CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter I – The Fountain of all Life
Chapter II – Disease only in Mind
Chapter III – Denial a Power
Chapter IV – Faith the Entrance into Life
Chapter V – Heredity
Chapter VI – Overcoming Evil with Good
Chapter VII – Knowledge a Necessity
Chapter VIII – Spiritual Telegraphy
Chapter IX – Material Remedies a Failure
Chapter X – Discord among Schools
PREFACE
For I long to see you, that I may impart unto yon some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established.”— Rom. 1:11.
To present an old truth in a new form is a privilege cheerfully accorded to all. Truth may assume as many forms as there are varieties of intelligence to receive it.
The fact that the seven notes in music have been presented to us in thousands of combinations, by different orders of genius, does not deter us from forming still other combinations with the hope of touching some chord in the human heart hitherto untouched, or of reaching some intelligence hitherto unreachable Every demand creates a supply.
We do not need to apologize for saying again what has already been so well said.
Jesus did not hesitate to offer us truths that had for ages been embodied in the literature of the East. He did not hesitate to give us the Pater Noster as a model of prayer, because Hillel had already offered it to the world before he came. He did not consider it derogatory to his teachings to enrich them with literal quotations from the Talmud and other sacred books. The whole beautiful life of Jesus was a manifestation of truth, but he did not pretend to create truth. Truth cannot be created. It has always existed. It is here and now to every one of us. If our spiritual vision is not yet sufficiently developed to behold it readily, we must grope for it and find it as best we can, always helping one another in the search.
The wave of spiritual truth that is now sweeping over the western world is bringing refreshment and vitality to thousands of tender and living souls, which, like the green sapling in the tempest, yield to its quickening force. Those, however, who stubbornly deny and defy it, will be only bruised in the conflict, as the dead tree is snapped in twain by the rushing wind.
Those of you who are dead, wake up to life! Life is within you. Summon it forth! The cry of Lazarus, come forth ” is ringing in the air today as clearly as it was eighteen hundred years ago. The Lazarus, the real being, that appears dead but is yet alive, can come forth at the sacred summons. The divine spark that is surely within you can kindle into a flame that shall vivify your whole being. If you have not yet discovered that spark within yourselves, search for it with all diligence, and your search will surely not be in vain.
If during the perusal of the following pages certain inquiries should arise in the mind of the reader, we should be happy to receive them, in the hope of being sufficiently illumined from the Source of all Light, to be enabled to reply to them, weaving the reply into the texture of our next work.
CHAPTER I
THE FOUNTAIN OF ALL LIFE
“For with thee is the fountain of life.” — Ps. 36:9.
Metaphysics, as the root of the word implies, is the science of that something in us which is beyond the physical. Metaphysics has too commonly been regarded as dry speculation concerning the working of mind, and held in reserve as the monopoly of polite scholarship, and in no way referable to practical, everyday life. No knowledge is valuable that is not practical. Nothing is more practical than real metaphysics, which teaches the true relation of that something in us beyond the physical—the immortal part of us — to God, who created us, and to the universe in which we are placed. As we are every moment the creature of God, we are every moment in need of the knowledge of our true relation to him. As we are every moment in the universe, we are every moment in need of the teaching that enables us to adjust ourselves to that universe.
Metaphysics is rightly defined to be the science of mind over matter. It teaches the mind to assume its rightful province in dominion over matter. The maintenance of this true order of life has, in all ages of the world, been proved to result in sanity of mind and body. The great question, then, is how to maintain this divinely established order of our being. It is in no instance done without watching and working, even if accomplished—as it may be — without suffering. With spirit in full command of its servant matter, we are in that condition which brings us into true relations with the Eternal Being, we are in that attitude which opens us to the influx of the all-pervading life-principle.
The existence of an ever-present life-principle is universally acknowledged. It is one and the same under whatever name it may be designated; whether it be the “Nature” of the materialists, or the “Od” of Baron Reichenbach, or the “ Vril ” of Bulwer-Lytton, or the Divine Influx from the Lord” of Emanuel Swedenborg, or the Akasa” of the Adept Brotherhood of India, or any one of that list of names in the book of Hermes: “The Divine Thought,” “The Celestial Ocean” The Ether flowing from Hast to West” The Breath of the Father ,” The Life-giving Principle ” The Holy Ghost
All life, in whatever kingdom it may be found, is sustained from this universal fountain so variously designated; and if at any time matter ceases to imbibe its due supply, it becomes inert and dead. Matter has no life in itself. Our material body is alive, as we say, just in proportion to its capability of receiving from this fountain of life, and it is capable of receiving from this fountain of life just in proportion as it is dominated by that something in us beyond the physical, which in its divine essence is called soul and in its dual manifestation is called mind and spirit, the intellect and the affections, the male and female principles.
How comforting it should be to think that the power to be wholly alive is all within ourselves, that we can make slight effort and have partial health, or we can put forth all our energy and enjoy mental and physical health in its fullness and perfection.
There is no time when, there is no place in which, this life-principle may not be found. There are only conditions in us which open us to it, or close us against it. It is the atmosphere of the soul, as the air we inhale into our lungs is the atmosphere of the body. It permeates every crevice and every tissue of our souls, as the physical atmosphere permeates every crevice and every tissue of our bodies, if we permit it to do so. It is above us. It is below us. It surrounds us and presses in upon us on every side. It is even eager to be admitted. It is freighted with divine love, with divine intention to bless and to heal, if we will only allow it to do so.
We have first to believe that this power exists, and then with the turning of the mind towards it grows a faith in its saving efficacy, which faith increases with the working of the power, until it becomes that positive knowledge which opens wide the portals of the soul and makes its atmosphere one with the universal ether.
CHAPTER II
DISEASE ONLY IN MIND
“Not that which goeth into the mouth; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.” — Matt. 15: 11.
Only that which is within us, which is in the mind or in the heart, can harm us. No external thing can gain a hold upon us unless it find some point of affinity within us. All defilement, all disease, arises from within.
Before you can practically set to work to make your body whole by healing the mind, you must at least listen to the great truth that disease originates in mind. All are willing to admit that some diseases are created by a condition of mind, but many assert that other diseases are wholly physical; that they are conditions of body irrespective of mind. In what are usually termed nervous ailments, even the materialist can trace the working of metaphysical law, for it lies so near the surface. But the deep and complex causes in mind which just as surely produce the whole list of so-called physical ailments, he cannot discern, for they are further below the surface than his science is able to explore.
We say you must listen to the truth that disease originates in mind; for if you are not yet opened to spiritual things, you cannot be expected to do more at first than give truth an unprejudiced hearing. You cannot be expected to be convinced of any truth through the intelligence of another person. Spiritual truth must come to you through your own spiritual perception, as intellectual truth must come to you through your own intellect. It is the office of the practical teacher to enable you to gain a knowledge of truth by your own practice, and not by the practice of another person. But in order to begin the practice of metaphysics rightly, you must start on at least the supposition that in mind is the cause of all effect in matter, not necessarily your mind, but some mind or minds. You must, therefore, direct your healing energy exclusively to mind, to the entire ignoring of matter. You must regard yourself as only a spiritual being.
Our great, ideal teacher, Jesus, in his marvelous works in healing, never alluded to the diseased body of the afflicted. He told them their sins were forgiven them; that their faith had made them whole. He bade them go and sin no more. He commanded them to arise, to be whole; but never do we read of his making an examination of their physical body, or calling attention to the outward manifestation of the error which he considered within them. He addressed only the soul within. We have but to follow his pure and explicit example.
You may say it all sounds very well as theory, but we have had enough of theories. They do nothing for us.
If theories are not put in practice, they certainly can do nothing for you. We confess that in metaphysics, as in many other sciences, the wheat of truth is too often choked up with tares of mysticism and verbosity. There are largely circulated works on the old science of metaphysics, in which one is obliged to seek for gems of truth amid heaps of rubbish, works in which one golden sentence is found on a page, the remaining part of which is an insult to any rational understanding, because it is totally devoid of rationality. But that these works live in spite of their rubbish is proof that they live because of the little truth there is in them. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.”
We have no need of whole volumes to prove that there is no such thing as matter in existence, for matter certainly does (as the word implies) exist, or stand out, on the material plane as the lowest or ultimate manifestation of spirit. It is useless to say that we have no body. At this moment we have a material body. It is not (according to Material Science) in any one of its particles the same body we had seven years ago, but it is nevertheless a body. It is real while it lasts. A shadow is real while it lasts, real as an effect. Our body, which is momentarily changing, is as real as a shadow. If we feel cold and uncomfortable standing in the shadow of a large building, the mere assertion that there is no shadow there, will not, so long as we believe there is one, make us feel warm. But if we can take the higher ground that while the shadow as an effect, as an appearance, does exist, yet we are in so positive a condition that we can hold our own against it, that we can be indifferent as to whether we are in shadow or in sunshine, then, relatively, the shadow will not exist. It will not exist for vs.
Our material body is a shadow of our soul, as the whole material universe is a shadow of the spiritual realm.
The Persian book of Shet, in harmony with Swedenborg’s Science of Correspondences, as well as with modern Greek philosophies, says: Whatever is on earth is the resemblance and shadow of something that is in the sphere; while that resplendent thing remaineth in an unchangeable condition, it is well also with its shadow. But when the resplendent one removeth far from its shadow, life removeth from the latter to a distance.”
These sentiments, whether expressed in the language of the Persians, or that of the Greeks, or in the Latin of old English Literature, are the sentiments of true metaphysics. When the spiritual world removes itself from us, as we say,—just as we say the sun leaves us, or God forsakes us, when it is only we who change — then life is removed from us.
The shadow depends for its existence and form upon the more substantial object that casts that shadow and the light back of the object. Material science does not teach us to make an examination of the ever-shifting shadow in order to learn the properties of the object that projects the shadow. Material science in search for such truth would ignore the shadow altogether. Much more should spiritual science, in its search for causation, ignore the existence of the soul’s shadow, the transient body.
As we regard the shadow of the style on the face of a sundial, merely as an index of the sun’s position with relation to that style, so should we regard the body, only as an index of spiritual light with relation to us.
Material science recognizes the fact that when our body is in a state of perfect health we are not conscious of a body. But material science asserts that in order to arrive at that state of unconsciousness, the body must first be in a condition of perfect health, while spiritual science reverses the assertion, and says that the body cannot be in a state of perfect health until we have arrived at a condition of unconsciousness of its existence. If we take care of the soul, the body will take care of itself. If we fill the mind with truth, the body will express that truth. All truth is beautiful. It is a universal conception that Jesus, that Buddha, that all the great spiritual lights of the world have been beautiful in body as well as in soul. All unsightliness of body originates in disease as a second cause. Disease is an index of a lack of spiritual light resulting in sin or weakness, or ignorance, either in ourselves or some other mind or minds that dominate us.
Some very upright, conscientious and even religious people will say that they live up to their highest light, and yet they are ill. Yes; but their highest light may be darkness.
It is difficult for us to realize how little we are ourselves, and how much we are made up of the beliefs and opinions of others. The majority of the world believe, without question, what they have been taught to believe. It is only the exceptional mind that puts aside inherited and ingrafted belief and finds out truth for itself.
Medical science, and even religion, has for ages taught us that disease of body is a necessity of our mortal condition, and we are even told that it is sent by God as a necessary part of our development and discipline; when the truth is, that it is wholly our own creation. We certainly do need it as a discipline when we are in a condition to have it. But if we are in such a condition now, let us not remain in it a moment longer. Let us at once learn the lesson taught us in this inevitable result of error, and cast out the error. There can be no effect where there is no cause.
So long as your child is in a condition to break the rules of his school, he is in a condition to need the suffering his transgression entails on him. But you do not tell him that punishment is a necessary part of his education, and that it is necessary for him to be disobedient in order to have the suffering which benefits him. You feel sure that if he obeys the rules he not only will not need to suffer, but that there will be no cause for his suffering, and therefore he cannot have the suffering.
If disease in us is the result of our error, if it is our own work, how can we undo that work and begin anew on a metaphysical basis. Can we carry these metaphysical theories into practice?
We can do so. We can begin today to live metaphysics.
You need not fear that you are so good that you will not be able to find your error. You need not fear that you will find nothing to correct in yourself; for after the intelligent introspection of an hour, you will be aghast at the host of errors, in the form of weaknesses and indulgencies — to speak of nothing worse — that you will bring to the front. If you think you are all right within, when you have an ailment without, you must be blind indeed. Egotism has destroyed your vision. A tree is known by its fruit.
There is, perhaps, no universal error which seems so little like an error as an opinion regarding weather and climate. Pinching and poverty are suffered, large fortunes are spent, and valuable time is sacrificed, in order to avoid certain climates that are believed to be injurious, and gain certain other climates that are believed to be beneficial, when the truth regarding it is, that you have all climates within yourself. This bondage to atmospheric changes and conditions is a troublesome and expensive kind” slavery A civil war is needed to blot it out of existence, a war within your own boundaries, a war at home, and with weapons that you have within yourself.
If it is only a matter of pleasure, and if duty does not conflict with that pleasure, there is certainly no harm in seeking the climate you like best. But do not imagine for a moment that a certain kind of climate is a necessity for you.
If duty, or even expediency, places you in a climate that you believe to be injurious to your health, contradict that belief at once. Remain in that climate and protect yourself in truth. Experience will then demonstrate to you (as it has to us) the fact that power over the elements is within yourself, and you will not run away to have your fighting to do another day, but you will stay and conquer, and you will enjoy the fruit of your great conquest over error more than you could possibly enjoy the most delightful climate on earth.
If you are a weather slave, work for your freedom I If the fear of climate is the dragon that meets you on the threshold of your introspective chamber, seize it at once, and trample it under your feet!
We are equal to all the inevitable conditions in which we are placed. Our backs are fitted to the burdens
that God has placed upon them. We will say more: if not even duty, but convenience or pleasure, calls us to a harsh climate, then we can endure a harsh climate and receive no harm, if we protect ourselves in truth. God does not intend us to be in bondage to these material things. The power of good can always protect us against evil.
If, for example, you fear dampness and believe that you cannot expose yourself to it without injurious results, then combat that fear at once. It is not the dampness but the belief in your mind that injures you. Dress yourself comfortably and protect yourself sensibly, and go out for a walk in the dampness or rain.
If you have an object, and can be of service to someone by going, so much the better, for benevolence is a servant of metaphysics. Every moment of your walk deny, not that bad weather exists, but that it can possibly harm you. It is an error to suppose that it can do so. It can do so only as you allow it to do so. Deny this error again and again, if need be, until it finally retires, as it certainly will do, and you are J troubled with it no more.
We know of a case in which a serious and chronic fear of dampness was overcome in two months. Now two months may not be required in your case, for spirit acknowledges no limitation in time. You may, perhaps, conquer the error in two days. But if more time is needed, do not be discouraged. Know that the limitation is in yourself and not in the power of truth.
CHAPTER III
DENIAL A POWER
“The evil bow before the good.” — Prov. 14: 19.
Evil is always cowardly. Assert your rightful supremacy over evil, and it will cringe before you. If evil arrogates to itself the right of master, it is always because the true master is absent. Let the master return and deny the claim of the usurper. Good is the only supreme sovereign.
There are those who conscientiously object to denying what they say they know to be true. It is for you to realize that evil is true only in proportion as you make it true, and false in proportion as you make it false.
It is not necessary to deny that evil and disease exist. They certainly do exist as an effect, on the outward plane. But they find no lodgement in the inmost and eternal soul, the pure emanation from the All Perfect Being. If disease exists, it is no part of our real self. If you have a wart or a tumor, you do not consider it, a necessary part of your body, but you regard it as something that has been added by an interference with the working of natural law. You never saw a statue or any model of the human body with a tubercle included as a necessary part of that body. Disease has no more place in the material body as it was created, than sin has in the soul as it proceeded from its pure source. Both sin and disease are something added to our original self by an interference with the working of fixed law, producing an inharmony between us and God’s established order. Then deny them both as real eternal conditions. Do not permit them to exist. Above all, at any time and every time deny the power of disease to harm you.
The most conscientious mother does not hesitate to say to her child who has just had a severe fall: Get up, my son! Be brave! You are not hurt. It is well now. There is nothing the matter.” She does not tell him that he did not fall, but endeavors to impress upon him the fact that if he thinks nothing about it, he will not be harmed. The child swallows his sobs, dries his tears, and runs to his play again. Do you feel that the mother has been untruthful? There is a swelling upon the child’s forehead, and you can see it across the room. What of that? The pain has been driven out of his mind where alone it existed, and the lump upon his forehead is of no consequence whatever. But if you desire to increase that lump, you have only to place your mind upon it, and the child’s in addition perhaps, to create an inflammation that will last him for many a day.
Mere belief in the power of disease is an error. Stout and sincere denial of an error weakens its power. It is the greater attacking the lesser, and that lesser must always retire maimed if not at once destroyed.
The denial of truth cannot weaken its power. The greater can always hold its own against the lesser. If truth in you seems to give way to error, it is because you have not a firm hold upon truth. Truth does not give way; it is you that give way. When truth becomes a knowledge to you, when it is in your possession, it will hold its own against all attack. If a person who stood beside you as you looked upon a glorious sunset should tell you that there was no such thing as color, you would simply feel sure that he was blind, or at least color-blind. Your faith in the existence of color would not be shaken; you would not only believe, but you would know that color existed. You may believe what is false, but you can know only what is true. Knowledge stands on the rock of truth and cannot be shaken. Mere belief is built upon the sand, which at any moment may shift and bring the feeble structure down in ruins. You may believe one thing today and its opposite tomorrow, but that which you know, is truth. It is unchangeable. It is yours forever. Deny evil, and, having nothing to stand upon, it will fall.
Mere words of denial do not possess the desired efficacy. If you deny the power of an ailment in a tame, mechanical way, with no spirit or faith in the power of denial, if you employ your words as a sort of magical incantation expected to operate upon certain occult forces, without your co-operation, you may as well say nothing and let the evil have its way unmolested. But the very energy that is put forth in earnest denial of error is a power that instantly begins the work of destroying that error. It expresses your desire, and paints upon the mind the perfect image that your body will as a natural sequence copy. If you perceive little result in one denial, deny again and again, if need be. Reiteration is a power.
You have perhaps heard that a person may tell a falsehood so many times that at last he believes it himself. Now, if a falsehood may be thus impressed upon the mind, why may not also a truth, to the same degree? It may, to the same degree and to a thousand times greater degree. The power of truth always has been, is now, and always will be, a thousand times more than a match for falsehood. The powers of light are greater than the powers of darkness. The hosts of heaven outnumber the feeble ranks of hell. If you have joined the army of truth, victory is already yours. Raise high your colors and march on I
To make denial practical, suppose that at this moment you feel that you have a severe headache, then vigorously deny its power over you. Say, with the child who was offered medicine that he considered worse than his ailment, that you have it, but it does not hurt. It cannot harm you if you do not permit it to do so.
Argue away all cause for such a result. Make the statement that you are in a harmonious condition of mind and equal to the duty of the hour, whatever it may be, and with that statement is presented to you an image of yourself as you can be and will be, or, perhaps, there comes back upon you from the past a recollection of yourself at your best, and with that image, its corresponding condition of mind returns upon you. How many joys and sorrows of the past we live over again I Why not utilize this tendency of human nature and turn it to good instead of evil account. Never live over your Borrows. But if your grip upon truth will not sustain you in the present without a backward look, then revert to some past joy, or some moment of perfect health or happiness, and use it as a crutch until you can stand alone in the present, firm and tranquil on a foundation of truth.
We know of an old man who always feels strong when he thinks of a certain day in his youth in which he saved a child from drowning. We tell him that if his mind must travel backward, then let it rest upon that day.
We know of a lady who always feels ill when she thinks of the day in which she refused to acknowledge the acquaintance of a friend for fear of harm to herself. We tell her never to think of that day again. Like the cowardly disciple Peter, she has wept over her error, and, like him, she can atone for it by noble living and noble teaching. She learned her lesson in her suffering, and now let her close the book forever.
Let the dead past bury its dead. All the good of your past is living in the present; it has lost but its worn-out shells, and is re-embodied in your words and deeds of today. Do not go back and rake up the corpses and skeletons that you have dropped along the road. You carry everything along with you that is worth carrying, and that without any effort on your part. Live in today, and live only in the good of today, denying the evil and dropping it along the way as you pass on.
Continue to employ over error the power of denial, until the mere quiet assertion that God is life and you are one with God sustains your calm soul in all uprightness.
This condition of peace, of rest in the Eternal, will come after the fighting is over. After the storm a calm. After the battle peace. Peace earned by successful warfare with evil rests upon a perfected faith which has become knowledge.
CHAPTER IV
FAITH THE ENTRANCE INTO LIFE
“According to your faith be it unto you.” — Matt. 9:29.
Faith takes you by the hand and opens to you the sanctuary of truth.
There is no truth so lofty that it cannot be put in practice if firmly enough believed in. But our trust in it must be boundless. It must become incorporated into our being. It must become a part of our real self. Our belief in a material remedy is not supposed to cure disease unless it leads us to procure that remedy and appropriate it, and incorporate it into our own bodies.
We naturally desire that which we believe to be good. A belief in good attracts us to good. If we pursue evil, it is because we mistake it for good. It has been well said that all evil arises from ignorance, from a misconception of truth. A firm belief in the supremacy of good over evil would lead us to forsake evil and cling to only good. Who would refuse to go on board a sea-worthy vessel to embark on a sinking ship? Mere worldly policy would guide us better than that. In crossing a stream we seek the bridge that will carry us over, and not the one that will break under our tread and let us down into the current. When we once see that good is the all in all, we must place our faith in it.
Reason and nature, without Bibles, teach the supremacy of good over evil. They teach us the governing principle of metaphysics, that good in its battle with evil must always come off victorious, that the higher principle must inevitably finally conquer the lower. We can read this lesson at midwinter, when the sun, almost swallowed up in darkness, finally emerges into stronger and longer light. We can read it every morning, when night is vanquished, by the glorious light of day. To employ one of W. J. Colville’s striking illustrations: The ancient Egyptians, thousands of years ago — as heathen as we consider them to have been—displayed a knowledge of this principle in their religious celebrations in which Osiris, their sun-god, in his battle with the dragon, always came off victorious. It was not sometimes Osiris and sometimes the dragon, sometimes good and sometimes evil, — sometimes God and sometimes the devil, as with our modern theologians, — but always good, always the Infinite, the Eternal, that conquered.
If modern theology would endeavor to stand on this high ground, its vision would become so broadened that the temporary reign of evil would never appear inevitable and final. There might, and undoubtedly would, be amicable differences between differently unfolded minds, but there could be no “Andover Controversy.”
It has been proved thousands of times by demonstration, that faith in God, in good, reposeful trust in the supremacy of the Eternal over every opposing force, induces an approximation to that perfect happiness and health which we conceive to be inherent conditions of our Creator. But is this faith a matter of will?
It is a matter of will, of desire, to assume a passive attitude towards truth, to hold yourself in that receptive condition in the midst of your good works, which, when the truth comes, permits its knock to be heard. If you believed that a friend was coming to see you, you would not bar the door. You would wait, and watch, and listen, and meet that friend upon the threshold. We ask you to regard all possible truth as a friend, and not as an enemy.
You say that reason tells you there is a divine, universal, saving principle, which if you could apply to yourself would make you whole, but somehow you cannot apply it. You believe intellectually in this great truth, but you do not realize it, you do not feel it as a part of your inner sell
You have heard that your friend lives and can come to you; then expect him at any moment. You know that a vital truth exists; then expect it to visit you. Make ready to welcome it and conduct it to the inner chamber of your soul.
A tree is only passive,—presenting no obstacles of prejudice, or error, or sin, —yet it appropriates the universal life-giving atmosphere, and grows, and blooms, and bears fruit. How much more, then, should a conscious soul appropriate the divine ether, the native atmosphere of spirit, to the health of mind and body!
W. F. Evans, in that beautiful chapter on trust, in his “ Esoteric Christianity,” says that this healing energy, this life of angels and men, stands forever inclined to save, and the best thing we can possibly do is to let it save us.
First desire to be saved, then hold yourself open to the one and only power that can save. As soon as this power is felt by you, it will generate faith, and your faith in turn will increase the power to the begetting of still greater faith. When your whole soul is opened to the divine atmosphere, your faith will then be perfect.
Before, however, you can arrive at this sublime, this passive, this perfect trust, you may have work to do. Your salvation must be worked out, and you alone can do it. If you are a victim of disease and are working out your salvation in suffering, it is because you are still in ignorance and error. It is because you have not yet opened your mind to truth. However rich you may think yourself, you are poor in soul, for you lack the gold of truth. You are crossing the ocean as a steerage passenger because you have not money enough for the cabin. Your poverty at this moment may not be guilt, but it becomes guilt when a dear friend offers you the price of comfort and happiness and you refuse it. God is our friend, and he never prefers to have us suffer. You have brought the condition of suffering upon yourself, knowingly or unknowingly, actively or passively.
You believe that this truth, this faith, might cure a slight ailment, but you are beyond the reach of this saving power, for you have an incurable disease.
We reply that there is no such thing as an incurable disease. Jesus taught and demonstrated this great truth. He did not tell his disciples to cure slight ailments, but he told them to heal all manner of diseases.
There are no incurable diseases, but there are certain conditions in the minds of certain individuals, or in the minds dominating theirs, which render it impossible to cure them of whatever disease they may have, while remaining in that condition of mind. The important question with a metaphysician is, not what is your disease, but what is your condition of mind. Are you hostile or friendly to the truth? Will you remain in a hostile condition, or will the influence of truth be able to enter into your mind and change that condition?
You urge that you have a cancer, and that it is really there, whatever any one may think about it. The doctors all say that it is settled; that the tissues are broken down ; that the system is already poisoned.
We reply, then, that the power of spirit can unsettle the disease; that it can build up the broken-down tissues, and eject the poison from your system. Why not? Spiritual power by the action of your mind steadfastly fixed upon truth can so rouse up into action every function of your body, that recuperation will supersede waste; that sound tissues will replace unsound ones; that pure blood will drive out the impure. But turn your mind away from the changes that may be working in your body. Lose sight of your body, except so far as to see it already healed.
Have you never seen a change in the mind produce a change in the body? Does not fright suspend the natural action of the heart, impede the flow of blood in the arteries, cause one to shiver with cold, turn pale, and faint? Does not sudden joy hasten the action of the heart, send the blood rushing through the system, flush the cheeks and brighten the eyes? Are not fear and joy states of mind? If such changes can be wrought by momentary and so-called accidental conditions of mind, what may not be accomplished by persistent effort in an intelligent leading of the thoughts into truth?
A physician will tell a person in grief, that his mind has dwelt upon his bereavement until the tone of his system is so lowered that he is open to the attack of disease. Then why may not one dwell upon an encouraging, a joyful truth, until the tone of his system is so raised that he is protected against disease. It is known even to medical science that one can do so, but material science limits this power of mind. Spiritual science affirms that there is no limit to the power of spirit. All limitations that exist regarding it are in ourselves. It is for us to break away the limits and let spirit perform its perfect work.
The so-called power of matter is the only power that is limited. Spirit working through matter does some good, and sometimes does great good. Material remedies do good with the mind that is in them, but mind unencumbered with matter can do all good.
Electricity can abort a boil. The inflammation is really there, the swelling is really there, but, nevertheless, they disappear, and the boil is gone. What becomes of it? The functions of the body are roused up into action, the undue quantity of blood is withdrawn from the inflamed spot and turned into its natural channel again. This process is no marvel. It is the natural one. The forming of the boil is the unnatural one. Health is natural. Disease is unnatural. The body stands ready to be helped the instant spirit will lend its aid.
The power of mind in electricity can abort a boil, but it cannot abort an advanced cancer. Why? When the cause of an ailment is more external, external means may cure. When spirit has serious work to do, it must throw off the incumbrance of matter. It would do the lesser work without matter, but it cannot do the greater work with matter. When Jesus employed clay and the saliva from his mouth in opening the eyes of the blind, his teaching was to destroy rather than build up faith in material remedies. He seemed to make a concession to the material condition of the minds present. He taught that spirit could work through matter (or in spite of it), and one form of matter as well as another — not necessarily expensive and rare drugs, but matter that was always accessible, and was without price. It was the first crude lesson to those who, perhaps, could have received nothing higher in the great truth, that our remedies are always with us, that they are free to all. But when his greatest work was to be done, when one considered dead was to be raised again to life, he stood upon the high ground of pure spirit. He commanded the soul to come forth and manifest itself. Matter may seem to do the little work, but spirit alone must do the great work.
You say that although the doctors can cure your cold, they cannot cure your cancer. Then set about the work yourself. You are through with material remedies; they have told you that they can do nothing more for you. The surgeon’s knife Has promised to rid you of your cancer if it has not advanced too far. This cancer may disappear, but the great workshop of disease — the mind in error — is still in operation, and your ideas can take form in other cancers indefinitely.
Remove your faith from that which, at best, is only a postponement of evil, and put a stop to the evil that is working in your own mind.
You ask if a diseased person can heal himself.
We reply that one who is in a condition of mind to have disease is not in a condition of mind to cure disease. But that condition can and may change at any moment; work to change that condition. Never settle down under the conviction that your ailments must be cured by another. The fountain of living water is as free to you as to any other created being. But if you do not feel that your condition of mind has changed, if your discord has such hold upon you that you cannot yet master it unaided, then ask assistance of one more firmly grounded in truth than yourself. Go to some healer in whom you have confidence, and who is adapted to you, and ask co-operation in the good work. Go to one who has conquered his own ills, who has, perhaps, — which is still better, — conquered an ill similar to your own. But however much a healer may aid you in opening your soul to truth, remember it is you who must do the work. One person can no more heal another than one person can breathe for another. Fresh air may be supplied you, and your lungs may be strengthened for their office, but it is your lungs that must breathe for you.
Continuing further, you say — still holding on to your disease as if it were a friend instead of an enemy — that all the faith and all the work in the world could not cure you, because there is nothing wrong in you. The discord or the error is not yours; it was handed down to you by your mother. Your disease is an inheritance, and cannot be removed.
We, as metaphysicians, do not like to talk about disease. We do not like to hear about disease. But if disease is in your mind, we must bring it forward, in order to rid you of it altogether. In sweeping a room we must create a dust. We do not like the dust, but we must have the room clean even at the risk of raising a dust. We say to you that it is no matter where your disease comes from; if you have it, it is yours, and yours to conquer. We cannot reply better than in the words of that most illuminated spiritual teacher, W. J. Colville: —
“If you have inherited evil, you have also inherited the power to overcome evil. If you have inherited sin, you have also inherited the power to overcome sin. Back of Adam there is always God.”
CHAPTER V
HEREDITY
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” — Luke 12 :32.
The Lord’s kingdom is our inalienable inheritance, but we can no more reap the fruits of that inheritance than of any other, until we enter into possession of it. If we only hear that a certain land is ours, but do not know how to gain possession of it, it will do us no good.
There is but one inheritance that is so fixed upon us that we cannot possibly alienate it, and that is the inheritance of eternal life.
In metaphysics we are not dealing with a question of eternal life or of final happiness, for we believe that each individual, divine soul of man will reach its destined end in supreme happiness, and continue to live throughout eternity. The question is, whether we are to arrive at inevitable final good through error and suffering, and be a curse to our fellow-beings, or through noble effort and happiness, and be a blessing to them.
What kind of an idea of supreme goodness has one who supposes that God intended us to bear the evil results of another’s sin, to our own detriment? If evil has come into our life seemingly through the agency of another, it is here for us to overcome, to get rid of, not to guard, sustain, and perpetuate.
There certainly are some human beings born into this life under a load of moral, mental, and physical corruption, while others begin this present existence with an inheritance of moral, mental, and physical soundness. Why the former class should come into a condition of things that necessitates hard combat with evil, and why the latter class should come into a condition which, at the very outset, promises an immunity from every kind of warfare, are questions that have been variously answered, in various ages, and by various philosophies of the world.
It is difficult for some minds to reconcile this working of heredity with that perfect justice which they wish to ascribe to Deity.
To one who is so unfolded as to accept the teaching, there is perhaps no elucidation of this point that so harmonizes with an idea of perfect justice as that expressed in the law of karma as set forth in Oriental Theosophy, under which law each individual has earned his own heredity as the fruit of his unfoldment in former incarnations. There is in fact no system that does permit an enlightened mind to see the justice of God in heredity, except this encouraging, this hopeful one, which tells us so emphatically that we suffer nothing we have not earned; that we reap nothing we have not sown. We may feel ourselves bound to accept as a dogma, upon some religious authority, the truth that God is just even in heredity, because being justice itself, he could be only just; but we do not in that way see it for ourselves.
In what way the law of karma, or sequence, works to attract us before birth to those spiritual, moral, mental, and physical conditions in harmony with our own spiritual, moral, and mental condition, is more a question of spiritual evolution than of metaphysics. To those of you who can accept only a little of Oriental Theosophy, we say that metaphysics, although included in pure wisdom-religion, does not require you to go further or faster out of the beaten track than you are able to go.
The all-important question is, not how did we come by our inheritance, but what shall we do with it now that we have it. We may call it Platonic heredity, and think that we have earned it ourselves, or we may consider ourselves a victim of ancestors clear back to Adam; but of one thing we are sure—the heredity is ours. Now, what shall we do with it? Shall we destroy that which is evil and hold fast to that which is good? Or shall we, through ignorance or perversity, hold fast to the evil until the good becomes buried out of sight? It is for us to replace evil with good. As all sin originates in thought; it is for us to substitute right thinking for wrong thinking.
Thought shapes the mind in symmetry or deformity, as it is true thought or false thought, and the mind shapes the body to its own image or likeness.
Suppose you have a disease that doctors have taught the world to call consumption. Suppose your mother had this disease and transferred to you the thought that consumption was your inheritance and therefore inevitable. Suppose you already have one diminished lung. There is no reason why you should continue in the thought that has been put upon you. There is every reason why you should not add another link to your chain of error. If your lung is diminished, it may be made to increase again and attain its rightful size and rightful function, or you can get along perfectly well with it as it is. Turn your mind away from your lungs. They can never become whole under the action of your mind in error. By fixing your anxious mind upon any organ, you can produce inflammation, but you cannot allay it. Your body does not require from your mind any more attention than you give to your clothing. A healthy animal relies wholly upon spiritual power to build up his organism; cannot you do as much? Regard yourself as only a spiritual being, therefore whole and sound. Become indifferent to any pain you may feel. Know that in spite of whatever pain you may feel in your body, you are in your real, immortal self, perfectly well.
We know a lady who is now in the condition just referred to. She is pronounced to have hereditary consumption and already one diminished lung. She received the truth of metaphysics as a new and startling revelation less than two months ago, and she has already so made it her own that she is far on the road to recovery. Her first battle was with fear — that powerful ally of disease. She has conquered a fear of bad weather, a fear of excitement, a fear of fatigue and numberless other fears that attend error and fill one’s life with torment. She has displaced her belief in the fatal issue of her ailment, by a firm belief in her speedy recovery. She has become assured and happy and strong. For the first winter in years, she braves the New England climate, and finds the obstacle of climate a mole-hill instead of a mountain. She pays no attention to weather, except so far as to dress comfortably. She says that when she feels a pain in her lungs or when she coughs, she literally cares nothing about it. As she is a pure, conscientious woman, with no positive vices to combat, we feel just as sure of her ultimate recovery as though it were already accomplished. Of course we could cite numberless cases of recovery accomplished, but there are enough such already on record. A mention of the different steps of progress towards recovery is sometimes more useful.
It is generally supposed that an inherited disease is the one most difficult of cure, while the reverse is frequently the case. The difficulty lies mostly in the long hold the error has had upon your mind and in the belief that the disease h difficult of cure.
If you have inherited not only your belief in the reality of the disease,—the so-called physical ailment,— but have also inherited the tendency to error that originally induced the disease, you have two enemies instead of one to conquer. But if, on the other hand, you have only a belief in the reality of your disease, you have but one enemy, and a comparatively easy one, to vanquish.
Suppose, for example, that your father had been dissolute, and had died of what is termed Bright’s disease of the kidneys, induced by his excesses, which, of course, originated in his immoral condition of mind. Now, the belief in weak kidneys was transferred to your mind even before birth, and imprinted upon it again and again after birth, by your father, by your mother, and doubtless by any number of relatives and friends. But in some way you were protected against that vicious tendency of mind which was the cause of the disease in your father. You then have only a mistake, a weakness, to overcome, and not a vice. It is not a love of evil that must be rooted out of your heart, but only a negative condition of mind that you must change to a positive one. You are suffering from a false belief and a passivity to the influence of other minds. As soon as you come into a knowledge of truth, you willingly correct your belief, and conquer your weakness. Your friends — those worst of enemies— will say of you, Poor fellow! he is very good, not at all like his father morally; but then he has his father’s disease, and, of course, will die of it.”
Now, even if you had inherited your father’s immoral tendency of mind as well as the so-called physical disease, there would be no reason why you should not conquer both; and it would not be a matter of time, but a matter of spiritual power, of how much spiritual power you could open yourself to receive. Never, for an instant, feel that you cannot, with God and all the angels on your side, completely vanquish every evil to which you may be subject. But if with your inheritance, you have only a mistake to drive out of your mind instead of an evil to drive out of your heart, you will frequently find the conquest so prompt and easy that you will be amazed.
We have known cases in which a long list of hereditary errors, with distressing physical results, have, one after another, disappeared, before a certain slight ailment, whose cause still lived among one’s own passions or desires, evinced the least sign of retiring. When there is not only error in the mind but an affinity with evil in the affections, stronger weapons are needed in the contest. Never consider an hereditary ailment hopeless, for it may give you the easiest work you will have to do.
God has told us through Moses that He visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him, and shows mercy unto thousands of them that love Him and keep His commandments.
Now, shall we rank ourselves with those, who, in the figurative language of the Orient, hate God, that is, do not live in accordance with his law, or shall we be with those who love him and keep his commandments, who live in harmony with his law? If your fathers have lived a sinful life, their iniquities will be handed down to you; and if you do not live in harmony with divine law, and cast off your iniquities, they will in turn be visited upon your posterity.
Whether your posterity are, according to Oriental Theosophy, attracted to your sphere through their own karmic conditions, or whether, according to Western Orthodoxy, you are making new impressions upon newly created souls, your evil conditions of mind will certainly reappear in them until such conditions are overcome and put out of existence altogether. If, on the other hand, you live in accordance with God’s fixed laws, you will enjoy his promised mercy. If you open your soul to divine life, if you conquer the evil that is now yours, you will hand down to future generations your own soundness of mind and body.
Never dwell upon the difficulties of your case. Difficulties exist only relatively to yourself or to the healer who brings you the light. Jesus was so advanced in his spiritual unfoldment, that difficulty did not exist for him. His work of healing was mostly performed in an instant with no recognition of hindrance.
We have only to hold him in mind as our ideal. We have only to endeavor to be perfect even as he was perfect. We have only to press forward continually towards his standard; then error will flee before us like chaff before the whirlwind. Let us each day overcome the evil that is within us with the good that is still more surely within us.
CHAPTER VI
OVERCOMING EVIL WITH GOOD
“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life.” Rev. 2:7.
To insure having good fruit, we not only water the vine, but we tear up the weeds in the vineyard.
We must be contented if we can pull up the weeds only one by one. We must not be impatient for great works and great results.
Do what comes to your hand to do today; do not be looking out for the work of to-morrow. You must become day laborers in the vineyard of the Lord. The Master will apportion to you each your work for today, and it is for him, and not you, to plan for tomorrow. Carrying the mind anxiously over into the future cripples the energies for the work of the present.
You may have no conspicuous vices to battle, but you have only to search in order to find within yourself some one error, and in all probability a host of them. Each day endeavor to bring some good work face to face with an evil, and that evil will turn and flee before it as Satan is said to flee from holy water. Conquer a wrong condition of mind by introducing a right condition.
If you have an envious feeling towards your neighbor, correct it by ringing loudly his praises, praises which you know to be just, and can utter in all sincerity. There is no one so devoid of good that he cannot be justly praised. If you feel angry with a friend, give him the kindest word at your command, and the word, if uttered with a struggle for the corresponding feeling, will help you to the feeling, without which the word would be mere hypocrisy. If your thoughts are dark and gloomy, engage in a lively conversation on some bright topic. If alone, converse with yourself, and let the voice of truth ring out above the voice of error and have the last word in every discussion. Truth is always true, whether you feel it to be so or not; and if you do not feel its force with the first utterance, you may do so with the second. This is overcoming evil with good.
By overcoming one evil we unite ourselves with that realm of thought which helps us to overcome a thousand more. An earnest desire for truth sent out into the unseen universe is a cry for allies that brings mighty armies into our camp. Conquest in one direction strengthens us not only in that, but in every other direction.
To make this practical by illustration. We know a lady who began the day feeling that she had a severe cold and a violent headache. Now, one of this lady’s most striking inharmonies resulted in an aversion to music in the early part of the day. Although she was fond of music and a musician herself, she could not listen to any sort of music early in the morning without a feeling of impatience and even ill-temper. Her friend and healer, who knew of this peculiar inversion of her mind, and who was with her on this particular morning, proposed her singing a certain little song as a remedy for her cold. The proposal at first excited a feeling of disgust. It seemed impossible for her to comply with it. At length, however, she overcame her morbid condition sufficiently to hum the song in a faint voice. The healer requested her to try again, and sing it better and louder. She then made an earnest effort and repeated the melody in clear, loud, sustained tones. When she had finished, she cried out suddenly that her headache was gone, that her cold had all disappeared.
She was, from that moment, entirely well, and wholly by means of the effort she had made to overcome a morbid condition of mind.
There may be no logical connection between music and a cold, but there is a very logical connection between harmony of mind and harmony of body, — a connection that is positive, reliable, and inevitable.
We say not only that you will become sound in body in proportion as you drive out such inclinations as come forward into your consciousness; but we assert that you will never be perfectly well until you have brought forward to the light and conquered such evil dispositions as lie quiescent in the past and even buried in oblivion. You will never have sound health so long as there lurks anywhere in your soul hatred for any human being, even though that being may have long since passed out of this life. You may not have seen the object of your aversion for years; you may think that, as you have forgotten all about it, your hatred no longer lives; but it does live until you have killed it, and you are the only one who can kill it. So long as the image of the hated person can arouse in you the slightest feeling of aversion towards him, you have not conquered the evil, and it may be the root of a certain otherwise unaccountable malady from which you are, at this very moment, suffering.
If you would have sound health, bring forward all your hatreds of persons, and kill them at once. Nourish only hatreds of wrong principle.
In order to arrive at a certain serene condition of mind, which results in a proper discharge of every function of the body, we have to overcome not only our positive inclinations to evil, but also those thousand and one negative conditions, which, though without guilt, hold us in ignorance and error, and render us a prey to other minds, which may be in guilt as well as error. We feel that we are pure, and yet we suffer. We feel that we are innocent, and yet there is no health in us. We are full of weaknesses. We are negative to error and positive to good, when the reverse should be the case. We cannot see truth, because our faces are turned towards error. We do not know which way to turn for truth. We allow ourselves to be guided, but guided wrongly.
We are, perhaps, a prey to sorrow, grief, anxiety, fear, or some other one of that long list of negative errors which can always offer an excuse for their existence in so plausible a sophistry.
Have we not a right to mourn for our friends who have left the material body?
Most certainly we have not. If we had a just conception of truth, we should find nothing to mourn about. Why should we mourn? are our friends in misfortune? If their work is finished here, and they have a superior attraction elesewhere, why should we not be glad to have them go? If, on the other hand, they have destroyed their bodies through ignorance or sin, before their work in this existence was finished, you may regret that they did not live rightly and wait the Lord’s time to go hence, instead of taking the matter into their own hands. But even this regret should not be encouraged, for going as they went was the only thing they could have done in their condition, and all for the best. If you are mourning for yourself, because you fail to realize your friend’s presence in spirit, and can no longer see him with your material eyes, then surely your selfishness is wrong. The indulgence of grief injures those around you, and weakens your own power of doing good. Regard your grief as a weakness to be overcome. Do not sentimentally misname it a virtue, and nourish it and perpetuate it with tears, and proclaim it by robing yourself and your surroundings in black, which corresponds with the darkness of a benighted mind.
You are, perhaps, full of fears and anxieties for yourself and for others. All such states of mind are errors, and have no foundation in truth. Anxiety only works an injury to the one on whom it is bestowed, as well as to yourself, and fears are the most fruitful sources of unhappiness and disease. Fears are death to spirituality. Are you not in the Lord’s hands? can he not provide for you and for all whom you love? “ Consider the lilies. ” Is he not always doing the utmost that can be done for us all? is he not unceasingly doing all we will permit him to do? He allows no person or thing to harm us, except so far as is for our ultimate good. We have only to do our best in everything. We are not responsible for results. We have nothing to be anxious about.
These negative errors, so often nourished by false sentiment, are as prolific sources of ill health as more positive vices. Let this be our test: the indulgence ( of any feeling that causes unhappiness to ourselves or others is always wrong. A tree is known by its fruit. Evil cannot result from good. If we see corrupt fruit, we may be sure that the tree which produced it is corrupt.
If you have hitherto taken a mistaken view of these things, then turn your face about, and change your point of view. Look towards truth, and truth only.
Seek light, and you will surely find it. Seek knowledge, seek true wisdom, and you will surely find them.
CHAPTER VII
KNOWLEDGE A NECESSITY
“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” — Rev. 12:1.
Ignorance is no protection against evil. It is not enough to be guiltless of any intentional wrong, but a knowledge of right is necessary, to guard us against evil. An infant, however innocent he may be, cannot be left in situations of danger to follow the bent of his own inclinations. Someone in more knowledge than he must guide him. Knowledge is necessary in all situations of life. We must have light on our path if we would not go astray. The intellectual as well as the moral part of our nature must be unfolded, or we mistake wrong for right, falsity for truth.
If a godly man should walk off the edge of a precipice because he could not see it, he would no more be protected from the fall and the destruction it would entail, than the deliberate suicide in a similar act, when carrying out his intention of crime.
It is not enough to follow what we have been taught to consider truth, but we must learn what truth really is, in order to lay hold upon it and govern our lives in accordance with it.
Material science today is full of devotees, who, for the most part, are conscientious workers in their respective branches of learning, but they are blind to the higher truths. They live in the realm of effect, and mistake it for that of cause. They have looked so long and so exclusively upon matter, that they have lost their discernment of spirit. Their learning is a massive structure of ignorance on a foundation of error.
The only way to dispel darkness is to introduce light. Gain knowledge, and ignorance will disappear. Ignorance is no more real than darkness. Waste no time in lamenting ignorance, but turn your energies towards gaining a knowledge of the truth of being. Turn your gaze away from matter to spirit.
The geologist, with his eyes turned earthward, learns nothing of the stars; yet the stars are more real and more lasting than the rocks. Spirit is more real and more lasting than matter. It is, in fact, the only real, the only everlasting substance.
We are not created into full knowledge. We must work for it. We must first desire knowledge, then put forth our energies to gain it. If one sincerely desires knowledge, he will naturally seek it, and he will surely find it.
The only serious obstacles in the way of gaining knowledge are prejudice and antagonism. If one feels that nothing exists which is beyond his grasp at this moment, or if he antagonizes a truth because he has not yet discovered it for himself, he builds up a high wall in his path, that will inevitably put a stop to his onward march.
Those of you who have already reared such walls of ignorance or conceit, demolish them at once! Leave not one stone upon another.
It is said that Narada, the Hindoo philosopher, gave utterance to the following wise sentiments: “Never utter these words ‘I do not know this; therefore it is false.’ One must study to know, know to understand, understand to judge.”
Now, whether it really was Narada who said this, or whether there ever really existed such a person as Narada, does not matter. Such a truth has been put forth, and has been preserved in Sanskrit literature for thousands of years. It was valuable when it was uttered, and it is just as valuable today, not because it is old, but because it is true. We should care less for the source of truth, and more for the truth itself. Material research spends its energy in discovering the correct origin of a certain old apothegm, but spiritual research only endeavors to absorb the truth there is in it.
When we find truth, let us help ourselves to it. Truth is common property. It is ours whenever and wherever we are able to lay hold upon it. There can be no such thing as a monopoly of truth. No one has all truth, but there are always some who have more truth than we have just now. What we have not today, however, we may have to-morrow.
Do not be like a blind man who refuses to be led because he thinks he can see as well as anyone else, because he feels sure that the sense of sight is an illusion, and that no one knows any more about it than he does; or that, if there is such a thing, it is purposely concealed from all of us, and we have no right to be prying into God’s mysteries.
God manifestly intended us to learn all that he has made us capable of learning. No faculty is given us for nothing. It is the little knowledge that is dangerous, and not the great.
It is one-sided knowledge that misleads. Jesus rounded out his whole nature until he became a perfect man. He not only completely conquered his lower nature, and rose pure and unsullied in his broad philanthropy and his love of God, but his intellect also was wonderfully unfolded. When only twelve years old, he was so learned that he confounded the wise men of his age.
Let us endeavor to develop our whole nature. Let us unfold our spirit and our intellect, our heart and our mind. Let us bring all our faculties into use. Let us be like the woman described by St. John. Let us be clothed with the sun — shielded with light and purity. Let us have the moon under our feet — the dependency of the earth, the lower nature, under our dominion. Let us have a crown of twelve stars upon our heads — a rounding out of the intellect complete in the cabalistic number twelve. Thus, and thus only, shall we be perfectly protected in truth.
CHAPTER VIII
SPIRITUAL TELEGRAPHY
“For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit.” — Col. 2: 5.
With what wonder and admiration we regard the science of material telegraphy! It is with intense interest that we review the progress of this science of writing afar, or, to speak more broadly, of projecting our thoughts to a distance by material means. We first see it in its alphabet, in the rude fire signals of the savage. Next, we find different thoughts expressing themselves in different colored lights, from signal poles or from fires on the ground. Then, passing through various gradations, we arrive at the semaphore, or signal boards of the French; thence we go on up through intermediate steps until we reach the present stupendous achievement in the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph.
Matter, the most external expression of spirit, seems to have offered us its last resource in its most sublimated element, electricity. When material science captured and pressed into service this high potency, it advanced to the borderland of spirit. If matter can go no further, if it can do no more for us, shall we not now, in our onward march, turn perforce to spirit for aid?
In these progressive days, in which even those who are still in a material stage of development find themselves interested in the subject of mind-reading and thought-transferrence, now so prominently before the public, it would be strange indeed if those more advanced could not receive the great metaphysical truth which includes the higher phases of this wonderworking power, this silent telegraphy. Scientific experiment has its own legitimate work to do in the more external manifestations of this spiritual power, but would it not seem a poor spiritual economy to confine this power to the work of finding lost pins or discovering the numbers on a bank-note?
Thought is an energy, a substance, sent forth into the invisible atmosphere. It is visible to clairvoyant vision, and by that vision is seen to have form and color. The color of a thought ” is an expression more literally correct than is generally believed. Thought can be directed to a given point like an arrow aimed at the heart of a bird, though, unlike the arrow, it is not limited by time or space. The character of thought determines the condition of the mind. Mind not only directs its thoughts to a given point, but it constantly throws them off by a natural but unconscious process like that of the emanations from the physical body, and these emanations, like those of the physical body, depend for their quality upon the condition of the source whence they proceed, which in the one case is a condition of mind and in the other a condition of body.
We all feel, if we do not understand the fact, that every individual charges the invisible atmosphere with his mental emanations, just as surely as he charges the physical atmosphere with his material emanations. When we say that a person’s atmosphere is very revolting to us, we do not necessarily mean that he is diseased or otherwise unclean, so that his physical emanations charge the air with impurities. But we feel — and just in proportion to our own sensitiveness — the impure quality of his soul emanations. We sense — that is, perceive by means of a spiritual sense — the impure quality of certain emanations from his mind in thoughts, or from his spirit in passions or desires.
We are equally sensitive to good spiritual emanations. We have known those whose spiritual atmosphere exerted so powerful an influence for good, that others have been benefited by entering — even in their absence — a room habitually occupied by them. We know a lady who said that however tired she might be, she had only to sit awhile in a certain friend’s room — with that friend present or absent — to become thoroughly rested, and that a few moments’ conversation with that friend was all the tonic she ever needed.
One may not be able to form a precise estimate of character by the nature of such an influence, but of this fact he may rest assured: if he receive good from a person, good is in that person ; and if he receive evil from a person, evil is in that person.
Many who by the use of reason have argued away the evidence of this spiritual perception, have, in the end, been forced to return to it as the only reliable witness. It is the only infallible witness, but must never be confounded with that morbid distrust of others which results from our own inharmonious condition. The soul must be strong in truth and integrity before we can fully rely on its testimony. No court of justice accepts the testimony of a contradictory witness. While metaphysics may acknowledge the existence of an impure mental sphere, yet at the same time it protects you against its influence. It permits you to bask as much as you like in good spiritual magnetism, but forbids you to be affected by bad spiritual, as well as by bad physical magnetism.
If, then, we find ourselves so influenced by these undirected spiritual and mental energies, how much more strongly shall we feel their power when they not only exist, but are directed to us; when they are sent to us by will, or by intention, which is a more quiescent form of will.
That both good and evil exist, now at this present stage of our unfoldment, we will not deny; but as evil is something we do not wish to perpetuate, we will not allow our minds to dwell upon it. It is not well to ponder the evil thoughts or bad emanations of others, either when directed against us or when existing passively ; for if we are sufficiently in truth ourselves, we are always protected against them. One who cries out against the injury that is done him by another, only proclaims his own unsoundness. One may, and sometimes should, know that the evil intention of another exists, but he should never be harmed by it. Truth renders us negative to good and positive against evil, passive to receive good and active to reject evil.
Suppose a few benighted messengers are flashing their evil despatches along their telegraphic wires towards us? We are protected in truth; consequently we know nothing about them. Our offices are not connected with their lines. We are in communication with only good. Our lines form a vast network in the invisible ether, stretching north and south, and east and west, all controlled and guided by the Great Eternal, whose operators are willing co-workers in the service of only good.
We need, then, to take into consideration only good thoughts. Could we once realize the immense power for good our good thoughts exert over others, as well as over ourselves, we should feel that nothing in our daily practical life was so important as to generate such thoughts, and we should set about the work at once.
Are thoughts a matter of will?
Most certainly they are a matter of your will in conjunction with divine will. If you would have good thoughts in abundance, do not keep them for your own exclusive use. All the laws of self-healing equally apply to the healing of others. Constantly draw for others from the pure spring whence you draw good thoughts for yourself, and they will flow in to you more purely and more abundantly.
Give not only in word and deed, but give in silent thought. Open dispensaries in your minds for the poor and needy. Give not only to those who ask, but to all who can receive. Set up your telegraphic wires, that you may at any moment flash forth a silent, unseen message that can never be refused.
A thought given silently to another frequently infuses itself so subtly into that other’s mind, so weaves itself in with the texture of his own thoughts, that, not perceiving the presence of a foreign element, he believes the thought to be his own, and has no wish to refuse it. However opposed one may be to the thought of another, he does not antagonize what he believes to be his own thought, that is, what he believes to originate in himself, for any thought is really his own as soon as he has accepted it.
Although there are cases in which thought is best conveyed by speech, yet thought is as much more powerful than speech as steam is more powerful than the engine conducting it. Speech without thought, like the engine without steam, is without power. If we. could employ steam without the engine, we should have steam in its highest potency. Were we in a condition always to employ thought without the limitation of speech, we should have thought in its highest potency.
Any thought that comes from the realm of soul and appeals to the inmost soul presents truth in its highest potency. By speech and argument truth is presented to the intellect. Error is combated in that lower and mortal degree of the mind termed mortal mind. But however externally truth may be presented, it must penetrate to the inmost being before it becomes available.
If your intellect is more unfolded than your spirit, if your spiritual faculties are dormant, it may be well, in case you do not antagonize truth, to approach you in speech with argument. In your case the intellect may prove the most ready messenger to the inner nature, with the good tidings. But there are so many cases in which this method is rendered impossible by absence, and nothing but silent thought is left you, nothing but telegraphy will serve your purpose.
Rest assured that no soul is so closed against good that persistent thoughts of truth cannot finally break down the barriers and enter within. We may say that so long as one is in the love of sin and hatred of truth, he cannot be reached; but it is not for us to say at what moment he may, by the power of truth, change that condition. When the truth is hateful to a person, we can approach him only with silent thought; we can only flash the light along our telegraphic wires and upon his unconscious and therefore unresisting mind, with an assurance that it must finally penetrate to the darkness within.
This universal, ever-present power of thought is without money and without price. We need no cumbrous machinery to set it in motion. We need no expensive tools to manipulate it. It is ours as freely as the sunlight and the air we breathe, and we have only to desire good in order to press it into our service and set it in motion.
We do not need even to continue in active thought in order that a work which we have begun may continue. If we begin a good work, God will finish it for us. If we send forth a good thought to a friend, we start in his direction a current of divine life, which, even though our thoughts may be taken from him altogether, will continue to flow through us to him until he has taken in all he is in a condition to receive. There is no limitation in the life principle; there is a limitation only in the patient.
One does not need to be what is termed a professional healer in order to be a constant healing power.
Any occupation soever can be dedicated to the healing of the nation. We know of those who, beginning the day with manual labor, or even literary work, preface their occupation with a telegraphic message to some friend, thus freighting their day’s work with an intention to heal, and in this way effecting marvelous cures. God only needs to know our good intention in order to use us as instruments for good, and while his living water is flowing through us, it is filling us also with life. We cannot carry good to others without receiving good ourselves. There is, perhaps, no better way to heal ourselves than by dedicating all our work to the uplifting and healing of someone else.
A passive, receptive attitude towards good, with a calm, trustful intention in its direction to others, is more powerful than active mental energy, for this latter condition contains more of the element of personal will. But this trustful condition, which is the result of much conquest over self, must never be confounded with that dullness and indifference which simulate it.
Let us send forth our telegrams in a quiet, full confidence that God surely will use us as an instrument for good in the special case we have on hand, and we shall be sure to hear that our patient is benefited.
Put out of your mind all ideas of distance and time, in sending forth your thought. Thought can travel from Boston to China as easily and as quickly as it can travel from one room to another in the same house, or from one mind to another in the same room. Does it take you any longer to think of a friend in Pekin than it does to think of one in an adjoining room?
We know a healer in Boston who is treating a patient in Africa, and she feels just as sure that the good messages she is flashing in that direction reach their destination, as you do that the telegraphic despatch you have just started off for New York will reach its destination, and a thousand times more sure, for there are no broken wires along God’s lines; there are no strikes among His operators; there is no boycotting to close His offices.
We know of many remarkable cases of what is termed absent healing, or healing by telegraphy. We have in mind one in which a healer has effected a marvelous moral work in one whom she has never seen. Her thoughts are sent through a friend of the patient, with whom she is acquainted. With a thought of this friend in mind to guide her messages, she has roused up the divine nature within him, until he has undergone a reformation of character. Good traits have risen in ascendency over evil ones, and the improvement in his moral atmosphere is perceived nowhere so clearly as in his own home. The healer held him in her thoughts as already possessed of the virtues she desired him to have, thus infusing this ideal into his unconscious mind, until at length he desired to attain to it.
We all know that if we associate closely with one whom we admire, we at length resemble that person. Now, a spiritual ideal which has found its way into our soul is much more powerful than any external influence which is not likely to penetrate so deeply into our nature.
A silent message is the only one likely to be accepted by an antagonistic mind. One who has not yet reached the stage of unfoldment at which he would be willing to acknowledge himself susceptible of outside influence, likes to feel that if he is doing better, it is because he chooses to do better; for Satan has a grand opinion of his own personal will power, and prides himself on being able to resist good.
We constantly hear of healers who cure the most serious and so-considered incurable diseases, and their cures are loudly praised, as they deserve to be, for they are good works; but that higher work of moral and spiritual enlightenment which makes itself known only to those connected with the inner life of the patient, is a work which in days to come will so eclipse the healing of mere bodily disease, as to make it seem only a smattering of the divine science of healing.
The great work is always the silent work. The sun makes no noise however brightly it may shine, yet it gives light to a whole circle of worlds.
The sun may seem far away, but its light is not lost in space or diminished by distance. It no sooner rises over the mountain top than it flashes to us its messages of light and heat to quicken us into new life.
If we would work effectually with our highest potency, our spiritual power, we must erase from our mind all thought of time and space. If we would employ this power aright, we must work as a spiritual being. In healing another we must proceed as one spiritual being with another spiritual being, who can at any instant be present to each other.
You perhaps lament and bewail the fate of a dear friend who is addicted to intemperance. If you could only influence him for good! But he is so far away. What can you do for him when he is on the Pacific Coast and you are on the Atlantic? Then you know very little of his surroundings. His wife writes you that he keeps bad company, that he is always intoxicated, and that he and his family are in destitution. Sympathy would not eradicate the evil, and money would be only a temporary relief. What can you do?
You can do everything. Set yourself to work at once! Send the wife your first telegram this very moment. Then write to her and teach her how to cooperate with you. Do not fear opposition from her. She may have no conception of spiritual things, but she is in the condition of a drowning person who would grasp at a straw. In your telegrams to the husband, tell him what you really see in his higher nature, and what he in his best moments has himself given utterance to. Tell him that he does not wish to drink, that it is a vice which is hateful to him, that the taste, and even the smell of liquor is repugnant to him, that he positively cannot raise the glass to his lips. Tell him again and again that he does not drink, that he is a sober, a temperate man. See him as the youth you knew years ago, manly and upright. Tell him that he wishes to avoid all who would lead any one into vice. But, above all, see him with the tempter driven out of himself, and he will then find no tempter without. See him hastening from his work to enjoy his home. See his leisure hours filled with rational amusement in which his wife can bear him company. Every day repeat your telegrams to him, and at such hours as he will be likely to be in a passive condition of mind — if asleep, so much the better, for you are not working upon his conscious mind.
Your work with him is only a part of your work. Send to his wife all the hopeful, encouraging thoughts you can command, and, above all, treat yourself until you are able to erase from the canvas of your mind all those pictures of your patient in error, that have been presented to you by his wife. So hold him in your mind as a temperate, happy man, that, whenever your thoughts by chance revert to him, his image will be in harmony with this picture of him.
Your friend does, as you say, live a long way off, and it is a month before you receive an answer to your first letter to his wife.
She is a good woman, though quite unspiritual, as you imagined, yet she has eagerly carried out your suggestions. When your letter arrived, she had been thinking, for some time, that a peculiar influence was at work upon her husband. He had not been drinking so much. One night he actually came home sober. He said that somehow the whiskey he called for did not taste good, nor feel good either, and that he was sick of the saloon and the whole lot there.
She had tried to treat him exactly as you told her; but when he went out next day, she was so afraid he would come staggering home; and she was not mistaken : he did so.
Poor little woman! of course he did. It seems almost cruel to tell her — as you must do — that it was her fear that brought him down again. She could not hold him in truth, and as yet he had no power to hold himself in it.
Remember you have two patients on your hands. The wife needs more of your good thoughts than the husband, or, rather, it must be through her that you help the husband. Hers is the dominating mind, and she must be the chief instrument in his salvation. She has his material presence constantly before her to contradict her ideal in mind. Sustain her, strengthen her, let the divine life flow through you to her.
Some weeks later you receive another letter. She did not dare to write too soon, but oh! she has such joyful news to tell you! Her husband does not drink any more. She feels sure he will never drink any more. He is so different in every way. He says he does not feel as he used to feel when he left off liquor for a while, always an intense craving for it; but now he does not want it. The sight of it does not tempt him. He has lost all desire for it. They go out together in the evenings, and on Sundays, and they seem to be living over again the first happy year of married life. He is so kind to the children, and they are no longer afraid of him. She dares now to say that he is a reformed man.
This case is in no way overdrawn. We know of many similar cases.
We would never wish to imply that any certain length of time is requisite for a cure, even if someone cure did seem to require it. We would not say that a cure could not be accomplished in an instant, but do not be discouraged if an instant does not do the work.
Continue without faltering to send your good messages along God’s lines, feeling sure that they accomplish good, and He will take care of the result.
CHAPTER IX
MATERIAL REMEDIES A FAILURE
“Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?”—Matt. 7: 9, 10.
If one ask you for life, which is spirit, would you give him matter, in which there is no life?
Some of the wisest and most learned physicians, educated in the most advanced medical schools of their times, have, at the close of a long and so-called successful career, pronounced materia medica a failure. They have confessed their science to be one that worked in the dark, and was never certain of results.
The doctor of medicine can do good in proportion to his sincere belief in his own methods, his conscientiousness of purpose, his strength of mentality, but more than all, his spirituality. He himself acknowledges that he can go about so far with drugs, then a certain disease arrives at what he calls an incurable stage. He does not so much say that there are incurable disorders, as that there are incurable stages of certain disorders. Metaphysics acknowledges not only no incurable disease, but no incurable stage of any disease. It does, however, acknowledge a certain condition of mind in the patient, or in the minds dominating his, which, while that condition remains, prevents a cure.
A doctor of medicine recognizes this metaphysical law, when he asserts (as he frequently does) that if a hopeful person had a certain ailment, it could easily be cured, but with a patient, in his condition of mind, it cannot be cured.
Material remedies do good, and sometimes do a great deal of good, by the mind that is in them. But spiritual power can do greater work when it is not hampered with matter. A man can swim a few rods in a great overcoat, but when he has to cross a broad stream he must rid himself of that burden.
All remedies are universally effective in proportion as they are sublimated, or approach more nearly to spirit, and pure spirit is the most powerful substance in the universe.
It is well known in mechanics that invisible steam is more powerful than more condensed visible vapor, and that visible vapor is more powerful that still more condensed water.
Allopathy employs as a curative agency the grossest form of matter; and while it can accomplish a temporary good, it can also effect a great deal of harm. In its system of counter-irritants, while like metaphysics it turns the mind of the patient from his disease, yet unlike metaphysics, it turns his mind only from one disease to another, from one error to another, which may be better or may be worse. There is nothing to depend upon in a false system. You frequently hear that a certain drug serves one for a time, then suddenly fails him. The faith, the mind that was in it, seems to have departed, and it becomes worse than useless. The patient feels that it not only does it not benefit him, but that it does him an injury. His belief verifies itself, and the drug becomes an injury to him. Then in case of a wrong diagnosis, the wrong drug is administered, and the result is perhaps fatal.
Pure spirit can never, under any circumstances, injure any one. One may fail to receive it, but receiving it must result in permanent benefit.
Electricity, that link between spirit and matter, that most sublimated matter or that grossest spirit, would seem to approach more nearly to metaphysics than any other curative agency, and such might be the case could it be gathered from the atmosphere and administered without mechanical aid. But as it is usually employed, with its chemicals and its cumbrous machinery, it is further removed from pure spirit than either homoeopathy or animal magnetism. Indeed, with its accompaniment of matter in so gross and large a form, it approaches more nearly to allopathy.
Homoeopathy is an immense spiritual advance on allopathy. The diminished quantities, and less gross forms of matter employed in homoeopathy, are more favorable to the working of mind through them. The advancing homoeopathist felt (if he did not fully understand) this law, when he asserted that the greatest effects were produced by those high attenuations in which there was no appreciable quantity of the drug left; or, as some said (with more truth than they were aware), in which none of the drug remained, but only the dynamic power of the drug.
Now as all dynamic power — all power of motion, of life — is spirit, they plainly acknowledged that when they refined away matter and left only spirit, their remedies were then the most powerful agents of healing.
Hahnemann demonstrated to a large class of the public, first, that the curative power of a drug was not in proportion to its material quantity; second, that substances, which in a crude state exerted no medicinal power, came to possess that power after attenuation. In these two demonstrations he took the first two steps towards the dynamization theory. But many who could go thus far, were not willing to go a step further. Hearing of the “ wonder cures ” wrought by high potencies, they joined the ranks of the skeptic, Dr. Trinks, and said (with logic satisfying only to themselves), that they did not believe a word of those cures, because they were impossible. A few doctors, more conscientious than the others, made a persistent trial of these high potencies in which they had no faith, and the result was (as metaphysics could have foretold), they found them as inefficacious as they expected them to be. If they had reversed their logic, and said that the cures by these high potencies were impossible to them because they did not believe in them, they would have hit upon the truth. The dynamic power was not in them. There was no faith to direct it.
You ask how it is that these high potencies now affect cures, when the patient has no faith in them. We reply, that the patient’s mind is only one mind, and an ill-conditioned mind at that, while the drug is freighted with faith from thousands of minds — those of druggists, of nurses, of doctors, both singly and in united medical faculties. You find high potencies most successfully administered by those physicians who have the strongest faith in their efficacy.
If the homoeopathist could only carry his truth a little further; if he could only perceive that should he make use of this dynamic power, as he terms it, wholly detached from matter; should he draw his thoughts entirely away from their connection, with even water and a suggestion of the drug, he would find in pure spirit a remedy a thousand times more universal, more infallible, more marvelous, than any he had yet employed.
There is in fact no limitation in the power of God as a remedy for disease. All limitations are in the healer or in the patient.
The homoeopathist is far on his way to pure spirit as an agent of healing. If he has not arrived there today, he may do so to-morrow.
Animal magnetism being more ethereal than any form of drugs is frequently a more effective agent of cure. Dealing, as it does, in occult forces, it seems more nearly allied to spiritual power. But, as there are good and bad drugs, so there are good and bad magnetism. Animal magnetism depends for its quality upon the physical condition of the healer. As no healer is in a perfect physical condition, no healer is able to give forth perfect emanations from his body. If you can receive good, you can also receive harm from a magnetic healer. It is this eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that is forbidden. When we discover the most excellent curative agent, it is something in which the element of evil is not to be found.
There are those who call themselves magnetic healers who inconsistently tell you that their spirit-guides alone do the work. In such cases, so-called magnetic cures are the work of pure metaphysics. Their spirit- guides, having dropped the material body, have only spirit wherewith to perform the work.
Mesmerism, though a power of mind, is, when employed otherwise than for scientific experiment, a perversion of mental power. Like drugs and like magnetism, it may do either good or harm according to the condition of the one who employs it, but it is always slavery. Both the holding of slaves and the subjecting of one’s self in slavery are founded on a wrong principle. Minds should be enlightened and liberated, and not forced into truth blindly. If one is in truth through the personal will of another, his virtue is that of an automaton, and he will remain in truth only so long as the denominating will power lasts.
We are always safe in the employment of pure spirit, as a remedy for every ill. We are always in the higher truth when we are in that attitude of mind which makes it possible for divine life to flow into us, or to flow through us to another.
It seems to you marvelous that those whom you consider unprincipled can effect good as spiritual healers; but it will not seem so if you reflect that a moment of pure benevolence, of desire and intention to benefit a fellow-creature, is as valuable in an habitually malevolent person as a similar moment in a righteous person.
We feel positively certain that nothing like the same amount of good work is done by an unprincipled person as is accomplished by one who is pure and upright. But so far as any good is effected by an evil-minded person, just so far he must raise himself for the time being, upon a higher plane than the one on which he habitually lives. To work good with spiritual power, one must desire good, and open himself to good, if only for one solitary moment.
We do not doubt that the sphere of many a healer’s usefulness has been narrowed by his failure to demonstrate his teachings by the purity of his own life. But even in such a case metaphysics has still its rightful advantage; it still proves all that it claims for itself; for if one does not demonstrate truth by his purity, he is sure to do so by his impurity. A healer, like anyone else, can never be healed in his sins. If a healer has not good health, it looks bad for him, but it does not harm metaphysics.
Divine power is an agent that contains no element of evil; therefore it cannot be abused. It may be refused, but it can never be abused.
We have only to come more and more into a knowledge of truth, more and more into the reception of divine life, pressing on to the goal, in order to be sure of the crown that awaits the victor.
The road of progress is not a blind alley. It lies open before us and always leads on to further truth. We are all upon that road, and must at length advance, however long we may loiter on the way.
CHAPTER X
DISCORD AMONG SCHOOLS
“Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest.” — Luke 9:46.
A spirit of discord among adherents to any cause, for the most part results in a reasoning as to which shall be greatest.
There are today many workers in the divine science of healing who, eclipsing truth with self, like John, forbid others to work in the cause because they do not proceed in just their way, and who need the reprimand given by Jesus to that disciple, when he told him to forbid them not, for those who were not against the cause were for it.
There are some who, while they are modest enough to think they do not possess all truth themselves, yet go but one step further when they believe it is to be found only in some other one person or one school of thought. There is no one individual, there is no one class of individuals, that has arrived at the ultimate of knowledge. There are no narrow boundaries that can confine truth. It can be found everywhere. If different schools of thought upon the same truth are in existence, it is to meet the needs of different stages of unfoldment. Every supply is created by a demand.
There may and must be different ways of accepting the science of healing, which necessitate different schools of metaphysics; but there should be no discord among these schools. They all have truth. In their essential principle they are all right. The vital truth which governs them all is one and the same truth, however they may differ in non-essentials, and under whatever name they may be represented. Whatever divine power in them all is directed to the uplifting and healing of the nation is one and the same divine power.
If any one class of minds possesses more truth than another, why should this fact create a discord? Truths are never discordant. It is only errors that can clash and produce inharmony. There is no more discord in playing a melody with a hundred instruments than with only one, if they are all tuned to the same pitch. There is no more discord in truth presented by a hundred different minds than by only one.
If your neighbor can accept more truth than you are now able to do, there is no reason why you should be intolerant towards him because he has gone beyond you, or why he should be intolerant of you because you have not yet arrived at his point. You are all on the road of truth, going each at your own pace, and there is no reason why you should be expected to go at another’s pace.
Naturally, you like your own school the best; if you did not do so, it would not be your own school. It is adapted to your stage of unfoldment. You have every right to prefer it, but you have no right to feel that all the world ought to prefer it with you.
Differences among schools of metaphysics, as among religious sects, are not only allowable but inevitable, while discords in either are both unnecessary and unlawful.
If light comes to you best through the medium of Faith Cure,” then Faith Cure ” is the handmaiden best suited to your service. In this branch of healing you are certainly resting upon the great fundamental truth, that by reliance on God all good is possible to you. There is no doubt that prayer places the soul in a receptive attitude towards the Eternal. But cooperation is as necessary as prayer. We think that to have that perfect faith which is a realization of ever-present good, to know that, without supplication, you already possess all good, is to stand on higher ground than that on which the so-called Faith Cure ” is based.
The vital force that sustains life is already ours. We have only to pull away the barriers and let it flow in upon us. What should you think of a man who shut himself up in a dark room with closed blinds, then fell on his knees and prayed for light? What should you think of a child who came hungry to his mother’s well-laden table, and dropped on his knees, and begged and implored her for something to eat? Would not the mother tell him that he was blind if he could not see the abundance she had placed before him? Would she not say that he was wasting his energy in fruitless supplication, that she knew his needs, and had already provided for them, and that he had only to receive?
So God, who is our mother and father, has already provided spiritual food for us, which through the spirit can sustain and vivify even the physical frame. We have only to know it is here, and avail ourselves of it.
There certainly are laws that govern this life force. Everything in the universe is governed by its own laws. In order that the child of whom we have spoken may sustain his body with the food placed before him, he must first be able to see the food that his mother in her love has given him; then he must place himself in an attitude towards it that makes it possible for him to appropriate it. Precisely thus must we proceed with regard to our Heavenly Parent, and then our cure will be a cure by faith and by works.
If you are limited by the narrow bounds of a cold philosophy that seems to be implied by the term Mind Cure,” you certainly have the truth that the material body should be under the perfect control of the mind, but it is a small truth to live by. It is the science of the Stoics, which seems to leave out God and the affectional nature. We do not think that all who rank under the standard of “ Mind Cure ” or Mental Healing ” are thus limited; but if they are not, do not these terms fall short of expressing the science by which they work?
If truth under the name of “ Christian Science ” most fully meets your requirements, then Christian Science ” is your servant, and can best perform your work. The true science of healing most certainly was beautifully taught, practiced, and lived by Jesus, the Christ of eighteen hundred years ago, as well as by other christs—or anointed, consecrated ones — in different ages of the world. The great truth of metaphysics, the dominating of the lower by the higher nature, was set forth by the Buddhas, who enlightened Asia; by Confucius, through whom wisdom was given to China; by Zoroaster, the great teacher of the Persians ; and by many other lights of the world. While the term Christian ” in its broad sense applies to all those who live in accordance with the Christ principle, yet the term Buddhist ” equally applies to them, and there is a narrower and usually understood sense in which the word Christian refers to the Jesus whose teachings are set forth in our Bible.
The limitation implied by the term Christian Science ” excludes a portion of humanity from its fold. The Jew cannot favorably regard a science that claims to have been founded by our Christ, who is not to him the great teacher that he is to us. The Jew has not Christ; but he has God, who is greater. There is also a class of enlightened human beings in Asia, among whom this science has never died or even slept, who would doubtless prefer the term “ Buddhistic Science ” to “ Christian Science,” and who might, ages before our Christ came into existence, have thus named this science, which teaches dominion of the higher over the lower nature, through spiritual advancement.
There is perhaps no term that better expresses metaphysical truth, than the term “ Spiritual Science.” “Spiritual Science” includes in its fold all spiritual beings.
There can be no discord between theosophy and metaphysics, for theosophy, which is wisdom concerning God and spiritual things, includes metaphysics.
There is no discord between spiritualism and metaphysics. Metaphysics, as teaching the communion of mind with mind, irrespective of the physical body, is spiritualism. If metaphysics is consistent, it must include spiritualism. We do not refer to that lower phase, that phenomenal spiritualism, which though useful as scientific experiment, endeavors only to materialize the spiritual world instead of spiritualizing the material world.
Many are able to perceive that we bear a certain relation to one another in mind while here in the material body together, but cannot perceive that the relation, which they acknowledge to be spiritual, remains the same after we all, or part of us, have cast off the material body. They acknowledge that the body bears no part in the action of mind upon mind, yet, with illogical blindness, they cannot see that the relation exists irrespective of the existence of the physical body. They feel that if a friend has cast off his material body, he has by that act severed the spiritual relation between himself and his friends in the body. They do not seem able to accept that mass of evidence in the New Testament clearly proving the communion, communication, and manifestation of so-called departed spirits with spirits still embodied on earth, an evidence crowned with the great teaching of Jesus himself in his manifestations to, and communion with, his disciples after he had cast aside his material body.
If a dear friend can transfer his healing thought to your mind today while he is in the material body, why should he not continue the good work to-morrow, even though he may have cast aside that body? Why should not your friend in the other life — as you call it — give you a mind treatment? He did not leave his mind behind him, as a doctor leaves his medicine-case. If, as most of us believe to some extent, angels minister to us, it must be by means of mind, of spirit. If you cannot see that logical metaphysics includes spiritualism in its highest form, then you may be a metaphysician without it; but if you do not hold yourself open to that or any other truth, you surely cripple your own powers. What you have not reached today, you may reach to-morrow.
You have a great truth, if you see that God is the fountain of all good; but you have more truth, if you not only see that God’s work is perfect, but also see some of the means by which he works, for he always employs means in the working out of his law, whether you are able to see it or not.
You are just as much being treated by minds out of the body, when you do not know it and do not believe it, as when you fully realize and acknowledge it. God’s laws are not changed by our beliefs. If you denied the existence of air because you could not see it, you would none the less be breathing in that very air at the moment of your denial. Spirits do not come to us because we believe in them. They are here now, and always, whether we believe it or not.
It is one thing not to know a truth, and quite another to endeavor to prove it false. Prejudice and false logic against something you do not know always displays ignorance instead of learning. The metaphysician who denies spiritualism, like the spiritualist who denies metaphysics, finds himself in an entanglement of inconsistency. What he asserts with one breath he denies with the next. There are metaphysicians who advertise to give instruction that will destroy all belief in spiritualism. Perhaps a certain shallow belief in spirit communication, founded on the ipse dixit of someone else, or arrived at by logic only (for it is most logical), may be destroyed. But when this belief has become a knowledge to the individual soul, it is just as absurd to talk about destroying it, as it would be to talk about destroying a belief in the existence of the sun. Nothing could be more inconsistent than for metaphysicians who pretend to follow the teaching of Jesus the Christ to deny what he so plainly taught, and what they themselves so frequently assert; viz., that spirit can communicate with spirit irrespective of the material organism; and this is what they deny in denying spiritualism.
There are certain minds that are so open to spiritual truth that they do not need to gain their knowledge in any external way. They are taught by an inward illumination, through the interior perception. Sometimes light breaks upon them from the pages of a book, or from some chance word, or from the atmosphere around them. We know of a lady who received such a flood of light on the truth of spiritual healing from the perusal of one of W. F. Evans’ lofty works on the subject, that she became healed of a serious malady. We hear of others who say they received this truth in a single moment, directly from God; that it was a revelation to them, a discovery made by them. Undoubtedly they did discover this truth. At whatever instant the truth enters into our soul, at that instant we make a discovery of it, and we must make a discovery of it before it becomes really ours and we can avail ourselves of it. We may have sat under much teaching concerning metaphysical truth, but it is of no use to us until the moment of our own discovery of it. It may come like a flash of lightning, or it may seem to break upon us ray by ray in a gradual illumination; but in order to possess it, we must in some way make the discovery of it. As we are individual emanations from God, we must each have our own individual illumination.
Those writers who attempt to prove logically that we have no individuality of soul, but are merged in one great universal ocean of spirit, find the idea so vague that it easily slips away from them. When they abuse this figure of speech, endeavoring to prove it literal truth, they find themselves on such yielding ground that if they fix the idea in one paragraph they are sure to uproot it in the next. We are parts of one universal spirit, as drops of the ocean are distinct parts of one great body of water, yet none the less distinct drops. We are branches of the one vine, and depend for life and sustenance upon the vine from which we sprang. We are all one spirit, as the members of an organized society are one, — one in interest, one in purpose, — yet none the less distinct individual members of that body. We feel ourselves to be on a firm foundation of truth when we view ourselves as individual creations or thoughts of the Great Eternal Being, entities partaking of the essence of the Creator or “Over Soul,” and which, like that Creator, will retain an individuality to all eternity. Jesus taught in parables; but instead of endeavoring to prove them literally true, he explained them to his disciples as parables.
There is much time misspent by certain metaphysical teachers in censuring good which they mistake for evil, and such censure is confusing to the tyro in science. There is a great deal of misdirected thunder leveled at physiology, mistaking it for pathology.
Now, a correct study of anatomy and physiology as publicly taught in schools, being sciences which explain the structure and functions of the material body in its normal condition of perfect health, can harm no one. Pathology is no more physiology than a treatise on potato rot is botany. If we are able to discern spirit, to discern God in nature, a study of nature is uplifting. If we are not able to discern God in nature, we probably should not discern Him even in His most wonderful work, — the mind of man, — but should regard thought as merely the result of atomic friction.
As metaphysics works to correct the great error of the age regarding disease in the material body, it does well to advise you to turn away from that body until you are so disciplined that you can regard it rightly.
Botany is not considered a debasing science; yet if a botanist should become so inverted in mind that he failed to read God’s perfect idea in plants, and could see a rose only with a corrupting worm at its heart, and regarded this corruption as a necessity of the plant in its development, then we should tell the botanist to turn away from his science altogether, until he was grounded in the truth of God’s intention regarding the vegetable world.
So we tell the physiologist, if he cannot read God’s intention concerning the material body, to turn away from that body altogether, until he is able to regard it rightly. The material body is no more matter than a flower or a rock. No material science should be debasing. No pure material science could be debasing.
It is a great mistake to decry good as evil, instead of decrying the perversion of good, which is the only evil.
In an age of reformation, however, good work is generally overdone. In religious reformations Pagan images are overthrown, and afterwards set up and restored, to decorate Christian churches. Tearing down must be done, even if we afterwards build up with a portion of the old material.
The pendulum of science is now swinging from matter to spirit. When a pendulum reaches the extreme point, it must turn and come back again. When it finally stops, it is always at a central point.
When great questions find their true basis and rest, they will always be midway between the two extremes.
The End