The deeper mind opens to all who knock; provided only that the new-comers be not the enemies of some stronger habit or impression already within.

To suggestions which coincide with the self's desires or established beliefs it gives an easy welcome; and these, once within, always tend to self-realization.

Thus the French Carmelite Therese de l'Enfant-Jesus, once convinced that she was destined to be a "victim of love," began that career of suffering which ended in her death at the age of twenty-four.[100] The lives of the Saints are full of incidents explicable on the same lines: exhibiting again and again the dramatic realization of traditional ideas or passionate desires.

We see therefore that St.Paul's admonition "Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things be of good report, think on these things" is a piece of practical advice of which the importance can hardly be exaggerated; for it deals with the conditions under which man makes his own mentality.
Suggestion, in fact, is one of the most powerful agents either of self-destruction or of self-advancement which are within our grasp: and those who speak of the results of psycho-therapy, or the certitudes of religious experience, as "mere suggestion" are unfortunate in their choice of an adjective.

If then we wish to explore all those mental resources which can be turned to the purposes of the spiritual life, this is one which we must not neglect.