YOUR MIND

YOU have a brain capable of wonderful things. In its organization it is the great marvel of life. Composed of millions of units, it is so constructed that each unit plays its definite part in the work of the whole.

In fineness of operation and delicacy of construction any piece of machinery as compared to it is crude beyond description.

Because of this endowment that nature has given, your brain or your mind is your greatest possession.

You may have wealth. It may have been earned by your own effort, or it may have been inherited. Even so, your brain, is more precious than all else.

Without it, all other parts of the body are useless. The hand will not go where the eye wants it. The head and feet work independently. The body cannot act as one person.

With the brain, you have an organized machine. Through its operation, eye and hand work in harmony. The feet and the head co-operate. The finest organization in the universe is complete.

The question is—How does this brain work?

In simple language we want to show you. In the first place let us take up its parts and their relation to each other. Brain, for our purpose, is the whole nervous system. It includes that part which is located in the head and also all the nerve cells and fibers in all parts of the body.

At birth this nervous system has some definite ways of working already set. Certain other ways of working are characteristic of it but they do not show themselves until later in life. These definite inherited ways of behavior are known as reflex and instinctive responses.

Our Instinctive Responses

You do not need to learn how to breathe, nor need to train your heart to beat. You know instinctively how to take food. Whenever the lips are stimulated the swallowing movements take place. You eat and drink without being taught.

In the early explorations in the world about you, everything you pick up is carried instinctively to your mouth. If an extremely hot object touches your hand, you will pull it back. Teaching for this is not necessary. Instinctive responses take care of this much of our behavior.

Take the last illustration and let us follow out what takes place. As the hot object touches the hand a temperature-sense-organ in the skin is stimulated. This stimulation sets up an excitation in the nerve fiber, which is connected with that sense organ.

Just what this excitation is, or how it works, we do not know. It may be like the operation of the electric current. The wires are there and the work is done. In the nervous system the fibers are the "wires." The nerve current travels over them.

It travels back to the central part of the system on one set of fibers and after passing through one or more "cells" of which the "grey matter" is composed, it comes out again by way of the motor fibers to the muscles of the arm. The contraction of the muscles, due to this excitation, withdraws the hand from the hot object.

The same principle is operating when we ward off an impending blow with our arms.

The eye is stimulated by the moving object. Nervous excitation travels over the fibers leading from the eye to the central part of the system. From central cells it again travels over motor fibers to the muscles of the arm. The result is again the use of these muscles to bring the arm into position for protection.

The Teachable Brain

Your brain is capable of many responses besides these original inherited ones. You do not know how to write, to play the piano, or to read, unless you are taught. Being taught means that the nervous system works in a different or modified way.

When letters or words were first put in front of you, they brought no response. You did not write; neither did you read. The response of the nervous system had to be developed and modified for this kind of stimulus.

Your eye saw the queer looking scrawls on the paper. But your hand did not at first attempt to imitate them. Some one said: "Write like this!" You watched how it was done. You tried to do the same thing. Your eye saw "a" but your hand did not make it until after many trials.

As you made the attempt, what was going on?

Exactly the same type of behavior as when you moved your arm to protect yourself against a blow. An excitation in the eye which sees, is carried over by the nerve fibers to the central system. It is there transferred to the fibers leading to the muscles of the arm. Your arm and hand moved in response to that stimulus.

Why then did not you write the letter correctly the first time and with as much ease as you do now? The answer—Writing is not an inherited ability. It is a habit way of acting. It must be taught, and the nervous system must be modified for this particular purpose.

Mental Habits

The modification takes place, through making use of certain fibers of this nervous system as paths over which special excitations travel. When the teacher began, if she moved your arm in the right way to write the letter, the learning was much easier.

The simultaneous moving of the arm and seeing the letter brought the two nerve paths into close connection. The tendency for them to work together was set up.

The next time you saw the letter it was easier to use those same nerve fibers than any others. Each successive use made that "path" more marked. It was soon deeply grooved. The habit of writing "a" had developed.

Most of our mental development depends on such habits being set up. You think in a certain way. Thus, what you will think under certain conditions may be foretold.

You meet these words: "George Washington was the first _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _." How do you fill out the blanks? You will do it as hundreds of others do and as you have done before. You have a habit of thinking in this way.

Someone says: "Think of any color." What is your response? What word do you think of first? Is it not Red? Most people think this way. Few think of any other color.

The laws of association and of habit have operated. Think of one thing and certain other thoughts follow inevitable in the train.

It is because of such well known facts that PELMANISM as a mind training system is possible. In this course of instruction we give enough information concerning the laws of thought and action to enable you to understand mental operations.

The chief aim, of course, is to set up the right mental habits. We want your mind to function efficiently. Just as a physical instructor develops the body, so PELMANISM trains and develops your mind.

Mind-Wandering

Concentration and Strong Will-Power are two of the characteristics which, almost universally, people wish to develop. A cure for mind-wandering is an urgent demand of the day. Mind-wandering is largely a habit. It is pernicious in its effect, but is overcome by the development of the opposite mental habit.

In PELMANISM, you will find the methods clearly outlined, and the exercises prescribed, for the development of concentration. With Will-power the same thing holds true.

The competition of life calls for people to think for themselves, who are not afraid of new things, who are willing to take the initiative and open up new fields of endeavor.

In every person’s thinking there comes, time and time again, the wish to do something worth-while, to make a contribution that will add something to the welfare of the world.

The greatest obstacle in the fulfillment of this wish is the failure in originality. We fall into the rut of custom and accepted procedure. PELMANISM develops originality and initiative so that the ruts of custom are broken down and the mind is free to make its own observation, draw its own conclusions and initiate enterprise.

Your Occupation Needs It

An inquirer writes: "How can this system apply to the mind of the federal judge as it does to the mind of the day laborer?"

It applies because the operations of the human mind are fundamentally the same. It makes no difference what your occupation is, it is the trained mind that makes you more efficient in it.

The ditch-digger with the trained mind will dig ditches better than one with an untrained mind. The bank president has no more need for the training of the mind than does the man who attends the furnace for the heating of the bank.

The ability to make independent observations, to persist in the necessary tasks, to devise new methods and take responsibility is as desirable in the man who watches the steam gauge as in the man who keeps his hand upon the financial pulse of the world.

In our school training, the chief consideration is the acquisition of a certain amount of information and the training in doing certain things. The brain is supposed to work automatically, and the original capacities are rarely considered.

The child is taught to read, to spell, to write and to do similar things. He is seldom stimulated to observe, or to use the sense avenues with which he is endowed. The observations which he makes are largely through chance. His teacher is not supposed or required to show you how he can make use of the possibilities of all the senses.

Do You Really See?

PELMANISM, on the other hand, develops an efficient use of all the sense organs. Most of us view situations lazily, and the result is a hazy, ill-defined perception.

People pass before our vision, but it is as though we were looking through a fog, and they are nothing but vague, shadowy forms. We do not get a clear-cut picture as to how the person looks, or what the chief characteristics are.

Likewise our ears fail to differentiate the innumerable sounds which, if separated, would mean music—not noise. To overcome these difficulties and to enable us to get clear first-hand knowledge of the world about us, PELMANISM has worked out a set of exercises the practice of which will greatly increase the clearness of perceptions.

This is the first step in the development of a reliable memory. A fundamental law is that memory depends upon the vividness of the first impression.

PELMANISM goes further and shows how in the organization of material, facts are readily remembered, which if taken without this organization would soon be lost in hazy general impressions. Through the exercises prescribed by this course of instruction one’s memory becomes clear, well-defined and serviceable.

The Science of Right Thinking

PELMANISM will train you to see things more clearly, to hear meaningful sounds where there had been only a rumble. It will lead you to develop interest and driving power, so that the necessary job is done.

Mind-wandering will be cured and concentration will become a habit. It will also show you the way to originality to initiate and thinking for yourself. PELMANISM will train you to make efficient use of all your mental powers.

PELMANISM is the science of right thinking, the science of putting right thought into dynamic action. It will help you to use fully the powers that you know about, and what is even more important, how to discover and use hidden, unsuspected powers.