By Thos.  Parker Boyd

(1) Select some part of the body, a foot or hand, with the idea of HEAT.  While holding the mind in this attitude, breathe deeply and steadily, and, in from one to four minutes, you will feel the warm glow coming to the foot.  In this way, you can soon master the entire body.  Begin with the sense of feeling.  If there is an itching of the body, make it stop by the force of your will.  In from three days to three weeks, you can stop the itching sensation at will.  Then try the habit of sneezing; stubbornly resist the inclination to sneeze, and you will soon have the mastery.  Now try your will on coughing.  When the tickling sensation comes, stop it by the exercise of your will.  You can soon master it.  Next try it on pain.  When you feel a pain in the body, instead of rubbing on liniment, rub in a little will power; soon it will ease your pain as if by magic.  With the fingers of one hand rub the skin on the back of the other hand, stroking toward the elbow, and will that all feeling shall disappear.  In from one to three minutes, take a needle, and you can stick it through the skin on the back of the hand without pain.  You may have to try it a dozen times, but persistence will bring success.  Having mastered the sense of feeling, take up that of hearing.

(2) It may seem impossible at first thought, but you have seen people so absorbed in what they were reading or thinking that they heard nothing, although you addressed them directly.  They are simply abstracted from all else, and are thinking of one thing—­to the exclusion of everything else.  They entered this state of abstractedness unconsciously.  To do so intentionally, you go by the law of indirectness.  For instance, take sight; concentrate your vision and your whole attention upon some object, real or imaginary, until soon the sense of HEARING becomes dormant.  A little practice will enable you to study, think or sleep, regardless of noise.

(3) Having mastered hearing, begin on SIGHT.  You have known people who walked on the street, looked at you and passed by without recognition, although they knew you well.  A person deeply thinking on some subject, neither sees nor hears, but uses the mental sense entirely.  The method is to let the eyes be open, but concentrate the thoughts on hearing or feeling.

(4) After getting control of your sight, take up the TASTE. Take some tasteless thing on the tongue, abstract the mind to something else until the taste becomes dormant.  Then take something with more taste to it, abstracting the taste, until by this gradual process you can make the sourest pickle sweet.

(5) Finally take some light odor, and hold it before the nostrils, abstracting the attention from the sense of smell, by hearing or seeing, etc., until by practice you can pass through the foulest odor without inconvenience or notice.

Sit or stand absolutely motionless, except your breathing, for one to five minutes at a time.  Do this often.