OUR USE OF THE TERM, the Two Minds, is made applicable to this study. In other works various names are given by scientists and writers to these same minds. For many years there has been a persistent reference by scholarly investigators to what is often termed the sub-conscious faculty, as a mind wholly apart and entirely different from the so-called work-a-day mind. In all leading institutions of learning, the subject of psychology is now taught as a branch of the highest importance; some claiming that it controls all human activities, and makes for success or failure depending on the uses derived from it. Experiments and the after-history of graduates prove that all opportunities for advancement in the world are swayed inevitably by the influence of this power; and, to the surprise of investigators every test has shown conclusively that there is a mind wholly different from that hitherto known as the thinking function of the brain; that there is a life imbedded in human existence that is endowed with powers that cannot be explained by any human standards.

No one name can describe properly this other mind. It is not a faculty of a single character, but a collection of faculties; one of which is sub-conscious, and hence this term has been applied to it as an inclusive one. Some years ago a very able writer issued a small book entitled a scientific demonstration of the existence of an immortal life within man, based solely on proofs of the presence of this other mind; and to fall in with the accepted usage he employed the name sub-conscious faculty. In hospitals, the same term is used by doctors and surgeons in their curative experiments; and thousands of remarkable cures have been effected through a recognition of the powers of this faculty.(*)

(*)Note:—Any person who wishes to be made familiar with the sources of proofs of the nature, activities and powers of this supernatural faculty, may address inquiries to the Publisher of this book whose address is given on the final page hereof.

The Physical Mind that is mentioned in the last page of the preceding lesson is that which is generally understood as the entire conscious thinking faculty in all its divisions, including its sensations, its intelligence, its memory, and its power of reasoning. Writers and teachers allude to it as the conscious mind; also the working mind; also the thinking as well as the automatic mind; to distinguish it from the sub-conscious faculty.

The Magnetic Mind is connected with that other mental world of which the sub-conscious faculty is only a part, and with it forms a group of activities such as those of the genius, of the inventor, of the poet, of the great dramatists, of the leaders in all onward movements, and of the inspired writers of the past. History presents in countless ways the efforts of such genius to break through the wall that separates the natural from the supernatural powers of life. But that which was once supposed to belong to the realm of the supernatural has been found to be a part of the plan of Nature; just as the belief in the occult warnings of eclipses and earthquakes has melted into modern knowledge. So in time it will be learned that there is no supernatural world; but that all existence is wedded together.

The Magnetic Mind contains three powers:

1. The Truth-Teller.

2. The Ideal-Maker.

3. Mental Determination.

The Truth-Teller is a double-power. It is able to discern the truth of the future by applying the experiences of the past. It is also able to take advantage of its faculty of discernment by possessing the ability to accept the truth of the future as though it had actually already occurred; thus avoiding the reefs and dangerous shoals that are wrecking most lives and neutralizing the brilliant victories of personal magnetism.

The Ideal-Maker creates in fact the individual that is sought, In early youth, and sometimes far into middle life, men and women build castles in the air. Blood and brain and heart convert their inmost wishes into seeming realities; and it has been aptly said that if these castles could only become material facts, the world would be a beautiful place in which to live, The Ideal-Maker does not deal in masonry or concrete structures; but creates a person and a personality that represent the highest type of existence on this little planet, and then leads the way to their realization. Measurements are taken, not of the individual, but of the idealized person and personality, and the power of the Magnetic Mind draws and lifts up to these standards the being for whom they are intended. We shall see.

Mental Determination furnishes the best example of the difference between the Physical Mind and the Magnetic Mind The latter is able to accomplish anything; but the Physical Mind succeeds only as far as it has free advance or can break down the barriers that stand in its way. In the Department of Tension Energy we saw that the habit of setting the muscles was a detriment to the cultivation of magnetism. So the habit of setting the mind is a detriment in another form. Luckily the Magnetic Mind cannot act in that way; for what is known herein as Mental Determination is the opposite of setness;it is movement.

This is the greatest force in life.

There is power in a locomotive that stands on the track of a great artery of travel, but that does not move. In like manner there is power in the obstinate person who conceives a fixed idea, and who stands by it with all steam up. But he does not get anywhere. The world moves past him. Progress finds him there still, and still there. When the great machine is given the open valve, it moves and goes on into the world of action. It sees life, participates in it, and becomes a part of it. In like manner, Mental Determination is power in motion.

It has a goal, and it moves towards it by the process of action, not of belief or fixedness of position.

All sorts of causes operate to set the Physical Mind or working consciousness in fixed positions or fixed ideas. Disease is a frequent cause. Old age in which the brain cells ossify or harden and destroy their flexibility, is a very frequent cause; and does not wait for the arrival of decrepitude in a majority of cases; for this organ may begin to lose it: flexibility even when a person is in the teens or twenties. One-way thinking and one-way believing partly paralyze its powers to see or accept anything that challenges such thinking or belief.

The non-flexible or set mind is rarely ever able to attain that fullness of magnetism that wins success or draws friends or worthy companions.

In our journeys among people of all ranks and grades of achievement in life, we have never yet found any man or woman whose mind had become set in lines of thinking or believing who was magnetic, or who had any genuine friends. Some there were who had acquired wealth and power, before whom others fawned to their faces, and sneered behind their backs; and whose so-called closest friends were posers of convenience.

Obstinacy is merely an acute form of the set mind.

As long as the majority of the people are fools, so long will the world be full of setness of minds and setness of existence; of friendless and unpitied men and women barricading their miserable selves within the hides of mules and waiting for death to make somebody sorry. They cannot help themselves, nor their condition. All we can say is that if you belong to the class of persons who cannot extricate themselves from the inability of flexible thinking, or if you are of the kind that grip an idea and hang to it like a dog to a rag, you can make no progress in this study beyond what you have already attained.

The Magnetic Mind is open; wide open; open always to the Truth; it never closes itself against facts; it never sets itself to anunalterable belief for it believes what it knows and experiences. It, however, gets nearer the truth for it is always nearer the sources of the truth, than the Physical Mind. The latter is the accumulation of earthly experiences beginning at birth, and including all that can be remembered since then. The Magnetic Mind has its sources of knowledge from the opposite direction.

It cannot be said that persons who set their minds in a fixed belief and purpose, although as a rule devoid of magnetism, cannot acquire some of this power; but they cannot reach the heights. They, in the first place, do not understand the difference between setting their minds to a fixed purpos, which is always praiseworthy if the purpose is worthy, and setting it to a flexible purpose which bends always to the Truth and to the presentation of facts. This distinction is hard to grasp. But it is the alternative of no magnetism and failure on the one hand, and uniform success on the other hand.

A flexible purpose that moves in the right direction is magnetic.

A fixed purpose that closes the mind is never magnetic.

Take the old illustration of the law college seeking to impress on the intellects of its students the methods of getting proper testimony before a jury when balked by the laws of evidence. The professor speaks of a table that is to be moved through a doorway to the next room. The first attempt is to force it through lengthwise; but as the door is less than three feet in the opening and the table is four feet long, the task seems impossible. Having seen the futility of the effort in this way, the table is then turned so that the end may be pushed through the doorway; but as the width is a full three feet, and the opening at the door slightly less, the table still remains in the first room. Now comes the application of the law of flexibility. The table is laid on its side; two legs are worked through, then the body, and finally the two remaining legs; and it is in the next room.

Taking this example only as an illustration, the obstinate mind in life would persist in trying to force the table through the doorway with the broadside facing it; and would sit down and stay there set in mind and purpose. Life is made up of countless such cases. The Magnetic Mind retains its flexibility in all things; suits all the activities of existence to conditions that must be met, and meets them in the best way possible In other words it molds its efforts to the necessities that arise, changes its methods without changing its direction, and often stoops to conquer without abandoning its purpose.

One of the most beautiful characteristics of the Magnetic Mind is its habit of sending out tentacles of thought in order to draw in new influences that arise from contact with other persons, analyzing them, and, if found to possess new values to absorb them; otherwise to discard them as having been found wanting.