For let us look at that picture of things such as it is given you by the facts of life, or rather death. A corpse, cold, feelingless, rigid, discoloured, blue at the lips, decay, worms, a skeleton, earth. Is that the picture you accept and hold and nurse? Of course it isn't. Within a few days you and your family will be talking about " the fun mother used to be," about the "jokes she used to make," and you will be having many heart to heart laughs mixed with your furtive tears. You know that is so, always, with everything.

Why do we do this in our thoughts? Some will say: " Because hope springs eternal in the human mind," or misquote equally some equally beautiful poetry, but unadulterated nonsense in this case.

We invert or convert the pictures of the black and not those of the white facts of life, and we do so because we cannot do otherwise without interfering with the functions which enable us to think at all, without collapsing mentally, nervously, and physically; without ultimately completely disorganizing the very functions by which we live.

For instance, if on hearing of the death of a loved one we accepted the picture given us by the facts of death, and contemplated and nursed that picture, we should find that our breathing (to mention only one function easy to observe) was slowly but surely dwindling to nothing.

Make an experiment, and determine to hold before your mind's eye for a few minutes, the image of death as it really is. The more successful you will be in visualizing exclusively the perfect picture of death, the sooner you will lose your power to continue doing so, as the rapid and progressive deterioration of your functions will paralyse your control over your thoughts.

We are fundamentally beings of sympathy, animals of imitation. When we sympathize with a stranger, run down by a motor-car before our eyes, and scream with and for him, it is because we have first imagined his feelings, taken the image as a model, and imitated and realized it in ourselves. Then and then only, do we sympathize, but it is with ourselves that we sympathize, with what we are feeling.

We cannot resist this tendency to reproduce in ourselves the models thus imagined and contemplated in our minds, and the Chinese who deliberately dies on his enemy's doorstep only illustrates the application of the law to its extreme conclusion.

It follows that in order to deal with worry you must endeavour to alter consciously the images that it generates in your mind so as to make them into models that you can imitate and sympathize with in yourself without interfering with your vital functions.

You cannot find a better example of how this should be done deliberately than your own unconscious calling up of the image of life when you have been confronted in the past with the news of death; that is, you must learn to invert or convert consciously the image generated in your mind by the thought of your worry.

You may object that you will never lower yourself deliberately to practice self-deception and make yourself believe what is not true.

Your objection is not valid: you do not make yourself believe that your late mother is not dead because you imagine her as she was when alive. But when you do so you contemplate an image that you can live and function with, and not an image that must slowly inhibit all your vital functions.

The question is simply this: having established in yourself sound conditions for repair work, do you want to become unconscious, or do you want to allow worry to break down these sound conditions and keep you awake? Time, the great healer, will in any case alter your images for you. Why not do it yourself, deliberately, here and now, and get sleep? There is no more self-deception in deliberately forming the image of your mother alive twenty-four hours after her death than there is in accidentally conjuring it up ten years later. In both cases, you know perfectly well that the lady is dead, but you breathe better when you imagine her in the fullness of life.

If your worry has developed through time, go through its history backwards, very much as though a film of it was being projected on the screen the reverse way. Surely you have seen the film of the diver emerging from the water feet first and landing on the diving board.

If your worry is caused by a sudden blow, invert or convert every disturbing image it generates. Visualize and hold for a while the exact opposite of any such image; do so as a mental exercise, and methodically repeat the process whenever the disturbing image reappears. If you do this you will observe that the objectionable model is automatically changing and approximating more and more to the substitute you have deliberately created and contemplated, and that as a result your breathing and other functions improve sufficiently to make peaceful unconsciousness possible.

You may object on more general grounds to the whole mental scheme outlined in this book and say: " I do not hold with suggestion, and this is all suggestion from cover to cover."

Control your indignation for a while and calmly ask yourself why you object to suggestion.

You will probably find that it boils down to this: " Suggestion is self-deception, and I, at any rate, don't sink to that kind of thing, whatever weak women (if you are a man) or uneducated minds (if you are an educated woman) may do!"

The correct use of suggestion should never involve any self-deception whatever. Unfortunately, so many schools teach suggestion in such a way that self-deception is unavoidable, and they are responsible for the dislike of it so prevalent among normal, sane, and educated people.

If you have had a knock on the knee and are in great pain, it is wrong to say to yourself any of the following things:—

I feel no pain.

I have no pain; I only imagine it.

I have no knee; I only imagine it.

In actual fact, you know perfectly well that you have a knee, that it is paining you, and that your feeling of pain is real, and you want to get rid not only of the feeling of pain but of its cause.

In the circumstances, do not adopt any of the methods of auto-suggestion exemplified above, but quietly relax as soon as possible, clasp your hands and cross your feet, think warmth and circulation all the way down your whole body, and then vigorously imagine yourself running a quarter-mile at maximum pace, at the age of not more than twenty-five if you are over that age. As reason and experience will show you, this stimulates metabolism in your bad knee, and that is exactly what is wanted to mend it.

This is auto-suggestion, sane, rational, based on experience, and entirely free from any vestige of self-deception.

If you analyse the process and compare it with your normal processes of thought preceding any of your daily activities, you will realize it is not only logical but completely consistent with them.

When you are sitting on a chair, you cannot get up, walk, then run, unless you first conceive yourself getting up, walking, and then running.

It would not occur to you to deny that your thoughts have an effect on your functions, and it is rational to assume that what is lawful in your objective life is just as lawful in your subconscious life. The motive-thought you set out to conceive must be the prototype of the effect you desire, the model you can allow yourself to copy physiologically with the knowledge that you will not hinder, but promote, healthy function.

If you wish to achieve particular efficiency in any one function or capacity, learn to visualize yourself performing it efficiently and you will, ipso facto, begin to develop the desired efficiency.

And remember that your memory is a storehouse of life-giving and death-dealing images, all reversible in time, or convertible in form. Deal with them in that knowledge without fear, and especially in bed, at night, before sleep.