What innumerable images, ideas, impulses, thoughts and feelings are pressed back and hidden in the subconsciousness of each person's mind! I remember slipping off a little rowboat pier at a Michigan summer resort about twenty years ago. To the conscious mind, it was but thirty or forty seconds from the time my head went under the water till it bobbed up again and I was helped into one of the rowboats tied to the pier. But subconsciously, I lived years: I saw the snow peaks of the Himalayas; a jungle army of African gorillas; a garden of roses in Rome; I worked out the chapters of a book on a new philosophy of life; I felt passions previously unknown to me; I heard people gibbering and saw twenty or more box cars filled with dirty linen; I conceived a new play; planned to build a pyramid; and even saw the headlines of a newspaper announcing my death "in the presence of forty thousand people" -when in reality there were only eight people on the pier.
Every suppression is a possible cause of an ill or failure of one kind or another -even though the conscious mind does not know that such suppression exists or that such cause is operating. To one ill of the wild animal, man has ten thousand diseases. The animal's subconsciousness is hourly expressed; but man's subconsciousness is habitually suppressed. So long as the cause is hidden in the subconsciousness, the conscious mind often fails to heal. It succeeds only when it happens to hit the nail on the head.
Let me illustrate the value of a study of hidden causes by a particular case: Twenty-one months ago a man 56 years of age came to me. His heart palpitated so badly that his physicians feared for his life week by week. He was subject also to periods of great despondency and to fits of violent temper. These had been growing worse for twenty years or more. He had been a poor boy and was now wealthy. He had faith in prayer, mental healing and Christian Science.
First, he had been -treated by physicians; he had tried "change of scene," and had been hypnotized; then for years, he had relied upon mental treatment to cure him. Yet he had not been healed. As he told me the story of the sincere and earnest efforts of others to help him, I became certain that there was some cause hidden in his subconscious mind that was at the bottom of all his trouble. But his conscious mind could remember nothing that seemed to be of sufficient importance to cause so persistent a condition.
The process is this: discover the hidden cause in the subconscious mind; interpret it; and thus give the conscious mind a chance to idealize and express it in normal action.
To return to our case: an analysis of the subconscious showed that the man preferred yellow, violet and old rose to other colors. He preferred opera to any other form of entertainment. In drama, he liked the villain best; but in opera, the hero. Of different voices, he liked the bass best; and of music, that of the pipe organ. In writing 900 words -anything that came into his mind beginning with the word match -he wrote smooth 27 times, harmony 42; times, heaven 37 times, flowing 11, sound 28, organ 53, father 41, hell 36, concert 42, opera 28.
Space limits me as to detail; but this is what I discovered. As a young boy, his greatest desire was to play the organ. The next strongest desire was to listen to organ music. He often went to a Catholic Church to hear the organ music. But his father was a Baptist and thrashed the boy every time he found out that the boy had been to the Catholic Church Music aroused limitless feelings that demanded expression; but -because of his father -these were always suppressed by fear. Consequently, as means of curing him -instead of concentration on calmness and peace and control, as had been done in previous treatments -I chose Courage and Harmony in Action. This last was put in practice. The man learned to play a pipe organ. Within thirty days he was cured. In eighteen months that have since passed, he has never had an attack of blues or a fit of temper and his heart beats as normally as my own.
God is All Knowledge; hidden and revealed. Your subconscious mind is infinite, with the infinity of God. Out of it all ideas, impulses and feelings you need to know will come to you. There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed.
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