The Laws Of Mental Magnetism Pdf

[Kassim Sin]

Thisis a really interesting topic for me because I was used to pushing all the time from when I was middle and high school. It was just something that I learned to do to get what I wanted. I learned early on that it was pushing and striving to the point of obsessing and magnetism is very different. And when I started learning about it when I went to India and learned about the work of Paramahansa Yogananda, who brought yoga here to the west and his teachings are featured in my new book, it was really talking about this different way of living, where instead of over efforting, we can actually draw things to us.

Hi Kimberly! Do we need to develop physical magnetism (having the right diet and recharging the body) before we can bring in mental magnetism in order to get the things that we want? What are your thoughts on which comes first?

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Kimberly: 00:02 Namaste Beauties and welcome back to our Thursday Q&A podcast where our topic this week is Magnetism and How To Draw the Things You Want Into Your Life. So this is a really interesting topic for me, because I was used to pushing all the time from when I was middle school, high, high school. It was just something that I learned to do to get what I want to get, what I wanted. I, I learned early on that, you know, it was, it was pushing and striving to the point of obsessing and magnetism is very different. And when I started learning about it, when I went to India and learned about the work of Paramahansa yoga Nanda, who brought yoga here to the west and his teachings are featured in my new book, it was really talking about this different way of living, where instead of over efforting, we can actually draw things to us.

I first encountered Webster Edgerly's work when I found a copy of Sex Magnetism (or to give its full title Private Lessons in the Cultivation of the Magnetism of Sexes, Teaching the Development and Wonderful Enlargement of Those Powers and Influences that Nature has Invented to Aid Every Human Life) by 'Edmund Shaftesbury' in a local charity bookshop. It is a substantial volume of crankish advice and opinion, and it intrigued me. Who wrote it, and when?

I consulted the Library of Congress online catalogue, which revealed Edgerly as the author, gave his dates (1852-1926) and provided a list of fifty-something different titles on such subjects as diet, hygiene, exercise, punctuation, longevity, telepathy and voice training. The next step was to track down more of his books, which was easy enough using the Internet. So far I have acquired a further six of them, enough I think to qualify me to reveal some of his true ghastliness to the world.

"We believe that Ralstonism, since it is becoming universal, is as necessary as food, light or water. This movement is the grandest, noblest, and already the most far-reaching power that has originated in the present age.

These resistible claims of his come from the Book of Star Ralstonism, the Book of General Membership of the Ralston Health Club, a sort of instruction book for novice Ralstonites. Ralstonism is mainly concerned with matters of diet, health and longevity; but - not content to limit himself to these areas - at the same time Edgerly was also promoting his teachings on psychological self-improvement through 'The Magnetism Club of America', whose key text Instantaneous Personal Magnetism is still in print today.

The high point of Edgerly's career was reached in about 1900, when the founder of the Purina Wholefood Company, William Danforth, observing that Ralstonism was gaining popularity and that its teachings on diet were largely compatible with his own views, invited Edgerly to participate in his enterprise. Despite Edgerly's pompous avowal in the Book of Star Ralstonism that

the company took a new name, Ralston Purina, under which it still flourishes today - though the brand is nowadays mainly associated with pet foods. With further zealous enthusiasm, in 1905 Edgerly attempted to put his ideas into practice when he founded "Ralston Heights", a house built to his own design to contain a community of Ralstonites. Like all such Utopian endeavours, it was not a success.

Given the scale of Edgerly's output and the fact that his books still sell, it would seem odd that he is so little-known - until you actually try to read his books. His style is so long-winded and sententious that any normal discriminating reader is likely to abandon any of them after a few chapters. For the connoissseur of kookery, though, there are plenty of delights. For a start there is the grandiosity of his claims, as instanced by the quotes at the head of this article, or this, from Operations of the Other Mind:

"Against the growing errors, vagaries, morbid theories, occult teachings, and wild beliefs that are darkening present-day life, depressing the mind, weakening the nerves, preying on the health and creating gloomy forebodings, this work comes as an inspiring guide and a practical instructor.

"It has been our wish and purpose to make this course of training one of the most important and valuable ever published. So, into the book we have put the great study, 'HOW TO EMPTY THE MIND.' Recall the countless times you have been mentally upset, worried, bothered with troubles. Think of what it would have meant-and will know mean - to know how to cast all such mental torture out of your mind. The relief and peace of mind this one study alone can bring you can be worth thousands of dollars."

(Certainly, an empty mind helps when reading this stuff). His titles, too are remarkable: I already mentioned Sex Magnetism, but I also like Brain Tests: A New System to Determine the Place of Every Human Being in the Scale of Civilization: A Study in Practical Psychology Which Takes Minds That Are Wrong and Makes Them Right. No half-heartedness about that, is there? Many of his works have likewise an impressive organisational scheme: not divided into anything as mundane as chapters but for example 'cycles' or 'departments'. Within this framework what you typically find is some sound if unexciting advice - such as suggesting that it is a good idea to clean your teeth, or not to eat indigestible food before giving a lecture (I would second this one, having once haplessly burped my way through an after-lunch presentation), mixed with slightly stranger stuff, like his recommendation in Sex Magnetism that every young man should engage with a form of probationary marriage with a woman old enough to be his grandmother, and the infamous quote in Star Ralstonism that:

"The brain, when very shallow, is round and smooth, comparatively speaking. It is never perfectly round, nor is it perfectly smooth. Even the brain of an idiot has some indentations and convolutions."

To locate such little gems as these one has to dig into deep and unpromising seams: Edgerly was a master of padding, in which respect one of his favourite techniques was to pile anecdote upon anecdote in support of his argument. For example in the just two chapters - sorry, 'cycles' - of Operations of the Other Mind, there are no less than 43 anecdotes, of which this is a typical if short example:

"A man who had also carried in his mind a secret that he would not have known under any condition, began to think too much about it. The result was that his sister caught the impression and began to think at times of the very same thing. At length she sought information concerning it, and pursued the matter until she had ascertained the whole secret".

I have not counted how many there are in the whole book, but it has 27 'cycles', so there are probably hundreds of them. Imagine if you can the deadening effect they have when read in bulk. In general they are either completely anonymous, concerning 'a banker', 'a doctor', 'a lawyer' or 'a clergyman'; or else they feature one of Edgerly's favourite famous folk, such as Daniel Webster, Edison, or:

... Gladstone, the great Prime Minister, whose personal magnetism won him the highest honours in the gift of the nation. He not only possessed the Shaftesbury works but, at the solicitation of Queen Victoria, presented her with one of them that she admired. These facts were published at the time.

- this from the introduction to the British edition of Instantaneous Personal Magnetism. Although it refers to 'Shaftesbury' in the third person it is unmistakeably in Edgerly's turgid style. (Which book did Queen Victoria admire? Where were the facts 'published at the time'? It couldn't be that Edgerly just made this stuff up, surely?).

When I wanted to know the numbers of anecdotes referred to above, there was no need to count since Edgerly had thoughtfully numbered them. He must have liked numbered lists, since his books are filled with them: lists of rules, of foods, of personality types and traits, of exercises, of things to avoid ... In a chapter entitled 'Wreckage' of Sex Magnetism, he enumerates 62 'great truths', of which this is typical:

"Every woman should have a man. If she has no husband let her cling to her father, son or brother. If these are lacking, let her entertain in a social way, and have men and women call to see her, and call upon men and women. It is not good for women to see only women, for they soon become gossips."

Its title would suggest that the provision of some set of criteria by which the merits of different brains can be judged, but in fact it is actually a series of written lectures - rants really - which are justified on the unconvincing premise that ones brain is tested by reading and attempting to understand them. If you follow, and presumably agree with, Edgerly's arguments, you have a fit brain. What these 'tests' actually demonstrate is Edgerly's darker side, those views that are only hinted at in most of his other books, such as his racism:

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