Unleash The Hidden Power Of Your Mind
It is said that there is no royal road to learning; and while
in a sense this is true, it is also true that, in all things,
even in mind training, there is a right way and a wrong way--or
rather there is one right way, and there are a thousand wrong
ways.
FIRST of all, before you are able to think at all, you must have
something to think about. You must have some mental "stock in
trade." And this mental stock in trade you can gain only through
the senses. The appearance of a tree, the roar of the ocean, the
odor of a rose, the taste of an orange, the sensation you
experience in handling a piece of satin--all these are so much
material helping to form your stock of mental images--"the
contenof the consciousness," as the scholastic psychologists
call it.
Now, all these millions and millions of facts which make up our
mental stock in trade--the material of thought are gained
through the senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and so
on.
Our system of training for mental supremacy will begin, then,
with a brief study of the perceptions, or senses, and the
methods by which we may gain the power of seeing more clearly,
listening more intently, of feeling more delicately, and, in
general, of developing the perceptive powers.
MEMORY AND IT'S USES
But the perceptions are of little value unless we remember what
we have perceived. You may have read all the wise books ever
written, you may have traveled the wide world over; you may have
had all kinds of interesting and unusual experiences; but unless
you can remember what you have read, what you have seen, and
what you have done, you will have no real use of it all.
You will have gained no mental "stock in trade," no material by
the employment of which you may hope to achieve mental
supremacy. It will be necessary, then, for us to study not only
methods of developing power of perception, but the means by
which perception may be retained and recalled at will.
THE POWER OF ASSOCIATING MEMORIES
But the memory itself is not enough. I have known people of
unusual powers of memory who could not talk, write, or think
well--who were like "the bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
with loads of learned humor in his head"; but who, in spite of
all their experience and their recollection of it, had nothing
to write, nothing to say.
So memory is not enough. One must have the power of putting
memories together, of analyzing, comparing, contrasting, and
associating memories, until the entire mass of memories, which
form the "content of the consciousness," is wrought into one
splendid, homogeneous whole, a mass of images, each one of which
is intimately connected with many others, and all of which are
under instant command of the central sovereign