There is real folk wisdom in the biblical statement, "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" (Prov. 23.6). If we hold fear in our hearts, we will be more receptive to the things we fear. In a way we become mesmerised by our own fear. Our bodies respond in the direction of our thinking. Thus we lessen our ability to fight the thing we fear. On the other hand, when we believe enough in our own ability to overcome our difficulties, a physiological preparedness occurs within the body. We trigger an endorphin and biochemical response to assist the accomplishment of our thinking. Our bodies will respond in the direction of our positive attitude, our minds become concentrated and objective.

The mind is like the board of directors, drawing information from the subordinate managers. Some of these subordinate managers are habits, fears, hopes, prejudices and emotions, all ready to activate their special interests in the situation. Even before we become conscious of the reasons for our thoughts and actions, something has already been working within us out of sight. Daniel Goleman in "Vital Lies, Simple Truths" quotes an unpublished manuscript by Howard Shevrin. It says,

"We experience something 'popping' into consciousness, but a complex and unconscious process prepares that 'pop'.... Taken together, subliminal and attention studies show that our brains are humming with cognitive and emotional activity prior to consciousness."

So our thoughts and therefore actions spring from the storehouse of our accumulated experiences and emotional responses. Unconsciously we are analysing and selecting from our past knowledge and emotions to determine our present attitude or action.

Ernest Hilgard, a noted researcher of Stanford University tells of a classroom demonstration of hypnotically induced deafness. A volunteer was given the suggestion that he would be completely deaf to all sound. Loud noises, including the banging of pieces of wood together close to his head, were made without any response from the subject. One student asked whether "some part" of the subject might be aware of what was going on.

"The instructor....whispered softly to the student,.... 'Although you are hypnotically deaf, perhaps there is some part of you that is hearing my voice and processing the information. If there is, I should like the index finger of your right hand to rise." While still hypnotised, the student asked if his hearing could be restored so that he could know why his finger spontaneously rose. The instructor restored his hearing and asked him what he could remember.

"I remember you telling me that I would be deaf-It was a little boring....when I felt my finger lift; that is what I want you to explain to me." to me.

With the subject hypnotised again, the instructor then said,

'When I place my hand on your arm,...I can be in touch with that part of you....that could hear and know what was going on when you were hypnotically deaf-it will be able to answer me and tell me what it knows ....I shall say, 'Now you can remember everything.'....! am placing my hand on your arm.'

The following conversation ensued:

'...Does the part to whom I am now talking know more about what went on?' 'Yes.'

'you made noises with some blocks behind my head. Members of the class asked me questions to which I did not respond. Then one of them asked if I might not really be hearing, and you told me to raise my finger if I did. This part of me responded by raising my finger.'

The instructor then lifted his hand from the arm. 'You said .... some part of me would talk to you. Did I talk?'

...We speak of the concealed information as available to a 'hidden observer.'" (Quoted from "Divided Consciousness" by Ernest R. Hilgard. Copyright John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1977).

Hilgard shows that there is a deep hidden observer within us which is quietly observing information. The hidden observer is aware of that part of us which can become subject to hypnotic influences but the hypnotised part is unaware of the hidden observer. The hidden observer does not judge us or deal with pain or morals but quietly observes. It is not a separate identity but a facet of the whole person.

An excellent way to study the power of thought to control the body is to look at a person in hypnosis. During an hypnotic trance, subjects will believe implicitly in the operator and will not question their own ability to perform the suggested activity. Remember that suggestion and belief constitute the central phenomena of hypnosis. Normal body reactions to the awareness of our five senses can be overruled. By willingly accepting the suggestion of the hypnotist, somehow our normal inhibitory and logical mechanism is bypassed.

In "Wisdom, Madness and Folly" Dr. R. D. Laing gives us another illustration of altered consciousness.

"A professional hypnotist put me into a trance in front of several dozen people at a demonstration in his house. He asked me to choose a taste to taste. I chose a dry sherry. He gave me a dry sherry to savour, to roll around over and under my tongue and swallow at leisure. A very nice sherry. When I came out of trance, he invited me to try the sherry again. Its smell and taste were so repulsive that I could hardly get it past my lips. Yes, it was the same drink, the foulest-tasting harmless concoction he could get a pharmacist to make up.... The same hypnotist induced me to believe that I saw only six people in a room filled with over sixty."

We have shown how we can have hallucinatory perceptions about hearing, taste, smell and sight; four of our five senses. But the fifth is even more dramatic. Dr. Laing goes on to say,

"I could induce a blister in someone who believed I was burning him when I was not, and no tissue reaction when I was."

Not only was there an hallucinatory perception of the presence of a hot iron, the physiological response was that a blister appeared, although no actual burn was inflicted. And again, where there was a hot iron, and a blister could be expected, no physiological reaction occurred. Remember we said that suggestion and belief constituted the central phenomena of hypnosis. The power of the mind can even override the normal physical reactions of our bodies. This is a power we can use to reduce pain, stimulate healing within our own bodies and give us a positive happy life.

The late Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, the one-time leader of the Methodist Church, in his book "Psychology, Religion and Healing" gave a very similar report of personal experience. He tells us of a young woman he could easily put into an hypnotic state,

"Ethel could lie with her heels on one chair and her neck on another, without intermediate support, and on being told that her body was firm and unyielding, an adult could sit on her abdomen without her body yielding....Ethel's temperature could be put up as high as 104 degrees and brought down to 96 degrees by being told, under hypnosis, that these figures represented her temperature;

that her temperature was rising or falling, as the case might be. The figures were checked with clinical thermometers by medical men present. Her heart-beat could be accelerated or retarded and tested with a stethoscope. ...

Any part of her body could be made completely anaesthetic at a word, and needles, if driven into her in any area declared anaesthetic, produced no reaction at all. On being told that she had developed nettle-rash on her right knee, the area was soon covered with the familiar rash of urticaria, and most dramatic of all, when I touched her right knee with a pencil, telling her it was a red hot iron, and bound that part with a bandage and sealed it in the presence of medical witnesses, within twenty hours she developed a blister quite painless but puffed out with fluid. .....

Major operations have been performed by means of hypnotic anaesthesia. I myself have helped a dentist extract teeth from a patient who, for various reasons, was unable to take anaesthetic. Not only were the extractions painless, but haemorrhage was restricted by suggestion. There were no nauseating reactions afterwards, and one cannot help feeling that we have, in hypnosis, nature's own anaesthetic which possibly already operates in the animal world between cat and mouse, snake and bird, etc."

If the sensitivities of touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing can so easily be manipulated, what other hypnotic influences are we subject to? What other kinds of influences can change our thinking into new directions? One wonders about the suggestive influence of advertising, seminars, preachers, television and even a smile on the face of one's wife or husband. We can see how easily one can be affected by the pressures of criticism or praise from another person. This applies especially to children. Do we all affect each other? Yes, in a mild hypnotically suggestive way, we do. We can also see the importance of self esteem. Positive or negative thinking can determine the happiness or unhappiness of our lives and affect health. The attitude of the mind can program the individual for success and happiness or failure and unhappiness.

You have probably heard how the Aborigines of Australia fear the bone-pointing ceremony. The fact is that an aboriginal person who believes in its power can die once he has been the victim of a bone-pointing occasion. The thought and fear alone are sufficient to make him fade away and die. There are incidents when doctors have been unable to reverse the process once it has begun.

Have we a hidden power to heal ourselves or at least relieve ourselves of pain by the use of relaxation and positive thinking? The answer must surely be yes. If we believe enough that we will be healed, the body will activate the biochemical or physiological machinery to assist in the process. I have a friend who was bitten in the face by a large dog. Her upper cheek and lower eyelid were torn. Her surgeon stitched up the wound using hypnosis as the only anaesthetic. Not only did our friend feel no pain, she

healed quickly with no visible signs of the experience. There have been thousands of cases, my own included, where people have had dental work done using hypnosis as the only anaesthetic.

Surely this is faith healing, just as much as any performed by religious faith healers. Many Christians believe that healing is a proof of the existence of god. As we can show, healing is a natural function of the body and is assisted when enough belief and relaxation is applied. It has nothing to do with an outside spirit force. Both the hypnotist and the faith healer perform the same service in that they persuade their followers to believe in the process. The power does not come from an outside person or god or vibration. The power is within each one of us and is touched off by our own thoughts, attitudes and beliefs. We do not need the mediumship of a god or an external force. The body has tremendous healing power if we will only trust it. I do not advocate abandoning medical assistance, trust in the healing power of our bodies should be used in conjunction with modern medical knowledge.

I cannot see any difficulty in the notion that my thoughts and emotional state can release hormones and endorphins and bring about relaxation helpful to my own healing process. In their book "The Pleasure Connection" D. and J. Beck comment,

"Consider the irony that while we search for external assistance, the biochemical potential for pleasure and happiness exists within the reality of Endorphins, and that this potential for euphoria and pain-freedom streams through our biochemical design....A negative consciousness, attitude, or perception might indeed hinder health or block the flow of health sustaining biochemicals, such as endorphins."

Our thoughts and attitudes can also be influenced by the actions of other people. Magnus Pyke in his book "There and Back" tells us of an interesting experiment with two groups of rats who were all cousins of comparable ages and sex. Each group was housed, fed and cared for separately but in exactly the same manner and conditions. There was only one difference between group A and group B. The girls looking after group A were told to show love and affection to their rodent patients. They were to talk to each rat, to fondle and stroke it. The result was that the rats in group A grew bigger than the rats in group B. So even small animals can derive physical benefit from human warmth and caring.

I can see, and have experienced, how love and caring can help to relieve the stresses in another person and thereby assist in their healing process. The Becks tell several well known stories of people suffering from terminal illness who have cured themselves by stimulating a positive personal belief in their own ability to overcome their disease.

About five years ago I read a book by a former athlete of Australia. He had developed bone cancer to the extent that his right leg had to be amputated in January 1975. By November the same year his cancer had reappeared on his chest. He shows photographs to prove his claim. By March his specialist thought he had only two more weeks to live. lan Gawler gave the story of his fight and final victory over that dreaded disease in his book "How to Conquer Cancer". He says,

"The techniques talked about in this book have no religious loadings,...The techniques centre on appropriate diet, positive thinking, stress management and meditation - all in conjunction with suitable, specific therapies. By utilising all these means, the body's natural healing urge can be helped to restore itself."

When I read the book I wondered how real his cure had been. Was this just another story which had a sad and unheralded ending? Recently I happened to be watching the television when an interview took place with lan Gawler himself. So I went to a lecture by him. It was fifteen years after he had lost his leg with bone cancer. I now saw a lean and obviously healthy man with an easy smile and relaxed manner. While he was ill and under the threat of an early death, the first question he asked himself was "Do I really want to get well?" The next question was "Do I want to take responsibility for my own condition?" You see his healing had to start with his own positive attitude and thinking. lan Gawler's message is that the body will heal itself if given enough opportunity, care and attention.

Meditation or prayer is an exercise in mental self manipulation, akin to self hypnosis. It may encourage helpful positive thinking and expectation. But as with hypnosis, prayer cannot make an amputated leg grow again nor can it move an object from one position to another. The first thing to remember is that there are immutable laws of nature such as gravity whiich cannot be directly cancelled by thought power alone nor can positive thinking create something new out of nothing. Many superstitious notions which contradict the laws of nature and distract from real living have been sustained by that kind of fanciful notion.

Many have a strong belief that healing thoughts can be transferred to another person without communication. So strong is their wish that they can gain a sense of validity from their own feelings. Others, including myself, do not think that it is possible that help can be given without direct communication or some other form of contact. But without doubt the knowledge of the love and caring of friends can stimulate positive thinking and attitudes within the sick. Healing power comes from within the person's own body by releasing helpful hormones and endorphins to assist the process in conjunction with modern medicine.

We are social beings and need the company of each other. We all enjoy the moral support and caring of our friends and benefit by the knowledge of their goodwill toward us. But physically, each of us is a separate identity, standing utterly alone, a self sustaining system, complete within oneself. Each of us is born as a unit and dies as a unit, and we bear our own actual physical and emotional pain. We also carry a great capacity for joy, optimism and fulfilment.

We have seen that what appeared to be supernatural or magic, was not the result of a god or spirit force. I am convinced that the power dwells within ourselves and is available for our enjoyment. The American psychologist, the late Willam James, once said that the average person uses only about one tenth of available mental capacity. There should be no question of our ability, we are capable of using this power by the exercise of positive thinking and attitudes, it can apply to every facet of our lives. Our bodies respond according to our own sincere belief and expectation.

Let us now look clearly at the concept of an independent god force. Is it possible that because of the ignorance and fears of our forbears, we have accepted and been taught a concept which is really no more than a figment of our own imagination? Perhaps we have assumed that we are powerless and in need of assistance from an outside spirit force. Perhaps many have been taught and believe in a god in the same way a small child believes in Father Christmas. Perhaps what was believed to be a demonstration of divine power is nothing more than the function of capricious natural forces. Perhaps it is we who have created a god and religious ritual to stimulate our faith, when all along, the power was within ourselves.

Without doubt our thoughts and attitudes largely determine the kind of life we experience. Positive attitudes bring positive results just as surely as negative attitudes bring negative results, stress and un-happiness. Our thoughts are a power source which we can use for our own betterment. This life belongs to you and me. We are equipped with our own power to live fully and happily in a straightforward manner without a neurotic dependency on an outside divine person or spirit force which is inevitably associated with the Christian doctrine. The marvellous thing is that we can change our negative thoughts to positive ones by an act of will, by simply deciding to do so.