William Walker Atkinson 
Mind power – the secret of mental magic 

In Leipzig, Germany, in 1866 there stood an old three-story mansion, used as a manufactory of mechanical toys. An American student attending the university was invited to visit the showrooms in the upper story and became intently interested in the surprising exhibition of inventive genius. As the visitor descended to the second and first floors he visited the rooms where machinery of many kinds was turning out various parts of the toys. But when he ventured to descend to the cellar to look at the power plant he found ‘No admission’ on every door. But he was more disappointed when he was told that the ‘designing room, ‘ where the toys were invented and the drawings made, was in the subcellar. In order to preserve their patents and their secret processes, even the workmen on the upper floors were forbidden ever to look into the subcellar.

That illustrative fact came forcibly to mind when meditating long over a letter written by a praying student and author who said that he felt sure that the only direct passage between the human soul and the world spirits is through the subconscious mind. From that subcellar of the soul come ideas, impulses, and suggestions which most largely influence our actions. But we are forbidden to enter that department to examine the plans or listen to the wireless dispatches from the spirit world so continuously received there. ‘No admission’ is posted on every door to the subcellar designing room of the human soul. We get the blue prints of new plans, or read suggestions for new or improved work sent up to our brains. But who makes them we do not know. In the impenetrable regions of our mental and spiritual nature are formulated many ideas and moral laws which we must blindly obey. A man is what he thinks, and the larger portion of his thinking is originated or molded in his subconscious self.