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Dr. Alexander spent some time in India studying the religious and spiritual practices of the East. He believes that the essence of wisdom has been described in the sacred books of Asia, and that Western science has merely rediscovered and in the future will continue to rediscover the laws known in the East many centuries ago. In this book he tells of the Eastern way of overcoming all ills and of attaining health and well being. His style is turgid, grandiose and often ludicrous because of the gap between the sublimity he strives for and the ridiculous effect he achieves.
'Prana', which is the Sanskrit word for soul or breath, the author modernizes as an electrical energy in the body, the life force which supplies the power for the mind's sending and receiving 'wireless sets' for 'station Y-O-U'. If one worries, he tunes in on all the worry thoughts in existence, which are then taken as bad suggestions by the 'instinctive mind'. In the same way good thoughts tune in on the harmony of the spheres. One must learn to operate the switch of the imagination at will, by practice in dwelling on worthy thoughts and avoiding or discarding bad ones.
The soul is a spiritual entity inhabiting the body as a person inhabits a house. Just as a tenant might be tempted to move if a house fell into bad disrepair, so the soul might (and does) move out if the body gets into serious disrepair. The soul lives on through eternity because it is destined to pass through newer and higher experiences which unfold its exalted nature. To avoid having the soul move out of the body, one must make one's instinctive mind repair one's body at the command of the soul.
To become well one must truly desire it. This is achieved by imagining the body in a perfect state of health. The sufferer from tuberculosis must not tell his 'instinctive mind': 'Repair the lesion on my lung', but 'My lung is perfect!' It is essential to keep absolutely silent about the desire for health because talking of a de