The Text - Section 15
The Difficulty in Establishing a New Science-Language
BU 28:45, LC 8:80
The fact that the mode in which I cure disease cannot be understood by the
learned may lead some to suppose that I do not understand myself. This is a
mistake and arises from the fact that certain demagogues of all classes take
upon themselves the responsibility of giving their opinions on every subject
however complicated it may be. They always make war whether they see or hear
about the thing in question or not and are always opposed as a stumbling block
to every new science and invention.
Every science has its shadow based on opinions about the phenomenon as in
the invention of steam, for instance. When it was first claimed that it could be
applied to the advantage of the world, up sprang this set of demagogues to show
off their knowledge. And while the first steamer was crossing the Atlantic, one of
the learned quacks, lecturing in New York City, was proving by actual
demonstration that the steamer could not carry coal enough to drive her to New
York. But for all his wisdom, the steamer kept plowing along unheeding prophetic
voice till it arrived safely, thus proving by practice what the theory had contended
for. This class of men abound everywhere. They are as superstitious as the
people were in the days of the Salem witchcraft, and if it were not for their
acquired abilities, would become a laughing stock to all sensible men. They are
narrow-minded and place a great reliance on their education, supposing that
education is wisdom, while it as often proves the shallowness of knowledge as it
does its superiority. Wisdom is not learning; it was before education. Every
phenomenon comes without learning or wisdom and the accounting for it brings
out genius. This genius looks for causes and traces back the phenomenon to the
cause, and then reduces the investigation to physical demonstration. This
process is called science; therefore science is wisdom reduced to practice. The
class spoken of above never had any genius; they had superstition. So learning
is not confined to either class but is common to both. Men demand praise for
learning, for that is an invention of men and a thing in common. No one supposes
a dictionary has any more wisdom than Cock Robin. The man of genius puts his
senses into his wisdom that is known to him in the form of science. The man of
letters puts his senses in the shadow of this wisdom, in the form of opinions, and
tries all things by his knowledge.
Now there are certain established principles, called law and order, made by the
voluntary consent of the people. These arguments are condensed into law and
they agree to be governed by the laws of their own make. So as law is arbitrary,
it is not based on true wisdom but is the best that the majority can agree to.
Therefore it is necessary to have persons who understand what the true
construction of the law is. This class is called judges, and it is a very necessary
calling and should be filled by those most skilled in learning. They give their
attention to their new business if they know it, but if they do not, they become
babblers of all sorts of parties and show that they are of the class I have
described. This class is found opposing everything that requires physical
demonstration. They oppose also all sorts of religion, not that they do not believe
in another world, for they are the most zealous believers, but they have no
genius. Everything that they cannot understand must be a mystery, and being
ignorant, they cannot see the difference between a fact based on an opinion and
on science. To them all is science. You hear them talking of the science of
mesmerism, the science of phrenology and of many others that have not ever
been broached to see what were the causes of the phenomena that are seen
and heard, but which these blind guides claim as science. In like manner, you
hear of the medical science. Yet there is not one fact reduced to practice by
which man is put in possession of any wisdom that gives him superiority over the
lowest laboring man who works in the gutters and lives on what he can get and
pays no respect to the opinions of these blind guides, yet is the healthiest.
So learning never made a man healthy; wisdom might, but ignorance let alone is
bliss. The class who stand in the way of health and offer their opinions for
wisdom is what Jesus had to contend with.
Jude describes them when he says, "But these speak evil of those things which
they know not but what they know naturally as brute beasts; in those things, they
corrupt themselves. Woe unto them! For they have gone in the way of Cain and
run greedily after the error of Balaam for reward and perished in the gainsaying
of Korah!"
Every man who has ever introduced any new invention or discovery has had to
contend with this set of babblers. I am not an exception to this rule. My
observation of men for the last twenty years has taught me what every man must
go through before he can establish a theory that strikes at the root of all
superstition; for as no man knows himself, to introduce a mode by which men's
thoughts can be weighed is so new and strange to the world that it is looked
upon as humbug. My experience in mesmerism gave me a chance to see and
hear the views of men upon those things that pertained to health and happiness.
The investigation of mesmerism is like introducing any new discovery. You meet
with all sorts of minds and all kinds of questions are asked, some for information,
some to trip you up or to show you that they are posted up in all the quackery of
the day and that they look upon everything with suspicion. So when you go into a
place, you are attacked by these babblers in the form of second rate lawyers or
students who want to get a hold on public opinion and young physicians who
want a chance to show off their knowledge. My practice has given me great
advantage over others from the fact that I work on my own responsibility, not
being connected with any school of practice. This standing alone has created a
sort of nervous excitement among not only the medical faculty but all that class of
minds who looked upon everything that cannot be explained to their satisfaction
as coming from God or the influence of the spirits of the dead. Then there is
another class who have seen the absurdity of the medical profession and are
willing to admit that there is something in what is embraced by mesmerism but
believe that in time they can be accounted for on some principle not yet
understood. This makes up men or society.
The religious persons I class in one scale: those who really believe that the Bible
is of divine origin and have no doubts, and another class who have their doubts.
The latter, in order to feel sure of their religion, will pay tithes for preaching and
make great professions; they never use their influence for the benefit of mankind
without a show. They generally pay well when it is for their interest. If they are
traders, it is for custom; if they want political office, they pay those societies who
will yield the most votes. Thus the world is made up of such material.
There is another class who mind their business. To them the world is merely a
mechanical workshop and they allow everyone to follow their bent. This is not a
small class, but it does not make any one noise in the world. Now all the above
classes and many more besides are liable to be sick. They almost always call a
physician, and from these, I have had a chance to learn the causes of most of
the ills that flesh is heir to. When I first commenced investigating mesmerism, the
phenomena were rare and scarcely any one believed, even in the sleep. It was
so mysterious that it roused the minds of the masses to that degree that men
took sides with considerable feeling. The first experiments were of that peculiar
kind that they confounded the learned as well as the unlearned, and I was looked
upon by some as a deceiver and by others as a humbug and by still others as
ignorant but honest. Here were the most learned and liberal; but those men of
education, among whom were doctors who had just come before the public,
found a chance to make a show of their wisdom. So at every exhibition, I have to
come in contact with some professor or doctor or minister who wanted to make
himself popular at my expense.
I gave no explanation of the manner in which my experiments were done, so the
investigation was to see that there was no collusion between the subject and
myself. I have noticed how most people who have seen experiments in
mesmerism have their opinions and try to make everything correspond with their
belief, and as that is nothing more than a child's belief, it can be compared only
to a bubble or sensation.
Happiness is the harmonizing of some disturbance. This disturbance is nothing of
itself, but language makes its misery; so language excites it and happiness is
only the name of rest from the disturbance or misery. We often hear of the evils
of intemperance, etc. Now language of itself, like rum and tobacco, is harmless,
but a bad use of either makes evil or discord. But of all evils, language is the
worst. It is the groundwork of all other evils; it is at the bottom of every one that
affects man. Some men live on it; they eat and drink it; deprive them of it, and
they are not anything. All they are is language. Ask them for any scientific
information and they are as hollow as a bubble. Language to them is like
stimulant. It makes them talk about everything that they know nothing of but they
get carried away by this false stimulant. (It never was the intention of the inventor
of language that a bad use should be made of it, neither was it the intention of
any true genius that his invention was to be applied to the destruction of life and
happiness.) The discovery of wines and liquor was not to make misery but to
elevate man, and the invention of gunpowder was not designed to make war but
to defend us from our enemies. So language was invented to communicate
sensation from one man to another so as to get him out of trouble. This is the
origin of language and it is of no use except to facilitate certain plans. Genius
never cares about language; his wisdom is all in the idea he wishes to
accomplish. When it is accomplished, he wishes to convey the discovery to the
world; and as the inventor is not the language, his invention must be introduced
by someone who knows language but may or may not have genius. Genius is
known in language only when language is the invention of genius to explain the
wisdom of genius. The abuse of language is the root of all evil. You never hear of
language itself doing any harm, but see if it is not the bottom of all misery. This
rebellion would not have been started by the ignorance of language, for that must
be used to corrupt the minds and get the people excited, and then they are ready
for anything the leaders propose. Look at disease. If there never had been any
language, the ideas advanced called disease would never have been heard.
April 1862
Does Imagination Cure Disease?
BU 17:1, LC 8:92
Are men cured by imagination or by some power or virtue in medicine? All men
believe in a power that cannot be explained. One person condemns the man who
is cured by any mode of practice differing from his own; for instance, the
allopathic practice is orthodox and any dissent from it is quackery. It is the same
as in the religious sects. Calvinists believe in future rewards and all who do not
embrace this belief are infidels. My theory classes all the different modes of cure
with the different religious beliefs. Religion and healing are based on a belief that
there is some saving power or healing quality independent of the mind of man.
There is a shadow of truth in this, but I have seen that it is nothing but mind
acting on mind and mind is only a medium for some wisdom to control.
I will describe a case under allopathic treatment and one under quackery and will
ask any skeptic if the difference does not lie wholly in their belief. A person
suffering from a severe pain in the stomach, supposed to proceed from
inflammation, calls a doctor. The doctor gives medicine, applies blisters, etc., and
the patient is no better. He hears of a lady of the same religious belief as his
own. She comes and enters upon her course of treatment which I will give from
the patient's own lips. The lady made a barley cake as large as the patient's
hand. After baking it she took three pieces of a candle about an inch long, put
them upright in the cake, and laid the cake on the patient's stomach and lit the
candles. She then filled a tumbler with warm milk and water, turned it out, and
placed the tumbler over the lights, extinguishing them. She then knelt down and
prayed. The flesh rose up in the tumbler, the patient's pain was relieved and he
was cured. Where is the difference in these two modes of treatment? To me they
are the same, both being quackery.
It is true, cures are made. But the virtue is in the belief and the people liked to be
humbugged, and those who cannot see through their own humbug are duped the
more. The Eastern magicians acted upon the people in the same way, and in the
days of Jesus, there were some who believed that he also cured in that manner;
but from what I know, I am sure this cannot be the case. How does my theory
apply to cases like the above? I know by sympathy that they have a pain in their
stomach, this is no humbug or power but sympathy. The patient is nervous and I
know that the doctor or someone has made him believe an opinion which is
perhaps that his stomach is full of tumors; then he is made to believe that the
blister has some healing virtue in it and it will cure. Now just as much as he is
affected, just so much he believes. In cases of healing by prayer, either the
patient cures himself by his belief or is cured by the combined beliefs of the
operator and patient. There is no particle of wisdom in the disease or cure. The
patient was made to believe a lie that made him sick; then he was made to
believe another and this changed his mind from disease to health. The wisdom of
the physician was ignorance or a belief in a lie. I convince the patient that he has
been deceived. This destroys the deception and the light of his wisdom is his
cure.
April 1862
Light-Substance and Shadow
BU 28:60, LC 8:86
Does man see himself or any other person or any true substance, or is it the
shadow of the substance that he sees? My own observation has satisfied me that
what I see is nothing but a shadow of some intelligence which is behind the
shadow, as a man looking in a glass sees himself, but the substance is not seen
by the reflection although you would think life was in the shadow. Everything is
reversed by man's ignorance of himself. This reversed shadow is taken for the
substance and it has its identity and its life is dependent on the substance and its
acts depend on the wisdom that governs it. The substance is the wisdom or
identity that contains the life or God. Man is not seen at all but his senses and
feelings are shadowed forth in the world of darkness and life is attached to them.
To make myself better understood, I will illustrate by shadows, which all admit
have some invisible substance. Present an apple to a person who has lost the
sense of smell but who can see and hear; of course he attaches his sense of
sight to the apple but to him the odor is nothing. Then give an apple to a man
who has lost his sight but has the sense of smell, and observe how these two
reason, one reasoning from the sense of smell and the other from the sense of
sight. Here you have the two worlds. The man of sight is the shadow and knows
not himself; the man of sympathy who can detect odors is the man, for sympathy
is true light or sight and would lead the stranger where his eyes would deceive
him. Sympathy is the substance of sight, so everything seen by the eye of the
shadow is the reflection of the substance which is in the dark. Man (like the apple
or rose) has two identities: one the man of sight and the other the man of
sympathy. A, by sight, sees the shadow of his friend. B, by sympathy, sees and
feels his friend. A has no idea of his friend out of independent of sight. B is never
absent from him and participates in all his joys and sorrows. A is looking for
some change that will restore his lost friend. B is at a loss to know why A should
grieve. Here is where the two stand. A is the religious man and expects to see
his friend in another world. B is the skeptic of A's belief, for his sympathy is in his
wisdom and what is wisdom is known to him, so his friend is always with him.
The same is true of Jesus Christ. The religious man worships the shadow of the
substance, but I worship what I can sympathize with. The Christian is looking for
reappearance of the shadow, so he partakes of the sacrament as a token of his
belief that the shadow or substance will come.
I commune with the substance whenever I sit down by the sick who have been
deluded with this horrid belief. They have spiritual eyes or sympathy but cannot
see, so they rely on their eyes or shadows and being blind they wander about
like sheep without a shepherd, and having been deceived themselves, they try to
deceive others. Jude speaks of these persons when he exhorts those who have
received this truth not to be deceived by these blind guides who have eyes and
no sympathy, ears and no wisdom, hearts and no understanding; also to be
earnest in contending for this truth that will lead man to health and happiness. He
says, "There are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained
to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into
lasciviousness and denying the only Lord. . . . These speak evil of those things
which they know not. But what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those
things they corrupt themselves. . . . These are spots in your feasts of charity. . . .
They are clouds without water carried about by winds; trees, whose fruit
withereth without fruit . . . raging waves of the sea foaming out their own shame;
wandering stars without any light."
Jude was trying to instruct man to attach his wisdom to the sense of sympathy or
odor of things instead of the shadow. Every idea is a shadow of a substance, the
substance is what the shadow contains and this substance is merely a shadow of
some other substance. Trace them back till you find the cause and it will always
be found in some sensation where there is neither sight nor sympathy but simply
a sensation or disturbance.
When man begins to reason, he either attaches his life and senses to the
shadow or to the substance or odor or sympathy. I will state a case. When in the
dark, A comes in contact with a rose and having the sense of smell, he enjoys
the odor; but B, the Christian, does not until the light comes, and then he sees
the shadow. Light makes shadows; the rose was in the dark but the man of sight
saw it not. Every idea has its odor and the man of sympathy who has made it his
study to reduce the odor to sight or language is a man of science; it is like music
reduced to a science. The note A contains no music or sympathy to him who is
ignorant of the science of music; nevertheless, every sound is associated with
language so that when a sound is made, it is put in the form of a note. And these
forms are put together and a body appears visible to the eye to the man of sight.
But the music or harmony is out of sight; therefore the man of sympathy can
enjoy the music where the other cannot feel it. So with the shadow called man.
Thoughts like notes in music are combined into an idea and these contain the
substance of the author; the substance is the food for the mind and the ideas are
combined into one great idea called man.
So man is the embodiment of his opinions and wisdom, and he shadows forth the
fruits of his wisdom like the tree, and the tree is known by its fruits. The judges
are the two characters before mentioned. One decides by the looks, the other by
the odor, so the standard of judgment depends on the intelligence of the society
in which we live. Men judge by the looks. I judge by the odor and in this I differ
from all others. I have attached my senses to the odor and have reduced it to
language, like sound. If I smell a rose, I know that it is one, from the fact that I
have seen the shadow or the substance. So it is with all odors that I have
reduced to language, and so it is with disease. Disease is like the apple. If you
plant an apple seed, you will not expect the tree to bear pears, but you may
engraft a pear. Likewise, if you plant consumption in the mind, it will come up
consumption. But as the owner's wisdom is not known in the higher medium of
sensation of odors or sympathy, the tree must grow till it begins to bear fruit, till it
throws off an odor that can be perceived by the man of true sympathy long
before it reaches the horizon of the man of sight. The man of sympathy sees
disease long before it makes its appearance. Like the peak of Teneriffe, it
beholds the rising sun long before it reaches the horizon of the common mind.
The odor of disease is as easily seen and known of itself as a blade of grass is
known from an apple pip. The man who never saw an apple pip would never
think of an apple, but as soon as the man of sympathy sees the pip, he sees the
apple, although he might not detect its quality. Science is to cultivate his wisdom
so that he may become familiar with every condition of the phenomenon from the
first impression to the bearing of fruit, for then it may not be too late to correct its
growth. Every disease throws off this odor, and the life and senses are in it, and
the body and countenance of the individual is the shadow of his feelings so that
"as a man sows so shall he reap." If he sows to the flesh or what he sees as
brutes, he shall reap the reward; but if he sows to wisdom or science, he shall
reap everlasting life, for his life is in his wisdom.
Ideas are like fruit. If the eye is the judge, then man deceives himself, for
sometimes the most beautiful fruit contains the most poison, and some ideas
seem so beautiful and desirable that we eat of them. At first they appear
pleasant, but soon we find that we have eaten the poison of some idea in the
shape of cancer that will gnaw our very life from us. The man of sympathy could
detect this loathsome disease or idea by its odor and destroy it in embryo before
it takes form and comes forth in the body. Here you see the two characters: one,
ignorant of his situation, is living without God or truth in death and disease ready
to be destroyed at any time, while the man of sympathy perceives by the sense
of smell the stench of this loathsome disease long before it comes to the man of
sight or opinions. My theory is to put man in possession of a wisdom by which he
can detect these false fruits from the real, lest he should eat of the tree of
disease and die. The tree of life will open his eyes and he will see his nakedness
and then he will see that all his knowledge is cut off.
April 1862
Music
BU 17:12, LC 8:103
Has music a body like any substance? Yes, and parents as much as a child.
Music is the offspring of wisdom or truth and contains the feelings of its author as
much as the child contains the feelings of it,, parents- and when aroused by an
instrument or voice of another, it throws off an odor or atmosphere as much as a
rose. All persons take in the tune or odor as much as they take in the rose by the
odor, and they take the feelings or state of mind of the author at the time the tune
was produced. Music contains as much language as anything else. All the works
of nature contain an odor or atmosphere of wisdom with God in it, and everything
created by man contains an atmosphere that contains the author. All things must
perish and of course decomposition is the proof; so man decomposes and his
body or idea like the invention of man decays and wears out. The decomposition
of each contains the author and the author is in the odor. Ideas are the invention
of man. All the elements of nature are perfect. Man is imperfect. The tree is an
illustration of man and his invention. God never engrafts, for he has nothing to
add or diminish. He makes man as he does trees and surrounds him with the
atmosphere of himself, thus giving him all the senses necessary to develop what
man has made of himself. So man sets up for himself like a child out of his time.
The child has eyes, so has the father; but the eyes of the child are the mirror of
its spiritual sight, so it sees not itself as a shadow. The spiritual sight is not seen
at all except as a mystery.
To illustrate the idea, suppose there are two children: one born blind but has the
sense of smell, the other has no sense of smell but can see. Both grow up
together. One goes by his sight, the other, by his smell. You present an apple to
each. One attaches to it the sense of smell, the other, that of sight. Each
cultivates his peculiar faculty and each is a mystery to the other. They act in
different spheres. One cultivates his sight and looks into all creation, and he sees
trees grow and he engrafts and cultivates them. All nature seems to be under his
control. He reasons about the blind man as a phenomenon out of the common
course of nature. His sight is not deep enough to penetrate the mystery of the
blind man's sense of smell, but at last he admits it as a gift coming from some
invisible agent. Being ignorant of the cause, he becomes nervous and religious,
so he sets up this man as a superior being and refers all things that contain life to
his test of his peculiar gift. The man of smell sees no reason for this sort of
religious worship and tries to convince the man of sight that his smell is as much
a sense as his sight and both belong to the human race, but he, from cause, was
born blind and the other had not the sense of smell. This wisdom he gets from
his father who has been teaching the child who has this sense that all men have
both, but sometimes they are deprived of one or the other. At last the child that
was born blind receives his sight. Then he is a natural man and a spiritual man.
He attaches his sense of life to the sense of smell or odor when in the dark so
that his light is in the darkness of the man of sight who sees it not.
As I have said, all ideas contain an odor of the parent or author, but the man of
sight cannot see it nor smell it, so to him it is a mystery. Disease is the invention
of the man of sight but, being ignorant of the odor, he often creates ideas that are
full of poisonous substances and engrafts them into the idea man. Now as
disease grows, its odor cannot be detected by the author till it comes to his sight,
as it is sown in the mind and grows and works on the system like a canker worm
till it has entered every part of the flesh and shows its skin on the surface as
yellow as saffron. Then the man starts as though he was shot and wants to know
what kind of a disease has got hold of him. His limbs quiver, his eyes become
glassy, his hand trembles, his voice is husky and he almost imagines he sees
living snakes crawling over him. When told by the man of odor that he has seen
all this long ago, he will not believe it, for he has no idea of the sense of smell.
Every living thing throws off an odor and in the odor, like a looking glass, are the
senses which take form according to the feelings.
So it is with all vegetables. The healthy and the diseased throw off their odor, and
in the odor the body or identity of the vegetable is seen by its odor which is sight
to the one that is affected by it. The natural kingdoms are all governed by the law
of decomposition, and the science is to replace the affected parts or keep up the
health of the system or matter. Man is like all other creatures of God's wisdom.
But God has endowed man with one faculty that no other living being has and
that is science that can correct an error. This makes man separate from himself.
Sympathy cures and all animals are governed by this power, for it is a power until
it is reduced to language and can be taught to others. Then it ceases to be a
power and becomes a science. The greatest error in the way of progression is
that man admits an error to begin with and then tries to prove it is a lie their error
makes.
April 1862
The Religion for the Well and the Religion for the Sick
BU 28:12, LC 8:55
It is customary for the clergy to open the Bible, read a chapter, make a prayer,
and then after reading a passage as a text, preach a sermon. This is the fashion
of the day, and everyone who preaches from the same text explains it according
to his views, as though his explanation was of some value to man. Suppose a
number of persons who are sick and in pain sit listening to preaching; instead of
receiving any spiritual food or drink to cool their feverish tongue, they get nervous
and are told to be reconciled to all that happens and not complain of their
suffering, so they leave the church more nervous than they entered it. Now was
this the case with the preaching of Jesus and his disciples? No, their preaching
was from some wrong impression that the people had in regard to their health.
Jesus never preached to the well. The priests of his day preached to them to
make them religious, and when they got a convert, they made him ten times
more miserable than before. This is the same in our day. All sermons are
preached to make men more religious, and when they have succeeded, men are
ten times more liable to disease.
Jesus opposed such works as the works of darkness, and I oppose this sort of
religion as the invention of man and shall show that every word they say is false
and contains not a word of Christ or truth. Jesus says a tree is known by its fruits.
If I show that the fruits of religion come from a corrupt tree, then it ought to be
hewn down. Everyone will admit that when a minister preaches from a text, he
gives his opinion as to what it means, and his opinions make up his religious
discourse, the fruit of it is the good it does to the hearers. Everyone knows that
opinions are arbitrary or a belief without wisdom, so how can the fruits coming
from a religious opinion be anything but bad? It must be so, for every person is
responsible for his opinions and must be affected by them either for good or evil.
All religion is arbitrary and was opposed by Jesus, for he had nothing to say to
those who were without religion, for he came to save the lost house of Israel. You
will find that all his disciples were from the church and religious, being Jews. So,
being a Jew himself, his remarks were to his own people and everything was for
the benefit of the suffering sick, who had been robbed of their health and
happiness by the religion of the priests and left like the prodigal son, to eat the
husks and crumbs of their own labor or wisdom or common sense.
This kind of food was to the priests and religious people a dry morsel as it is now.
If a person undertakes to question the opinions of the priests and doctors and to
think for themselves, such a person is denounced by both classes and their
wisdom laughed at and ridiculed as dry food and worthless. As I said at first, all
preaching is religious but not of the religion of Jesus. It was the very religion he
opposed, for he saw that it contained nothing but opinions that were forced upon
the people, making them sick and unhappy. Jesus' religion was Christ or truth,
not opinions. So when he spoke the truth, he spoke God or Wisdom and that
would burn up the priests' opinions and destroy the misery that followed them. So
all his religion was to the sick, made so by the priests. The sick are the only ones
who are in danger, for if a person is not sick, he needs no physician. So to make
anyone sick is to get him in danger of something. If you cannot make him believe
he has a disease, you can make him believe his soul is in danger of being lost.
This is the same. One is an effectual as the other; either makes a man miserable
and is the effect of our belief. When Jesus commanded his disciples to go forth
and teach all men and cure all diseases, he never told them to go to the well and
preach the doctrine of the Scribes and Pharisees but to go to the lost sheep or
those who had been made sick by the priest, to call on them and cast out their
corrupt ideas that they got from the doctors. So by their fruits they were to be
known, and instead of making the young sick and crazy by false doctrines, they
showed the absurdity of their religion and expounded the living truth which broke
in pieces their opinions.
Their test came when they had something to perform; for instance, when Paul
went to Athens, his text come up by the state of society. He saw that their religion
was all vanity and it made the people sick and wicked, so he said, I perceive that
in all things you are too superstitious or religious. You often hear this text
preached from Acts 17:22-23. "I found an altar with this inscription, To the
unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship him declare I unto you."
Paul knew the people were very religious, for when he was a religious man, he
was very religious and persecuted all who disbelieved in his religion. But when
he saw the truth or Christ, it lit up his wisdom so that he saw that all his religion
was of man and he condemned it as superstition, etc.
Religious worship is all the invention of man; there is not one particle of the
wisdom of Christ in it. It is only the superstition of the old church that Jesus
opposed. Jesus had got rid of his religion before he undertook to preach the
Christ or truth. This is the difference: one teaches what he believes about
something he knows nothing of, and if he succeeds in convincing others of this
belief, this is religion. They are convinced of all kinds of errors and are put under
a great many restrictions so that fears of something horrible get them nervous.
This is called religion, and their feelings are the fruits. Therefore religion is to
make men more miserable than before and this is always so, although at times it
may seem different. Shall we do evil that good men come? Now let truth be truth
but every man or opinion a liar. The idea of opinions being true is what causes all
the controversy. All medical skill is based on this sandy foundation. Religion is
based on the same, so when minds of wisdom blow and the waves of truth beat
upon the house of opinion, its foundation is washed away and it falls.
Science, like rain, has been dropping upon superstition or religion until it is nearly
crumbled to pieces. And as the tide of wisdom sweeps along the shores of
superstition, it will wash out the errors and leave the shores of time clear from the
rocks and ledges of religious bigotry. So when the wind of life springs up, the
soul will glide away down the stream of life to the great ocean of wisdom, there to
float free from all harm till time shall be no more. You may say that this time may
never come. I will answer in the words of Jesus spoken on a similar occasion. As
in the day of Noah, they were eating and drinking in heathen superstition and the
floods of wisdom came and those that entered into this truth were saved; so shall
it be now. The heavens or minds are black with error and the sun or wisdom
gives no light or truth. The stars or teachers fall from the heaven and the powers
of their theories are shaken. Now as this truth cometh from the east and shineth
to the west, so shall this great wisdom come and thou that understandeth shall
enter in and be saved from the evil that follows the belief of the priests and
doctors. The truth shall come in the clouds of error, and every eye of wisdom
shall see it, and it shall sit on the throne in the belief of man where it will judge
the world and separate the truth from the error. Then every theory of man, based
on an opinion, shall fall and the Son of God or Science shall reign on the earth as
it does in heaven; then there will be a new heaven or science and a new earth or
belief, for the old theory of opinions shall be burned up by Science.
Truth and wisdom shall reign till error shall be known as a separate thing from
wisdom. Wisdom or Science shall test all opinions, and when a man gives an
opinion, it will be taken as such and truth as truth. Religion will then give away to
a higher wisdom that will prove itself as Jesus proved his wisdom when on earth.
Jesus was the founder of this great truth and his field was the mind of man. His
labor was not among the well or in any known science, but it was with the sick,
and his sermon was to correct the error that made the people sick. Therefore all
he said was to destroy religion because religion was a sin, based on an opinion.
If a person can show where a sermon corrects any error that the sick have so as
to relieve them from any suffering, then I will admit the preacher is a follower of
Jesus. Jesus never preached without having some object to obtain. But you may
go to the church forever and gaze on the dead bodies of sin and error and offer
up prayers to this common God, and it will never take away sin and error. But
once in the end of these things, the truth will come out and explain all and the
sick will be made better; but never will the truth shine till error is shown up in its
true character and its cloven foot of ignorance is seen. Then it will cease to be
error to mankind.
April 1862
True and False Science
BU 28:48, LC 8:75
Man's belief makes him what he is and he is subject to all the errors of the world
as far as his life and happiness are concerned. This science of happiness
embraces all sciences admitted by scientific minds, but the knowledge of it
separates the real from the spurious science. It proves that a belief in any
science that can be proved never makes a man sick, but one that is based on an
opinion is false. For example, all religion is based on an opinion. The healing art
must be a science or an error, and when its advocates claim it as a science, the
people have a right to call for proof. So it is with any new question; it must be
demonstrated to skeptics on an admitted principle.
There are persons claiming wisdom or science, and when asked for proof, they
give their opinion, while every scientific man knows that any opinion is merely a
babbling about what is not understood.
Nebuchadnezzar understood this and when he besieged Jerusalem, he gave a
command that they should bring certain of the children of Israel and of the kings
and of the princes, children in whom was no blemish but well favored and skillful
in all wisdom and cunning in knowledge and understanding science, and such as
had ability in them, to stand in the king's palace and whom they might teach the
learning and tongue of the Chaldeans. Here Nebuchadnezzar knew that there
were babblers or men of pretense among them even in his own palace, so he
found that such science as theirs was only opinions about what they knew
nothing. Paul warns Timothy and says, "Keep that which is committed to thy
trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so
called." Ever since the world began, there has been a war in error. But science
never makes war nor has any hand in it; it never dictates but reasons what it
knows. Error is Science falsely called.
Now I claim that my cures are done by a true science and so do all others the
same. This was just the same in the days of Jesus. The false science or saviour
or Messiah claimed the same power as Jesus, but the latter contended there was
a difference. The world has never been shown where it is and the false science
has had the day up to this time. Now I profess to show where my practice differs
from all others and also to show that their professed science is nothing but an
opinion based on an error. My science consists in proving that this is only an
error and their misery is what follows the error. To prove this, it is necessary to
show that man is made sick by his belief and cured by it and that all there is of
man is error, ignorance and science. His life and senses are in these and they
make up man. So when a man goes to a doctor, he is in one of the two,
ignorance or error; he cannot be in wisdom, for wisdom cannot be ignorant or in
error. Error is opinion, reason is knowledge and is always showing what it knows.
Ignorance is the child disturbed. I will take for illustration one who is sick and a
spiritualist. He sits down and after I have told him how he feels and he admits it, I
begin to tell the causes. This requires his attention and, in listening, he grows
nervous and says, "I don't want you to talk; that won't cure me. I came to be
cured." Well I answer, "That is what I am going to do and I want you to listen
while I tell you what has made you sick." "I don't care what has made me sick. I
want to get well. I believe you can cure me and that is all I want. I don't want to
hear you talk. I am a spiritualist and so are you, but you won't admit it so it does
not make any difference. Just cure me and let your talk go; you cannot change
my mind." "What do you believe," I then ask. He answers, "I believe you get your
power from the spirit world." These believe that I have a power. This belief
requires no reason or thought, only a belief in a spirit world which has all the
spirits of the dead. To reason is to get them nervous, for they cannot understand.
It is much easier to admit an error than to try to understand it. Such a person
stands in relation to a doctor as a scholar who comes to his teacher with a
mathematical problem and wants him to work it out for him. The teacher tells him
where his error is, and then goes on to explain how he got into it and to teach
him how to get out of his error. But the pupil says, "I don't want you to explain it; it
makes me nervous. I only want to get out of my trouble." The teacher replies, "I
want to make you understand that there is a science." But the pupil says, "That is
all nonsense." The same is the case with the spiritualist. He says to me, "You
have a power which all men have not; some men have more electricity than
others." I answer, "Electricity has nothing to do with it." Well, he says, "It is of no
use for you and me to argue. I know it is all spiritual electricity, so just correct the
evil and that is what I want; you cannot change my mind." So I cure them in their
own belief and save them in their sins or ignorance, ready to get into trouble
again the next day. This is the case with a great many. They want to hold on to a
belief and then be cured of it. They want me to admit a disease and then want
me to cure it by my spiritual power, so their belief makes them sick and their
belief makes them well. My wisdom cures and they are none the wiser.
There is another class of minds like the following. A person comes to see me. I
commence to tell him how he feels, and he admits it. I then say your mind is
affected; this makes you nervous and you believe you are troubled with
dyspepsia. He answers, "I have the dyspepsia but my mind is all right." I then ask
him why everything looks so dark and gloomy and why he feels so alone in the
world. He says, "My dyspepsia causes it." I say, "I have no dyspepsia and yet
you make me feel as I have described." He answers, "I don't know why." I then
say, "It is caused by your religious belief. You cannot understand, so it makes
you nervous, and you put your trouble into your food." "My religion does not
make me nervous," he answers, "it is the only thing that gives me happiness. I
cannot give up my religion. I would rather die than give it up ." "I do not want your
religion; I only want to show you how afraid you are to ' have it touched." "I did
not come to have you talk to me about religion. I came to be cured of the
dyspepsia."
Here is a person with whom I have to argue until I change his mind. His mind is
the disturbed state of his matter. His belief is the bugbear that frightens him, and
his fright changes his mind. This is the disease and the misery is the complaint or
feelings. As I am not afraid of such a belief, I stand to a person like the above as
a pilot stands to a captain when he is in trouble and calls for one. I know my
business, and if the captain won't listen to hear me tell him how he got into his
trouble, that does not prevent me from getting him out of his trouble, but the
captain is none the wiser.
The next kind of patient is lawyer. Jesus could not make much out of this class of
minds, for their wisdom is all arbitrary. They never argue from scientific principles
but from law, and everyone knows that law is arbitrary. I sit down by the learned
lawyer just as I do with alt others and tell him his feelings. Sometimes he will
admit them and sometimes he will not, except as a guess. I commence to explain
and he breaks out with, "I know what the matter is, I understand the structure of
the human system. I know the liver is turgid, the lungs are irritated, etc. I
understand my difficulty. Do you think you can give me anything to help me?" "I
never give anything for disease; I believe all disease is in the mind and my
explanation cures." "Well, my mind is not troubled; I have a local disease." "That
is your belief, and that is just what I must change." "But you don't understand,"
the lawyer insists. "I have a disease of the liver; I understand my trouble." I
answer him, "If you understood yourself, you would have no trouble or belief. I
explain your feelings in my way and by enlightening you and showing you the
cause of disease, I make you see that you have embraced an error which is the
cause of your misery. When you see this, you will lose your belief and gain
knowledge." "Poh! This is humbug. You need not think to come such game on
me. You do not use words correctly." Then he goes on to quibble about words
and puts me down on the ground that I have no education. There he has the
advantage certainly. He quarrels all the time with me and seems very much
afraid I shall gain some advantage over him in argument. His native intelligence
is cramped by law and his opinions are molded with the intention of getting the
better of his opponent in some little matter. He is blind and deaf to the fact that
there is an intelligence superior to an opinion. Still I cure him and he goes on
browbeating and blackguarding, pleased with coming out ahead in such warfare.
April 1862
What Is the Foundation of a Religious Man's Belief?
BU 28:25, LC 8:68
[orig. untitled]
It is in a God who has all power, all wisdom and all strength, all love and all
goodness. To believe in all the above is to be a Christian. What does the
Christian believe that this God is doing for the benefit of the human race? That
he is watching over his creatures, providing everything that shall make them
happy and comfortable and is ready to give to all that shall ask him, believing in
his power to answer prayer. All this and a great deal more is believed by the
Christians. They also believe that God watches over their health and knows
better what they need than they do themselves. If they suffer, it is for their good
to convince them of the weakness of man's wisdom and his dependence on a
superior power; and if they suffer for his sake, they will receive a reward in
heaven that shall recompense them for all their suffering.
Now suppose you believe in all the above, what does it profit you? Can you cure
yourself of one ache or pain? Can you add to your height one inch, or turn a hair
white or black, or give to the sick who are wasting from disease one single word
of wisdom that will correct their error and restore them to health? Can you make
one blade of grass grow or do anything that shall instruct the world in regard to
man's wisdom? You must answer, No. Then what does your religion amount to?
Nothing but a belief, like a child's belief in God. Suppose you believe that God is
in heaven or don't believe it, what will that have to do with curing your heart
disease? You will say, Nothing. Suppose you believe in all I have stated as the
Christians believe, will it cure you? Then what is your belief good for except as a
belief? Why does not your God cure you? Is it for want of faith on your part? If
that is the case, then faith is the cure, so if you have the cure that is your faith.
Faith is not wisdom but the substance or cure. Like water to the thirsty soul, it is
his cure, but wisdom leads him to the fount of living water so that he will not
thirst. Then his faith will be lost in sight for his wisdom prevents his thirst.
Therefore to know God is to get wisdom, but to be separated from God is to be
religious and believe that there is a fountain of water large enough to quench the
thirst of everyone if they can find it. This is religion. But to the wise, it is to know
this fountain is in yourself, a well of water springing up into everlasting wisdom.
Then you will ask of this wisdom, and just as you understand, you will receive
and your wisdom will teach you that you cannot ask of wisdom by your belief and
have your prayers answered. God is like mathematics, for mathematics is
wisdom put into practice or reduced to man's comprehension. To receive an
intelligent answer in mathematics, you must ask in wisdom, not in opinion, and
just according to your wisdom, the answer comes.
Here is the difference between you and me. Your God is your belief and you
attach your senses to it. My God is my wisdom, and I attach my senses to it. My
God is light and truth; your God is darkness and error. My God sees through your
God and knows it is a God invented by man. To destroy your God is to destroy
your opinion in man's belief. So as you cease from evil or believing in man's
wisdom and learn to love God or wisdom, your errors or diseases are blotted out
and your life is saved by this wisdom or truth.
All evil is in our religious beliefs. There could be no disease without a sensation,
but a sensation is not a disease. It is simply a change from harmony. This is a
chemical change in the mind or fluids. This change shows itself by heat. The heat
is under the direction of man's opinion or God's wisdom through man. Wisdom
can account for all the sensations. Error gives opinions, so disease is what
follows opinion and the misery follows the belief. The child has no wisdom so that
it has no disease to itself, but its misery is in its fear and its fear is in its
ignorance. So to quiet its fear, you relieve its misery. Disease and a phenomenon
are not the same. The same difference exists in the two as does in opinion and
wisdom. The ignorant cannot see the difference between a truth based on an
opinion and on a scientific fact. A scientific man and a Christian are as different
as a truth based on a belief is different from a truth based on science. I will
describe a man of religion and one of science so you can see and feel the
difference. A purely religious man is all made of error, based on opinions, with
not one element of wisdom in him. All his acts are governed by fear. The fear
makes him believe in a God of love and hatred. If he does well, his God will
reward him, and if he does wrong, his God will punish him. His God is not a part
of himself but separate and apart from him, so he prays to his God. He lives in
fear and dies in the hope that God will receive him in His abode. So he lives and
dies as all error dies when the truth comes. This belief is full of contradiction, for
it is of this world's opinion; so he is a man of matter and his God is a tyrant. What
is my God? My God is all wise in everything. Science is his wisdom reduced to
practice. He has not eyes like the Christian God, he is all light. He has not ears
but is all wisdom, so that not a sparrow can move but moves in his wisdom. He
hears all men's prayers that are made according to the principle of science, so
when man asks for what he cannot have, without some act, God never will
answer. The Christians believe that God will step out of the natural course of
Science to help a man, but my God cannot do such a thing.
I will show how Christians receive favors from men, and through their wisdom
give the praise to this unknown God. A pious old man and woman live in some
bylane in a small apartment with no furniture, not even a chair, and depend on
the charity of the world for a living. You enter and find the woman with the Bible
in her hand, feeble and careworn, and with a trembling voice she says, "Will you
not be seated on this box by my side?" You seat yourself and learn her history.
She tells you that when she was young, she experienced religion and felt that
she had found her saviour. At the age of twenty, she married a man who had all
the means to make her happy. But it seemed to be the will of God to remove
from her all the blessings of life in order to teach her that man's happiness does
not exist in the things of this world but on laying up treasures in heaven where
moth and rust do not corrupt, etc. You ask her, "Do you feel satisfied with your
situation?" "Oh, yes," she answers. "I feel as though God knows my wants and
will not let me suffer but will watch over me ." "Don't you suffer for food?" "Oh, no.
He sends me food." "How?" "The Lord sent Mrs. D. to see me, and she gave me
all this food that you see here." Now here is where a great mistake is made in
supposing that some intelligence outside of man is watching as man does not
know himself.
All wisdom is outside of man's opinion and belief and that which does not come
to his senses is to him a mystery. So the mystery is his God. To know the
mystery is to know God, and when the mystery is understood, the religion
vanishes. One great trouble comes from teaching us to believe in an overruling
providence in the shape of a God who will answer our desires without our making
any effort. It makes man indolent and superstitious and a burden on society. It
makes man unhappy and even insane and draws out sympathy from a class of
persons who know their religion is the effect of superstition. I will show how a
person in a similar state the lady above might be benefited by some persons
without any knowledge through the senses. This would look as though it were by
the divine influence of God, while God has just as much to do with every act that
we take the credit of to ourselves and it really belongs to us. If I am hungry and
you give me a dinner because you feel that it would make me happier, and you
had this in your mind, then that was God and I give him the praise of my feelings
that do not lie; but if you give me a dinner to be praised for your goodness, that is
of man, and man should have the praise. Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the
things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." This God in us is
always on the lookout to render kindness to those who are in trouble, but the
Caesar is on the lookout to be rewarded for his acts so that it is hard to tell which
is master.
To return to the case stated above. A poor, sickly person confined to her room,
starving, freezing and nearly exhausted, offers up a prayer according to her belief
that would make her put forth her desire or feelings. Her feeling excites the
sympathy of some person; this, like yeast, excites him to look for a cause and,
like a mesmeric person, he finds it by following the desire to the place of her
abode and then relieves her wants. As both are ignorant of the cause and effect,
the whole is laid to God, so they give God the praise. The ignorance of wisdom is
called religion. You may ask me for proof. I will give it from my own acts under
these impressions, and I know that God nor spirits nor man's wisdom has
anything to do with them. They are the natural outpouring of persons' feelings,
and not thinking that their trouble could reach my ears. But my wisdom could
account for all. I will relate one or two instances, showing how little we know
ourselves and how much we are governed by this wisdom unknown to the world
of man.
I was attending not long ago a patient who was very sick. (P.R.H. Mrs. B&E.) All
those had a desire to see me and their desire was their prayer and their prayers
affected my wisdom or God that I believed in. Their wisdom or God was in
trouble, and in their trouble, they called on this wisdom. But their senses or
natural man knew not what they called on, for the religious man is a stranger to
this wisdom, and when he is in distress, the priest teaches him to call on the Lord
for help. This keeps them ignorant of this truth which they vainly worship. Their
God is in the clouds of their belief and I can see it, for my God is my wisdom and
theirs is in their opinion or belief. They expect to see him and I really see him.
They are looking for his second coming, but to me he has come and is now
writing this very truth that they vainly worship.
Here is a difference between a religious man and Jesus. God to the religious
man is separate and apart from the human family and watches over them as a
parent watches over his children. They stand to God as a servant to his master,
ready to obey his call, and if they are in want, he thinks it is for their good. He
grants their prayers if he thinks best, but if he chooses to do otherwise, it is all
right. So they are always looking for this unknown God that is in them and they
know it not. Now my God, that is, P.P.Q's, is his wisdom; and his senses
(P.P.Q's) are attached to his God. So he lives and moves and his life is in the
wisdom or God, and his prayer is to know more of himself, that is, this wisdom or
God.
April 1862
Clairvoyance-A Detection in Disease
BU 28:53, LC 8:80
[orig. CLAIRVOYANCE-A DETECTIVE IN DISEASE]
I notice an article under the signature of J. R. in your paper of the 14th in which
the writer undertakes to show that clairvoyance is the surest test to a knowledge
of disease. Now, I have no feeling towards any person claiming to cure disease
by this or that mode, but when J. R. undertakes to enlighten the world in regard
to what he pretends to know, he had better get the beam out of his own eye
before he tries to take the mote out of his brother's eye. I believe I am as well
posted in regard to clairvoyance as J. R. or I know that so far as its power is
concerned in curing disease, it is a complete deception and it is the cause of
more trouble than in any other mode of curing. Sympathy for the sick is all there
is about it and if any person will follow my direction, if they do not satisfy
themselves of the truth of what I say, I will forfeit my reputation as a man.
I have been for the last twenty years investigating clairvoyance and mesmerism,
and it has opened my eyes to facts that have not come to the world as yet. It
would be strange if I really believed that medicine was necessary to cure
disease, that I should not give it. If my object was to sponge the sick and
suffering, I certainly take the worst way to accomplish my object; but if my
motives are what I pretend they are, to put men in possession of a fact that will
keep them clear from such persons as J. R. who would have people believe that
God has chosen the foolish of this world to confound the wise, if this is the case,
he has certainly made a wise choice in selecting J. R.
For my own part I would examine persons for nothing and even pay them for it, if
I wished to impose on them by selling medicines. I have no medicines to sell, nor
do I recommend any, and I never meddle with what my patients shall eat or drink
or wear if it does not interfere with their health. Then I tell them how it affects
them and leave it to them to decide. If persons wish to take medicine, let them go
to those who sell and buy for themselves. Those who would be cured in the way
J. R. recommends by applying a test can detect whether the medium is
clairvoyant or not. Blindfold the subject and see if he can tell what you have in
your pocket or wallet. If they do that, they may see the state of your internal
organs, but they cannot tell that it is done by reading the strong impression on
your mind.
April 1862
Can a Spirit Have Flesh and Blood?
BU 17:8, LC 8:98
[orig. untitled]
I answer, no, for a spirit is nothing but a shadow either of a belief or a substance.
If a person knows anything, the shadow of the thing known is a spirit; so if we call
ourselves a substance, the shadow is a spirit not a substance. Truth is a solid
and makes no shadow. Wisdom never makes a shadow but ignorance is simply
a shadow of something that exists as a belief. Life is a solid not a shadow and as
it is attached to a belief of matter, our life seems to act in the matter, but in life
there is no matter except as we admit it. We do admit it; therefore all things are
based on this belief.
Our senses are our life and therefore are solid. As man is known to himself in his
belief or matter, he has no idea of himself outside of matter so that he can be in
but one place at a time, according to his belief, therefore if I am talking to a
person, I monopolize him for a time. Now this is a false idea. The person to
whom I am talking may be present at as many places as his wisdom can
comprehend. As I sit and write this alone, I have no doubt but that many persons
may be present, to listen and talk upon the subject, and yet not one is aware in
the natural world of any change in himself. You ask for proof of all this. I have it.
A person in a mesmeric state can ask a question of any person at a distance and
get a correct answer and yet the person not know that any question has been
asked or answered. When man knows himself, he will see that the thing called
man is but a very little real identity.
In regard to getting communications from our friends who have died, there is a
great error. The person who sends a letter to the medium supposes the spirit
friend comes and influences the medium's hand to write because the answer
comes without the medium knowing either party. Here is the mistake. Everyone
who believes in the spirit world addresses a letter as he would to a living friend
who lives at a distance, supposing that the friend knows nothing of the request till
he or she is called up by the medium. This is not the case. The person is a part
of the friend, and when he addresses the person, the answer is in the question;
and if the medium is in a perfect state, he can see the answer as well as the
question. If you ask a person whom you call dead a question, the wisdom of your
friend is with you but it does not prove that your friend is aware that you asked
the question any more than he is aware of answering it, yet the answer comes
and is satisfactory.
I will relate an experiment that I performed with my subject, Lucius, in
mesmerism. I asked any person in the room to give me a name of an individual
written on a slip of paper. I would send the boy to find the person dead or alive,
which he would do, bringing him into the room and describing him to the
audience. On one occasion a name was handed to me which I gave as usual to
the boy. He said this was a man who had a wife and three children, that he left
his chest of tools in a barn and had gone direct to Boston. I told him to follow the
man. So he went and said he had found him in Ohio in a cooper's shop, that he
had died. Still I told him to find him. Finally he said he had found him and I told
him to bring him before the people and describe him. Said he, "Can't you see
him? He stands here." I told the boy that he was in a mesmeric state. (He could
never understand this but admitted it because I said so. To him there was no
change; he had all his faculties and his identity was as perfect as when awake.
He expressed fear and joy at what he saw as much as though he had been in a
waking state.) I said, "Describe him." He commenced giving a general description
and I stopped him, saying if there was any peculiar trait or feature about him
mention it. "Well," said he, "I should think anyone might know this man by his
hare lip." I asked the person who gave me the name if this description was
correct and he said it was in every particular. Here was a clear case of
spiritualism. The subject would read sealed letters, he would go to a distant place
and ask a person a question and get an answer, and yet the person would not be
aware of answering any question.
The year that Mr. Dunn was chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives in
this state, I sent the boy from Belfast in a mesmeric state to Augusta to Mr.
Abbott, then Representative from Belfast, to inquire who was elected Speaker.
He asked Mr. Abbott who was making a speech and received the answer that
Dunn had a certain majority, naming it. This was before the vote was cast. A
letter was sent to a gentlemen by one who was present when this experiment
took place, mentioning the fact, and from some cause he had neglected to open
it until after the vote was taken, when he found that it agreed. Here you see he
got a fact before it was known to the world.
When at Eastport, I put a lady into a mesmeric sleep who wished to go to New
Hampshire to see her friends. I accompanied her. She would smile and bow, and
I asked her to whom she bowed. She said, It is our postmaster. She then said we
have now got home. Here is where my father lives. We went into the house. She
said, Our folks are baking. I asked her if her father was at home and if she would
introduce me, and she went through the ceremony. I said, Ask your father if
anything has happened since you left home; at this she started and turned pale
and seemed agitated. Upon asking what was the trouble, she said that her uncle
was dead, that he came there and was taken sick and had died on such a day
and how, mentioning both, her aunt who came to take care of him had been sick
but had recovered and her brother had carried her home. All this was confirmed
in a few days by letter. Her uncle, Dr. Richardson, sent me a letter which I have
in my possession, stating that all she had said was literally true. I might give
many experiments showing that we don't know ourselves. When I sit by the sick,
they tell me their feelings; yet they know it not through their natural senses;
neither am I aware of their presence or feelings through the natural organs. But
every person has two identities: one the substance and the other the shadow. To
me the natural man is the shadow, but to himself, he is the substance and all that
he cannot comprehend is shadow. A person in a mesmeric state proves to a
person in a waking state that there are two states and each is a mystery to the
other. The one in a waking state cannot see how a person can be dead to the
waking state and still retain his own identity and be to himself the same person
as before, and when he comes into the natural state, the mesmeric state is lost.
The mesmerized person cannot understand why the person in the natural state
cannot know what he knows in the mesmeric state. So each one is a mystery to
the other. Here is the fact. Wisdom has no shadow, a belief has one. A fact is not
a solid. For instance, there is a stone; that is a fact and it casts a shadow. The
stone being the invention of man, it is matter according to our belief and this
belief makes it a shadow. Man acts either by his belief or his wisdom. When he is
in his wisdom, he is to opinion a spirit, but to him he is himself with all his belief.
So as his belief makes him act in matter, every act is in his belief and the
acknowledging of matter depends on his belief.
Jesus to the world was dead, so to the world he was a spirit, but to himself he
was alive and had flesh and blood. Wisdom makes a man know himself, and
when he does know himself, he can be in two places at once. This proves to man
that as he rises from error into truth and knows it, he has two identities: one in
the body and one outside. To know this is to understand it so that you can put
your wisdom into practice for the benefit of those who suffer for the sins of their
belief.
Portland, May 1862
On Being in Two Places at the Same Time
BU 17:15, LC 8:107
[orig. untitled]
When a person can be conscious of his senses being in two places at the same
time, then he is in that position to see and feel man's trouble. The ignorance of
this is the cause of our misery, for it is far better never to have had a belief than
to have one that makes man miserable. For the fool has no belief; therefore he
looks for nothing and is not disappointed. The man who has just sense enough to
work up into a belief is living in a world of trouble in fear of something that may
destroy his life, so he lives a life of misery and is all the time subject to death.
Now convince man that his own existence, as he thinks he is, is death to a truth,
and this truth will teach him that although his body may be here and talking, the
real man may be in some other place and see and know what is going on and
enjoy it, while the idea body with all the knowledge and beliefs may be sitting and
talking to persons who are sitting by him.
Suppose you have just left a battlefield where you have been a principal actor.
You enter a public house, take a seat and someone enters with a paper giving an
account of the battle written by someone who picks up his facts from public
rumor, so the crowd commences giving their opinion. You know that nearly all
that is said is false and you are in two places at once, or in one place and out of
it, for wisdom is not a place. Your wisdom is in their ignorance. This is a place,
for it is surrounded by error of the truth. You are in their error or darkness, but
they cannot see your light or wisdom. Here are two states, as they are called.
You know that you are sitting in the room with the rest of the company and you
know what they say is false. Your knowledge of that fact is based on your
wisdom, so your senses and life are based in wisdom. This is one place. Their
knowledge is based on their wisdom which is someone's opinion. This is the
other place. You hear all that they say is false, but you are not with them nor are
they with you. One is a place and the other, a condition. Your life and senses are
in your wisdom but you have another life that is not known to the company. This
life is dead to your wisdom, for you are alive in truth. In the life of true wisdom,
there is no disease, but disease is the life of opinion. The company were dead to
the truth. So when you began to let your light shine, they were afraid and would
contradict because their life was in danger. But as you made your truth known,
you had risen from the dead to them; but to you the dead did not rise but the
living came from the dead. So you could say to all who believed, Let the dead
bury their dead, but you who have received the truth follow me in the truth.
There is a process of reason that can bring a man into that state that he can tell
these two states, one out of matter and one in it. When you know a thing, you
can see where you were before you know it, but what you do not know contains
one identity. For instance, a person in a waking state thinks that he is an
individual himself and that he is just where he thinks he is and nowhere else.
This is the natural man. He is like a man in the dark who thinks that he is the only
one who has any light, and his light being darkness, he is led by a light that is not
admitted to be one till his darkness is swallowed up, yet he thinks he has never
changed. So he lives and dies every day and never knows that his identity has
ever changed, for his progression is so slow that to him all things change, while
there is no change in him. This is the man of opinions. The man of wisdom can
see that he has changed from what he once believed to be true, but also can see
that his wisdom was based on opinions of others and that when he has the
evidence within himself, he knows that this evidence was not in his opinion.
Spiritualism is based on a belief of what we want to have proved. We want to
believe or have evidence that our friends are still living and know what we are
about, so we consult a medium to tell us what we do not know. There are some
who contend that they do know. Still they are all the time getting communications
to prove what they believe. This shows a doubt. At another time they say their
friends are present with them and know when they are writing a letter to them.
The tree is known by its fruits. If I wish to write a letter to a person who is looking
over my shoulder, of course he knows what I want, and if I believe him dead,
would I write to the person who stood by me and then send it to a medium to get
an answer? This is done by those who profess to believe, but if my friend sees
the question, he of course must answer it while I write it, but to me the answer is
not known.
May 1862
On Healing Those Who Do Not Understand
BU 17:22, LC 8:115
[orig. untitled]
The question has been asked if I do not cure many who do not receive my
wisdom and may not even know what my belief is, and why cannot I, who believe
that there is truth in you and wish to be taught by you, be cured? To the first
question I answer, Yes. I do often cure persons who have no understanding or
curiosity about the manner in which I cure them. My wisdom is my remedy and
the application to the patient is the cure. It is not necessary that a person who is
thirsty should have another teach him where he can find a spring of water to
quench his thirst, if the person will be good enough to supply his present wants.
But if the person has arrived at that wisdom where he knows there is danger of
being thirsty again, then it is necessary that he should be put in possession of a
wisdom that will lead him to the fountain so that he will not thirst but where he is
to himself a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
The child is satisfied with the present gratification of its wants, never dreaming
that it will ever be deprived of what it wants. And a person who is satisfied with
having his disease cured without enquiring into the causes is like a child who
never thinks that it will be thirsty after it is satisfied. This is the case with the large
majority of mankind. Your wisdom can give the child water to quench its thirst,
and my wisdom can destroy the error that made the child hunger and thirst after
health and happiness. Such hunger and thirst is a disease. The rich man's
torment was for water. The thirst made his torment and the wisdom he lacked
would have enabled him to get it. This is the case in all diseases, but man is too
lazy to think, so he believes what is said without any labor.
May 1862
Spirits-Are They Substance or Shadow?
BU 29:5, LC 9:3
Is a spirit a reality, i.e., a truth, or is it the work of superstition? I affirm that it is
the work of superstition. There is just as much truth in a spirit as there is in the
belief that spirits do exist. If a person believes a lie, to him it is a truth, not that
the lie is a truth, but the belief is a truth to him and he is affected by it the same
as though it was a scientific fact capable of demonstration. The belief in the real
existence of spirits is so universal that every person admits it more or less. Let us
examine whence this spirit comes.
The process of mind called thinking is a sort of sketch or draft for an idea or
thing. For instance, a man wishes to construct a machine; he creates it in his
mind and this creation can be seen and described by a very sensitive person.
Under the excitement of a superstitious fear of the dead, a man will create a
being after his own idea. This also might be seen by another. I know this to be
true for upon this principle, I cure disease. Ghosts and spirits, like diseases, are
the invention of man's superstition and the wisdom that can destroy one can
destroy the other. Man, not knowing that the things he sees are ideas of his own
or of someone else's creation, calls the thing seen a spirit. This gives rise to the
idea of spirits of the dead, for the living have no disembodied spirit. God casts no
shadow of himself, but when his wisdom is reduced to man's understanding, that
casts a shadow; therefore true wisdom is not seen! Spirits are not produced from
either of these causes. They come from superstition. Destroy the superstition
about death and the process of thinking of other things would stand. So long as
people think about the dead, so long there will be spirits, for thought is spirit, and
that is all the spirits there are.
May 1862
What Is a Spirit?
BU 17:20, LC 8:113
A spirit is the shadow of a person's belief or imagination. Fear produces a
chemical change and out of this fear comes phenomena and these again
produce fear. This fear creates fearful things or spirits. Perfect wisdom casts out
all fear and then the spirits are gone. Man's belief is the basis of his spiritual
sight. For instance start a story that ghosts are seen in a certain graveyard; every
person believing in spirits, good or bad, is just as liable to see a ghost as he
would to be affected by any belief on a religious subject. When Miller prophesied
the end of the world, ninety-nine out of a hundred were affected to some extent.
This was shown by the count taken by the churches. Even the Unitarian
Universalists had their evening meetings and men and women spoke who never
spoke before and probably never will again. But it showed what man's belief can
do.
I have said that fear produced a chemical change in man's belief, and as matter
is one element of his belief, this is liable to take form according to the belief. It
has always been impressed on children that ghosts are seen in the burying
grounds. This belief makes an atmosphere over the dead like a cloud on a
mountain, and in a certain state of mind, certain persons can make a ghost as
easily as a certain state of the atmosphere will make the borealis which always
keeps just so far from the traveller. So it is with spirits. When you get where they
are, they are gone, but the atmosphere still remains and persons may feel it. I
once visited a sick man. It was about eight o'clock in the evening when I visited
the room. Immediately upon entering, the atmosphere of the room produced such
an effect on me that I felt as though my hair stood on end and it seemed as
though the room was full of spirits. As I approached the bed, he seemed
frightened. I said, You are frightened to death. Why do you lie here? He said he
couldn't get up. I said, You are afraid of these devils. They scare you, and when I
came in, they left and are now standing out among the apple trees. He said,
They scared you a little. This was a fact. He then said, These devils have taken
me by the nape of my neck and seat of my pants and laid me here, but I never
told of it before. I told him to get up and I would keep them away. He did so and
got well.
These devils followed me over two miles before they left and then they parted
and flew to the woods. They seemed like a swarm of bees. They varied in length
from six inches to two feet. Each seemed to have a separate identity and all the
idea they had was to follow me. So all that was necessary for me was to keep up
courage enough. These were spirits. The man had become sick from some
nervous trouble and was made to believe that he was full of humor. As he
philosophized, he contended that the body was made of animal life and this living
humor was eating his very vitals, so the heat that passed off from his body was
full of living devils. As I came in contact with his belief, the atmosphere I felt was
the company or devils that he was with, and in the atmosphere, I saw the spirits
or shadow of his belief. And as I took in the atmosphere, I was impregnated with
it, but the devils were to me shadows of his own make. So as my system threw
off this heat that I inhaled, I could see these imps, and I never shall forget how
earnest and determined I was to keep up, for it was the passing off of the disease
from me.
May 1862
What Is Spiritualism?
BU 17:18, LC 8:110
Spiritualism is the name of a belief in the immortality of the soul. Its believers
rank it among the sciences. I will analyze this claim by asking the spiritualists a
few questions, being myself the skeptic. When I speak, is it I or my spirit? If it is I,
do I think also, and if I think, when do I sense thinking? If I lose my organs of
speech, etc., belonging to the body, where am I? Am I anything? If I am a spirit,
when was I not one? How came I flesh and blood and then a spirit? I am either a
spirit all the time or else I am not, and if I am one, what becomes of flesh and
blood? When is the change called death? What dies? If the spirit is not dead,
how can it give an account of what never happened and if it does not, what do
you make of these communications given and purporting to come from the dead?
These questions are in the dark and can only be answered by a person's belief
about a hereafter, and that is founded on the fact that they want to have it true;
but being ignorant of what they pretend to believe, they deceive themselves and
others.
I will state my belief and bring proof to substantiate it as true. Spirit is only matter
in a rarefied form, and thought, reason and knowledge are the same. To wisdom
all these are only shadows of wisdom. Memory is the same. Our existence does
not change. That is a self-evident fact. Memory is attached to this existence; it is
not eternal but belongs to the idea matter. Life is composed of light and wisdom;
everything having form contains an odor, and life and wisdom give it quality or
body as it pleases and to every idea its own peculiar body or odor. Man, as we
see him, is composed of these odors just according to his knowledge. The
wisdom that keeps the body together is not seen nor admitted but is an identity of
itself. All mankind is one body of wisdom, each having a self-existence in this
wisdom. Matter is the medium, and error is the material that is employed to work
out the problem.
I will made an illustration. Freedom from error is the great problem of man's
destiny, so he ventures on investigation with fear. Fear is darkness of the truth,
but truth is in the fear. Error is only a state of mind that is not really anything but
commotion. Man is two beings. God is one and man or God is in his works and
he, being ignorant of his God, leaves him in ignorance of himself, so he reasons
as though his body had life. This error makes him two, yet he is but one. And
when he learns that matter is nothing but error, that he has to get rid of or have it
at his will, then he will begin to understand what he is and how he stands in
relation to others.
As I have said freedom is science, slavery error; each acts outside of what is
called matter by error. So error tries to control the truth and make it subservient
to its will. It therefore establishes its science by authority, not science. This error
makes a sort of atmosphere that fills the whole earth like the air and, at times, it
gets so condensed that it darkens the heavens or wisdom so that the light of truth
seems to have gone out. But truth like lightning flashes through this darkness
and like a thunderstorm destroys the cloud of error. Then the light of freedom
once more shines out and lights up the heavens with its wisdom of freedom, and
science takes one more step towards perfection. Every living being is affected by
this change. It is the outpouring of error striving for the ascendency and its life is
in its own destruction. Property, character, bodies and every destructible thing
must be changed and the owners lose their place in the world and give way to a
higher class of mind. But their identity is not lost except as a power and they take
their places where ruined politicians and demagogues stand. This is illustrated by
the present rebellion. The error or secession element, North and South, will be
driven from this land of freedom and will mingle with the vilest class of minds.
Their memories will be held in contempt and they will be called liars and traitors.
May 1862
What Is the True Meaning of Life and Death and of the Two
Worlds?
BU 17:3, LC 8:94
How came man to reason that there ever was a world beyond this life? And what
is the evidence of a world independent of man as we see him? Life is a self-
evident fact that needs no proof more than each individual has in himself. Death
is an opinion of what life is; therefore man's life is in death or opinion, so he lives
in bondage through the fear of death. If man knew himself, he would know that
death is ignorance of himself and this ignorance is the cause of the greater part
of his trouble. The life of death is an opinion, so all men must die for all men have
opinion. To lose their opinion is death and the knowledge that you have changed
is life. Life embraces the true wisdom that can prove all things. Our senses are
one of the attributes of life. They are not the life but the medium. Where our
senses are is where we consider ourselves to be. So if our senses are attracted
to some opinion, we think that something has life, and as all opinion must die, we
are afraid of death. This fear is our death for its life is opinion. This wisdom of this
error is the destruction of death. The child knows no death nor fears it; therefore
he has no opinion.
Life is a point without space; all things start from it. When it is attached to matter
as an instructor, it acts through that medium of God's laws called the senses, so
life and the senses are all that make man; his wisdom is what he acquires by his
own effort. If he never places his senses higher than an opinion, then he is
subject to death; but if he can see that his life and senses can be detached from
an opinion and live in the Science of God, then he loses the fear of death as a
destructive element but tries to solve every problem of death for the sake of what
he can gain. These two worlds are science and opinion. How shall a man know
he is in each? By his wisdom. If it is of this world, he shows it by his belief; if it is
of God, by his science. Every thought is of this world and also every opinion, but
every scientific fact is of God and is known to the person who knows it, and he is
just as far advanced in another world as this fact is known to him and he can
make it known to others.
Beware of false science for there are many; try and see if they are of God or
man. If from God they can be shown or proved, but if from man, they rest on
some opinion. All our acts spring from one of these sciences and act either for or
against us, for man can act only according to the law that governs him and this is
either God or Error. Suppose a man to be God, and his children the Sons of God.
All will admit that the children are a part of their parents or father, yet there may
be a doubt who the father is but there can be none as to who is the mother. So I
will use the mother God. Suppose she knows all things; then she knows all about
her child, but this the child does not know, for its wisdom is limited to itself and
acts in its mother's wisdom and knows it not. The mother acts upon the child and
the child knows it not. The child is the offspring of two ideas: one called its father
and the other, its mother. Ignorance and superstition have changed these two
characters, and by making brute force the leading power have made the father
the wiser, the mother, the weaker. But according to true wisdom, this is reversed.
The child is the offspring of the earthly element called Adam and the spiritual Eve
or mother, and it is in these two elements. So as one must give way to the other,
it makes war with itself. The mother is its real life and the child lives in her, while
the father or brutal part tries to keep the spiritual life in subjection to itself. When
Paul broke from the earthly father and mingled with the spiritual mother, the
father would come and tempt him. So he said, When I would listen to my mother,
my father was present with me; when I would obey my mother, my father would
not let me, so it was not the mother but the father that governed me.
These are the two worlds; to rid ourselves of the earthly man is what we need to
make us happy. God is not of the earthly but of the heavenly or higher
intelligence called Science. Man's identity is embraced in every faculty. When we
speak of man's senses, we speak as though each man had sight of his own, and
between him and his neighbor there was no sight, and so with all the senses, but
it is not so. Sight is not a thing but is one of the attributes of God, like light.
Tasting is not a sense confined to the body, but life and all the senses fill all
space with no variation. This is the God of all wisdom. He spoke matter into
existence and gave it life eternal. Like the child, man acts either by the sympathy
of his spiritual mother or the dictates of the earthly parent. Each individual is
composed of these two identities; our life is in both and our happiness and
misery depend upon which we follow. If we follow the mother, all is harmony;
there are no laws to oppose us. But if we follow the earthly or brutal element, we
become a slave to the evils that the earthly man is capable of inventing. We are
subject to the laws and penalities, rewards and punishments, and every kind of
disease that ever was or will be invented, for such is the kingdom of the earthly
man.
The new birth is to know the wisdom that makes man sensible that there is a
higher life of his identity than that of the natural man or brute. When I compare
men to brutes, I do not mean to say that brutes will cease to live, but they have
no anticipation of anything except their daily wants. They take no thought of the
morrow, the morrow to them is nothing. They are ignorant of another world, yet
they are wiser than the Christian, for all his belief of another world is founded on
an opinion in the ignorance of this wisdom I call Science. This never teaches
another world of space or spirit, and the man of science is as ignorant of another
world as the brute, but he is wiser in cause and effect. He sees progression in
everything except death, and that is a superstitious fear of what will happen only
in our belief.
Let man settle this great truth, that his life, senses and memory is all there is of
him, and these are not his exclusive right, but they are all in the mother of
wisdom, like the child who cannot get out of sight of the parent. Our life is her life,
but our ignorance makes us unhappy. When we lose sight of this principle of
sympathy, we are under the influence of the earthly father and we become his
child. Yet the sympathy of the mother is still in us, but we know it not till the
reaction of our acts comes, and then comes the reward of our acts. All liars must
have their portion in this lake of wisdom that will burn up the lie or explain it; so
disease being what follows a belief, it is too late to repent after the disease
comes. The phenomenon is the result of the belief. The disease or misery is what
follows. For instance, if I make you believe that strychnine won't hurt you, your
belief is nothing till you put it in practice; then comes the reaction of your belief,
and the effect shows just what you really believed. If no effect took place, then
my belief neutralized the poison so that it acted according to direction. But if the
reaction was bad and caused disease, the feeling is the misery and the misery is
the disease.
May 1862
Can Dr. Quimby Be in Two Places at the Same Time?
BU 40:38, LC 8:37
[Part 2 of orig. HOW DOES DR. QUIMBY STAND TOWARDS HIS PATIENTS?]
My answer is I can by sitting by the sick, not the well, for a sick person is one
beside himself, and to converse with two persons who are not aware of their own
presence, one must be in communication with both. A mesmerizer is only in one
place at a time according to his belief, having but one identity, but I have two
identities: one in matter and the other out of matter. One can be seen and felt by
the natural man, and the other can feel and see the sick man's identity which to
him is not visible to his natural man. I will illustrate my two identities. When I sit
down by a sick person, I have one identity, the sick has two; yet one is not
admitted except as their feelings, but this is not the case. The natural man or
identity is the shadow of the real man who is in trouble. When the two separate is
when the spiritual man is disturbed and makes his complaint to the world through
his medium; but when there is no disturbance, there is but one identity apparent,
although in reality there are two the same. For instance, when a person is in a
mesmeric state, his real self can be hundreds of miles from his body, yet to him
he has but one body and one identity; but to another he has two, for one is seen,
and the other is admitted from the evidence he gives of his presence at the place
he describes. So with me I am conscious of my own identity; then I am equally
conscious of conversing with the sick and listening to their complaints as I am of
my own senses. I am conscious of their identity which consists of a body with all
the senses of the natural man, with all the intelligence they possess. It can travel
and show one things that his natural senses know not of. Their language is their
feelings which contain their trouble. It is the touch which Jesus felt. It tells you its
trouble. This I communicate to their senses to let them know that their very self is
outside of the body and all their troubles are in this self or identity which is not
acknowledged. For the sick are like persons in a mesmeric state who want to
return home having been carried away by false guides and left alone; being
strangers they cling to the shadow of their old identity. This is the identity I see
while I retain my own senses as a man. They remind me of a person turned out
of his own house where he was born by the dissipation of his parents, driven
from his own farm or house, where all his ties of earthly life are, into the world
among strangers. Believing they shall have a claim on the old estate, they linger
around the old place, sometimes driven away and even put into prison for daring
to speak of their wrongs. The child becomes the heir of its own vineyard, given to
it by the father of all, so it commences like a man and his wife in a new country.
The father is opinions (the child being the vineyard), Science the mother.
Opinions are the earthly man and the children partake of both parents. As
opinions wants to rule, it is arbitrary and wants to dictate. So as the little ideas
grew up, the earth becomes peopled with a race of ideas that are obnoxious to
the children of science. So a war commences and the earthly man being more
powerful in opinions and these being the standard, the child of science is driven
from the land and the land is left to the world of opinions.
This is the state of a sick person brought up under the guidance of parents who
have reverence for the opinions of the priest and physician and have no wisdom
of their own. The children of these blind guides soon become overbearing and
make war with their father, and the land passes into the hands of strangers and
they seek a home in the rocks and dens. It may be asked if I believe that man
might live forever, as it is called. I answer, No, not that it would be out of a true
principle of the economy of life but because man is two beings: one of opinions
and the other of Science. For instance, suppose a man and his wife go into a
new country and purchase some millions of acres of land, and being intelligent,
they have a strong desire that the land should descend to their own offspring.
Their children grow up and the females marry men from some other country and
all the titles are in the females (or Science) name, and if the males or opinions
marry, their titles are at the will of the female or Science. If this contract or
agreement is kept in full force, generations will pass away and still the heirs of
the original parents will hold the soil. So it might be with man, if there would be a
science that would separate opinions from truth, so that man should not be
deceived by false guides whose sole object is to get possession of the science
and govern the world; then man would live contented as long as he pleased. But
as long as the present theology exists, revolution and misery must follow; there
must be a war of opinions against science. Call it aristocracy against democracy,
or rich against poor, it is really opinions against Science or progression. Science
never makes war; opinions are always making a, disturbance and calling
themselves the children of wisdom. Jerusalem was called the place where the
Lord or Truth dwelt and the Pharisee Jews assumed to be the chosen people of
God or Science; this was false science. Paul warned the people to beware of
such and avoid those babbling and all opposition of Science, falsely so called.
The Jews had turned the word of God into a false religion and had taken to
themselves all wisdom. So to be a religious man was to be a Jew. The Jews
being made of opinions were looking for a teacher or ruler who should free them
from the Roman yoke or religion. So when this truth made its appearance
through the man Jesus and as they claimed to be the wisest people, Jesus went
to them, but they could not understand it so he returned to the Gentiles; that is,
the truth was first preached to the priests and physicians but they could not
appreciate it and condemned it and then it went to the sick who could appreciate
it. It is so now. I have tried to make the priests and doctors understand but they
have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, and hearts but cannot understand, so
they cry out, Crucify it, it is a humbug and they try to set the people against it.
Therefore I turned to the sick and found that they can understand what is for their
good.
So a new heaven or theory will spring up and a new earth or soil will bring forth
from the true vine, for this science is the true vine and its believers are the
branches. This science is the stone, which the builders rejected, that will become
the cornerstone of the new Jerusalem that came down from heaven and
established itself. Then comes the end when opinions must crumble under the
tread of progression and their field or false science will be plowed up by the plow
of science and their habitation will become a desolate wilderness. The fires of
progression will burn up the errors and opinions and the old ideas will become a
byword in the land. This is an illustration of the progress of that true science that
will free the poor, sick and disheartened beings that have been robbed by the
blind guides crying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.
I will show the sick how I make myself known to them in the clouds. A sick
person is to himself one person but is looking for his Messiah or Saviour to come
and save him. The priest tells him to pray to this unknown God; the doctor also
comes to administer to his wants. Each, having no wisdom, are false guides
leading the sick and blind till they all fall into the ditch or error together. Now in
the clouds of their belief, while wandering around their prison, starving for the
bread of life, sick and in despair and given up to die, a voice is heard that
speaks, not as man speaks but in that still small voice of wisdom saying, Be of
good cheer, your sins or errors shall be explained or forgiven. Then comes a
crash of the whole prison, he doors are thrown open, the walls of the prison fall to
the ground and the keeper trembles for fear. For he sees the shackles and bolts
trop from the prisoner and he hears a voice saying, Come hither! This is the way
that this truth acts upon the sick. The prison is the belief, the cords and shackles
are the pains and the keeper their belief. My wisdom is the Science or the
Saviour. It sees and feels their woes and comes to the rescue, and if they
understand this truth, it is wisdom to them; but if not, it does not prevent the cure.
It is like a criminal listening to his counsel. If he understands, he is the wiser and
better, for he knows better how to keep out of trouble; but if he does not
understand, it does not prevent his counsel from getting his case, for the criminal
can of himself do nothing. So it is with the sick; nothing is expected of them
except to be patient and answer such questions as their counsel shall ask, but if
they wish to be posted up so as to keep clear of these deceivers, they must give
heir attention to the argument of the counsel. But so far as the cure is concerned,
it makes no difference, only the counsel will take more interest if he sees his
client is interested in his case. But if the criminal takes no interest in his case, it
gives the advantage to the opponent which is the disease, for it looks as though
the prisoner felt that he was guilty. I find that if the prisoner places all confidence
in men or this truth, he excites it more in his favor than if he looked upon me as
though I had no higher motive than to plead his case for the little fee I get without
regard to his getting clear. When I see this, I take no interest in his case and feel
as a counsel does when he knows the prisoner is guilty and has no feeling about
his case. Of course, the counsel cannot manage his case with as much zeal as if
it were otherwise.
June 1862
Prove to Me that Mind Is Matter
BU 28:35, LC 8:67
You will admit that I am at a distance of some hundreds of miles from you
according to your belief. Now if your senses are your mind and then if I act upon
them, I must act outside of your own wisdom. My wisdom, being attached to my
senses, does not admit space except as an error, so that distance is an idea, not
truth; and according to error, I am at a distance from you. But I am now sitting
talking with you and although you have eyes, you cannot see, ears and you
cannot hear, yet I am trying to make you understand that I am with you even in
your very thoughts and I will tell you how you may see and understand. Suppose
your senses were an instrument and my wisdom wished to communicate to your
wisdom some truth.
I come to your senses and use them to communicate to your wisdom the fact, but
as your wisdom is of this world, you are ignorant of the author and think that the
ideas are your own. So watch your feelings and see if there are not some
vibrations or strains that pass through the senses that will make the whole body
tremble so that you will say that your mind can be affected; then you will see that
mind is matter and that it can be changed.
Belfast, July 11, 1862
The Phenomena of Spiritualism
BU 17:23, LC 8:116
According to man's belief, he cannot give a fair account of the phenomena of
Spiritualism, from the fact that the experiments are governed by his belief and
must be so; but man cannot tell what he believes till the effect comes. His belief
is like his courage; he can judge better after it is tested. To say you believe so
and so is merely to assent to what someone has said, but to have your belief of
any force it must take form. For instance I might say that I believed there never
was a spirit seen. Now, to test my belief is to place me where I see or hear
something that I cannot account for.
I have found that in experiments everything that rests on a belief is liable to be
changed by some other belief or by science. The whole error on which
Spiritualism is based is a belief of a world separate or apart from the living into
which sooner or later man must enter, and every phenomenon goes to prove the
truth of this belief. Now destroy the error and what is man? Some say this is
atheism; it strikes at the root of all Christianity. Suppose it does. Must we do evil
that good may come? No, let God be true and man's opinion a lie or error.
I will give my belief of man and his progression, leaving the world to judge of the
truth of my story. What I know does not rest on the evidence of my own or any
opinion, and my opinion I give as such, liable to be destroyed by science.
Formerly I believed as all mankind did in regard to death and the state after that
change. I believed it was taught by Jesus and that it was all laid down in the
Bible. But since I have been engaged in the investigation of man's eternal
existence, the truth which I have found has destroyed this belief and has opened
to me a light which shows that all my former beliefs were based on superstition. I
now stand on the rock of science and prove all things by what I feel and see and
not by what others tell me.
I admit the Bible so far as it goes to prove this fact, but the explanation I deny, for
I know it is false. My belief is my wisdom, my opinion is my knowledge; every
person may say this, but wisdom is of God and knowledge is of man, and that
being based on a belief must fail, while the wisdom of God is eternal.
I will mention the articles of faith in which I differ from all classes of believers. To
the world what I know is an opinion, so I have to speak of it as my belief and give
the evidence of this faith in me, for this truth. To make the difference plain, I will
draw out the articles of the Christian faith.
The Christian confesses as follows. "I believe in God and his son Jesus Christ,
the savior of man. I believe that m