Imagination, persuasion, faith, emotion or feeling, or will or conation can all be used depending on the individual's distinct imaginative, intellectual, emotional, or conative character. Only a few individuals are aware of this. Coue intends to cure everyone with solely autosuggestion.
The intellectually ill individual, on the other hand, is immune to suggestion and can only be affected by a philosophical explanation of the power of mind over the body.
He must intellectually comprehend the mind's dominance over the body.
If someone can comprehend, for example, that hypnosis may cause blisters, as Professor James points out in his "Principles of Psychology," he may comprehend the mind's ability to heal sickness. If the mind is capable of causing illness, it is also capable of causing good health.
Auto-suggestion is also unable to influence the sort of man who has a strong willpower. If he wants to be cured of his illness, he has to stimulate his willpower rather than his imagination.
A case was documented of an emotional individual who had lost his ability to speak but regained it while fleeing a burning house. The abrupt shock of seeing fire heightened his emotions to the point where he exclaimed, "Fire! Fire!" despite the fact that he had previously been unable to talk.
The force of a powerful emotion overcomes the subconscious mental sickness habit.
This anecdote demonstrates the importance of paying close attention while using affirmations to heal physical ailments. I was caught off guard by a bout of seasickness on my maiden steamship journey from India to Colombo, and I lost the priceless contents of my stomach.
I despised the experience since it was thrust upon me without my consent and at a time when I was reveling in my first encounters with a floating chamber (the cabin) and a swimming town. I vowed to myself that I would never be duped like that again.
I stepped forward and put my foot firmly on the cabin floor, commanding my determination to never tolerate another seasick sensation. Even though I was on the ocean for fifty days travelling from Calcutta to Boston, a month travelling to Japan, and twenty-six days travelling from Seattle to Alaska and back, I never became seasick again, even a very strong sea that made practically everyone else on board sick.
Willpower, creativity, reason, and emotion cannot heal the body on their own. They only function as various agents that, depending on the temperaments of various persons, might encourage the life energy to awaken and treat a certain condition.
If the will or imagination is constantly aroused in a case of arm paralysis, life energy will flow to the sick neural channels, healing the tissues and the paralyzed arm. The strength of the will and imagination should be adequate to awaken the uncontrolled or inert life force, hence affirmations should be repeated often. Yoga teaches how to harness this Life Current directly for healing oneself and others through its skills of focus and meditation, as well as will control.
No one should ever underestimate the power of repeated, ever-deeper efforts of will or imaginative affirmations, such as those described here, to cure harmful habits, mental or physical ailments.
You may also want to read more about Spirituality and Healing here.
Be sure to check out my writings on Religion here.
