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B 4 33Q 17D
THE CONQUEST OF DISEASE
The Conque^ of Disease
The Psychology of Mental and Spiritual Healing
by EUGENE DEL MAR
Author of "The Divinity of Desire," "Living Ideals.
" Spiritual and Material Attraction,"
" Fulfilment " Scries, etc., etc.
m
LONDON : L. N. FOWLER & CO. 7 Imperial Arcade, Ludgate Circus, E.C. 4.
COPYRIGHT, 1922 By EUGENE DEL MAR
AH Rights Reserved
Made and Printed in Great Britain by
Southampton Times Limited
Southampton.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword 7
I. Correspondences ii
II. Purposes and Objects 25
III. The Fundamental Basis 35
IV. Principle or Truth 43
V. The Delusion of the Senses 51
VI. The Illusion of Appearance 63
VII. The Obsession of Fear 73
VIII. Knowledge and Opinion 83
IX. The Reversal of Polarity 93
X. Thought : Intellectual and Emotional . . loi
XI. Conscious and Subconscious iii
XII. Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion 123
XIII. Inhibition and Prohibition 135
XIV. Common Sense 145
XV. The Realm of the Ideal 153
XVI. The Silence 161
XVII. The Cause of Disease 171
XVIII. The Cure of Disease 181
XIX. Healing Methods 193
XX. Faith and Love 207
XXI. Perfect Health 217
Supplement : Statements and
Affirmations 229
MlG2il78
FOREWORD
One of the most significant revelations of mental and spiritual healing has been the correspondence of mental states and physical conditions, disclosing the fact that the two are really one and identical, that the mental is the realm of cause and the physical that of effect, and that physical healing is essentially mental. More than this : these correspond- ences have been observed carefully by many healers and their results compared, so that there is already a considerable body of such knowledge that is available for use in the mental healing of physical disease.
Disease is a racial habit that persists largely because of its immemorial traditions. Were Truth to have the general acceptance that is now accorded to false behefs, health would be as prevalent as disease now is. Man has been slow to lay claim to his spiritual heritage of harmony and health, while he has accepted
8 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
readily his mental inheritance of discord and disease. It has been easier for him thus to adopt the behefs that necessitate physical disease. In view of present day knowledge, it is surprising that people are willing to remain sick when this is largely unnecessary and altogether demorahsing.
Mental or spiritual heahng is not universally applicable at the present time, because humanity generally is unprepared to abandon its materialistic conceptions. Believing in the physical as the realm of cause, it is living in illusion and delusion, discord and disease. The general recognition of the mental as the realm of physical cause would bring to the race a New Era, wherein humanity would enjoy an unprecedented degree of mental wholeness and physical health.
The basis of both health and disease is in the mental realm, which may be controlled consciously and guided subconsciously along affirmative and constructive paths. The heal- ing power is inherent in Life itself, and not in material remedies, and it may be explained in terms acceptable to the rational and reasoning mind. Its processes are subject to
FOREWORD 9
Eternal Principles, which may be formulated simply, so that they may be understood easily.
Mental or spiritual healing accepts modern applied psychology as a basis. At the same time, it is essentially spiritual and funda- mentally religious. If one will look deep enough into anything that concerns Life, it is inevitable that he will penetrate to its religious foundation. It is only as one reaches to the centre of Life that he may under- stand its circumference, and physical health is the visible appearance of the spiritual perfection that one may realise. It is the outer aspect of the inner vision. It is Truth manifested in physical form.
Eugene Del Mar.
New York City, September, 1922.
iQ CONQUEST OF DISEASE
THE LAW By Eugene Del Mar
I am hard as adamant, cold as steel, bitter as gall, deadly
as poison ; I am soft as down, warm as sunlight,
gentle as a zephyr, tender as a mother. I am your adversary, your opponent, your enemy ;
I am your counsellor, your assistant, >our friend. I am stronger than the strongest, I bend you to my iron
will ; I am yielding to the uttermost, gladly I go your
way. I am a curse ; I am a blessing. I am what you make of me ; I thwart or serve, I degrade
or exalt ; I am your Master or your servant. Obey me and you are my Master ; Disobey, and you are
my slave. I am the Law !
Chapter I CORRESPONDENCES
The basis of mental and spiritual healing is the fact that the physical body is essentially a thought body ; that it is the physical form assumed by one's thoughts. Bodily condi- tions are but mental conditions that have become apparent to the senses. Each and every change in one's thought registers itself in the body, even though it does not always evidence itself at once on the surface. Each thought has either an affirmative and con- structive tendency, or a negative and destruc- tive one. The former represents Truth and is health giving, while the latter portrays falsity and is productive of disease. Health is normal and evidences itself in harmonious accord, while disease is abnormal and shows forth in discord and inharmony.
From the time when one becomes self- conscious and assumes responsibility for his own thinking, he takes his life in his own
12 ■ ,- CONQUEST OF DISEASE
hands. Whether he knows it or not, he is influencing and determining both the interior and exterior conditions of his body, his health or disease, his relations to the world without and the God within, and he has become the arbiter of his own fate. The character analyst, from an examination of the exterior hnes of one's body, can delineate very clearly the interior lines of thought that one has traversed, and the trend of their present direction.
Each person reveals himself in his face, form and actions ; each is an individual, different from all others. One's thumbs, palms, hands, face, etc., are all characteristic of himself. Each has fashioned his body in the image and hkeness of his thoughts. As no two persons have an identical thought history, no two are exactly alike in appear- ance. What the influences are that have moulded one's body may be deduced from observations of its appearance, as these are brought together for consideration in physiology, physiognomy, phrenology and kindred methods of interpretation.
Whether one regards the physical body as
CORRESPONDENCES 13
one's thought body in visible form or as the physical result of one's thoughts, it must be obvious not only that any change of thought causes a change in the body, but that the changes in both will be in exact correspond- ence. Whether the mental and physical are identical, or the former is the cause and the latter the result, it must be equally true that any particular change in cause will always induce the same change in result, and that different causes will induce different results. Each thought of Truth or of falsity will produce a physical result in complete corres- pondence with its individual peculiarities or characteristics, A physical cold and a mental cold are but two sides of the same fact.
Each and every physical disease, as identified by its dominant bodily symptoms, is nothing more than a thought picture photographed on or in the body. Each person is his own photographer, conscious or subconscious. His physical condition is his own photograph and that only ; it is in fact a moving picture which one may continue to change. The form, outline or tracing of
14 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
the picture is intellectual in origin ; but its intensity and power are emotional. The conviction behind the idea, or the imagina- tion that vivifies it, is what gives the picture the quality of persistence or endurance ; with the conviction or imagination withdrawn the picture soon tends to fade away.
Each distinctive physical disease is in complete correspondence with an equally characteristic mental cause. The same thought cause will not produce exactly the same physical result in each person, for no two persons are alike when the new cause is introduced ; but subject to the differences between persons, the result will be the same. Where there is but one thought cause to be considered, the correspondence is usually quite evident, as in the case of sudden fear or fright ; and while usually many causes have contributed to produce a composite result, generally the dominant cause is evidenced in the symptom that is most pronounced.
The thought of the name of a disease may mean httle or nothing to one, but if he iden- tifies with that name its various accepted symptoms, which he pictures while in a
CORRESPONDENCES 15
receptive condition of mind, his thought may photograph the disease in physical terms. Mental pictures developed from actual con- tact with disease may suffice to induce the symptoms which identify the disease. But most diseases are the legitimate and logical outcome of thoughts of error, false behefs or opinions which impel destructive feehngs and emotions, and disorganise the mental and therefore physical machinery.
The subconscious is the realm of the emotions, and likewise of habits and auto- matism and vital adjustment, and when the auto-suggestion received by it represents false opinion and erroneous behef, discordant and inharmonious activities are soon introduced into the vital organism, which no longer operates harmoniously ; of which fact one becomes conscious through pain or suffering.
At different times, healers who have been associated in mental and spiritual work have met and compared experiences in reference to the correspondences noted by them between mental and physical conditions. Their conclusions have usually been in general agreement, although there has not been that
i6 CONQUEST Of DISEASE
extensive and intimate collaboration that is essential to a conclusive determination. How- ever, it is only a question of time when sufficient data will be brought together to demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt the intimate relation and exact correspondence between mental and physical states.
The fact that there is such a correspond- ence was demonstrated some twenty odd years ago by Prof. Elmer Gates in his labora- tory at Chevy Chase, where it was proven that each destructive emotion secreted its own particular poison, while each constructive one produced its own elixir. For each mental state there is a corresponding special condi- tion of cellular groups of the thinking organ ; and at the root of every emotion there are mental feelings that determine remote re- actions and the functioning of various physiological organs. A law of relation exists between emotional states and the circula- tion of the blood as uniform and certain in effect as any law of chemistry. The effect of fright is to generate a poison in the tissue, which chemical experiment will discern in the breath, perspiration, blood tissues, etc.
CORRESPONDENCES 17
Cold perspiration that is caused by fear has in it an alkaloid poison that is not present in the same person while in a joyous state of mind.
The emotion in a mind full of hate is more injurious than any other state of mind, sufficient toxin being generated in one hour to kill many men were it taken into their systems. In fact, it would generally be impractical for one to hate intensely, steadily, for an hour ; as exhaustion or death would probably stop the mental process. Every wrong emotion, every shade of it, has a definite, harmful effect on the whole body ; and the resulting secretions, when extracted and given to dogs and even human beings, have induced states of mind and acts similar to those of the persons from whom the poisons were derived. Anger leaves a bitter taste in the mouth ; and when not vented in action upon another is prolific in its discord- ant physical results. In fact, indulgence in anger is suicidal, and many poison themselves to death by their incessant fits of hatred.
The correspondences that are hereafter given were considered by a group of healers
Bd
i8 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
as representing some results of their com- bined experiences ; but healers generally have considered it inadvisable to give publicity to such a list. Patients are not merely reluctant to admit their destructive emotional and moral propensities, but prefer not to be reminded of them, and often would rather assume that they had not been discerned by or revealed to the healer. But this knowledge is most helpful to the healer ; and a Ust of mental and physical correspondences which were reliable would not only be of great assistance to the healer, but also valuable to the patient who was willing to acknowledge and face unpleasant facts in order that he might meet and overcome them successfully.
PHYSICAL DISEASES OR APPEARANCES
Mental Thought Causes
Apoplexy Anger and extreme passion
Asthma Nagging ; scolding
Back (lame) Burden bearing
Baldness Incompetency
Biliousness Backbiting ; revenge
Bladder Negativity : " I can't " thought ;
unable to overcome resistance Boils and other irrup- tions Irritability
CORRESPONDENCES 19
Catarrh Disgust
Cancer Dissatisfied love nature ; jealousy
Colds Depression
Constipation Tension ; holding on stubbornly
or too tenaciously
Croup Intense confusion and irritation
Deafness Unwilling to listen or accept
Diarrhoea Unwilling to face seemingly hard
experience ; running away
Diphtheria Intensified resistance to thought or
conditions
Dyspepsia Worry ; anxiety
Goitre Obstinate pride
Headache Confusion
Heart Fear-f- (according to character)
Hemorrhoids An accumulation or piling up of
worry and care
Kidney Secrecy ; fear of detection
Liver Inaction ; knowing and doing not
reciprocal
Lockjaw Bigotry
Nausea Rejection
Neuralgia Malice ; condemnation and self-
fishness
Paralysis Inhibited or thwarted will
Pneumonia Overwhelming disappointment
Rheumatism Criticism
Sore throat Resistance to thought or condi- tions ; stubborn refusal
Spine Fear of eternal punishment remote- ly ; fear of death proximately
Stomach Over-sensitiveness
Teeth (ulcerated) .... Resistance to personality
Tuberculosis Limitation and bondage ; lack of
freedom ; shut-in condition
Tumour Abnormal negative conceptions
20 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
There is considerable difference between the inharmony resulting from destructive qualities of thought that one has dwelt upon habitually, and those which have attended on accident, for example. The former having become crystallised to a far greater extent than the latter, are more difficult to dislodge or transmute. In fact, with the knowledge that the mental and physical are in corres- pondence, or are the two aspects of the same one fact, one may apply his knowledge of the physical to the mental, and read the one in the light of the other.
Accepting the fact of correspondence be- tween the mental and the physical, in com- bination with that of the multiplicity of physical conditions designated as diseases, and their varying degrees, intensities, admixtures, combinations, interferences, etc., it might very well be that there would be some difficulty connected with a detailed mental diagnosis of a complicated physical condition. While there are almost infinite shades and degrees of intensity of thought, and various combinations of different qualities, there are certain general correspondences that may be
CORRESPONDENCES 21
depended upon. It is not essential for mental or spiritual healing that one go beyond these general correspondences, although the more knowledge the healer has the greater will be his efficiency. Moreover, the knowledge of correspondences affords a clue that may be followed up to great advantage.
There has always been and probably ever will be considerable opposition to the acceptance of the belief in the correspondence between mental and physical conditions. The imphcations that accompany its acceptance and the deductions that flow from it are fraught with too many unpleasant consequences. Its hnking together of disease and " sin " is too palpable to be comfortable. It is a belief that would naturally be denied acceptance by those who are lacking in self- control, immersed in materialism, or ignorant enough to believe that they could get some- thing for nothing or nothing for something. The belief in such correspondences places upon each a personal responsibility that few are willing tc accept.
However, ti\e Truth is no respecter of persons and ha^ no regard for opinions.
22 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
prejudices or superstitions. There is no freedom outside of Truth, and as long as false thought prevails the slavery to disease will continue. The fact that it does con- tinue is conclusive evidence of false thinking. All negative and destructive thought is false thinking, in that it disregards and is opposed to the fundamental qualities and basic attributes of the One Life that expresses itself in and through all that is mental and physical. Every emotional activity that tears down or destroys the physical is based on false thinking, in its rejection of Truth and its acceptance of beliefs and opinions that are not based in Truth.
Whether one's thinking is true or false depends upon his acceptance of the spiritual or physical as its foundation stone ; whether knowledge of the Truth or behef in physical sensation is the basis of his interpretation of sensation and appearance ; whether he reahses the one eternal God and inevitable Good in all Being and existence, or is conscious of an eternal and inevitable Duality of Good and Evil in all Bein?; and existence. The division is dear anH incisive ; there is
CORRESPONDENCES 23
no difficulty in distinguishing between the two ; whether a thought is the expression of Truth or of falsity may be determined readily. The former results in health and the latter in disease.
Those who are willing to pay the price for health may have it. The price is the letting go of false beliefs, which of necessity result in disease. Many are so obsessed with their false beliefs that they would prefer to die with them than to live without them. That is their privilege. There are many who would wilhngly pay the price if guaranteed that health would be forthcoming as a result ; but they are reluctant to let go of what they have until after they have secured the more desirable substitute. This is impossible. One must let go before he may receive ; although he may be receiving while he is letting go. What is required is an intellectual perception that will support a confidence sufficient to warrant at least a tentative acceptance of Truth. All that is required for demonstration purposes is a fair trial.
The power of thought over health and disease is dependent upon the origin and
24 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
depth of its suggestion and inspiration. Its power increases as it rises from acceptance of the physical as its basis to that of the mental, and from the mental to the spiritual. With spiritual reahsation, the One Life is given free play over its three-fold domain ; with mental consciousness one may but use that degree of the One Life that is then at his mental disposition. It is as one identifies the Self with God, the Infinite, the First Cause, that his thought acquires or is infused with the power and inspiration productive of Perfect Health.
Chapter II PURPOSES AND OBJECTS
Disease denotes false thinking, and it is recognised generally by the physical symptoms that it produces. Of necessity, this physical evidence corresponds in character with the thought that originates it.
Disease comes from within, although the occasion or opportunity for it may come from without. The physical result of accident in itself is not a disease, but accident may lead to disease by reason of false belief concerning it. Otherwise natural recupera- tive tendencies wiU make the essential adjustments.
Disease being mental, the result of false thinking, and physical symptoms being the corresponding thought forms, it is evident that the cure of disease must be mental or on the same realm as the cause. Treating results alone will have no permanent effect on results, if their cause continues to operate.
26 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
All methods of spiritual and mental healing consist of denying, affirming and realising ; or in thinking along new lines of Truth rather than old lines of falsity. Truth thoughts certainly do not invite, suggest or constitute disease ; and the object of the various healing methods is to change one's thoughts from those of falsity to those of Truth. The object of each is the same, however the methods may differ.
What is it that one is to deny ? He denies the beliefs and opinions that are not in accord with Truth. One necessarily assumes that health is normal, for it is the condition that confers peace, harmony and happiness, and all that man regards as ideal. If health is not an evidence of thoughts in accord with Truth, and Truth thoughts do not result in mental harmony and physical ease, one does not possess any criterion of Truth.
What is it that one is to affirm ? One affirms the knowledge that has its origin and basis in Truth, which is eternal and unchangeable, and not beliefs and opinions, or thoughts that are liable to change accord- ing to sensation or physical suggestion. A
PURPOSES AND OBJECTS 27
material or physical basis is fluctuating and uncertain, while the spiritual foundation of Truth knows no change or variation. Affirm- ing the eternal, one escapes from the perturbations and disturbances of essential uncertainty.
What is it that one realises ? After one has abandoned the false and affirmed the Truth, he estabUshes the Truth in con- sciousness by making it real to himself, by absorbing and appropriating it so that it becomes his permanent possession. When one realises the Truth it is no longer necessary to affirm particular formulations, although these may be desirable as suggestions or reminders to fortify or intensify one's know- ledge. He then lives the Truth !
What is the object of denying a false belief, or an opinion that results in physical disease ? The object is to erase the false thought or take it out of the mind, so that it may no longer cause the inharmony and discord that is its necessary physical result. If a denial accomplished this purpose satisfactorily, it would be a most desirable healing method ; but what it effects in this way is incomplete,
28 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
while it is followed by undesirable reactions.
One denies the beliefs and opinions he has formed regarding sensation and appearance which are regarded as being the cause of his physical symptoms of disease. It is self- evident that fear and false thinking produce mental and physical changes that are detri- mental to health and productive of disease, in that fear induces beUefs that translate them- selves into physical conditions of discord and disease. And it is equally self-evident that with the removal of fear, the discordant results of fear tend to disappear.
One of the incidental purposes of denials is the destruction of fear through the elimina- tion of its cause. Its cause is one's inter- pretation in terms of enmity and harmfulness of the sensations that have reached him, and which he is unable to repel successfully. This interpretation involves the consciousness of one's comparative weakness and therefore inability to overcome what apparently threatens, and this confession of his weakness is justified in the result.
Denials are inferior to affirmations as heahng methods owing to their negative
PURPOSES AND OBJECTS 29
character and their necessary incidental recognition of that which they deny ; and also in their result of transferring to the subconscious that which they succeed in removing from the conscious realm of thought.
The primary idea of the use of the denial is that one escapes from that which he does not recognise, and that he will not recognise what he turns away from or ignores. This seems to be the idea of the ostrich ; and it originated before the recognition of the sub- conscious attributes of the mind, the know- ledge of which has given to the denial a very subordinate role.
In its very form, the denial includes the affirmation of that which it denies. The denials : "I am not sick," " There is no physical body," " I have no pain," all affirm that which they deny, supplemented by another negative, so that a denial is practically a double negative, one seeking to cancel the other, with perhaps the unconscious purpose of a resulting affirmation, the state- ment of which is beyond one's courage or consciousness.
30 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
On the other hand, the form of the affirma- tion is direct and forcible. " I AM well," " I AM a Spiritual Being," " I AM Perfect Health," are statements that are direct, vital and constructive, and express a consciousness of power. They are in correspondence with a spiritual realisation of Oneness and Unity. They express the courage of a creative consciousness. They sound the clarion note of Truth.
The denial is adapted peculiarly to those who are exceedingly feeble in the conscious- ness of Self, particularly as a result of their intense recognition of a Principle of Duality, and their consequent belief in a Devil or Principle of Evil that may overwhelm or destroy them.
The denial is acceptable especially to those who hesitate to assert themselves to be other than a worm of the dust. Unable consciously to raise themselves above the physical condi- tions that affect them, they seek to reduce these to a relatively weaker power than their own conscious strength, and thereby enable themselves to surmount that which they had previously deprived of power over them. In
PURPOSES AND OBJECTS 31
their inability to rise, they lower the altitude of the obstacle they would surmount.
A thought may not be destroyed by mere erasure or cancellation for it has made an indelible impression in the subconscious. If thoughts are restrained forcibly by denials, their disposition is to seek freedom and expression whenever the restraining force is removed. When the thought ceases to con- sciously deny, that which was denied will reassert itself with a force and result similar to, and perhaps greater than its original impulse. It is only when false thought has been transmuted into a higher realm that it is effectually graduated from and this is neither the office nor effect of a denial.
What is the object of affirming a knowledge of Truth that results in physical ease ? The object is to impress the thought of the reality of Truth, so that it shall pervade the consciousness, thereby releasing the natural flow of the One Life from the inhibitions of falsity and restoring its free circulation. Truth possesses the qualities and attributes of affirmation and optimism, of construction and creation, of harmony and poise ; and the
32 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
establishment of thought in the knowledge of Truth produces the correspondence of these qualities in physical conditions of health.
Affirmations of Truth also serve to remove one's thought completely from physical sensa- tions and material appearance and place it in the realm of the spiritual, to transfer it from the consideration of materiality to that of spirituahty, from ideas to ideals, to expand it from the personal to the universal, and to open one to the influx of the One Life and its more complete realisation. In the forgetful- ness of the physical body one finds the spiritual Self, and in losing the consciousness of physical existence one gains the realisation of the Universal Life.
What is the object of realising the Truth ? The object is to give permanence to such thought glimpses of the Truth as one may first obtain through the seeming correspond- ence between those beliefs and opinions that are of affirmative and constructive character, and the knowledge of Truth that is perma- nently affirmative and constructive. While opinions and beliefs are not always negative and destructive, they are always uncertain
PURPOSES AND OBJECTS 33
and fluctuating, owing to their source in physical sensation.
If one has interpreted sensation and appearance affirmatively and constructively, and thereby secured a desirable condition of physical health, he will be surprised when his interpretation changes, and the same influences that previously served as accom- paniments of health become the companions of disease. It then enters his consciousness that these outer influences were but occasions or opportunities, and that his thought was the cause of both health and disease. Then one seeks that which is more permanent than behef or opinion that is founded in physical sensation, and he finds it in the knowledge that takes its inspiration from the spiritual realm of Truth.
The cause and cure of disease are both mental. The cause is false thought or in- terpretations not in tune with the Truth that constitutes the Universal Harmony. The cause of disease is thought that takes its suggestion from the physical realm, where conscious fear, doubt and weakness dominate. The cure is Truth thought or interpretations
CD
34 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
in accord with Truth, which is identified with the harmonies of the Universal Spirit, the Infinite, God. The cure of disease is thought that receives its inspiration from the spiritual realm, where consciousness of courage, faith and strength dominates permanently.
The best healing method for any particular person to adopt is the one to which he is most receptive. It is very exceptional that one is not prejudiced, in one way or another, by certain words, expressions or ideas ; and until he outgrows these limitations it were well to recognise them. One will not secure the best results from methods that are repugnant to him. The method that should incur the least opposition is the one that is broadly inclusive, that appeals to reason and common sense, and rings true to the lofty spiritual concep- tions that he at the root and from the basis of all great rehgions.
Chapter III THE FUNDAMENTAL BASIS
The individual is the unit of progress. The mass of humanity move slowly, while here and there an individual emerges from it and frees himself from the meshes of tradition and inheritance. But for this the race would continue to stagnate, and human beings would move for ever in a closed circle as do the more primitive forms of life.
It is a natural source of pride to reflect on the great strides made by man from the days when he was a savage, not far removed from the brute creation. The retrospect is only in terms of thousands of years, while this is hardly more than a milestone in the great journey of Life. There are certainly many bright hghts to be discerned in the darkness through which the race has travelled.
On the other hand, many dark spots will readily be found in the hght of our present civilisation. During recent times, especially,
35
36 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
man has progressed greatly along material lines. Science has enabled him to revise and reappraise many of his conceptions, and to cast aside some of the superstitions that had previously obstructed his path of progress. But for these contributions of physical science man would probably now be grovelling in the crude conditions that prevailed but a few centuries ago.
While the scientific spirit has invaded all aspects of hfe, to more or less degree, there are some avenues of thought that are less readily affected than others, in particular the two most conservative ones of religion and medicine. This is so because of their more intimate relation to life itself, now and in the future, and also by reason of their historical traditions.
While rehgion is basic and fundamental and may be identified with Truth itself, each particular rehgious system and institution, in the exclusiveness incidental to its very purpose, necessarily incorporates more or less error. Each admits freely the errors of the others, while closing its eyes to its own departures from the criteria of Truth.
FUNDAMENTAL BASIS 37
Religion itself is as universal as is Spirit and is essentially spiritual ; but systems and institutions have theologised and materialised religion so that a marked distinction has arisen between religious and spiritual methods. The former follow traditions and precedents, forms and ceremonies ; while the latter are as free as the Universe itself, and independent of all outside authority, taking their direction entirely from the God Within.
The medical profession has always based its conclusions on the assumption that the physical is the realm of cause, and their remedies for physical disease have been material in character. These remedies have been changed time and again, indicating clearly their lack of reliabiUty ; but until very recently mankind has almost unanimously adopted the materialistic conceptions that they represent, and have accepted generally the art of medicine as embodying the highest curative knowledge.
In the same year that Charles Darwin's " Origin of Species " precipitated a revolution in rehgious thought. Dr. Phineas P. Quimby inaugurated a science of healing that, with its
38 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
various derivative phases, has perhaps brought about as radical a change in thera- peutic thought. Mental Science, Christian Science, Divine Science, New Thought, and the various other aspects of this modem method of healing have permeated or at least influenced every department of life.
It would be entirely too much to expect that these discoveries of less than seventy years ago should have by this time overcome the traditions of long ages, or have converted the conservative institutions of knowledge formed for the very purpose of conserving these traditions. They are not only too firmly rooted in the minds of man to be so easily dislodged ; but they will doubtless long continue in the future to serve the same purpose that they have answered in the past, only to change as the new conceptions become sufficiently popular to require an adjustment to their demands.
The conceptions that have now foimd a continually increasing popular favour are that man is a Spiritual Being, that the cause of physical conditions is to be found in the mental realm, which in turn receives its
FUNDAMENTAL BASIS 39
vitality from the spiritual ; and that in thought is to be found both the cause and cure of disease. On these new old concep- tions have been founded systems of healing and curing designated as mental, spiritual, divine, etc.
Spiritual healing is based on'the realisation that Man is an Infinite Soul, at one with Universal Spirit, the Infinite, God ; partak- ing of the universal attributes and quahties, and with inherent power to exercise these to the end of securing health, harmony and happiness.
It is but natural that this conception should be mterpreted in the hght of the teachings of Jesus as set forth in the New Testament, a splendid avenue to the Truth, and the best if not the only one for those who are desirous of or able to discern Truth only through that medium. To these it is all sufficient for that purpose. But spiritual healing is not bound by or limited to any form of words or any special teaching or any particular religion. It follows a grandly broad and inclusive conception, comprehending all humanity and all rehgions.
40 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
There are no limitations or boundaries to Truth, which is as eternal as God. Never was it invented, changed or altered ; nor will it ever be eliminated or destroyed. It is impersonal and impartial, and is bounded neither by t.me nor space, nations nor religions. Nor does it depend upon any particuar words, names, forms or ceremonies.
As thought is the power that determines for each of us the degree and extent of his harmony and health, or discord and disease, it would seem eminently desirable that one should learn to govern and direct his thought, and — above all — should do his own think- ing ! There is nothing that exerts greater influence on one's hfe or can be of more importance to him.
However, the habit of thinking for oneself has never as yet become popular. It has not only never been widely encouraged, but educational institutions have always been disposed to foster the behef that such a practice is both dangerous and unprofitable. One of the results of this self-abnegation has been the acceptance of beliefs that induce and almost necessitate universal fear. This
FUNDAMENTAL BASIS 41
condition could not long prevail were Truth or Principle to be inculcated instead of the mere repetition of words.
The world is governed by fear ! Fear of pain and harm and loss of every kind, of poverty, disease, old age and death, all aggravated by the gruesome fear of a fictitious after-death Hell and Devil, offspring of the misconception of Duality of Principle.
The only escape from this ocean of falsity is an individual one. No institution will voluntarily surrender the very essence of its influence ; and racial superstition and intolerance make it difficult even for an individual to free himself from the incubus of traditional behefs.
Of late, however, a spirit of freedom has arisen that will accept nothing less than the all-inclusive and all-comprehensive — the universal. This spirit obtains its vitality from an understanding of the identity of God and Good, that in Principle there is none else but God or Good, and that when interpreted in the hght of Principle the conditions called evil will be recognised to be essentially Good.
Based on the realisation that God is One,
42 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
God is All and God is Good, that anything and everything at all times manifest the qualities and attributes of God, that Man is a Spiritual Being possessing in his thought the powers of attraction and creation ; his religion, philosophy and science have now been combined and interpreted so as to furnish an intelligent method of living productive of health, harmony and happiness. This includes a system of therapeutics that indicates the fundamental cause of disease, and prescribes its effective cure.
Chapter IV PRINCIPLE OR TRUTH
The human race is in its infancy. Man is only beginning to understand either himself or the world in which he lives. He beheves what his senses report to him. " Seeing is believing," he says. He has opinions based on sense impressions and he regards this as knowledge.
He seems to come in contact with physical objects, and his conclusions are based upon this seeming. He really knows nothing of the world outside of himself merely because of his physical contact with it. He has impressions from without and sensations from within, but these must first be interpreted before they have particular significance for him.
The interpretation that man places upon his reactions to environment is of supreme importance to him. What it will be depends upon his basis of thought, his criterion of
43
44 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
judgment, his degree of understanding. While man is free to interpret as he pleases, he cannot at any moment transcend his own knowledge of that time.
Man's form is physical but Man is not physical, and before Man may know anything his form must report it to him. He must have something to work with, and his sensations are the raw material received for this purpose. If they were susceptible of but one interpretation, sensation and knowledge would be identical, and thought would be automatic.
Only during comparatively recent years has it been conceded generally that this is a Universe of Natural Law, Principle or Truth, that never varies, is inevitable and eternal. Coupled with this, it has come to be recognised that God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit, is and must be all there is, a complete harmony and essentially beneficent. With these bases, one is better able to understand the meaning of the Truth that God is All, God is One and God is Good.
We know that whatever is of the essence of the whole must also be that of the part, that
PRINCIPLE OR TRUTH 45
whatever is fundamental to the universal must be equally true for the individual, and that the microcosm must be a complete replica of the macrocosm. There can be nothing more or less in the part than in the whole, as with a drop of water in the ocean, a grain of sand in the mountain, or an electron in each and every form.
By whatever word, name or symbol one may designate that which is all inclusive, he must regard it as the finality, as a complete harmony, and as working together for the advantage of every part of itself. The invisible essence or quality which assures and guarantees this we may call Truth or Principle, which of necessity possesses the qualities and attributes and is identified if not identical with God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit.
Principle or Truth has no beginning or ending, no comparison or relativeness, no form or appearance. It is absolute and eternal, and it animates and inspires all form and appearance. It is the Substance of all existence. It is ever and always affirmative, positive, constructive and creative. It is the
46 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
one certain guide to God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit.
Man's eternal search, is for God or Good. His approach is made along the path of Principle, which may be realised only through knowledge or understanding. Principle is not self evident, nor does it intrude itself. It is to be found only through search, by weighing beliefs and opinions, and by turn- ing away from the slower and negative vibrations to the faster and positive ones. Principle is never on the surface, nor may it be automatically discerned or understood.
From the fundamental Truth that God is One, God is All and God is Good follow all lesser Principles. It is not difficult to under- stand that God is One, a Complete Harmony, a Unit. It may readily be comprehended that God is All, the Entity that comprehends Universal Being, together with its mental expressions and its physical manifestations. It is the almost universal misconception or lack of realisation that God is Good that lies at the root of humanity's discords, inharmonies and misunderstandings. With the human race in apparent chaos it may well
PRINCIPLE OR TRUTH 47
be asked : " How can one believe that God is Good? " But this is a question that has been both asked and answered throughout the ages.
An understanding of the evolutionary growth of existent forms of life leads to the inevitable conclusion that the object of Life is growth. Growth involves and necessitates the enlargement of environment and contact with wider ranges of vibration, and these in turn extend one's capacity for conscious harmony or happiness. The object of the Universal Life is correlated with man's ever increasing ability to attain more happiness, which is man's purpose in life.
Each of us is a magnet, using thought for the purpose of attraction and creation, the latter being the process of converting the invisible to the plane of visibihty. Whatever comes to each is in response to his own invitation, for his benefit and advantage, and it is inferior in its power over him to that of its creator over it. Each circumstance, condition or environment has in it, for each one, only such aspect as h s thought has ascribed to it ; and he may dominate or control, or assimilate and harmonise with it.
48 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
Instead of a world of form, fixed, solid and relentless, this is a Universe of Spirit, that is invisible, subtle, fluidic and responsive. This invisible Universe may not be coerced by vis ble form, but it may be guided and directed by invisible thought. Principles are not compelling but permissive ; they do not impose penalties but offer opportunities. They are the universal avenues over which rolls the wealth of the Universe obedient to the call of human thought.
The Universe may be directed, governed or controlled on its own terms only. These are terms of conscious power, strength and purpose. It capitulates to the positive, con- structive and creative thought that is of its own character. It co-operates with that which sounds its own clarion note of victory. It lends itself to those who take it on terms of equality. It responds in loving kindness to those who initiate this intimate relationship.
No reaction of strength may be secured from an action of weakness. That which is received by way of return will be of the same character as that which was given out. Result will not differ essentially from cause.
PRINCIPLE OR TRUTH 49
When one allies himself with Principle his recompense will be affirmative, constructive and creative. If he associates only with sensation and appearance, his compensations will possess their illusive and delusive nature.
The assertion that God is Good is the declaration of a fundamental and eternal verity. It is Truth. At the same time, it is recognised clearly that, speaking relatively, there are innumerable degrees of both good and evil. Good and evil, as conditions and comparisons, one measures by his pleasure or pain, gain or loss, hght or darkness ; but underlying each and every condition, as a matter of fundamental purpose, is the Universal Beneficence. The essence of both relative good and relative evil is Absolute Good.
The victorious attitude is that which, while sensing conditions of health and disease, recognises their meaning and significance, and at the same time sees through them to the Perfect Health that of necessity constitutes their very essence. Then one's vision opens a way for the spiritual influx of the One Life,
Dd
50 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
which dissipates the material darkness in the intense glow of its spiritual light.
This realisation does not require any particular words, forms, ceremonies or rehgions. It is the intent that counts rather than words, the purpose rather than forms, the object rather than ceremonies, and the Truth rather than religions. The best avenue for any particular person is the one that is most acceptable to him. He will be the more readily responsive to the methods to which he is most receptive.
What is required is a spiritual understand- ing, a realisation of Truth or Principle, a rejection of materialistic misconceptions, and a vision that discerns through the diversity of appearance the fundamental Principle that is responsible for its every aspect. It is the conscious living of this Truth that secures freedom from discord and disease.
Chapter V THE DELUSION OF THE SENSES
One's senses suggest to him that he is a physical being, hving in a world of form. This is the traditional and conventional behef . It seems evident that inwardly we are all physical, and that aU is physical out- wardly. One is assured of this by his senses, for apparently he feels, tastes, smells, hears and sees only the physical. There seems to be nothing else.
The most primary forms of life had but one source of sensation, that of immediate physical touch. They knew only that with which they came in close physical contact. Gradually, and as the need arose, the other physical senses were acquired ; but funda- mentally each of them constitutes a superior form of physical contact. Man touches the visible world through his various senses ; touches it in its many aspects and at varying distances.
52 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
Existence demands activity and contact with environment. This activity produces reactions in the form of impacts or encroach- ments of environment. In turn this induces sensations, these being the raw material for one's mental workshop. A sensation is a conscious impression upon the mind, made through the senses by the objective world. Sensation deals with things that are seem- ingly independent, and it does not concern itself with their relations. It is the record of physical impressions resulting from contact with objectivity.
When the various sensations coming from contact with an outer object unite, as is their nature to, they form a mental image. On mental images are built concepts, ideas, judgments, laws and principles. The under- standing and realisation of Principle which rest upon the summit of one's thought processes, are based on mental images that are founded on sensations, so that there is a necessary relation between the base and the summit of the mountain of thought. One's understanding and realisation of Principle are results of complex mental processes that
DELUSION OF THE SENSES 53
comprise many stages of mental activity. An error introduced at any one stage is likely to continue throughout every succeeding one.
Man's first conception of himself and of the world in which he lived was based entirely on sensation, and was therefore essentially physical in character. As a physical being, it was evident that the odds were greatly against his conquest of environment. Physically he was in no condition to face the wild beasts that then covered the earth nor could he resist successfully the forces of nature that surrounded him. These accepted facts gave colour to his thoughts, so that his every sensation came to be interpreted in the light of his feelings of doubt, anxiety and fear.
In time, with his greater mental develop- ment and his inventions of weapons and other means of influencing the outside world, to a large degree man overcame his fear of wild animals and the encroachments of en- vironment. While this process was going on, however, he was developing a greater fear — the fear of other men. This fear was con- firmed by the fostered mental conception of
54 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
infinite powers possessed by assumed Gods or Infinite Beings whose powers were delegated to certain human beings, and exercised by them over the rest of their kind. It was these fears that finally dominated the Hfe of man, his thoughts of them reaching down to the sensory foundation of life as well as up to its fundamental Principles. It determined the trend and direction of all of his thought activities.
Fear became the basis of human activity, and all reports made by the senses were turned preferably into this channel. It was one that was always open and receptive, and its results justified the attitude. Any other attitude would have been equally justified, but this fact seems not to have been revealed. God, man, world, everything, was considered to be separate, apart, opposed, antagonistic and unfriendly. Even one's own physical body was ever conspiring against him, so that every sensation came under suspicion and was regarded as inimical, often even if it compelled a feeHng of pleasure. In fact, this was regarded by some as a sure sign of its deception and folly.
DELUSION OF THE SENSES 55
It is a fact, fundamentally, that one's tendency is to grow physically in the image and likeness of his ideals. One's highest ideal is God, and basically one is a miniature idea of his ideal of the Infinite. Whatever are the idealised attributes and qualities of one's God, these are the attributes and qualities that one is developing or unfolding within himself. If one's ideal of God is Infinite Life, Perfect Love, Absolute Justice, Supreme Wisdom, Unity, the tendency will be for him to express these attributes increasingly as time goes on. So, if one's ideal of God is Infinite Life and Death, Infinite Love and Hate, Diversity and Duality !
The inherited and conventional interpreta- tion of religion is founded on a behef in duality of Principle, good and evil, heaven and hell, God and Devil. This has long been, and is now, the current belief of humanity. This conception ignores, overlooks or denies Truth or Principle, and it impels an erroneous opinion or interpretation of sensa- tion. While religion has proclaimed One Principle as its foundation, it has taught and practised two ; and that conception dominates
56 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
the civilisation of to-day, and permeates every aspect of society, its laws, customs and habits of thinking.
In the infancy of the human race, it would naturally be believed that whatever caused pain was necessarily harmful and to be avoided, as being evil or opposed to one and designed for his destruction. It was to be fought, opposed and contested, it had no merit and brought no benefit ; it represented the hatred of an evil power that was greater than man. These beliefs still prevail very generally, and they have assisted powerfully to make the world a troublesome and difficult dwelling place for the human race.
Man insists tenaciously in his belief that there is an evil Power or Principle in corres- pondence with that appearance which is seemingly unfriendly to him. He loves pleasure and he hates pain, and he chngs to his belief that these represent the dual Principles of Good and Evil, or God and Devil. It is easy to believe this, and difficult to accept that which is contrary to it. From the point of view of appearance, earth and water are entirely distinct ; fundamentally,
DELUSION OF THE SENSES 57
they are both equally material and spiritual. The intellect that has not been spiritualised knows the truth only through contrast and relation, and naturally it concludes that as results are dual in appearance, they are likewise dual in Principle.
The scientific world has long since reached the understanding that this is a Universe ; that it is in every respect a Unit in Being, Principle and Purpose. While the operation of the same Principle may result in either pain or pleasure, neither of these sensations have any relation to Principle, but are solely matters of consciousness of the hves that experience them. The Principles that inhere in and direct the Universe possess its characteristics of Unity, but when their operations result in sensation, the human consciousness classes these as being the product of good or evil principles according to the pleasure or pain that accompany them.
A deeper realisation of essential Unity enables one to comprehend that the quality of the Cause must inhere in the result, that the part must possess the character of the Whole, that the outside must be in correspondence
58 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
with the inside, and that although opinion may interpret sensations as destructive and evil, understanding realises them to be ever and always representative of and essentially Good !
To secure one's freedom it is essential that he interpret sensation in the light of Truth, knowing that whatever his opinion of it may be, it is essentially Good. In a Universe that is ever and always Good, all of its activities possess the same character, and in the Hght of this understanding they will be interpreted as affirmative, constructive and creative. When so interpreted, one is justified by results ; for in that consciousness sensations do not become harmful or destructive.
Each experience, with its various sensations, has a good and sufficient cause ; it comes to one because he has called for it by his thought and actions ; its result is an experience that contains a lesson for him that will be beneficial ; it is always within one's power to meet successfully the experience he attracts ; it must answer a purpose that will be useful to him. With this understanding it is quite possible to meet smilingly each experience,
DELUSION OF THE SENSES 59
even though it assumes an unpleasant aspect and brings painful sensations. All right ; it comes for a good purpose, its lesson is to be learned and its good extracted ; and then it will disappear of its own accord after a minimum of pain and suffering.
The diseases of humanity are the products of erroneous interpretation of sensation and appearance. There is nothing essentially harmful in a breath of fresh air, for example. On the contrary, there is everything beneficial and life-giving. It can be harmful only as the behef in harm is thought into it. Then one " catches a cold," which will thereafter assume such proportions as one thinks into it. That is the method whereby one originates appendicitis, cancer and other similar dis- cords. One has sensations that he relates to a particular brand of disease, that has been pictured and defined, and he stamps this picture into his physical organism. The racial thought aids and abets him ; and rely- ing on opinion rather than understanding and sensation instead of Truth, humanity has conventionalised its disease thoughts and standardised them.
6o CONQUEST OF DISEASE
The Truth is that this is a spiritual Universe, and that the physical senses are always delusive unless interpreted with spiritual understanding. A person (or ex- perience) approaches, its unknown or un- certain aspect suggesting anxiety or fear ; if interpreted in fear it constitutes a danger, while if accepted with Faith it becomes a protection. In its freedom of choice, the unmellowed intellect must learn through experience and mistake ; and its inclination is to accept everything at its face value. This requires the least effort of thought, and it is the disposition of the intellect to make the minimum of exertion. It is only when one seeks escape from the pains and penalties of experiences and mistakes that he realises the delusion of the senses, and acquires that insight which enables him to see through it to the Truth that it represents.
It is the understanding of Truth that alone win free one from sense delusion. Truth is Universal ; it penetrates to the smallest thing even while it encircles the largest. The Truth of the Universe is the Truth of sensa- tion. It is only human ignorance that, in its
DELUSION OF THE SENSES 6i
erroneous beliefs and opinions, manufactures its own discords and diseases. Tradition, convention, and special interests all contribute to perpetuate this condition. But the in- dividual may rise above all of these influences, and in the realisation of Truth may come to see clearly through the delusions that apparently seek to enslave him.
The result of sensation is one's conception of it materialised. Do we credit sensation as representing that which is evil and destruc- tive, it takes corresponding physical form ; and our thought has accomplished that whereunto it was sent. When we realise it as essentially friendly and beneficent, its results warrant our assumption.
Pains do not come haphazard, nor as punishments. Their office is to warn, to direct, to guide, and to save one from the danger of further unwise thought or action. Otherwise, one might rush to his destruction without knowing that he was even moving in that direction. Surely one may reasonably be grateful for a timely warning, even if it is not particularly pleasing to be reminded of one's discordant habits of thought.
62 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
One may even be grateful for unpleasant sensations and experiences when he knows that their intent and purpose are eminently friendly, and their ultimate result will be to his advantage. The attitude and thought of gratitude are most conducive to health ; and if, when one is in pain, he will take that attitude, and keep his thought of love and peace centred on the part afflicted, at once there will set up a tendency toward recovery, which may at times restore complete harmony.
Man's delusion consists in his accepting sensation as having power within itself, and in his non-recognition that it is his thought that confers whatever power it possesses. When one's thought is centred in the reahsa- tion of Truth, so that he recognises Principle in every aspect of Life, his thought will be permanently creative and constructive, he will have transcended the delusions of the senses, and he will manifest the perfect health, harmony an happiness that is his divine birthright.
Chapter VI THE ILLUSION OF APPEARANCE
We live in a Universe of Principle, and at the same time in a worid of appearance. Principle is unital, eternal, and unchange- able ; while appearance is dual or diverse, temporary and forever changing. Across a background that is always constant, passes a moving picture that is in incessant motion and change. It is a Spiritual Life that lives both universally and individually ; that it is wholly physical is the great illusion. When the spiritual appeals to sensory impression it is recognised as being physical, but the seeming two are in Reality one.
Appearance is of the world of the senses. One's knowledge of appearance is based on the reports concerning it given to him through the senses. One does not know what it is, other than what it seems to him to be. WHiat he interprets it to be depends not upon what it is, but how his senses report it to 63
64 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
him, and what his thought makes of the report. Each one hves in a different world of appearance, for each makes his own world.
The interpretation of appearance is of the greatest importance, for it constitutes the world of form in which one exists, and his thought concerning it will surely react on him in correspondence with his conception of it. His conception of it will dictate his activities in relation to it, and thereby determine the degree of his discord or harmony with it.
As harmony with appearance is essential to one's health and happiness, it is of the utmost consequence that one secure it. If both physical man and the world of form were fixed quantities, there might be but little difficulty about this ; but neither is static. Man makes his own world by his thought regarding it, and man is forever changing his thoughts and therefore his world in which he hves. If man is to continue to relate himself to appearance with any great degree of harmony, he must have a fixed standard of interpretation, and appearance does not provide such a standard.
ILLUSION OF APPEARANCE 65
The only permanent or fixed standard is that of Principle, the underlying substance of all appearance. It is the invisible Truth that never varies, and the operating Cause of aU that is visible. It always acts in the same manner under the same conditions. It is affirmative, positive and constructive, and it possesses the harmony and beneficence that are attributes of the Infinite.
Man interprets appearance usually in the light of his inherited, traditional and con- ventional fears. He regards it as representa- tive of dual and opposing Principles. He looks upon it as denoting a fighting world, where good and evil are ever in conflict, and physical opposition and resistance are eternal verities. Accordingly, he fights whatever he comes in contact with ; and as action and reaction are always equal and from opposite directions, his world is one of constant or at least intermittent discord and inharmony.
Fear attends a feeling that one wiU be harmed in some way, either by physical pain or loss of some character ; and doubtless there is cause for fear if one regards himself as
Ed
66 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
unable to cope successfully with his environ- ment. If one regards the Universal as being in an eternal conspiracy to injure or destroy him, is he not warranted in entertaining fear ? If there is a Power or Principle of Evil, must not one be in constant doubt and anxiety regarding its possible encroachments ?
One can see appearance ; he must under- stand Principle. When he understands Principle, he interprets appearance differently from what he senses it to be ; and when he understands appearance he interprets it in the light of Principle. Principle is unital, affirmative, constructive and creative ; and appearance is the exemplification of Principle. In its essence, therefore, appearance has all of the attributes of Principle, and does not possess any qualities that need to instil fear. All of the fear that is contained in appearance is the thought of fear that one puts into it. Fear of appearance is fear of one self, the product of one's belief in his own weakness.
Each one is a magnet, having such powers of attraction as his thought forces have stored up ; and as one gives out he attracts an equivalent return. His thought forces are
ILLUSION OF APPEARANCE 67
creative of circumstances, conditions and environment, and as these contact him they bring about his experiences. What he shall make of these depends upon how he reacts to them, in what attitude he meets them, how he interprets them. If one regards them as opponents and enemies, as being unfriendly and antagonistic, and as representative of an adverse Power, then he has credited them with a strength that he should have attributed to himself, and he has enslaved himself to the power he has placed outside of himself.
Each one is the creator of his own ex- periences ; he reaps what he has sown and he interprets what he receives. One seldom knows what he has sown in the way of thought causes, and all he knows of what he receives is what he thinks it to be. If he thinks in terms of Principle, his experiences may be greatly at variance with what they would be did he think in terms of appearance. And yet, other than his attitude of mind, all of the factors of the experiences would be the same. All that is necessary to put a new and different light on an experience is to look at it differently. As a rule appearance wears
68 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
a mask of unfriendliness, but when looked at with eyes of love and sympathy this mask vanishes from appearance, and one discerns its harmonious correspondence with his own mental attitude.
Each one being the creator of his own experiences, and these being the result of the attitude with which he receives the results of his thought activities, each may meet and overcome the products of his own creative powers. The creator is mightier than that which he has created. Not only this ; but in the light of Principle it becomes evident that the factors of experience represent the needs of the one to whom they come and seek their creator in order to pay homage to him. They come as opportunities for his further growth, as tests to increase his strength, and as the needed incentives to purposeful action. They are his friends, and cannot but behave as such if they are greeted in that spirit.
When one reaHses the friendliness of appearance, there is no further desire to avoid it. When one is no longer looking for trouble in meeting experiences or contacting environment, he does not attract it. He
ILLUSION OF APPEARANCE 69
expects friendliness, and he is not dis- appointed. In this attitude, he recognises the uselessness of seeking to avoid experiences, or of attempting to ignore them by the use of denials. Even if they may be avoided for the time being, this would but postpone the lesson of to-day, and add it unnecessarily to the lesson of to-morrow. Enough for the day is the lesson thereof !
The only sting in experience is that which one puts into it. The Soul realises its own ability to meet successfully whatever it may contact. If there was not something within one possessing this consciousness, he would be content with defeat at the hands of that which he conceded to be more powerful than himself, for nothing else might reasonably be expected. But the Soul resents one's con- sciousness of weakness, and when he fails to meet experience as a victor, there is an inner feeling that he has not been true to the Self ; and one's intellect ignorantly places the blame on that which is outside of himself. When one satisfies the Soul-realisation of its power and acts as a conqueror, there is no sting in experience.
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The fundamental Principle that God Is — or that God Is One, God Is All and God Is Good, or that the Universe is a com- plete beneficient harmony — inheres in all appearance. What is true of the Whole is equally true of the part, and the qualities and attributes of Principle are likewise those of appearance. Appearance is Principle on the plane of form, subject to interpretation by the physical senses. Man has been left entirely free to relate himself to appearance as he may be disposed, and in his exercise of this freedom of choice and the results that ensue, he grows and develops by acquiring a wider knowledge and extracting a deeper wisdom.
When one recognises the folly of the belief in Duality, or the recognition of rival Powers of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Health and Disease ; when one understands that there is but One Power or the essential Unity of all Power, ever and always repre- senting Good, Light and Health ; he comes to see that co-operation rather than opposition and love rather than hate are the dominant characteristics of the Universe. With this recognition one comes to live a life of
ILLUSION OF APPEARANCE 71
co-operation and love, and allies himself consciously with the affirmative, positive and creative forces of the Universe.
And then what becomes of evil, darkness and disease ? Are they nothing ? If they were nothing, they would require no considera- tion. They represent physical states or con- ditions that one has brought into form by the creative power of his thought, as he has been assisted by racial beliefs ; and these forms may be dissolved and dissipated by the same power that brought them into existence. One may withdraw the thought that occasioned them, and he may also acquire the understanding that will sweep away completely all traces of darkness and disease. These have been essential to the evolution of humanity, their purpose is good ; but like all matters of form, they are meant to be graduated from, to be outgrown, to be superseded.
What is to take their place is the full realisation of the fundamental truth that God is Good in expression as well as in Being, that the Universe in its care of itself is in a constant conspiracy to do good to all of its parts. The
72 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
life of each and all of us is the Infinite Life, received and expressed as conditioned at the time by one's degree of understanding ; and freedom of choice has been accorded as to what one shall make of it. In accepting appearance as Truth he has met with constant pain and suffering ; in his deeper understand- ing he discards this false guide in favour of the light of Principle.
In this hght, life takes on a new aspect. One sees no more of the hideous masks, the distortions of his fear thoughts, that formerly met him at every turn. He now looks through appearance and not merely at it. In and through it all he discerns the truth, the beauty and the love of Life. He recognises the co-operation and sympathy of the universal activities. He has transmuted his thoughts from the standard of appearance to that of Principle. He has disposed of the illusions within himself, and therefore no longer finds illusion in appearance. He has illumined himself interiorly, and sheds this light on the path before him. He has made his peace with appearance in his Oneness with Principle and his harmony with the Divine Law !
Chapter VII THE OBSESSION OF FEAR
It is axiomatic that God Is — that God Is One, God Is AH and God Is Good. God is the harmonious, universal, loving Entity. This is the fundamental Truth. One must either accept this conception or reject it, and its rejection leaves the mind in the darkness of chaos. Its acceptance carries with it many logical conclusions and necessary implica- tions.
If God is One, All, and Good or Love, the opposite cannot represent or express Truth. If this fundamental is accepted, there cannot be anything that, in itself, warrants or demands that one fear it. Any statement that requires or necessitates fear does not express Truth. Any claim that warrants or demands fear is a claim that represents error. It expresses opinion or belief and not know- ledge.
Tested by this standard, many of the
74 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
traditional and inherited statements that are accepted almost universally do not express Truth, but represent rather prejudices and superstitions that our ancestors received and passed on to their successors with but slight change. Their predecessors had done like- wise, and the comparatively microscopic period covered by the lives of those now existing but thinly covers a deep and dark background of vast ages of animal, savage and childish lore, overlaid by later heritages from the various epochs of human civilisa- tions.
The physical body of man is a museum of outgrown and aborted antiquities ; and mentally he is similarly constituted. As man was not conscious of the gradual loss of physical functions or faculties that he was outgrowing during the course of his develop- ment, he made no attempt to retain them ; otherwise he would doubtless have obstructed his progress by clinging to them. He has compensated for this neglect along physical lines by his retention of mental behefs and opinions that have long since become unsuited to his later development and unfoldment.
OBSESSION OF FEAR 75
Fear is founded predominantly on tradi- tional beliefs and conventional opinions that do not possess the quality of Truth, or have been outgrown and graduated from ; and fear lies at the root of all inharmony and disease. These beliefs and opinions are calculated largely to teach, suggest, necessitate, warrant or demand fear. Most of our inherited religious beliefs, medical opinions, economic practices, and social customs are impregnated and surcharged with fear thought ; so much so that it would be difficult to imagine the basis changes in our civilisation that must inevitably take place were man freed from the atmosphere of fear that now envelops him.
The mists that becloud man's mental vision are certainly not due to his knowledge, his understanding or his realisation of Truth. If he is beset with darkness it is not because of the light of Principle. His expressions of inharmony and manifestations of disease do not originate in his realisation that God is Good or God is Love. His mistakes and misunderstandings find no correspondence in the Truth that God is One and God is All.
76 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
Man finds in the inherited racial thoughts of the day so much to incite fear that he has no occasion to seek for it along any other avenue. In fact, it would be difficult for him to find any source of fear that has not already been appropriated for that purpose or to that end. There are comparatively few traditional beliefs or opinions that inculcate and stimu- late faith and love, or the fundamentals that underlie these. This is not surprising in beliefs and opinions that are almost without exception founded in the false conception of Duality.
It is extremely difficult if not impossible to destroy or eliminate an opinion or belief, as though it had never existed. The con- tinuance in the individual mind of ancient racial conceptions suggests that opinions and beliefs are wonderfully persistent. In the building up of the human body, faculties and functions that have been outgrown and superseded still persist in perverted and abortive forms. So in the mind with out- grown conceptions ; they persist, only to fade away very gradually as higher values overlay them and become increasingly dominant.
OBSESSION OF FEAR ^^
Traditions and conventions are not to be fought, opposed or contested ; they are not even to be denied or ignored ; they may be false or true ; they are to be examined, analysed and considered both in the light of opinion and of Principle ; if founded in opinion alone they are to be rejected ; if they inculcate and demand fear they are to be forsworn ; if they inspire faith and love they at least represent a constructive attitude of mind ; and if founded on unchangeable Principle they should be accepted as state- ments of fundamental Truth.
Inherited behefs and traditional opinions have their value, use and purpose ; they could not be very well dispensed with as such ; they serve as a foundation, even if unstable, for truer conceptions and deeper realisations ; they represent the historical attainments of average humanity ; and they furnish the support for the greater knowledge and wisdom that eventually wiU take their place. Facts similar to those that suggested beliefs and opinions that are inherited will have to be considered, and it is useful to know the racial conception in order that one may transcend it.
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The fact that a racial conception is sanctified by age is no proof of its infaUibihty. Rather is it evidence of its origin in the thought of more primitive man, when his conceptions were bounded by a comparatively crude knowledge and limited understanding. If humanity has progressed from primitive times, and surely no one can doubt that this is the fact, certainly man should have a greater knowledge now than then. If so, why should humanity of to-day bow down and reverence as the loftiest expression of supreme wisdom the ideas and conceptions of its comparative infancy ?
Man of to-day cannot reverence the wisdom of past ages without possessing the record of that wisdom. The record he has possesses no inherent value, because of its age, other than if it were of to-day's origin. Its value is in its productiveness of health and whole- ness, in the possession of which humanity is conspicuously lacking.
Moreover, man has the records of the past on which to build. All that he knows of the knowledge and wisdom of the past, he possesses in the record. Can he know less
OBSESSION OF FEAR 79
than his ancestors did, when all that they knew constitutes but the foundation of his present knowledge ? In the domain of natural science it is now admitted generally that the knowledge of the past was nothing more than shifting behef and opinion. This admission has come gradually, only after strenuous conflict and continued opposition ; and it may confidently be expected that the inherited beliefs and opinions concerning the more conservative and personal aspects of life wiU be changed only after at least as great a struggle.
In the fearful conflict of the World War many ancient beliefs and opinions were shattered, or are least so discredited that they could no longer be reverenced as Truth. Revolution superseded evolution, and destruc- tion was enthroned in the place of construc- tion. Much was destroyed, while but little was constructed to replace that which had perished. The opportunity is now afforded of meeting the new conditions with conceptions based on the firm foundation of Principle.
Such conceptions will breathe love, sym- pathy, kindness, co-operation and harmony
8o CONQUEST OF DISEASE
among men, and their realisation will elimi- nate all necessity for fear. Fear is incidental to all conceptions founded in Duality, and the elimination of this belief will remove all occasion for fear. Why fear the God of Love ? Why fear a Son of the God of Love, and why fear if one is a Son of the God of Love ? If Love is always dominant and ever enveloping, surely no one need fear that which, of necessity, is of the nature of Love !
The facts that suggest fear when interpreted by fear-thought, will merely impel greater caution or activity when construed in the light of reason and knowledge. Whatever of benefit fear may suggest can be induced to greater advantage by courage and faith. While fear may impel self protection from threatened danger, it detracts from one's power to accomplish this purpose ; while courage and faith can more effectually meet any situation that requires purposeful activity.
Love and Faith are the outcome of in- dividual thought, founded on Principle. It is essential that one think for himself, and not merely the thoughts and words of others ; accepting inherited thoughts only when they
OBSESSION OF FEAR 8i
are representative of Truth. Tradition should not be discarded indiscriminately, but one should turn away from it resolutely as soon as it discerned to ring false to the harmony of Principle.
Self-appreciation, Self-estimation, Self- valuation and Self-recognition are products of the realisation of Oneness with God. When, through understanding of Principle, one realises that God's Life is his Life, and that his thoughts are in accord with the Infinite, he becomes the embodiment of Faith and Love, he knows no fear for he is in harmony with every other Self, and he acquires the supreme Self-control that gives him power over all that affects him, through obedience to the higher impulse that inspires him.
It is idle to deny fear, and unnecessary to affirm it. In the light of Principle the dark- ness of error disappears, and fear goes with it. In the radiance of Truth all trace of error vanishes into apparent nothingness. Fear evidences an attitude of mind that fails to realise fundamental Truth, accepting a basis of illusion or delusion rather than of Reality.
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" All our experiences are fitting us to do our individual work. We may seem far indeed from that work as we plod along, mistaking our bodies for ourselves, regarding heredity and environment as the leading influences that shape us, meanwhile striving as we do for a living amidst materialistic competition. We may seem equally far from spiritual things when we are ill from diseases which appear to be bodily maladies and nothing more. But anon the intuition of some one gifted in spiritual healing may bring us a new insight. We may come to regard the spirit as the real man. We may see that spiritual influences are real causes. We may learn that heredity and influences coming from the world can be thrown off. Then in time we may come to see the meaning of the long years of our bondage, may see that all our experiences can be turned to account.
" Horatio W. Dresser : " Spiritual Health and Healing."
Chapter VIII KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION
In order to reach an intelligent under- standing of result, it is essential that one should comprehend its allied cause. One may experiment with result and thereby possibly find some method of treatment satisfactory for the moment, but necessarily this will be haphazard and devoid of permanent guidance. Disease is a result, and in order that it may be understood rightly and conquered, it is essential that its cause be comprehended and interpreted correctly.
Causes are imbedded deeply and not readily discerned, while results are on the surface and may not be overlooked. Causes demand intelligent investigation, whereas results appeal to the ignorance of opinion. Causes are in the realm of the invisible, and they are manifested as results in the world of visibility.
Ultimate Cause is far removed from manifested result. Simple as an appearance 83
84 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
may seem to be, behind it will be found miracles that one may but dimly comprehend. The processes and methods that have become commonplaces are no less miraculous than those which still seem mysterious and profound. Dig deep enough anywhere, and inevitably one reaches a realm too vast to encompass, and mysteries too profound to fathom.
Back of the material is the immaterial, and beneath the visible is the invisible. Behind the physical is the mental, and back of that the spiritual. The outside appearance is but a portrayal of the inner Principle. As it is only when the shell of the nut is cracked that the meat is revealed, so it is only when the shell of appearance has been pierced that the Infinite may be discerned.
The Infinite, God, Universal Spirit, is invisible. The Infinite Life, the Infinite Intelligence, is invisible. The Soul and the Mind are invisible. Thought is invisible. The ocean of invisible hfe surrounds and envelops us on all sides ; it infiltrates and interpenetrates us. There is but One Life, and one lives that life for there is none other
KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION 85
to live ; and one who lives that One Life is also part of it.
The Universal Life and Infinite Intel- ligence, in its Supreme Wisdom and Divine Purpose, evidently decreed that certain of its vibrations should take on varying degrees of lessening activity, thereby establishing what are interpreted respectively as spiritual, mental and physical, with their many differentiations. So vastly contrasting in texture and refinement are these differing gradations that usually they have been interpreted as constituting entirely separate realms having little if any relation to one another.
If would seem that the purpose of this differentiation was to enable each particle of the Universal Life to secure the Universal Consciousness in increasing degree, and to confer upon such of these particles as might be entitled to it, under prescribed terms and conditions, the capacity for unlimited indi- vidual Cosmic Consciousness. The exercise of this capacity creates the conditions required for the higher realisations of health, harmony and happiness.
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The Universal Life, in its highest aspects and intensities, makes use of its lesser velocities as avenues of expression ; the Soul energises its mind, which in turn vitalises its physical body. The Universal Life invades the mind to the degree that its devel- opment permits, and the conscious and sub- conscious effects are determined by the thoughts in which the mind indulges. These effects, by some divine alchemy, take internal and external form, and determine one's personahty.
It seems apparent that some interpreter and moderator is necessary between the Universal Life and its physical form. The Spirit is too intense in its vibrations for direct invasion of the physical. It requires some inter- mediate instrument that will transmute its vibrations into the lower chords that the physical organism is capable of receiving without destruction to itself. The mind is the receiver of the Spirit that tones down its activities to the point where it may with safety be transmitted to the physical.
The form that the Universal Life assumes is determined by the quahty and quantity of
KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION 87
the thought that directs it. The physical takes on the character of the thought that fashions it. This is determined primarily by the source of its inspiration ; whether it is Spirit or form, Principle or appearance, realisation or sensation.
If man's thought is based in the Universal Life, he thinks in terms of Principle, the fundamental conception of which is, " God Is " ; and, as expressed in its threefold aspect, " God Is All, God Is One and God Is Good." This foundation of Principle is eternal, changeless, and invariable. It is ever and always creative, optimistic and constructive. It represents and manifests Perfect Health.
When one's thoughts are based perma- nently on Principle, they are persistently positive and affirmative ; they mirror the one- ness of life, the harmony of life, and the love and kindness of life ; they are universal and inclusive ; they are one-pointed and ever directed toward the eternal verities. They cannot fail to picture forth the character of their Source.
But man's form, the habitation of his Soul, has had its evolutionary growth, and his
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conscious thought has had its development through the experience of the senses. Before he had any conscious reahsation of the Universal Life, his sole guide was sensation, and his interpretation of appearance. He followed opinion that was founded on suggestion from the world of form, as he came in contact with it.
With his evolutionary growth, man accumulated a mass of assumed knowledge that was based on his experiences and opinions, and this knowledge has been altered, changed or intensified from age to age. Man's knowledge of to-day represents the accumulations of past ages of experiences based on opinions, which have been inherited in the form given to them by convention, custom and habit.
Principle, on the spiritual realm, is ever one and the same ; while appearance, on the physical plane, is always diverse or at least dual. What is usually regarded as knowledge is founded on contrast, comparison and relation ; and it is variety and differentiation that appeals to the senses. Knowledge founded on appearance is a matter of
KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION 89
opinion, and subject to change, for it is always open to interpretations that are contrary and directly opposed to one another. It requires some degree of understanding or wisdom to interpret appearance always in terms of Principle. To do this, one must know that whatever is visioned from the view-point of the Universal is always and inevitably Good, whether it seems to be good or evil from the personal point of view.
In the absence of a sufficient depth of un- derstanding, and in the light of the constant fears and destructive emotions excited by environment and sensation, man has habitually interpreted appearance as antago- nistic and opposed to himself, as inimical and destructive to his health, as the messenger of disease and inharmony, and as the instigator of unhappiness and misery. He catalogued an encyclopaedia of beliefs and opinions founded on his erroneous interpretations, and all calculated to confirm his fear of fears — the fear of death.
In the light of Truth, it is evident that any interpretation of appearance that assumes it to be of a destructive or pessimistic nature
90 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
is contrary to Principle, and it represents a belief that has nothing to support it other than the opinion of ignorance. Any inter- pretation of appearance that characterises it as opposed to health, harmony or happiness is devoid of Truth, and yet such is the power of thought that it justifies the interpretation given to it to the extent of assuming physical form that is in correspondence with it.
All thought tends to take on physical form in correspondence with the mental inter- pretation or picture held in the mind. If founded on Principle, the physical form wiU represent the three-fold aspects of the Infinite ; if based on appearance it may be destructive or constructive, but in either event it does not possess the character of permanence. It is because of this element of impermanence and lack of substantiaJ basis, that the effects of destructive thought may be changed, eliminated or destroyed.
All thought is creative. Thoughts of Truth create constructively ; thoughts of falsity create destructively. No Truth thought is destructive, and no false thought is con- structive. Destruction is the result of false
KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION 91
thought, and construction the result of Truth thought. When one lets go of false thinking and substitutes for it thoughts of Truth, destruction stops and construction takes its place. But as long as one indulges in thoughts that are not in accord with Divine Law, with the great Eternal Facts of the Universe, disease is inevitable.
One's erroneous thought takes form in correspondence with his individual opinions, which are dominated and controlled largely by racial beliefs. The inherited racial behefs serve as the foundations for our opinions and — speaking generally — traditional and conventional beliefs meet with but httle resistance, and are accepted with but slight opposition.
More than aU else, man has had forced upon him by inheritance and environment beliefs, opinions, thought dispositions and attitudes of mind. Life makes it easy for him to exist with but shght conscious thought, upon which it places a premium both in value and effort. One may permit subconscious inheritances and later acquisitions to fetter him in their enslaving coils, or he may assert
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his freedom, direct his own fate, and guide his conscious thought along paths of self- dominion and mastery.
It is a widespread belief that whatever has heretofore been accepted as facts must represent the Truth. This is one of the cherished beliefs of ignorance and indolence. It has not even the merit of the worship of one's ancestors, who were at least facts. To a large extent, it merely represents the accumulations of average ignorance that have been conserved that they may be dissipated in the hght of a higher intelhgence.
If all men had ever been satisfied to accept tradition and convention as final expressions of Truth, progress would have been thwarted and prevented by a universal conservatism. In such event, barbarism and savagery would even now be the condition of mankind. The saviours of man from time to time have been those who have defied tradition and conven- tion, and eventually changed and modified these for the benefit of future generations, the radicahsm of one age tending to become the conservatism of a later one.
Chapter IX THE REVERSAL OF POLARITY
The transition from disease to health is the result of a reversal of one's thought polarity. Disease is erroneous thought, and its error consists in its material misconceptions due to its basing its beliefs and opinions on physical sensation. It is negative or receptive to material suggestions, and positive or repellant to spiritual impressions. The reversal of polarity places one under spiritual guidance, and results in physical health.
Similarly, one changes his conscious rela- tion to circumstances or environment when he ceases to regard it as aggressive and inimical, and turns toward it the thought of co-operation and friendliness. One's attitude meets with a response of similar character, he creates friendship where enmity would otherwise manifest, and he secures a con- sciousness of harmony instead of disease.
The world of appearance is to each one
93
94 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
exactly what he interprets it to be, and every aspect of it has its positive and negative poles. Harmony may be secured with exterior conditions by the conscious determination of one's polarity ; being negative to the positive poles of appearance and positive to the negative poles.
It is not suggested that this is always desir- able, for it may be quite advantageous to bring about a reversal of polarity outside of oneself instead of within, to the mutual benefit of all concerned. The mind that is attuned in the knowledge of Truth wiU be guided intuitively in this respect, so that one's response will become quite automatic.
It is not in a spirit of weakness that one should accommodate his polarity to that of an- other or of circumstances or conditions, but rather in the reahsation of his superior strength. It is not that one would disarm another of his means of offence, but that one would take from him all inchnation to use his offensive weapons.
This attitude carries no outward coercion with it, but it inspires a responsive acquiescence in the invitation conveyed by its
REVERSAL OF POLARITY 95
silent thought of Love and Faith. This attitude represents an inner reahsation of power to which a purely physical conscious- ness pays ready homage.
The mental is the pivot for the physical and the spiritual. It is the teeter or see-saw determining how they are balanced against each other. While it separates the physical from the spiritual, it also serves to unite them ; and it is the moderator and transmitter of spiritual power. One of its functions is to transmute spiritual vibrations into terms of voltage that the physical body is capable of receiving without disintegration, for the body is unable to assimilate direct spiritual power and requires the intervention of the mentality as an intermediary.
Life is essentially One, and the three aspects of Soul, mind and body are essentially One. One is harmonious who lives the three- fold aspects of his life in mutual agreement ; and this can be only when the Soul dominates the mind which in turn controls the body. The control must be from the higher or more fundamental aspects. The Life of Harmony or Oneness may be depicted as follows :
96 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
SPIRITUAL MENTAL PHYSICAL
Here the current of life flows without inter- ruption or opposition from the spiritual into the mental and thence into the physical, the positive pole of each higher plane contacting the negative pole of the next lower.
When the Soul flung itself into the material realm, it made the physical body the found- ation of its evolutionary or manifested life ; governed by sensory suggestions or in- citements. At first the reactions to these were almost if not wholly physical, but in time mentality functioned more and more until, with increasing complexity of life forms, what is known as intellect was developed. Over vast periods of time intellect has received practically all of its suggestions, in- formations, guidance and knowledge from the sensory side of life ; and it has believed in and accepted as facts those experiences only that could be weighed and tested in the laboratory of the senses.
REVERSAL OF POLARITY 97
The higher planes of Ufe were governed by the lower, and the mental life was sub- ordinated to the physical. In general this is the present condition of human life, which may be represented somewhat aptly as follows :
SPIRITUAL MENTAL PHYSICAL
Here the mental receives its impulses to thought and action from sense impressions and suggestions, while it points its positive pole toward the similar pole of the spiritual aspect of life ; refusing to accept spiritual suggestions, and seeking to bring the higher aspect of life to its own lower level. Not only this ; but the mind is both conscious and subconscious, and includes both intellect or reason and emotion or feeling, and the suggestions of the physical affect the feelings before they reach the intellect, so that the guides to intellect are not only sense
Gd
98 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
impressions, but emotions that have been influenced by these, represented as follows :
MENTAL
''^=^
SPIRITUAL INTELLECT-EMOTION PHYSICAL CONSCIOUS— SUB-CONSCIOUS
In his false pride of intellect, man has sought to dominate the spiritual by the mental and has insisted upon a polarity that rejects spiritual guidance and illumination. The result of this false polarity has been the continued acceptance through long ages of assumed facts and ideas that are essentially erroneous, and yet ring true to man's false standpoint. Man's vision being distorted, the crooked seems to be straight and the straight appears to be crooked. He cherishes many misconceptions, and summarily rejects the higher conceptions of Truth.
The consummation of the spiritual hfe must be a conscious harmony of all aspects of life, based on the realisation of the Soul as
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the fundamental inspiration, with mind as its interpreter to the body. This conscious- ness must include the recognition of the intellect as an essential factor in life, and the knowledge that the body is the ultimate instrument of Spirit, designed and fit to shine resplendent in spiritual glory. The one obstacle to this consummation is the insistent wrongful polarity of intellect in relation to the Soul.
The Soul may invade only such mental premises as are receptive to its influence and character, and it may not intrude on the intellect except as it is invited. But the intellect is unlikely to extend an invitation until it has been so buffeted and battered by unpleasant experiences that it is humiliated and its pride humbled in the recognition of the falsity of its conclusions, because of its dependence on delusive and illusive sense im- pressions. In meekness and sadness of mind, and with bruised and injured body, one then becomes receptive to the spiritual influences which may enter to comfort and console.
The spiritual hfe does not deprecate or underrate the intellect ; but cultivates, refines
100 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
and elevates its character so that it turns its face away resolutely from physical guidance and domination, and opens its countenance to the sunshine of spiritual regard. Then the intellect ceases to build a false and fanciful spiritual world founded on intellectual ideas that are based on its assumed knowledge of physical facts, and in place of misconceptions of separation and exclusiveness adopts ideals that are universal and all-inclusive.
Then the spiritualised intellect interprets seeming separation in terms of Unity, it rests secure on the eminently solid foundation of intangible and invisible Reality instead of the insecure and unstable impressions of the senses. It substitutes knowledge for belief and opinion, and penetrates the disguises of appearance so that they no longer delude and mislead ; it visions the ideal in the actual and the spiritual in the physical, and now unites rather than separates ; it identifies the physical with its spiritual Source and thus closes the gap in the chasm of life ; and it finds its true function in bringing together the trinity of life into One Harmonious Whole.
Chapter X
THOUGHT INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL
Man does not merely use his brain in thinking ; he thinks all over himself. While he has grey matter distributed in more or less bulk at certain favoured spots, a careful examination will discover some tints of grey at almost any centre of activity. As matters of distinctive contrast, man thinks with his brain and he thinks with his " heart."
The One Mind, God, the Infinite, reveals itself through countless Individual Minds, each of which, more or less unconsciously, possesses all of the attributes and qualities of the One Mind. The One Mind has complete consciousness of its Divinity and Perfection, functions in Perfect Self-contemplation, Self- expression and Self-love, and has the privilege of Absolute Selection and Initiative. The Individual Mind, through the same agencies, unfolds gradually from an utter
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unconsciousness of its Divinity and Perfection ever nearer to a complete consciousness of them.
The Individual Mind, with deepening consciousness of its divinity and perfection, through Self-contemplation, expresses itself with increasing approach toward perfect Self-expression and Self-love. This perfect- ing Self-expression and Self-love directs the consciousness of the Individual Mind from the personal to the impersonal, from self- ishness to altruism, from egotism to egoism, and from recognition of the small self to that of the large Self. Perfect Self-contemplation, Self-expression and Self-love by the Individual Mind would denote a complete consciousness of its divinity and perfection.
The two divine attributes of God, those of Knowledge and Love, Mind and Feeling, masculine and feminine, are exemplified in Man in his intellectual and emotional think- ing. The former is presided over by his cerebro-spinal system and the latter by the sympathetic ; the former centring in the brain and the latter in the solar plexus.
Not infrequently, thought and feehng are
THOUGHT 103
considered as being unconnected and un- related, whereas feeling is but one of the two great contrasting mental functions, which at times co-operate but more often perhaps contend with each other. Whether they work together or against each other is of extreme importance to one's peace of mind and health of body.
The intellect is the mascuHne aspect of mind ; and intellectual thought directs, moulds, defines and shapes ; while incident- ally it limits, controls, confines and restricts. In itself, it has no power ; but it is that which power uses. The emotions constitute the dynamic power of thought, the power given to it by Love — harmony, correlation and correspondence — which constitutes the basis of all attraction.
Emotion without intellect is power uncontrolled, undefined, undirected and unshaped ; it is the bow without the arrow, the molten metal without the mould. The intellect represents the arrow that the bow propels and the mould that emotion fills. Without emotion intellectual thought lacks in intensity, enthusiasm and power.
104 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
Intellectual thought is of the conscious faculties, while emotion is of the subconscious. Emotional thought is the more primary and essential, and without it intellectual thought would remain either abstract or otherwise barren. The emotions remain dominant until one has acquired that degree of knowledge and wisdom which dictate that the emotions be held to a strict intellectual discipline. Speaking generally, humanity is governed by its emotions, and the most intellectual persons usually remain under their sway even to the extent of having their intellectual sense of universal justice subordinated to personal emotional feelings. It is only when the intellect has been mellowed by the Spirit that it secures an equilibrium wherein is maintained an equitable balance with the emotions.
The intellectual being the masculine aspect of thought and the emotional the feminine, and each being complementary and com- pensating to the other ; it is when the two conjoin that creation takes place. Neither the cold and chill of intellect nor the heat and fever of the emotions represent the
THOUGHT 105
normal or ideal. Each is essential and neither may be dispensed with. Neither is complete in itself, and the completion of either is found only in their conjunction. The intellect gathers together facts and ideas ; then it analyses and tears them to pieces ; and primarily it destroys and annihilates. The tendency of the emotions is to ignore facts and disregard the ideas of the intellect, and primarily they too are disruptive and disintegrating.
The emotions are attributes of Love, whether they are destructive or constructive ; at first they represent the love of the destructive and only later that of the con- structive. The emotions represent that con- sciousness of harmony which determines the working of the universal Principle of Attrac- tion, or the Goodness of God, by virtue of which like attract hke, and the world is kept in balance and equihbrium. Emotions attract their kind, whether destructive or constructive ; and the unpleasant results of destructive emotions gradually lead to the cultivation of those that are essentially con- structive. One must have a considerable
io6 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
degree of wisdom before he is willing or able to learn without painful experience.
Emotion is more primary than intellect ; it has no reverence for tradition or convention ; it responds readily to the physical interpre- tation of sensation and appearance ; it seeks to exercise its freedom of selection and initiative ; it seems to realise that by use alone may its vitahty be conserved ; and through the avenue of unwise use gradually it ascertains the secret of conservation and purposeful activity.
The intellect is the monitor of the emotions ; it reverences tradition and con- vention ; it seeks to analyse and understand the physical response to sensation and appear- ance ; and its tendency is to restrain and curb the excitabihty of emotion ; it opposes its own powers of selection and initiative to those of the emotions ; and it seeks to find a working basis whereby it may co-operate with the emotions on terms of equahty. It tones down the emotions, and in doing this is itself toned up. Their vibrations tend to associate in some combination of mental co-operation, each feehng the restraint of
THOUGHT 107
the other, but realising the necessity of their alliance.
The emotions are of vast antiquity, they are fundamental in character, and they are aroused easily, especially those of destructive tendencies, these being the most primitive and ancient. Compared with the emotions, the intellect is comparatively modern, it is incidental rather then fundamental, and intellectual thoughts of constructive quahty are awakened only with effort, these being of most recent origin. Man thought "in his heart " long before he had a head ; and even now his heart often carries him far into peril before its S.O.S. call reaches his head. A " cool head " is often very desirable if the raging fire of the heart is to be quenched before it has burnt out both heart and head.
The disposition to decry, disparage or denounce any natural faculty or function suggests a limited vision, or else an assumption of knowledge exceeding that of the Infinite. This Universe is evidently one of use and necessity, in that each and every thing in it has its individual use and purpose ; and one can but wonder and marvel at its
io8 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
intricate system of checks and balances that everywhere suggest co-operation to be a fundamental requirement. As a Unit and Oneness, all of the parts of the Universe are apparently intended to work together ; and if there is such a thing as sacrilege, may it not consist in denying, rejecting, repudiating, disowning or excluding as unworthy of use or consideration, any aspect of this Universe of eternal and infinite Good ?
The emotions must be placed under restraint or control before they may with any degree of safety be entrusted with the powers of the Spirit. It is through the intellect that the Spirit finds its way to the domain of the emotions. The Spirit is neither intellectual nor emotional, but it takes on the character of the instrument that it uses. Its powers are too vast to be entrusted to passions that may be aroused at the whim of physical suggestions, and it is only when emotions are conserved and in restraint that the emotions may vibrate in unison with, and so become receptive to, the spiritual influx. Not that the Spirit demands any particular keenness of intellect, but it requires at least the degree
THOUGHT 109
of intelligence that can know and realise the Truth.
It is the office of the intellect and conscious mind to seek and know the Truth, to think according to Principle and to suggest to the emotions and subconscious the vital applica- tion of Truth that will give to the emotions dominant tendencies that are affirmative and constructive. It is the duty of the intellect and conscious mind to direct the ocean currents of the subconscious into constructive streams of conscious activity. It is the privilege of the intellect and consciousness to encourage the exercise of the emotions in such manner as shall render them productive of ease of mind and health of body.
It is the office of the emotions and sub- conscious to be receptive to the Truth that the conscious supplies to it, and to respond to the affirmative and constructive impulses thereby imparted. It is the duty of the emotions and subconscious to guide its ocean currents into and along the constructive streams of conscious activity. It is the privilege of the emotions and subconscious to exercise its activities in such manner as shaU
no CONQUEST OF DISEASE
enable them to co-operate in the direction that is productive of mental ease and physical health.
It is the mutual office, privilege and duty of both intellect and emotion to work together in mutual harmony and co-operation, each realising its individual incompleteness, and that neither may reach its culmination of development to the exclusion of the other, but only in complete collaboration and co-opera- tion, or even absolute unity and identity. Both intellect and emotion possess freedom of selection and initiative, and it is essential to their conjugal harmony that each sustain the other in its respective role, each recognis- ing the office of the other, and both deferring to the Truth that alone can guide them to their mutual safety and advantage.
Chapter XI CONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS
There is a constant struggle for dominance between the conscious and subconscious activities of Hfe ; the innate tendency of the conscious being radical and that of the sub- conscious being conservative. The sub- conscious is the repository of habits, the nature of which is persistency, and reluctance to change. All sensations find an abiding place in the subconscious fields of activity, which is the realm of emotions, habits, automatism and vital adjustment.
The subconscious represents the ocean of residual mental activities of one's present existence — if it does not run back of this — and it dominates his life except to the extent that the conscious faculties challenge or direct it successfully. While always possible to accomphsh this purpose often a strong incentive is required.
The subconscious is particularly sensitive to
112 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
racial ideas and concepts, or to those beliefs and opinions that are being constantly thought, expressed and acted upon by others. In time these are hkely to become one's own thought habits, and to constitute the guiding impulses to which constantly one gives ready obedience. It is customary to defer to traditional beliefs and opinions, so that usually one is indisposed to think consciously of these matters except in line with the inclination of the subconscious.
Most people think and speak of traditional behefs — particularly of spiritual and religious ones — ^in borrowed words, quoting from those who have hved and died long since, and especially from the records of ancient days. Seemingly, these are regarded as having gathered increased authority from age to age, and as possessing a character of sacredness that is lacking in similar statements of the present day. Distance in time seems to lend enchantment to words of wisdom.
We of the Western World worsliip the beliefs and opinions of our ancestors rather than their persons. On these beliefs and opinions have been established the organisations
CONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS 113
and institutions of our civilisation, and as these constitute or represent the ruUng powers of the day, it is deemed by them essential to the well-being of society that these beliefs and opinions remain unchanged. Any challenge to them is considered generally to be dangerous if not intolerable.
There is a universal law of progress that will prevail quite irrespective of what man may do or think concerning it. There is that inner urge of the One Life that cannot be repressed entirely. It may be retarded and delayed, but it will finally break away from a restraint that is too long continued. Inherited traditions and beliefs must have their evolutionary variance and development in correspondence with the necessities of human progress.
Racial thought may be much stimulated and humanity make considerable progress in times of great emotional excitement, such as the years covered by the World War. While this was a period of destruction rather than construction, it witnessed the passing away or the lessened acceptance of some long stand- ing traditional beliefs and opinions that had
Hd
114 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
long outlived their usefulness. To this extent, at least, it answered a useful purpose.
The subconscious is charged with all sorts of negative and destructive beliefs and opin- ions, and these dominate both one's inner and outer activities unless they are neutralised or overcome by his conscious thought. One's outward activities usually meet with conscious recognition, and therefore one's thoughts that are expressed physically are often changed, altered, corrected or neutralised by conscious thought. But one's erroneous inner activities usually continue unnoticed and unchanged until they evidence themselves in physical discord and disease.
It is essential to health that one counteract the influences on the body of such inherited beliefs and traditional opinions, by conscious activities that will change the subconscious mental attitude from the negative and destructive to the affirmative and construc- tive. This is the office of the conscious faculties, which have the power and privilege of so impressing the subconscious that it will become subservient to conscious dominion.
CONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS 115
In other words, when man does his own thinking, he may dominate his world ; but when he permits others to think for him or merely repeats the words of others, he places himself under their direction and control, and offers but slight resistance to the racial thoughts that engulf him. Why remain a parasite when one possesses the divine privilege of thinking for himself ?
Before one may change from error to Truth he must know what distinguishes them, and be able to discriminate between the two. He must know how to effect the change, and then do what is necessary to accomplish this purpose. Truth is the invisible essence of the Universe, binding it, correlating it, determining all relations of parts and all sequences of events. It has all of the attributes and qualities of God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit ; it is AU, it is One, and it is Good. It is ever and always affirmative and constructive ; it is eternal, unchanging and universal. All else is error.
The subconscious is surcharged with traditional beliefs and inherited opinions that are based on the misconception of Duality ;
ii6 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
and that inspire, demand, require or neces- sitate fear. All of these are false thoughts, productive of mental inharmony and physical disease. They must be transferred from negative and destructive influences to affirm- ative and constructive ones, if one is to secure mental harmony and physical health. This requires the exercise of the conscious mind, willing to perform the duty of a transforming station ; so that the false thought may be changed in character and polarised rightly. V The interpretation of every sensation that suggests fear, discouragement, failure and particularly bodily harm, discord and disease, must be changed from negative to affirmative and from destructive to constructive. With the change thus brought about in sub- conscious thought, physical conditions are altered accordingly, and both one's inner and outer existence are transformed by the renew- ing of the mind, through the substitution of constructive elements for destructive ones.
When the subconscious has been trained to disregard false traditional beliefs and inherited opinions, it will substitute con- structive thoughts for destructive ones,
CONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS 117
through the recognition of Principle. Instead of permitting the subconscious to dominate one's hfe with its inherited and erroneous negative and destructive thoughts, one will charge it with affirmative and constructive thoughts that will assist him to physical health and ease.
One may plant in the subconscious either the dominant note of Principle or of opinion ; of Faith and Love or doubt and hate ; of health and ease or discord and disease. This dominant note wiU be the controlling influence in one's life, and it will prevail except where the conscious thought challenges it successfully through definite and intense suggestions to the contrary. Each thought seed will bring forth fruit of its kind, and the dominant thought will be productive of a bounteous crop.
If one impresses upon the subconscious as its dominant note the understanding that God is One, God is All and God is Good ; that Principle or Truth is of the essence of all sensation and appearance ; that sensation and appearance are therefore always affirmative and constructive, however otherwise they
ii8 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
may seem to be ; then it becomes compara- tively easy for one's conscious thought to impel and direct his life's activities along the path of physical health and ease.
The subconscious never forgets, it never rests, it is eternally persistent ; while the con- scious is neglectful, intermittent and spasm- odic. The subconscious is always awake, even while the conscious sleeps. These qualities and attributes of the subconscious are of tremendous import and advantage to one when its dominant note represents the knowledge of Principle, and is therefore affirmative and constructive.
The conversion of the subconscious from a negative and destructive quality to one of affirmative and constructive influence is brought about by conscious thought, speech and action of the latter character. The more clear, definite, forceful and intense the con- scious activities, the deeper is the impression that will be made on the subconscious. One should feel what he thinks and affirms. The more definite the challenge and the greater the conviction behind the conscious thought and activities, the more effectually will the
CONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS 119
subconscious inheritances and acquired habits of false thinking be overcome and changed.
Behind the affirmation of Truth is the thought of it, and the power of the affirmation depends upon the conviction, or the Faith and Love that it represents. Idle and indifferent affirmations are of but slight importance ; automatic duplication of words is lifeless and impotent ; the spoken word has power in the Truth that it symbolises and the realisation that vitalises it. The most effective affirmations are those that are vitalised, through being lived, expressed and manifested in one's physical activities.
Before the conscious faculties were given creative power over the expressions of the One Life, the subconscious was in sole control. It is essential that it retains this control, except to the extent that the conscious faculties assume the responsibility of direction and co-operation. When the conscious mind accepts this leadership in the knowledge of Truth, the subconscious becomes its faithful ally in the cause of mental harmony and physical health.
The conscious impresses its wiU by
120 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
means of suggestions, which the subconscious receives and then obeys. In its obedience, it contracts habits that become increasingly difficult to change as time goes on, and especially if these habits are in accord with and sustained by racial habits of thought. The subconscious becomes increasingly reluctant to beUeve that it is the wiU of the conscious to change or alter its time-honoured instructions. In its loyalty to these, it requires positive evidence of the change in conscious desire, and it is justified in demand- ing convincing proof in the way of clear, definite and positive command.
One's purpose should be the harmonious activity of the conscious and subconscious on the plane of affirmative and constructive thought, so that one's physical activities will receive the stimulus of not only the intellectual conviction but also the emotional qualities of Faith and Love. As man is primarily emotional, it is seldom that his reason dominates when his emotions run counter to it. The subconscious ocean is likely to overwhelm his conscious stream of thought ; but their co-operation wiU add to
CONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS 121
the power of the conscious stream the full force of the ocean of the subconscious.
It does not necessarily require as long a time to overcome a thought habit as it took to acquire it. It depends upon the intensity of one's desire, the depth of one's previous false convictions, and the completeness of one's reahsation of Truth. The habits of a hfe- time may be overcome in an instant. One may have trod the path of error all of his Hfe, and yet have the ability to right-about-face in a moment. One need but seek Truth and he shall find it if his search for it be earnest and sincere. One has but to turn away from the darkness of falsity to be flooded with the hght of Truth.
122 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
" Students listen with rapt attention to the powers of guaicol, piperazine, phenocoU and the whole round of well-advertised modern drugs ; but how often is their attention directed, save in ridicule, to this mighty curative agent, that in its powers pretty nearly balances the whole Pharmacopoeia — the mind ?***
" We have seen that the powers of the conscious mind over the body are well-nigh immeasurable ; and knowing, as we now do, that our old division into functional and organic diseases is merely the expression of our ignorance, and that all diseases, even hysterical, involve organic disturbance somewhere, we are prepared to believe that faith and other unorthodox cures, putting into operation such a powerful agent as the unconscious mind, or, if you prefer the formula, ' the forces of nature ' are not necessarily limited to so-called functional diseases at all."
" Alfred T. Schofield : The Unconscious Mind "
Chapter XII SUGGESTION AND AUTO-SUGGESTION
The influence of suggestions depends largely upon whether they merely impress words, impel thoughts or arouse emotions. Repeated affirmations, even when they become auto-suggestions through acceptance by the subconscious, will not affect all people similarly. They may be received indiffer- ently, produce an intellectual conviction or induce a spiritual Faith. The influence they exert will be proportioned to the depth of understanding to which they penetrate, or their results in terms of intellectual conviction or spiritual Faith.
There is quite a distinction between intellectual and spiritual conviction, and between bhnd behef and reasoning Faith. There is a great difference in mentality be- tween the one who is content with a statement and allows himself to be under the influence of the personality of a healer, and the one
124 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
who acquires confidence through the clear exposition of knowledge and realisation of the Truth. There is a wide gulf between the one who possesses intellectual conviction only, and the one with spiritual reahsation.
There are two directions from which one's thought is influenced, or two avenues from which it is aroused. One is that of suggestion, from without ; the other that of inspiration, from within. Obviously, no suggestion has any effect until it has been accepted, when it becomes an auto-suggestion. One must make the suggestion of another his own before it may exert any influence upon him ; but a suggestion by another may have the same effect as though made by oneself.
To be accepted by the consciousness, an affirmation or suggestion must pass the barrier of the reasoning faculties, and unless it satisfy the tests imposed as conditions of admittance, it will be rejected. The con- sciousness reasons from experience, behef and opinion, inductively and deductively ; and generally it places a high valuation on tradition and convention, habit and custom. The subconscious imposes no such conditions
SUGGESTION 125
for admission, but accepts as true every suggestion that is impressed with sufficient force to effect a lodgment or compel its acceptance. This it will invariably do where there is not already in the subconscious a deeper impression of an opposite or incon- sistent character.
""While the subconscious may receive its suggestions either from the conscious self or from a source outside of itself, the conscious has the ability to impress the subconscious with whatever suggestion it may desire to place there. The degree of receptivity of the subconscious will depend upon the manner in which the suggestion is made, and the con- tent of the subconscious at that time relative to the subject matter of the suggestion. Suggestions that are inconsistent will tend to modify or destroy each other.
One whose reasoning powers are not well developed may accept a suggestion with but shght objection ; while one who has a keener intellect may interpose barriers that will not be surmounted. While no one will deprecate the possession of superior reasoning powers, it not infrequently happens that the intellect,
126 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
in its pride of knowledge, inhibits the accept- ance of suggestions of high spiritual value, which the mind of lesser attainment readily accepts.
The power of an auto-suggestion depends primarily upon the conviction that it embodies or invokes, and its character depends upon its clearness, decision and definition. These latter give it the attributes that later on are translated into material or physical shape. The choice of words has its importance, as some are more incisive, determined and gripping than others. If the words produce a mental picture that is vivid and stands out prominently, and if planted in the subconsciousness in spiritual Faith, they will at once tend toward asserting themselves in physical form.
The tendency of every auto-suggestion is to express itself in form. But it is evident that conflicting or opposing suggestions will to some extent neutralise each other. This is particularly true of denials when made of previously accepted affirmations or sugges- tions, when one endeavours to overcome his beliefs by negations. The result is an aborted
SUGGESTION 127
belief, an inhibition, a complex, which may remain hidden all through life or may at any time find a belated and probably discordant expression.
The most important auto-suggestion is the one that serves as the key-note of one's life, the fundamental thought around which all others group themselves. If one impresses deeply upon the subconscious the conviction that he is a Spiritual Being in a Spiritual Universe, that God is One, God is All, and God is Good ; it will be difficult for suggestions containing contrasting imphcations or incon- sistent thoughts to find lodgment in the sub- conscious. There will be "no room at the inn." On the other hand, if one accepts as his subconscious fundamental that the physical or material is the realm of cause, thoughts that partake of this general characteristic will be accepted readily.
All suggestions that are affirmative and constructive are advantageous for subcon- scious storage purposes. The suggestion that one " Smile " is a good one ; and the phrase " I'm fine and dandy " and the statement " Day by day, in every way, I'm getting
128 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
better," are both beneficial. All such words help to keep one in an optimistic attitude of mind. Beyond this, and of themselves, they are of slight consequence. There are numerous other expressions that would answer the same purpose equally well. The essential is that the Truth underlying the sug- gestion be received, and even more desirable is it that the subconscious knowledge develop into spiritual realisation. Health is dependent upon thinking Truth, rather than repeating words. It is the Ufe that is put into the words that stirs the Hfe that is resident within the body.
It is not enough that one smile ; on general principles he must also know why. Other- wise he will probably be unable to retain his smile under other than ordinary conditions. Why should one continue to smile when faced by anger or hatred, when threatened or abused, or indeed except under smiling con- ditions ? Unless one has a reason that appeals to him as good and sufficient, his smile will become a grimace, and it will be as false in effect as it is in fact.
The repetition of affirmations and auto-
SUGGESTION 129
suggestions may at times be eiBficient curative agencies, without conscious acceptance or understanding of the thoughts that are suggested. They may be accepted directly by the subconscious. The essential of the sug- gestion is the conviction of fact or realisation of Truth that is of its essence. It is not the intellectual words but rather the emotional feeling that possesses power, and when that feeling is the expression of spiritual Faith or Love, the thought embedded in the words may brand itself deeply in the subconscious.
The I AM affirmation or suggestion is one of tremendous power. In the realisation of Oneness with the Infinite, one may affirm with conviction " I AM " — whatever is affirm- ative and constructive, whatever is represent- ative of Truth or Principle, whatever is of the quahty or attribute of the Infinite. That one does not at the time manifest the ideal that is affirmed is not inconsistent with the statement, while one's absorption of the ideal tends to transmute it from the realm of Being to that of physical form.
In the knowledge of Truth one may make the affirmative and constructive suggestion
Id
130 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
regarding any experience, any circumstance, any condition or any environment, so that it will be accepted as an auto-suggestion by the subconscious, and thereupon it will be to him that which he has declared it to be. Irrespective of the physical or material appearance, its effect upon him will be affirmative and constructive as long as this consciousness continues. In its effect upon one a thing is exactly what he believes it to be.
The purpose of heahng is not merely to dispose of physical sjmiptoms, but also to eliminate their mental cause. Raising the morale of the patient, arousing his optimism, and especially inculcating a conviction of his speedy cure, may result in his getting rid of the physical discord ; but it will not prevent a recurrence of the same disease. But the understanding of Truth, constituting a guide to living and thinking, not only will act as a cure but also operate as a preventive. The object of treatment should be to make the patient master of himself through the education of his reason.
All affirmations and suggestions should be calculated to arouse optimism and good-
SUGGESTION 131
cheer, hope of health or expectation of pleasure ; in fact, whatever is constructive, creative and mentally or morally uplifting. If one's thoughts are temporarily depressed, it may be that nothing more will be necessary than simple auto-suggestions of this character. But where an habitual trend of false think- ing has manifested in crystallised physical conditions of disease, usually more than this is necessary ; and healing may require a conscious reversal of thought from the false belief to the knowledge of Truth.
It is better to explain the false belief of the patient than to deny it, for its explanation involves a presentation of the Truth. While it is easier to deny than to explain, the former method gives no real satisfaction and it is an obvious evasion of the problem involved. And to the average mind it is easier to explain the Truth than it is to justify a denial. If one's thoughts are twisted and knotted and confused, a httle persuasive reasoning will smooth them out and bring about the patient's amiable understanding far more readily than wiU any negative avoidance of the question.
132 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
In as tactful a manner as possible, and without arousing the opposition of the patient, this line of thought may with advantage be suggested to the patient : "As an Eternal Soul, One with the Universal Spirit, by your thinking you make use of the power to create your physical conditions. By the thoughts you think you create every condition of health or disease. You have the power to think what you please, when and as you like, and therefore may consciously and purposely produce desirable conditions of physical health. To do this, you must think affirmatively and constructively, which you will always do when you think in the know- ledge of Truth. The conditions of disease from which you suffer are results of false think- ing, which is negative and destructive, but these results will cease when you stop your false thinking and they will be dissipated when you substitute in its place thoughts of Truth."
The healer may then explain the particular falsity in which the patient has been indulging, and state the Truth regarding it. The false thought is always negative, and generally unpleasant in its suggestions ; while
SUGGESTION 133
the Truth is always indicative of health and harmony. The suggestions of error that the patient has been entertaining have not been agreeable to him, either in their consideration or their result ; so that, if tactfully presented, there will be little if any objection to accept- ance of the Truth if clearly presented. There need be no particular difficulty in this respect, as the Truth may be both simply expressed and explained.
There are auto-suggestions that come from the God Within to those who have cultivated their spiritual realisation. These do not originate in sensory impressions or for- mulated affirmations, but come from the depths of the Soul in response to one's righteous craving for interior illumination. These are reactions of the One Life from the impressions of spiritual realisation or living of the Truth. When one has purposely inhibited the consciousness of physical sensation and thought activity, or seemingly inadvertently become receptive to the Divine inflow, a flood of spiritual light will illumine the mind, and give back to one a spiritual recompense in the form of inspired
134 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
messages, directions or other auto-sugges- tions.
It is when one both consciously and sub- consciously looks persistently to the God Within for guidance rather than to the world without, that the material realm seems to be enveloped in a wonderful radiance. It is then seen as it is illumined by its spiritual essence, and one realises as never before that the Goodness of God, or the beneficence of the Universe, is a fact transcending all seem- ing or appearance. The veil of illusion is rent asunder that has theretofore blinded one to the Reality animating the world of appearance, and in the clear mirror of the Soul one recognises his Unity and Oneness with it all.
Chapter XIII INHIBITION AND PROHIBITION
The craving of the Soul is ever for more freedom of expression, and its desires are always for greater expansion and broader inclusiveness. It seeks complete liberty and freedom in thought and act, and as these are secured in greater degree it finds increasing satisfaction and contentment. It knows that its final destiny is complete freedom and happiness, in contrast with the comparative slavery and misery of its present circum- scribed existence.
Physical growth, mental development and spiritual unfoldment are all evidences of the attainment of greater freedom ; they denote contact with wider physical surroundings, correspondence with a broader mental environment, or realisation of harmony with greater spiritual depths. They act and react upon each other, conferring an ever develop- ing consciousness of peace and power, and 135
136 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
realisation of harmony and happiness. Attendant upon these are that under- standing and knowledge of Truth on which depends one's mental ease and physical health.
Truth or Principle has no boundaries, admits no limitations and accepts no restric- tions. The Soul possesses the same characteristics, and it is eternally insistent upon the attainment of a greater knowledge and inclusiveness. Its invariable disposition is well expressed in the motto : " Ultimately ; why not now ? " Nothing has or ever will take from the Soul its craving for that freedom which is of its very essence.
The mind and body of man are the instru- ments of the Soul, and it is through their agency that it must find its freedom. Thought is the means whereby the spiritual and physical realm are brought into contact, and act and react on each other. The out- ward occasions of these contacts are known as environment, surroundings, circumstances, experiences, mistakes, etc. These are the means whereby man becomes conscious of his dominion over the world of appearance and
INHIBITION AND PROHIBITION 137
realises his harmony with the universe of Principle.
The Soul is aware of the Eternal Goodness of Being and of existence ; it has no fear, it knows no enemy, it recognises no danger. It craves knowledge, and is nowise daunted in its search for Truth. That which is denied to it, it desires above all else. It resents any limitation that is set upon it. It rebels against whatever restrictions are placed about it. It can accept gracefully and gratefuUy only those influences that are founded in Truth or Principle.
The disposition of the Soul that is conscious of its freedom is to reject denials, negations, prohibitions and inhibitions. These are challenges that it may not ignore, or limita- tions that it cannot admit. Its intuitions refuse acceptance to any such limitations. Denials and negations never express Truth ; prohibitions are commands from without to desist, and inhibitions are instructions from within to refrain. They each represent a different phase of contraction, limitation or restriction ; and as such the free Soul cannot but regard them with suspicion nor
138 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
accept them without good and sufficient reason.
Inclusion is the law of life, not exclusion. Whatever it rejects at any one step of its ascent, it must thereafter accept either at that or some higher elevation. That which has been excluded may perhaps be transformed before it receives acceptance ; but in some form its essence must be extracted that life's lessons may not be incomplete. No one is immune from the repetition of an experience until he has extracted its wisdom ; and one's environment will not expand further while he remains unequal to his present one.
That which one thinks, and to which he refuses voluntary activity, wiU inevitably consume his vitality. Thought must find expression ; freely if it may, otherwise with effort and discord. When one inhibits a conscious thought, he but transplants it to a pigeon-hole in the subconscious ; from where it will escape into expression at any fitting opportunity, unless kept under constant restraint. Repression is seeming death for that which is transplanted to the soil of the
INHIBITION AND PROHIBITION 139
subconscious, and naturally it rebels against apparent extinction.
The savage or wild man is afflicted with but Httle disease as compared with the civilised man of to-day. The former has httle or no consciousness of limitation, while the latter feels his restraint at every turn, as he encounters convention, tradition and precedent. Wild animals are healthy in their native haunts, but are diseased when tamed. Man is tamed ; and he is irritated constantly and made restive under the many constraints and restrictions that he finds about him on all sides, and the justice of which he is unable to understand.
When by force of will one compels his thought to take a channel contrary to his conviction, there is a consciousness of discord and inharmony that is productive of disease. Such is the tendency of all repressions and aborted desires. W^hen one pursues an occupation in which he is interested, he not only acquires power but health of body. Those who are not in congenial employment feel a sense of limitation and restriction that expresses itself in physical disease, and
140 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
ultimately — in the aggregate — in social dis- order. The problem of congenial employ- ment is therefore a social one as well as an individual.
Man is a Child of God, an Eternal Soul, in the spiritual image and likeness of the Universal Spirit. He has no inherent depravity. He has every desire to hve rightly. But man is essentially the Knower, and his desire for knowledge is so keen that there is no price too high for him to pay for it. Above all else, man prizes the knowledge that is denied to him. Whatever is hidden arouses his curiosity, awakens his suspicion, and quickens his appetite for knowledge regarding it. Men will devote their hves and fortunes in the pursuit of hidden knowledge, and there is no greater incentive to action. That which requires effort to capture or possess arouses a desire so irresistible at times that it becomes a mania that carries one to destruction.
In order that men may hve together in peace and harmony it is essential that the Hberty of each individual be restricted, in his own interest as well as that of all other individuals. Such restrictions must take the
INHIBITION AND PROHIBITION 141
form of prohibitions until they become matters of inhibition. Then one refrains because of his sense of justice, fairness or equahty ; or of his fear, alarm or sense of danger. But any unwilling repression of thought due to prohibition or inhibition, any such coercive and compulsory limitation, is impressed upon one physically, and takes the form of disease. That which one thinks, and to which he refuses vitality, wiU draw vitality from him against his volition.
It is revealed by psycho-analysis that man's forced acceptance of various prohibitions of thought and action lies at the root of many of his diseases. Thought must express itself ; if not permitted immediate outward expression it expends itself in the physical organism as a preliminary to a subsequent outward expression as opportunity permits. If the desire is so strong that a great and continued effort is required to suppress it, its successful prohibition may involve paralysis of some sort even unto death.
If one's thought impulses are repeatedly suppressed, and his thought faculties con- tinually repressed, the tendency will be for
142 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
his whole nature to be deranged and stunted. Misuse and disuse lead to loss of faculty and function, and one may become thought bhnded if the natural channels of expression are persistently obstructed.
It is of supreme importance to man that he should know what to do. The fact that he is free to do whatever he is not prohibited from doing does not afford a sufficiently definite guide to action. And yet our tradi- tional and inherited beliefs seldom go beyond this. Man's thought have been focused entirely too much upon the negative aspects of hfe. Heaven, happiness, health and harmony have all been regarded as of neutral character ; rather as the absence of pain and suffering than the presence of joy and pleasure.
Our civihsation has been built upon a negative foundation. A positive character has always been ascribed to that which is destructive, but the contrasting constructive has been pictured as negative or neutral. Hell has been regarded as decidedly aggres- sive, and Heaven as a place where one escaped from pain and work and effort. Hell was a
INHIBITION AND PROHIBITION 143
place of suffering, and Heaven where suffer- ing no longer prevailed. Man was a " worm of the dust," a " nothing," surrounded on aU sides by rivers of Hmitation and forests of restrictions.
What is needed to-day is a positive philosophy of hfe ; a pragmatic interpretation of religion ; the teaching of that which one may and should do ; the encouragement of individual thinking ; an understanding of the identity of Man with the One Life ; and the realisation of his possession of potential powers heretofore ascribed only to the Infinite.
Above all else, psycho-analysis confirms the necessity of the acceptance of religious and philosophical interpretations that will enable man to give outward expression to every impulse founded in Truth, and which will divert him from thoughts of the character that should be suppressed in his own interest as well as that of others. The fundamental Truths that God is One, God is All and God is Good, furnish a substantial basis for all that is required, if carried out to the circumference of their implications and applications.
144 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
" The immediate correspondence between the thought- picture and its physical copy in the nervous system is an exceedingly interesting and important feature of diagnosti cation. Its value is inestimable.***
" Every distinct feature of the bodily ailment is an exact copy of the mental image of some one or more features in a thought-picture existing in the mind of the sufferer either from direct thought, conscious or subconscious or reflected there from thought-activity generated in other minds. If this picture had not formed in mind, the sickness could not have occurred ; if its action can be made to cease the sickness will disappear. With an adequate understand- ing of the principles involved in these facts it becomes possible to trace back directly from the physical symptom to the corresponding mental emotion which caused it. This once removed the road to recovery is easy and certain."
Leander Edmund Whipple : " Mental Healing."
Chapter XIV COMMON SENSE
A normal life manifests an equal develop- ment of its faculties, the physical and mental functions being in conscious agreement. Health, harmony and happiness are normal. Disease, misery and discord are abnormal. While all conditions are natural, the results of immutable law, growth is ever from the abnormal to the normal.
The normal manifests equilibrium, common sense, balance, and a rounded development. It is approximated as a clearer perception of right relations and proportions is reached, as more numerous points of view are combined, and as a higher consciousness of the Oneness of all things is attained.
The Universal Source of supply is un- limited, and as the individual's need and demand are limited, the supply always exceeds the demand. The supply received measures exactly that to which one's demand equitably
Kd 145
146 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
entitles him. The manner in which one uses what he has determines what he shall receive. As one approaches more nearly normal conditions of health, harmony and happiness, he is able to express consciously and increasingly greater realisation of the Universal Life.
Essentially growth is spiritual, and is realised in an increased conversion into con- sciousness of the unconscious harmonies that one represents eternally. It is within one's power to express consciously chords of ever- increasing harmonies. His plane of unfold- ment prescribes how his vital energy will be expended, and his method of expenditure determines the effectiveness of his demand for further vital supplies.
The more nearly normal one is, the more deeply he realises that the shghtest act has importance and significance. All things are related to and dependent on each other. Each atom is essential to the existence of the Universe, so that not one may be annihilated or lost. Not ever a single thought can be destroyed. It may be transmuted into other forms or combinations, but it cannot be
COMMON SENSE 147
blotted out of existence. It may be placed in changed relation only, and in some different manner devoted to its inherently beneficient purpose.
All material and physical forms are the manifestations of God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit. All material forms are reproductions of their inner prototypes, and as the mind develops in consciousness its physical corres- pondences change similarly. Man is both mental and physical, but these are inseparable. The mental is the controlling and creative factor, while the physical is its moulded counter- part. Man's inner consciousness fashions his outer form, and the latter accommodates itself to the requirements of the former.
Mind and body are one ; mind the positive factor and body the negative. Neither mind nor body may be neglected profitably, and an understanding of their true relation shows the impossibihty of overlooking the one without ignoring the other, for they are inseparable.
Physical conditions denote the individual's mental attitude and expression. What and how one thinks dominates his daily life. One's actions are of great moment, but one
148 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
cannot even move a finger without a prior thought. Physical action is thought in visible motion, the result of thought activity. It is a manifestation of thought from which it cannot be separated. The effect of any act on the Self is determined by its impelling thought.
A normal hfe ignores neither the physical nor the mental, for if either suffers both suffer. What and how one eats are important, but what and how one thinks and acts are far more important. What one does in the way of physical exercise influences him greatly, but his mental exercise has a more fundamental significance.
One's thought first determines what and how he shall eat, drink and breathe ; and the effect of these upon him depends upon their accompanying thought and existing condi- tions that are themselves the results of prior thoughts. Food provides the material through which hfe manifests, while thought represents hfe's vital energy.
To manifest a normal hfe, one must give consideration both to thought and act. He must have regard for the proper sustenance of
COMMON SENSE 149
mind as well as body. There is no physical condition that may not be made to respond to mental changes, and no physical inharmony that may not be modified or neutrahsed by mental harmony. It is only as one lives normally that he may recuperate quickly from any unusual mental expenditure.
It is not wise to ignore such matters as breathing, diet, exercise and clothing. One can utihse to advantage all his mental energies in promoting his development and his growth. He should hve with as httle friction and as much comfort as possible. Because mentally one can neutralise an inharmony manifested on the physiccd plane, is no good reason for cultivating such inharmonies.
Why travel the circuitous route to harmony through discord that must be overcome, when such expenditure of one's vitality is useless and may be avoided ? While each individual must ascertain and determine his own physical as weU as mental needs, this in no way precludes the existence of principles underlying the physical manifestations of life. In fact, all food is primarily mental, and all
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dietary laws necessarily must have spiritual significance.
Primarily man is mental. This does not mean that he is not physical nor that matter has no existence. Also, man is physical and matter exists. But while man is both mental and physical, the mental is the dominant and active partner. The body should not be ignored, but its physical education should be directed from the mental viewpoint. Food and drink should be consumed and air breathed under mental conditions most advantageous to their ready assimilation. The mental and physical should be educated to a mutual understanding and a quick responsiveness to each other. They must act in unison if one would experience physical and mental harmony.
To manifest an exalted spiritual life, one must cultivate mind and body so that they shall be in harmonious correspondence. Undue cultivation or neglect of either results in abnormal conditions. If one forego either physical or mental needs he will suffer both physically and mentally. If one live a life devoted entirely to thought and devoid of
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physical activity, the physical will decay and will affect the mental similarly. If one's thought life is devoted entirely to the material, and the spiritual need is ignored, sooner or later both physical and mental must suffer. The two are one, and in time they stand or fall, grow or decay together.
A normal hfe is indicative of mental and physical poise. Outwardly it manifests itself in a healthy co-operation of physical organs and functions. Physical man is a wonderful organism, one that is adapted exquisitely to the manifestations of harmonious action. This dehcately adjusted instrument requires attention to all its parts, each of which primarily obtains its nourishment and exercise from the mind. The details of these physical matters, however, are already common pro- perty, and will be given no more than this passing mention.
Mental and physical are correlated, so that mental activity must be completed through physical means. Physical exercise incites suggestions in the brain. These involve sensations that impel a return of vital energy to the part exercised. As physical activity
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is essential to normal life, and as all outward forms are the manifestations of principle, it is evident that an harmonious physical develop- ment depends upon an observance of the inherent Principle of correlated mental and physical activity. Common sense is a desirable factor in all of life's activities.
Chapter XV THE REALM OF THE IDEAL
The mind can entertain but one thought at a time. Fill it with the thought of knowledge and it is unconscious of error. Fill it with the thought of pleasure and it is oblivious to pain. Fill it with the reahsation of Good and it entertains no consciousness of evil. Fill it with a memory that elevates and ennobles and it will have forgotten all that might lower and degrade.
One exists in a world of appearance, inciting constant suggestions that demand attention and interpretation. One exists as a physical form that is for ever seeking harmonious adjustment with its environment. The details of existence attract one's atten- tion persistently and insist upon their con- sideration by him. There is an incessant call for thought from avenues of almost infinite variety. How one shall respond to these invitations is of supreme importance.
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The response to a demand requiring thought usually runs along traditional paths, these being somewhat automatic and requiring the least conscious attention. If one has over- come inherited tendencies and acquired new habits of thought, generally these will assume direction of the situation. One's habitual thought tendencies are usually unchallenged and this is especially true when they are in accord with racial beliefs.
The general tendency of thought is to move along what are regarded as practical lines, or those which are founded on broad racial experiences. These concern themselves with the world of form or appearance, contact with material environment, and adjustment with physical conditions. Racial experiences rest on physical sensation, on the consideration of material phenomena and the recognition of materiality.
In accord with this tendency, one is accustomed to accept physical sensation as his guide, to look upon the material world as basic and fundamental, and to regard the invisible as being dominated by the conditions and qualities that are apparently inherent
REALM OF THE IDEAL 155
in materiality. Inevitably, sensation and appearance suggest essential Duality ; or an innate and necessary play of two opposing forces ; one friendly but requiring overtures, and the other inimical and disposed to be aggressive.
The racial thought response to a physical sensation accepts the physical as its basis, and interprets any disturbance caused by the sensation as destructive and necessitating resistance. However, resistance but in- tensifies discord, so that the traditional response to physical sensation but adds to one's fear consciousness ; while continued action and reaction between the source of sensation and its interpretation crystalhses the destructive thought into a physical form of disease.
As long as one acknowledges the material as the realm of cause and centres his con- sciousness in materiality, he cannot rise above regarding his body as liable to materialistic domination and as being controlled by dualistic influences. Considering his body as dense, inert and unsympathetic to other than physical suggestions, it becomes readily
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amenable to these and proportionately irresponsive to inspiration from higher realms.
As long as one's thought is centred on the physical body, as body, he will but accentuate the discords and diseases that he induces through materialistic interpretations of physical sensation. In order to helpfully influence the bodily condition, one's thought must be placed above the consideration of materiality, so that it enters a realm of higher vibrations. The thought must be elevated to a plane of greater wisdom where one may escape from illusion and delusion into the illumined knowledge of Truth or Principle.
One must forget the self if he would find the Self. One finds the Self when he loses the self. One must take his guidance from either the physical or spiritual realm. If he accepts the former he recognises only the smaller physical self ; if the latter he reahses the greater spiritual Self, and is able to appreciate rightly the significance of its physical counterpart. It is only when one functions consciously on a plane of thought that recognises the material as result rather than
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cause, that he may effectually control and direct the health of his physical body.
When one reahses that God is One, God is All and God is Good, and recognises the imphcations that necessarily flow from these Truths, his thought is elevated to the spiritual plane, and he lives in conscious relationship with the higher rates of vibration. He has acquired the knowledge that he is living in an invisible Universe, that the visible to him is the invisible that has been attuned to rates of vibration coming within his scope of vision, and that in considering his body he is dealing with a thought form that is responsive to thought.
In immersing oneself in the reahsation of Universal Spirit, one loses consciousness of the physical and material, he forgets discords and inharmonies, he is impervious to sensa- tions of pain and disease, and he is immune from illusions and delusions. He is dwelling in a consciousness of harmony and peace, his inspiration coming from the spiritual realm, the dwelling place of ideals and the abode of knowledge and wisdom. One is never lost in the Universal Spirit, but rather does he find it
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within himself when it becomes a reality to him.
Even intellectual absorption in lofty ideals and conceptions may withdraw one's thought so completely from the consciousness of phys- ical existence that he will, for the time being at least, lose all feehng of physical discord and disease. Taking the thought to the intellectual heights will often suspend the destructive thoughts that are playing havoc with his physical body, so that their results will fade away through lack of continued nourishment. Disease conditions tend to lose their vitality and disappear when they are no longer appreciated and encouraged.
When one interests himself in altruistic and humanitarian movements or in an endeavour to help and assist others, to that extent his thought is taken from personal matters, and in his consideration of larger interests his own smaller affairs seem less important and pressing, if they are not forgotten entirely. When one's thought becomes expansive and comprehensive in its scope, petty details of physical life tend to fade away from memory as involving a useless waste of energy.
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The satisfaction that comes from one's thought is somewhat proportional to its scope of inclusiveness. The personal thought, in its almost universal exclusiveness brings back a response from an extremely limited area ; for reaction is never greater than its correlated action, and one is rejected by that which he rejects. When one thinks in terms of uni- versality and inclusiveness, he is the recipient of a play of forces from the spiritual realm that bring with them the healing balm of peace and power.
The poet and the scientist, the dreamer and the enthusiast, may be so absorbed in their various fields of imagination that physical suggestions make no appeal to them. In forgetfulness of self they recognise no sensory appeals other than those of their voluntary choice. They have centred their thoughts on abstract conceptions that satisfy their creative impulses, and bring an enjoyment more intense than the suggestions of physical sensation.
One escapes from the without by going within. The without is a world of appear- ance that tempts and deceives the unwary, for
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one knows not what it is and in his ignorance imputes to it that which returns to embarrass and plague him. The within is a realm of finer texture, a dream world to the materialist, but in fact a fairy land of ideals and spiritual reahties. The materialist makes a veritable nightmare of his world of appearance.
While it is both unwise and unnecessary to disregard the physical body or the world of appearance generally, it is both wise and necessary to health, harmony and happiness that the physical aspect of hfe be placed in right relation to its reahties. It is not suggested that the body be denied or ignored ; but, on the contrary, that its existence be recognised in its true relation to the inclusive One Life that it serves to manifest.
There is a compartment of the realm of the ideal that has so far only been hinted at, but the importance of which warrants its separate and extended consideration. It would be difficult to overestimate the value of this aspect of the ideal to those who are qualified to enter its sacred portals. It is known as The Silence.
Chapter XVI THE SILENCE
The two physical senses of sight and hear- ing bring one into persistent contact with the world of form and appearance. The vibra- tions that one is conscious of as hght and sound place him in touch with vast stretches of space, and afford almost endless oppor- tunities for acquaintance with the material world. The operation of these senses, how- ever, are not confined to registering sensa- tions from without ; they may open inwardly as well.
The vibrations that register as sound are slow and to a large extent are interpreted as lacking in harmony or pleasurable sensation. They are sensed as noise and disturbance. In order to relax or concentrate, one usually seeks a quiet place, away from noises and sounds of confusion, and perhaps also closes his eyes in order to be undisturbed by the vibrations that might otherwise reach him
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from that avenue. He is quiet and still, both physically and mentally, that he may become conscious of increased power and be able to conserve it for constructive use.
With the dawn of spiritual realisation, there comes the disposition to be quiet, to hsten, to still the physical and intellectual machinery and await the prompting of the inner voice. The vibrations of the outer world are slow compared with those of the mental plane, as are these relative to the velocities of the spiritual realm.
There are steps of approach to the Silence. Stillness is one thing and the Silence is another. One may quiet himself physically and not be still, and he may be still without entering the Silence. When one becomes physically and mentally at rest, he is apt to become receptive to psychic influences ; and when these are not desired it is advisable to protect one self while mentally negative. One may affirm his Oneness with God, his being surrounded and protected by the divine Goodness, and may symbohse this by envelop- ing himself in thought with the white light of love or the mellowed tints of sunshine.
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With the senses calmed and unresponsive to the slower vibrations but responsive to the quicker ones, a peace and calm pervade one's mind, and it becomes consciously receptive to higher vibrations of vital energy. Immune from the lesser harmonies one opens himself to the greater ones, which are always seeking avenues of expression. With the greater influx of the One Life, a sense of power steals over one and he becomes conscious of increased vigour and vitality.
In seeking the Silence one does not con- centrate upon his affirmations of Truth in the intellectual sense ; he affirms them rather as a means of diffusing or dissipating intellectual activities, or of transmuting these through infusing them with a power that reverses their polarity and impels intellectual receptivity to spiritual impulses.
In relinquishing specific thoughts, one opens inwardly rather than outwardly, and becomes receptive to subconscious impressions that are directed by his conscious affirmation of funda- mental Truth. The subconscious responds by returning to the conscious the logical sequences of the Truths that have been
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consciously impressed upon it. The sub- conscious follows the lead given to it by the conscious affirmations of Truth, and it brings back the consciousness of those Truths in their various ramifications.
The door to the spiritual inflow is opened in the realisation that God is All, is One, and is Good ; that the Soul is at one with and inseparable from God ; that the mind and body are its instruments of expression ; and that the One Life is harmonious in its expression to the extent that the mental takes its guidance from the spiritual and in turn directs the physical.
When one has become completely absorbed in spiritual realisation, so that he is no longer conscious of the physical or mental ; when one's affirmations of Truth have been dis- solved in their ideal, and one's consciousness limited to the consciousness of being conscious, all else being shut out so that neither specific thought nor general ideas reach the conscious mind ; when one has subordinated and elevated the individual mind so that it reahses its identity with the Universal Mind ; then one enters the Silence, the Divine
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Presence, and comes into conscious contact with the Infinite.
To the degree that one reahses this, is there direct response from the Universal Mind, and the Divine Presence reveals that which one's unfoldment requires at the time for its instruments of expression. This in turn induces a still higher spiritual unfoldment, in which the spiritual impulses are transmuted through the mind to the outer rim of one's physical activities.
With this spiritual realisation comes a definite understanding of the meaning and significance of life. The Spiritual Will is awakened ; the Will that recognises the Truth of Being ; the Will that is actuated by- Divine Love, that WiU that knows of but one method under any circumstances, being that which is in accord with Infinite Wisdom. With that Will in conscious control and directing the intellect, complexity takes on simplicity and problems are solved with unerring certainty. It is the Will of God, of the Soul, of the Self, which one consciously accepts to enhghten and inspire, to guide and direct.
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The mind is a sounding board or phono- graphic plate, and its registration of vibra- tion is hmited to the range included within its awakened consciousness. Only a mind rightly attuned may catch the higher har- monies, only a dehcate mental substance may respond to the equally delicate tracings of the Universal Stylus, and the subtle whispers of the Universal Mind demand the utmost spiritual refinement.
One goes into the Silence to receive. He should enter it with a mind open to spiritual illumination, under the influence of affirma- tions of Truth that tend to induce the recep- tive attitude. The Silence is the realm of the Infinite ; One goes into the Silence to seek God. The Silence is a holy temple which one enters that he may worship. That worship is communion, the recognition of identity or Oneness ; a mighty reahsation that confers a peace, a poise, a serenity, a grandeur and a dignity that is incapable of expression in thought or word. Only the Silence may encompass it.
If one has entered the Silence for a specific purpose, he should affirm and believe that
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this purpose has been met. Having entered the Silence in faith, he should leave it with faith unimpaired. The essence, the sub- stance, and the basis of all that is mental and physical come from the Silence, wherein are contained the spiritual causes of all mental and physical results.
One enters the Silence to receive, and one who enters always receives ; but the Universal Spirit conditions its responses to individual requirements and circumstances. To some the divine message is in language that is readily understood ; to others it is revealed in syrabols that must be interpreted ; to some it comes through one or another of the senses ; and to others it comes as intuitions or intimations that have no conscious sensory line of travel.
On leaving the Silence one should rejoice, affirming that he has already received. He should give thanks that what he has sought has been given unto him. In the invisible realm, one attains conscious possession through reahsation of that fact ; for on that plane one always possesses unconsciously, and it requires but the further knowledge of
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his individual possession to give him possessory title, a title conferred by conscious appropriation and confirmed by wise use.
The most potent thoughts are those that express a conscious revelation from the God Within ; the most forceful activities are those impelled by such revelation. One who reahses or knows that he thinks the thoughts of God and lives these thoughts, gives a vitality to his hfe in striking contrast to the average life, inspires others and carries con- viction. It also gives health, harmony, and happiness to the one to whom has come the revelation.
The purpose of the Silence is mental harmony and physical health or wholeness, that these instruments may become more and more receptive to the impulses of the Soul ; making the temporary home or abode of the Soul more suitably comfortable, and thereby inducing the further unfoldment of the Soul and one's fuUer consciousness of his oneness with the Infinite. This may continue only as its instruments express and manifest Love and Faith. One may consciously possess and retain spiritual powers and privileges only as
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he lives the Ufe that is dictated by fundamental Truth.
One lives the spiritual Hfe when he makes wise use of the instruments of the Spirit. The spiritual hfe is one of intense activity, wherein conscious expression counterbalances the activities of spiritual impression ; whereby one translates spiritual realisation into mental consciousness and transforms it into physical activities. It is essential that both the mental and physical come under the conscious dominion of the spiritual, and that the avenues of the senses be actuated by spiritual standards, the result being a marked increment in one's mental and physical vitality.
Health, harmony, and happiness are results of spiritual causes. The physical is but the replica of the mental, it is the way the mental shows forth on the physical plane ; it is the mental masquerading in physical attire. The mental is the instrument of the Soul. Its primary education comes through sensory channels, but when it reverses its polarity and renders itself receptive to the voice of the Spirit, its body in turn accepts the orders of
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the spiritualised intellect and one lives the spiritual life.
One who continually practices the Silence may become the conscious master of his health, harmony, and happiness. In it is the secret of Self-Mastery. It is the open door to the deeper realisation of the One Life, the life whose spiritual hght shines through all complexities and diversities and reduces them to terms of simplicity and unity.
In the depths of the Silence one attains the fullest realisation of Perfect Health, and he may retain this in his conscious activities to the degree that he abides in the knowledge of Truth that gave him admission to the Silence. This is the purpose of the practice of the Silence ; that one may thereafter manifest physically in the image and likeness of his spiritual reahsation.
Chapter XVII THE CAUSE OF DISEASE
Physical disease is the result of thoughts that are based on false interpretations, on conceptions that have no foundation in Truth or Divine Law, on opinions that are not justified by facts ; leading to impressions that are incapable of harmonious expression, or expressions of a character that do not permit of harmonious impression. The thought that represents false reasoning interferes with free circulation, and this results in abnormal physical activities, of which pain is the reaction and conscious evidence.
Man has a physical sensation of some character, and in his habitual interpretation of appearance and sensation as unfriendly and antagonistic, he forms an opinion con- cerning it that inspires fear, suggests pain and forebodes some degree of disaster. Tradition tells him that it is the forerunner of some standardised species of disease, with its
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traditionally determined penalties. The particular form of that disease has been clearly described in terms of symptoms, and consciously or otherwise he pictures the form that it will take.
This is exactly what it does. By some mysterious process, the picture is photo- graphed into the body, the invisible takes on visibility, subconscious takes on consciousness, opinion assumes physical form, tradition is justified, and ignorance is crowned as demon- strated wisdom ! This transmutation of thought serves as a demonstration of one of the greatest mysteries, the persistent justifi- cation by the Universal Life of whatever attitude one takes toward it — it always accepts one at lOO per cent, of his own valuation.
One's thought founded on opinion and sense impressions have moulded his physical body in its own image and likeness. But the resulting condition is that of pain and suffer- ing, and of sickness that is unpleasant and undesirable ; and naturally one seeks to transform this into the normal state of health and ease. How may this be done ?
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The world has standardised its diseases, defined them physically, identified them in terms of symptoms, and pictured them so that one may visualise them readily. Their names are legion ; and it requires an encyclopaedia to catalogue them. The world has also standardised the cures for its standardised diseases, and it has one or more of these prescribed as a cure for each combination of symptoms ; for example, x y z is the drug corrective for the disease corresponding to the combination of symptoms 3, 28 and 76.
This would be a splendid system if it only worked according to plan ; but from time to time so many changes are made both in the standardised diseases and the standardised cures, as well as in the opinions and beliefs of successive generations, that humanity has now more diseases than it ever before had ; and the world is awakening to a recognition that the whole system lacks any fundamental basis of Truth.
The fact is that one's diseases are dependent upon and may not be independent of his thought ; and if that thought is one of falsity, inharmony or disease is the inevitable result ;
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it is the physical reaction to thought that is based on erroneous interpretation of appear- ance or sensation. The basis of disease is erroneous thought, the occasion is the un- scientific interpretation of fact or Truth, and the error consists in assuming a Principle or Truth in correspondence with one's belief in his destructive interpretation.
Disease is due to one's erroneous behef, his faulty reasoning, his misconstruing of sensa- tion, his ignorance of Principle. Usually a conventional name is given to it, a fear picture is generated, the suggestion is accepted, the traditionally anticipated result is expected, guilt is admitted, and punishment follows. And necessarily " the punishment fits the crime " against truth or Principle !
The creator is greater than his creation That which one creates he may control or destroy. That which is founded on opinion is but temporary in character, and may be effaced by a change of opinion. That which has been built up by the aggregation of invisibilities may be resolved into its original elements. That which is contrary to Principle may be transmuted into its likeness. That
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which has no foundation in Truth may be swallowed up in the realisation of Truth.
Disease being a product of thought, the human form being the physical composite of many thought pictures, and disease those characteristics of it that are in correspondence with ignorant beliefs and erroneous opinions ; it results that the fundamental treatment of disease is mental. If an opinion is the cause, the result may be altered by a change of opinion. If the original opinion was the cause of destructive conditions, then when that opinion ceases it will no longer produce any results. And when former erroneous opinion is replaced by a realisation of Principle that is necessarily opposed directly to this opinion, its previous results will be erased and destroyed.
The word " cancer " means nothing to one who has never before heard it. But he readily ascertains its traditional meaning and significance, and this creates an opinion that is converted into an idea. The thoughts persist and, in the presence of the sensation that has suggested cancer, this is held in invisible solution until it condenses into a form
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corresponding with the conventional cancer pattern. The thought dominates one's sense interpretation, which reacts to feed the thought, his hereditary or acquired thought tendencies are aroused, and in due course of time one's opinion has been fully justified by the appearance of the traditional form of this standardised disease.
Man is a Spiritual Being, and in that realisation there is mental harmony and physical health. With the mentality open to the spiritual influx, and the physical body obedient to mental control, the One Life is lived harmoniously. Regarding the physical as basic and fundamental, the mind interprets sensation negatively and destructively, and mental inharmony reacts as physical disease. Truth thoughts are allied to health and false thoughts generate disease.
The result will be the same whether one come into actual contact with physical disease in others, or think the false thoughts that have served to produce this condition. One may visualise mentally or vision physically with the same result. One may contact disease without unpleasant results or may contact
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health without pleasant reaction. He may take health from disease or disease from health or preferably, he will receive from either exactly that which his thought calls for.
If one adopts traditional behefs and inherited opinions that are false, and imputes to circumstances, conditions and experiences negative and destructive attributes and quahties, he will create mental inharmonies. If one's thoughts inculcate and demand fear, they are false and are allied with inharmony. If one deviates or departs from Truth he sows the seeds of disease, and what the crop shall be will depend upon the thoughts with which the seeds are kept watered.
One may manifest any physical disease that has been catalogued by thinking the thought cause allied with the particular physical result that one is looking for. Or he may acquire it by visualising the symptoms that standardise the disease, anticipating the symptoms, and thinking of himself as phys- ically subject to the disease. While this may necessitate considerable effort, no effort seems to be too great when disease is the goal !
As long as one accepts the false traditional
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beliefs that have caused and perpetuated inharmony, he must register physical disease. If one incorporates in his system the cause of disease, inevitably he will manifest its allied result. One who plants the seeds of disease in the prolific soil of false behef, will raise a bounteous crop of physical inharmony. It is inevitable that a compensatory reaction should follow every action.
Truth is impersonal and impartial. It knows nothing of pain or suffering, joy or sorrow, like or dislike. It knows only cause and effect or action and reaction ; and it hastens to compensate or reward each cause with its appropriate effect. When one places an action on The Law, necessarily the Universal assumes that the correlated reaction is desired. That is the manner whereby the Universal rewards or compensates ; and it is by this process that one acquires disease. In the language of the Universal, one asks for it ; and asking, it is not denied.
A deep realisation of the fundamental Truth that God is One, God is All and God is Good, with their necessary imphcations, inspires the Faith or spiritual conviction that
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will both eliminate the destructive erroneous opinion and replace it by the knowledge of constructive Principle, which also constitutes the original cause of health. These funda- mental Truths may be recognised the more readily when one discerns the fact that there is but One Life, which vitalises, energises and hves all forms of existence, and confers on them the use of the powers of the One Life to the full extent of their knowledge of how to make use of them.
Universal Spirit is all inclusive ; the One Life envelopes and inspires all existence. The Infinite is all pervading ; God is omni- present. The permanent is present always and everywhere ; and it only awaits its conscious recognition by man to be trans- muted into visibility and form. When man's thought is founded in Truth or Principle, it is essentially affirmative, optimistic and con- structive ; and inevitably his physical body will evidence the constructive products of Creative Mind in a form indicative of its divine origin and destiny.
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" An emotion tires the organism, and particularly the nervous system, more than the most intense physical or intellectual work. Terror or anger is enough to provoke a stroke of apoplexy ; to lead to syncope ; to paralyse the limbs ; to bring on an attack of madness. Simple ill humour, caused by those who surround us, can take away all our enthusiasm and our energy. And let us note the fact that if the conduct of others has been the cause of our emotion, it is really we ourselves who have created it by the manner in which we have reacted.***
" I have everywhere been able to see that the original cause of the trouble lies in the native mentality of the subject, and in those peculiarities of his character which have not been sufficiently overcome by clear and reasonable convictions. I cannot treat my patients without having recourse to psychotherapy."
Dr. Paul Dubois : " The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders."
Chapter XVIII THE CURE OF DISEASE
Underlying aU changes, whether of growth or decay, is a process whereby one condition is converted into another. Whether this be quick or slow, instantaneous or long in dura- tion, the same distance must be traversed from one to the other condition. Even the human form in its nine months of embryonic life, epitomises its evolutionary development through vast ranges of time from the simplest form of hfe to that of the most complex. A natural law is only a statement of a necessary sequence of events.
While there is a Principle of Health and none of disease, there are conditions and ap- pearances of, and opinions and beliefs regard- ing both health and disease. Principles cannot be changed, nor would any change in Principle be of the shghtest benefit to any one. All Principles are beneficent in their quality and beneficial in their character. But condi-
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tions may be changed, and it is desirable and of advantage to transform all conditions of disease into those of health.
Conditions of disease are founded on erroneous interpretations and false ideas, and these are their sole support. Take away their bases and sources of power, withdraw their continued nourishment, and their vitality will be impaired and they will begin to fade away. All results are proportioned to their causes, and most conditions of disease will begin to pass away and continue to do so as their causes are removed.
However, the character of some conditions is such that they are slow to disappear even when their causes have been removed. No behef is destroyed in the sense of being com- pletely obliterated. Nothing is ever lost entirely ; but one overcomes a particular belief through transmuting it into another, which then constitutes a new cause. When one first bases his knowledge on Principle, he substitutes this for his previous false beliefs or opinions of appearance, and an attitude of construction displaces that of destruction.
Man acquires his knowledge, both because
CURE OF DISEASE 183
of his physical senses, and also in spite of them. But they are essentials, and their misinterpretations are a necessary factor in man's evolutionary development. So with disease. Everything has its use and purpose and that use and purpose is for one's benefit. Whatever comes to one is his that he may extract from it the lesson it has for him. That accomplished, he should drop it and let it go, graduate from it and forget it. Its purpose having been accomphshed, its con- tinuance stands in his way. One can be grateful that it came to him, grateful that he has learnt its lesson, and grateful that it is going or has gone. This is a Universe of use and purpose, and the extent of one's under- standing of this fact is a test of his wisdom. When one's thought is based on Principle, he is thinking with the Universal Thought, and is in harmony with Perfect Health. When one's thought is based on his opinion of appearance or belief in sensation, it lacks this essential foundation. Irrespective of what his opinion or belief may be, if it is not founded in Principle it is subject to change at any moment, and is lacking in permanence.
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Like pictures thrown on a screen and kept there for some time, one's opinions or behefs may seem to be permanent but they are really subject to change without notice.
It is well that opinions and behefs should be the stepping-stones to knowledge. Those who do not take the steps necessary to the attainment of knowledge are left behind as incompetents, while the others lead the way to a deeper understanding. Knowledge does not dispense with appearance or sensation, but it interprets these with understanding. Knowledge represents the co-operation of thought with understanding rather than with opinion. One can know the Good only ; he can have but an opinion of evil.
When one is sorrowful, hating, angry, melancholy or otherwise negatively emotional, it is because he has misinterpreted sensation or appearance. The realisation of Principle will have no such effect. When this mis- interpretation has become contagious and there is a general disposition to sense condi- tions as destructive — as when there is wide- spread fear of physical danger, hunger, financial loss, etc. — an epidemic may ensue
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when the disease will take form in correspond- ence with the false thinking. With fear of such an epidemic prevaihng, the sight of its prescribed symptoms will often frighten one into this disease.
The solution of many a stupendous problem may be formulated in but a few words, as the greatest truths may be expressed with the utmost simphcity. Between the statement of Principle and the living of it many years may elapse, not to mention lives and centuries. But an ideal is a magnet that draws one onward and upward, and the realisation of Truth is the road to freedom. In Principle, the cure of disease is as simple as its cause.
That which stands pre-eminently in the way of a cure of disease is the tenacity with which one clings to habits, one's unwillingness to change his mode of thinking, one's difficulty in taking a new attitude of mind toward the world in which he hves. This indisposition arises from man's fundamental conservatism, and his natural indisposition to admit his mistakes. Although habits are of one's own making, many willingly accept slavery to them and render it extremely difficult to
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regain their freedom. One possesses a faith in that which he has aheady made part of himself, perhaps after much testing and proving, and he has a corresponding fear of that which is novel and as yet foreign to him.
Fundamentally, it is fear that stands in the way of curing disease. Fear is the greatest factor in the cause of disease, and the removal of fear is the first step in its cure. But fear cannot be removed by cutting it out as though it were a physical form. Fear is a mental result of misinterpretation of one's relation to Truth. It lessens as one interprets more truly, and it is transmuted into courage and faith when one interprets rightly in the light of Principle.
The first step in the cure of disease is to eliminate the factor of fear. The change from one's false opinion or behef through a more intelligent understanding may accomplish this ; and it will always follow that realisation of Principle which substitutes a constructive understanding which is fundamentally spiritual, in the place of the former destructive influence which is more distinctly mental.
One cannot escape from fear while
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continuing in the beliefs or opinions that inspired fear. One cannot avoid the tradi- tional fears inherited from his ancestors while clinging to their fearsome behefs. All that health calls one to relinquish is falsity ; all that it requires is the co-operation with Truth. It would seem to be evident that no one may secure health by grasping more tightly the errors that have created his disease.
Among our inherited falsities are the beliefs that our dual interpretation of appearance and sensation as good and evil are expressions of corresponding Principles of Good and Evil, that disease is physical and independent of mind, and that the physical is the realm of cause. Our religious organisations and medical and other institutions in general are founded upon and have fostered these racial beliefs ; the inevitable results of which have been fear, sickness, old age and death. It is impossible for these beliefs to result any differently.
The realisation of the Oneness and Good- ness of God, with the necessary implications of such realisation, wiU work a wondrous change in one's attitude of mind, and in his interpre- tation of the facts of existence, superseding
i88 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
negative conceptions by positive ones, instilling courage rather than fear, promoting harmony instead of discord, and creating health in the place of disease. One never fears Reahty, but only that which represents his false concepts and beliefs.
Should this realisation become a racial belief, it would work almost a magical change in the existing systems of religion, medicine, commerce, pohtics, etc. All of these have been founded in fear and they are supported by fear ; with fear extinguished their nourish- ment would cease ; and they would be trans- formed into the image and likeness of their new inspiration of love and co-operation.
The cause of disease is false thinking that reasons from the basis of physical sensation, which traditional and racial conceptions interpret as representative of negative and destructive forces. Under these inherited and generally accepted beliefs, physical sensations induced either from within or without incite fear of pain and bodily harm ; and being interpreted as negative and destructive, the thoughts incited by them take form in the body as physical disease.
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If sensation were interpreted spiritually, in the knowledge of Principle, if they inspired affirmative and constructive thoughts only, health would be their inevitable result. If the false behefs and opinions based on physical sensation, once indulged in, were terminated it is obvious that there would be no longer an incentive to erroneous thought or physical disease. If one thereupon resumed his spiritual interpretation, it is clear that health would be restored comparatively soon, if not at once.
No one consciously desires mental inhar- mony or physical disease ; but often, perhaps even as a matter of habit, he thinks the thoughts that cannot result otherwise. When his thoughts are of falsity, mere beliefs or opinions founded on physical sensation and hence interpreted wrongly, he really desires, invites or looks for disease ; and looking he finds, asking he receives. WTien one seeks and asks for health, in the knowledge of Truth, the response is quite as certain.
In fact, the response to affirmative and con- structive thought, to spiritual understanding, to knowledge of the Truth, is often so rapid as
190 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
to be practically instantaneous. Thoughts of error are usually permissive rather than purposeful, and they seldom have behind them the power of conviction and deliberate choice ; whereas thoughts of Truth may represent the mighty power of a spiritual conviction and the guarantee of freedom that is embodied in a deep realisation of Truth. The Truth thought may reverse one's whole attitude of mind, and in an instant shatter the error structure of a lifetime.
In order to effectually destroy disease it is essential that one recognise its mental cause ; he should acquire an understanding of the direction of the mind in its false reasoning and erroneous opinion ; he should eliminate these through knowledge of the Truth or Principle of Health ; he should realise that he is an Eternal Soul or Spiritual Being, and that his divine inheritance is Perfect Health. Not infrequently, the mere recognition of one's former errors of reason and opinion will suffice to restore normal ease.
Diseases may be and are now being directed, controlled, terminated and destroyed through scientific thought activity ; even
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though one's convictions are controverted by the racial thought, with its perverted opinions, prejudices and superstitions. As the race thought changes, and the beHef in the mental cause of disease is more widely accepted, it will become increasingly easy to heal by mental methods. When the racial opposition has become a memory of the past, and this knowledge has become the conviction of humanity, a New Era will have been inaugu- rated, a period wherein health, harmony and happiness will prevail as never before.
When it shall have become the accepted racial belief that both the cause and cure of diseases are mental, diseases will gradually cease to be popular or respectable, or the subject of general discussion in polite society. This may eliminate much that now engrosses its attention, but doubtless their substitutes will be of a more beneficial character. Indeed the time may come when one would no more air his symptoms of physical disorder than he would accuse himself of criminal offences, or advertise the prison sentences that had been conferred upon him by an indulgent community.
192 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
Man is the creator of his own conditions of disease, and he may alter, change, modify or destroy these conditions. He may cease to energise them by withholding their sus- tenance of falsity. He may withdraw his support of misinterpretation, and let them fade away as their cause evaporates. They are but precipitations of thought forms and aggregations of invisibhties, and they may be persuaded to return to their native haunts and dissolve into apparent nothingness.
Man withdraws his support from disease when he substitutes knowledge of principle in the place of his previous false opinions regarding appearance and sensation ; and he eliminates the remnants of discord as he clarifies his understanding by substituting in the place of his behef in Duahty the realisa- tion of Unity. There is no error in Truth ; there is no destruction in Principle. That which causes discord, inharmony and disease must represent error and destruction. These are unrelated to Truth or Principle, the realisation of which must inevitably be expressed by perfect health.
Chapter XIX HEALING METHODS
No one healing method will appeal or be applicable to all healers or all patients. To obtain the best results, it will be found necessary to accommodate methods to indivi- dual requirements. Indeed, the same patient may require changes in methods from time to time. However, one may indicate methods that have been used to advantage, and these will serve to illustrate or guide, subject to such modifications as are deemed advisable to meet the individuality of healer or patient.
The purpose of treatment is to relieve the patient from false thoughts and their conse- quences, and to replace these with thoughts of Truth. One is healed of disease and acquires health when these two steps have been completed in the process of transmuting negative and destructive thought into the affirmative and constructive. It is then only
Nd 193
194 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
that one may be assured that both the thought cause and the physical effect of disease have been ehminated.
Methods of treatment involve preparation by both the patient and healer. It is necessary that the patient be receptive, both in intent and fact. The desire to be healed and the fact of coming to the healer for that purpose, usually meets the requirement of intent. The fact of receptivity is determined by the condition of the patient, the essentials of which are physical relaxation and mental ease, or, to state it negatively, temporary release from conscious strain, constraint and contraction.
These conditions may best be brought about if the patient wiU take as easy a position as circumstances will permit, on chair or couch, voluntarily relaxing the muscles, and making the body everywhere as limp as possible, hands apart, feet apart, and eyes closed. Deep breathing is very desirable at all times, and a few deep breaths is a splendid pre- liminary to induce relaxation both mentally and physically.
There are various thought suggestions that
HEALING METHODS 195
will facilitate and accelerate the process of relaxation. For example : The patient may take the mental picture of the body as filled completely with a vital fluid from the soles of his feet to the top of his head and then vision this fluid as flowing out at the toes, while its high level lowers gradually from the top of the head down through the entire body until it is completely emptied.
This is as though water were flowing out of a bowl when a plug had been taken from the bottom of it, the level of the water at the top of the bowl receding as the water escapes from below. Keeping the thought on the receding level of vital fluid in one's body will assist to bring about a condition of relaxation, and also to gain conscious control of one's thought forces. With some httle practice one will be able to place his thought on any part of his body, and incidentally to withdraw it from any or every other part.
Another mental conception that may assist to induce physical and mental relaxation is to regard all that is outside of the body as being composed entirely of motion or vibration, which is as invisible as the air, and to look
196 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
upon the body as being porous like a sieve, and then picture the waves of motion as pass- ing through the body from various directions. The body will soon no longer seem to be heavy, inert, and physical, but to be hght, active, and immaterial.
This conception of the body is in full accord with both scientific fact and spiritual reahty. There is an impalpable and invisible ether that interpenetrates and occupies all space, irrespective of what else may seem to be in possession ; and there is the Universal Spirit or the One Life that similarly fills all space. These two conceptions are but contrasting in- terpretations of the same Truth, the conscious picturing of which will assist mental and physical relaxation.
Another picture of the body that may assist to take the thought from it as being physical and inert, is to see it gradually expanding, getting larger and larger in size in all direc- tions, until it is so vast and seemingly so attenuated that it loses all semblance of solidity, rather seeming to be airy and ethereal. As a matter of fact, the body is composed of invisible electrons, which would
HEALING METHODS 197
quickly fly apart upon the application of an extreme degree of heat.
Some healers do not require any pre- liminary statement from the patient in regard to his condition or symptoms or past history, and they give the same treatment for all discords and inharmonies. They beheve that any such statement constitutes an undesirable recognition of the discord or inharmony, which is, of course, unknown to the Power that heals. Such healers are not at all interested in explanations or statements of symptoms, particularly if they have the ability intuitively to vision the patient's inharmonies, a power that may be cultivated or acquired.
However, there is usually great advantage in having a patient tell about himself as fully as time will permit, for this is likely to enable one who is observant and intuitive to gain considerable knowledge of his patient's peculiarities, to discover his thought pro- cesses, and to ascertain facts that may be of the utmost importance in the healing work. Not infrequently some apparently insignificant fact will indicate clearly either the source of the trouble or the best method of treatment,
198 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
In the first interview, after the patient has given such information as may be desired, the healer may gain the confidence of the patient by pointing out as simply and clearly as he may, the mental causes of physical disorders, explaining the power of thought to photo- graph them on the physical body or to precip- itate them into physical form, and then the patient's greater power to dissipate them into nothingness ; and that to this end it is requisite that the patient co-operate continu- ally and persistently in following the instructions of the healer.
The patient having revealed himself to the healer in giving the history of his case as it seems to him, the healer takes the opportunity of explaining to the patient the false character of his thoughts that are the essence of his trouble, how these may be changed, what the Truth is in this connection, and how it may be understood and retained in consciousness. Not infrequently, the heahng is accomplished then and there ; "in the explanation lies the cure."
Some healers do not touch the patient physically, while others take the patient's left
HEALING METHODS 199
hand in their right hand ; or perhaps place their two thumbs on the patient's spinal column at the base of the brain, with the hands extended forward and resting lightly on the neck. The life forces that pass through the healer may thereby be given a more direct contact with the patient. There are various other methods of contact.
While physical contact is not essential or necessary, it is often of great assistance in securing favourable results. The patient is usually obsessed with beliefs in materiality, even if he has risen to the plane of bread pills and sugar water ; and again he may be far more sensitive to thought of Truth when the hand of the healer assists in concentrating his attention. This may also greatly increase the patient's faith and thereby greatly facilitate the healer's work.
All preliminaries being disposed of, the healer is prepared to give his treatment, first surrounding his patient with the thought pro- tecting him from unfavourable psychic influences, if this has not already been done by the patient or himself. Whatever method the healer may adopt, his purpose is to reahse
200 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
consciously and then subconsciously his One- ness with God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit. By placing himself in rapport with the patient, the latter is included in this reaUsa- tion ; this being accomplished automatically if the patient is properly receptive. The healer's interior processes may hardly be described adequately, it being rather a matter of feeling and of making real than one of definite thought ; but its essence is his realisation of Oneness with the invisible and universal Truth that knows only health, harmony and happiness.
It is possible for the patient to do for him- self whatever the healer may do for him ; possible, but seldom practical. If one cannot keep himself immune from disease, it wiU usually save time and suffering to consult a healer. One's consciousness of his own dis- order detracts greatly from his power of self- healing. One is trying to realise that which his consciousness denies ; whereas the con- sciousness of the healer is presumably free from this defect. It is advisable to consult a specialist who has given years of study and practice to the very problems which
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are still novel and perplexing to the patient.
The same affirmation that the healer uses can also be used to advantage by the patient, and it is well for the healer to prepare such forms as are especially applicable to the patient in addition to those that have general application. These the patient can use, preferably before retiring and before arising and at such other special times as the healer may arrange for giving silent assistance when away from his patient.
No suggestion from without will have any effect until it has been accepted and thereby been made an auto-suggestion ; it being fundamental that all healing is self-healing. One may offer physical food to another, and in the same way it is not given until it has been received. In other words, both giving and auto-suggestion assume acceptance. It matters little whether one calls the healer's affirmations suggestions, or waits until they have been accepted and calls them auto- suggestions. Nor is it material whether one uses the word inspiration or suggestion, or the word subconscious or unconscious. What
202 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
is essential is that the patient understand ; and it is not difficult for him to comprehend that he receives nothing until he accepts what is offered. These comments may seem unnecessary ; but it is just such slight differ- ences in terms that often perplex the patient, introduce unnecessary confusion of thought, and even arouse his criticism.
Most of the mental and spiritual healers co-operate gladly with physicians and indeed permit any other dependence that the patient desires. They seek to restore the patient to health, and beheve that anything is conducive to this that enables the patient to keep his thoughts affirmative and constructive. Patients are not always prepared to at once forsake the agencies on which they have been accustomed to rely. Conforming in these respects with the patient's traditions or prejudices, will secure more ready acquiescence with the healer's methods.
If other things were equal, it is doubtless true that one's conscious auto-suggestions would have the same power to heal him of disease as the suggestions that are given by a healer and received by the patient. But it
HEALING METHODS 203
is very seldom that " other things are equal," for it is rare indeed that a student is as learned as his teacher, or that an amateur possesses as much wisdom as his professional adviser. Assuming the healer to be qualified for his work, he possesses exactly those qualities in regard to which the patient is lacking in consciousness. There is necessary work for the healer to do until this consciousness has been acquired by the patient.
Absent healing is a demonstrated fact. Absent healing includes all healing other than when the patient is in the presence of the healer or within reach of his words, his aura or his thought atmosphere. If healer and patient are in adjoining rooms, the health results of treatment will constitute absent healing ; exactly as they would were healer and patient miles apart. It is now beyond question that thought may be transmitted over vast distances with but slight if any loss of power, and operate to transmute conditions of disease into those of health.
It is eminently desirable that the patient be placed on his own resources as soon as practicable. How soon this shall be will
204 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
depend upon many circumstances. Like all other outside helps, a healer is meant to be graduated from ; and his greatest usefulness is in the capacity of teacher. In fact, teaching and healing should always go together ; so that when one is healed of a disease he is also cured of the tendency to repeat the offence. Indeed, no healer should have about him a number of chronic invalids ; it is far more to his credit to have a record of many cures and of few patients who have been with him for any great length of time.
It might seem as though mental and spiritual healing was a simple matter and required no effort. It is simple, and effort by the healer is neither required nor desirable. The patient's efforts are those involved in letting go of false beliefs that he may become receptive to the Truth, in taking the prescribed exercises and maldng the required affirma- tions, and particularly in living the Truth. The efforts of the healer have been in the past, in obtaining the vision that now pierces through the illusions and delusions with which the patient is still contending. The pain and suffering and discipline that the healer has
HEALING METHODS 205
gone through and assimilated have given him the peace, poise and power to now guide and assist others.
Anything is simple to one who knows, even while it may seem extremely difficult to one who is lacking in knowledge. The Infinite brings about the most stupendous changes with apparently httle or no effort ; while all growth seems simple, easy, inevitable and effortless. Less and less effort is required as one escapes from bondage to the physical, and then to the mental, and in the realm of spiritual realisation effort finally ceases. It may only be necessary for the healer to say : " Take up thy bed and walk " ; but behind the words may be a soul power to which the Infinite grants its recognition and response !
This is an age of scientific achievement of what the world had previously regarded as miracles. Many may now do that which but few are believed to have accomplished in years gone by. In ancient days, some of the commonplaces of to-day were regarded as miracles, and were attested to as such by people of simple faith. To-day, the greatest intellects coldly analyse aU hke occurrences,
206 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
and freely explain, expose or condemn them. And yet, in the bright searchUght of modern scientific analysis, greater " miracles " are being performed to-day than ever before ; while it would seem as though we had but little more than touched upon the possibilities of mental and spiritual healing.
Chapter XX FAITH AND LOVE
The two great pillars of spiritual under- standing are Faith and Love. These are the most profound of all spiritual emotions. They represent the vital stream of spiritual life, and he at the centre of the heart of Truth.
In their spiritual aspects, Faith and Love are identified with the profoundest realisa- tions of Principle. They constitute the two sides of the shield of universal harmony. They possess the attributes of Divinity, and constitute the links uniting the individual with the Universal.
One realises the Universal Spirit through the avenue of the individucd Soul. It is an inward vision, having no regard for outer circumstances, and foreign to the realm of beliefs and opinions. One reaches it when thought is harmonious and quiescent, and when the intellect has been mellowed and sweetened by an influx of the spiritual. It
2o8 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
comes when the understanding has been universaHsed in Truth.
The reahsations that God or All is One and God or All is Good carry with them far- reaching impHcations, that cover every de- partment of hfe. They pervade all relations and activities, and the hght they shed renders many of the greatest problems of life transparently simple and readily dissolved.
These realisations are the tahsmen that convert the invisible into visibihty, create form from seeming void, bring forth divine harmonies from the Silence, and attract and create in their own spiritual image and like- ness. Faith and Love are always antimately connected and related, and in many of their aspects they become one and inseparable.
This Universe is a Unit, and the realisation of this spiritual fact may be attained along either of two distinct and yet complementary paths. One of these wends its way through one's own Soul to the Universal Spirit, and there finds its unity with another Soul. The other treads the avenue that leads through another Soul to the Universal Spirit, and there finds the unity of another Soul with its
FAITH AND LOVE 209
own. The Universal may be reached by the individual only through individual avenues. When one's own Soul is the pathway to reahsation one has established Faith, and when it is another Soul that serves this purpose one has brought Love into his Hfe.
On the spiritual plane, reahsing accom- phshes what visualising does on the mental plane. It creates in its own image and hke- ness. It deals with ideals, while visualising is in the realm of ideas. When one visions a spiritual ideal in another, that ideal at once seeks to express itself mentally and then manifest itself physically. When one realises Truth and localises it, it possesses an innate tendency to formulate physically the under- standing that has realised it. Truth responds readily to one's invitation that it come forth into objectivity.
When one becomes conscious that his realisation of a spiritual ideal in another has clothed that ideal with a physical form, in the hght of his realisation that All is One, one cannot but become conscious than this ideal is as ever present in himself as in another. It is then evident that the beauty that he freely
Op
210 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
visioned in another, but was previously unable to attribute to himself, is equally his own possession, only awaiting the magic call of a reaHsation that no longer excludes himself from the Universal Harmony that includes another.
This is the process whereby Love is born, realising the Universal in another and then including the Self therein through the funda- mental reahsations that All is One and All is Good. Then one becomes conscious that, irrespective of seeming separation in form, there is but One Life, each human being representing outwardly a slightly different phase of that One Life which constitutes the vitality of each and every form.
While there are those who are able to realise their divinity only through another, others are able to do this only through the Self, by their self-appreciation and confidence. They have spiritual Faith when through their own self love they realise their unity with the Universal Spirit. Expanding their self from the individual conception to that of the Universal, they come to reahse that each other self is similarly endowed.
FAITH AND LOVE 211
This is the process whereby Faith is bom, reahsing the Universal in the Self and includ- ing others in the fundamental realisation that All is One and All is Good. A consciousness ensues similar to that which attends upon the attainment of spiritual Love. Though each has followed a different path, one that of Love and the other that of Faith, they have reached the same goal. Through faith in the Self, Love has been awakened ; and through love of another Self, Faith has developed. And underlying both is the same fundamental Truth of Unity.
Faith and Love typify respectively the two fundamental impulses of humanity, the selfish and unselfish, or the centrifugal and cen- tripetal tendencies. The masculine attribute of Faith finds the Self through the self, while the feminine quality of Love finds the Self through another. The two are natural com- plements, but Love has the most grandeur in that it relates itself more directly with the unital or co-operative essence of the Universe.
Knowledge is based on the understanding of Truth or Principle. Faith and Love have the same basis. With knowledge come Faith
212 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
and Love, and neither may come without knowledge. When one hnks up his con- sciousness with the spiritual realm by the realisation of Truth, he knows ; and in that knowledge there is no wavering or uncertainty, no changing beliefs or opinions. He has made his oneness with that which is Eternal.
There are but two spiritual paths, both representative of the One Truth ; the paths of Faith and Love. Whatever the road may seem to be, by whatever avenue one ap- proaches the Truth, at some point or another it enters the broad highway of Faith or of Love, which sooner or later unite as one. One cannot bring about harmony in the self through Faith without assisting others, nor may one induce it in another through Love without helping the self. This follows on the reahsation of Unity that is common to both Faith and Love.
There is no illusion in Faith nor delusion in Love, for they are both representative of Principle and possess its attributes and qualities. They are always affirmative, positive, constructive, and creative. They are linked with the unseen creative powers of the
FAITH AND LOVE 213
Universe. The love of God is the love of Self, of the Universal Spirit. There is naught else for God to love. And spiritual Love is the human expression of God's Love ; it is man's Love of the Self, the Soul, the inseparable individual aspect of Universal Spirit.
Spiritual Love is sublimated good-will. It is the highest aspect of emotion, freed from selfish personality, while inclusive of all personality. It is feeling itself, exalted, dignified, and inclusive ; it is the sunshine of the Soul. It radiates on all ahke, but each may receive only that to which he is receptive. The sunshine of spiritual Love has a different value to each of its recipients. Where it enters it heals, but it may not enter uninvited.
There is no power in the physical body, as such ; nor yet in the thought that seems to accomplish results. When one considers what may be done with thought, he always identifies with thought the power that thought wields, the invisible power of God. This power is inherent in the One Life that animates all existing forms ; and it is one's reahsation of this Truth and of his conscious identity with it that enables him to make use of it.
214 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
One's available power is dependent upon and measured by the degree and intensity of his Love and Faith.
In the reahsation of Faith and Love, one no longer craves for demonstrations or has anxiety concerning results. One knows that they are already in the realm of Being, and he awaits with confidence their manifestation on the plane of existence. One's spiritual certitude requires no advance confirmation. Acceptable and rightful results must come, and they will appear at the right time — when it is best that they should take form.
Faith and Love symbolise strength and power. While constructive, they are also receptive. They always give freely, and receive as readily. Their attitude is non- resistant, as they neither fear nor cause others to fear. They keep ahve the circulation of giving and receiving ; they have no pride in giving, and no humility in receiving ; they receive only as they give, and giving again they receive more ; and the joy of receiving is in the increased ability to give.
Faith and Love are aspects of spiritual prayer, the prayer that knows and reahses
FAITH AND LOVE 215
without words or outward symbols. They are hving prayers of hfe and power. It is in their reahsation that the Soul absorbs itself into the Universal, which then infills and possesses the Soul, and that which Is comes into exist- ence. Spiritual Love includes all others with the Self, and spiritual Faith embraces the Self with all others. With both Love and Faith focussed in right perspective, one attains to clear vision and deep insight.
Faith and Love are the two great spiritual emotions that lie at the root of aU healing and wholeness, whether they are realised by oneself or by another. The realisation that God is One and God is Good must express itself first as either Faith or Love and ulti- mately as both ; these being the spiritual means whereby error is dissolved and know- ledge made evident in mental harmony and physical ease.
As sheath after sheath of materiaHty is shed, as the illusions and delusions of matter are outgrown, as one becomes harmonised with the higher vibrations of the mental and spiritual realms, and as Faith and Love become the dominating impulses, life becomes
2i6 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
exquisitely beautiful in its profound simplicity and sweet kindliness. Exterior and interior have become as One, consciously the outer is as the inner ; one is in tune with the Infinite, and life becomes one grand, sweet song.
Chapter XXI PERFECT HEALTH
Life creates the form of each man in the fashion of his thought. One becomes pre- dominantly that which his prevaiHng thought dictates ; he determines the mold within him- self that hfe shall fill. With his mentality wide open to the One Life and increasingly receptive to the divine inflow, his thoughts are in harmony with the Universal Mind and he manifests ease.
Man is divine. He may control purposely the expression of the One Life that pervades his form, and he effects this in proportion as his spiritual life secures control and the God within is given free transit across his mental and physical borders. Man is both spiritual and physical ; but what existence in form shall mean to him is determined by the relation that he makes between the two and which one he places in conscious control over the other.
When one realises that he is essentially spiritual and is persistently receptive mentally
817
2i8 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
to the spiritual influx, which then serves to interpret sensation and appearance, he Uves a unital hfe ; each inferior plane being under the guidance of its superior, and the qualities of the spiritual dominating his consciousness and activities. He has estabhshed the polarities that enable life to function with a maximum of harmony and a minimum of discord.
On the other hand, if one believes that he is essentially physical, his mentality is domi- nated by this materialistic conception, his interpretation of appearance and belief in sensation are without the guide of Principle, and he is living at variance with the Self. His thoughts are receptive to sense impressions while closed to spiritual understanding, and he flounders about in a morass of fearsome thoughts and discordant sensations.
Doubt and fear dominate the life that judges appearance and sensation from a physical basis, while courage and faith inspire the one who has the surety of spiritual guid- ance. Doubt and fear instil destructive and discordant interpretations and thoughts, the disposition of which is to take physical form
PERFECT HEALTH 219
as diseases. One cannot depart from Truth without being reminded of it, although the hint may be never more than the occasion requires.
Each may determine his own thoughts and thereby render himself immune from the consciousness of discord and disease. All that one knows of these conditions are what he is conscious of, and when these conditions are brought into right conscious relation with the Truth, one knows them only as harmony and ease. In Truth they can be nothing else ; and interpreted in this understanding the condition takes on the aspect of Truth and induces a corresponding consciousness.
This is quite a natural process, and is no more wondrous or magical than any other activity. What is called the world of form is neither solid, permanent nor stationary ; but on the contrary it is fluidic, impermanent and ever moving. In fact, it is composed of invisible and intangible entities of motion, whose vibrations are translated by each one in correspondence with his own vibrations, and all that one senses of it is what this correspondence suggests. Each one is free to
220 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
think of his sensations either in the Hght of opinion or of knowledge.
The physical body is simply that aspect of the world of form which is in closest touch with the Self, and the part of it that is the most difficult for one to disregard. The physical body had the same invisible consti- tuents as the rest of the material world, and one's knowledge of both is on the same plane. One only knows it as he thinks of it, and whatever it is now is because of what he had thought of it in the past.
When this conception comes to one for the first time, or when he is unprepared to comprehend its significance, it may seem to suggest a fantastic or even impossible world. But when one realises that matter and motion are identical in substance, in regard to which science and religion are now in fair agree- ment, it becomes increasingly easy to imder- stand that this is a Spiritual Universe, of which one has a consciousness of some of its vibrations through the sense avenues that have been developed for that purpose.
It does not suffice to say that Truth is eternal, and that what is not eternal is not
PERFECT HEALTH 221
Truth. Granting this, and that only the eternal is Real ; what then is that which is temporary only, the world of form and appearance ? To say that it is nothing because it is not permanent, apparently satisfies some minds, but this seems to be an evasion of the question and a confession of ignorance. To simply ignore and deny seems a poor method of solving any problem.
The more scientific method is to recognise and accept each fact, to determine its nature and character, to relate it to other facts, and to discern its meaning and significance in the light of Principle. It is knowledge alone that precludes fear, and ignoring and denying do not add to one's knowledge. One does not overcome by hiding one's head or running away ; one conquers through the exercise of superior understanding.
Perfect Health is that condition of physical ease which manifests in correspondence with a mental harmony that takes its rise from spiritual realisation. It indicates that the One Life is functioning harmoniously on each of its three planes. The spiritual influx that one is receiving mentally is also giving
222 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
direction to his body, which is therefore functioning in accord with Principle and is at ease. As long as this accord prevails and to the extent that it does, physical health will be manifested.
This accord is subject to interruptions through the intrusion of sense impressions that are interpreted at variance with Principle or contradictory to its various attributes. This denotes a change of polarity of the mind, which has ceased to be receptive to the spiritual influx and opened itself to the suggestion of the physical plane. The mind has changed its basis of thought from the spiritual to the physical, renounced knowledge for opinion ; and exchanged harmony for discord.
Health may be restored by reversing the process. Re-establish one's thought in the understanding and realisation of Principle, interpret sensation and appearance in the light of Truth, reverse the mental polarity so that it will take its direction from the spiritual realm ; and as the suggestions of harmony displace those of discord from the material realm, one's body will re-assume its
PERFECT HEALTH 223
manifestation of health in correspondence with the change.
If one's understanding of Principle were so completely and firmly established that it could not be interfered with or disturbed, there would be no difficulty in maintaining his health ; but usually one's understanding is subject to challenge and will withstand but little more than the test to which it has already been subjected. These greater tests will come, if only to give opportunity and occasion for cultivating a firmer and deeper understanding, and one should be prepared to meet them.
The most efficient way is to re-establish one's conscious knowledge of Principle and to indulge in appropriate affirmations and activities, until the negative pictures that have falsified Truth have faded away or been absorbed in the higher vibrations of an illumined knowledge. The conscious thought must be asserted with the conviction that gains for it the co-operation of the sub- conscious. It is in the consciousness of Truth that one finds freedom from discord and disease.
224 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
To the average intelligence, the placing of reliance upon invisible thought and intangible Truth for physical or material results may seem quite impractical. But the only differ- ence between the visible and the invisible is the rate of vibration, and the visible is only that aspect of the invisible that comes within the range of one's vision. It is only a question of speed, rapidity of motion or rate of vibration that makes a revolving electric fan — or anything else — visible or invisible. The difference is in the human consciousness, and not in the thing outside.
No one has ever seen an electron, for it is quite invisible ; but no one has ever seen anything that was not composed entirely of electrons. God or Spirit is invisible, Man or Soul is invisible, Mind is invisible, thought is invisible ; only certain vibrations of Spirit are visible and these are discerned in the world of physical or material form. All power, substance, energy and life are invisible ; it is in fact the visible that is comparatively lacking or deficient in all of these attributes.
In its larger significance, thought is the one power whereby all existence was created
PERFECT HEALTH 225
from seeming void into the world of form. It was the reahsing thought of the Infinite that, through lowering some of the vibrations of Substance, created a world that was to become visible to the human consciousness that was at the same time inaugurated in its most primary aspects. Visibility or invis- ibihty is to us a matter of consciousness only ; that a thing is visible to us confers upon it no new attribute.
It is a question of flooding one's con- sciousness with the light of knowledge, and of keeping its polarity true to this hght. It is a question of reinforcing the supply of light as it flickers in the foul currents of false beliefs that come from the physical realm, or dims in the erroneous opinions of materiality. It is a question of facing traditions, conven- tions and inheritances that are founded in error, and of freeing oneself from their devitaHsing suggestions and their demoralising influence.
One who has consciously attained the spiritual heights has acquired a responsibility that may not be laid aside lightly. One may not, with either peace or harmony,
Pd
226 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
forgo either the privileges or duties of the spiritual altitude that he has reached. The descent from the heights may take one to the valley of despond, in a condition of physical, mental and moral chaos. No one lives to himself or for himself, and the broader his inclusiveness the more will he receive and must he give. No temporary obstacle or unpleasant mishap will be permitted to assume a permanent character. The Soul must continue its ascent to Cosmic Con- sciousness, and always " the greatest joy of living is the joy of going on."
Never in the past was man nearer to God than he is to-day. Never was he so developed mentally or unfolded spiritually. Never was he more capable of a deeper understanding or a higher wisdom. Never was he better prepared to think for himself, to think the Truth, to think constructively. Never was he as willing to throw off the shackles of traditional falsehoods and inherited fallacies, and to realise the Truths that carry with them the maximum of mental ease and physical health.
Disease is irregular, disorderly, abnormal
PERFECT HEALTH 227
and unnecessary. It is a luxury that one might well decline to his advantage. There is no good and suiBcient reason why one should accept the slavery handed down by his physical forefathers when he might better claim his freedom, the right to which was conferred upon him by his spiritual ancestry. It were well for one to remember that he was the Child of God long before he was the child of his earthly parents.
Perfect Health is the birthright of Man, as an Eternal Soul. He disclaims his inheritance when he regards himself as a physical being, and the material world as the realm of cause. He is reinstated in his inheritance when his thoughts soar above these false conceptions and rise to the spiritual heights. As he approaches the full realisation of his identity with the Universal Spirit, his mind and body are placed under spiritual guidance, and the One Life expresses itself in mental harmony and physical ease. With an abiding Faith, he realises in his own life the eternal fact of Infinite Love, and in that realisation he represents and embodies Perfect Health.
228 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
" Every sick person is suffering either directly or in- directly from the effect of some belief ; therefore my arguments are to show the absurdity of the beliefs what- ever they are, for beliefs are catching. The child is affected by its parent's belief, which is as real an enemy to health as slavery is to freedom. Science is the true man, belief is the enemy of happiness, for everyone knows that a man will die before he will give up his belief. So when a person has a belief in any particular disease, he will not give it up until it destroys the body, although he knows that fighting is his own destruction. ***
" Disease is a belief, for an individual is to himself just what he thinks he is, and he is in his belief sick. If I believe I am sick, I am sick, for my feelings are my sickness, and my sickness is my belief, and my belief is my mind. Therefore all disease is in the mind or belief."
" Dr. Phineas P. Quimby : Quimhy Manuscripts."
SUPPLEMENT
STATEMENTS AND AFFIRMATIONS
Each of the formulations of statements and affirmations in the series that follows expresses a logically connected line of thought running somehwat parallel with its corresponding chapter. It combines with this expressions that are applicable personally, either for meditation or treatment. They may be regarded as interlocked consistent expressions of fact and Truth that will recall the essentials of the chapters to which each refers, and the suggestions they contain will also serve to impress the subconscious with the knowledge that manifests in Perfect Health.
I. Correspondences
The mental and physical are one ; the mental being the cause and the physical the result — The body is a thought form — Any and every change in thought registers
229
230 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
physically — Each physical disease may be diagnosed mentally — Each false thought causes mental disturbance and physical disease — Each Truth thought promotes men- tal ease and physical health — Truth thoughts are based on the fact of One Eternal God and inevitable Good in all Being and existence — False thoughts are based on the erroneous behef in the eternal Duahty of God and Devil or Good and Evil in all Being and existence — ^The price of health is the letting go of false beliefs, and the acceptance of Truth — I know that eternally there is One God, and that all Being and existence is inevitable Good — My mind is at peace — I have physical ease — I AM Perfect Health !
IL Purposes and Objects
Disease comes from within ; it denotes false thinking — Spiritual and mental healing methods include denials, affirmations and reahsations — One denies false beliefs — One affirms and realises Truth — Denials are indirect, weak and inconclusive as compared with affirmations — Denials are more primary, and are adapted especially to those who
SUPPLEMENT 231
accept Duality as a fact, and the " worm of the dust " consciousness — Affirmations are more acceptable to those who realise Unity and have the constructive consciousness — Reahsation of mental ease and physical health comes to those who hve the affirmations of Truth — I deny all false behefs — I let go of all opinions founded on the misconception of Duality — I affirm the Truth — God is One, God is All and God is Good — I live and realise the Truth — I am a Spiritual Being living in a Spiritual Universe — My physical form is the manifestation of Principle — I AM Perfect Health !
in. The Fundamental Principle
God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit, Is — God is One, God is All and God is Good — Man is an Eternal Soul, one with Universal Spirit — Man is a Spiritual Being, living in a Spiritual Universe — The Spiritual is the ultimate realm of Cause — Man exists physi- cally in a world of appearance — Appearance is visible, temporary and changing — The Universe is governed by Truth or Principle — Truth or Principle is invisible, eternal and
232 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
changeless — There are no Hmitations or boundaries to Truth — There is no absence or lack of Truth— There is freedom in knowledge of Truth — Freedom in Truth brings ease of mind and health of body — Living Truth is living the Spiritual Life — I AM a Spiritual Being Uving in a Spiritual Universe — I live in the realisation of Truth — I hve in the freedom of Truth —I AM living the Spiritual Life — I have ease of mind and health of body —I AM Perfect Health !
IV. Principle or Truth God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit, is One, is All and is Good — Man is an eternal Soul, inseparable from Universal Spirit — Man, as Soul, possesses the attributes and quahties of Universal Spirit — Man or Soul expresses mentally, and manifests physically — The purpose of the One Life is spiritual unfold- ment mentally, and mental development physically — The purpose of the One Life, as manifested physically, is growth — The object of growth, as interpreted by man, is conscious health, harmony and happiness — The attributes and qualities of God inhere in all
SUPPLEMENT 233
mental expressions and physical manifesta- tions— The realisation of these three-fold aspects of Truth is knowledge — In the knowledge of Truth, there is Perfect Health — I AM an Eternal Soul, inseparable from God, the Infinite — I possess the attributes and qualities of the Infinite — The One Life express itself freely through my mind and body — I realise the three-fold aspects of God — I know, and I AM Perfect Health !
V. Delusion of the Senses
God Is — God is One, God is All and God is Good — God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit, always and ever is Truth — Universal Spirit unfolds and expresses mentally — Universal Spirit develops and manifests physically — Truth or Principle is ever affirmative and constructive — In the knowledge of Truth, all sensations are interpreted as affirmative and constructive — In the knowledge of Truth, all experiences are beneficial — In the belief of error, sensations are interpreted as negative and destructive — In itself, sensation has no power — The power in sensation is the thought
234 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
that is put into it — I interpret sensation in the knowledge of Truth, as affirmative and constructive — I reaUse that all sensation is essentially beneficial — I manifest the health and harmony of affirmative and constructive thought — I ally myself with Truth or Principle —I AM.
VL The Illusion of Appearance
The Universe is invisible and one with Principle — The world is visible and is a matter of appearance — One is conscious of appearance only as he senses it — The Prin- ciples of the Universe govern the world of appearance — Appearance has all of the qual- ities and attributes of Principle — One inter- prets sensation either from knowledge or belief — Usually one senses appearance accord- ing to inherited beliefs that inspire fear — This is a false interpretation — The only illusion regarding appearance is in one's erroneous thought concerning it — I lay down my thought illusions and look through appearance to the Principle it represents — I understand appearance in the light of Prin- ciple— I know the Truth of appearance — I
SUPPLEMENT 235
interpret appearance as affirmative and con- structive— Appearance is Good ; I do not fear it — I discard my false beliefs and erroneous opinions concerning appearance — I realise that appearance has all the attributes of Prin- ciple— I know the Truth, and I AM free !
VII. The Obsession of Fear
God is One, God is All and God is Good or Love — The opposite of Truth cannot be Truth — Truth inspires courage, faith and health — Truth does not require or necessitate fear — Many traditional and inherited beliefs necessitate fear — Most of man's beliefs and opinions are inherited and traditional — Many of them inspire fear — All of these are false — Fear is unnecessary and harmful — Knowledge will suggest and accomplish to better advantage whatever fear may suggest and accomplish — In the reaHsation of Truth, I let go of all inherited and traditional beliefs — I examine all beliefs and opinions in the light of Principle — I discard all beliefs and opinions that are not based on Principle — I discard all beliefs that require
236 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
or necessitate fear — I have no fear ; I have courage and faith — I am One with Truth or Principle — In the knowledge of Truth, I AM free !
VIII. Knowledge and Opinion
Principle or Truth is One with God — Principle partakes of all the qualities and attributes of Good — Principle is One, is All and is Good — Principle is unchangeable, harmonious and beneficial — One can know Principle or Truth ; he cannot know error — One may have a behef or opinion regarding falsity, but he cannot know that which is false — Belief in falsity is error, and its results are discord and disease — False beliefs have their basis in the misconceptions of DuaHty — False opinions are based on ignorance of Principle — False opinions are based on sug- gestions of materiahty — I cast aside all false behefs and opinions — I let go of all negative and destructive behefs and opinions — I reahse that Truth is always affirmative and constructive — I realise that Principle inheres in all appearance — I know that all appear- ance is essentially affirmative and constructive
SUPPLEMENT 237
and is Good — I know the Truth and I AM free !
IX, The Reversal of Polarity
Man is a Spiritual Being — Man expresses mentally and manifests physically — ^The One Life animates all that exists — Harmony of existence depends upon the polarities of the three aspects of life — ^The mind is at ease when open to the inflow of the Spirit — It is discordant when it follows sensory impres- sions— ^The body is healthy when responsive to the direction of the spirituahsed mind — It becomes diseased when it accepts the physical as its guide — One determines his mental ease and physical health by his mental polarity — If open to the physical and closed to the spiritual, discord wiU prevail — If open to the spiritual and closed to the physical, he lives the One Life, in mental ease and physical health — I open my mind to the inflow of the Spirit — I place my body under the control of my spirituahsed mind — I feel the One Life animate my mind and my body — I AM a Spiritual Being— I AM Perfect Health!
238 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
X. Thought ; Intellectual and Emotional
Man is the Thinker ; he thinks in all parts of himself — Man's Mind is God's Mind, with all of its attributes and quahties — Man's Mind gradually acquires Cosmic Consciousness — Man thinks more especially with his head and his " heart," with his brain and solar plexus — Intellect and emotion comprise the two poles of Man's thought — Each is essential to the unfoldment of the other — Intellect directs, moulds and defines ; limits, controls and restricts — Emotion constitutes the dynamic power of thought — Intellect is the arrow and emotion the bow that propels it — ^Their development is consummated in their recognition of and co-operation with each other, in the light of Truth— My Mind is God's Mind— I think Truth and direct my thought with Faith and Love — My emotion realises and my intellect recognises the funda- mental Truths — My brain and heart co-oper- ate in peace and harmony — My intellectual thoughts and emotional feehngs are affirmative and constructive— I AM Perfect Health !
SUPPLEMENT 239
XI. Conscious and Subconscious God, the Universal Mind, is all-inclusive — The Universal Mind pervades all existence — The Mind of Man is the Mind of God— The One Life infills all existent forms to the degree of their receptivity — The subcon- scious is the ocean of past existence — ^The conscious is the stream of present activity — The subconscious imparts its tendencies to the conscious — ^The conscious may accept or reject these tendencies — The conscious is a free agent, directing or directed by the sub- conscious— It may guide or it may be guided — I think only Truth or Principle — I think only affirmative and constructive thoughts — I think only ease and health — I fill the sub- conscious with these thoughts only — I direct it consciously with affirmative and construc- tive thoughts — The ocean of the subconscious gives its power to this stream of conscious thought — I think only affirmatively and constructively — I AM Perfect Health !
XII. Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion Suggestions may impress words, impel thoughts or arouse emotions — ^They may
240 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
result in intellectual conviction or spiritual Faith — ^They may come from without or from within — When received by the sub- conscious, they become auto-suggestions — Their character is denoted by their clearness, decision and definition — Auto-suggestions tend to manifest in form — ^That suggestion is fundamental which serves as the keynote of one's Hfe — It may express the Truth of Unity, or the falsehood of Duahty — Health is dependent upon thinking Truth, rather than repeating words — ^The I AM suggestion is one of great power — I AM whatever is affirmative, constructive and creative — All circumstances, conditions and environment are Good — ^The auto-suggestions from within are spiritual affirmations of Truth — I AM one with God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit — I AM a Spiritual Being, hving in a Spiritual Universe— I AM Perfect Health !
XIII. Inhibition and Prohibition
The Soul seeks freedom in mental expression and physical manifestation — It realises increasing freedom in wider mental inclusiveness and greater physical dominion —
SUPPLEMENT 241
Instinctively the Soul rejects denials, nega- tions, inhibitions and prohibitions — Inclusion is the lesson of life, not exclusion — Whatever has been rejected must afterward be included — Man must know eventually all that is at any time withheld from him — Prohibition denotes repression from without, inhibition is suppression from within — ^These impel mis- use or disuse of faculties and functions and consequent loss of power — ^The Truth impels rightful use of faculties and functions — It does not suggest misuse or disuse — I realise the Truth and manifest it in activity — I express the eternal Good — I manifest health, harmony and happiness — I find Good in all activities of existence — I claim freedom in thought and activity — I manifest Perfect Health !
XIV. Common Sense
Mind and body are one — A normal life balances the two in equilibrium — Neglect of the mental or physical is harmful to both — The mental is the controlling factor, while each acts and reacts on the other — While
242 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
eating, sleeping and breathing are necessary, the accompanying thought is most important — When in physical ease, one's thought powers are conserved for constructive purposes — Man is both mental and physical, and their harmonious accord denotes mental peace and physical health — Thought manifests through physical activity — Truth thoughts result in health of body — I have a mind and a bod}^ — I express myself in mental and physical accord — I think Truth thoughts while eating sleeping and breathing — Spirit expresses mentally and manifests physically — ^The body is Spirit in form, as it is moulded by thoughts — Common sense denotes the harmonious co- operation of body, mind and Soul — I AM One with Universal Spirit — I AM Perfect Health !
XV. The Realm of the Ideal
One finds the Self in losing the self — The loftier the thought the greater its power— The mind may think but one thought at a time — One forgets the self in remembering the Self — Absorption in the higher releases from the
SUPPLEMENT 243
lower — One escapes from the outer discords of the world of appearance by seeking the harmonies of the God Within — Spiritual reahsation dominates mental consciousness — Mental consciousness overcomes physical sensation — Thoughts centred on ideals banish thoughts of physical sensation — God is One, God is All and God is Good — I reahse my Oneness with God — I am a Spiritual Being — My mind is Spirit in mental expression — My body is Spirit in physical manifestation — I lose consciousness of the physical body in realising my Spiritual Being — I centre my thoughts in the spiritual realisation of the One Life — I open my mind to the influx of the Spirit — My body accepts the direction of my spiritualised mind — I live the One Life — I AM Perfect Health!
XVL The Silence
The Silence is the realm of the Soul, the portal to the House of God — To secure entrance, the physical and mental activities must be stilled — ^To acquire its favours, one must become receptive to the inflow of the
244 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
Spirit — In the Silence there is health, harmony and happiness — I enter the mystic realm of the Silence — In the realm of Silence I reahse God — I enter the Silence to commune with the Infinite — I cross the threshold to reahse my Oneness with the Universal Spirit — I open my mind to the inflow of the One Life — I close my eyes to the self to open them to the Self — I realise the Presence of God — I realise my Oneness with the Infinite — I leave the Silence with thanks and rejoicing — I have received that for which I entered the Silence — I am grateful for that which I have received — My life shall manifest my realisa- tion— My hfe shall express my gratitude — I am One with God !
XVII. The Cause of Disease
Disease is the result of erroneous thought — Disease is dependent upon false conceptions — The cause of disease is false interpretation of sensation and appearance — False interpreta- tion of sensation and appearance is inspired by fear — Fear accompanies inherited and
SUPPLEMENT 245
traditional erroneous beliefs — False reason- ing, prejudices and superstitions are causes of false beliefs — False thoughts induce discord and disease — Beliefs and opinions founded on sensations produce discord and disease — False mental pictures are photographed on the body as disease — I interpret sensation and appearance in the knowledge of Principle — I am free from error thought — I am free from behefs and opinions based on sensation — I am free from beliefs founded in fear — I have courage and Faith — I AM Perfect Health !
XVIII. The Cure of Disease
There is a Principle of Health, but none of disease — The Principle of Health is eternal, changeless, universal — ^The Principle of Health has no recognition of disease — Dis- ease is a condition of erroneous thought ; thought that is not based on Principle — Dis- ease is a condition of thought based on belief or opinion founded on false interpretation of sensation or appearance — Fear is the under-lying factor of disease — Fear is the accompaniment of false thinking — Physical
246 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
S5anptoms of disease correspond with the disease thought — I ally myself with affirmative and constructive Principle — I interpret sensa- tion in the light of Principle — I reahse the Oneness and Goodness of Principle — In the realisation of Principle, I have no fear — I let go of false thought and replace it with Principle — In Truth or Principle there is no disease — I AM Perfect Health !
XIX. Healing Methods
I AM Perfect Health — My thoughts are in Truth or Principle — I know that I AM a Spiritual Being — I know that my mind expresses in Truth — I know that my body manifests in Truth — I realise peace of mind and ease of body — My nerves are in perfect order all over my body — ^They obey my will and I have great nerve force — I am breathing deeply and quietly, and the air goes into every ceU of my lungs, which are in perfect condi- tion— My blood is purified and made clean — My heart is beating strongly and steadily, and my circulation is perfect even to the
SUPPLEMENT 247
extremities — My stomach and bowels per- form their work perfectly, my food is digested and assimilated, and my body rebuilt and nourished — My liver, kidneys and bladder each perform their several functions, and I am perfectly well — My body is resting, my mind is quiet and I AM at peace — I AM Perfect Health!
XX. Faith and Love
God is One, God is All and God is Good — The Self or Soul is inseparable from God, the Infinite, Universal Spirit — Faith and Love are the two great spiritual emotions through which one realises Truth — Faith realises Truth through the avenue of the Self — Love reahses Truth through the avenue of another Self — Faith and Love realise the Unity of the Self with another Self — Faith and Love realise the Unity of the Self with Universal Spirit — ^The spiritual realisation of Unity brings mental peace and harmony — Faith and Love are always allied with Truth or Principle — Faith and Love are always affirma- tive and constructive — I have Faith and Love
248 CONQUEST OF DISEASE
— I realise my Unity with the Infinite — I reahse my Unity with every other Soul — I reahse the Unity of every other Soul with my Soul — I have mental peace and harmony — I have physical health and ease — I AM Perfect Health !
XXI. Perfect Health
I AM an immortal Soul, inseparable from Universal Spirit — My Life is identified with the Universal Life— My Mind is One with the Universal Intelligence — My thought deter- mines every aspect of my life — I can and will think as I please— I think affirmatively and constructively — I place myself in accord with the Principles of the Universe— My physical and material conditions respond to the character of my thought — My conscious thought directs my hfe, and I command my conscious thought — I AM an immortal Soul, with power to think affirmatively and con- structively— I AM free from all negative and destructive thoughts— I AM grateful for all sensations and appearances, and I interpret them in the light of Principle— I AM grateful
SUPPLEMENT 249
for the power, the strength and the will to think affirmatively and constructively — I AM Health— I AM Strength— I AM Power— I AM.
Fulfilment Booklets
BY
EUGENE DEL MAR
Experiences and Mistakes
The School of Life — Man a Creator — Being, Expression and Mani- festation— What Experience Involves — Evolution — Experience and Principle — Wisdom and Experience — The Beneficence of Experience — The Necessity of Experience — The Value of Experi- ence— Attracting Experiences — The Art of Living — Attitude Towards Experiences — Diversity of Experiences — Significance of Mistakes — Recognition of Mistakes — Necessity of Mistakes — Value of Mistakes — Avoiding Mistakes — Not Responsible for Results — Sequence of Cause and Effect — The Law of Compensation — Good, Better, Best.
Affirmations and Denials
Absolute and Relative — Opposites and Contrasts — Comparative and Relative Conditions — Efficacy of Affirmations and Denials — Trans- formation and Destruction — Recognition — Significance of Disease — Symptoms — Indirectness of Denials ; Directness of Affirmations — Repression — Absolute Good and Relative Good — Viewpoints of Principle and Appearance — Conceptions of Duality, of Unity Dis- cordant, and of Unity Harmonious or Identity — Ignorance- Negative Admonitions — Realisation of Principle — No Law of Decay — I Am — Living the Life.
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The Law of Compensation
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Power to Create
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Within You is The Power
By HENRY THOMAS HAMBLIN.
4TH EDITION. 46TH THOUSAND.
" None need be overwhelmed in the great conflicts of life, for one who has learnt the great secret of his identity with the Universal Life and Power, dwells in an impregnable city, built upon and into the Rock of Truth, against which the storms of adversity beat in vain."
BRIEF SYNOPSIS. PREFACE.— There is in man a Greater Self. CHAPTER I. — Infinite Life and Power. Man, who is a sharer of the
Universal Life, can never be separated from his Divine Source. CHAPTER II.— Overcoming Life's Difficulties. The only hfe that is
easy is the life of the strong soul who has overcome. CHAPTER HI.— Fate or Free- Will. Fate cannot be fought yet it can
be overcome. The extent of free-will. The future, both immediate
and distant, lies in our own hands. CHAPTER IV. — Cause and Effect. Sowing and Reaping. How the
Soul can become freed from the wheel of fate. CHAPTER V. — Success. True success defined. Progress the law of the
Universe. The qualities that are necessary for successful achievement. CHAPTER VI. — Health. The various causes of ill-health, sickness and
disease, physical, mental and spiritual. The conflict within.
Restoring balance and harmony. CHAPTER VII.— The Secret of Abundant Supply. The Spiritual
Source of aU Creation is the Inexhaustible Supply of Man. The
planless life. Supply, not riches. Fulfilling the conditions. CHAPTER VIII. — The Powers and Limitations of the Sub-conscious
Mind. Fatigue unknown. Delegating the bulk of our thinking to
the Sub-conscious. CHAPTER IX.— The Use of the Spu-itual or Super-Conscious Mind.
Originality. New Ideas. Wisdom from the Universal Mind. CHAPTER X. — Character Building and the Overcoming of Habit.
UnUmited powers and how to employ them. Making character
building a habit. CHAPTER XI. — Happiness and Joy. The way of happiness, how
found and followed. The Joy consciousness. CHAPTER XII.— The Use and Mis-Use of Mental and Spiritual
Powers. What mis-use is and what it does. CHAPTER XIII. — Overcoming Limitations and Awakening Inward
Powers. Living in a higher consciousness. Transmuting thought.
Safe method of unfoldment. Finding the Real Self.
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The Way of Escape
OR
THE OVERCOMING OF EVIL AND ALL NEGATIVE CONDITIONS. (Science of Thought Text Book No. I.) Before one can become free from negative states it is necessary to know the Truth. Before one can know the Truth one must under- stand the nature and cause of evil. This profoundly metaphysical subject is treated by the author in such a simple way that those who cannot follow ordinary abstract reasoning will have no difficulty in understanding it. At the same time the writer goes so deeply into his subject that advanced students will find much that is helpful and illuminating.
There are ten chapters, the titles of which are as follows : Chapter I. — The Truth. Chapter II. — The Senses. Chapter III. — Life and the World a Reflection. Chapter IV. — The Problem of Evil. Chapter V. — The Truth about Evil. Chapter VI. — Reality and UnreaUty. Chapter VII. — An Invincible Weapon. Chapter VIII. — Practical Instructions. Chapter IX. — Perseverance. Chapter X. — Signs Following.
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The Path of Victory
{Science of Thought Text Book No. II.) By HENRY THOMAS HAMBLIN.
WITH
FOREWORD BY THE PRINCESS KARADJA.
CONTENTS :
Foreword. Introduction. Chapter I. — Worms of the Dust or Sons of God. Chapter II. — Falling Short. Chapter III. — Gods in the Making. Chapter IV. — Coming into Harmony with Life's Purpose. Chapter V. — My Thoughts are not your Thoughts. Chapter VI. — The Path of Liberation. Chapter VII. — The Way of Understanding. Chapter VIIT. — The Way of Wisdom. Chapter IX. — Influences. Chapter X. — Entering the Truth. Chapter XI. — The Path of Victory. Chapter XII. — The Art of True Meditation. Transfiguration. Practical Instructions in Meditation.
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The Art of Living
By HENRY THOMAS HAMBLIN.
" The Art of Living enables us to strengthen our bodies, improve our health, clarify our thoughts and live lives based upon Divine Wisdom. It shows us how to increase our efficiency, improve our service to life and our fellows, and be more useful in our day and generation. Also, it brings us into daily touch with the One Source of Life and Power. We learn to drink deeply of inexhaustible fountains : we become centres radiating Divine Power."
PREFACE.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS.
CHAPTER I. — Life's Responsibilities. The folly of trying to live for ever. Balance, poise, proportion, wisdom. A balanced, poised life the only successful one. The danger of extremes and lack of balance.
CHAPTER II. — Man a Centre of Cosmic Energy. Man a cog in the Cosmic Machine. A Spiritual Universe. The necessity for health and fitness. Harmony of body, mind and spirit.
CHAPTER III.— Instruments Through Which the Divine Life Flows. Reahsing our oneness with the Infinite Life and Power.
CHAPTER IV. — Health. Nature's five demands which must be met. Valuable instruction in health culture.
CHAPTER V. — Health (continued). Real cleanliness. Simple exer- cises which promote health and elasticity.
CHAPTER VI.— Practical Idealism the Sure Guide in Life. The eternal process of unfoldment. Expressing the Divine Idea. The Path that leads ever upwards.
CHAPTER VII. — Efficiency. Why the majority of people are ineffi- cient. Why it is so easy to succeed. Why and how the inefficient suffer.
CHAPTER VIII. — How to Become Efficient. Square pegs in round holes. Enthusiasm. How to use the whole of the mind to increase efficiency and develop latent powers. Use of the super-conscious mind.
CHAPTER IX. — Thought Control. The one realm where man can be master. Only one way to thought mastery. Making thought control a sub-conscious habit.
CHAPTER X. — Trial and Adversity and the Way Out. Tests and trials inevitable. How to meet them. The truth about good times and evil times. Only one way whereby life's difficulties can be overcome.
CHAPTER XL — The Wisdom of Simplicity. True simplicity of life described. Why the majority of people never find happiness. The gilded idols the unthinking worship. The things really worth having are close to hand.
CHAPTER XII. — Attaining to Divine Wisdom and the Universal Life. The Life of the Spirit described. Entering into Divine Wisdom. Coming into harmony with the motif of the Divine Composition.
Closing thoughts.
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The "POWER SERIES"
OF SCIENCE OF THOUGHT MANUALS
By HENRY THOMAS HAMBLIN.
Price 6d. each net. Postage id. each extra.
No. 1. -POWER TO BE WELL
With Foreword by Burke O'Connor. " There is a power within us to be well. Disease, ill- health, sickness, these have no part in the Divine Idea. Each individual life is perfect as it is imaged in the Divine Mind, and the extent of man's disease or sickness is the measure of his falling short of the Divine Ideal." PART I. — The Spiritual and Mental Causes of Sickness and Ill-Health. This section covers the whole ground thoroughly, and shows the reader exactly what is the cause of his ill-health. PART II. — Instructions for Those Who Wish to be Healed. This section shows the student how to remove all barriers and obstructions, and thus allow the One Universal Life to flow freely through him.
No. 2. -POWER TO OVERCOME LIFE'S DIFFICULTIES
With Foreword by W. G. Hooper, F.R.A.S. CHAPTER I. — The Power is Within, not in Circumstances. CHAPTER II.— The Life of Victory. CHAPTER III.— Lions in the Path. CHAPTER IV.— From Victory to Victory.
Written by one who has risen from the depths of negat^veness, this little book should prove of practical help to many who find life's difficulties rather more than they can bear.
No. 3.-POWER TO SUCCEED
With Foreword by John R. Todd, the well-known contributor to '' Bibby's Annual." " This booklet . . . tells of the wonderful achievements possible to those who learn to rely, not on themselves, but upon the Divine Power within them — to the breaking of all bonds, to the arising from all degradations, and to the accomphshment of that true, whole, complete Success which makes Man one with the Supreme Wisdom, Love and Power that shapes the destiny of the Race."
No. 4.-POWER TO TRANSFORM THE LIFE
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How the Mind Works
By CHRISTIAN D. LARSON.
This book is the latest of all ; and it deals with a subject that is of vital interest to all students of modern metaphysics, the new psychology and practical idealism.
This book will explain. It will tell you exactly how the mind works ; how you can control and apply, as you may desire, the laws of the mind ; how you can think what you want to think, and thus npply, according to plan and purpose, the full power of thought. In lirief, it is a book that will tell you how to use your own mind ; and j-i.L,.ing than this can be more important.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. — The Greatest Power in Man. CHAPTER II.— The Best Use of the Mind. CHAPTER Ill.—What Determines Mental Action, CHAPTER IV.— The Leading Metaphysical Law. CHAPTER V. — How the Mind Makes the Man. CHAPTER VI.— How Mental Pictures Become Realities. CHAPTER VII.— The Increase of Mental Power. CHAPTER VIII. — The Within and the Without. CHAPTER IX.— Finding Your Place in Life. CHAPTER X.— When All Things Work for Good. CHAPTER XL— With What Measure Ye Mete. CHAPTER XII.— Finding Material for Mind Building. CHAPTER XIIL— Building the Superior Mind. CHAPTER XIV.— The Secret of the Master Mind. CHAPTER XV.— The Power of Mind over Body. CHAPTER XVI. — The Power of Mind over Destiny. CHAPTER XVIL— The X-Ray Power of the Mind. CHAPTER XVIIL— When Mind is Broad and Deep. CHAPTER XIX.— The Greatest Mind of All. CHAPTER XX.— When Mind is on the Heights.
Cloth, 4S. 6d. net. Post free 4s. lod.
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WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE.
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APR 5 1943 |
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LD21-100to-7,'40 (69368) |
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY
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