Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World Part 3

[Sidenote: _"Things" and their Mental Duplicates_]

But perception is obviously only a state of mind. Can it, then, go outside of the mind to meet the table or even "hover in midair like a bridge between the two"? If you perceive the table, must not your perception of it exist wholly within your own mind? If, then, the table has any existence outside of and apart from your perception of it, then the table and your mental image of the table are two separate and distinct things.

In other words, you are on the horns of a dilemma. If you insist that the table exists _outside_ of your mind, you must admit that your knowledge of it is not direct, immediate and intuitive, but _indirect_ and representative, because of intervening physical agencies, and that the only thing directly known is the _mental impression_ of the table. On the other hand, if you insist that your knowledge of the table is direct, immediate and intuitive you must admit that the table is only a mental image, a mental reality, if it is any sort of reality at all, and that it has no existence outside of the mind.

[Sidenote: _Effect of Closing One's Eyes_]

You may easily convince yourself that the table you directly perceive can be nothing other than a mental picture. How? Simply close your eyes. It has now ceased to exist. What has ceased to exist? The external table of wood and glue and bolts? By no means.

Simply its mental duplicate. And by alternately opening and closing your eyes, you can successively create and destroy this mental duplicate.

[Sidenote: _If Matter Were Annihilated_]

Clearly, then, the table of which you are directly and immediately conscious when your eyes are open is always this _mental duplicate_, this aggregate of color, form, size and touch _impressions_; while the real table, the physical table, may be something other than the one of which you are directly aware. This other thing, this physical table, whatever it is, can never be directly known, if indeed it has any existence, a fact that many distinguished philosophers have had the courage to deny.

Imagine, then, for a moment that everything except mind should suddenly cease to exist, but that your sense-perceptions--that is to say, your perception of sensory impressions--were to continue to follow one another as before. Would not the physical world be for you just exactly what it is today, and would you not have the same reasons for believing in its existence that you now have?

[Sidenote: _If Mind Were Annihilated_]

And, conversely, if the world of matter were to go on, but all mental images, all perception of sense-impressions, were to come to an end, would not all matter be annihilated for you when your perceptions ceased?

_It is obvious that the world is not the same for all of us; but that it is for each one of us simply the world of his individual perceptions._

[Sidenote: _As Many Worlds as Minds_]

The whole subject of sense-impressions, sensation and perception may, therefore, be looked at from the standpoint of the mind as an active influence, as well as from the standpoint of outside objects as the exciting causes of sense-impressions.

CHAPTER V

ESSENTIAL LAW OF PRACTICAL SELF-MASTERY

[Sidenote: _Option and Opportunity_]

_External objects excite sensory impressions, but the perception of them is purely at the option of the mind._

This is of the greatest practical importance. Consider its consequences. It means that sense-impressions and your perception of them are two very different things. It means that sense-impressions may throng in upon you as they will. They are the work of external stimuli impressing themselves upon the sensorium as upon a mechanical register. You are helpless to discriminate among them.

You cannot accept some and exclude others. You are a perambulating dry plate upon which outside objects produce their images.

[Sidenote: _Prearranging Your Consciousness_]

But, and this is a vital distinction, perception is an act of the mind. It is initiated from within. It permits you to discriminate among sensations in the sense that you may dwell upon some and ignore others. It enables you to definitely select, if you will, the elements that shall make up the content of your consciousness.

_Perception as an independent mental process thus enables you to predetermine what elements of pa.s.sing sensory experience may be made the basis of your conscious judgments and of your feelings and emotions._

[Sidenote: _How to Definitely Selects its Elements_]

Bear this in mind when you think of your environment and its supposed influence upon your life. Remember that your environment is no hard-and-fast thing, an aggregate of physical realities. Your environment, so far as it affects your judgment and your conduct, is made up, not of physical realities, but of mental pictures.

_Your environment is within you._ Get this conclusion clearly in your mind.

Hold fast to the point of view that, _Environment, the environment that influences your conduct and your life, is not a chance ma.s.sing of outward circ.u.mstances, but is the product of your own mind_.

[Sidenote: _An Infallible Recipe for Self-Possession_]

Think what this means to you. It means that by deliberately selecting for attention only those sense-impressions, those elements of consciousness, that can serve your purpose, you can free yourself from all distractions and make peaceful progress in the midst of turmoil.

[Sidenote: _Using "Unseen Ear Protectors"_]

"In the busiest part of New York, a broker occupied a desk in a room with six other men who had many visitors constantly moving about and talking. The gentleman was at first so sensitive to disturbances that he accomplished almost nothing during business hours, and returned home every evening with a severe headache. One day a man of impressive personality and extremely calm demeanor entered the office, and noticing the agitated broker, smilingly said: 'I see that you are disturbed by the noise made by your neighbors in the conduct of their affairs; pardon me if I leave with you an infallible recipe for peace in the midst of commotion: _Hear only what you will to hear_.' With this terse counsel he quietly bade the astonished listener adieu. After his visitor had departed, the nervous man felt unaccountably calm, and was constrained to meditate upon his friend's advice, and no sooner did he seek to put it into practical use than he learned for the first time that it was his rightful prerogative to use unseen ear protectors as well as to employ his ears. Six or seven weeks elapsed before he saw his mysterious visitor again, and by that time he had so successfully practiced the simple though forceful injunction, that he had reached a point in self-control where the Babel of tongues about him no longer reached his consciousness."

[Sidenote: _How to Avoid Worry, Melancholy_]

Herein lies a remedy for worry, with its sleepless nights and kindred torments; for melancholy and despair, with their train of physical and financial disaster.

How? Simply by shutting off the flow of disagreeable thoughts and subst.i.tuting others that are pleasant and refres.h.i.+ng.

You are master. You can change the setting of your mental stage from portentous gloom to sun-lit a.s.surance. You can concentrate your thought upon the useful, the helpful and the cheerful, ignore the useless and annoying, and make your life a life of hope and joy, of promise and fulfilment.

[Sidenote: _Putting Circ.u.mstances Under Foot_]

You will not question the statement that what you do with your life is the combined result of heredity and environment. At the same time you doubtless possess a more or less hazy belief in the freedom of your own will.

The chances are that in any previous reflections on this subject you have magnified the influence of outside agencies and wondered just how a man could make himself the master rather than the victim of circ.u.mstances.

You now realize that your environment is an environment of thought, that your material universe is a thing your own making, and that you can mold it as you will simply by the intelligent control of your own thinking.

[Sidenote: _Running Your Mental Factory_]

In Book I. you learned that--

I. _All human achievement comes about through bodily activity._

II. _All bodily activity is caused, controlled and directed by the mind._

In this volume you have added to these propositions a third, namely:

III. _The mind is the instrument you must employ for the accomplishment of any purpose._

Acting on this third postulate, you have begun the consideration of primary mental operations with a view to evolving methods and devices for the scientific and systematic employment of the mind in the attainment of success. You have concluded your study of the first of the two fundamental processes of the mind, the Sense-Perceptive Process, and have learned to distinguish between seeing or hearing or feeling on the one hand and perceiving on the other.

[Sidenote: _Acquiring Mental Balance_]

Realizing this distinction and applying it to your daily life, you can at once set to work to acquire mental poise and practical self-mastery, the essence of personal efficiency.

There never has been a moment in all your life when sense-impressions were not pouring in upon you from every side, tending to disturb and annoy you and interfere with your concentration and progress.