696 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-CREATION
SUGGESTION AND
THE SUBCONSCIOUS MINDAutosuggestion is a powerful weapon with which one may rise to
heights of great achievement, when it is used constructively. Used in
a negative manner, however, it may destroy all possibility of success,
and if so used continuously it will actually destroy health.
Careful comparison of the experiences of leading physicians and
psychiatrists disclosed the startling information that approximately 75
percent of those who are ill are suffering from hypochondria, which is
a morbid state of mind causing useless anxiety about one's health.
Stated in plain language, the hypochondriac is a person who
believes he or she is suffering with some sort of imaginary disease,
and often believes they have every disease of which they ever heard.
The person who suffers with such a condition is not only unable
to think with accuracy, but also suffers from all sorts of destructive,
illusory thoughts. Dr. Henry R. Rose is an authority for the following
typical example of the power of autosuggestion:
"'If my wife dies I will not believe there is a God: His wife was
ill with pneumonia, and this is the way he greeted me when I reached
his home. She had sent for me because the doctor had told her she
could not recover. [Most doctors know better than to make a state-
ment such as this in the presence of a patient.] She had called her
husband and two sons to her bedside and bidden them good-bye.
Then she asked that 1, her minister, be sent for. I found the husband
in the front room sobbing and the sons doing their best to brace her
up. When I went into her room she was breathing with difficulty, and
the trained nurse told me she was very low.
"I soon found that Mrs. N--had sent for me to look after her
two sons after she was gone. I said to her: 'You mustn't give up. You are
not going to dielYou have always been a strong and healthy woman and
I do not believe God wants you to die and leave your boys to me or
anyone else: