The Victorious Attitude

by Orison Swett Marden

The subjective mind is not only capable of carrying out orders but, as has already been shown, every impression made on it is indelible. How often we say, when we cannot recall a well-known name, or the details of some important event or experience, "Well, I cannot think of that now, but it will come to me; I shall think of it later." And how often have the forgotten details flashed into our mind when the occasion had passed and we were thinking of something else. Again and again have we puzzled our brains at night trying to think of some particular thing which had gone out of our memory, only to find it waiting for us in the morning.

We are beginning to realize that all of our experiences during the day, all of our thoughts, emotions and mental attitudes, the multitude of little things which seem to make but a fleeting impression, are not in reality lost. Every day leaves its phonographic records on the brain, and these records are never erased or destroyed. They simply drop into the subconscious mind and are ever on call. They may not come at once in response to our summons, but they are still there and are often, many years after they have dropped into the subconscious mind, reproduced with all their original vividness.

I heard recently of a prominent banker who lost a very important key, the only one to the bank treasures. He claimed that it had not been lost in the ordinary way, but stolen. Suspicion at once attached to the employees. A prominent detective was placed in the bank, and, after watching and questioning every one on the staff, he became convinced that none but the banker himself knew anything about the key.

Every detective is necessarily something of a mind reader, and this one, believing firmly in his own theory, suggested a simple plan for recovering the key. He told the banker to quit suspecting the employees and worrying about burglars getting the bank's treasures, to relax his overwrought mind and go to sleep with the belief that he himself had put the key away somewhere, and that it would be found in the morning. "If you do this," he said, "I believe the mystery will be solved."

The banker, to the best of his ability, did as the detective suggested, and on getting up the following morning he was instinctively led to a certain secret place, and, behold, there was the key. He was not conscious that he had put it there, but after finding it he had a faint recollection of previously going to this place.

The banker's objective or conscious mind was probably busy with something else when he put the key away. Only his subconscious self had any knowledge of what he was doing. Then when he missed the key his fears, his worry, his anxiety, his suspicions and generally wrought-up mentality made it impossible for his subjective mind to reveal the secret to him. But after his mind had become poised and he was again in tune with his subjective intelligence the information was passed along.

Dr. Hack Tuke, a distinguished English authority on the subject. "The memory, freed from distraction as it sometimes is," he says, "is so vivid as to enable the sleeper to recall events which had happened years before and which had been entirely forgotten."

Now, if, as we have seen, the subconscious mind can perform real work, real service for us, why should we not use it especially during sleep? Why should we not avail ourselves of this enormous creative force to strengthen all our powers and possibilities, to piece out, virtually to lengthen our time, our lives? Think what it would mean to us in a life time if we could keep these sleepless creative functions always in superb condition so that they would go on during the night working out our problems, unraveling our difficulties, carrying forward our plans, while we are asleep! We have sufficient proof already to show that they do actual constructive work, but the testimony of Dr. Tuke on this point is of interest. "That the exercise of thought—and this on a high level—is consistent with sleep can hardly be doubted," he writes. "Arguments are employed in debate which are not always illogical. We dreamed one night, subsequent to a lively conversation with a friend on spiritualism, that we instituted a number of test experiments in reference to it. The nature of these tests was retained vividly in the memory after waking. They were by no means wanting in ingenuity, and proved that the mental operations were in good form."

It is now established beyond a doubt that certain parts of the brain continue active during the night when the rest of it is under the anesthetic of sleep. But we have hardly begun to realize what a tremendous ally this sleepless creative part of the brain can be made in our mental development. It is well known that most of the growth of the child, of its skeleton, muscles, nerves and all the twelve different kinds of tissues in its body takes place during sleep, that there is comparatively little during the activities of the day. It is not so well understood that our minds also grow during the night; that they develop along the lines of the ideals, thoughts and emotions with which we feed them before retiring. "All the analogies go to prove that the mind is always awake," says M. Jouffroy. "The mind during sleep is not in a special mood or state, but it goes on and develops itself absolutely as in the waking hours."

As a matter of fact we never awake just the same being as when we went to sleep. We are either better or worse. We changed while we slept. While our senses are wrapped in slumber, the subjective mind is busily at work. It is either building up or tearing down. It is my firm belief that by an intelligent, systematic direction of this sleepless faculty of the brain we can actually make it create for us along the line of our desires. As it is, most people by not putting the mind in proper condition before going to sleep not only do not intelligently use this marvelous creative agency but they destroy all possibility of beneficial results from its action. It is as necessary to prepare the mind for sleep as it is to prepare the body. The following chapter offers some suggestions on this point.