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.Such a combination has a power against which reasoning or desiring, even to thedegree where it is called willing, does not avail.Active thinking is the effort of the doer to hold the Light of the Intelligence on asubject of thought presented by the doer itself or by the senses.Active thinking is theattempt to gather Light and then to focus it, and is jerky and spasmodic.This requiresthe pressure of desire; and with this pressure, active thinking begins and at oncemakes an impression on the breath-form.Usually the impression is faint because thedoer cannot focus continuously and give undivided attention. The force of passive thinking can be used to remedy the troublous results ofdisease and want, to check the sort of passive thinking that produces them, and evento bring about an active thinking that will be right.While it is almost impossible forthe doer to think out of itself the righteous thoughts that will produce righteous acts, itis not even difficult to lead the doer, by means of passive thinking, into activethinking that will produce thoughts which will be exteriorized in honesty, morality,health and peace.Self-suggestion is the name given to the intentional use of passive thinking forthese purposes.However, all passive thinking is self-suggestion, whether intentionalor unintentional.Most of the thinking that people do is unintentional self-suggestion.The large majority live by passive thinking, and this determines their lives.Their livesare carried on without much of an object or a goal, and are steered or led into thisposition or that condition by their senses and by passive thinking with them.The four senses present objects to the doer and play with them under the diffusedLight of the Intelligence.If the doer considers these objects, passive thinking beginsand the impressions become fixed on the breath-form.In this way are produced thenotions and fancies which govern people's lives.Fear of a danger or belief in theimpossibility of accomplishing a thing realizes the danger and prevents theaccomplishment.The use of one's reason or willpower, that is, the concentrated forceof one's desire behind the definite thinking, to overcome these notions, will not availwhen the notions are strong.This is especially so when the memory of pastexperiences connected with similar impressions strengthens them.Persons who are afraid of catching a cold from a draft, from wet feet, wet clothingor exposure are much more apt to do so than those who have no such notions.Aperson who is afraid of walking through the woods in the night may have his hair turngray, or may contract a fever if he is forced to spend a dark night in a forest.Fear thata swelling will become a malignant tumor tends to make it grow into such.Thegreater a person's fear of catching infectious diseases, the more liable does he becometo contract one.A person that persuades himself that he cannot remember figures,names or places, cannot remember them, and one who believes that he cannot add acolumn of figures will surely make mistakes.A person who believes that he can nevermake a success of anything, disqualifies himself before the start; and if he starts he ispractically doomed to failure.One who believes that he is too tired to finish a march,is likely to collapse.One who believes that he cannot cross a trestle or a plank orledge at a height, is almost sure to fall.Some people observing these results as facts seek to explain them by theories thatthere is an "unconscious mind" or a "subconscious mind" that brings about thesephenomena.That which produces these results is the breath-form.It is not mind and itis not subconscious.It does not act consciously at all.It acts as an automaton, andmanages the human body through the involuntary nervous system by means of thefour senses and the three inner bodies.There are only two kinds of impressions it can receive: impressions from natureand impressions from its own doer.If the impression relates to feelings, the desires of the doer itself are bound tofollow the lines of the impression.It is the same with impressions that relate torightness in moral and intellectual matters; thinking is bound to follow the lines of theimpressions just as did the elementals of nature and the desires of the doer.Themarkings on the breath-form are lines which compel the doer to follow them in itsdesires and mental activities.According to these signs, which it has made by thinking,the doer feels joy or gloom, ease or anxiety, fear or anger; and it thinks of noble orignoble subjects with honesty or dishonesty, along the lines of the signs.In these lines is stored up a power which is the concentrated force of desire stamped there throughthe breath.This is the power which the mental healers generate and try to concentrate,and which they use wrongfully.Thinking, feeling, and acting are done along theselines.Their power is all-compelling unless there are clearer and deeper lines.Thenthese control.Unintentional self-suggestion is the gradual making of these ruling signs withoutknowing it.The method of self-suggestion should be to make them intentionally, andyet not violate any law.The power of intentional self-suggestion can be called intoplay easily by using intentionally the unintentional method.The object is to producepassive thinking along certain lines which will make signs on the breath-form andcompel a certain kind of action, feeling, thinking and being.The points of the method are to cause passive thinking by seeing or hearingsomething which is unobtrusive and is done or occurs habitually, and which for thesereasons accumulates or concentrates force in lines which it makes gradually, clearlyand deeply.The seeing or hearing to be most effective should be done at those timeswhen it will make the deepest impression, that is, in the morning soon after wakingand at night before retiring.At night they should be the last impressions.Then theywill be carried out more immediately because there is no interference by the doer withthe marking of the lines on the breath-form.The last impressions will guide thethinking in sleep when the doer is dissociated from the senses.In the morning theyshould be the first, because on awakening the doer is relaxed, the breath-form is mostreceptive, and the physical body is rested.Thus the impressions are made, as it were,on a clean sheet.These points are well covered by seeing and reading aloud a written formula or bythe mere speaking of a formula every day, as the first thing done on awakening andthe last thing done before going to sleep.The reading or mere speaking should be loudenough to reach one's ear, and should be done at least three times on each occasion.The formula should be as short as the object in view permits and should have ameasure, rhyme or cadence.When the ear catches the sound, the three inner bodies and the breath-form areaffected; the breath-form is the medium through which the doer feels the impressions.The doer feels them in the voluntary nervous system through the medium of the innerbodies and the breath-form in the set of nerve fibers through which the doer senses.Of course, the doer entertains these impressions, since they are intentionally made,and therewith passive thinking starts
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