Ladies who suddenly see “eyes” in their rooms which float in the air and fascinate them and which they follow from street to street and at the end arrive at the house of a certain Oriental to whom the eyes belong. Or people who, in the presence of the same Oriental, suddenly feel he is looking right through them, seeing all their feelings, thoughts, and desires; and they have a strange sensation in their legs and cannot move, and then fall into his power to such an extent that he can make them do everything he desires, even from a distance. All this and many other stories of the same sort had always seemed to me to be simply bad fiction. People invent miracles for themselves and invent exactly what is expected from them. It is a mixture of superstition, SELF-SUGGESTION, and defective thinking, and, according to myobservation, these stories never appear without a certain collaboration on the part of the men to whom they refer. Fragments: One

“Of course not,” said G. “People are very fond of talking about morality. But morality is merely SELF-SUGGESTION. What is necessary is conscience. We do not teach morality. We teach how to find conscience. People are not pleased when we say this. They say that we have no love. Simply because we do not encourage weakness and hypocrisy but, on the contrary, take off all masks. He who desires the truth will not speak of love or of Christianity because he knows how far he is from these. Christian teaching is for Christians. And Christians are those who live, that is, who do everything, according to Christ’s precepts. Can they who talk of love and morality live according to Christ’s precepts? Of course they cannot; but there will always be talk of this kind, there will always be people to whom words are more precious than anything else. But this is a true sign! He who speaks like this is an empty man; it is not worth while wasting time on him. Fragments: Eight

“It depends upon whose prayer,” said G. “The prayer of subjective man, that is, of man number one, number two, and number three, can give only subjective results, namely, self-consolation, SELF-SUGGESTION, self-hypnosis. It cannot give objective results.” Fragments: Fifteen