Auto-Suggestion: What It Is and How to Use It for Health, Happiness and Success

Document Description

Auto-Suggestion: What It Is and How to Use It for Health, Happiness and Success is Herbert A. Parkyn’s systematic presentation of the psychological method he had been developing through the Chicago School of Psychology, his Special Mail Course in Hypnotism and Suggestive Therapeutics, and Suggestion magazine. The book was published in 1905 by Edward E. Beals’ Science Press and then issued in 1906 by Parkyn’s Suggestion Publishing Company.

Parkyn explains in his introduction that the book grew directly from a series of articles on auto-suggestion published in Suggestion during 1903 and 1904. He revised those articles, added new material, and brought them together as a single work after readers created a demand for back issues that could no longer be supplied. By the fourth edition the book was already “completing the 10th thousand.”

Read online: Auto-Suggestion: What It Is and How to Use It for Health, Happiness and Success

What Is Parkyn’s Auto-Suggestion About?

Herbert A. Parkyn begins with a deceptively simple definition. “Auto” means self and “suggestion” means impression, making auto-suggestion a “self-impression,” or an impression arising within one’s own mind (p. 7). From this definition he develops a complete theory of how repeated thoughts, expectations, fears, beliefs, memories and mental pictures influence physical health, emotional states, character, habits and outward conduct.

The book then teaches how this process can be brought under conscious direction. What makes Parkyn’s approach different from a simple collection of positive affirmations is that he attempts to explain why the method works. The directing part of the mind supplies an impression, repetition strengthens it, the involuntary mind accepts and acts upon it, and thought eventually finds expression through bodily condition and behavior.

The fifteen chapters progressively extend this mechanism through almost every major field of self-development that Parkyn had been teaching. He applies auto-suggestion to physical and mental disorders, childhood and character formation, habits, personal magnetism, optimism, concentration, success, breathing and health.

He concludes with two of his most expansive claims. First, auto-suggestion is the common factor underlying apparently different systems of healing. Second, deliberately created “psychic pictures” can shape future action and circumstances because sustained mental pictures direct the thoughts and actions of the person holding them. The progression is important. Parkyn does not introduce health, character, magnetism, concentration, success and mental imagery as unrelated subjects. They are different applications of the same psychological mechanism.

The Three Forms of Auto-Suggestion

Parkyn divides auto-suggestion into three forms, beginning with voluntary auto-suggestion. This occurs when a person deliberately impresses something upon himself, such as determining before sleep to awaken at a certain hour. Involuntary auto-suggestion occurs without conscious intention. Parkyn gives the example of a Chicago man whose appetite is aroused when a New York visitor mistakenly tells him it is twelve o’clock because his watch remains set to New York time. The statement awakens an established association between noon and lunch, and the body responds. He similarly describes someone who learns that he has touched clothing worn by a person with a skin disease and immediately begins imagining itching sensations (pp. 7–8).

This involuntary form also provides Parkyn with an explanation for attitudes whose origins have been forgotten. A child may witness a man behaving harshly, retain the impression long after the event itself has disappeared from conscious memory, and years later feel an unexplained dislike toward someone resembling him. What the adult calls intuition may actually be a chain of associations beginning with an old stored impression. Parkyn extends the same principle in the opposite direction. Childhood ambitions and desires can remain active beneath ordinary awareness and continue directing a person toward something he first wanted years earlier (pp. 9–10).

His third category is what he calls “involuntary-voluntary auto-suggestion.” Here a person believes that some outside object, medicine, healer or force is producing a result, while his own expectations supply the effective suggestion. A patient takes medicine while thinking that it will quiet his nerves. Another pays an absent healer, sits down at an appointed hour expecting to receive telepathic treatment, and generates within himself the health suggestions he believes are arriving from the healer. A magnetic healer can produce the same response when the patient expects magnetism from the operator’s hands to stimulate the body. Parkyn’s point is not that the patient’s improvement is imaginary. He argues that a real bodily response occurs, but that its immediate psychological cause lies in the patient’s auto-suggestion (pp. 10–12).

The Voluntary and Involuntary Mind

The machinery behind the entire book is Parkyn’s division of mental activity into the voluntary and involuntary mind. He acknowledges the dual-mind theory associated with Thomson Jay Hudson, but deliberately rejects Hudson’s “objective” and “subjective” terminology, along with “conscious” and “sub-conscious,” in favor of “voluntary mind” and “involuntary mind” (p. 13). The change matters because Parkyn’s terms describe the functions he assigns to each side.

The involuntary mind controls bodily functions, remains active during sleep, contains the emotions and memory, and preserves the accumulated impressions of education and experience. Parkyn says it is incapable of inductive reasoning and remains open to direction through the voluntary mind. The voluntary mind reasons, judges, directs attention and supplies the impressions capable of modifying involuntary activity. In Parkyn’s compact statement, “the involuntary mind is automatic in its operations, but is always open to control by the impressions made upon it by the voluntary mind” (p. 14).

That produces the central method of the book. A person who constantly talks and thinks about illness repeatedly supplies the involuntary mind with images of disease. Someone deliberately thinking and speaking in terms of health supplies a different set of impressions. The same process applies to personality. Parkyn writes that a self-conscious, timid and fearful person can become “determined, confident, aggressive, and fearless” by keeping those thoughts before the voluntary mind until the involuntary mind accepts them and begins influencing conduct accordingly. His instruction at the end of the first chapter reduces the method to one principle. “Seek, then, to control the voluntary thoughts” (p. 15).

Auto-Suggestion and Physical Health

Parkyn next applies the method to physical disorders. His medical theory places great importance on circulation, nutrition, fresh air, water, exercise and the blood supply of the tissues. Some of the physiology belongs unmistakably to the medical thinking of his period, but the psychological principle running through it is consistent. Fear, expectation and repeated ideas of disease can interfere with bodily functioning, while suggestions associated with normal function can assist the patient’s return to healthier habits.

For Parkyn, treatment does not consist of repeating words while ignoring the body. Mental suggestion is joined to action. Patients are given things to do. Drinking water, exercising, breathing deeply and establishing regular bodily routines become both physical measures and occasions for renewed self-suggestion. The activity continually recalls the desired idea. This is one reason his system moves so easily from therapeutics into habit formation. The mind is not simply told what should happen. The person repeatedly behaves in accordance with the desired condition until the thought and the action reinforce one another.

How Auto-Suggestion Shapes Character

Parkyn gives childhood impressions a central place in character formation. A child continuously receives suggestions from parents, teachers, companions, surroundings and experience. Those impressions accumulate and become part of the mental material from which later reactions arise. His earlier example of an adult’s unexplained dislike illustrates the mechanism. The original event may disappear from conscious memory while its emotional association remains capable of influencing future judgment.

This also means that character is not fixed. If repeated impressions helped construct an undesirable tendency, deliberately selected impressions can help establish another. Parkyn’s method of self-development follows the same logic as his therapeutic method. Fear is not conquered by repeatedly thinking about fear. Confidence, courage and determination are supplied in its place. The desired state must occupy the attention until it becomes familiar enough to guide conduct without continuous conscious effort.

This is one of the most important bridges between Parkyn’s medical psychology and the later literature associated with William Walker Atkinson. What begins as suggestive therapeutics becomes a method for deliberately rebuilding personality.

Habit Is Repetition Made Automatic

Chapter V makes that transition explicit. Parkyn writes, “All habits of mind and body are formed by repetition of a thought or action” (p. 55). Most habits have developed without deliberate planning, but the same mechanism can be used consciously.

His example is intentionally ordinary. A man continually loses pocketknives. Parkyn has him obtain a leather cover and establish a fixed sequence whenever the knife is used. The cover remains in his hand until the knife is returned, and the knife is then placed in the same vest pocket. He repeatedly rehearses the action until the sequence becomes automatic. The importance of the example is the union of mental intention, repetition and physical performance. Auto-suggestion does not end with saying something. The suggestion must find its corresponding action, and repeated action becomes habit.

This provides the working meaning behind one of Parkyn’s recurring formulas throughout the book.

“Thought takes form in action” (p. 99).

The idea becomes one of the strongest fingerprints connecting Parkyn’s teaching with the Atkinson-associated literature.

What Does Parkyn Mean by Personal Magnetism?

Parkyn’s treatment of personal magnetism is striking because he removes much of the mysterious force-language commonly attached to the subject. “Personal magnetism can be cultivated by studying and practicing the art of pleasing,” he writes (p. 76). He then identifies the qualities involved as a cheerful expression, steady eye, cleanliness, health, strength, determination, gentleness, modesty, even temper, coolness, confidence, fearlessness, thoughtfulness and consideration for others.

Personal magnetism is thus developed through character and behavior. A person deliberately cultivates qualities that make his presence attractive and effective. Health supports it. Confidence supports it. Fearlessness supports it. Consideration for others supports it. Auto-suggestion is used to cultivate these characteristics until they become part of normal conduct.

This chapter is important to the history of Parkyn’s relationship with the personal-magnetism literature surrounding Atkinson. Parkyn had already incorporated personal magnetism into his earlier teaching, and here it appears inside the same system of voluntary mental direction, habit, confidence and action. Personal magnetism is not an isolated subject added to Auto-Suggestion. It follows directly from Parkyn’s psychology of self-development.

Optimism as a Trained Mental Habit

Parkyn treats optimism in the same way. The pessimist repeatedly thinks, speaks and acts according to negative expectations and then helps create the social and personal conditions that seem to confirm them. The optimistic person develops another habitual direction of thought. Parkyn says that a person’s mental attitude affects environment, friendships and success, and he advises meeting obstacles with courage and an expectation that means of overcoming them can be found (p. 98).

His instruction for cultivating optimism begins again with his axiom, “Thought takes form in action” (p. 99). He asks the reader to become generous not only materially but mentally, to think well of others, overlook faults and replace petty jealousies and suspicions with a more constructive mental attitude. He then recommends repeated optimistic auto-suggestions, but specifically warns against merely automatic repetition. The meaning of each suggestion must occupy the mind.

This distinction is important. Parkyn’s affirmations are not magic sentences. Their purpose is to hold a selected conception before the voluntary mind until it becomes an accepted mental habit and begins influencing behavior.

Concentration and Control of Attention

Concentration follows naturally because deliberate auto-suggestion depends upon the ability to keep the voluntary mind upon a chosen idea. If attention wanders constantly, the desired impression cannot receive the sustained reinforcement necessary to compete with established habits and associations. Concentration becomes the mechanism by which the individual selects which thoughts will be repeatedly presented to the involuntary mind.

This is also why concentration occupies such an important position in later Atkinson and Yogi Publication Society literature. In Parkyn’s system it is not merely an exercise for improving memory or mental performance. It is part of self-government. Attention determines which ideas receive mental energy, repeated attention strengthens those ideas, and strengthened ideas influence action.

Auto-Suggestion and Success

Parkyn’s two chapters on success extend the therapeutic method directly into ordinary life. Health, confidence, determination, concentration, optimism and useful habits are combined into a mental attitude suited to effective action. He recommends that success suggestions be repeated “earnestly” many times each day, with the mind dwelling upon each statement until its meaning is understood. His rule is explicit. “All auto-suggestions should be encouraging, optimistic, positive and affirmative” (p. 123).

The suggested statements begin with health and strength and move into determination, confidence and successful conduct. The order matters. Parkyn is constructing the person who succeeds before discussing success as an external reward. His case material likewise describes a patient repeating such suggestions hundreds of times each day until his mind became filled with them and his actions changed. Parkyn says that the man “told himself these stories so often that in the end he believed them to be true,” after which his actions and success corresponded to them (p. 128).

Success in this system is not obtained merely by wishing for something. A sustained mental conception changes attitude and conduct. The changed person notices opportunities, approaches people differently, persists where he previously withdrew, and repeatedly acts in ways consistent with the new conception.

“I Can and I Will” as Parkyn’s Formula for Success

Parkyn’s famous “I Can and I Will” formula appears directly in Auto-Suggestion as part of the method taught in Chapter IX, “The Achievement of Success Through Auto-Suggestion.” After instructing the reader to cultivate physical strength, determination, confidence, fearlessness and what he calls kindly aggressiveness, Parkyn supplies a series of auto-suggestions intended to create these qualities. The sequence builds toward the declaration, “I CAN and I WILL be successful in everything I undertake” (p. 124).

The phrase is important because Parkyn does not present “I Can and I Will” as an inspirational slogan detached from his psychology. It is an application of the voluntary and involuntary mind system developed from the opening chapter of the book. The voluntary mind deliberately selects the desired conception. Repetition keeps that conception before the mind. The involuntary mind gradually accepts it as true and begins influencing feeling, conduct and habitual action in accordance with it. By the time Parkyn introduces “I Can and I Will,” the reader has already been taught his accompanying rule that “Thought takes form in action.” Parkyn is teaching the reader to create confidence through repeated self-impression and then express that confidence through conduct.

This makes “I Can and I Will” an important marker when examining the mental-development literature later associated with William Walker Atkinson and the Yogi Publication Society. Parkyn’s formula belongs to the same established system that joins affirmative self-suggestion with confidence, will, concentration, personal magnetism, habit formation and success. When the same language and method appear in Atkinson and YPS-associated works, they can be compared against a documented Parkyn teaching whose meaning and mechanism are laid out explicitly in Auto-Suggestion. The phrase is especially valuable as evidence because it is more distinctive than a general subject such as positive thinking or self-confidence.

Breathing Exercises and Auto-Suggestion

Parkyn’s discussion of breathing is another important connection with later YPS literature. He certainly values fresh air and deep breathing, but he makes an unusual distinction between the physical exercise and the psychological effects attributed to it. He explains that he sometimes prescribes breathing exercises even when a patient does not need them physiologically because each performance reminds the patient to repeat the accompanying auto-suggestion. The exercise becomes a mental trigger. He says that he had seen severe mental troubles overcome through this method (p. 146).

He even discusses advertisements promising to overcome worry and fear through abdominal breathing. Parkyn attributes many of the reported results “not so much” to the breathing itself as to the auto-suggestions that necessarily accompany repeated performance (p. 146).

This becomes significant beside YPS works dealing with breath, mental control and health, including Yogi Ramacharaka’s The Hindu-Yogi Science of Breath. The systems are not identical and the Oriental framework of the Ramacharaka books introduces teachings that cannot simply be attributed to Parkyn. What Parkyn’s book establishes is that within the same Chicago circle, breathing had already been integrated into a psychological program in which repeated exercises could serve as vehicles for suggestion, concentration, health expectations and self-control.

Is Auto-Suggestion the Basis of All Healing?

Chapter XIV contains one of Parkyn’s strongest claims. By this point he has discussed physicians, medicines, magnetic healing, absent treatment and other therapeutic systems. His explanation is that very different methods can produce improvement because each may awaken favorable expectations and auto-suggestions in the patient.

After comparing cures attributed to such things as a healer’s breath, a horse-chestnut carried in the pocket and a brass ring, Parkyn concludes that the underlying healing force must be the same. Since auto-suggestion is present across these systems, he proposes that it is “the healing force underlying all systems of treatment” and that cures occur by arousing forces within the patient through his own auto-suggestions (pp. 182–183).

This returns directly to his introduction. There Parkyn names Christian Science, Magnetic Healing, Divine Science, Mental Science, sacred shrines, absent treatment and success circles and argues that their apparently mysterious phenomena can be explained through auto-suggestion. He even extends the principle to many cures achieved by ordinary physicians. After fourteen years of experience in Suggestive Therapeutics, he calls auto-suggestion the most important study connected with healing, while also insisting that its importance reaches far beyond medicine into character, success and failure.

“Psychic Pictures Tend to Materialize”

The final chapter completes Parkyn’s movement from medicine to a comprehensive psychology of self-direction. He asks readers to examine the “mental or psychic pictures” they continually construct. Pictures of weakness, fear and failure influence the person who holds them. Persistent pictures of another kind can direct thought and action toward another result.

Here Parkyn gives perhaps the clearest formulation of the complete process in the book.

“THOUGHT TENDS TO TAKE FORM IN ACTION, AND MENTAL PICTURES TEND TO MATERIALIZE” (p. 185).

The capitalization is Parkyn’s own. Yet his explanation immediately limits what he means by materialization. He specifically says that he does not mean that the mind leaves the body and physically removes material obstacles. Sustained concentration upon a goal influences voluntary and involuntary actions, including actions performed without conscious recognition of their connection to the goal. The resulting chain of behavior can make it appear as though mind itself directly altered material objects (p. 185).

That qualification is extremely important when comparing Parkyn with later New Thought and YPS books. His “psychic pictures” provide a clear antecedent for later visualization and manifestation language, but his explanation in Auto-Suggestion remains anchored to suggestion, attention and action.

How Auto-Suggestion Connects to the Yogi Publication Society

The historical importance of Auto-Suggestion to the Yogi Publication Society lies in how much of the mental-development program associated with YPS can already be found within Parkyn’s established system. The relationship predates this particular book because Auto-Suggestion was assembled from Parkyn’s 1903 and 1904 Suggestion articles, and those articles themselves developed principles already taught in his earlier Mail Course. Parkyn’s 1900 course contains voluntary and involuntary auto-suggestion, repetition, control of adverse suggestions, self-treatment, the effect of thought upon bodily function and the rule that the voluntary mind can control the involuntary mind.

This places the YPS literature beside a documented Chicago system already teaching the subjects that would become familiar throughout its mental-development books. Health is connected to thought. Fear is replaced with courage. Character can be reconstructed. Habits are produced through repetition. Attention can be trained. Personal magnetism can be cultivated. Breathing exercises can be joined with mental suggestion. Success depends upon developing a corresponding mental attitude. Mental pictures influence action. These are not scattered remarks in Parkyn’s work. They are the chapter structure of Auto-Suggestion itself.

The point is not that every YPS teaching came from Parkyn. The Yogi philosophy books also draw upon Indian philosophy, occultism, New Thought and other sources. What Auto-Suggestion provides is the psychological foundation already operating inside the immediate environment from which YPS developed. It allows specific YPS teachings to be compared against an earlier, dated body of Parkyn material instead of treating their similarities as general features of the period.

Parkyn and A Series of Lessons in Personal Magnetism

The connection with Atkinson’s A Series of Lessons in Personal Magnetism is stronger because the chronology reaches behind Auto-Suggestion into Parkyn’s Mail Course. The earlier comparison shows Parkyn defining voluntary auto-suggestion as an assertion that the voluntary mind attempts to impress upon the involuntary mind. The Personal Magnetism lessons recast this relationship as the Active and Passive functions of mind. The Active function repeatedly tells the Passive function what it is to become until the latter accepts the new thought.

The correspondence continues into method. Parkyn teaches repetition, replacing an adverse mental tendency with the desired one, directing attention, using suggestion before sleep and transforming thought into habitual action. Personal Magnetism instructs the student to repeat statements such as “I am Fearless” and “I am Confident,” concentrate inwardly, replace an undesirable quality with its opposite and carry the selected thought into sleep.

Parkyn’s later personal-magnetism chapter makes the connection still clearer. His ideal magnetic person possesses confidence, fearlessness, determination, health, self-command and consideration for others. The subject called “personal magnetism” is being constructed from the same qualities produced by his established method of auto-suggestion.

Read the article: Thought-Force in Business and Everyday Life: Herbert A. Parkyn’s Intellectual Property Behind the First Book Under the Name William Walker Atkinson

Parkyn and Mind Power

The same architecture survives in Atkinson’s Mind Power. The detailed comparison with Parkyn’s Mail Course shows auto-suggestion defined as self-treatment, repetition used to make the mind accept and act upon an assertion, the directing aspect of mind educating another aspect, and the therapeutic method expanding into deliberate reconstruction of character.

One development in Mind Power is the formal combination of auto-suggestion, visualization and acting out the desired quality. Yet each component has a clear counterpart in Parkyn. Repetition supplies the mental impression. Concentration holds it in attention. Mental pictures establish the desired conception. “Thought takes form in action” requires corresponding behavior. Repeated behavior becomes habit. The later work packages those components into a more explicitly defined character-building method.

That makes Auto-Suggestion important for reading Mind Power. Parkyn’s final chapter already joins mental pictures directly to the action principle with “THOUGHT TENDS TO TAKE FORM IN ACTION, AND MENTAL PICTURES TEND TO MATERIALIZE” (p. 185). The later combination of visualization, affirmation and action does not appear against an empty background. Its components are already joined in Parkyn’s system.

Parkyn and Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion

Atkinson’s 1909 Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion provides an even more revealing comparison because it returns explicitly to Parkyn’s central subject. The later book distinguishes habitual or unrecognized self-impressions from deliberate impressions directed by the conscious mind toward the subconscious. It even uses Parkyn’s specific example of programming oneself to awaken at a selected hour. The terminology has changed from voluntary and involuntary mind to conscious and subconscious mind, but the functional relationship remains closely aligned.

Character is again rebuilt by developing the quality opposed to the unwanted trait. Fear is displaced by courage. Pessimism is displaced by optimism. The work explains affirmations and similar methods as forms of auto-suggestion and rejects the need for mystical explanations of their effects. This closely follows the explanatory direction Parkyn had taken when he placed Christian Science, magnetic healing, absent treatment and other apparently different systems under auto-suggestion.

Most striking is the survival of Parkyn’s thought-and-action formula. The later work tells the student, “Let your thought manifest and take form in action” (p. 196), and shortly afterward, “Let your thought take form in action” (p. 204). This is not simply the same general subject. It is Parkyn’s distinctive formula functioning as an instruction inside the later auto-suggestion system.

From Parkyn’s “Psychic Pictures” to Later Mental Imagery

Parkyn’s final chapter also helps establish a line into later Atkinson and YPS teachings on mental imagery. Parkyn does not merely tell readers to think positively. He describes deliberately constructed “psychic pictures,” says that they affect mental and physical condition, links them directly to action, and says that persistent fear pictures can appear to materialize through the behavior they generate.

Later Atkinson-associated material formalizes mental imagery as visualization. The comparison with Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion shows the student being instructed to say the desired quality, see it mentally and act it physically. Mental pictures are expected to precede physical realization. The vocabulary develops, but Parkyn’s combination of picture, concentrated thought and resulting action is already present.

This also gives an important caution when reading later YPS “thought power” teachings. Parkyn’s version does not require an invisible thought substance traveling through space to manufacture objects. He explicitly denies that interpretation in Auto-Suggestion. His mechanism is psychological. The picture changes the person, and the changed person performs the actions through which the picture can become reality.

From Parkyn’s Breathing Exercises to Yogi Ramacharaka

The breathing chapter creates another revealing connection with Yogi Ramacharaka and the early YPS program. Parkyn was teaching breathing alongside auto-suggestion because breathing provided both a physical health exercise and a repeated occasion for mental direction. Each performance could call the selected thought back into consciousness and reinforce it.

YPS would make breathing a major subject through works such as The Hindu-Yogi Science of Breath. The Yogi presentation has its own terminology and Indian framework, so the two should not be collapsed into one system. Yet Parkyn’s book demonstrates that breathing, health, mental concentration and self-directed thought were already being combined within his immediate teaching environment. That fact becomes important when reconstructing how the early YPS curriculum was assembled from different intellectual sources.

From Health, Happiness and Success to the YPS Program

Even the subtitle of Parkyn’s book deserves attention. The system is explicitly offered for “Health, Happiness and Success.” Those are not three decorative promises placed on a cover. The book is organized to produce all three from the same underlying psychology. Physical regulation produces health. Character, optimism and constructive mental habits support happiness. Concentration, confidence, personal magnetism and directed action support success.

That threefold program had already become associated with Parkyn’s teaching before Auto-Suggestion, and it provides a useful key for understanding the early mental-development literature surrounding YPS. The books divide the material into different subjects and pseudonymous series, but again and again they return to control of thought, development of character, health, confidence, magnetism, concentration and success.

Three Distinctive Parkyn Formulas in the Later Atkinson and YPS Literature

Three formulations in Parkyn’s work provide especially useful markers for tracing his system into the later literature associated with William Walker Atkinson and the Yogi Publication Society. They are “Health, Happiness and Success,” “Thought takes form in action,” and “I Can and I Will.” Their importance comes from the fact that they do not stand alone as advertising slogans or inspirational phrases. In Parkyn’s teaching they express three connected parts of the same psychological system. “Health, Happiness and Success” defines the three main fields in which the method is to be applied. “I Can and I Will” supplies the affirmative attitude through which confidence, determination and successful action are developed. “Thought takes form in action” explains how the mental state is expected to become outward conduct. Auto-Suggestion brings all three together within a single work and explains the mental mechanism behind them.

The subtitle itself identifies Parkyn’s purpose as the use of auto-suggestion for “Health, Happiness and Success.” His success instructions then give the reader the declaration, “I CAN and I WILL be successful in everything I undertake” (p. 124). This follows his instruction to make auto-suggestions “encouraging, optimistic, positive and affirmative” and to repeat them while dwelling upon their meaning. Elsewhere in the same system Parkyn states his governing formula, “Thought takes form in action,” and his final chapter expands it into “THOUGHT TENDS TO TAKE FORM IN ACTION, AND MENTAL PICTURES TEND TO MATERIALIZE” (p. 185). The three expressions therefore form a sequence. The desired condition is selected, the ability and determination to attain it are repeatedly asserted, and the resulting mental state is expected to express itself through action.

This combination becomes important when reading the later Atkinson and YPS material because the same cluster of ideas continues across books dealing with suggestion, personal magnetism, concentration, character building, mental power and success. In the Atkinson-associated works, repeated affirmative statements are used to develop courage and confidence, unwanted qualities are replaced by their opposites, concentration strengthens the selected mental state, and thought is deliberately carried into action. Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion even instructs the student, “Let your thought take form in action,” preserving Parkyn’s distinctive formula inside a later system of self-development. The importance of the comparison lies in the combination. Parkyn had already joined affirmative self-suggestion, “I Can and I Will,” thought taking form in action, character reconstruction, concentration and success within one organized psychological method.

These formulations also help explain the continuity between Parkyn’s earlier Special Mail Course in Hypnotism and Suggestive Therapeutics, Auto-Suggestion, and the mental-development literature that appeared around the early YPS network. The vocabulary of the later books changes and additional philosophical and occult material is introduced, but Parkyn’s underlying progression remains recognizable in many of them. The individual selects the desired mental condition, repeatedly impresses it upon the mind, develops confidence in the ability to accomplish it, and gives the thought physical expression through conduct. “Health, Happiness and Success,” “I Can and I Will,” and “Thought takes form in action” provide three unusually concise expressions of that system and give us distinctive language with which to compare Parkyn’s documented teaching against the later Atkinson and YPS titles.

Why Auto-Suggestion Is Important to Yogi Publication Society History

Auto-Suggestion matters to YPS history because it gathers Parkyn’s psychology into one accessible volume at almost exactly the period in which the early Yogi Publication Society literature was taking shape. More importantly, Parkyn tells us where the material came from. The chapters were revised from articles he had published in Suggestion during 1903 and 1904, while their basic psychology can be traced still farther back through his earlier course.

The book makes the continuity visible. The voluntary mind directs the involuntary mind. Repetition produces acceptance. Accepted thoughts influence bodily states and behavior. Repeated behavior becomes habit. Habit forms character. Character influences personal magnetism and success. Concentration enables a person to hold the selected thought. Optimism supplies the constructive mental direction. Breathing and other exercises become physical anchors for the suggestion. Mental pictures establish a model toward which action is directed. Across all of these applications stands the same governing idea, “Thought takes form in action.”

That is why Auto-Suggestion should not be treated only as one of Parkyn’s books on mental healing. It is one of the clearest surviving guides to the psychological system that surrounded the birth of YPS. When placed beside A Series of Lessons in Personal Magnetism, Mind Power, Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion, the Yogi Ramacharaka mental-training literature and the later Theron Q. Dumont works, it supplies an earlier framework against which those books can be read. In the strongest comparisons, the connection reaches beyond common New Thought themes to the same mental division, the same method of repeated self-impression, the same replacement of undesirable qualities with their opposites, the same movement from thought into action, and even Parkyn’s distinctive language appearing again in later works.

Parkyn’s purpose in Auto-Suggestion was to take phenomena commonly explained through mysterious forces and show the reader a psychological mechanism operating underneath them. Once that mechanism was understood, the individual no longer needed to wait for an outside healer, magnetist, charm or unseen influence. The same force that had unconsciously created fears, habits and expectations could be deliberately directed toward health, confidence, character and achievement. That principle had been part of Parkyn’s teaching years before the book appeared. Auto-Suggestion brought it together in its clearest popular form and, in doing so, provides one of the most important primary sources for understanding the mental-science foundation surrounding Parkyn, Atkinson and the early Yogi Publication Society.

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