The mystic will : a method of developing and strengthening the faculties of the mind, through the awakened will, by a simple, scientific process possible to any person of ordinary intelligene / by Charles G. Leland.

  • Leland, Charles Godfrey, 1824-1903.
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The mystic will : a method of developing and strengthening the faculties of the mind, through the awakened will, by a simple, scientific process possible to any person of ordinary intelligene / by Charles G. Leland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    process has precisely the same result—it establishes a fixed idea in the mind, or a haunting presence. We can cure ourselves of intemperance. This was, I believe, first established or extensively experimented on by Dr. Charles Lloyd Tuckey. This can be aided by willing that the liquor, if drunk, shall be nauseating. We can repress to a remarkable degree the sensations of fatigue, hunger and thirst. Truly no man can defy the laws of nature, but it is very certain that in cases like that of Dr. Tanner, and the Hindu ascetics who were boxed up and buried for many weeks, there must have been mental determination as well as physical en- durance. As regards this very important subject of health, or the body, and the degree to which it can be controlled by the mind or will, it is to be observed that of late years physiologists are beginning to observe that all “mental” or corporeal functions are evidently con- trolled by the same laws or belong to the same organi- zation. If “the emotions, say of anger or love, in their more emphatic forms, are plainly accompanied by vary- ing changes of the heart and blood-vessels, the viscera and muscles,” it must follow that changes or excite- ment in the physical organs must react on the emotions. “All modes of sensibility, whatever their origin,” says Luys, “are physiologically transported into the sen- sorium. From fiber to fiber, from sensitive element to sensitive element, our whole organism is sensitive; our whole sentient personality, in fact, is conducted just as it exists, into the plexuses of the sensorium commune.” Therefore, if every sensation in the body acts on the brain by the aid of secondary brains or ganglions, it must be that the brain in turn can in some way act on the body. And this has hitherto been achieved or at- tempted by magicians, miracle-mongers, thaumaturgists, mesmerists, and the like, and by the modern hypnotizer, in which we may observe that there has been at every step less and less mysticism or supernaturalism, and a far easier process or way of working. And I believe it may be fairly admitted that in this work I have simplified the process of physically influencing mental action and