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.
When thought is sent out to any thing, you send out your force. When it is centred in a single thing, and so drawn in and kept from straying every moment, you are drawing in force.
The Hindoo “adept” becomes able, through a certain training of mind, to send his spirit or himself from his body. It is still connected with it by the fine unseen current of life known in the Bible as the “silver thread.” When that thread is snapped, body and spirit are completely severed, and the body dies. The “adept” has allowed himself to be buried alive. Rice has been sown over his grave, and sprouted. Seals were put in his coffin, and the grave carefully watched. He has so remained for weeks, and when dug up “came to life.”
The real man was never buried at all. It was only his body in the self-induced trance state, that was buried. Between his body and spirit, possibly miles away, the fine thread of spirit kept up the body’s life, or rather such supply of life as the body needed to keep it from decay. When the body was dug up, his spirit returned, and took full possession of it. He was able to do with his own body what the mesmerizer does with the body of his subject. He sent his own spirit out of it; the mesmerizer sent his subject’s spirit out. Before so sending out his spirit, the adept makes his mind a blank. Before drawing out the spirit of his subject, the operator causes the subject to make his own mind a blank; in other words, he stops the resisting forces of the other person’s thought by turning all his thought to a centre.
Your spirit can, and does frequently, go from your body to other places during sleep. It is then still connected with it by this thread of exceedingly fine element. This can be drawn out to a great distance. It is as an expanding or contracting electric wire connecting your spirit with the instrument it operates, your body.
This power of the spirit so to leave the body accounts for the phenomenon of persons being seen in two places far distant at the same time. It is the spirit that is seen by some clairvoyant eye. It is the “double,” the “doppel ganger” of the German, the “wraith” of the Scotch. The spirit may even be far from the body just previous to the body’s death. It is only the feeble supply of life sent it through the connecting thread, which causes the involuntary throes (so-called) of dissolution. These are not as painful as they seem. The real self, the spirit, even then may be unaware of the “death-bed scene.” It may go to some person, possibly at a distance, to whom it is much attracted; and thereby is solved the mystery of the apparitions, seen by distant friends, of persons whose deaths at or about the time of such appearances were not heard of until months after.
Sometimes people, during periods of sickness, fall unconsciously into a state where the spirit leaves the body, without snapping the threads of life. The body’s trance has then been mistaken for its real death, and it (the body) has been buried alive. The spirit has been compelled to return to its body in the coffin. The thread could only be severed after such return.
Your real being is ever sending out, with each thought, a fine electric ray or filament, representing so much of your life, your force, your vitality, and reaching to the object, place, or person to which such thought is sent, be it six feet or thousands of miles from your body.
Your thought is your real strength. When you lift a weight, you put your thought on the muscle that lifts. The heavier the weight, the more of your thought do you put on it. If, in so lifting, a part of your thought is turned in some other direction, if some one talks to you, if something frightens or annoys you, a part of your strength or thought leaves you. It goes to whatever has taken away a part of your attention from lifting.
It is mind, thought, spirit, that use the muscle to lift, as we use a rope to pull up a weight. There is no lifting or working without intelligence. Intelligence, thought, mind, and spirit mean about the same thing.
It does not matter, in order to give strength, whether the spirit, when once called together, be near the body or at a distance from it. So that it brings its forces (its thoughts) together, be it far from its body or near it, it is strong; and when it again takes possession of your body, and wakes it up, it is able to use the body with its full strength.
But the spirit may remain scattered all night. It may never be able to bring its forces together at any time. It may be living, as many now are, with its thought always
