A Broadcasting and Receiving Station for Thought
The Twelfth Step to Riches
MORE THAN 20 years ago, I, working in conjunction with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell and Dr. Elmer R. Gates, observed that every human brain is both a “broadcasting” and a “receiving” station for the impulses of thought.
Under the right circumstances and in a fashion that may be likened to that employed by the radio broadcasting principle, every human brain is capable of “picking up” thought impulses which originate in the brains of others.
In connection with the statement in the preceding paragraph, compare and consider the description of the Creative Imagination as outlined in the discussion on Imagination in Chapter 5. The Creative Imagination is the receiving set of the brain, which processes thoughts released by the brains of others. It is the agency of communication between one’s own conscious or reasoning mind and the four sources from which one may receive thought stimuli (i.e., Infinite Intelligence, one’s own subconscious mind, the “highly energized” conscious mind of another person, and the subconscious storehouse of another person. See the discussion on the Sixth Sense in Chapter 10.)
Creative Imagination is the mechanism by which intuition and hunches seem to spring out of thin air, and by which two or more people, working closely together in a state of intense concentration and focus, seem to anticipate each other’s next thoughts, actions, insights, and even actual words.1
When thus highly stimulated, or stepped up, the mind becomes more receptive to thought impulses that somehow reach it from sources outside itself. This stepping-up process is driven by powerful emotions, either positive or negative.
Thought manifests itself as electrical energy within the human brain. Only highly intensified or “energized” thought impulses are transmitted from one brain to another through this mysterious and still not understood process. Thought which has been modified or stepped up by any of the major emotions is the only type of thought which passes from one brain to another through the “broadcasting machinery” of the human brain.
The emotion of sex stands at the head of the list of human emotions as far as intensity and driving force are concerned. The brain which has been stimulated by the emotion of sex is much more highly energized than it is when that emotion is dormant or absent. (To reiterate an earlier point, “stimulated by the emotion of sex” refers to a sex drive that is vigorous and powerful, yet under control, channeled, and given adequate and appropriate expression.)
The result of sex transmutation is the increase of this energizing effect on thoughts and thought processes to such a pitch that the Creative Imagination becomes highly receptive to ideas, which it seems to literally pluck out of thin air. When the brain is operating in this highly energized state, it not only attracts thoughts and ideas released by other brains, but it also gives to its own thoughts that feeling which is essential before those thoughts will be picked up and acted upon by one’s own subconscious mind.
Thus, you will see that the broadcasting principle is the factor through which you mix feeling or emotion with your thoughts and pass them on to your subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind is the sending station of the brain, through which thought impulses are broadcast. The Creative Imagination is the receiving set, through which thought impulses are picked up. Along with the important factors of the subconscious mind and the faculty of the Creative Imagination, which together constitute the sending and receiving sets of your mental broadcasting equipment, consider now the principle of autosuggestion, which is the medium by which you may put into operation your broadcasting station.
Through the instructions described in Chapter 3 on Autosuggestion, you were definitely and specifically shown the method by which DESIRE may be transmuted into its monetary equivalent.
Operation of your mental broadcasting station is a comparatively simple procedure. You have but three factors to bear in mind and apply when you wish to use your broadcasting station—the SUBCONSCIOUS MIND, CREATIVE IMAGINATION, and AUTOSUGGESTION. The stimuli through which you put these three forces into action have been described. The procedure begins with DESIRE.
The world has been brought to the very borderline of an understanding of the forces that are intangible and unseen. Throughout history, people have depended too much upon their physical senses and have limited their knowledge to physical things they could see, touch, weigh, and measure.
We are now entering the most marvelous of all ages—an age which will teach us something of the intangible forces of the world about us. Perhaps we shall learn as we pass through this age that the “other self” is more powerful than the physical self we see when we look in a mirror.
Sometimes people speak lightly of the intangibles—the things they cannot perceive through any of their five senses—and when we hear such people speak, it should remind us that all of us are controlled by forces which are unseen and intangible.
The whole human race has not the power to cope with nor control the intangible force wrapped up in the rolling waves of the oceans. We still do not have the ability to understand the intangible force of gravity, which keeps this little earth suspended in mid-air and keeps us from falling from it, much less the power to control that force. We are entirely subservient to the intangible force that comes with a thunderstorm, and we are just as helpless in the presence of the intangible force of electricity—we do not even fully understand what electricity is, where it comes from, or what is its ultimate purpose!
Nor is this by any means the end of our ignorance in connection with things unseen and intangible. We do not understand the intangible force (and intelligence) wrapped up in the soil and resources of the earth—the force which provides us with every morsel of food we eat, every article of clothing we wear, every dollar we carry in our pockets.
Last, but not least, we—with all of our boasted culture and education—understand little or nothing of the intangible force (the greatest of all the intangibles) of thought. We know but little concerning the physical brain and its vast network of intricate structures through which the power of thought is translated into its material equivalent, but we are now entering an age which shall yield enlightenment on the subject. Already scientists have turned their attention to the study of this stupendous thing called a brain, and, while they are still in the kindergarten stage of their studies, they have uncovered enough knowledge to know that the “central switchboard” of the human brain, the number of lines which connect the brain cells one with another, equals the figure one, followed by 15 million zeros!
“The figure is so stupendous,” said Dr. C. Judson Herrick of the University of Chicago, “that astronomical figures dealing with hundreds of millions of light years, become insignificant by comparison….It has been determined that there are from 10 billion to 14 billion nerve cells in the human cerebral cortex, and we know that these are arranged in definite patterns. These arrangements are not haphazard. They are orderly. Recently developed methods…draw off action currents from very precisely located cells…amplify them…and record potential differences to a millionth of a volt.”
It is inconceivable that such a network of intricate equipment should be in existence for the sole purpose of carrying on the physical functions incidental to growth and maintenance of the physical body. Is it not likely that the same system that gives billions of brain cells the media for communication one with another, provides also the means of communication with other intangible forces?
After this book had been written, and just before the manuscript went to the publisher, there appeared in The New York Times an editorial showing that at least one great university and one intelligent investigator in the field of mental phenomena were carrying on organized research through which conclusions were reached that parallel many of those described in this and the following chapter. The editorial briefly analyzed the work carried on by Dr. Rhine and his associates at Duke University.
A month ago we cited on this page some of the remarkable results achieved by Professor Rhine and his associates [at] Duke University from more than a hundred thousand tests to determine the existence of “telepathy” and “clairvoyance.” These results were summarized in the first two articles in Harper Magazine. In the second that has now appeared, the author, E. H. Wright, attempts to summarize what has been learned, or what it seems reasonable to infer, regarding the exact nature of these “extrasensory” modes of perception.
The actual existence of telepathy and clairvoyance now seems to some scientists enormously probable as the result of Rhine’s experiments. Various percipients were asked to name as many cards in a special pack as they could without looking at them and without other sensory access to them. About a score of men and women were discovered who could regularly name so many of the cards correctly that “there was not one chance in many a million…of their having done their feats by luck or accident.”
But how did they do them? These powers, assuming that they exist, do not seem to be sensory. There is no known organ for them. The experiments worked just as well at distances of several hundred miles as they did in the same room. These facts also dispose, in Mr. Wright’s opinion, of the attempt to explain telepathy or clairvoyance through any physical theory of radiation. All known forms of radiant energy decline inversely as the square of the distance traversed. Telepathy and clairvoyance do not. But they do vary through physical causes as our other mental powers do. Contrary to widespread opinion, they do not improve when the percipient is asleep or half-asleep, but, on the contrary, when he is most wide-awake and alert. Rhine discovered that a narcotic will invariably lower a percipient’s score, while a stimulant will always send it higher. The most reliable performer apparently cannot make a good score unless he tries to do his best.
One conclusion Wright draws with some confidence is that telepathy and clairvoyance are one and the same gift. That is, the faculty that “sees” a card face down on a table seems to be exactly the same one that “reads” a thought residing only in another mind. There are several grounds for believing this. So far, for example, the two gifts have been found in every person who enjoys either of them. In every one so far the two have been of equal vigor, almost exactly. Screens, walls, distances, have no effect at all on either. Wright advances from this conclusion to express what he puts forward as no more than the mere hunch that other extra-sensory experiences, prophetic dreams, premonitions of disaster, and the like, may also prove to be part of the same faculty. The reader is not asked to accept any of these conclusions unless he finds it necessary, but the evidence that Rhine has piled up must remain impressive.
* * *
In view of Dr. Rhine’s announcement in connection with the conditions under which the mind responds to what he terms “extra-sensory modes of perception,” I now feel privileged to add to his testimony by stating that my associates and I have discovered what we believe to be the ideal conditions under which the mind can be stimulated so that the Sixth Sense described in the next chapter can be made to function in a practical way.
The conditions to which I refer consist of a close working alliance between myself and two members of my staff. Through experimentation and practice, we discovered how to stimulate our minds (by applying the principle used in connection with the “Invisible Counselors” described in the next chapter) so that we can, by a process of “blending” our three minds into one, find the solution to a great variety of problems.
The procedure is simple. We sit down at a conference table, clearly state the nature of the problem we have under consideration, then begin discussing it. Each contributes whatever thoughts that may occur. The strange thing about this method of mind stimulation is that it places each participant in communication with unknown sources of knowledge definitely outside his own experience.
If you understand the principle described in Chapter 9 on the Master Mind, you of course recognize the round-table procedure here described as being a practical application of the Master Mind.2 This method of mind stimulation, through harmonious discussion of definite subjects among three people, illustrates the simplest and most practical use of the Master Mind. By adopting and following a similar plan, any student of this philosophy may come into possession of the famous Carnegie formula briefly described in the introduction. If it means nothing to you at this time, mark this page and read it again after you have finished the final chapter.