Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion

Observation.--This is the essential point of the method. In order to make auto-suggestions, you must eliminate the will completely and only address yourself to the imagination, so as to avoid a conflict between them in which the will would be vanquished.

Then, after having asked them to close their eyes, M. Coué gives to his patients the little suggestive discourse which is to be found in "Self Mastery." When this is over, he again addresses himself to each one separately, saying to each a few words on his case:

To the first: "You, Monsieur, are in pain, but I tell you that, from to-day, the cause of this pain whether it is called arthritis or anything else, is going to disappear with the help of your unconscious, and the cause having disappeared, the pain will gradually become less and less, and in a short time it will be nothing but a moment."

To the second person: "Your stomach does not function properly, it is more or less dilated. Well, as I told you just now, your digestive functions are going to work better and better, and I add that the dilatation of the stomach is going to disappear little by little. Your organism is going to give back progressively to your stomach the force and elasticity it had lost, and by degrees as this phenomenon is produced, the stomach will return to its primitive form and will carry out more and more easily the necessary movements to pass into the intestine the nourishment it contains. At the same time the pouch formed by the relaxed stomach will diminish in size, the nutriment will not longer stagnate in this pouch, and in consequence the fermentation set up will end by totally disappearing."

To the third: "To you, Mademoiselle, I say that whatever lesions you may have in your liver, your organism is doing what is necessary to make the lesions disappear every day, and by degrees as they heal over, the symptoms from which you suffer will go on lessening and disappearing. Your liver then functions in a more and more normal way, the bile it secretes is alcaline and no longer acid, in the right quantity and quality, so that it passes naturally into the intestines and helps intestinal digestion."

To the fourth: "My child, you hear what I say; every time you feel you are going to have an attack, you will hear my voice telling you as quick as lightning: 'No, no! my friend, you are not going to have that attack, and it is going to disappear before it comes. . . .'"

When everyone has been attended to, M. Coué tells those present to open their eyes, and adds: "You have heard the advice I have just given you. Well, to transform it into reality, what you must do is this: As long as you live, every morning before getting up, and every evening as soon as you are in bed, you must shut your eyes, so as to concentrate your attention, and repeat twenty times following, moving your lips (that is indispensable) and counting mechanically on a string with twenty knots in it the following phrase: 'Every day, in every respect, I am getting better and better.'"

There is no need to think of anything in particular, as the words "in every respect" apply to everything. This autosuggestion must be made with confidence, with faith, with the certainty of obtaining what is desired. The greater the conviction of the person, the greater and the more rapid will be the results obtained.

Further, every time that in the course of the day or night you feel any physical or mental discomfort, affirm to yourself that you will not consciously contribute to it, and that you are going to make it vanish; then isolate yourself as much as possible, and passing your hand over your forehead if it is something mental, or on whatever part that is painful if it is something physical, repeat very quickly, moving the lips, the words: "It is going, it is going . . ., etc., etc." as long as it is necessary. With a little practice, the mental or physical discomfort will disappear in about 20 to 25 seconds. Begin again every time it is necessary.

M. Coué also adds what follows: "If you formerly allowed yourself to make bad autosuggestions because you did it unconsciously, now that you know what I have just taught you, you must no longer let this happen. And if, in spite of all, you still do it, you must only accuse yourself, and say 'Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.'"

And now, if a grateful admirer of the work and of the founder of the method may be allowed to say a few words, I will say. "Monsieur Coué shows us luminously that the power to get health and happiness is within us: we have indeed received this gift."

Therefore, suppressing, first of all, every cause of suffering created or encouraged by ourselves, then putting into practice the favorite maxim of Socrates: "Know thyself," and the advice of Pope: "That I may reject none of the benefits that Thy goodness bestows upon me," let us take possession of the entire benefit of autosuggestion, let us become this very day members of the "Lorraine Society of applied Psychology;" let us make members of it those who may be in our care (it is a good deed to do to them).

By this means we shall follow first of all the great movement of the future of which M. E. Coué is the originator (he devotes to it his days, his nights, his worldly goods, and refuses to accept . . . but hush; no more of this! lest his modesty refuses to allow these lines to be published without alteration), but above all by this means we shall know exactly the days and hours of his lectures at Paris, Nancy and other towns, where he devotedly goes to sow the good seed, and where we can go too to see him, and hear him and consult him personally, and with his help awake or stir up in ourselves the personal power that everyone of us has received of becoming happy and well.