Part 6 · Attention Is a Muscle · points 1–8 of 34 in this Part

Mind is the only thing that produces effects

Thought is the cause; your nervous system is the machine that turns it into effects.

8 numbered points · 2 study questions · 2 min read

The one line to keep

Thought is the cause; your nervous system is the machine that turns it into effects.

Haanel treats the mind as a power like electricity: what effect it produces depends entirely on the mechanism it is run through. Your mechanism is the brain and nervous system. Understand the machine, and thought becomes predictable instead of mysterious — the secret of all mental power is knowing what you are working with, the way an electrician knows a current.

Why this matters — Part 6

If you are waiting to feel motivated before you start, this level explains the trap: interest follows attention, not the other way round. You don't decide to be interested and then look; you look, and interest arrives as a consequence. For someone whose motivation has drained away, that is very good news — you don't need the feeling. You need ten minutes and a photograph.

Study questions for this sublevel

Haanel put a review question at the end of every part. Answer out loud first — the recall is what moves it into memory.

51. What are some of the effects which can be produced by electricity?

Heat, light, power, music.

52. Upon what do these various effects depend?

Upon the mechanism to which electricity is attached.

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Haanel's own words — points 1–8

Quoted exactly from The Master Key System (1912, public domain). The translation above is ours; this is his.

The Universal Mind is so wonderful that it is difficult to understand its utilitarian powers and possibilities and its unlimited producing effects.

We have found that this Mind is not only all intelligence but all substance. How, then, is it to be differentiated in form? How are we to secure the effect which we desire?

Ask any electrician what the effect of electricity will be and he will reply that "Electricity is a form of motion and its effect will depend upon the mechanism to which it is attached." Upon this mechanism will depend whether we shall have heat, light, power, music or any of the other marvelous demonstration of power to whichthis vital energy has been harnessed.

What effect can be produced by thought? The reply is that thought is mind in motion (just as wind is air in motion), and its effect will depend entirely on the "mechanism to which it is attached."

Here, then, is the secret of all mental power; it depends entirely on the mechanism which we attach.

What is this mechanism? You know something of the mechanism which has been invented by Edison, Bell, Marconi and other electrical wizards, by which place and space and time have become only figures of speech, but did you ever stop to think that the mechanism which has been given you for transforming the Universal, Omnipresent Potential Power was invented by a greater inventor than Edison?

We are accustomed to examining the mechanism of the implements which we use for tilling the soil, and we try to get an understanding of the mechanism of the automobile which we drive, but most of us are content to remain in absolute ignorance of the greatest piece of mechanism which as ever come into existence, the brain of man.

Let us examine the wonders of this mechanism. Perhaps we shall thereby get a better understanding of the various effects of which it is the cause.