THE SECRET BEFORE THE SECRET
How to Control Fate Through Suggestion – Henry Harrison Brown
So this was another of those “What a great title” book purchases – I mean, who doesn’t want to control fate through suggestion? But, as with so many of the books featured in this historical journey through the writings on hypnotism, it ended up being absolute and utter rubbish. But there are a few interesting observations to be made so I hope that you, the reader, will indulge a few hundred words for the gems within.
Originally written in 1901, this modern-day printing is of the fifth edition that includes a special supplement written in 1905, and published in 1906. We’ll get to the meat in a second, but first I wanted to comment on this reprint. The back cover shows a picture of the author, together with a short bio for a completely different person, Harrison Scott Brown! (The latter was a nuclear chemist and geochemist born in 1917, a year before our author died.)
It also states on the back cover that “This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilisation as we know it.” Scholars! Knowledge! Civilisation! Such care was taken in reprinting this important work that they totally screwed up the contents page, claiming that four of the sections all start on page 2, and the remaining section (first in the book, but last on the contents page) starts on page 1, even though that one does actually start on page 2. I was therefore a little suspicious that this might be the work of optical character recognition with little human input, but actually it appeared largely reasonable.
Reasonable, that is, if you discount the horrendous, pseudo-bible-style in which it was written. Had I not recently reviewed a magazine article from 1900, I could have been fooled into thinking that this was how people wrote in that era; but the magazine article flowed similarly to something written today, whereas this pile of steaming horse manure reads like the author wanted to claim authority over the subject and reader, by using a much older-sounding style of prose. If anything, it read like the translation of Mesmer’s essays on animal magnetism: pompous, arrogant, preachy, and devoid of humour, humility and a decent editor.
But so to the content, which is handily divided into two parts, an introduction to each part, and a supplement to this edition. Part 1, ‘The Science And Philosophy Of Life’, basically preaches unity as opposed to duality. Not a terrible cause, if you accept the modern perspective that mind and brain are one (the typical rejection of duality these days); but madness – utter madness – if taken to the extremes that Brown does, especially while clinging to the (apparently literal) claims made about Jesus Christ.
What other unity could there be, you wonder? Well, how about, 'god only lives within people’? That’s not too crazy – if you’re an atheist – that god was an invention of the imagination and exists purely as a metaphorical concept. But if god is an illusion, then why take the bible’s descriptions of Jesus as literal, given that both only really exist because of largely fictional stories? (Side note: you could take the view, I guess, that Jesus was a real person and the author of said fictions, in which case, yes, perhaps you could talk of Jesus as being real and god being an illusion without creating dissonance, but then, if a historical person is only the sum of their behaviours, and those behaviours are only claimed in fictional writings, then isn’t Jesus – as presented – also only fictional? Maybe something to ask the next religious person you chat with…)
The next unity is the melding of soul and culture, where “Soul being the religious side, and Culture being the scientific side.” Did I mention that the author is Very, Very Fond of Title Case? He turns practically Everything into a Proper Noun and after A While it gets quite Tedious (even though we’re also quite fond of it here at Cosmic Pancakes!, but in the measure and frequency that allows it to be used for Specific Emphasis). Others include “God and Devil, angels and demons, men and women, spirit and body, mind and matter, matter and motion, matter and spirit, good and evil, health and disease, [and] life and death.” So you see, this is a rejection of duality across the board, because everything, as far as the author is concerned, exists only within the mind.
That’s the sort of thinking that could cause one to go mad; or potentially the writings of someone who has already gone mad. A lot of it feels like a stream of consciousness, not unlike the writings of modern-day hypnotists, who seem to think a single draft, written in a single sitting, is the best, if not the only, way to produce anything literary. But I have some sympathy with the author. If you accept the position that the world only really exists in the imagination centres of the brain, informed, of course, by the senses, then with enough mescaline – or psychedelic of your choice – this is the sort of conclusion that you’re likely to draw.
So part 1 continues, reducing all dualities to a simple, subjective, mental perspective, concluding boldly that “By devoting a little time intelligently each day, less than it takes to make a musician, one may become clairvoyant, psychometric, or inspirational.” Given that position, is it any wonder that part 2, ‘Suggestion: Its Place And Power’, describes, relentlessly, repeatedly, and at length, how this mental image of the world can be manipulated by auto-suggestion?
One interesting observation – aside from the really blatantly obvious observation: that this is just The Secret, written well-ahead of its day (maybe the author of that owes this author’s estate a huge proportion of their royalties?) – is that, while the suggestion is the statement made about what will happen or how the world will be perceived, the affirmation is the result of it being accepted and acted upon. I’d always thought of affirmations as being statements made to yourself every day, over and over again (maybe you could write them on your hand?); but this book states definitively that they’re the results of suggestions instead. I think I prefer this definition, even if it isn’t the culturally accepted one.
“Suggest to yourself that that is true which you desire to be true.” And with that one sentence, I’ve saved you reading all of part 2, including giving you the chance to appraise the clumsy language used. By the time we get to the supplement, Brown tells us that he has sold 10,000 copies of this book, and written others as part of his plan to write 25 in total. He explains that the suggestion, “Dollars want me!”, has resulted in his success and wealth, but he might just as well have written “People who want dollars will buy a book promising them dollars” instead.
A curiosity of a time past, which still resonates well with the industrious publishing of books that claim to improve readers’ lives, happiness, wealth and health.
[Update 06.06.2024: I, Amy, took a phone screenshot of this post on 8 October 2023 two days after reading the word ‘abracadabra’ in a book of magic, and one day after realising that invisibility is both a blessing – and a curse. Something for those more detailed-oriented readers, who enjoy a bit of magic!]
