Page 162 - Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich Full Book | Success Learned

other circumstances. The "sixth sense" is the faculty which marks the difference
between a genius and an ordinary individual.

The creative faculty becomes more alert and receptive to vibrations, originating
outside the individual's subconscious mind, the more this faculty is used, and the
more the individual relies upon it, and makes demands upon it for thought im-
pulses. This faculty can be cultivated and developed only through use.

That which is known as ones " conscience operates entirely through the faculty
of the sixth sense. The great artists, writers, musicians, and poets become great,
because they acquire the habit of relying upon the "still small voice" which speaks
from within, through the faculty of creative imagination. It is a fact well known
to people who have "keen" imaginations that their best ideas come through so-
called "hunches."

164

NAPOLEON HILL THINK AND GROW RICH

There is a great orator who does not attain to greatness, until he closes his eyes
and begins to rely entirely upon the faculty of Creative Imagination. When asked
why he closed his eyes just before the climaxes of his oratory, he replied, "I do it,
because, then I speak through ideas which come to me from within."

One of America's most successful and best known financiers followed the habit of
closing his eyes for two or three minutes before making a decision.

When asked why he did this, he replied, "With my eyes closed, I am able to draw
upon a source of superior intelligence."

The late Dr. Elmer R. Gates, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, created more than 200
useful patents, many of them basic, through the process of cultivating and using
the creative faculty. His method is both significant and interesting to one inter-
ested in attaining to the status of genius, in which category Dr. Gates, unques-
tionably belonged. Dr. Gates was one of the really great, though less publicized
scientists of the world.

In his laboratory, he had what he called his "personal communication room." It
was practically sound proof, and so arranged that all light could be shut out. It
was equipped with a small table, on which he kept a pad of writing paper. In front
of the table, on the wall, was an electric pushbutton, which controlled the lights.
When Dr. Gates desired to draw upon the forces available to him through his
Creative Imagination, he would go into this room, seat himself at the table, shut
off the lights, and CONCENTRATE upon the KNOWN factors of the invention on
which he was working, remaining in that position until ideas began to "flash" into
his mind in connection with the UNKNOWN factors of the invention.