Miracles are attributed to the Fakirs of India. Legend or fact, I know not, but it is certainly true that they do some most wonderful things simply because they are taught from their infancy to know and make use of the limitless unseen and yet unexplained forces latent in us which can be awakened by thought.

The limitations of auto-suggestion are unknown.

I am often asked: What are the limitations of auto-suggestion?

I reply: I really do not know.

The cures I have seen have appeared sometimes so amazing, so incredible, that I decline theoretically to place any limit at all, although, of course, I must insist, nothing must be expected from autosuggestion which is obviously outside the domain of material possibilities.

For instance, it would be absurd to ask for the growth of a new arm or a new leg–despite the fact that the lobster seems to know how to grow a new claw when it is necessary!

There are persons who, by long practice and concentration, have acquired an amazing power over their bodily functions. Cases are known to the medical Faculty of Paris of men able to increase at will the speed of their heartbeats from 90 to 120, or diminish it to such a degree that the heart seems almost to stop.

In another chapter I shall talk of the diseases actually cured by auto-suggestion, and in general of its sphere of curative possibilities. Let it be thoroughly realized that thought, or suggestion, is able to mold the human body as a sculptor chisels his clay. Thought is an act; it is more than Bernheim believed when he wrote: “Suggestion is an idea which can be transformed into action.”

Certain it is that cases declared to be incurable have been cured by auto-suggestion. And not only diseases of a functional nature. Sores and wounds of long standing which had resisted all other treatments have been healed rapidly by suggestion. Was it not Doctor Carnot who said “the wounds of victorious soldiers heal more rapidly than those of the vanquished”?

I can declare without hesitation that whatever the illness, the practice of rational auto-suggestion will always effect an appreciable improvement in the patient’s condition, even if the disease itself be incurable.

Check out my eBook on Auto-Suggestion “The Imagination at Work”