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Serial Lesson 66

From Course V, Esoteric Psychology, Chapter 11

Original Copyright 1937, Elbert Benjamine (a.k.a. C. C. Zain)
Copyright 2011, The Church of Light

To purchase the print book Esoteric Psychology click here

 

Subheadings:   Creative Work Depends Upon Reproductive Energies    Source of Images Used in Creative Work    Directed Thinking in Creative Work    How the Occultist Differs From the Mystic and Materialist    Rationalization    Why We Forget Resolutions

Birth Charts:  Emile Coué Chart    Jack London Chart

Chapter 11

How To Develop Creative Imagination

ALL creation is the result of giving something already in existence a new form; for all that is and all that ever will be has ever existed in some condition. Creative imagination, therefore, consists in rearranging the images already present in the unconscious mind, or which may be acquired for the purpose, into new combinations. Its application implies that the unconscious mind shall possess stored experiences in a state suitable for use, and that energy of sufficient intensity be applied to these mental factors to cause them to enter into new and unique arrangements with relation one to the other.

The kaleidoscope well illustrates this process when it is unguided by desire. The instrument contains loose fragments of colored glass and reflecting surfaces so arranged that changing its position presents the contents in an endless variety of symmetrical vari-colored designs. But the unconscious mind and its thought-elements, thought-cells and dynamic thought structures, as I have set forth in detail in Chapter 10 (Serial Lesson No. 65, “How to Cultivate Subliminal Thinking”), is never uninfluenced by desires. Each thought-element is associated with the Conditioning energy which accompanied its formation, as is each thought-cell and thought-structure; energy straining for release in a given direction, such as we call desire.

Some of these desires are more powerful than others, and the one largely able to gain the attention of the unconscious mind at the time, exerts an influence upon the kaleidoscope fragments of experience somewhat parallel to that exerted by a magnet on iron filings.

Place iron filings on a plate of glass. They lie, like the mental factors within the unconscious when unaffected by desire, in a listless heap. But put a horseshoe magnet under the glass and all is changed. The filings leap into definite and beautiful designs, and follow all movements of the magnet. Desire energy is the magnet which is responsible for all movement, all change of pattern, and all new combinations of mental factors within the unconscious mind.

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Creative Work Depends Upon Reproductive Energies

The energy released by the Drive for Self Preservation, or by the Drive for Significance, is sufficient to cause trains of thought of intensity to pass through the unconscious mind. And some worthwhile new combinations may result from the thought processes thus set in motion. But the experiences of writers, composers, inventors, artists, and all those to whom we credit creative work, is that creative output of volume and importance, on any plane, is dependent upon the creative energy of the Drive for Race Preservation.

In other words, the procreative instinct has for its object the creation of something outside the self, and through all time since the soul started its journey it has been engaged in acquiring Significance through producing something new. It has thus been specifically conditioned to create, rather than to acquire. Thus is creative expression dependent upon sexual power.

Poorly sexed individuals never become noted for any kind of creative output. Hermaphrodites, and those of little sexual vigor, become the best of all mediums. They are easily dominated and controlled by a more vigorously sexed mind; and as irresponsible mediums sometimes are the instruments through whom a large amount of creative work is accomplished. But it is the controlling intelligence, in such cases, that does the actual creative work.

Back of all important creative activity, back of creative imagination of value, lies reproductive energy as the driving power. And as a corollary, the use of creative imagination, and creative work of all kinds, consumes sexual energy. Modern biologists and physiologists, such as Alexis Carrel1, of the Rockefeller Institute, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1912, have commented on the relation between sexual energy and creative mental output; holding that a person engaged in such mental work could not expend his energies too freely through marriage relations without lowering his mental output; where a person doing merely routine work would not be noticeably affected.

Those who would develop creative imagination, therefore, must not dissipate their creative energies wantonly. Instead they should learn, as explained in Chapter 5 (Serial Lesson No. 60, “Why Repression is Not Morality”), to Condition the reproductive desire to find a higher satisfaction through creating mentally than in flowing through more physical channels of expression. Not that a celibate life is essential for creative work; but that a reserve of reproductive energy should be present which may be diverted, as occasion demands, into mental creation.

While we occupy physical bodies the intensity of both physical and mental activity is largely, as explained in Chapter 9 (Serial Lesson No. 64, “How to Think Constructively”), determined by the electricity generated in the brain and nervous system. Creative activity, either physical or mental, requires a high electrical potential. Mental creation requires an electrical potential even greater, and radiations of even higher frequency, than mere physical procreation. Yet through Sublimation the electrical energies responsible for procreation are given a higher frequency and higher potential such as enables them to create on the mental plane. In fact, in all important mental and artistic creation and in all exalted emotion and feeling of religious devotion, a portion of the electrical energies responsible for physical procreation is thus Sublimated, or diverted into a higher plane of expression.

For the specific generation of electrical energies, such as have intensity sufficient for use in procreation and other creative activities, by the cells of the brain and nervous system, the organism has developed special endocrine glands. It has developed the secretion of adrenaline and intercortin to meet the emergency of fight or flight, and these secretions generate potentials especially adapted to these emergencies. But it has developed different endocrine secretions, those of the gonads, to meet the emergency of procreation and other creative activities. And these gonad secretions are specially adapted to generating within the brain and nervous system electrical energies of the proper potential and frequency to do creative work.

Creative geniuses of all kinds—famous poets, famous composers, famous writers of fiction, famous actors, famous painters—have, like the moving picture stars of the present time who also are creative artists, the reputation of many irregularities in their lives. Some of the most productive writers of fiction of all time, like George Eliot2 of England and George Sand3 of France, for instance, both women of world-wide fame, have been noted also for the unconventionality of their loves.

It would be erroneous, however, to conclude from this that amours and creative genius are necessarily companions. For there have been other geniuses of great productivity whose lives have been quite conventional. But we are quite warranted in concluding that the glandular makeup of those who do much creative work is such as to give unusual sexual power.

Some of these are successful in Sublimating so large a part of this excess of sexual energy that their lives are quite regular. They are able to divert the abundance of electrical high tension into the channels of their work. But others, having the same or even higher electrical tensions, are able to Sublimate only a portion of it into their work, and the remainder drives them into excess, or into affairs that are not sanctioned by society.

Writers now quite generally recognize the relation between sex energy and creative output. Even the most dissolute among the more successful ones, while engaged in writing, live continent lives. Until the piece of work upon which they are engaged is finished they refrain from alcoholic beverage and from too close association with the opposite sex. Then with the literary effort delivered to the editor they go on a jamboree that justifies their reputation as drunks and profligates. Such a mode of life, which is followed by some also in other lines of creative work, is reprehensible; but it nevertheless points to the working of a law, which these people have discovered through practical experience, that for creative work there must be a sufficient reserve of sex energy.

When such a reserve of sex energy is present, if it is to accomplish worthwhile mental work it must be directed into some specific channel of creation, and subjected to sufficient control that it does not run riot. Monastic life many times in history has been responsible for religious manias and wholesale hallucinations, due to the reproductive energies accumulated in forced celibacy running rampant with the imaginations of whole groups. The electrical energies present in high tension and over abundance created mental images that became so vivid, and charged with force, that they assumed the properties of physical presences.

As indicating the force of mental images, thus highly charged, to produce physical results, the records of stigmatization in the case of numerous individuals, from the thirteenth century down to the present day, are well attested. The votary, dwelling on the thought of the crucifixion, and identifying himself sympathetically with the image of the dying savior, received on his own body similar marks which became permanent. On some, the records show, no doubt because their imaginations were centered chiefly on it, there appeared only the mark of the crucifix. But on the bodies of others appeared wounds that bled, wounds of the nails and thorns and scourging.

Creative imagination, when it has sufficient electrical energy at its command, can produce the phenomena of the spiritistic seance room. That the phenomena are commonly produced through the direction of the creative imagination of a discarnate entity, rather than that of the person chiefly supplying the electrical energy, does not vitiate the principle.

All the evidence, again considering inadequately directed reproductive energy, indicates that an ascetic life, in which the sexual impulse is repressed, is the most highly productive in the development of psychism and a fertile and vivid imagination. Various strong desires of thought-cells and thought structures, finding no external avenue of expression, divert their energies into four-dimensional activities. The electrical tensions of high potential, generated in the brain and nervous system by the action of the gonad endocrine secretions, not finding a physical avenue of expression, exert a powerful pressure toward the creation of mental images. Fancies flow through the brain so highly charged with electrical energy that they seem convincing realities.

Nothing develops the ability to see, feel and hear psychically quicker than a complete suppression of the normal physical functions, especially the suppression of strong reproductive energies. But under such crowding and forcing, that which is seen, felt, and heard, although to the one having the experience it is most convincing, gives little information of value, and a multitude of errors.

I have enjoyed a wide experience checking the accuracy of the clairvoyant, clairaudient and psychometric experiences of those who have forced these faculties through asceticism. And I have found that to the extent there has been such forcing through repression, that the reports given are inaccurate and unreliable. Year after year I have been given predictions, warnings, and messages by those who still believe they are wonderful psychics, and whom no one could convince otherwise, practically none of which has proved reliable or of any value. What they thought was seen or felt or heard was really an image, often a preconception, in their own minds into which had been drained high tension electrical energy.

This, of course, presents no argument against the development of the psychic senses through normal methods of unfoldment; nor against the proper use or creative imagination. It simply indicates that when the energy present is too powerful to be controlled, or no special effort is made to direct powerful electrical energies when these are generated in the brain and nervous system, that these follow their natural creative trend, but their mental creations are inimical rather than beneficial.

Before indicating how the energies of creative imagination should be directed, however, it seems best first to consider the images of the unconscious mind, new combinations of which it is the function of the creative imagination to form.

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Source of Images Used in Creative Work

The experiences, physical and mental, which form the thought-elements, thought-cells, and dynamic stellar structures comprising the unconscious mind have fused according to the Law of Association; and they are recalled into objective consciousness in conformity to this law. Yet the individual has a certain power to create new Associations between the factors within his unconscious mind. If he could not do so there would be no power of discrimination; which requires that important matters, for instance, be selected and held before the attention apart from the unimportant material with which they were originally associated.

The process of separating images and other mental factors from the material with which they originally were linked in Association is called Dissociation. Some persons have great difficulty in Dissociation. And as creative imagination must make use of Dissociated ideas or images, they are unable to perform any work that they have not seen done in detail. They are unable to originate any marked variation in methods of work, unable to form an opinion of worth that they have not already heard expressed. Their mental processes are too tight.

People with small imagination often have a great fund of knowledge which has been integrated as received, but subjected to no process of dissociation in which it has been examined in a large variety of ways, in new combinations. Such an individual in relating an occurrence must tell all the details; if he tries to leave anything out, however unimportant, it breaks the whole train of his thought. Those of this type of mind often have unusually retentive memories, but can not pick out a passage from a memorized poem without repeating the poem from the beginning. Thus it is that those of much learning often are so hampered by the fixity of the contents of their minds that they can not adapt themselves. Such ultra-conservatives travel in a rut; unable to dissociate the ideas they have received from books or from precedent.

Those, however, who have the Individualistic Urges more prominent in their mental makeup, such as are mapped in a birth chart by a prominent planet Uranus, find dissociation easy. The thought energies mapped by Uranus tend to act as alternate currents, attracting strongly for a time, then as strongly repelling. This breaks up the mental fixity, enabling new combinations of ideas to be made. More than any others, the Individualistic Urges mapped by a prominent birth chart Uranus, give originality.

Mental fertility depends upon the supply of material at hand and its dissociation. By way of illustration we can think of any number of things that can be made from a large granite boulder. It may be used, finely ground, as sand in mortar; crushed to proper size as cobblestones; in larger blocks as building material, as monuments, or as part of a breakwater protecting a harbor. But so long as the boulder remains intact it can not be converted into any one of these uses. It must first be broken into pieces of suitable size. And for mental fertility, the mental contents must be broken up, severed from the fixity of their original association. The ability to do this may be cultivated through the habit of viewing experiences from various angles and in diverse combinations.

Yet if there is to be great fertility there must also be plenty of material within the unconscious mind thus to dissociate. Invention is more frequent among civilized peoples, not because they have stronger energies, and not merely because they have the thought-cells mapped by Uranus more powerful in their astral bodies, but because they have a so much wider field of information from which to draw their material. Also, they have devised methods of directing their desires more persistently toward a single end.

Yet the unconscious mind has within it, or easily accessible, a vastly wider field of information than has the objective consciousness. The objective consciousness has at its disposal only those images and ideas which can be brought up, through the process of memory, in a manner that they impart vibratory energy to the physical brain cells. And because the physical brain cells offer so much resistance to the process, making new and complex combinations of mental factors in this way is a laborious process and consumes much electrical force.

When the conscious mind has its attention focused on creating through the use of the imagination, it has three sources from which to draw its materials. Within it, and therefore accessible for use by the imagination, are stored the experiences of the soul, including those it has had in the process of its evolution through innumerable lower forms of life. On the astral plane are an inconceivable variety of conditions which may be examined through the use of the independent psychic faculties, or by the soul during the hours of sleep.

An artisan, desiring to accomplish a certain result, even if the artisan is but a bird striving to build a nest or a bee endeavoring to build honey-comb, searches for suitable material. The energy put into the search depends upon the intensity of the desire. The degree of intelligence displayed in selecting the material depends upon the organization of the unconscious. Thus the unconscious mind of man, urged by intense desire to create mentally, seeks for the proper material to use with such intelligence as it possesses. If the desire is intense enough, it will explore widely in the astral realm.

Furthermore, it possesses the ability to tune in on other intelligences, both on the physical and on the inner plane, who possess the kind of information it seeks. It is able not merely to explore the astral plane, but to take advantage of the knowledge and ability of those who are still more competent; of those who are willing to help in the enterprise.

If the desire is intense, with energy at its command to release, and the individual is not hampered by the conviction that all knowledge must come through the five physical senses and reason, the unconscious mind leaves no stone unturned either on the physical or the astral plane to acquire proper material for the creative work attempted.

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Directed Thinking in Creative Work

But for efficiency in using this material there must be the power to discriminate and to do Directed Thinking. Phantasy thinking, because strongly influenced by other desires, is too wasteful. It brings great quantities of material that are unsuitable for use, and arranges them in unsatisfactory patterns. Birds and ants go to a great deal of extra work because they do not discriminate in the selection of material and have not the power of Directed Thought to arrange it. A bird having the power of Directed thinking could build a nest with one-tenth the labor.

To start the unconscious mind on its search for material, there must be an intense desire to obtain a given result. Work on any plane is always at the expense of energy. The work of an organism is directed by desire energy, and, other things being equal, the more desire energy diverted into a given enterprise, the more accomplished. And for creative imagination, or other creative work, there should be, as previously indicated, a powerful supply of creative energy which through Sublimation can be diverted into the enterprise decided upon.

Nearly all important inventions and discoveries and artistic productions project themselves into objective consciousness complete as to general scheme and outline. The unconscious mind, in some manner given the impetus, has assembled material and arranged it suitably.

There remains for the objective consciousness, therefore, the gradual bringing up from the unconscious realm the details of the work. Yet this does not signify that no improvement can be made on the original plan presented. With more material, at least, better details may be afforded. The competent artist or inventor, therefore, will read all that others have written relating to the matter, will talk with those interested in similar endeavors, and in all ways will endeavor to add to the material from which the unconscious mind can make selection. Such procedure also encourages the unconscious to follow a similar method of research on the astral plane.

Truly creative work implies the use of the imagination. The workman who merely builds to the blue-print furnished by an architect does little in the way of creation. The creative work was done by the architect. Yet there are various kinds of Imagination. Imagination is used by science in all discoveries except those purely accidental. It is used in the commercial world for planning. Then there is the utopian type, which envisions conditions as they should be, if? But as we are specially interested in the attitude towards life of these three great classes of individuals, let us examine the kind of imagination used by the Materialist, that used by the Mystic, and that employed by the Occultist.

The aim of the material scientist is, as nearly as possible, to reproduce in his imagination the relations and processes of nature in all exactitude. All too frequently he restricts the material used to the reports of the five senses, and even then discards observations against which schooling has given him prejudice. He uses carefully ascertained facts presented clearly, in the proportion and arrangements found in nature, and with no distortion by the imagination. He is the exact antithesis of the mystic, who pays no attention whatever to the facts of the objective world, but relies entirely on his imagination to create a world such as he desires.

Where the material scientist endeavors to make every image definite, and an exact representation of an external fact, the mystic uses suggestive symbolic images and creates an ideal universe, according to his own conception of how a universe should be which he projects outward. Mystic literature, consequently, so long as it is mystical, is always obscure; ever hinting, suggesting and insinuating, but seldom giving concrete reliable facts. It stimulates the reader to picture things as the reader would have them.

Mystical thought is vague because it is mere fantasy. The imagination, left to itself, exaggerates the significance of the symbols which it uses, and stops at no extravagance. A revengeful and jealous Jehovah, for instance, was created by mystical imagination because a jealous god was desired by a jealous people.

And today, as in the past, fantastic ideas are being created by mystics and taught as truth. They are accepted by other mystics because these find in such notions the things they desire to find in the universe. They say that a notion appeals to them, hence they accept and act upon it. It appeals to them because it taps and releases desire energy. It is wish fulfillment. Yet the world of the mystic, and many of the things of the external world in which he has faith because they appeal so strongly to some desire to have them that way, have no existence except in imagination.

The mystic is accustomed to finding satisfaction for his desires within; he is of the introvertive type. His desires often are unusually strong, especially toward the realization of ideals; and his objective mind is unusually receptive to his unconscious. Due to the intensity of his desires, and the readiness with which material can be brought up from his unconscious, no form of imagination exceeds in fertility that of the mystic. His ingenuity often is amazing. And coupled with this is the general belief that all which is received from within must be true. In his case it is more often merely the wish fulfillment, created by his imagination, of some intense desire.

Yet we should not consider an imagination valueless which does not, like that of the material scientist, reproduce nature exactly and in proper proportion. To give a plain statement of fact may be scientific, but is never literature. Literature, which has an exalted value, appeals to the feelings and common associations, the details being left to the imagination. Each thus is permitted to fill in such particulars as are most attractive to him. It is what is left unsaid, as much as that which is related, that makes literature.

Following the same line of thought, a photograph may accurately represent something, yet be inartistic. To paint accurate to life in color and in detail the picture of a lovely woman is not art. But to give only such lines and colors as will stimulate the imagination of each person viewing it to construct a mental picture such as is most lovely to him, to see what he specifically most ardently desires, is art. And art has an exceptionally high value to human life.

It is not that the mystic creates a world as he would have it that is open to criticism; it is that he believes so thoroughly in the concrete reality of what his imagination creates. Music speaks to man in a language of symbolism. But to believe the voices of the instruments speaking in a symphony are the voices of people, either of this plane or of the inner, and that they are saying definite things, is to permit the mystical imagination to warp the judgment.

The mystical type of imagination, because it surpasses all others in ingenuity and in the diversity of material it can assemble, is most useful. It is only when, as happens in the case of the typical mystic, it departs from concrete images to place confidence in those created by the imagination, that it becomes inimical. Uncritical mysticism has been, and is today, the greatest foe of human progress; for even selfishness gives way before truth; but when fancies are substituted for facts, there can be no adequate adaptation. Yet when the mystical imagination is checked by experimental methods, it becomes one of man’s greatest assets.

Unrestrained by critical methods, the mystical imagination leads to a warped conception of the universe; for it permits desires to distort the images of reality. It thus paves the way to fanaticism. Mystics are usually queer and eccentric. Sometimes they are unbalanced and fanatic. Occasionally they are the perverts; because their imaginations suggest plausible but unusual methods of expressing the desires that have found no normal outlet for their expression.

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How the Occultist Differs From the Mystic and Materialist

The Occultist differs from both the material scientist and the mystic. In fact, he may have qualities of both; but this he does, he uses all possible means, internal and external, to check the accuracy of his knowledge. Like the mystic he may imagine something. But before accepting it as a reality he devises ways and means of testing its truth.

The materialist has hypnotized himself into the belief that all phenomena can, and must be, explained by material processes. When phenomena originating on the astral plane are presented to him he concludes they can be explained by some as yet undiscovered law of matter. He believes his eyes and ears and feelings only so long as they present no proof that there is any realm other than the physical.

But the Occultist rejects no facts reported, regardless of the plane of their origin. He does, however, find means by which to test the facts as to their accuracy. His imagination does not accept as facts the things of its own creation, as does that of the mystic. And having a so much wider field from which to draw information, that is, from both the three-dimensional realm and the four-dimensional realm than does the material scientist, he is able to construct a far more perfect conception of the universe.

The field of information of the materialist is too narrow. That of the mystic is broad enough, but in his mental processes there is a tangled mass of fancies interwoven with a few facts gleaned from actual astral experience, and usually warped from all semblance of the truth by some dominant religious emotion. The Occultist, in his research, makes use of such methods as are reliable that are employed by both the material scientist and the mystic.

But whatever type of imagination is used for constructive purposes, the general principles are the same: There must be supplied by the unconscious mind as wide a variety of material relevant to the enterprise as possible. There must be intense desire energy straining for release in the direction of the contemplated mental creation. And finally, there should be some facility for the product created by the unconscious to be recognized in objective consciousness.

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Rationalization

Closely related to the mystic type of imagination is a mental process of which few of us are completely free. It is called Rationalization. This consists of arriving at a conclusion, or doing something, and then finding a plausible reason for it. The individual thus believes he has arrived at the decision through the process of reasoning, or at least that it is something quite reasonable, when in fact it is largely or wholly a matter of wish fulfillment.

A mob, for instance, can always find a good reason for what it does. In fact, mass psychology in general is mostly a response to wish fulfillment which is rationalized. And it is said that love is blind. It is so to the extent that desire for a certain perfection creates that perfection in the imagination and crowds out, for the time being, the image of reality.

We should recognize that the more direct appeals to sensation, because they have had more cultivation in the development of life, commonly afford the strongest stimulation to desire. A shrewd business man, for instance, in selecting a mate, commonly finds physical beauty more attractive than brains. If his reason were dominant it might deem intelligence more attractive. But reason is a late biological acquisition, and physical attractiveness has an age-long appeal.

The release of the desires through the avenue of creative imagination is not always in the direction of beneficial endeavor. As already indicated, negative desires create the image of the condition not beneficial, and because it is held before the attention, action is in the direction of fulfilling this inimical image. Nor is it necessary, for creative imagination to operate in this manner, that we shall be conscious of the importance of what is taking place within.

When some person displeases us and we permit a momentary flash of anger and immediately forget the incident, but an hour later awkwardly cut a finger with a knife, let us not deem this chance. Analysis will bring to light a train of thought within the unconscious in which the anger gave rise to a fantasy, a dream in which imagination, prompted by the animal instincts, actually pictured an assault against this person with a deadly weapon. The unconscious expresses symbolically, and the cut with a knife was really an expression of the suppressed desire to kill our friend.

Children crossed in trifles by playmates or parents commonly indulge in fantasies in which they avenge themselves for the fancied injury by inflicting death. The child would not carry out such an action, but the repressed displeasure, lending energy to the creative imagination, gives rise to a fantasy. And this is the common rule, that any desire which is repressed instead of having its energies diverted into some channel of expression, sets up streams of fantasy thinking within the unconscious of which the objective mind is seldom aware, but which, in some manner tends to find symbolic expression, often in our mistakes and blundering actions.

I have already mentioned the feeling of guilt and how the unconscious often metes out punishment because of it. But also if we feel angry at ourselves, this may lead to some form of accident. The resentment against self sets up a train of fantasy images released by the desire of the anger imparted to the thought-cells. A group of thoughts has been endowed with the feeling that action should be taken against the self. Then, while the mind is busy with something else, a few days hence, the individual falls down stairs, steps in front of a passing automobile, or through some other accident is severely injured.

It is a very frequent thing for a person suffering from a severe disappointment to be accidentally hurt or killed. The disappointment depresses him and he thinks to himself: “This world is a poor place to live. I would be better off dead, as I have such wretched luck.” He puts much feeling into this thought, into his brooding, and then turns his mind to necessary tasks. On opening a bureau drawer he finds a pistol that excites his curiosity, or absent-mindedly blows out the gas.

The consciously thought desire for death, even though transitory, acted as a suggestion to the unconscious. It would have never been carried out in action with his conscious sanction. But a train of fantasy thoughts was commenced, charged with the desire energy his brooding imparted to them. When the unconscious accepts a suggestion to do something, creative imagination starts to invent a way for it to be realized in fact. And when conscious attention is off guard, giving the unconscious an opportunity to carry out what creative imagination has devised, such as when preoccupied with something, the unconscious brings the event to pass. It is a dangerous thing to entertain thoughts which we do not mean; for they so easily slip past objective consciousness into action in spite of ordinary vigilance.

But the unconscious, through inventing ways to bring things to pass, is able to exercise a beneficial function. It becomes aware, through the psychic senses, or through talking with others while the objective consciousness is asleep, of many things it is impossible for the objective mind to know without its assistance. Among people not crammed with artificial education there are many little signs of approaching events.

Do not in false superiority laugh at the Roman soldier who starting for the wars stumbled on his threshold and turned back because he took this as a symbol of death. His unconscious mind probably knew much more of what would happen to him if he were on the battle field than the modern professors do who dismiss the affair with the word, Bosh!

A knife dropped at table may really signify the approach of a lady, a fork so dropped a visit from a man; and before denouncing people as superstitious who believe thus it is well to find out in how many such instances the signs are verified by subsequent fact, unknowable to the objective mind beforehand. The unconscious mind, if set to the task, would have no difficulty in discerning who, if anyone, was approaching; nor would it find much difficulty in controlling the unconscious muscular activities sufficiently to cause the dropping of the table-ware which properly symbolized the type of individual who would come.

Even the things we forget that we should remember are symbols, illustrated in the case of forgetting the name Brown as mentioned in Chapter 10 (Serial Lesson No. 65, “How to Cultivate Subliminal Thinking”), of something going on in the thought processes of the unconscious mind. To misquote a well known poem or saying is not just an accident. Analysis will reveal that the unremembered words are associated with some repression, that is, some painful image or experience, and that the words substituted are symbols of some desire. Pain is repellent, and thus disagreeable things are forgotten, kept from repeating their pain by being recalled into objective consciousness. Yet there are always desires seeking expression, which tend to do so in symbolic form, when opportunity presents.

If I call a person I know well by a wrong name, it is because there is an unconscious train of thoughts passing through the unconscious mind in which the person mentioned, or something with which he is associated, is under consideration. Furthermore, a lie always betrays itself to the keen observer; for volitional effort can not conceal for long the truth which the little unconscious movements reveal.

To go calling on a person and in a brown study pass his door without turning in, only to be awakened to the fact after having gone by, is to acknowledge that there is something disagreeable to the unconscious about the call. It is probably a duty call, or at least there is a desire of the unconscious to be elsewhere engaged. To forget an appointment is an acknowledgment there is no strong desire to keep it, or that there is some disagreeable element in it. Whoever heard of an impassioned lover forgetting the time or place of an appointment with the idol of his heart!

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Why We Forget Resolutions

We forget resolutions because there is a repressed desire that opposes them. If we desire completely to do a thing, and there is no repressed desire opposing it, we never forget to do it. But when the unconscious is divided into two opposing camps, the more primitive desires, with much energy at their command, are apt to get the better of the situation, and thus the higher but less energetic desires slip from conscious memory.

In reading we often mistake words. Such is not mere chance; for it can be shown by Free Association that either the printed word is associated with some painful mental image, or the substitute word bears some significance as the symbol of a desire with which in some manner it has become associated.

In writing, also, when we use a wrong word which on reflection we recognize as wrong, it is because the wrong word bears a pleasanter association in the unconscious than the right one. The attention can be volitionally directed to but a few considerations at one time, and the thousand and one actions of life that are more completely directed by the unconscious while the objective mind is attending to other things, accurately portray the inner desires.

The feeling of intense abhorrence for something, of hate, or of disgust, indicates that certain groups of thought-cells, which have a dominant power at the time, are in a state of active conflict and aggressive antagonism against the desires of the thought-cells associated with the condition toward which the Feeling is directed.

Emotions are aroused only when the unconscious mind is given to believe there is an emergency. And such strong emotions indicate that the emergency is acute. It signifies that, within the unconscious, the thought-cells associated with the conditions are strong enough to put up considerable resistance. In other words, the individual who expresses undue repugnance at some act is much nearer that act than is the individual who can view it undisturbed and with a judicial outlook. He must summon all his reserve to escape it.

Those who make crusades against a given vice always have within themselves a strong temptation toward it. It is the violence of the struggle within which they project outward toward conquering the condition in the external world.

Nor is the power of creative imagination, even when its processes are unrecognized, limited to causing undesired actions of the muscular system. It can bring changes quickly in the chemistry and physiology of the human body. An illustration which can find plenty of verification in almost any rural community is the bean cure for warts. College professors may shout, “ridiculous!” but it actually works, as rural people can testify.

A person having a wart is told that if he will take a bean, split it in half and rub the inside of the two halves on the wart, afterward burying them in a crossroads at midnight, that the wart soon will follow the bean and go away.

The individual possessing the wart is given assurance that this works; and various persons who have had warts thus removed may be called upon to testify as to the efficacy of the process. The suggestion still further gains attention through the mystery of the rite performed, rubbing the wart with the bean, and then the unusual act of going to a crossroads at midnight, and the final burying of the two halves of the bean which are reputed to attract the wart. A day or two later, he looks where the wart was, and it has entirely disappeared, often leaving no mark to show where it was.

In many processes by which valuable results are obtained, or those dire, it is difficult to separate creative imagination from suggestion. That is, suggestion plays an important part in directing the activities of the unconscious mind to create something on the inner plane. This something thus mentally given creation then may be brought up into the objective world in some manner. It may be a change in the health, it may be a musical composition, it may be an invention, or it may be an act of the individual, unintended by his objective consciousness, through which the mental image is realized.

But in all cases it is the desire energy released into the process that gives it the power to create or bring about changes. The amount of work thus done is commensurate with the desire energy diverted into the process. And if new combinations are to occur, that is, if there is creative activity, some of the energy supplied the process must be creative in character.

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Birth Charts

Emile Coué Chart

February 26, 1857, 4:08 a.m. 4E. 48:30N.

1882, became a chemist and a student of hypnotism and suggestion: Sun conjunction Mars r, ruler of 10th; Mercury sextile Venus r, in 3rd.

1910, established a free clinic for treatment by suggestion at Nancy, France: Sun semisextile Moon (populace), Mercury opposition M.C., square Mercury r, ruler of 6th.

Taught in Europe and the United States, emphasizing the power of autosuggestion to effect organic changes. Became famous by his formula; “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” So popular did his method become that it was taken up as a healing fad, and consequently soon dropped from sight.

Jack London Chart

January 12, 1876, 1:50 p.m. 122:26W. 37:47N.

1887, many arguments with teachers: Sun conjunction Mercury r in house of teachers (9th), Mercury square Pluto r.

1889, spent much time in 14 foot skiff: Mercury conjunction Saturn r.

1890, contacted smugglers and adventure: Mars semisquare Pluto r.

1891, made acquaintance of “John Barleycorn”: Sun sextile Mars p.

1892, almost drowned: Mercury conjunction Saturn p.

1893, sealing, later portrayed in “Sea Wolf”: Mercury square Jupiter p.

1897 to Klondike, health failed: Sun opposition Moon r.

1899, several stories published: Mars trine Moon r, Mercury square Jupiter p.

1914, war correspondent: Mercury opposition Uranus p.

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