Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion
TextM. X–, at Belfort, cannot talk for more than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour without becoming completely aphonous. Different doctors consulted find no lesion in the vocal organs, but one of them says that M. X– suffers from senility of the larynx, and this conclusion confirms him in the belief that he is incurable. He comes to spend his holidays at Nancy, and a lady of my acquaintance advises him to come and see me. He refuses at first, but eventually consents in spite of his absolute disbelief in the effects of suggestion. I treat him in this way nevertheless, and ask him to return two days afterwards. He comes back on the appointed day, and tells me that the day before he was able to converse the whole afternoon without becoming aphonous. Two days later he returns again to say that his trouble had not reappeared, although he had not only conversed a great deal but even sung the day before. The cure still holds good and I am convinced that it will always do so.
Before closing, I should like to say a few words on the application of my method to the training and correction of children by their parents.
The latter should wait until the child is asleep, and then one of them should enter his room with precaution, stop a yard from his bed, and repeat 15 or 20 times in a murmur all the things they wish to obtain from the child, from the point of view of health, work, sleep, application, conduct, etc. He should then retire as he came, taking great care not to awake the child. This extremely simple process gives the best possible results, and it is easy to understand why. When the child is asleep his body and his conscious self are at rest and, as it were, annihilated; his unconscious self however is awake; it is then to the latter alone that one speaks, and as it is very credulous it accepts what one says to it without dispute, so that, little by little, the child arrives at making of himself what his parents desire him to be.
CONCLUSION
What conclusion is to be drawn from all this?
The conclusion is very simple and can be expressed in a few words: We possess within us a force of incalculable power, which, when we handle it unconsciously is often prejudicial to us. If on the contrary we direct it in a conscious and wise manner, it gives us the mastery of ourselves and allows us not only to escape and to aid others to escape, from physical and mental ills, but also to live in relative happiness, whatever the conditions in which we may find ourselves.
Lastly, and above all, it should be applied to the moral regeneration of those who have wandered from the right path.
THOUGHTS AND PRECEPTS OF EMILE COUÉ
taken down literally by Mme. Emile Leon, his disciple.
Do not spend your time in thinking of illness you might have, for if you have no real ones you will create artificial ones.
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When you make conscious autosuggestions, do it naturally, simply, with conviction, and above all without any effort. If unconscious and bad autosuggestions are so often realized, it is because they are made without effort.
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Be sure that you will obtain what you want, and you will obtain it, so long as it is within reason.
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To become master of oneself it is enough to think that one is becoming so. . . . Your hands tremble, your steps falter, tell yourself that all that is going to cease, and little by little it will disappear. It is not in me but in yourself that you must have confidence, for it is in yourself alone that dwells the force which can cure you. My part simply consists in teaching you to make use of that force.
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Never discuss things you know nothing about, or you will only make yourself ridiculous.
Things which seem miraculous to you have a perfectly natural cause; if they seem extraordinary it is only because the cause escapes you. When you know that, you realize that nothing could be more natural.
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When the will and the imagination are in conflict, it is always the imagination which wins. Such a case is only too frequent, and then not only do we not do what we want, but just the contrary of what we want. For example: the more we try to go to sleep, the more we try to remember the name of some one, the more we try to stop laughing, the more we try to avoid an obstacle, while thinking that we cannot do so, the more excited we become, the less we can remember the name, the more uncontrollable our laughter becomes, and the more surely we rush upon the obstacle.
It is then the imagination and not the will which is the most important faculty of man; and thus it is a serious mistake to advise people to train their wills, it is the training of their imaginations which they ought to set about.
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Things are not for us what they are, but what they seem; this explains the contradictory evidence of persons speaking in all good faith.
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By believing oneself to be the master of one's thoughts one becomes so.
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Everyone of our thoughts, good or bad, becomes concrete, materializes, and becomes in short a reality.
We are what we make ourselves and not what circumstances make us.
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Whoever starts off in life with the idea: "I shall succeed", always does succeed because he does what is necessary to bring about this result. If only one opportunity presents itself to him, and if this opportunity has, as it were, only one hair on its head, he seizes it by that one hair. Further, he often brings about unconsciously or not, propitious circumstances.
He who on the contrary always doubts himself, never succeeds in doing anything. He might find himself in the midst of an army of opportunities with heads of hair like Absalom, and yet he would not see them and could not seize a single one, even if he had only to stretch out his hand in order to do so. And if he brings about circumstances, they are generally unfavorable ones. Do not then blame fate, you have only yourself to blame.
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People are always preaching the doctrine of effort, but this idea must be repudiated. Effort means will, and will means the possible entrance of the imagination in opposition, and the bringing about of the exactly contrary result to the desired one.
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Always think that what you have to do is easy, if possible. In this state of mind you will not spend more of your strength than just what is necessary; if you consider it difficult, you will spend ten, twenty times more strength than you need; in other words you will waste it.
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Autosuggestion is an instrument which you have to learn how to use just as you would for any other instrument. An excellent gun in inexperienced hands only gives wretched results, but the more skilled the same hands become, the more easily they place the bullets in the target.
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Conscious autosuggestion, made with confidence, with faith, with perseverance, realizes itself mathematically, within reason.
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When certain people do not obtain satisfactory results with autosuggestion, it is either because they lack confidence, or because they make efforts, which is the more frequent case. To make good suggestions it is absolutely necessary to do it without effort. The latter implies the use of the will, which must be entirely put aside. One must have recourse exclusively to the imagination.
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Many people who have taken care of their health all their life in vain, imagine that they can be immediately cured by autosuggestion. It is a mistake, for it is not reasonable to think so. It is no use expecting from suggestion more than it can normally produce, that is to say, a progressive improvement which little by little transforms itself into a complete cure, when that is possible.
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The means employed by the healers all go back to autosuggestion, that is to say that these methods, whatever they are, words, incantations, gestures, staging, all produce in the patient the autosuggestion of recovery.
Every illness has two aspects unless it is exclusively a mental one. Indeed, on every physical illness a mental one comes and attaches itself. If we give to the physical illness the coefficient 1, the mental illness may have the coefficient 1, 2, 10, 20, 50, 100, and more. In many cases this can disappear instantaneously, and if its coefficient is a very high one, 100 for instance, while that of the physical ailment is 1, only this latter is left, a 101st of the total illness; such a thing is called a miracle, and yet there is nothing miraculous about it.
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Contrary to common opinion, physical diseases are generally far more easily cured than mental ones.
Buffon used to say: "Style is the man." We would put in that: "Man is what he thinks". The fear of failure is almost certain to cause failure, in the same way as the idea of success brings success, and enables one always to surmount the obstacles that may be met with.
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Conviction is as necessary to the suggester as to his subject. It is this conviction, this faith, which enables him to obtain results where all other means have failed.
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It is not the person who acts, it is the method.
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. . . Contrary to general opinion, suggestion, or autosuggestion can bring about the cure of organic lesions.
Formerly it was believed that hypnotism could only be applied to the treatment of nervous illnesses; its domain is far greater than that. It is true that hypnotism acts through the intermediary of the nervous system; but the nervous system dominates the whole organism. The muscles are set in movement by the nerves; the nerves regulate the circulation by their direct action on the heart, and by their action on the blood vessels which they dilate or contract. The nerves act then on all the organs, and by their intermediation all the unhealthy organs may be affected.
Docteur Paul Joire, Président of the Societe universelle d'Etudes psychiques (Bull. No. 4 of the S. L. P.)
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. . . Moral influence has a considerable value as a help in healing. It is a factor of the first order which it would be very wrong to neglect, since in medicine as in every branch of human activity it is the spiritual forces which lead the world.
Docteur Louis Renon, Lecturing professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, and doctor at the Necker Hospital.
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. . . Never lose sight of the great principle of autosuggestion: Optimism always and in spite of everything, even when events do not seem to justify it.
René de Drabois, (Bull. 11 of the S. L. P. A.)
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Suggestion sustained by faith is a formidable force.
Docteur A. L., Paris, (July, 1920.)
To have and to inspire unalterable confidence, one must walk with the assurance of perfect sincerity, and in order to possess this assurance and sincerity, one must wish for the good of others more than one's own.
"Culture de la Force Morale", by C. Baudouin.
OBSERVATIONS ON WHAT AUTOSUGGESTION CAN DO
Young B–, 13 years old, enters the hospital in January 1912. He has a very serious heart complaint characterized by a peculiarity in the respiration; he has such difficulty in breathing that he can only take very slow and short steps. The doctor who attends him, one of our best practitioners, predicts a rapid and fatal issue. The invalid leaves the hospital in February, no better. A friend of his family brings him to me and when I see him I regard him as a hopeless case, but nevertheless I make him pass through the preliminary experiments which are marvelously successful. After having made him a suggestion and advised him to do the same thing for himself, I tell him to come back in two days. When he does so I notice to my astonishment a remarkable improvement in his respiration and his walking. I renew the suggestion and two days afterwards, when he returns the improvement has continued, and so it is at every visit. So rapid is the progress that he makes that, three weeks after the first visit, my little patient is able to go on foot with his mother to the plateau of Villers. He can breathe with ease and almost normally, he can walk without getting out of breath, and can mount the stairs, which was impossible for him before. As the improvement is steadily maintained, little B– asks me if he can go and stay with his grandmother at Carignan. As he seems well I advise him to do so, and he goes off, but sends me news of himself from time to time. His health is becoming better and better, he has a good appetite, digests and assimilates his food well, and the feeling of oppression has entirely disappeared. Not only can he walk like everybody else, but he even runs and chases butterflies.
He returns in October, and I can hardly recognize him, for the bent and puny little fellow who had left me in May has become a tall upright boy, whose face beams with health. He has grown 12 centimeters and gained 19 lbs. in weight. Since then he has lived a perfectly normal life; he runs up and down stairs, rides a bicycle, and plays football with his comrades.
Mlle. X–, of Geneva, aged 13. Sore on the temple considered by several doctors as being of tubercular origin; for a year and a half it has refused to yield to the different treatments ordered. She is taken to M. Baudouin, a follower of M. Coué at Geneva, who treats her by suggestion and tells her to return in a week. When she comes back the sore has healed.
Mlle. Z–, also of Geneva. Has had the right leg drawn up for 17 years, owing to an abscess above the knee which had had to be operated upon. She asks M. Baudouin to treat her by suggestion, and hardly has he begun when the leg can be bent and unbent in a normal manner. (There was of course a psychological cause in this case.)
Mme. Urbain Marie, aged 55, at Maxéville. Varicose nicer, dating from more than a year and a half. First visit in September, 1915, and a second one a week later. In a fortnight the cure is complete.
Emile Chenu, 10 years old, Grande-Rue, 19 (a refugee from Metz). Some unknown heart complaint with vegetations. Every night loses blood by the mouth. Comes first in July, 1915, and after a few visits the loss of blood diminishes, and continues to do so until by the end of November it has ceased completely. The vegetations also seem to be no longer there, and by August, 1916, there had been no relapse.
M. Hazot, aged 48, living at Brin. Invalided the 15th of January, 1915, with specific chronic bronchitis, which is getting worse every day. He comes in to me in October, 1915. The improvement is immediate, and has been maintained since. At the present moment, although he is not completely cured, he is very much better.
M. B–, has suffered for 24 years from frontal sinus, which had necessitated eleven operations!! In spite of all that had been done the sinus persisted, accompanied by intolerable pains. The physical state of the patient was pitiable in the extreme; he had violent and almost continuous pain, extreme weakness; lack of appetite, could neither walk, read nor sleep, etc. His nerves were in nearly as bad a state as his body, and in spite of the treatment of such men as Bernheim of Nancy, Dejerine of Paris, Dubois of Bern, X– of Strasburg, his ill health not only continued but even grew worse every day. The patient comes to me in September, 1915, on the advice of one of my other patients. From that moment he made rapid progress and at the present time (1921) he is perfectly well. It is a real resurrection.
M. Nagengast, aged 18, rue Sellier, 39. Suffering from Pott's disease. Comes to me in the beginning of 1914, having been encased for six months in a plaster corset. Comes regularly twice a week to the "séances," and makes for himself the usual suggestion morning and evening. Improvement soon shows itself, and in a short time the patient is able to do without his plaster casing. I saw him again in April, 1916. He was completely cured, and was carrying on his duties as postman, after having been assistant to an ambulance at Nancy, where he had stayed until it was done away with.
M. D–, at Jarville. Paralysis of the left upper eyelid. Goes to the hospital where he receives injections, as a result of which the eyelid is raised. The left eye was, however, deflected outwards for more than 45 degrees, and an operation seemed to be necessary. It was at this moment that he came to me, and thanks to autosuggestion the eye went back little by little to its normal position.
Mme. L–, of Nancy. Continuous pain in the right side of the face, which had gone on for 10 years. She has consulted many doctors whose prescriptions seemed of no use, and an operation is judged to be necessary. The patient comes to me on the 25th of July, 1916, and there is an immediate improvement. In about ten days' time the pain has entirely vanished, and up to the 20th of December, there had been no recurrence.
T– Maurice, aged 8 and a half, at Nancy: club feet. A first operation cures, or nearly so, the left foot, while the right one still remains crippled. Two subsequent operations do no good. The child is brought to me for the first time in February, 1915; he walks pretty well, thanks to two contrivances which hold his feet straight. The first visit is followed by an immediate improvement, and after the second, the child is able to walk in ordinary boots. The improvement becomes more and more marked, by the 17th of April the child is quite well. The right foot, however, is not now quite so strong as it was, owing to a sprain which he gave it in February, 1916.
Mlle X–, at Blainville. A sore on the left foot, probably of specific origin. A slight sprain has brought about a swelling of the foot accompanied by acute pains. Different treatments have only had a negative effect, and in a little while a suppurating sore appears which seems to indicate caries of the bone. Walking becomes more and more painful and difficult in spite of the treatment. On the advice of a former patient who had been cured, she comes to me, and there is noticeable relief after the first visits. Little by little the swelling goes down, the pain becomes less intense, the suppuration lessens, and finally the sore heals over. The process has taken a few months. At present the foot is practically normal, but although the pain and swelling have entirely disappeared, the back flexion of the foot is not yet perfect, which makes the patient limp slightly.
Mme. R–, of Chavigny. Metritis dating from 10 years back. Comes at the end of July, 1916. Improvement is immediate, the pain and loss of blood diminish rapidly, and by the following 29th of September both have disappeared. The monthly period, which lasted from eight to ten days, is now over in four.
Mme. H–, rue Guilbert-de-Pivérécourt, at Nancy, aged 49. Suffers from a varicose ulcer dating from September, 1914, which has treated according to her doctor's advice, but without success. The lower part of the leg is enormous (the ulcer, which is as large as a two franc piece and goes right down to the bone, is situated above the ankle). The inflammation is very intense, the suppuration copious, and the pains extremely violent. The patient comes for the first time in April, 1916, and the improvement which is visible after the first treatment, continues without interruption. By the 18th of February, 1917, the swelling has entirely subsided, and the pain and irritation have disappeared. The sore is still there, but it is no larger than a pea and it is only a few millimeters in depth; it still discharges very slightly. By 1920 the cure has long been complete.
Mlle. D–, at Mirecourt, 16 years of age. Has suffered from attacks of nerves for three years. The attacks, at first infrequent, have gradually come at closer intervals. When she comes to see me on the 1st of April, 1917, she has had three attacks in the preceding fortnight. Up to the 18th of April she did not have any at all. I may add that this young lady, from the time she began the treatment, was no longer troubled by the bad headaches from which she had suffered almost constantly.
Mme. M–, aged 43, rue d'Amance, 2, Malzéville. Comes at the end of 1916 for violent pains in the head from which she has suffered all her life. After a few visits they vanish completely. Two months afterwards she realized that she was also cured of a prolapse of the uterus which she had not mentioned to me, and of which she was not thinking when she made her autosuggestion. (This result is due to the words: "in every respect" contained in the formula used morning and evening.)
Mme. D–, Choisy-le-Roi. Only one general suggestion from me in July, 1916, and autosuggestion on her part morning and evening. In October of the same year this lady tells me that she is cured of a prolapse of the uterus from which she had suffered for more than twenty years. Up to April, 1920, the cure is still holding good. (Same remark as in the preceding case.)
Mme. Jousselin, aged 60, rue des Dominicains, 6. Comes on the 20th of July, 1917, for a violent pain in the right leg, accompanied by considerable swelling of the whole limb. She can only drag herself along with groans, but after the "séance," to her great astonishment, she can walk normally without feeling the least pain. When she comes back four days afterwards, she has had no return of the pain and the swelling has subsided. This patient tells me that since she has attended the "séances" she has also been cured of white discharges, and of enteritis from which she had long suffered. (Same remark as above.) In November the cure is still holding good.
Mlle. G. L.–, aged 15, rue du Montet, 88. Has stammered from infancy. Comes on the 20th of July, 1917, and the stammering ceases instantly. A month after I saw her again and she had had no recurrence.
M. Ferry (Eugène), aged 60, rue de la Côte, 56. For five years has suffered from rheumatic pains in the shoulders and in the left leg. Walks with difficulty leaning on a stick, and cannot lift the arms higher than the shoulders. Comes on the 17th of September, 1917. After the first "séance," the pains vanish completely and the patient can not only take long strides but even run. Still more, he can whirl both arms like a windmill. In November the cure is still holding good.
Mme. Lacour, aged 63, chemin des Sables. Pains in the face dating from more than twenty years back. All treatments have failed. An operation is advised, but the patient refuses to undergo it. She comes for the first time on July 25th, 1916, and four days later the pain ceases. The cure has held good to this day.
Mme. Martin, Grande-Rue (Ville-Vieille), 105. Inflammation of the uterus of 13 years standing, accompanied by pains and white and red discharges. The period, which is very painful, recurs every 22 or 23 days and lasts 10-12 days. Comes for the first time on the 15th of November, 1917, and returns regularly every week. There is visible improvement after the first visit, which continues rapidly until at the beginning of January, 1918, the inflammation has entirely disappeared; the period comes at more regular intervals and without the slightest pain. A pain in the knee which the patient had had for 13 years was also cured.
Mme. Castelli, aged 41, living at Einville (M.-et M.). Has suffered from intermittent rheumatic pains in the right knee for 13 years. Five years ago she had a more violent attack than usual, the leg swells as well as the knee, then the lower part of the limb atrophies, and the patient is reduced to walking very painfully with the aid of a stick or crutch. She comes for the first time on the 5th of November, 1917. She goes away without the help of either crutch or stick. Since then she no longer uses her crutch at all, but occasionally makes use of her stick. The pain in the knee comes back from time to time, but only very slightly.
Mme. Meder, aged 52, at Einville. For six months has suffered from pain in the right knee accompanied by swelling, which makes it impossible to bend the leg. Comes for the first time on Dec. 7th, 1917. Returns on Jan. 4th, 1918, saying that she has almost ceased to suffer and that she can walk normally. After that visit of the 4th, the pain ceases entirely, and the patient walks like other people.
EMILE COUÉ.