Chapter VIII - Healing the Sick
438:1
live after death we lived before birth. Life has no
live after death we lived before birth. Life has no
beginning, therefore no end; all that is material must
disappear before man is found immortal. How strange,
then, to conclude man would have had no individual
being unless he had been individualized through matter,
an impossible beginning of Intelligence.
438:7
The body never affected the Life of man for a moment;
The body never affected the Life of man for a moment;
eating never made him live, nor abstaining from food
caused him to die. Do you believe this? No! Do you
understand it? No! and this is the only reason that
you doubt it; the cadaverous dyspeptic learning this,
has a sweet face without a sour stomach, and is nearer
the kingdom of heaven than you. We are attracted or
repelled mentally without knowing the thoughts that
lead to this. We weep because others weep, and laugh
because they laugh, and have small-pox on this ground,
for disease is not hereditary or contagious only through
mind. The more spiritual we are, the more conscious
to us is an error of belief. Surrounded by minds filled
with thoughts of disease, constantly dwelling upon
their bodies, and with some complaint always ready,
the spiritual suffer greatly in this mental atmosphere;
such involuntary agents of pain to themselves and
others, must be reformed. When mental contagion is
understood, these people will be avoided as we now avoid
small-pox. To stop the manufacture of disease and give
us a better mental atmosphere, is worthy the present age
of progress. We would sooner risk our health, inhaling
the miasma of a rice swamp, than be obliged to listen
constantly to complaints of sickness, or through sympa-
thy or society be kept in the mental atmosphere of the
sick; some natures may stand it, but ours has a struggle.
439:1
We admit man is immortal, – our only evidence of this,
We admit man is immortal, – our only evidence of this,
however, we gain from his harmony; discord, sickness
or death never begat this conclusion. Immortality was
never demonstrated to personal sense; but apprehend-
ing in the least, Soul and science, no man doubts his
eternal existence. Physical effects proceed from mental
causes; the belief we can move our hand moves it, and
the belief we cannot do this renders it impossible dur-
ing this state of mind. Palsy is a belief that attacks
mind, and holds a limb inactive independent of the
mind's consent, but the fact that a limb is moved only
with mind proves the opposite, namely, that mind ren-
ders it also immovable. Medical works fill the mind
with images of disease that are liable sooner or later
to be re-produced on the body. The consent of mind
must first be given that palsy is practical, then the cir-
cumstance said to produce it, and the result follows
you have it developed.
439:19
Ossification, or any abnormal formation of bone, is pro-
Ossification, or any abnormal formation of bone, is pro-
duced by mind alone; for a bone never grew independent
of mind, and the cause producing this can remove it.
What the physician and others determine is fatal in a
case, and above all what the patient believes regarding
this, is the only obstacle in the way of the recovery.
A condition of matter must first have been a condition
of mind; hence to destroy the former we must begin
with the latter, and when the cause is removed its effects
disappear. We will suppose two parallel cases of bone
disease, both produced similarly and attended by the
same symptoms; for one we employ a surgeon, and for
the other a scientist. The surgeon, believing matter
forms its own conditions, entertains doubts or fears in