[continued...]
Sin, sickness, poverty and death.
These four beliefs are the settled
convictions of the race. These four
beliefs are accepted; they are
settled; they pass unquestioned; they
put aside and apart from our daily
thought, and it is considered either
sacrilege or insanity to doubt their
being the irrevocable decrees of the
theological God. Indeed, we regard
them as supreme powers in themselves,
and quite beyond our control. Holding
them as firmly established truths, we
do not discuss them from day to day
as we discuss lighter beliefs that we
are less certain of. These lighter,
more fluctuating beliefs may be
called “the growing, changing,
impressionable mind.”
Now, our settled convictions have
been made manifest in our bodies. Our
settled convictions were the settled
convictions of our parents, and our
parents incorporated them into the
very structures of our organizations
before we were born, and we have held
them fast ever since with unwavering
tenacity. In other words, we are the
stratified or fossilized beliefs of a
world ignorant of the right way of
believing. We are the organized
mistakes of the ages. Not
irredeemable mistakes--no mistake is
irredeemable--but we are mistakes
subject to correction by the thought,
or the will, or spirit, we have at
last evolved, and are still
evolving--of which those light,
fluctuating beliefs I have referred
to, those beliefs not yet condensed
into settled convictions are very
important factors. These lighter
beliefs, which come and go like the
play of waves on the rocks are making
our bodies more and more malleable to
the touch of truth.
These lighter beliefs, which may
be called “the conscious,
growing mind,” are made
manifest upon the body; but not to so
great an extent as those beliefs out
of which our external selves are
built--the beliefs in sin, sickness,
poverty and death.
In these remarks I have shown that
the bodily condition depends upon the
mental material of which it is built.
It depends on the proportions of
truth and error (positive and
negative) to be found in the mind.
Plant a truth in the thought and its
influence is soon seen in the body,
for the thoughts determine the
condition and quality of the blood,
and the blood builds the tissue of
the body, thus making the body an
actual expression of the thought
material. Belief is the building
power of the body. “As a man
thinketh (believes) so is
he.”
When you treat a patient you teach
him the truth about himself mentally.
In other words, you furnish new
health-giving material for his mind
or his [253] beliefs to weave into
his body, and show forth there.
What is it that makes a woman
faint from fright? It is because body
and mind are one. And the shock to
her mind went through her because she
is all mind. Had she been part matter
(matter being a dead substance as at
present understood outside of Mental
Science) the shock would have
produced no external result. But the
shock no sooner touched her thought
than the thought acted on the nerves,
the nerves on the blood vessels,
etc., until it had traversed the
space of her organism (the entire
magnet), from positive to negative,
and became externalized. The thought
governs the body by giving its
quality to the blood, and the blood
builds the mental quality into the
tissue. On the other hand, the body
reciprocates by building the thought.
The two are one.
When you study the science it
should heal you of any disease you
may have by furnishing you with new
mental substance with which to repair
and rebuild your body. Literally,
your body should become a revised
expression of a revised manner of
thinking; and it will, too, in
proportion as your faith and
determined persistence in the study
of this truth bring you into the
understanding of the subject. In
proportion as you render service to
the truth will it yield returns to
you. Never forget this.
Our beliefs in sin, sickness,
poverty and death are very deeply
rooted. Indeed, these beliefs are
ourselves. They have built us into
what we see ourselves to be. We must
build ourselves anew after the
pattern of truth expressed in these
words--all is good, or all is Being.
We must seek to incorporate the
positive conditions into our bodies
by denying our weaknesses and ailings
and “bad luck,” etc.
Think what a transformation it
will be if we can cultivate so strong
a belief in good as to rebuild
ourselves in it. We have believed in
malice, hatred, lust, deformity,
poverty, sickness and death, and our
beliefs have shaped us as we see
ourselves. Let us learn to believe in
the omnipresence of good, the
prevalence of faith, hope, courage,
charity, justice, wealth, beauty, and
all other positive attributes, and we
shall be shaped anew by these
beliefs. This is the splendid
transformation awaiting us on our
understanding of the truths of Mental
Science.
But the real understanding of them
is of paramount importance; not
merely an intellectual perception of
them, but an entering into them, as
it were; or, rather, an incorporation
of them into our whole structure,
from extreme positive all through to
extreme negative. We must become
saturated with them. Nothing less
than this saturation is perfect
understanding. To come into this
condition we must give ourselves with
all we have and are to the truth,
fully and unconditionally. Truth will
have no half service! She gives
herself only in exchange for the
person who would own her. If you
would have truth, you must give
yourself to truth. Be earnest; be
sincere in your service. Being, Life
eternal, is pledged to the sincere
and earnest searcher after truth.
Little by little the result will be
attained. The student must read the
lessons over and over, and think
about them as he pursues his daily
avocations. Every thought that comes
into the mind leaves its impression
upon the body according to its
energy. If the thought is projected
in great vigor and faith it has so
much the more power to affect the
body, and in this way we can build
ourselves into images of truth and
love and enduring life and beauty.
“For as a man thinketh, so is
he.”
The power of the healer is in
proportion to his understanding of
these truths; therefore it is not
formulas for healing that the student
needs; he needs to be. If you
can show forth health, strength,
vital force, and all the noble
attributes of mind, then you are
these truths. Not one of us has
reached a very high point yet, but we
are on our way toward reaching it.
When reached this condition will be
[254] one of Being. It will be being
the truth bodily as well as mentally.
The trouble with nearly all the
healers at the present time is that
they are only whitewashed with these
truths, are not saturated with them.
What is more, they do not know that
this truth is meant to come to them
in their bodies, as well as their
thoughts; and for this reason they
are not growing organically in the
science.
This is to say, they merely have
an intellectual perception of these
truths, and do not expect this
perception to show forth in their
bodies because they deny the
existence of a body. They deny away
the negative pole of their lives, and
from this fact the science in their
hands becomes little more than a
theory, of no practical value right
here on this earth plane. This is the
point of their great confusion; they
deny the existence of a body without
qualification; they say it is
nothing. I asked my teacher what it
was that was laid in the grave at
death. “Nothing,” was her
answer. I said, “It is
something. There is no such thing as
nothing and cannot be, for if nothing
exists in a universe full of
omnipresent good, then evil may do so
also.”
That which we lay in the grave is
negative mind; but it is not a
nothing. If it were a nothing, every
possibility of life would be gone
from it, when, in reality, it never
rests one second, but is renewing its
efforts of growth even in the process
of disintegration.
Let the student make no mistake
here. I deny the existence of matter
as strenuously as any scientist
living; but I do say the early
leaders in this line of thought made
a grave and confusing mistake, saying
that the substance called matter was
a mere illusion of the senses; that
it was absolutely nothing. The point
to be make is this: Matter has no
separate existence from mind; there
is no matter, because all is mind.
There is but one substance. Matter
and mind are different degrees of
that one substance. Matter is a name
given to certain negative or crude
degrees of mind. The coarsest matter
you can think of is undeveloped mind.
And but for the fact that our bodies
and minds are “all of a
piece” no one could heal a
patient mentally and have the result
of that healing become apparent on
his body. His body is the expression
of his belief; and as the spoken
word--which is the thought expressed
either mentally or orally--always
externalizes itself, so when we
mentally speak the word of truth that
heals the patient it goes right
through him from his thought (which
we have touched with our healing
thought) by way of his nerves, blood
vessels, muscles, etc., to the
surface of him, where the truth that
he is healed becomes apparent to all.
Our science can only become of
practical benefit when it is
understood that body and mind are
one, because it is only by this
understanding of it that the truth
will penetrate through and through us
so that we shall be all over, inside
and out, the living incarnation of
the understanding of truth. When we
come into this condition no disease
or no deformity can withstand our
healing power.
The majority of the healers,
therefore, being wrongly taught on
this point, have only a feeble
perception of the truths and power of
this science. Lacking a bodily
perception of it, they can only do a
certain amount of healing, and that
not of the most satisfactory
kind.
You must organize the
understanding of this science in your
body--the other essential half of
yourself. For see here: The negative
part of the magnet is as essential to
the perfect magnet as the positive
part. The negative part always serves
in the capacity of handmaid to the
positive part. The negative parts of
the man are the roots to him. He does
not want to get loose from this part
through any violent separation from
it, as in death, or as in consigning
it to nothingness in theory, as some
of our [255] scientists do. He wants
to proceed upward by natural growth,
avoiding violent ruptures of all
kinds. This is nature’s method
of lifting. This is the way--now that
we are learning how to lift
ourselves--to do it. Jesus said,
“If I be lifted, I will lift
all men unto me.” He meant,
“If I be lifted all
over,” both body and mind,
negative and positive parts
together.
We can and must make ourselves
over by the slow but sure process of
right thinking until every atom of
our bodies shall actually come into
the understanding of truth. And when
we come into this understanding no
teacher is needed to instruct us by
formulas for healing. We shall then
be the life and the way, and
shall heal from our own deep
convictions of the external
prevalence of health, or Life. We
will heal then because we must heal.
We will not enact the truth, but we
will be it; and being it we cannot
help but impart it to all.
And I repeat it: as right doing
comes before right being, therefore
it is necessary that the student
should, by every effort in his power,
organize the truth in himself. In
proportion as he does this he will be
prepared to organize it in others.
Here is the order of growth: Right
thinking first, which produces right
being, and right being gives
spontaneous rise to right doing.
The effort of this whole course of
lessons is to bring you into a way of
right thinking. When this is
accomplished (and it is the only
place where any effort is required)
right being and right doing will take
care of themselves.
