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MAN AND WOMAN AND CHILD

Harold W. Percival

PART IV

MILESTONES ON THE GREAT WAY TO CONSCIOUS IMMORTALITY

Self-De-hypnotization: A Step to Self-Knowledge

No hypnotized person knows that he is hypnotized. Furthermore, one who does not know what he or she is, is hypnotized. You are hypnotized, self-hypnotized, because you as a conscious self do not feel yourself in the body as distinctly as you feel the body to be distinct from the clothes it wears. Now, since you are self-hypnotized, you can dehypnotize yourself, and then you will know yourself while in the physical body.

The facts are: You do not understand yourself to be distinct and different from the physical body in which you live. You do not know who or what you are—awake or asleep. When you are asked: Who are you? you give the name which the parents had given to the body in which you live. But your body is not, cannot be you. Scientists have declared that within every seven years the human body is entirely changed. Whereas, you are now the self-same identical “I,” the conscious self, that you were when you first entered your constantly changing body. That is astonishing!

Let us consider a few commonplace matters: Do you know how you go to sleep? When you dream, is your identity the same as when you are awake? Where are you during deep sleep? You do not know what or where you are when not in the body; but certainly you cannot be the body, because the body rests in bed; it is dead to the world; it is not conscious of its parts, or of you, or of anything; the body is a mass of particles of constantly changing physical matter. On awakening, and while you are getting into touch with the body, before you are “awake,” you sometimes wonder for a moment who and what and where you are. And, while you are getting into connection with the body, you may mentally say, if you live in a male body: Oh, yes, I know; I am John Smith; I have an appointment and must get up; or, if you live in a female body, you may say: I am Betty Brown; I must dress myself and see about the house. Then you go on, and continue the life of yesterday. This is your common experience.

Thus throughout life you identify your own constant identity with the name given the infant body in which you took residence when it was ready for you to move in, some few years after its birth. At or about that time you became conscious of yourself in the body; that was your first memory. You could then begin to ask questions about yourself, about your body, and about people and the things in this world.

The process of dehypnotizing oneself must of necessity begin with an attempt at self-analysis. You can question yourself: Of all things that I am conscious of, what do I really know? The right answer is: Of all the things of which I am conscious there is only one thing that I really do know, and that is: I am conscious.

No human being really knows more about his conscious self than just that. Why not? Because, as a basic fact, one knows without thinking that he is conscious, and there is no question or doubt about it. About every other thing there may be a doubt, or one has to think about what he is conscious of. But one does not have to think about the fact that he is conscious because there is no doubt about it.

There is one and only one other thing that one can know, but he must think about it. That fact is: I am conscious that I am conscious. Only a human being can really know that he is conscious. These two facts are all that anyone really knows about his conscious self.

By taking the next step toward self-knowledge, one begins to dehypnotize himself. That is done when one asks and answers this question: What is it that is conscious, and is conscious that it is conscious?

When one is told what he is, he can assent and believe that. But mere belief is not self-knowledge. To really know oneself, the human being must and will by thinking persistently know by degrees what he is, however long it may take, until eventually he answers his question of what he really is. And that first step toward self-knowledge is so different from and superior to what he had only believed, that he will not be satisfied until he has taken all the steps or degrees and actually and really does know himself as self-knowledge.

The only way to self-knowledge is by thinking. Thinking is the steady holding of the Conscious Light within on the subject of the thinking. There are four stages or actions on the way or process of thinking. The first action is to turn the Conscious Light on the selected subject of the thinking; the second action is to hold the Conscious Light on the subject of the thinking and not to allow the thinking to be distracted by any of the myriad things that flock into the Light; the third action is the focusing of the Light on the subject; the fourth action is the focus of the Light as a point on the subject. Then the point of Light opens the subject into the fullness of knowledge of the subject.

These processes as actions are here stated to show the right way of thinking. They should be seen as logical and progressive thinking. But while thinking on the subject of self-knowledge, all thinking other than on that subject must be disregarded for the focus of all the Light on that subject, else there will be no actual focus of Light resulting as the real knowledge of the subject.

Three minds or ways of thinking are used by the Doer and employed in all thinking. The purpose of the body-mind is to make contact with nature by thinking with and through the four senses, to receive impressions from nature, and to bring about whatever changes there are to be in the world. The feeling-mind is the intermediary between the body-mind and the desire-mind, to interpret and translate the impressions of nature from the body-mind, to the desire-mind, and in turn to transmit the responses of the desire-mind to the impressions received.

From the early days of your childhood, you, as feeling-desire, the conscious self in the body, have allowed your body-mind to hypnotize you, so that you are in a waking self-hypnotic trance or sleep, and you are now completely under the hypnotic influence of your body-mind and the senses. Therefore you do not distinguish yourself as feeling-desire from the body you are in.

This control by the body-mind over feeling-desire makes the conscious self in every human body a slave to nature, and is the cause of the afflictions and troubles of mankind. As the conscious self, you do not distinguish yourself from the appetites and fleshly instincts and impulses and you often do what you would prefer not to do, just to please your appetites and instincts. Therefore you remain a slave to nature; you cannot escape; you do not know how to “wake up” and gain your freedom.

To wake up and be master of the body you as feeling-desire must dehypnotize yourself and learn to control your body-mind. You can do this in three steps. You take the first step by asserting yourself to yourself, and by logically reasoning to convince your body-mind of the difference and distinction between yourself and the body. The second step is to find yourself as feeling while in the body so that you can reasonably feel and understand yourself as that in the body which feels, which feels itself in the body as not the body. The third step is to detach, isolate, yourself and know yourself to be yourself, alone in yourself. Then you will have dehypnotized yourself. Confusion results when one tries to take the three steps at the same time.

In the man, desire-feeling is the conscious self in the body, because desire is the dominant representative in the male body; in the woman, feeling-desire is the conscious self in the body, because feeling is dominant in the woman body. But with man or woman, feeling must be found and freed before desire, because feeling makes the contact with nature through the four senses and holds desire to nature.

It should be an easy matter for you to prove to yourself that you are feeling-desire, distinct and distinguished from every other thing of your make-up as a human being. This you can do by understanding the difference between that of your make-up which is of nature, and that which is you. That of which you are only conscious through the four senses, belongs to nature; that in the make-up as which you are conscious, is you, feeling-desire—yourself.

You can begin the examination of yourself with the sense of sight, and say: I see that person or thing; or: this photograph is a picture of myself. But actually it cannot be you that sees, because you, as feeling-desire, are in the nerves and the blood, and there you cannot see or be seen. In order to see you need the sense of sight and the sense organ of sight. A person deprived of his eyes cannot see any object.

To locate yourself as in the nerves and blood and to be consciously distinct from your body—although in the body—it is necessary to understand that there are two seats of government: one of nature, and the other of yourself. Both are located in the pituitary body, a small bean-shaped organ in the brain, which is divided into a front part and a rear part.

The front part is the seat of the breath-form, which coordinates and governs the senses and the involuntary nervous system. The rear part is the seat from which you, the Doer, the conscious self, govern the voluntary system by thinking. From there your body-mind reaches into the front half, acts on the breath-form there, and connects with nature by thinking through the senses.

Your body-mind thinks for nature through the senses; it does not comprehend that feeling-desire, you, are not of nature. It impresses you into the belief that you are the senses; that you are the body of senses. Therefore you say: I see, hear, taste, and smell; and you continue to let your body-mind keep you hypnotized in the belief that you are a man body or a woman body.

There are three reasons why man has not been able to identify and distinguish himself from the physical body in which he lives. The first reason is, that he has not known what the soul or breath-form is and how it functions; the second is that he does not know that he uses three minds in thinking, that is, three ways of thinking, and what the kinds of thinking are, or what thinking is; the third reason is that he does not know that he is self-hypnotized by his body-mind. To take yourself out of the hypnosis and “wake up,” you must realize that you are self-hypnotized. Then you can proceed with your self-dehypnotization.

When you realize the situation and want to “wake up,” you should be fully convinced that the feeling side of your conscious self is not a “fifth sense,” else you cannot free yourself from the body in the present life. Feeling is not a sense at all, but is an aspect of the Doer in the human being. You can first find yourself as feeling in the body by regular and uninterrupted deep lung breathing. (See Part IV, “Regeneration.”) Then, when you detach, “isolate,” your feeling from the body-mind in the breath-form, you will know and feel yourself, that is, feel feeling as yourself, while in the physical body, similarly as you feel the physical body as different from the garments it wears. Then you will have taken an important step forward and you will be qualified to continue your conscious progress toward full self-knowledge, that is, knowledge of the self in the body.

 

The pituitary body, which, as has been stated, is the seat of government for both the innumerable functions of the physical body and the activities of the Doer in the body, is the best protected part of the entire body and this is evidence of its supremely vital importance to the human make-up. It is suspended by means of a stalk, the infundibulum, from the base of the brain, like a pear by its stem, and is firmly held in place by the surrounding bony tissues. Somewhat above and behind the pituitary body, projecting slightly from the roof of the third ventricle, is the pineal body, the size of a pea. From its position in the roof of the third ventricle, the pineal body directs the Conscious Light through the infundibulum to the Doer in the rear half of the pituitary body. In the present state of things, it is largely a rudimentary organ, but it is the potential seat of the Thinker-Knower, when all three parts of the Triune Self will be in the regenerated perfect physical body.

Of great importance are the ventricles of the brain, about whose purpose anatomists have not ventured even to speculate. The ventricles are large hollow spaces which communicate with each other. They take up a large part of the middle, and of the right and left hemispheres, of the brain. They are somewhat like a bird in configuration, the third ventricle making up the body, with the head dipping down through the infundibulum into the rear half of the pituitary body, the seat of the conscious self; the two lateral ventricles would represent the wings, and the fourth and fifth ventricles the tail which, thinning out into a threadlike canal, passes in the center of the spinal cord all the way down to the small of the back.

 

The Conscious Light comes from the Knower-Thinker of one’s Triune Self through the top of the skull and fills the arachnoidal space between the two delicate membranes nearest to and surrounding the substances of the brain and spinal cord, as well as the ventricles in the interior of the brain. This space contains a meshwork of fine filaments and interlacing, sponge-like material between the two bounding membranes, numerous branches of arteries and veins and a clear fluid, and communicates freely through certain well-defined apertures with the ventricles in the interior of the brain. The material in the arachnoidal space serves as conductor of the Conscious Light to the organs in the brain, by means of which the Light is made available as needed by the Doer in its thinking.

Under the guidance of the Thinker of one’s Triune Self as much Conscious Light is allotted to feeling-desire, the Doer part in the body, as that one may have. Light then goes into nature by the thinking of one’s body-mind and endows it with the intelligence which is everywhere manifest in nature; and the body-mind controls but depends upon feeling-desire, without which the body-mind could not think.

It is because the body-mind controls feeling-desire in the human, that it thinks as it does. But when feeling-desire eventually dehypnotizes itself, it will control the body-mind while it intelligently guides the thinking.

The body-mind contacting the breath-form in the front part of the pituitary body and thinking through the four senses, determines one’s actions through the day; and what is thought and done during the day affects what one dreams at night. In the dream states the sense of sight is usually the active sense, and the eyes are the organs dividing the waking from the dreaming.

When the body is tired or exhausted, nature urges relaxation through the involuntary nervous system by sleep; the eyelids close, the eyeballs turn upward and inward toward a point or line, the waking state is left, and the Doer either enters the dream state or passes into dreamless sleep. In dream, the body-mind controls the Doer and the Doer can sense and feel and desire, but in dreamless sleep the body-mind has no such control. In dreamless sleep feeling-desire is in its own state, unconscious of the senses, and it is not in hypnosis because feeling-desire, the Doer, is then not dominated by its body-mind.

Although the body-mind is used by feeling-desire its sphere of action is limited to the front part of the pituitary body, and as long as it contacts the front part, the Doer is still in the dream state. The rear part of the pituitary body is the domain of feeling-desire. When the body-mind connects again with the breath-form in the front part, the territory of the senses and nature, feeling-and-desire is again controlled by the body-mind.

When the Doer realizes that it is not the body and the senses, it can begin to assert itself and exercise control over the body-mind. One way to control the senses and appetites generally is by not yielding to their urges. But the particular way to control the body-mind is by suppressing its functions of thinking through sight, hearing, taste, and smell. This is done best by suppressing the function of sight during the attempts to gain the desired control. That is done by closing the eyelids and by refusing to think of any object or thing; by willing positively not to see any thing. This can be practiced at any time. But it is easier at the time for sleep. Thus one may put oneself to sleep at night as soon as he can stop thinking, and one can thereby overcome a tendency to insomnia. It is not easily done, but it can be done by persistence in the practice. When one can do it at will, he has taken a definite step toward self-mastery, and then self-de-hypnotization can be achieved.

De-hypnotization can be accomplished, not by theorizing or the belief that it may be done, but by your actually trying to feel yourself as feeling in the body at any time during the day. As, for example, when using the hands for any purpose, by feeling your feeling-self in the hands, and feeling the object which the hands touch; or, feeling one’s leg or feet, or feeling another person in your heart. That should not be too difficult.

Distinguishing yourself at all times as different from your body makes it possible and eventually practicable for you to suppress the body-mind at will and thereby to stop its functioning. When by thinking you intentionally stop the functioning of the body-mind, that is to say, when you do not see, hear, taste, or smell, and remain conscious, you have suppressed the body-mind, the world has vanished, and you are alone and conscious of your feeling-self as conscious bliss!

By refusing to think on retiring you intentionally stop thinking through the senses, and you will then be in deep sleep. Then the body-mind is detached from the breath-form in the front part and is withdrawn by feeling in the rear part of the pituitary body, and you as feeling are isolated from nature and alone in yourself, in deep sleep. That is automatically done for you every night when you are in dreamless sleep.

When you understand the method of procedure and do it intentionally, you subdue your body-mind to unquestioning obedience. Then, by detaching and withdrawing your body-mind from nature, you retire and know yourself as feeling, alone, as conscious bliss. You are in The Eternal, where time cannot be. You know yourself and are dehypnotized. Then, in your safe abode, your body-mind goes into the breath-form and contacts nature by thinking through the senses. You are again in the world, but you are not deluded; you perceive things as they really are, and the body-mind does not attempt to rule; it serves. Then you know and feel yourself to be as distinct and different from the body. You can, when in union with your desire, complete the victory.