movement, for here is involved the great principle of releasing the ten- sion of the body and mind. Each exercise forces increased vibration in the center under manip- 69 PSYCHCOMA ulation, and it is a mistake and may- be a positive injury to leave the energy of the physical dynamo turned upon any center and left there. The idea is to harmonize the entire body, hence the series should begin and close with a general treat- ment for the entire body. Few people understand that the muscles should be held tense or con- tracted while exercising only when one is unable to take sufficient exer- cise and to reduce flesh. To obtain power and poise without sacrificing what is already possessed, practice these exercises on relaxed muscles. This is the positive, constructive, building-up process. The tense mus- cle is the tearing down process. In- valids should practice these exercises on relaxed muscles, generating and 70 OR SOUL-SLEEP. storing up energy. Distraction of any kind may be controlled by man- agement of the breath thru inspira- tion, retention, and exhalation. There are many movements for developing exercises. The need is to have a few effective ones and prac- tice them daily. The following ex- ercise is one of the most important and taught by one of the greatest teachers in Europe for the attain- ment of poise, deep breathing, and a fine carriage. Carefully follow and think out these movements for secur- ing the opening and lifting of the entire body: — No. 1 (a) Stand on ball of foot, arms hanging at side, rising to the toes as the hands describe an upward and outward circle, reaching the hands out to their farthest limit 71 PSYCHCOMA in front and in line with the shoul- der, with each thumb and forefinger held together at the tips. (b) Describe with these finger tips a line straight out to the extreme sides as if spinning a fine thread. (c) With arms extended turn palms up, bending the hands over, touching the shoulder with the finger tips (holding them in this position). (d) Bring the elbows straight out to the front. (e) Swing the elbows straight back in place at the sides with elbows bent, leaving hands level with the waist line, weight on ball of foot. This gives perfect standing position with the chest high and advancing. To use this for a general exercise and not merely for position, when the elbows are brought to the sides 72 OR SOUL-SLEEP. at (e), use for the last movement the extending of the hands to the front, and describe part of a circle as in supplication, thus spraying your im- mediate environment with the thoughts you desire to see mani- fested. Repeat from 10 to 20 times. An affirmation to be used with this exercise is: Lifting the head and body high: "I am open on my inner side to the inexhaustible ocean of in- finite love and wisdom; thru the working of this power I (extending the hands at close of exercise) mani- fest health, or peace, or joy, or what- ever specific thing is desired." Whenever a change of thought is de- sired, take this exercise with the af- firmation, if only for five minutes. No. 2. Hands at side, weight on toes; inhale as you swing arms in 73 PSYCHCOMA large curve over head, bringing them together in front and touching floor with tips of fingers ; exhale as you go back in same curve. Bend body at waist, but not at knees. Repeat 10 to 20 times. No. 3. Weight on ball of foot, hands at waist, keep face to the front ; inhale as body is turned to ex- treme right, exhale as body is brought to position. Repeat 6 to 10 times with each side and close with hands on hips; lower the upper body from the waist, completely relax and move it in a circle around the body. No. 4. Hands at waist, describe circle with foot as the leg is swung over a chair and increase height as practice grows. 6 to 10 times with each foot. No. 5. (a) Hands on hips, inhale, 74 OR SOUL-SLEEP. describe high curve with chin, mov- ing head slowly and as far as pos- sible to right side, exhaling as return to front is made. Repeat with left side, (b) Extend chin outward and in high curve to as low a point as possible on chest, return in same curve, exhaling and relaxing, (c) Relax head until it is perfectly loose, then swing it slowly around in a complete circle. This should always close the head exercise. This will destroy a double chin. Begin and close the exercises with No. 1 or No. 2. For reducing flesh about the hips, in addition to the leg exercise, lie flat on the floor, raising the body to sit- ting position and lower it without assistance from the hands, always on the breath. 75 PSYCHCOMA The body held in a tense position with the spine stiffened and bent back is not only vulgar, emphasizing the fact of lack of training, but pos- itively injurious thru the pressure brought to bear upon the nerve tis- sue in the spine. The upper part of the body should be flexible, shoulders flat. The first exercise develops a perfect carriage. An additional help may be used by drawing a straight line from the center of shoulder bone to center of hip bone. Lift the chest and lower the shoulders. From having control of the breath, understanding how to inhale and ex- hale, combining breath with thought, the next step is Concentration and Meditation thru which every sepa- rate and divided interest may be uni- fied in a self-directed impulse. 76 PART III. AWAKENING Aspiration. The Subconscious Mind. Law of Suggestion, Concentration, Meditation, Affirmation. The Silence. Sleep as the Great Opportunity for Development. If I should falter more or less In my great task of happiness, If I should move among my race, And show no glorious morning face, If beams from happy human eyes have moved me not, If morning skies, books, and my food and summer rain Knock on my stubborn heart in vain, Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake ; Or, Lord, if still obdurate I, Choose thou, before my spirit die, Some piercing pain, some killing sin, And to my dead heart run them in. —Robert Louis Stevenson. PSYCHCOMA. AWAKENING. jWAKENING is the being £^ born again, the entering upon a process of spirit- ual growth from spiritual infancy to mastership, dependent upon a nourish- ment of food peculiar to its needs. Every normal proc- ess of life and nature symbolizes the supernormal needs. As our food grows our physical body, so does that which feeds the spiritual self grow its substance. The food of the soul is aspiration. Spiritual maturity does not happen. The soul only stirs in its sleep at first, from impacts from without, and sinks into lethargy as the experiences 79 PSYCHCOMA pass, conscious only of itself in all the world, as it seeks response in the contentment of material life. Only by constant recurrence of stimuli can awakening come. Just as the connecting paths are made between the brain centers by presenting the same stimuli again and again, and a vibration set up that forces its own track of communication like threads across the soft substance, so, in like manner, every thought has its vibra- tory action of silent force in the sub- conscious. For every act on the physical plane there is a cell inflation in the brain, and whatever is ex- pressed is also impressed and the process is duplicated by the super- conscious activities. When a soul is sufficiently dis- turbed to cognize repeated impacts 80 OR SOUL-SLEEP. from without, a regular avenue of vibration is established thru which experience is poured to waken the dreamer. The phenomenon of a double personality or many person- alities is but One man, One soul in partial stages of coma, responsive to some stimuli and dumb to others. The subconscious mind is the potent and unseen magnet polarized to its feeling or emotional self. It remembers and stores up knowledge, it scents danger where none can be seen. It knows where words are foolish. Spiritual apprehension is the thought of which human action is mere utterance, its own sure guide is the motive and purpose within itself. It obeys and becomes our servant or master just as we elect. When it is fed upon aspiration it 81 PSYCHCOMA parallels its growth with its quality and environs itself with it. Aspiration is the irrigation of ideals. The magnet for any result is thought potentized by aspiration; then you may ask what you will, it will bring it to pass. The method of communication with the subconscious is thru the law of suggestion which becomes self- direction and centered in a thought matrix enters into relationship with its idea and radiating it, grows by its own intention. The subconscious mind sees and is capable of knowing and revealing to us all things. Not that it functions on various planes but that the aura of each person holds as in solution the content of past experience, and intelligible to subconscious percep- 82 OR SOUL-SLEEP. tion. Apparitions, psychic visions, etc., are believed by many psychol- ogists to be a subconscious perception of things near or remote, as they are or have been, not as they will be. Futurity is not a subconscious fac- ulty. It may discern near events already foreshadowed in the aura. The high potency life makes no reck- oning with psychic visions and ap- paritions which imperil the dreamer thru his own instincts. We are obsessed by ideas, not by dead en- tities. Bodies are not taken posses- sion of by astral imps. The doorway to this life in the body is thru birth and race tradition. The planes are separated by non-conductors, each plane recording its own experience, which is merely an extension in con- sciousness. Developing positive spir- 88 PSYCHCOMA itual power does not lie in the regions of automatic writing, or in paralyzing any brain center thru self-hypnotism, but in raising the plane of consciousness thru a posi- tive process of analysis, proof, and understanding, keeping in the great highway of sane scientific revelation, not side tracked and lost in the coma of conceit and ignorance. The subconscious activity is forced into action by the mental machinery which, as it works, involves every atom of the person. The objective mind obtains during waking coma and registers its reflexes as emotion and will on the subconscious; then when demands are made upon the will it responds as it has been trained. True will power is adapt- ability. Degenerated will power is 81 OR SOUL -SLEEP. obstinacy. The first belongs to ripe understanding, the latter to child- hood and senility. One is immov- able and inert, unable to cope with circumstances, the other is educated for response and increased power. The subconscious is the totality of impressions. Fleeting experiences do not register. No action becomes habit, no method resolves itself into principle until it is carried over and lodged in the subconscious convolu- tions of the psychic body. How to tap its abundant source is to appre- hend the Law of Suggestion. This is a communication with our real self in another and more potent form. No one who is familiar with the methods of ordinary scientific educa- tion to-day questions the law of sug- gestion. The government of France 85 PSYCHCOMA defends and supports its methods for medical purposes in preference to giving anesthetics. The facts of hypnotism prove that the subcon- scious mind will execute the com- mands of the objective mind. In therapeutic hypnotic treatment a definite process is entered upon and the steps outlined by the operator. In spirtual awakening the goal alone is held before the subconscious and it is left to itself, to right itself by a light superior to the direction of the objective mind. No one method can disclose the pearl of great price to all questioning souls. Each temperament makes its peculiar demands; there are many ways for many men, but one goal. Among the sayings of Jesus recently found at Oxyrinchus is the follow- 86 OR SOUL-SLEEP. ing: "Let not him who seeks cease until he finds; and when he finds he shall be astonished; astonished, he shall reach the kingdom, and having reached the kingdom he shall rest." In these days of predigested foods short cuts to a high potency life are inevitable, but there is no patent ap- propriation of infinite love ; the whole nature is to be retuned and through- out a lifetime we are given opportu- nities to test experience and recon- struct results. "Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee, thee and no other, that is the law for thee." So long as one aspires, daily put- ting ideals into circulation thru the avenues of homemaking, housekeep- ing, business relationships, keeping much in the open air, there is no danger of morbid introspection. 87 PSYCHCOMA Unless we make use of our ideals they are nothing but spiritual an- esthetics. When the awakening comes rapidly the novitiate overflows with precious truth and would proclaim his way as the only way. Remember it was your way, it may not be another's way. God is good; he meets us where he finds us and lures us heav- enward according to our interests and needs. By living our beliefs in- stead of talking about them we win where words would lose. Let devel- opment have her way and your own will come to you in joy, work, love, and prosperity. You can have no permanent values until you radiate a vibration that draws the demand for which you are the supply. You must be the mag- 88 OR SOUL-SLEEP. net that attracts, you, yourself are it. Be still and know ! Do not demand nor limit the ac- tion of another. A mother longing for a letter from her son long over- due, grasped his photograph, de- manding with intense feeling that he write to her at once. He wrote that same hour a cruel, defiant, graceless letter. If she had been patient, sending out continued love and no restrictions, a different mood might have dictated a different letter. If you are a worker do not think you can make another person buy your work. Mental sandbagging meets with mental resistance. They will get your thought above anything you can say. You exchange subcon- scioush/. You cannot go out and attract friends. You must be the 89 PSYCHCOMA magnet that attracts. You cannot transfer the thought matrix to an- other and command its growth as you must when you order your own power. Do not attempt to control another. Do not try to make of yourself a special providence to every one you meet. Wait until you are asked, lest you be considered an ob- structionist. The form of suggestion should be for self-awakening and de- velopment to increase and intensify one's worth. The world pays for the best. Go in to win, in yourself, not to hypnotize any one else. You will not need to. Do not separate your- self from your work. Your work is you, put yourself in it, it is then alive and attracts attention. Send out thoughts of love and freedom to the whole world to help, but not for per- 90 OR SOUL -SLEEP. sonal influence. You need all your time for your own mental house- cleaning; adverse currents are play- ing across your life constantly, and as you add to the power of good you subtract from the power of evil. When knowledge of this human dynamo is the common property of the race, become so thru centuries of subconscious consent, affirming invol- untary action on the part of the mind, refusing the unfit and know- ing the good, we can hope to have a responsive mind as we have a phys- ical body. It has taken centuries to produce subconscious regulation of the circulation, and it will take cen- turies more for the gathering of truth sediment sufficient to manifest natural and easy discrimination, and by added reincarnations the final 91 PSYCHCOMA truth of cause and effect become a law in the perceptions. There is more in life than a cut and dried philosophy adopted as prin- ciples behind which small souls re- treat with an air of superiority when- ever a difficult situation demands vigorous, broad, and sympathetic treatment. Truth has been called by Professor James "a species of good" ; as such, truth becomes a proc- ess, not one small notion nor any one dogma, and it permeates all acts and filters thru all effort. It is a be- coming process, not a fixed state, ad- justing and readjusting as higher values emerge and release higher forms of truth. The reflex of intellectual convic- tion is stored in the subconscious and becomes our power as initiative. 92 OR SOUL-SLEEP. The Psychcoma is buffeted thru new applications of old truth or species of good, these experiences being the alphabet of the divine vocabulary thru which we learn by constant analysis the laws of life. We learn to know when there are "open doors," when we should go and come; we allow small truth values to demon- strate themselves thru every expe- rience, rising higher and higher in perception as augmented data clari- fies vision. This is a clairvoyant sight which is positive awareness, not psychic negation. We cease hurry, we dare to wait, we learn to know that success must mean some addi- tion to the sum of human happiness, we have the courage to count the worth of ideas before money. A truth, therefore, is not absolute, 98 PSYCHCOMA rather is it relative. All truth is precious but not sacred. Nothing is more sacred than the awakening from the soul-sleep; this is the fruit of truth, it is not a question of facts but of vision. Each man becomes an individual explorer into the deeps of his own life; faith is his unseen guide, the symbol of light in the vis- ible world. Physical life is the ego exerting itself into matter, and it withdraws with the result of the effort. The self would reach into the unseen and demand the consolation of the re- assembling of its family, or such members of it as are agreeable, in a future state. Awake! Life is ex- perience! You needed just such hu- man relations to develop and awaken ; don't cling, another life will draw 94 OR SOUL-SLEEP. you into other filial relationships and obligations with another family; all life is a brotherhood, so give to every living creature sympathy and love. Be observant of hindrances, they are friendly. When the inner process of thought is making use of aspira- tion and meditation one need give no anxious attention to obstacles. Con- structive thought leaves behind all that cannot be used in the upbuild- ing process. All instability, anxiety, uncertainty and pain are ways for producing a full-fledged, self-poised human being, and when sorrow has done its work release will come; but wait patiently, let the law work. We would like to say when the release will come but we do not know. Prepare the soil of your own nature 95 PSYCHCOMA for the incoming peace, it cannot enter until strife is stilled. The silence is "the secret place of the Most High." It is "The Most High Place" ; your most high. Higher than that we cannot go now. It is the meeting place between the human and divine. No prophet has divined a relationship between the Creator and the created that transcends God as a loving father and we his chil- dren. Know that the Father knows what is best for you; that while he works you also must work and sup- plement his work. Pray unceas- ingly and when you say "Thy will be done" get behind that statement and "will that God's will be done." Make it your strongest affirmation. This is not to be taken in the spirit of resignation and renunciation, but 96 OR SOUL-SLEEP. for positive accomplishment to which you may tack your highest and deepest motives and hopes. Renun- ciation is an unhappy word for out- grown impedimenta. We easily re- nounce what we have outgrown. To renounce is to "let go," and may be a positive process in acquiring power and not negative resignation in any sense. Professor James calls prayer "commerce with God." The very attitude is subjective. You make yourself negative to the highest good of which you are capable of receiv- ing. Say often, "I am negative to God alone and positive to all the world." You do not want second- hand thoughts, you do not need to be on the wires for warmed-over trans- mitted messages. Tap the source, go 97 PSYCHCOMA direct to God, talk to him; this is the spirit of truth, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. Such a life is not a passive life, awakening is alert- ness! awareness! The coma yields to perception ! You do not get into the silence, you earn the silence thru concentration and meditation. Concentration and meditation is an advance step which begins where breath control leaves off. From having control of the breath, understanding how to inhale and exhale, the power of thought to develop harmony, now begins the de- velopment of the power of concentra- tion and meditation for specific needs. Concentration is defined in chem- istry as "to intensify in strength by removing valueless constituents." Meditation is "to fix in the mind." 98 OR SOUL-SLEEP. Concentration of thought force is a composite blending and co-ordination of fugitive yet affiliated impulses. The polarization of any thought cen- ter guarantees the dissolving of every unrelated and undesirable element. Intentness magnetizes that thought center and a mental reflex is obtained which constitutes a demonstration. Concentration is a positive condi- tion and meditation is the negative. Concentration first selects, reasons, determines, then it invites the sub- conscious thru meditation to give up its secrets. Thru the silence of con- centration comes the stillness of the mental machinery and the conscious mind demands and affirms, then waits and suspends action for meditation to yield its answer. The one goal is the cultivation of the subliminal self so 99 PSYCHCOMA that it may direct instead of being directed by the objective physical mind. The subliminal self could do all things and tell us all things if we would educate our motives to express truth instead of expediency, and whatever its bidding, it will be modi- fied by the dreamer's capacity to understand and rightly value truth. Going into the silence is not an ex- perience given over to devotees; it is a normal conscious process for self- development. It cannot be appro- priated, it must be earned. There is no other way to reach it except thru concentration and meditation. Whenever there is failure to realize the silence there has been neglect in preparing the way. The conscious and the subconscious are distinct and unrelated spheres 100 OR SOUL-SLEEP. of consciousness. Thru concentra- tion and meditation is sought the union of the two. The most important consideration is to have a certain time and place. If it is possible have a tiny room for this purpose with nothing there but a table and chair or prie Dieu, and a picture or symbol upon which the eyes and thoughts may rest in in- spiration. Most important of all is to have a definite time. Then keep that ap- pointment with your own soul. It is your waking hour, a precious mo- ment ; be as regardful of this moment as you would to any demand from a friend. Enter into this communion as expectant as you await the ring- ing up of the curtain at the play. When you have established an in- 101 PSYCHCOMA timacy with your own soul, there will come a time when you will require no set time or place to enter this cos- mic peace, but every unoccupied mo- ment, the time spent on street cars and every moment of waiting will give this opportunity. You concentrate when your whole interest is involved. This is induced thru forcing the attention to follow certain methods until externals drop away. There is no more effectual method than to close the eyes and ob- serve mentally one's own breathing as given in "Transmutation," follow- ing as an appointed guard on duty, slowly visualizing the process and silently saying, "I now inhale with the lungs, now with the diaphragm, now the abdomen, now centering at the solar plexus; I exhale with the 102 OR SOUL-SLEEP. abdomen, now with the diaphragm, now with the lungs," ending with spraying the thought and breath up- ward along the spine and then as in a shower over the entire body. In training the attention to con- sciously follow each movement with accuracy, in a few moments dis- tractions cease and from the forced manipulation of the breath quiet comes, and the matters about which you desire knowledge may be focussed in the mind and one by one the ques- tions considered reasonably, quietly, firmly. Say "I seek to know 'this' and 'this'," naming what you are working out. At first work for con- ditions, not things. Seek to man- ifest peace, joy, harmony, health, and take but one statement for a medita- tion, varying the statement from day 103 PSYCHCOMA to day as desired. When you resolve to awake, you will mentally assort during concentration your inclina- tions, capacity, and avenues open to you. You can concentrate upon and cultivate successfully but one line of work at a time, and every bit of experience will assume a possible relation to it. Slowly analyze your problem step by step, pushing effect upon cause back to a starting point. When reason has done its best, slowly relax thru the measured breathing, release all responsibility, let go of the world and ideas, and say, "I now release thru my con- scious mind the wisdom regarding (mention the subject under consider- ation) ;" or, "I rise into the realm of all knowledge and ask to be shown the way." Then sit in the silence and 104 OR SOUL-SLEEP. enjoy it from ten minutes to one hour, feeling yourself the center of a circle with all distractions far out on and beyond the circumference. This is meditation and the Silence. Confusion is on the circumference. Get back into the cosmic peace and abundance and "let go" the entangle- ment of cross purposes. You cannot attain concentration on nothing and you cannot maintain meditation on nothing. The silence is dynamic with awareness, which polarizes on the plane of aspiration. You may raise your vibrations to whatever level you desire. Feel the stillness of your thought, your body, your being, the universe. Feel yourself the center of that universe. Surround yourself with the inhalation of the spirit of truth or God; take a spirit bath in its 105 PSYCHCOMA clarifying atmosphere; see none but yourself and God ; inspire the univer- sal will and so magnetize your con- sciousness with your oneness with God. So shall your entire environ- ment vibrate with power to draw the highest to you. Thru your union with this silent brotherhood of thought a vi- bration is intensified which includes you in this rhythm. You become a channel for all like motives and the focus is in your environment. Friends, home, all material things respond to the law of vibration. Congestion is confusion and disorder. I know of no more powerful correc- tive than forcing one's self to keep one's belongings in perfect order and condition. Disorderly closets and bureau drawers are demoralizing in a real way. Every outward symbol 106 OR SOUL-SLEEP. sensed deeply enough to be felt, im- ages itself upon the superconscious, which, in turn, reflects itself in events. To invite prosperity and to have a part in the circulation of money, your own circulation must be free from congestion. Hoarding things makes a plague spot of decayed cells. Attics and trunks stored with unused things are a menace. Distribution and order is the law of inflowing supply and no bargain days except for needs. Affirm "I give and re- ceive money freely." This does not mean indiscriminately and waste- fully, but wisely and well. We sometimes make too much of money when we say we do not want it, be- cause we do want our needs supplied, and merely saying it does not con- 107 PSYCHCOMA vince. One does not acquire spirit- ual power because he is rich or poor, but in spite of it. The joy affirmation does not re- main in the ether but must be mani- fested. So with peace and health; these conditions involve material processes and can and do manifest as money. Fill yourself with the ele- mental source, it will assume as many shapes as your needs dictate. What- ever thought you wish realized, think intently with the whole being, soul and body. This law is inherent in every life. The dreamer produces a dream parallel to his awakening. The condition of manifestation is to be, rather than to merely believe. To be involves bringing into subjec- tion every faculty, to be able to order our thought atmosphere and concen- 108 OR SOUL -SLEEP. trate at a moment's need so that neg- ative conditions shall immediately resolve themselves into positive con- ditions; in short, to polarize every separate and divided interest into an undivided, universal spirit. Music study would cease to be drudgery if the pupil could be taught to read the music silently, feel the melody, get into the rhythm and then play it. All study would yield double returns if one entered the subjective state for a short time before trying to think or write. You do not need to use force, you obtain the silence and then speak your desire. Thru the silence a strong desire makes connection with other and needed factors. The result may not be anything we counted upon, but unexpectedly a turn in our affairs L09 PSYCHCOMA is accomplished. All education and development are subconscious. What- ever book is studied, turn its pages as you impress certain statements upon the mind, saying, "I bring into my conscious mind the knowledge of ," or "Now do I draw from my superconscious mind the knowl- edge of this ," or, "Now do I bring into manifestation my knowl- edge of ," or, "I give forth what is in me." If the mind wan- ders, reset it a thousand times if necessary and know what you are thinking about and why. Spend no time in denials, an affirmation holds within itself a denial. The only form a denial should take is to direct the subconscious to "let go" of cer- tain tendencies, saying, "I let go of fear, or sickness," etc. This is a no OR SOUL-SLEEP. command without the use of not. The physiological process forces in- flation of the group of cells corre- sponding to the thought center. If such a group is inflated thru denial, then you have made one more ob- stacle in the way of affirmation. The night time should mean oppor- tunity for supplementing our work and wisdom. The cessation of the physical functions releases the soul from its control and limitation. The experiments of Professor Elmer Gates at Washington are open to any one, and the experiences of inventors and students have given us data for the subconscious activities. Not long ago a student spent half the night trying to solve a problem. Worn out with repeated failure he went to bed. When he awakened in in PSYCHCOMA the morning he found the problem completed on the paper as he had left it. He realized that he had been a somnambulist and that his subcon- scious mind had given up the knowl- edge he had failed to perceive. In the days when witches were burned this would have been credited to witches or to a spirit who had inter- vened to help, but we know better now. The soul does not go to the Hima- layas, nor London, nor some other planet. It is here but released from the limitation of the mental and physical machinery and awake on its own subconscious plane where feeling is sight, will is understanding, and perception is hearing. You do not send your soul or sub- conscious mind out; you, yourself, go, 112 OR SOUL-SLEEP. or rather, you awake subconsciously. A last thought to float in the con- sciousness is, "I go to-night to seek wisdom and to manifest it thru my conscious mind." If some special need exists say, "I go to-night to con- nect with (work or money) and to bring it into manifestation." For a long time the novitiate would better confine himself to charging the subconscious mind at the moment of sleep with "I seek wisdom from the infinite source." Be not too hungry for things. The purpose of sleep is not merely to rest the body thru the suspension of the mental machinery, but it is a dream just as full of activity as the waking dream, and we may double our power and usefulness by direct- ing it. The daytime is nothing com- 118 PSYCHCOMA pared to it. When the power of self- direction is understood the daytime will be used as a secondary condition in which the objective consciousness waits to receive and adjust the results accomplished during sleep. One need never worry nor hurry, simply affirm and wait, never passive but with the perceptions active in the highest degree, making ready for the manifestation of the thing to be wrought out. We should lie down to sleep not from weariness, but because we wish to go consciously into the subcon- scious alive to the importance of receiving what it has to give. Wel- come sleep as a privilege, taking time to lay aside all worry, anger, fear, grief, that the soul may be impressed with a clear and definite message, then 114 OR SOUL-SLEEP. ask of it what you will, so you require attention to but one thought at a time. Keep that thought uppermost and insistent, that it may float in the margin of consciousness and unify the impulses. Say, "Now do I draw the wisdom of my inner life into my conscious mind," or, "Now do I draw from my inner life the knowledge of this ." The time wasted in undirected sleep might be used in working out all life's problems. The subconscious is not tired; night is the daytime of the soul on its subconscious side. The student, writer, artist, inventor, may educate himself while he sleeps by directing the subconscious. Say with the last waking thought, "I de- mand that this knowledge pass into my consciousness/' or for health say, 116 PSYCHCOMA "I restore my body to-night," or, "I now renew my entire being." Sup- plement this tremendous power by meditating upon the same subject during the appointed silent time. The desired knowledge will flow to you or when you take up the subject upon which the subconscious has worked your thoughts will come faster than you can well manage them. Demand specific things if need be, but we sometimes get what we ask for and wish we had left it to a higher power. When the high potency life rules, the moment of waking and the be- ginning of the day should enunciate a statement of rejoicing and thanks- giving regardless of our personal opinions. Thru the night unseen helpers have companioned you, now 116 OR SOUL-SLEEP. expect the unexpected, affirm and wait, your own is on the way to you. You may not enjoy hunger and va- rious phases of incompleteness, but expect and affirm and work. As you waken say, "I greet the day with love and send forth joy and peace to all the world," or, "I drink in infinite life and I breathe out in- finite love." Ahvays try to make a complete circle of your affirmation by including a receiving power and its manifestation, as "I receive life from the divine source and I now manifest health." Constant affirmation keeps one positive to all less than the de- sired good. In the Revised Version of the Bible, Psalm 127:2 reads, "For so He giveth to His beloved in sleep." This bit of ancient wisdom is suggest- 117 PSYCHCOMA ive. Keep your material needs, if possible, for the daytime meditation at first, and at night lift yourself into the realms of wisdom. The superconscious self is a store- house of wisdom gathered thru countless ages ; each for himself may gather from this infinite supply. 118 PART IV. MASTERSHIP Cosmic Consciousness. Pragmatism. Special Keys. Happiness. Dominion. Reali- zation. Healing. Awareness. " It is possible that some stupendous incident may suddenly surge from without, from another world, from a new phenomenon, and either inform our effort with definite meaning, or definitively destroy it. But we must proceed on our way as though nothing abnormal could ever befall us. Did we know that to-morrow some revelation, a message, for instance, from a more ancient, more luminous planet than ours were to root up our nature, to suppress the laws, the passions and radical truths of our being, our wisest plan still would be to devote the whole of to-day to the study of these passions, these laws, and these truths, which must blend and accord in our mind ; and to remain faithful to the destiny imposed upon us, which is to subdue and, to some extent, raise within and around us the obscure forces of life. None of these, perhaps, will sur- vive the new revelation ; but the soul of those who shall up to the end have fulfilled the mission that is pre-eminently the mission of man, must inevitably be in the front rank of all to welcome this revelation." — Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee. PSYCHCOMA. MASTERSHIP. ASTERSHIP means the at- jy[_ tainment of cosmic con- sciousness. A oneness with infinite purpose. The let- ting go a handful to take hold of a lifeful. To real- ize the happiness of emanci- pation won thru knowledge of what man is and the supremacy of the high potency life. The awak- ened one knows the victim of the Psychcoma and adjusts himself to it as to a person under the influence of morphine. His one hope is that he may awaken. To understand is to possess a self-commissioned life for the awakening of thousands from the death sleep. Mastership is not 121 PSYCHCOMA satiety, nor ennui, nor renunciation, no, none of these things. It is awareness! A vigorous enlightened insight and recognition, invincible, unquenchable, inextinguishable. It knows what the mental apparatus fails to register, it divines what phys- ical sight conceals and contradicts. It vibrates and energizes to the eter- nal purpose. It is in union with all that is. The cry of the awakened one is, "Give me wisdom." The natural instincts which func- tion easily in some persons toward justice and kindness are so because previous lives have demonstrated that it pays. It is the road to the soul's happiness and that much has been proved. Happiness is as primitive an in- stinct as hunger and by repeated 122 OR SOUL-SLEEP. trials a kind of happiness is found that pays. It is not preserved as a virtue but for pure elemental self- protection. Just to live becomes as real a pleasure as to the one who is lost in the pleasure of living. He perceives the profound eloquence of simple things; food, friends, daily doing of common things, retracing all the by-ways of youth, finding infinite pleasure where before was pain be- cause he knows now it was his way of development. Freed and separated, he guides his life along the shoals that threaten other lives, with his heart full of song, secure in the superconscious perception that all is love, yet all is law. Happiness belongs wholly to the subconscious. It is a reflex and its response is secured just in proportion 123 PSYCHCOMA to the average of truth values we have made our own. When once the habit of analysis is adopted the non- essentials drop away like starved parasites. The affectations and mimicry of conversational boredom give place to wholesome silence, vocal with voiceless resolve. Ideals are wrought out alone. We need to know, to discriminate; we need to reprove, to refuse to give our sanc- tion to what we believe to be wrong; to have principles and to anchor to them, and, above all, to cherish ideals, but to also know that life is fluid and only as we become atro- phied and senile do we cease to move from ideal to ideal. Ideals are high water marks of the souVs capacity to apprehend the superconscious mes- sage. 124 OR SOUL-SLEEP. Never allow a mean discontent to grow upon you. Whatever your sit- uation, dig up the good in it; it is always there. And realize that when you have drawn from your present environment all that it was intended to mean to you and contributed to it what it was meant you should, the dissolving process will manifest your further needs. We are no better than our environment until it or we change. A superior understanding forces a superior condition. As fast and as soon as we are aroused from our coma we polarize ourselves to attract new values. The happiest moments you can ever know will come thru glimpsing your own ascent thru the cosmic consciousness. If your thoughts are unkind, un- grateful, fault-finding, and full of 125 PSYCHCOMA fear, you are magnetized (because centered thru deep feeling) to attract these very things to yourself and you may be caught in a holocaust of per- sonal disappointment. Only as an attitude becomes deep feeling will any change be possible. Mere surface distinctions will never disturb the coma. Happiness results from the freedom and power to multiply experience from unexpected opportunities, to share life with every living thing. Deep coma means to be separated and isolated intent upon the self. Exclusion develops at two periods of consciousness; first, as it is lulled to sleep thru conceit of its own impor- tance by difference of education, money, or clothes. Finally as the soul grows conscious of opportunity and 126 OR SOUL -SLEEP. sees itself in true proportion, as a son of the good God, with hands, feet, mind only as a means to enter into the service of men and for the benefit of all, he possesses an over- flowing fount of happiness that can be tapped by no man. A man de- mands his happiness on the level of his consciousness. A Master does not find his satisfactions in that which may entertain an infant. Dare to be alone! Analyze the mass. Know what ministers to your happiness and seek the highest. Be not afraid to withdraw from the groups of social circles if you have ceased to find happiness there; the law of the ascending life is to allow it to advance. Few people really love the silence because they are beg- gars in resources and unacquainted 127 PSYCHCOMA with the power which demands the attitude of listener. A Master seeks the lonely places. A metaphysical or mathematical system educed from the Bible may be interesting but it is a parody. The science of mind needs no apology to- day. All the heavy artillery of scholarship is turned upon the men- tal apparatus. Man has an immense evolution behind him and the study is illuminating. Men dare to laugh at the one who presumes to defend a system as a special divine revelation from God. The scientific world adjusts its psychology to such types of mind and with its academic finger on the pulse of developing tendencies can trace with exactness the fevered spasms of self-importance which leads a person 128 OR SOUL-SLEEP. to announce himself or herself as Elijah or The Woman Clothed with the Sun. Freaks are spasms in pre- serve. The Hebrew literature has been a handy volume with which to inspire awe and arrogate authority. You do not need to sign away reason and break with all your relationships in the world of progress, because sud- denly you have awakened to the power of auto-suggestion. The real fact is you have touched only one of the laws in world economy; it is not the all nor the ultimate. Unity must be sought thru relationships vast enough to include all experience, scientific, historical, religious. Any system which places restriction upon your thinking, seeking, and proving pauperizes you. Take your private L29 PSYCHCOMA systems if you will, but do not think for one moment that you are in possession of any knowledge of what the Bible is, its meaning, or its his- tory. More knowledge will help you to understand that it takes one with the spirit of the Trusts to exploit the Bible as a private scheme. We need to know what is fact lest we make fable of it all. The student in every known field of knowledge plods and assorts his findings, widens and deepens all his resources, and never shuts off the light nor burns his bridges. The Bible is the autobiography of the Hebrew nation. It might have been dug up as was the Mormon Bible, or written by one man as the Koran was, instead of being written by many men covering a period of 130 OR SOUL-SLEEP. several hundred years, weaving in its traditions and myths for the purpose of teaching and preaching, rewritten and re-edited according to the need of the prophet's lash in correcting pre- vailing evils. Some parts of the Bible were writ- ten as late as 165 B. C. and Genesis was re-edited and put into its present form about 445 B. C. How do we know? Assyriology has been born during the last twenty years and from her buried treasures of palaces, enormous libraries, tablets of legal documents, accurate systems of chronology, we have data inter- changing across Palestine on its way to Egypt, which returns the com- pliment by uncovering in 1887 the Amarna letters written 1450 B. C. by a vassal king in Palestine to 181 PSYCH COM A his Egyptian monarch, revealing a civilization antedating by several thousand years the colonization of Palestine by the Hebrews. Historical criticism tethers frag- ments to wholes and distinguishes its ages of literature by the variation in its language as easily as the geologist dates the rocks or the stu- dent distinguishes between the Eng- lish of Chaucer and that of the twentieth century. The bubble of unlocking the Bible by special keys is pierced by an exegesis which enables one to recognize certain inherited ideas, customs, and language. This method interprets the meaning of Scripture in the thought of the writer. The Allegorical interpreter is con- cerned with its spiritual lessons, 132 OR SOUL-SLEEP. wholly distinct from the thought of the writer. The Mystical interpreter scorns the lexicon and grammar and sees only what it means to him. Dogmatic interpretation is con- cerned with only what defends a cer- tain doctrine. The Historical method seeks the meaning in the thought of the writer, to know the situation which gave it birth, the ends to accomplish, the political, moral, social, and religious life from which the book sprang. Within it are truths valid for all time, requiring no interpretation save the direct appeal to the con- science, for it is the literature of a people saturated with the God con- sciousness, and a revelation of ele- mental man with his face toward 188 PSYCHCOMA God. It is a treasury of race ex- perience, and not a collection of in- fallible oracles and cunningly devised fables. History is God's one great method of teaching men. Its abid- ing lesson is that sin is punished and virtue will have its reward. By ex- perience with great men of the past our life is stimulated and nourished. This study soon leads to the discov- ery that the Bible throughout does not present the same conclusions of God nor the same standards for moral conduct. The Bible is not a history of the world but of Israel's traditions. There are those who have thought they could not be Christians and know anything about psychology, while the fact is you cannot be as good a Christian without it. It 134 OR SOUL-SLEEP. pigeonholes experience that is live data. The Bible pronounces no anath- ema on electricity and the uses of steam or upon any line of achieve- ment of which the ancient Hebrews had not the slightest notion, yet they are not the less useful on that ac- count. You need to understand your material, and have the knowledge that comes thru scientific research, history, and religion. Both national and individual life swings around a center. The center of the Hebrew life was God and when the people swung far out on the circumference of life's fascinations their prophets called them back and centered their lives again. That everlasting round- ing-up of a life is sacred history. Other nations center in the Derby and motor cars. Yet one by one an 135 PSYCHCOMA individual steps out, detaches him- self from the mass and disintegration is arrested in spots. The intellectual awakening of this century will not be put off by a conglomerate metaphysical frappe. The relation between cause and effect has revealed a power resident in every man to bring things to pass. The hurry habit makes the spiritual life the specialty of experts who furnish a concise formula for its possession. The one who seeks bar- gain sales for spiritual outfits grows impatient as he realizes that the spiritual life is a process and not a plaster. Only by blending "to be" and "to get" into "begetting" or "be- coming," can the transformation take place. Physical culture would make man the reflex of his dia- 136 OR SOUL-SLEEP. phragm. Electric healing would re- solve life into human electricity; all good as forms of suggestion which may or may not lead to awakening. The one sure way is to analyze the self. This should never become mor- bid introspection, which is another word for self-love and a dislike for thinking the self ever at fault. Analysis has been so little used that the word has almost become fossilized syntax and now Pragma- tism takes its place as a brand new word and lends its name as sponsor to the things worth while. Accord- ing to Professor James the psychol- ogist, the Pragmatist accepts the world as an inheritance which obli- gates each generation to leave it to posterity in an improved condition. It has no dogmas and no doctrines 137 PSYCHCOMA but a method for arriving at truth which it calls "a species of good." Pragmatism unstiffens all theories by setting each one to work. It enter- tains any hypothesis and considers any evidence and offers a free field even to theological ideas if they prove to have a value for concrete life. It assumes that any new knowledge is absorbed in terms of past knowledge and that primitive ways of thinking may not yet be wholly expunged; that our funda- mental ways of thinking are discov- eries of exceedingly remote ancestors which have been able to preserve themselves throughout the experience of all subsequent time and that all theories are mental moods of adap- tion to reality; that the possession of any truth is not an end in itself, 138 OR SOUL-SLEEP. but only a means of vital satisfac- tions. There is no absolute truth, but that certain truths work out in the course of experience. It argues for a universe unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places where thinking beings are at work, rather than the idea of a universe eternally complete, an edition de luxe with duplicate editions full of false readings, each mutilated and distorted in its own way. Pragmatism asserts that we can- not reject any hypothesis if conse- quences useful to life flow from it. That every ideal realized is one mo- ment in the world's salvation, and that a man should be willing to pay with his own person, if need be, for the realization of the ideals which he frames. Professor James closes his L89 PSYCHCOMA book with these words: "I firmly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of ex- perience extant in the universe. I believe, rather, that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing rooms and libraries. They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history, the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangent to the wider life of things, and may well believe that higher powers exist and are at work to save the world on ideal lines sim- ilar to our own." Pragmatism, then, becomes a class 140 OR SOUL-SLEEP. name for various working values in experience, analyzing ideals as they work out in life with a spirit of rev- erence, love, and wisdom. It wel- comes unity on the basis of diversity and usefulness and safeguards its conclusions by fearless, searching analysis. The Awakened one seeks prayer as the most high place where he may renew his life. If prayer preceded every meditation, every act of heal- ing, every work attempted, the way would quickly uncover itself, because the vibrations are centered around positive domination of good thru the quiet process of spiritual energy, without the effort necessary in manipulating the mental and phys- ical currents and controlling the out- ward energies. 141 PSYCHCOMA Prayer unites us in a common rhythm with the infinite love and law. "God is able to do for us far more abundantly above all that we can ask or think." Each may supply for himself another word for God if it would more adequately convey his conception of the infinite energy. Professor Edward Everett Hale has written a most interesting ac- count of the part prayer played in the certain experience of his. He began by seeking during the day one hour of perfect solitude, in which he might make "the experiment of prayer." He writes: "As the week went on I began to be conscious of a curious change in myself which I did not and do not explain. My pleasure in the many interests which made up my life began to diminish and become 142 OR SOUL-SLEEP. dull. Instead of desiring to finish up the duties of life to turn to its pleasures, I found that for the time its pleasures had little interest. Art, literature, scholarship, the theater, the various things that had filled my mind lost attraction. Plans and ambitions of one sort and another no longer interested me. I felt no especial lack, however; I believe I was conscious of a greater interest." Prayer disclosed an eter- nal harmony and gave life new val- ues in the yielding of his own life to a higher law of gravitation. Things released themselves from an exaggerated value and assumed their true proportion. Let this prayer experience be your daily sacrament. A sacrament is your most high consciousness with 143 PSYCHCOMA the most high spirit of all worlds. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and I will sup with him and he with me.' Equilibrium of the physical and spiritual forces is true healing. Healing is not force, nor hypnotism, nor will power. It comes as a spiritual victory and thru soul struggle. Having attained to the knowledge of Aspiration, Trans- mutation, Meditation, command the soul to heal itself and then open the objective consciousness to watch the work. It is the spirit that heals, that establishes a law in the perceptions. We need to create a center thru which the power of the spirit can work. 144 OR SOUL -SLEEP. We have nothing to do but to visualize the perfect picture; the spirit does the rest thru the illumination of sug- gestion and the silence. Think of yourself in pictures, visualize your hopes. "He who builds no castles in the air builds no castles anywhere." Every thought and act stirs certain life forces, therefore let no force generate which would cancel your desires. It is no part of the result what your opinions are, you are educating your opinions; the process is to be observed, and while you stop to mourn, disintegration and demagnetization are taking place. Mere telling the subconscious will not change the coma, an impres- sion must be made thru feeling it must be so. Mere words are often caught in the mental machinery and 145 PSYCHCOMA never get any farther. Convey the impression direct as to what you wish fulfilled. Keep your vision upon that, it becomes a thought matrix for manifestation. How you feel within is the potent power. Never tell the subconscious what not to do. "Not" is a limita- tion and inefficient to stamp the de- sired impulse. Its physiological action was explained under "Affirma- tion." The dynamo of environment is the body. To be healed means more than bodily harmony. The radiation of harmonious vibration impresses our homes and business relation- ships. We magnetize conditions. Look upon every disappointment as an increased opportunity; a door closed as another opens. Be serene, 146 OR SOUL-SLEEP. calm, joyful, expectant, saying firmly, "I am waiting, I manifest joy unto me." Walk beside yourself as a friend and companion. To suggest health to the soul is to receive it if the conditions are ful- filled. First understand that you are a dreaming soul, that you need to arouse yourself. Be concentrated in your effort and impress the sub- conscious with what you desire to have realized. To restore normal conditions in another, attain to the silence, and hold in your mind the picture of that one as he should be ; see him no other way. Lovingly and often draw this picture to you, thus forming a thought matrix. It will in time be- come so real a thing that he, too, will glimpse it, and, fed by its vision, 147 PSYCHCOMA come into his own. In the wordless silence thought creates an illimitable universe vast as space and sends its messages on wings. Send out love and encouragement to all the world. What about "getting and having"? Is it right to attract our own home to us and the ability to preserve our- selves from being a burden to any one? The expediency of the every- day facts of existence need not be overlooked or ignored. In any con- dition of human life a home and clothing are necessary, and the higher we are in the ascending scale of de- velopment the clearer are our per- ceptions of the value of a suitable environment, but our circumstances must justify our demands. One might demonstrate a house and lot remote and unavailing to produce 148 OR SOUL-SLEEP. the comfort and usefulness that one room might bring. It is perfectly legitimate to demand a home and a reasonable income ; these are as much a part of ns as feathers are to a bird, merely protection. In the matter of food and clothes a Master should be able to exercise his free- dom as to how his time and energies shall be conserved. When the church provided homes for its brotherhoods, one great dis- traction was removed. The question of clothes was easily solved. But, like all good things, it was abused by being an open door to a mere profes- sion of spiritual goods, and there has never been devised a psychic plum- met to take the measure of a human motive. The abuse of a privilege, however, does not argue for its un- 149 PSYCHCOMA fitness, and such retreats to-day offered at the least possible expense and governed by the laws of silence and meditation, would be a glorious philanthropy. Do the work that lies direct before you and the purity of your motive will lift you into channels of supply which are legitimate only as they further usefulness. When a horse and carriage or a motor is a neces- sary part of your work or develop- ment, it will be forthcoming. But as a magic creation for self-indul- gence, it may not materialize. An understanding, spiritual, consecrated consciousness does not demand unre- lated things. Life is experience! Mere money may negate experience. The journey up the heights of full awakening may take years, a month, 150 OR SOUL-SLEEP. a day; all depends upon the stupor and the determined purpose during the moments of awakening and the use of the hours of meditation and prayer. It also requires that you "travel light" in requiring service from others and carrying no heavy baggage of mental and physical self- necessities. When one realizes that the un- awakened life is a dreaming out loud, that one thought is as effective as another to provoke action, that only thru conscious directed thought and analysis will result an under- standing which will eventuate in an awakening that means supremacy, he enters into the life of the spirit which becomes dominant. The senses become mere mechanical devices by which the soul enters upon the 151 PSYCHCOMA large life of mastership, merely guideposts on the path of service. The one who can enter the subliminal consciousness at will knows a happi- ness that transcends the sense life. He may say, "I and the Father are one." He no longer sees himself a separate atom, but lifting his inner eye to the great brooding over-soul, he bathes in its light, unites himself with its purpose, merges his person- ality with its impersonality, slips into the great eternal and the mask of self is nullified. In the transforming process the small self-interests have become dis- solved. The narrow conventions that conform to "this," and "that," no longer operate ; he is one with all, no joy but increases his joy, no pain or grief but he can share ; dumb to self- 152 OR SOUL-SLEEP. glorification, praise and blame are alike to him, for he is sensitized to every human need and the personal sting is deflected. Beautiful surroundings are en- joyed because they are beautiful and harmonious, not because they are a necessity. He can live in the world but not of it; he can work as those who are ambitious; he can respect life as those who desire it; he can be happy as those who live for happi- ness. No longer dependent upon human caprice for happiness, he is not offended at anything it may do; he understands, he sees the dreamer dreaming; he seeks experience from the laws of his inner nature. The senses then become symbols of the real; the spirit knows and feels; there is no more war between the 153 PSYCHCOMA spirit and the senses; everything takes on a new meaning. Home, family, friends, food, nature, become mere names for protection, brother- hood, communion. The petty bar- riers of money and position drop away like magic and the soul stands naked before God, aware of itself! Affirmations. I am working for eternal truth which must emerge. I work for its release into this life whether it be for my own loved ones or for others. I will do the work before me, I bring into manifestation the will of God. Now do I draw the wisdom of my inner life into my conscious mind. Divine Father, thou Soul of the universe, I empty myself of self to 154 OR SOUL-SLEEP. be filled with Thee. Absorb me, animate me, dominate me until merged with Thy spirit, all the ave- nues of my being manifest Thy will and Thy law. Psalm 23. HELEN RHODES Has written for The Nautilus a series of five most original and practical articles on ' ' Religious Educa- tion for New Thought Children. ' ' These appear in the magazines for June to October, 1908. The five numbers will be sent free upon request — as long as they last — with a trial six months' advance sub- scription to The Nautilus, for 25 cents. To new subscribers only. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Edwin Markham, Florence Morse Kingsley, W. R. C. Latson, M.D., and Prof. Edgar L. Larkin are among the regular contributors to The Nautilus, and Elizabeth Towne and William E. Towne are its editors. The 1908 numbers con- tain a serial story, "The Way Out," by Grace MacGowan Cooke, and with January, 1909, number will begin another splendid serial, "The City of Perfection," by Caroline Wood Morrison — a story full of helpfulness and the charm of the unex- pected. The Nautilus stands for self-evolution through self-knowledge, and its readers say it is like a delightful look -off from the mountain top on a clear day — a revelation and an inspiration. Elizabeth Towne publishes The Nautilus and many helpful books. Ask for descriptive circulars and special offers. Address her at Holyoke, Mass. 41493 University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. ,^».ERN REGIONAL! (RE M 000635775 Univer Sou Lit