§ 30
To return, then, after this digression, to the statement that control is entirely mental: By this, of course, is meant control according to a hypersomatic pattern. There is no control without a pattern. One never is said to control one’s actions unless he has an idea according to which he is going to act. Otherwise his actions are automatic—not controlled.
The immediate connection of this with our present argument is this then (an argument that runs right along with the ideas of autosuggestion): any man can do what any man has done, if he has the same hypersomatic pattern according to which his actions are carried out.
An obvious objection will at once be made, but it is only an apparent one. Many men will say they know they are physically weak, or weak-willed, are lacking in control. They know it because they have never controlled their love emotions, and have little control over any of their emotions.
To that excuse, the answer is: just because you have not is no proof that you cannot. If that were the case no progress would ever have been made by humanity.
That you have not controlled yourself is proof only that you have not yet vividly imagined a pattern according to which your actions might be carried out. The only hypersomatic pattern existing in your personality is that according to which you are now acting.
Countless biographies of men, great and less great, demonstrate that there have been revolutionary, cataclysmic changes in their actions resulting from alterations in the patterns, i.e., changes in the hypersomatic end of their personality.
The man who says he cannot change his actions is simply saying he cannot change his ideas. That would be somewhat analogous to saying he cannot learn a foreign language. But we know that everyone going to a foreign country and being environed month after month by a foreign language will learn to speak it, whether he tries or not. How easily and quickly he does is a matter only of his hypersomatic elasticity. Some are more elastic than others, but almost anyone who can walk can learn to change his hypersomatic patterns, can in other words become conscious of a new hypersomatic pattern, see its superiority to an old one, and regulate and control his actions accordingly.