• When all men know how to make the subconscious work for them there will be no poor people, none in distress or suffering, in pain or ill health; no one will be unhappy, no one will be a victim of thwarted ambitions.
• Your subconscious mind is like a garden, and you must be very careful what you plant there. Every thought, every emotion, every suggestion is a seed planted in the subconscious soil, and will bring you a harvest like itself. It doesn’t matter what kind of thought seeds you plant, whether poverty or prosperity, failure or success, happiness or misery, you will reap a harvest in kind.
• If you impress vividly, intensely, and persistently, upon the creative mind in the great within of you, your determination to be what you long to be; if you register your vow to succeed in doing what you long to do; and do your level best to actualize your longings, nothing in the world can stand in the way of your success.
• Every great inventor, every great discoverer, every great genius has felt the thrill of the divine inward force, that mysterious power back of the flesh but not of it, which has come to his aid in working out the device, the discovery, the book, the painting, the great musical composition, the poem, whatever he was trying to create or discover.
I predict that within the next twenty-five years the average man, through his knowledge of the infinite power and possibilities of the subconscious mind, that mysterious force in the great within, will be able to accomplish more than the greatest minds of all time have ever dreamed of doing.
Science has revealed the mechanism of the body and mastered the secrets of its marvelous construction and action; but the mystery of mind is as yet but dimly understood. Very few have even a faint realization of its immense hidden powers.
The body becomes unconscious in sleep and all its voluntary activities cease. But the mind . . what does it do when the body sleeps? We know it does not sleep, for when the body is wrapped in slumber the memory and imagination slip out of their house and go where they will. They wander in scenes of the past or they project themselves into the future.
Now they are visiting in California, now in London, now in Paris, now they are among the stars. What embodiment do they assume? Or do they take visible form? They certainly seem to be completely independent of the body during sleep. The new psychology explains the mystery of mind in a very simple way. It claims that that part of the mind which continues active when we sleep is that marvelous force in the great within of us which, understood and rightly used, will enable man to reach the heights of his limitless possibilities.
We know that we are tapping a new source of power. When we can do this intelligently, scientifically, we shall all be performing what hitherto have been regarded as miracles. We are just beginning to realize that the subconscious mind is the channel by which we connect with infinite supply; with the great creative processes of the universe; that through it man can tap the Infinite Mind and accomplish things that will dwarf to insignificance achievements that now excite our wonder and admiration.
Everything, so far as results are concerned, depends upon the degree of intelligence and conscious purpose with which we use the subconscious mind, for it is forever occupied registering on the invisible creative substance your every thought, emotion, desire, wish, or feeling. It never sleeps, but is incessantly working on the suggestions it receives from the conscious or objective mind. Your habitual thought, your convictions, your visions, your dreams, your beliefs, are all impressed upon it, and will ultimately be expressed in your life.
In other words, your subconscious mind is your servant, and proceeds instantly, without quibbling, without questioning, no matter whether it is a big thing or a little thing, whether it is right or wrong, to obey the order, to follow the suggestion, you give it.
For instance, when you want to take an early train, or to get up in the middle of the night for some purpose, when you haven’t been accustomed to do so, and you say to yourself, or hold the thought in mind before dropping to sleep, “I must wake up in time to get that train in the morning,” or, “I must get up at one o’clock tonight,” you are sure to awaken at almost the exact time you register, when, perhaps, you haven’t been awake at that hour before in a year. You have no alarm clock; no one calls you; what wakes you up at just the right time? You probably never asked yourself the question, or thought about it. But it was that little faithful subconscious servant who was on the watch for you while you slept.
A similar thing is true of our appointments; making dates or engagements for some time in the future. You agree to meet a man tomorrow or someday next week at a certain place and hour. You don’t make any written record of it and the thing passes out of your mind. But when the time comes round you are reminded of your engagement. From long experience I know that that something inside of me will bring every engagement I make to my consciousness in time for me to attend to it. I don’t keep thinking of it all the time. Not at all. I file it away in the within of me as I would file a business letter in my office for future reference. Then I dismiss it from my thought, knowing that it will be taken care of at the proper time.
The trained man learns to commit all sorts of things to his subconscious secretary, knowing from experience that it will serve him faithfully, not only in comparatively small things, such as awakening him at any desired hour in the night or early morning, constantly reminding him of his engagements, but also in the serious problems of life. Edison says that when he is right up against a great problem in his work and has no idea in the world how to solve it, he simply sleeps over it, and many a time he wakes up in the morning to find his problem solved; it has been worked out for him while he slept in ways which he never dreamed of. The details of various inventions have been completed for him in this way.
I know a great many business and professional men who do as Mr. Edison does when serious problems confront them; they sleep on them before they make any decision. In fact, it is the commonest thing in the world, when we are considering some serious problem, for all of us to say: “I must sleep over that matter before deciding; it is so important.” What does sleeping over such a matter mean? We may not understand or be able to explain, but what it really means is this: Your subconscious mind takes up the problem at the point where your conscious mind left it when you went to sleep, and in the morning you will find that it has been thought out for you. Your subconscious wisdom has entered into the transaction, given you the benefit of its advice and enabled you to make the right decision.
When all men know how to make the subconscious work for them there will be no poor people, none in distress or suffering, in pain or ill health; no one will be unhappy, a victim of thwarted ambitions. We shall know then that all we have to do to make our dreams come true, to be prosperous and happy, is to give our invisible secretary the right instructions and follow this up with the necessary effort.
Establishing in your subconscious mind the things that you want to come true, that you are ambitious to attain; impressing upon it the ideal of the man or woman you long to be, is the first step toward achievement. Hold the conviction in your consciousness that your own is already headed your way, work for it confidently in the realization that you can draw from the creative energy of the universal mind anything you desire, and it will surely come to you, because you will thus start the process of creation in the great within of you.
Consciously or unconsciously put in motion, these are the initial steps that have led to the production of every great work of art and genius in the world. They were adopted in the production of our railroads, our ships, our homes, our great monuments and buildings, our cities, our telegraph, telephone, and wireless systems, our airplanes, and all the marvels of modern inventions. Edison says he is only a medium for transmitting from the great cosmic intelligence and energy which fill the universe a few of the infinite number of devices which are destined to emancipate human beings from every form of drudgery. He believes that the best things he has given to the world have been merely passed along through him to his fellow men from the Infinite Source of all supply.
While the subconscious mind is all-powerful in working out the pattern or idea we give it, of itself it does not originate, so it will make all the difference in the world to you what sort of material you give your subconscious mind to work on.
You can make it an enemy or a friend, for it will do the thing which injures you just as quickly as the thing which blesses you. Not through malice, but because it has no discriminating power any more than the soil in which the farmer sows his seed. If the farmer should make a mistake and sow thistle seed instead of wheat, the soil doesn’t say to him, “My friend, you have made a mistake. You have been sowing thistle seed instead of wheat, so we will change the law, which you may get what you thought you were going to get.” No, the soil will always give us a harvest like our sowing.
If we sow thistle seed it will be just as faithful in producing thistles as it will in producing wheat or cabbages or potatoes. We sow the seed and nature gives us a corresponding harvest; that is the law on the physical plane. It is exactly the same on the mental plane. The subconscious mind is like the soil, passive. The objective mind uses it, gives its commands or suggestions, which it carries out according to their nature. That is, the objective or conscious mind sows the seed in word, motive, thought or act, and the subconscious mind gives us back our own; always the thing that corresponds to what we impressed on it.
In other words, the subconscious mind has no choice but to follow the lead we give it. Hence, how important it is that our instructions to this invisible servant should be for our good and not for our harm; that we should saturate it, not with the things we do not want, the things we hate and fear and worry about, but the things we long for and are striving to attain.
If you are working hard, and yet not progressing toward your ideal; if you are in poverty and wretchedness, though constantly struggling to get away from those conditions; you are not obeying the law “which governs the subconscious. Your thought is at fault; you are thinking poverty, thinking failure; your mind is filled with doubts and fears; you are working against the law instead of with it; you are neutralizing all your efforts by your wrong mental attitude.
Some people by their indomitable faith and self-confidence get hold of the dormant powers of the great within of themselves and unconsciously work with the law which governs them. Wherever a man or a woman is doing unusual things, struggling heroically to accomplish some great purpose, you find one who consciously or unconsciously is obeying this law, by making tremendous demands upon the subconscious; by registering his life purposes with such tremendous intensity and working so persistently, so confidently, along that line that his purpose is unfailingly carried out. Luther Burbank, for example, has done and is doing tremendous things in the plant world because he makes tremendous demands upon the mighty agent within, his subconscious mind or self.
He does not neutralize the demands by doubts and fears as to whether they will be carried out or not. He makes his demands, gives his orders, persistently, emphatically, with vigor and determination, and they are faithfully executed. By the same means, consciously or unconsciously used, Madam Curie has made some of the most remarkable discoveries in the scientific world. We can all accomplish our ends, attain our life ambition by doing as they and all other great achievers are doing . . working with law. We are not, as we were taught to believe in the past, so many separate little bits of mind thrown off into space to struggle for ourselves; we are all a part of the infinite mind, the cosmic intelligence and energy of the universe.
We are the creation of the one Supreme Mind which called all things out of the unseen, and since the created must partake of the qualities of the Creator, man must partake of the qualities of omniscience, of omnipotence, of the Supreme Mind that gave man dominion over the earth and everything on it. This means that we are really, so far as this earth is concerned, in partnership with God, that we are co-creators with the great creative intelligence which is everywhere active in the universe.
The marvelous accomplishments of man within the past few centuries can only be accounted for through his cooperation with his Creator. It is the spirit of God in man working in harmony with the spirit of God in the great cosmic intelligence of the universe which has made possible within the past half century achievements in science, in invention, in discovery that our ancestors would have ridiculed . . if anyone dared to suggest them as possibilities . . as the imaginings of the insane.
Wireless telegraphy and telephony, the automobile, the airplane; the harnessing of electricity to do the work in our factories, in our homes; the reconstruction of the body by great surgeons, the discoveries in astronomy; cables under oceans, connecting the ends of the earth; the construction of railroads under rivers and under the streets of our teeming cities; the works of scientific men in every field, of the great agriculturists, horticulturists and naturalists, and the great animal breeders who are doing in the animal world what the Burbanks are doing in the plant world . . all these things are the results of man’s reaching out into the great creative energy and in cooperation with Omnipotence molding it to his purposes.
The dictum of science is that “Nature unaided fails.” In other words, man is God’s working partner on this earth, his work being to lift everything upon it, including man himself, to the highest possibility of the divine plan. There is a power in man back of the flesh, which, working with the divine cosmic intelligence, will enable him to do things that at present we can hardly conceive of. Nothing we can imagine or dream” of will be impossible of achievement, because we are a real part of the creative power which performs miracles throughout the universe. That is, apparent miracles, for everything follows a law which is never violated in order to perform what seem to us miracles.
In the consciousness of the mighty possibilities of the subconscious mind to tap the great universal mind lies the secret of infinite creative principle, of limitless power. There are powers in your subconscious mind which, if aroused and utilized, would help you do what others tell you is “impossible.” Your ideal, your heart’s desire, however unattainable it may seem at present, is a prophecy of what will come true in your life if you do your part. It is only in our extremities that we touch our real power, that we unconsciously have recourse to the great within. There are multitudes of people in the failure army today, with scarcely energy enough to keep them alive, who have forces slumbering deep within themselves which, if they could only be awakened, would enable them to do wonderful things.
The great trouble with most of us, even those who have studied along this line, is that our demands upon ourselves are so feeble, the call upon the great within of us is so weak and so intermittent, that it makes no vital or permanent impression upon the creative energies; it lacks the force and persistency that transmute desires into realities. When we realize that it is through our subconscious selves, in the great within of us, that we make wireless connection with the All-Supply, with all possible joy and satisfaction; that it is here the great creative processes which make our dreams come true are started, it seems strange that we don’t use this great force to better advantage.
When the necessary conditions are fulfilled the law that governs the subconscious operates unerringly. Work with the law instead of against it and nothing can hinder your success. In other words, let your subconscious mind help instead of hinder you.
Give it the right thought, the right instruction, the right ideals to work on; give it success thoughts instead of failure thoughts, bright cheerful, hopeful thoughts instead of gloomy discouraging ones; never hold a thought that does not correspond with your ideal or ambition; no matter what conditions are, what obstacles stand in your way, persist in vividly visualizing your success, never letting a doubt or fear thought come between you and the confident belief that you will get the thing you long for and are working for with all your heart, and you will be amazed at what your faithful secretary, working in harmony with creative intelligence, will do for you.
The interior creative forces are more active during the night than in the day time, and are especially susceptible to the suggestions they receive before we fall asleep. During sleep the conscious mind is not active, and consequently the subconscious mind operates uninterruptedly, without any of the objections or hindrances which it is constantly bringing up during the day.
Therefore it is of the greatest importance that you give the subconscious the right message, the right model on which to work during the night. Do this before you drop to sleep and it will work for the attainment of your ambition, your desire, all night. Never allow yourself to fall asleep in a doubting, despondent mood.
Do not hinder the operation of the creative intelligence at any time by doubt, or fear. Doubt is the great enemy which has neutralized the efforts, and killed the success of multitudes of people. Live always in the consciousness that you are a success in whatever you are trying to do and the creative processes within you, faithfully working according to the model you give them, will produce whatever you desire.
Orison Swett Marden
The Secrets, Mysteries & Powers of The Subconscious Mind
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