they are sung collectively and in
rhythm, and are cast in an emotional mould.[114] There was some truth in
the accusation of the Indian teacher Ramakrishna, that the books of the
Christians insisted too exclusively on sin. He said, "He who repeats
again and again 'I am bound! I am bound!' remains in bondage. He who
repeats day and night 'I am a sinner! I am a sinner!' becomes a sinner
indeed."[115]

I go on to the law of Reversed Effort; a psychological discovery which
seems to be of extreme importance for the spiritual life. Briefly this
means, that when any suggestion has entered the unconscious mind and
there become active, all our conscious and anxious resistances to it are
not merely useless but actually tend to intensify it. If it is to be
dislodged, this will not be accomplished by mere struggle but by the
persuasive power of another and superior auto-suggestion. Further, in
respect of any habit that we seek to establish, the more desperate our
struggle and sense of effort, the smaller will be our success. In small
matters we have all experienced the working of this law: in frustrated
struggles to attend to that which does not interest us, to check a
tiresome cough, to keep our balance when learning to ride a bicycle. But
it has also more important applications. Thus it indicates that a
deliberate struggle to believe, to overcome some moral weakness, to keep
attention fixed in prayer, will tend to frustration: for this anxious
effort gives body to our imaginative difficulties and sense of
helplessness, fixing attention on the conflict, not on the desired end.
True, if this end is to be achieved the will must be directed to it, but
only in the sense of giving steadfast direction to the desires and acts
of the self, keeping attention orientated towards the goal. The pull of
imaginative desire, not the push of desperate effort, serves us best.
St. Teresa well appreciated this law and applied it to her doctrine of
prayer. "If your thought," she says to her daughters, "runs after all
the fooleries of the world, laugh at it and leave it for a fool and
continue in your quiet ... if you seek by force of arms to bring it to
you, you lose the strength which you have against it."[116]

This same principle is implicitly recognized by those theologians who
declare that man can "do nothing of himself," that mere voluntary
struggle is useless, and regeneration comes by surrender to grace: by
yielding, that is, to the inner urg