Book Report: Secret Mental Power: Miracle of Mind Magic by Frank Rudolph Young (c)1973

Secret Mental Power: Miracle of Mind Magic by Frank Rudolph Young (c)1973

Background Information: Frank Rudolph Young ("F.R.Y.") is a bit of a cult figure, an author who wrote a number of books on health practices, psychic powers and self-development. Many were published in hardcover by Parker Publishing. What distinguishes Young's books stylistically is the hyperbole. He must have been a naturally intense individual and he really tries to impart that, while presenting his material as mysterious and exotic. It makes the books a lot of fun to read!
Trying to find reliable biographical material is a bit difficult, partially since he seems to have presented several different stories about himself. The Legend is that he and his other family members traveled the world, ferreting out mystical secrets of longevity and occult powers.
According to some diligent researchers on the internet, he was born in Panama in 1911 and lived in Chicago (Chicago was a major center of the "New Thought" movement). He may have been a dentist, a chiropractor, and a body builder. From his published works it's safe to assume he was an avid yoga practitioner, at least.
You can find much more research here: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/64281/what-biographical-information-do-we-know-about-author-frank-rudolph-young

The kind of "magic" the author discusses in this book are powerful, practical, mental habits of reasoning, decision making, projecting confidence, making friends, pain control, improving one's health, and so forth. Each skill gets at least a chapter of it's own, with a lively discussion, clearly defined how-to instructions and further hints and a few "testimonial" type stories. He writes with incredible enthusiasm and encouragement as you'd expect from a pop-psychology book of the 60s.

His approach to achieving success lies in combining logical methodologies with a powerful emotional intensity, and you'll find variations of this idea in all of his books, and he usually has a specific exercise to develop it and a specific bit of hyperbolic terminology. In this book he calls the practice of developing the required intensity the Miracle Mind Magic Stimulator, which consists of visualizing your goal with increasing detail to the point of being "savagely real." The subsequent exercises for decision making, confidence, making friends and so forth mostly all employ the Miracle Mind Magic Stimulator in some way. (in other books of his, you'll find the same or similar techniques with different names).

One of the interesting principles of this book are what he considers the use of the conscious mind to make the changes you want to, rather than the subconscious because he feels you're more resent and able to make needed decisions. I suppose this puts him more in the camp of the New Thoughtists who felt one could overcome all obstacles with will power.

Despite the over-the-top style, it's really a very practical book for improving emotional self control, achieving goals, dealing with others and more. Not all of it may be the best or most current approach, but he puts forth a workable approach. And I've noticed that somebody must be making good use of FRY's books. He seems to have a growing fan base on line, and while I used to be able to pick up his hardcovers for about 6 bucks, some of them are now going for ten times that.

Book Report: The Power of Hypnosis by Hans Holzer -- Hypnosis discussion and Some How-to

The Power of Hypnosis, How Mind-to-Mind Communication Works (c)1973 by Hans Holzer

Background Information: Hans Holzer, a tireless researcher of the paranormal, is the author of over 100 books on various aspects of the paranormal, and has been the inspiration for a number of TV shows about the paranormal. He often worked with well known spirit mediums, including Sybil Leek, who was quite popular in the 1960s. Most recently, his work with various mediums and haunted houses, has been revisited by the 2019 TV show, The Holzer Files (fittingly, 13 years after his death).
You can read more about Holzer on the web and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Holzer

This book, The Power of Hypnosis, is a fairly slim volume of under 100 pages. 

As a hypnotist, I have to say I found parts of the book a little bit silly. I'm not sure if he's playing to the public fear of hypnosis, or whether he just had an antiquated view on the irresistible power of hypnosis. (old time psychologists feared that hypnosis had the power to easily control and even harm the unwary. This was probably based on Freud's belief that the subconscious mind was a kind of wild animal that the conscious mind was always fighting to keep under control, and hypnosis might allow that wild animal to slip the leash). So the book opens warning the public of "involuntary" hypnosis in the form of advertising, and you should constantly examine yourself for covert influences (to buy more oatmeal, perhaps?).

He recommends hypnosis for pain control and to help with mediumistic trances, especially to remove residual spirits after the seance, and gener4ally for therapeutic purposes, but not for past-life regressions or other psychic phenomena. (about a third of the way into the book, he finally admits hypnosis isn't really dangerous when done correctly). 

There is  fair bit of discussion of how to apply hypnosis and for what. He describes his own method of hypnotizing people, which is a simple, authoritarian narrative induction (he tells a story that puts people to sleep). He distinguishes three levels of trance depth with the second and third suitable for suggestions.Before discussing other, non-hypnotic phenomena, like reincarnation, Deja Vu and "time slips" where someone physically slips into another time and place! 

The chapter on Emotional Hypnosis is actually fairly interesting, in that he describes how emotional states can access the subconscious to dissociate the consciousness and facilitate trance, and how various practices like tribal drums, incense and even Frank Sinatra's singing can lead to a dissociative trance. 

BTW, despite the subtitle, "mind-to-mind communication" isn't mentioned until the last few pages of the book, and then only to say that hypnotic suggestions must bev persuasive to be effective. 

Worth mentioning is his chapter on "Silent Hypnosis" where he discusses how the eyes can project a beam of energy particles that can influence another person's mind directly! Ah, if only it were true! I presume he got this from some olde tyme mesmerists. He suggests experimenting with it by projecting commands silently with your eyes to get others to do things. 

Overall, this is a fun book about psychic phenomena. The approach to hypnosis is limited and antiquated, but his observations on the power of emotional suggestions as well as his extensive knowledge of practices around the world are thought provoking.

Book Report: You Are Psychic! -- Psychic Ability Exercises

 

You Are Psychic! The Free Soul Method (c) 1989 by Pete A. Sanders

To be perfectly honest, I bought this at the same time as Holzer's Are You Psychic? just so I could put them side by side on my shelf. (https://successworkhypnosis.blogspot.com/2021/10/book-report-are-you-psychic-by-hans.html)

While a lot of these books on psychic abilities are a mixture of academic discussion, theory, anecdote and experiments, Sanders' book puts forth a very clear, workable, kind of course outline for developing one's mystical abilities. And no surprise, really, since this appears to be something he taught for many years (and still does, in Sedona https://freesoul.net/), so it's very easy to read and follow, having been presented many times before. 

What's interesting about Sanders is that he claims to have begun to develop his methods while doing research on the topic while a student at MIT. Sadly, there's no direct quotes of the research material he produced while at MIT, which I would have been interested to see. 

What distinguishes Sanders' Free Soul method is that he categorizes nine human senses--the usual five physical ones, and then four additional psychic ones: Psychic Feeling, Psychic Knowing (intuition), Psychic Vision (clairvoyance) and Psychic Hearing (clairaudience). He feels most people have a natural proclivity towards one of two of these, and that is reflected in the person's character traits, much the way NLP draws associations between a person's preferred sensory modality and some of their behavioral traits (not all NLP folks support that, BTW). 

He also feels his research has discovered specific areas in the body where these psychic senses are located. Interestingly, these are similar to some of the colorfully named places in Frank Rudolph Young's work from several decades before. For example, Sanders locates clairaudience in the temporal lobes of the brain above the ears, as does Young, who names this area the "brain horns."

Sanders book is a easy to understand and to follow and clearly a labor of both love and experience. I can't say I've really applied myself to the exercises, but if I were looking for a book to learn Psychic abilities from, I'd guess that this would be a good one.