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