Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion: Part Two

(For the next week, the Successful Living blog will post the complete book, "Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion" by Emile Coue. Coue, a french doctor, was one of the pioneers in the field of autosuggestion - now known as affirmations or self talk. This is his seminal work.)

Chapter 2
WILL AND IMAGINATION

If we open a dictionary and look up the word "will", we find this definition: "The
faculty of freely determining certain acts". We accept this definition as true and
unattackable, although nothing could be more false. This will that we claim so
proudly, always yields to the imagination. It is an absolute rule that admits of no
exception.

"Blasphemy! Paradox!" you will exclaim. "Not at all! On the contrary, it is the purest truth," I shall reply.

In order to convince yourself of it, open your eyes, look round you and try to understand what you see. You will then come to the conclusion that what I tell you is
not an idle theory, offspring of a sick brain but the simple expression of a fact.
Suppose that we place on the ground a plank 30 feet long by 1 foot wide. It is evident that everybody will be capable of going from one end to the other of this
plank without stepping over the edge. But now change the conditions of the experiment, and imagine this plank placed at the height of the towers of a cathedral.

Who then will be capable of advancing even a few feet along this narrow path? Could you hear me speak? Probably not. Before you had taken two steps you would begin to tremble, and in spite of every effort of your will you would be certain to fall to the ground.

Why is it then that you would not fall if the plank is on the ground, and why
should you fall if it is raised to a height above the ground? Simply because in the
first case you imagine that it is easy to go to the end of this plank, while in the
second case you imagine that you cannot do so.

Notice that your will is powerless to make you advance; if you imagine that you
cannot, it is absolutely impossible for you to do so. If tilers and carpenters are
able to accomplish this feat, it is because they think they can do it.

Vertigo is entirely caused by the picture we make in our minds that we are going
to fall. This picture transforms itself immediately into fact in spite of all the efforts of our will, and the more violent these efforts are, the quicker is the opposite to the desired result brought about.

Let us now consider the case of a person suffering from insomnia. If he does not
make any effort to sleep, he will lie quietly in bed. If on the contrary he tries to
force himself to sleep by his will, the more efforts he makes, the more restless he
becomes.

Have you not noticed that the more you try to remember the name of a person
which you have forgotten, the more it eludes you, until, substituting in your mind
the idea "I shall remember in a minute" to the idea "I have forgotten", the name
comes back to you of its own accord without the least effort?

Let those of you who are cyclists remember the days when you were learning to ride. You went along clutching the handle bars and frightened of falling. Suddenly catching sight of the smallest obstacle in the road you tried to avoid it, and the
more efforts you made to do so, the more surely you rushed upon it.

Who has not suffered from an attack of uncontrollable laughter, which bursts out
more violently the more one tries to control it?

What was the state of mind of each person in these different circumstances? "I do not want to fall but I cannot help doing so"; "I want to sleep but I cannot"; "I
want to remember the name of Mrs. So and So, but I cannot"; "I want to avoid
the obstacle, but I cannot"; "I want to stop laughing, but I cannot."

As you see, in each of these conflicts it is always the imagination which gains
the victory over the will, without any exception.

To the same order of ideas belongs the case of the leader who rushes forward at
the head of his troops and always carries them along with him, while the cry "Each
man for himself!" is almost certain to cause a defeat. Why is this? It is because in
the first case the men imagine that they must go forward, and in the second they
imagine that they are conquered and must fly for their lives.

Panurge was quite aware of the contagion of example, that is to say the action of
the imagination, when, to avenge himself upon a merchant on board the same boat, he bought his biggest sheep and threw it into the sea, certain beforehand
that the entire flock would follow, which indeed happened.

We human beings have a certain resemblance to sheep, and involuntarily, we are
irresistibly impelled to follow other people's examples, imagining that we cannot
do otherwise.

I could quote a thousand other examples but I should fear to bore you by such
an enumeration. I cannot however pass by in silence this fact which shows the
enormous power of the imagination, or in other words of the unconscious in its
struggle against the will.

There are certain drunkards who wish to give up drinking, but who cannot do so. Ask them, and they will reply in all sincerity that they desire to be sober, that drink disgusts them, but that they are irresistibly impelled to drink against their will, in spite of the harm they know it will do them.

In the same way certain criminals commit crimes in spite of themselves, and when
they are asked why they acted so, they answer "I could not help it, something impelled me, it was stronger than I."

And the drunkard and the criminal speak the truth; they are forced to do what
they do, for the simple reason they imagine they cannot prevent themselves from
doing so. Thus we who are so proud of our will, who believe that we are free to act
as we like, are in reality nothing but wretched puppets of which our imagination
holds all the strings. We only cease to be puppets when we have learned to guide
our imagination.

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