Prentice Mulford - The Collected Works of Prentice Mulford

VOLUME I. MAY 1886–MAY 1887

VOLUME II. MAY 1887–MAY 1888

VOLUME III. MAY 1888–MAY 1889

VOLUME IV. MAY 1889–MAY 1890

VOLUME V. MAY 1890–MAY 1891

VOLUME VI. MAY 1891–MAY 1892

Table of Contents

I. YOU TRAVEL WHEN YOU SLEEP.

II. WHERE YOU TRAVEL WHEN YOU SLEEP.

III. THE ART OF FORGETTING.

IV. HOW THOUGHTS ARE BORN.

V. THE LAW OF SUCCESS.

VI. HOW TO KEEP YOUR STRENGTH.

VII. CONSIDER THE LILIES.

VIII. THE ART OF STUDY.

IX. PROFIT AND LOSS IN ASSOCIATES.

X. THE SLAVERY OF FEAR.

XI. WHAT ARE SPIRITUAL GIFTS?

XII. THE PROCESS OF RE EMBODIMENT.

XIII. RE-EMBODIMENT UNIVERSAL IN NATURE.

Table of Contents

You travel when your body is in the state called sleep. The real “you” is not your body; it is an unseen organization, your spirit. It has senses like those of the body, but far superior. It can see forms and hear voices miles away from the body. Your spirit is not in your body. It never was wholly in it; it acts on it and uses it as an instrument. It is a power which can make itself felt miles from your body.

One-half of our life is a blank to us; that is, the life of our spirit when it leaves the body at night. It goes then to countries far distant, and sees people we never know in the flesh.

Sleep is a process, unconsciously performed, of self-mesmerism. As the mesmeric operator wills another into unconsciousness, so do you nightly will yourself, or rather your body, into a state of insensibility.

What the mesmeric operator really does is to draw the spirit out of the body of the person he mesmerizes. He brings the thought of his subject to some focus or centre, as a coin held in the hand. While thus centred, the thought (or spirit) of the subject is put in such a condition that he can most easily affect it by his will. He wills then the person’s spirit out of his body. This done, he throws his own thought in that body. It is then as a house left open by its owner. The mesmerizer then takes possession of that body by the power of his own thought. It is not the subject at all who sees, feels, and tastes as the operator wills: it is the spirit or thought of the mesmerizer himself, exercised in another body, temporarily left vacant by its own spirit.

Thought is a substance as much as air or any other unseen element of which chemistry makes us aware. It is of many and varying degrees in strength.

Strong thought or mind is the same as strong will. Some persons are so weak in thought, as compared with the practised mesmerizer, that they cannot resist him. Others of even stronger thought can give themselves up voluntarily to his control. You need not be overpowered by anyone in this way, providing you resist them in mind, and call upon the higher power to assist you, if you feel their thought overcoming you.

When we “go to sleep,” the spirit has been by its day’s workings sent widely scattered away from the body; with so little of its force left by it, the body falls into the trance state of slumber. As the mesmerizer draws the spirit away from the body of his subject, so has our spirit drawn itself away from our bodies by its many efforts during the day.

Your body is not your real self. The power that moves it as you will is your spirit. That is an invisible organization, quite distinct and apart from your body. Your spirit (your real self) uses your body as the carpenter does his hammer or any tool to work with.

It is the spirit that is tired at night. It is exhausted of its force, and therefore not able to use the body vigorously. The body is really then as strong as ever, as the carpenter’s hammer has the same strength when his arm is too weak to use it.

The spirit is weak at night, because its forces have in thought been sent in so many different directions during the day that it cannot call them together. Every thought is one of these forces, and a part of your spirit. Every thought, spoken or unspoken, is a thing, a substance, as real, though invisible, as water or metal. Every thought, though unspoken, is something which goes to that person, thing, or locality on which it is placed. Your spirit, then, has during the day been so sent in a thousand, perhaps ten thousand, different directions. When you think, you work. Every thought represents an outlay of force. So sending out force for sixteen or eighteen hours, there is not at night sufficient left in or near the body to use it. The body therefore falls into the condition of insensibility we call sleep. During this condition the spirit collects its scattered forces, its thoughts which have been sent far and wide; it returns with its powers so concentrated to the body, and again possesses it with its full strength. It is when scattered as so many scattered rills of water trickling in many directions. Put all these together in a single volume, and you have the power that turns the mill-wheel.

Could you call all of your spirit at once to its centre, and so collect its widely scattered forces, you could be fresh and strong in as many minutes as it now takes hours to rest you. This power was known to the first Napoleon, and sustained him for days with very little sleep during the crisis of his campaigns when his energies were taxed to the utmost. It is a power which can be acquired by all through a certain training.

It is done by first placing the body in a state of as complete rest as possible; stopping all involuntary physical motions, such as the swinging of limbs, tapping with the foot, or drumming with the fingers. All such involuntary movements waste your force, and, worse, train you unconsciously to a habit hard to break, of wasting force. The involuntary working of the mind, the straying of thought in every direction,—towards persons, things, plans, and projects,—the useless frettings over cares great and small, must be similarly stopped, and the mind for a few minutes made as near a blank as possible. Concentration of thought on the word “in-drawing,” or “drawing into self,” or the mind-picture of your spirit with its fine electric filaments reaching to persons, places, and things far from you, being all drawn back, and massed in a focus, is a help to do this; because whatso you image in your mind is a spiritual reality. That is, what you image, you are-actually in spirit and by spirit doing. Every plan or invention clearly seen in thought is of thought-substance, as real a thing as the wood, stone, iron, or other substance in which afterward it may be embodied and made visible to the body’s eye, and made to work results on the physical stratum of life.

If a man thinks murder, he actually puts out an element of murder in the air. He sends from him a plan of murder as real as if drawn on paper; its thought is absorbed by others; so is this element and unseen plan of murder absorbed by other minds; it inclines them towards violence if not murder. If a person is ever thinking of sickness, he sends from him the element of sickness; if he thinks of health, strength, and cheerfulness, he sends from him constructions of thought affecting others to health and strength as well as himself. A man sends from him in thought what he (his spirit) is most built of. “As a man thinketh, so is he.” Your spirit is a bundle of thought; what you think most of, that is your spirit. Imagine, then, yourself as such a being, drawing in all these filaments, sent and placed as they are to so many things. The thoughts so passing from you in one minute could hardly be plainly written out in an hour. You gather them to a centre. You have then gathered in and concentrated your full motive-power; then you can put all its force on any thing you please. When the eye and mind are put on any single object that does not tax the energies, say a spot in the wall, the positive thought or filaments reaching out are drawn in to the common centre. Your absorption on any single thing loosens them from their near or far point of contact. Before such loosening, the spirit is as the expanded hand and fingers. When the thought is drawn in, the spirit is as the closed or clinched fist.